New

A year is full of promise.  Everything is new and fresh about the days coming because "anything can happen" in them and yet we all know that we are full of calcified habits and mummified behavior patterns that we rarely undo.  Extra weight almost always stays on us; trapped in a body of routine.  It is the crisis that awakens us to change.  The crisis comes like a lightning bolt, the new day like a wave of the sea.  Inexplicably we welcome the wave and despise the bolt.   The pink slip and the cancer diagnosis we dread and yet they carry with them a hope we don't have in the new day.  Something must change when the lightning strikes and it does.  We see people from a different angle, think of our habits with critical awareness.  The person we took for granted morphs into a trusted friend; the walk in the park becomes alive with brilliant colors we hadn't noticed.  Not everything turns grey when the lightning strikes, sometimes neon green and strawberry reds explode out from the shadows.  Satan engineers a crisis when he is afraid we have begun to inch our way back to God but he miscalculates.  He thinks he wrecks us with the stormy blast but in fact the drenching rain can awaken us to what we have missed, what we might have if we just turn the boat around.  The old term "backslidden" describes the vast majority of us.  We have fallen back into our old crusty patterns of Godless doing.  We have stopped looking to Him for guidance, given up our electrifying dependence upon God for help and gotten by on mindless habitual religion rather than living faith.  Perhaps today you could cast your habits to the wind and do something wildly new with God.  Scream into the stars your praise.  Throw all the money you have in your wallet into some stranger's hand and invest in love rather than something more reasonable and rational.  Lock yourself in your room and sit with God until you are thoroughly uncomfortable and bored to tears.  Confess your hidden sin and make right your wrong.  Take someone's hand and pray for her.  Finally forgive your father or your coach that despised you.  Read out loud an entire chapter of the Bible and make each sentence pop with the joy of an angelic choir.  This is a fresh new day God has given you!  Make the most of it!

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  I say to myself, "The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him."  Lamentations 3:21-24 NIV

Obedience—The Great Uncovering Step 2

Genesis 28:16 NIV

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it."

Are You Aware Of God’s Work In You?

Perhaps the most odd of all my actions in college was when I got involved in a “love triangle”.  Now I am sure that the girl in the triangle did not think of herself as being in a love triangle.  She was just having a good time going out with different guys.  My two friends though who liked her and who wanted her to choose between them felt very much like they were in a love triangle; or at least in a very attracted to this girl triangle.  For several weeks each of these two guys pined to me about his affections for her and how he could not tell if she liked him or  was just pulling him along to feed her ego.  I liked these friends and didn’t want either one hurt and so finally when I heard the girl was going out with a third guy at our school, I decided we should do something about this.  A group of us guys snatched her one day, brought her to the school fountain at the front of the campus and tossed her in it.  Now some would say this was a very mean thing to do and although the girl was laughing and mad all at the same time when she got out of the fountain and perhaps in some strange way liked all the male attention she received that day, I was doing something that had to break some rule.  Even though I never read a single regulation in the school handbook prohibiting guys from throwing girls in the fountain, I cannot say that what we did was “right”…funny perhaps but not right.  What struck me in this was that it probably revealed more about me in organizing this prank than it did about Ella who we all thought deserved to be “baptized” in the fountain.  The question is, what did this rebellious and somewhat mean spirited act reveal about me?

We are unconscious beings who carry below the surface a vast assortment of memories, ideas, convictions and desires.  Who we think we are and what we decide about ourselves isn’t necessarily the complete picture and perhaps not even a true picture of us!  There is much to us that we don’t grasp…some we recognize but try to keep from others and a lot that is hidden from us of which a little, unbeknownst to us, has trickled out where it is observed by friends family members and even strangers.  The question is not whether or not we have a significant unconscious world within; it is what shall we do about that unconscious world and will we let it determine key aspects of our lives.

The Bible provides us with rich insight into our inner world and it is of great value to study the people who are described in it.  One of the most important players in the Old Testament is David, the eventual king of Israel whom some would call the greatest of all the Hebrew kings.  David was courageous, intelligent, creative, godly and passionate.  But he also was lusty, narcissistic, bull-headed and ambitious.  He was a wild tangle of conflicted personality traits that God worked through to establish a culture of faith among the Hebrew people and make into a “man after his own heart”. (See 1 Samuel 13: 14)  David knew there was much below the surface of his personality that he didn’t understand and he invited the Lord to probe it.  Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24 NIV)

There is a powerful and critical way the Lord reveals our hearts to us and it is astounding how effective it is.  The law of God not only defines holy behavior but it also uncovers layers of buried material that unconsciously drive many of our actions.  The Sermon on the Mount is a surprisingly effective way God reveals to us our hearts and the hidden wounded parts of our soul.  Consider just the directive to forgive.  For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:14-15 NIV)  It is amazing how difficult it is for us to do this.  In fact, it could be argued that it is nearly impossible for many.

The painful description of David’s relationship with his first wife Michal illustrates just how illuminating the law of forgiveness can be.  David was the golden boy of his time, the conquering war hero who could do no wrong.  Yet it is likely that deep resentments that were developed in childhood haunted him.  His father saw so little in David that when the great prophet Samuel came to their town and called for everyone there to meet him for a sacrificial feast, the boy’s dad never bothered to call his youngest son back to the house.  He left David out in the fields tending sheep while every other child of Jesse was at the party.   To get a perspective on this, suppose Michael Jordan or Bill Gates were to come to your neighborhood and everyone on your block was invited to meet him at one of the homes down the street from you.  You had eight sons but brought only seven of them to the meet and greet.  How would it have felt to have been the only child not asked to come?  Later, we see what this mindset of the father did to David’s siblings.  When the older brothers went off to war to fight the Philistines and David’s father sent David to the front lines to bring food to his brothers, the oldest brother had a bitter reaction to David’s natural curiosity about the taunts of the giant Goliath and the way the soldiers planned on responding to Goliath’s challenge to fight him.  When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, "Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle." (1 Samuel 17:28 NIV)

Of course, we know that David not only ended up watching the battle but played the most important part in the Israelites winning the fight.  As a result of this bravery and other successful accomplishments in war, David was made a high ranking general in Saul’s army.  His popularity exploded and he was revered by the Israelites.  In fact he was more beloved than the king himself.  This infuriated King Saul and his jealousy inflamed his hatred of David.  The king concocted a plan to have David killed.  He told the boy that if he could somehow kill one hundred Philistines, he would give his daughter Michal in marriage.  Michal was in love with David and it would seem the feelings were mutual for David agreed to the bridal price.  David successfully killed one hundred Philistines and won Michal as his bride but their marital bliss did not last long.  Saul’s hatred of David grew so bitter that it became clear soon Saul would kill him if he did not immediately go into hiding. His wife Michal helped in his escape despite the risk she took enraging her father.  She knew it was possible that he would kill her for the part she played in David’s getaway.  But her love for David was too great for her to worry about her own life.  She had to help David save his.

What followed is tragic. The timeline isn’t clear but this marriage of infatuation and sacrificial love fell apart.  Abigail quickly got on a donkey and, attended by her five maids, went with David's messengers and became his wife.  David had also married Ahinoam of Jezreel, and they both were his wives.  But Saul had given his daughter Michal, David's wife, to Paltiel son of Laish, who was from Gallim. (1 Samuel 25:42-44 NIV)  Did first Saul force Michal to abandon her husband and marry someone he handpicked to replace him or did David first marry Ahinoam and Abigail and as a consequence Michal abandon her marriage to David and marry Paltiel upon her father’s direction?  We don’t know.  Probably Michal was the first one to remarry based upon Saul’s fury with David and Michal’s fear of her father.  David now had been rejected by the two most important men in his life, his father and the king who had taken him under his wing.  Michal may have been a mere pawn in her father’s hand but her rejection of David clearly stung David and his bitterness over her betrayal worked like dry rot in his soul.  He never forgave her.  One might argue that he couldn’t.   He was still the little boy whose father did not think he was good enough to warrant attendance at the party.

Ten years passed.  David had now added at least five more wives and perhaps more, fought a bitter war with Saul’s son and Michal’s brother Ish-Bosheth to gain control of all of Israel and no longer had King Saul to fear due to his death six years before.  Ish-Bosheth’s general Abner had become incensed with Ish-Bosheth and so decided to form an alliance with David and pave the way for David to be king over all Israel.  David was more than happy to make this agreement but first he had a requirement if he was to make peace with Abner and his army.  The general had to bring Michal back to David so that he could force her to be his wife again.  For perhaps ten years Michal had been with her new husband and he loved her deeply.  She was his only wife…he was her only husband.  David on the other hand had at least seven wives and many more he would take later.  What sort of bitterness of soul could lead to such a cold hearted, spiteful demand?  It was an ugly scene.  David told Abner and King Ish-Bosheth, "I will make an agreement with you. But I demand one thing of you: Do not come into my presence unless you bring Michal daughter of Saul when you come to see me." Then David sent messengers to Ish-Bosheth son of Saul, demanding, "Give me my wife Michal, whom I betrothed to myself for the price of a hundred Philistine foreskins."   So Ish-Bosheth gave orders and had her taken away from her husband Paltiel son of Laish.  Her husband, however, went with her, weeping behind her all the way to Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, "Go back home!" So he went back.  (2 Samuel 3:13-16 NIV)

Consider an imaginary conversation taking place between David and Jesus, one much like what happened between Christ and the rich young ruler.  David asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life and Jesus tells him as he tells us all in the Sermon on the Mount to forgive, “Forgive Michal for marrying Paltiel and come follow me.”  David replies, “I can’t; it’s too much to ask, to demand I forgive her!”  Now, why couldn’t he forgive Michal for remarrying?  Why did he make her return to him?  He no longer loved her.  She didn’t love him anymore it seems.  Why couldn’t David just forgive Michal and move on in his life and let her move on too?  What drove his determination to ruin Michal’s life and Michal’s husband’s life even though it is a fundamental principle of God’s Kingdom to forgive those who hurt us?  Perhaps, it was because David always had to prove he was the biggest man in the room, always had to be the conqueror, always needed to have the prize in his hand, always needed to be respected and appreciated.  He could never let anyone get the best of him, never be disrespected. He had a deep seated need to prove his worth, to be someone!  Why might that be?  Perhaps, his bitter disdain for Michal and her needs and his unwillingness to forgive her was rooted in something deep and ugly…perhaps it had to do with his battle to prove his worth to his dad.  Maybe, there was a wound in David’s soul that had never healed and when someone he cared about deeply reminded him of the rejection he experienced when he was a child, he could not let go of the hurt it uncovered.

What if though, everything went in a different direction and the rich young ruler did give up his wealth and follow Jesus and David did forgive Michal for marrying someone else?  Is it possible that in doing the command of God, by forgiving Michal, David might have been freed by God of his need to prove himself, freed of his neurotic need to live up to the expectations of his father?  We cannot say what might have been but we do know this.  The commands of God are not intended to take apart the joy we have in being independent and free.  God’s demands are based in love and if we obey Him, there is power in God to make us more free than we ever thought possible.  Consider the promise found in Malachi made to those who take God seriously enough to do as He commands; who believe that in all His ways He is good, even when He tells us to do something that we feel is too hard to do.  But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. (Malachi 4:2 NIV)

Stable Baby

There is an amazingly casual quality to the description of the birth of Christ.  It is just there without fanfare or histrionics.  The child was delivered and no bright light struck the stable with golden hues, no blast of trumpets heralded the emergence of his arms and head, no earthquake shook the stable as the baby was softly given over to Mary.  It was a birth and in the moments immediately before and after there was a commonality to it...it was like your birth, like the birth of your parents before you and their parents before them.  Christ came as one more birth in a long line of births and the glow of it was as stupendous as when every other wanted and joyously anticipated child has emerged.   Nothing is so small and seemingly insignificant as when the Christ is born in you, when He makes you His home and yet the supernatural nature of it will awaken soon enough and your life will come alive with Him just as it did for the shepherds, the Magi, the Disciples, his mother and Joseph.  It may be silent now and even a bit dark;  it may be mundane and paltry as it gets lost in the uproar of the world's business, this coming of Christ to you but He has come and it will be astounding what He has done in you and through you soon enough.  The Christ will work His way out of you at home, at work and in all your studies.  He will clear out the darkness and His sun will shine brightly wherever you go.  You will become a light for the world because the Light of Christ will manifest itself in you at every point along your way.  Bethlehem may have been a dirty little town and the stable where Christ was born smelly and confining but soon enough His Presence exploded into the world with all the glory of God manifested.  It could be that you feel you are a mere stable for the Christ child's birth but nothing is so noble as the one who has Him born in her soul and the angels cannot contain their joy at seeing  Christ at home in you.

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.  Luke 2: 6-7a

Obedience—The Great Uncovering

Luke 1: 18 NIV

 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this?  I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”

Have You Considered What Is Below Your Surface?

When I was in high school I made a decision that was not completely conscious but had long lasting ramifications for me.  Somewhere around my sophomore year I started playing basketball at gradually increasing degrees of priority.  It reached a point where I was playing basketball every evening after school for three to four hours and on weekends ten hours a day.  I wanted to increase my jumping ability and so I began wearing five pound ankle weights around and using them to jump rope.  I lifted weights to increase my upper body strength and ran to improve my endurance.  It became obsessive for me, this drive to become a great basketball player.  I did not have confidence in my ability though to make the high school team until my senior year when I finally tried out for the varsity.  What I did not realize though as I chased “my dream” was how little concern I had for what my parents wanted for me.  I did not care that by playing basketball all the time I wasn’t doing any schoolwork and I was rebelling against them and their wishes.  I was going against the direction of my school counselor who tried to get me to work harder at school and at a certain level, which I did not yet understand, I was rejecting the plan God had for me.  I was not made by Him to be a world class athlete.  He had shaped me for academia and I didn’t want what He wanted for me.  There was something deeply buried in me that drove my need to prove my worth on a basketball court day after day rather than fit in with what my parents as well as my God wanted for me.

We rarely think of “doing what we are told” as uncovering hidden secrets about ourselves.  We usually don’t like being bossed around by our parents, by our teachers, by police officers, by our supervisors at work or by the IRS.  And whether we are “good Christians” or not, we certainly aren’t usually happy to have even God tell us what to do.  But there is a fascinating side to our reactions to being bossed around that might be of great value to consider and that is the depths of insight we gain about ourselves when someone…even God, tells us what to do.  Today we will begin to explore this consideration and see if there might be much we can learn about ourselves when it comes to obedience.

There is within the birth narrative of Christ a most interesting study in human personality.  We find in it the strange and wonderful account of Zechariah, a Jewish priest who was old and had a wife named Elizabeth who was barren.  He was in the Temple of Jerusalem, having been chosen by lot to light the incense there.  It was a great honor for him to do this and so it was a big day for Zechariah to be alone at the altar doing this highly esteemed priestly duty.  But there was something not quite right with Zechariah; as his encounter with the angel Gabriel uncovered.

Without warning, the angel Gabriel suddenly appeared at the right side of the incense altar.  Zechariah’s visceral reaction to the angel standing before him tells us much of the supernatural quality of this visit.  When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. (Luke 1:12 NIV) Zechariah might have been startled by a fellow priest showing up out of nowhere in the eerie splendor of the Temple but his reaction was much more like that of one who had seen a ghost. Whatever followed from this encounter would certainly be significant perhaps even life-changing.  In a split second of awareness Zechariah must have come to this conclusion that he was “in for it”.  The angel though was not there to wreck Zechariah.  Quite the opposite!  His declaration though was one Zechariah, clearly was not prepared to hear.  "Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John.” (Luke 1:13 NIV) 

The immensity of the angel’s proclamation cannot be overstated.  It was after all an angel who said it and his presence alone terrified the old priest.  Perhaps more importantly, at least for our discussion here, Zechariah and his wife were old, childless and as far as the couple knew, Elizabeth was barren and for her it was disgraceful to not be able to have children.  Later, when she found out she was indeed pregnant, her reaction makes it clear how devastated she had been by her inability to have children.  “The Lord has done this for me," she said. "In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people." (Luke 1:25 NIV)  After announcing the shocking news of a coming son, Gabriel, the scary angel then gave Zechariah a clear command about raising the child.  He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. (Luke 1:15 NIV)

But before all the angel promised Zechariah came to pass, Zechariah had no experience with God giving him such monumental gifts.  We know he had been praying for a child…most likely for decades.  The angel even said the coming child was an answer to his praying so most likely he had been praying faithfully for a long time.  He was a priest and he knew all the mechanics of praying for what he wanted…he had to have understood the scriptures promoting prayer and asking for what you want and need.  Perhaps he even did quite a bit of teaching on prayer but at some point it seems, Zechariah quit believing God would answer his most important prayer of all.  How do we know this?  Consider Zechariah’s reaction to the declaration that he would have a son!  Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years." (Luke 1:18 NIV)  The angel Gabriel was not at all pleased with Zechariah’s response.  The angel answered, "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news.  And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their proper time." (Luke 1:19-20 NIV) 

Clearly the angel knew, and was not guessing, that what may have seemed a quite natural reaction to being told that as an old man with a wife who was an old woman who never before had been able to have children that they as a couple would have a child was not a good reaction at all…it in fact revealed something very wrong with Zechariah.

At first it seems a bit harsh of the angel to take away like this Zechariah’s ability to speak.  Of course he did regain his speech after the baby was born so it wasn’t permanent, the Lord’s disabling of Zechariah but it certainly was a strong message sent by God.  There was something very wrong about Zechariah and the command of God to raise the child he was about to receive in a certain way helped uncover what was perhaps hidden to everyone but God Himself.  Remember that the angel Gabriel did not need to come to Zechariah to tell him he was going to father a child; that would become all too obvious in a few months.  What he did need to know in advance was how this child would fit into God’s overall plan and how he was to raise the child.  The mother, if the baby was to be alcohol free, would need to be alcohol free herself even while she carried the baby.  That command required immediate attention.  So when the command of how to raise the coming child within God’s plan for him came, it was uncovered that Zechariah had lost his faith in God to answer his prayer.  “How could this be” he asked.  Indeed, how could it be if God does not answer our big prayers?  Zechariah was deeply wounded by what he had faced for so many years and he had buried that hurt for so long that it was not easy to be done with it. 

Consider just how far Zechariah had fallen from being a praying man.  Despite the fact that Gabriel clearly was supernatural and Zechariah knew Gabriel was an angel sent by God, he still could not accept the possibility that God suddenly would do for him what he had for so long been asking God to do.  Not even an angel, who brought him great fear by simply being before him, could shake the deeply rooted unbelief in God to be able to answer his prayer.  Many of us would say that if an angel spoke to us in person, we would believe everything there is to believe in God.  But maybe we wouldn’t.  Maybe we have such buried brokenness that we have for years hidden from view that not even an angel could shake us of it.  But, maybe, God with a simple command can uncover what is broken inside of us and through our obedience heal that place of brokenness.

Zechariah was bound up in doubt and disappointment that maybe no one but his wife guessed existed.  Perhaps this is reading too much into the matter but maybe it isn’t. As we will see, it seems to be a spiritual principle.  Elizabeth had to follow a command and she did it.  She had to raise her child free of alcohol.  This would have meant her abstaining from it too.  There is a slight detail in the account of the son’s birth that is subtle but of great value to us.  Pay careful attention to what is said.  When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son.  Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy. (Luke 1:57-58 NIV)  Notice that the neighbors and relatives shared in the joy Elizabeth had.  No mention is made of Zechariah’s joy.  Is it possible that Elizabeth was the only one of the two who was happy to finally be a parent?  Was not Zechariah also happy to be a father?  Of course he was.  But the expression of that joy needed a simple act of obedience to completely heal the pain of his buried loss of faith in God.  There was controversy among family and friends of the elderly couple.  Elizabeth and Zechariah knew that God wanted the child to be named John but that seemed preposterous to everyone else.  But then Zechariah asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone's astonishment he wrote, "His name is John."  Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak, praising God. (Luke 1:63-64 NIV)  It was only after Zechariah obeyed God in what many of us would say was a small matter but for Zechariah it was a tremendous moment of victory because in the act of declaring the name of the child to be the name the angel told him to give the son, he revealed his complete belief in God’s work of giving the child to them.  It was in that one bit of obedience that Zechariah’s joy was unlocked and his unbelief and broken feelings about God healed.

Could it be that like Zechariah, there is a command of God that is revealing buried brokenness of soul?  Is it possible that if you in faith did what God says to do in the matter you might be healed of that brokenness and it would be replaced by joy?  We will give this fuller attention later but for now, consider the possibility that there is something God has told you to do and you have been stopped dead in your tracks by some past hurt or wound that you have buried and by rejecting out of hand God’s command to you, the wound is just festering within you and keeping you from bubbling joy.  What great joy might we all have if we did what God tells us to do?  May it be that in our disobedience to some simple matter, we have been our own worst enemy?  Could it be so?

Salvation Doing

Matthew 19:16-17 NIV

 Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"  "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."

How Is Your Salvation Coming Along?

The other day I took our dog Salsa out to run around and sniff things.  I usually don’t make her go on a leash.  I like for her to have freedom to use her mind and to act upon the external stimuli she discovers.  Dogs need the opportunity to think in new settings and explore.  No one else in the family can let her go off leash in the neighborhood because I am the only one who has absolute control over her.  When I call to her, no matter how far away she has wandered, if she can hear me, she will come running.  Sometimes I can tell she doesn’t want to come and her mind is trying to decide if she will keep up her sniffing where she is or return to me.  Rarely does she hesitate for long.  As I stood outside and watched Salsa wander about, suddenly her head jerked up to attention, her nostrils flared and in a split second she shot off into the street.  We live on the corner of two busy neighborhood streets that have significant blind spots.  Cars shoot through the intersection with almost no warning and there are no stop signs to slow them.  Suddenly Salsa was in the middle of the intersection going full bore after a squirrel.  I yelled for Salsa to stop but her mind was settled and she ignored my shout.  My screams to come back had no impact on her.  Salsa chased the squirrel madly through the street and to the foot of a tree where the squirrel escaped her fury.  It was only after she was foiled that the dog returned to me, obedient once again.  I learned something about Salsa that day.  She will obey me up to the point that some desire more powerful than her wish to please me comes to her.  Salsa is still obedient; it is though, to something other than me.

Obedience is fickle not just when it comes to dogs but to people also.  There are powerful forces that impact the direction obedience takes.  Of course, people are much more sophisticated than dogs and our rules of obedience more complicated but there is a pattern we find when it comes to obedience that may be important to explore.  Why is it that a man who loves his wife will leave her for someone else even though he knows the damage it will cause and how many people he respects will be upset with him for leaving her?  How come a patient will decide not to take the medication given her despite the authority of the doctor and her knowledge medicin?  Why do children disobey their parents even if they might face dire consequences for their actions and how do you explain speeding on the freeway when tickets are so expensive and the hassle of traffic school so aversive?  What is it about disobedience that makes it such a universal habit of people?  Why do we chase squirrels into busy intersections?  Today we weill deal with part of the answer to this question.

Perhaps you, like me, find it interesting Jesus’ response to the young man who asked Him how to gain eternal life.  "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments." (Matthew 19:17 NIV)  The Lord connects surprisingly life with obedience to the commandments of God.  This is particularly disconcerting given what we think we know about eternal life based on the promises found in the Bible; that it is a free gift of God that comes to us through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 NIV) (John 3:16  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-10 NIV) But here in Jesus’ reply it seems that obedience to the commandments of God is required for eternal life which is the opposite of what we have all been taught!  The confusion is understandable but not necessary.  Let us look a bit more closely at this terse response of the Lord to the young man wanting to know about eternal life.

It is helpful if we consider the tenses of the verbs in this passage.  Literally the Greek text reads, “If you want into life to enter, keep the commandments!”  “If you want” is in the present tense which indicates continuous action.  In other words He is telling us, “If you continually want eternal life” or “If you always want to have eternal life” or “If eternal life is forever on your mind”, then He says, “to enter, keep the commandments.”   The second and third parts of this are tricky and it takes careful thinking to see this clearly.  “To enter” is in the aorist tense which describes a moment in time rather than continuous action.  The same is true of the command of Jesus, “Keep the commandments!”  This also is in the aorist tense and indicates a moment in time.  Now that we have gotten the technical part of the Greek language out of the way, let us examine the gist of Jesus’ words.

Eternal life is continuous and we have it as a result of the gift of God dying to take away our sin and being raised to life that we through His life might have the same eternal life as God.  Now the point Christ makes is this.  Eternal life is worked into us by God as a gift.  It is worked out of us by us in our doing.  Through Christ we always have eternal life but it is experienced in moments in time as we live out in practical and real ways the life God gives us.  How do we live out the eternal life we have in Christ?  Jesus said we do it by keeping the commandments.    The Apostle Paul put it this way.  “As you have always obeyed…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you…” (Philippians 2: 12-13 NIV) In other words, God gives you salvation.  You work out that salvation in your everyday life by doing what God tells you to do.  The reason you can obey Him and work out the salvation you possess is because it is God who is working in you in all you do as you obey Him.  Let us use an everyday example to illustrate this.

Suppose you want to make your favorite dinner and in doing so there are specific ingredients and spices and types of dishes you like the most.  You prefer it all cooked in a certain way but for some reason you have forgotten all this and now are dependent on someone else to guide you through it.  Of course it would be wise to carefully take into consideration everything that guide has to tell you for it is in your best interests to follow to the letter what you are told.  In our case, we have lost our memory or our sense of everything that makes eternal life, life.  We don’t know what it is because Sin has warped our grasp of it.  The Lord however does know what that life is and how it is put together and so He has given us commands that make that life come together in a practical way.  That is what the commands of God are, the way of Life…the way of the Eternal Life.

Without spending any time reflecting right now on what those commands that make eternal life real life are, we can take a moment to consider a case study on the application of obeying the commands of God and seeing life come out of it.  The fiancé of Mary, the mother of Jesus was described by Matthew, one of Jesus’ Disciples as a “righteous man”!  (Matthew 1: 19)  What does that mean?  It means he obeyed the commands of God.  Now what did Joseph know of God, eternal life and all God wanted to make of him?  Not very much probably!  But he was about to discover a great deal about God’s life with him.  He may not have been the first man ever to find out before he got married that his fiancé was pregnant with someone else’s child but he certainly was given the most unusual explanation for it.  Mary of course “was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1:18 NIV)  This would have seemed like utter nonsense to Joseph but he was a “righteous man” and so he decided in his best sense of what the scriptures taught of how to live and conduct one’s business that he would quietly divorce Mary rather than make all sorts of public accusations and bring her up to local authorities for stoning.  He could have done this of course and certainly none of his friends would have faulted him for it but he knew about love and mercy and he knew about the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself.

It was in Joseph’s righteousness that God, opened up to Joseph His plan for Joseph and Joseph’s fiance.  It came in a dream.  But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:20-21 NIV)  We mustn’t succumb to the temptation to quickly run right through all that happens here because the account is so familiar to us.  It is a perfect lesson on the value of obedience.  Joseph had a dream…all of us have had dreams and nearly all of the dreams we have we give little if any notice.  They are generally an absurd tangle of material coming out of our unconscious.  In Joseph’s case…at least this time, a dream was a revelation of God to him.  Any of us, with only the information Joseph had in his grasp, would not have faulted Joseph if he had ignored the dream and proceeded with his plan to quietly divorce Mary.  Joseph though was a righteous man and careful to do what God said to do.  He was determined to keep the commands of God and this, He realized, was a command of God.  It was a strange command and one that on the surface appeared to be asking too much of Joseph but it was a command nonetheless and so he did it.  He obeyed.  When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.  But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. (Matthew 1:24-25 NIV)

Not long after that Joseph had another dream and God opened Himself up to Joseph even more of his plans and told Joseph that he needed to take his young family to Egypt because King Herod was going to try and kill the baby Jesus.  What did Joseph gain in all these “obeyings”?  Jesus defined eternal life in a way we don’t often consider.  Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. John 17:3 NIV Eternal life is continual intimate knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ.  In our case study, Joseph did what God told him to do (i.e. followed a command), and the Lord revealed more of Himself to Joseph.  If eternal life is knowing God more and more as we go along, and if in obeying the Lord’s commands for us, we dive deeper and deeper into eternal life, then the reward for doing what God tells us to do is that we grow closer to Jesus.  Consider this as you take one of God’s commands to obey.  “God is love.”  Thus, the command you are given is given to you because of God’s love and when you obey it, the outcome of obeying will be something due to God’s love for you and in obeying you are filled even more with His love than you were before.  Go to God and ask Him to show you a command He wants you to obey.  He will reveal something to you.  Don’t hesitate, do what He tells you to do.  It may not seem practical, the command.  It may even seem to be mean for God to make the requirement.  But if you do the command, if you obey God in it, you will like Joseph, discover that God’s love for you is greater and more wonderful than you ever knew before.

Reasonable Rationality

The problem with Christianity is not in the audacious claims made by it.  Everything about Christianity is really quite reasonable and logical.  Its difficulty lies in the simplicity it presents.  Who can't imagine a God making the universe?  It really isn't that stunning a conclusion!  And what is so odd about that God loving His created beings with unquenchable affection?  Is that hard to consider?  And can we be so shallow in our thinking that we can deny the possibility that there is universal right and wrong; that some things always are good and fair and others have for all time been wicked and bad?   What can we say about a God who is willing to take the extreme measure of dying Himself to make a way for His beloved people to become wholly good and thoroughly flawless?  Is that too strange a consideration?  What marks the Christian is not the illogic of her assumptions; it is the complete reasonableness of her thinking!  No Christian should apologize for believing that God is love and eternal and holy.  That is the logical conclusion.  What is irrational is the determination that evil is somehow desirable and life is temporary and behind all of this we see and smell and touch is the random unthinking of empty space.  Just consider for a moment the love you feel for a baby griping your thumb for all he is worth or the joy you experience making a new friend who really does want to be with you!  Is that the stuff of nonsense and balderdash?  The beginning of wisdom is that love is really Love and good is really Good and life is Life and darkness is too small to contain the Light.  Perhaps just a moment or two is enough to resettle your senses and grasp the simplicity of your faith, that God loves you and really does love you and is working out every detail of that life of yours for good that is eternally good and intelligently loving and in your favor.  You are not alone.  You are in the lap of Love and that Love does not give up on you even when you want to give up on Him.

 "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"—which means, "God with us."     Matthew 1:23 NIV

Loss Syndrome

Luke 17:32-33 NIV

Remember Lot's wife!  Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

What Have You Lost?

Loss, or the threat of loss, is one of the greatest enemies of our peace of mind.  When I was in graduate school, I was fired from a part time job as an attendant at the campus gym.  After being told I was “relieved of my duties”, I went back to my dorm room and I wept.  This was a terrific blow leveled against me.  I felt humiliated.  I wondered what my worth was as it was just a goofy little job that anyone could do…but clearly not me.  I was afraid to walk down the streets of the campus knowing students would be looking at me in a new way; I was the one fired from the gym job. I was afraid of what others now thought of me. I was afraid of how I would pay my school fees without the job.  How could I find another job as good as that one?  It felt like my world had fallen apart and I was afraid that it could not be put back together.  All I could think about in my little room while I sat on my bed was all the losses I would face now.  I had lost a great job and I had lost my sense of worth with it and possibly my ability to stay in school.  The losses were too great for me to bear!

Losses come upon us often without warning and in dreadful ways.  A good friend suddenly cuts off all communication with you.  You get sick and the days you lose can never be regained.  A ministry ends that you loved and believed would have a tremendous impact.  The career you once believed would be so great is now a dead end.  Your degree has become worthless and now you have to somehow pay off the debt you owe for your college degree.  A love you cherished fades and someone you respected so much before has let you down.  Some losses are barely noticeable and others take your breath away.  Losses seem so unfair, so cruel at times.  You had hoped for so much more but losses made you cynical and moody.  What are we to do about the losses we face?  How are we to respond to loss?

If the ancient book of Job tells us anything, it is that Satan can hurl great big boulders at us, terrifying boulders.  Some of us have felt like Job because there are boulders that have hit us squarely too.  A friend wants to talk with us and it turns out he is deeply insulted by something we have said or done.  The owner of the company tells us layoffs are starting.  The doctor calls us into the office to discuss our test results.  We make an investment and it wrecks us.  A child of ours renounces Christianity.  The boulders slam us and we have a terrible time knowing what to do with Satan’s attacks upon us.  When Satan went after Job, the patriarch did not think a bit about Satan…all he could see was the loss he encountered and how unfair it all seemed.  It was unfair and Job was right about that.

Satan is a master at bringing us loss.  Satan disrupts our plans.  For we wanted to come to you — certainly I, Paul, did, again and again — but Satan stopped us. (1 Thessalonians 2:18 NIV)  How many of us have looked forward to a holiday that when it came, fell apart!  Satan has wrecked many long anticipated events.  Satan also torments us with worries and dissatisfaction and injuries and hardships.  To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. (2 Corinthians 12:7 NIV)  Satan can make our friends a stumbling block for us.  Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." (Matthew 16:23 NIV)  Who hasn’t at some time or another felt betrayed by a friend who we trusted!  That is a terrible loss and Satan is the master at taking apart friendships.  We also know that Satan turns authorities against us so that those in positions of power can be used by Satan to multiply our losses.  Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you… (Revelation 2:10 NIV) There are some losses we face that are due to our bad decisions and poor planning.  Satan even disrupts our thinking so that we go up against God to our loss.  Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? (Acts 5:3-4 NIV)  It is impossible to calculate how many bad decisions we have made because we have let Satan have sway over our thinking!

When Elijah the prophet fled the evil Queen Jezebel who threatened to kill him, he wound up in a cave and something that is enlightening for us occurred there.  As Elijah recuperated from his terrifying and exhausting flight, he was greeted in that cave by a series of horrifying calamities.  Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. (1 Kings 19:11-12 NIV)  Famously, after the fire was a whispering voice that Elijah heard which was either external to him or placed by God straight into his mind and that whisper was God.  Each of these terrifying events…the great wind, the earthquake and the fire were clearly not from God or at least God was not “in them”.  So who was in them?  Would we be off-base if we said “Satan”?  They seem to have been supernaturally caused.  It’s not like rock shattering winds, earthquakes and fires pile up together in the normal, natural realm.  Regardless of their point of origin, we do know that if we were there, we would have been frightened by it all.

We suffer many losses in our lifetimes and most we barely notice.  They may be irritating or even a bit maddening but never really frightening.  Every once in a while though, like Elijah’s wind and earthquake and fire, they are stunning and mind-numbing and we care very much about them.  And the Lord is not in those losses.  Satan is behind them and we must remember who the taker is, who the thief that robs us is…who is behind the storm we fear. 

With Jesus resting peacefully at the back of their boat, the disciples encountered a great storm.  Now this storm must have been bigger than usual because although several of the disciples were seasoned fisherman, they all were panicked by the storm.  Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, "Lord, save us! We're going to drown!" (Matthew 8:24-25 NIV)  Let us now make a point that perhaps is unnecessary but pertinent to our discussion.  First, Jesus was not going against the Father in calming the storm.  The Son never opposed the Father in anything. His work as Savior was to put an end to the wreckage brought on by Satan and sin and in that deliverance came the calming of the storm.   Second, the storm did not frighten the disciples.  It may have been wild and potentially deadly but it was not what terrified the disciples.  What brought on their panic was the possible loss of life they faced because of the storm.  The storm itself was exciting, maybe even thrilling with the giant waves, the billowing, boiling clouds, the claps of thunder and bolts of lightning. The thought of terrific loss though made them scared out of their skulls and they could not take it.  Loss is not our problem; it is the fear of loss that we must battle.  Now how did the disciples cope with their fear of loss?  They went straight to Jesus Christ.  They did not paddle harder or duck behind the walls of the boat, they went directly to Christ.

There are two key considerations when it comes to losses.  The first is that if God is not in the losses, then the probability is that Satan is involved.  Therefore, it is not God who we blame and avoid when the storm comes that threatens to take away from us what we love.  It is Satan.  Second, the loss is rarely as grave and horrifying as the fear of the loss.  Many have suffered terrible losses in their lives and been just as peaceful and calm as Jesus sleeping in the back of the boat.  They may have been completely overwhelmed emotionally by the coming losses but afterward, they found comfort.  King David comes to mind.   He wept and fasted and begged God to intervene while his son was deathly ill but once the child died, he became calm and unperturbed.  Now this may sound cold and inhumane on David’s part but perhaps we have left out the supernatural component to loss.  Maybe David was helped by God when the loss came to pass.  Perhaps in his begging for God to not take his baby away, it brought into the event the supernatural kindness of God to comfort the inconsolable soul when the loss did come to pass.  Like the disciples who turned to Jesus when the storm raged, David went to the Lord when the storm he faced raged.

Because this world is wrecked by sin, dying is all around us and it hits us directly.  Dreams of careers die.  Marriages die.  Plans we have for our children die.  Vacations fall apart and investments collapse.  This happens and Satan is directly involved in many of these “deaths”.  We must face squarely this matter of death and dying in every realm we travel.  Friendships die and dinner arrangements die and much of what we hope to have goes up in smoke.  But there is one matter we must put into our equation of loss.  Jesus Christ is “in the boat”.  Satan may take our lunch but Jesus Christ is in the boat and when the disciples went to Him, they gained peace...a supernatural peace.  It is hard when the storm strikes to go to Jesus Christ then and there.  We are captivated by the storm and all we can think about are the losses we are going to face and perhaps we are angry with God for the storm.  We are in a way mesmerized by our fear and frustration and even anger over what is happening but Christ is in the boat.  The storm that rocks us rocks Him too.  When we turn to Him, we may not lose what we thought was lost.  He may completely take the storm away.  He can do that and He may do that.  We must have a little bit of faith but if we do, He might take our storm from us.  But if He doesn’t and He lets Satan steal something from us, He will give us peace…a supernatural peace.  Anyone can have peace when it is smooth sailing; but Christ gives us peace when the storm comes headlong into us.  You may not think you need the peace of Christ now…everything is nice and easy for you.  But the time will come when Satan will throw a great storm at you, a storm too big for your peace to handle and when He does, remember that Christ is in the boat and if you turn to Him, He will give you His peace…and you will have peace that is supernatural and big enough to carry you through whatever loss you face.

Light Walker

There is the admonition today to "be yourself", to "believe in yourself", to "trust yourself".   All this sounds like wise counsel and of course it is upbeat in its approach to personality.  But it is sheer folly to put any real confidence in ourselves without taking into account the destructive working of Sin at every level of our personality.  Our dreams hint at the vast unconscious mind we possess.  It is a tangle of lusts, bitter frustrations and crippling fears.  Anger and hatred boil below the surface of our consciousness as does despair and loneliness along with hopes and loves and passions.  Our Lord is the great realist and he refuses to ignore the true condition of our humanity.  For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. (Matthew 15:19-20 NIV)  Many wave this all off as negative thinking but God knows how deeply Sin has worked its way in us and how corrupted the inner parts of our being are.  We don't need an infusion of positive thinking so we can blindly look past our true brokenness; we need a Savior to cleanse the deep parts of us that control our moodsand impulses.  John the Apostle puts perfectly what we must do.  Walk in the light and as the Holy Spirit reveals a matter of doing or stopping, immediately act upon that impulse of God.  As we remain in the light the Lord gives us, the blood of Christ will cleanse and purify the damage caused by Sin, even in the unconscious parts of us.  We will discover that while we walk in the light, the darkness in our dreams will begin to clear also so that we will see, as if on a big screen, the great work of our Lord in the inner parts of our soul!

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.   1 John 1:7 NIV