Terrifying Realization

John 15: 5 NIV

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

   

What Do You Think Of Your Accomplishments?

At the end of the day I was standing at the door of a high school class where I had been the substitute teacher and as the students filed out, not one of them said goodbye to me or wished me a Merry Christmas or even looked at me despite it being the last class of the day before Christmas vacation.  It was as if I did not exist or that I was not a living being.  I did the same thing though.  A guy was sitting down in front of a business and he had a sign about needing food and rather than look at him as I passed, I turned my head and did not acknowledge he was there.  What is the mechanism we trigger in us that de-humanizes others?  I have let it gain power over me and perhaps you have too; given no thought to the humanity of others.  News reporters are aware of this quality and so are movie makers and authors.  If we hear or see that 15, 000 lost their lives on a battlefield or in a natural disaster, we give little thought to it.  But if we come upon the picture of a little boy or girl or hear the account of a particular parent who died in the same circumstance, we might even shed a tear over it and if not, at least mull it over some and probably mourn the tragedy.

It started in the Garden of Eden after the first sin of Adam and has continued to this day.  You and I can take the humanity out of our fellow inhabitants of this planet.  You don’t do it intentionally.  Only the most perverse and broken of us set about to remove the humanness from those around them.  Yet it happens, where we stop thinking of people as people just like we are people and either give no thought to them or act as if they are machines.  The Bible insists that God never does that with us.  Despite the fact that there are over six billion people here on earth, he sees each of us and has His mind on each of us…not as machines but as individuals that He cherishes.  Speaking metaphorically, Jesus insisted that His approach to us is much like a kind and thoughtful shepherd.  I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—  just as the Father knows me and I know the Father — and I lay down my life for the sheep. (John 10:14-15 NIV)  It is impossible to see in this a distant and distracted God who can’t even come up with your name.  He knows you as intimately and affectionately as He does the Father and the Father Him.  Even now you are on His mind; even now He is thinking of ways to make your life good and joyous.  Can we say the same of ourselves?  Do we think of God as a real person who cares what we do?

If we give it much thought, there is a terrifying declaration Jesus makes that must be considered.  "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5 NIV) We do love the promise found here but have we taken seriously the caveat?  “…apart from me you can do nothing.” Did He really say “nothing”?  It seems like an incredible, perhaps even implausible assertion.  What about all the atheists and pagans who make decisions, alter the environment, impact people, change circumstances?  Don’t they do something without Christ?  Aren’t they functioning without Him?  The world is filled with people who assert their will without giving a moment’s thought to Christ.  Even a casual reading of the Bible has examples of this.  Lamech, who was from the genealogical line of Cain, the first murderer, killed a man because the fellow hurt him in some way.  Lamech said to his wives, "I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me.  If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times." (Genesis 4:23-24 NIV)  He clearly gave no thought to God and what He wanted and yet seemed to do well.  The Tower of Babel famously was constructed without a bit of consideration for God and His wishes.  In fact it was a sort of monument to the capacity of people to get things done without Him.  As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.  They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.  Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:2-4 NIV)  Even Jonah the prophet tried his best to get away from God by hopping on a boat that was traveling in the opposite direction of where he knew the Lord wanted him to be.

Probably more people live now as if God doesn’t exist than any time in the history of the world!  Even more though have taken the Godness out of God—if that were possible and mostly ignored Him.  So what did Jesus mean that “apart from me you can do nothing” when it seems like plenty of people are doing something without Him?  Remember the context of Jesus’ assertion.  He was talking about producing fruit that would last.  The world is full of all sorts of interesting activities, challenges and investments.  Adventures are all around us and there is always something to do.  Jesus told the parable of the talents because He wanted you to remember that there is more to life than this world and all its attainments.  There is a world to come that lasts forever and we must never lose sight of it.  The parable has been repeated so many times that it is like elevator music.  Yet it is perhaps more important to you and your welfare than any bit of advice you will ever hear.

It has two juxtaposed approaches to life.  One is that you can live with God in mind on everything and that what matters is how He wants things done.  The other is that you live as if God doesn’t exist and you do whatever you think best.  Whatever you do that pleases God will be rewarded extravagantly, far beyond its seeming worth.  The life that takes no notice of God and does not concern itself with Him will be wrecked and an object of great despair…despair past imagining.  Can this be proved, that God rewards spectacularly those who live for Him in the life to come?  All mysteries have their shelf life.  At one time it could not be proved that the earth was round or how diseases attacked the human body or the existence of ancient Babylon.  Just because you do not have all the facts in regarding life as it will be beyond this world does not mean you cannot be certain that it is just the way the Bible describes it.  You live in the age of faith and by faith you believe that God rewards those who live for Him and do what He commands.  As the Bible makes clear, And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6 NIV)

The Bible often uses Abraham as an example of how faith in God looks.  It would have seemed lunacy to his friends and neighbors and perhaps even to his dad when Abraham decided to leave his home and travel 400 miles south to a land he had never visited and did not know what to expect from it.  He made this arduous journey by foot when he was 75 years old, leading along sheep and goats because he was certain God told him to move there.  We don’t know how God spoke to Abraham…was it an audible voice, an angel, some sort of vision or just like how He speaks to us now.  The irony of this move is that once Abraham and his wife and servants got to Canaan where the Lord sent him, he discovered there was a severe famine there so he just kept walking south until he got to Egypt.

For Abraham, it was not a matter of what He was to do; it was a question of who was directing him.  He lived within a particular country whose boundaries were fixed.  It was the place where God is in charge no matter what.  Wherever Abraham went, and it was the same for his wife Sarah, God led the way.  Abraham did not have to worry about what he would do today or tomorrow.  He just lived his life with the Lord in charge.  Whether it was digging a well or pulling a goat back into the flock or setting up a tent, he did so acutely aware that the Lord could redirect him and change his plans and he was willing to do whatever God said to do.  That is how you bear fruit that lasts.  God rewards those who follow Him and obey His commands.  The Bible makes it clear what sort of life we are to live: morality, honesty, kindness, forgiveness, love, generosity. 

It is not very funny to think of someone living an entire lifetime and never doing anything that God wants to be remembered.  Like building a sand castle on the beach only to have the rushing surf send it crashing down, many do nothing for God’s sake.  But some take time each day to think about what they could do to please God.  They read their Bible so that they can keep thoughts of Him fresh in their minds and then they go about the day doing any sort of good thing God gives them to do.  A great friend of mine tells the story of the member of one of his former churches who was featured in Guidepost Magazine.  The woman was looking through the newspaper and came upon a picture of cute dogs being petted by senior adults at a nursing home.  The title of the article read, “Visit from Locals and Their Dogs Brings Joy to Nursing Home Residents”.   “Good for them”, she thought as she shuddered and quickly turned the page.  She says in the story that she then heard a voice say, “You have cute little dogs.  You can do that too.”  She wondered if she was hallucinating.  “Dee you do that”, the voice insisted.  She spoke back.  “God, if that’s you, you’re going to have to give me something else to do.  I can’t do nursing homes, remember?”  Again came the voice.  “Yes you can!”  This time she was certain it was a command.  “Fine, I’ll do it”, Dee cried.  The article then goes on to tell how Dee lost her distaste for nursing homes and genuinely developed a love for the residents, becoming a blessing to them and ambassador for Christ…her and her cute dogs.  What about you?  Is God looking at you right now, ready to make your life a blessing?  What can you do today that will please Christ and be remembered by Him as good and worth His praise?

God Revealed

Isaiah 6:1 NIV

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

What Do You See In God?

The other day I was in a high school class and a couple of the students asked me how old I was.  It was of course somewhat presumptuous on their part but I decided to play around a bit with them so I asked the kids how old they thought I was.  I did not expect them to be as wildly off base as they were since they were fifteen years old but they guessed 42, 44 and 45.  I just smiled and walked away, leaving them without an answer.  The next day the same group asked me again how old I was and this time I told them.  “Sixty.”  The shocked expressions on their faces were the best Christmas gifts ever.  They argued that I did not look that old and once more I smiled and walked away.  How fascinating to learn something new about someone, to discover secrets about that person you might never have guessed.

We often fail to consider the fact that God is a person.  He is not an idea or a premise.   The God spoken of throughout the Bible is not a theological concept but someone specific with actual characteristics that are His.  I have had conversations with different ones who have opinions of how the Lord should be if He really existed as if they are the ones who determine God’s nature and personality.  Either God is or He isn’t and if He is, then we do not decide what He is like any more than biographers can chose the qualities of George Washington or Pocahontas.  It does no good whatsoever to speculate about the characteristics of the Lord; one can only discover them through experience.

There is a rather humorous account found in the Bible that illustrates just how wrong we can be in our speculations about God.  After the Arameans attacked the Israelites and got soundly beaten by them, the counselors to the king of Aram insisted that the reason the Arameans were soundly defeated by the Israeli army was because they had fought in the uplands of Samaria.  The God of the Israelites they speculated was a god of hills.  What they needed was a change in location.  Meanwhile, the officials of the king of Aram advised him, "Their gods are gods of the hills. That is why they were too strong for us. But if we fight them on the plains, surely we will be stronger than they.  Do this: Remove all the kings from their commands and replace them with other officers.  You must also raise an army like the one you lost — horse for horse and chariot for chariot — so we can fight Israel on the plains. Then surely we will be stronger than they." He agreed with them and acted accordingly. (1 Kings 20:23-25 NIV)

When the Arameans were crushed again by the Israelite army, one wonders if the Arameans might have pulled out their canoes to fight on the lake, hoping that God was not a god of lakes.  The Arameans were certainly right to guess that the Israelites had a God who brought victory to His people.  They however were wrong to make determinations about Him without actually knowing Him.  It is like watching movies depicting aliens when no one has ever seen an alien and if they exist have no idea how they look or act.  There is absurdity in the way so many talk about God without having the least bit of experience interacting with Him.  When the patriarch Jacob ran away from his furious brother and exhausted fell asleep he was unprepared for what came next.

He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  There above it stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."  When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it." (Genesis 28:12-16 NIV)  Jacob’s reaction is priceless.  He did not realize God was where he was!

Nearly the entire world is oblivious to God.  Ambulances run to heart attack victims, senators discuss tax plans, shoppers comb the stores for deals, librarians restack books and hardly anyone realizes God is there.  Cynics decide God is cruel, professors think He is a myth and pharmacists believe He is a legend and all the while God is among us with His own specific personality and characteristics waiting for someone to notice Him.  The old pop song, “One of Us”, absurdly wonders what God would be like if He was one of us.  “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us.  Just a stranger on the bus tryin' to make his way home?”    The idea is that we cannot know what God is really like so we just make up things about Him.  For many, we can read the Bible and take what is said there as one person’s view of Him or maybe even the impressions of lots of people but we cannot really know what He is like because He is an idea or a concept and not an actual person.

When Jesus Christ was born and placed in a cattle trough after He was born, grew up and became a man, everyone who met Him discovered that God had specific, observable characteristics that made Him unique with certain qualities and personality traits.  God did this and behaved like this and reacted this way to these kinds of things.  God was not Fred down the street or the imaginative ideas of Marvel Comics.  He was not Thor, a made up character that could be anything the writers or the movie director wanted him to be.  God was there and He was just as He was seen and heard.  But you may argue that that was then and this is now.  How can we know what God is like now?

The last book in the Bible, the famous book of Revelation, or as the Greek name for it would be translated, “unveiling”, presents us with two specific groups of people.  The first would be those who are either oblivious to God or opposed to Him.  They react to circumstances they face without any sort of relationship to God.  There is no interaction with Him, no attempt at communication with Him.  They fear what is happening, are angry with their circumstances but never reach out to God or try to align themselves with Him.  The book of Revelation describes a typical response of those in this group to the destruction God will bring to the economic structures of the world.  "When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her.  Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: "'Woe! Woe, O great city O Babylon, city of power!  In one hour your doom has come!'  "The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more— (Revelation 18:9-11 NIV)

If you can just not let the nature of the events that are described in this chapter distract you, the point is that no one here looks to God for help or even tries to reach out to Him.  The entire crowd only reacts to the circumstances as if that is all that is there, as if there is no God involved in it.  Yet there is a second group of people described in the book of the Revelation and that is those who are aware of God all the time.  They view Him not as a story or an opinion or a thought but as He is, there, present, with characteristics that are specific and certain.  They do not speculate about God, they interact with Him and the result of being with Him is worship and undiminished love for Him.  Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: "Hallelujah!  For our Lord God Almighty reigns.  Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory.   For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.  Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear." (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.) (Revelation 19:6-8 NIV)

There is a clear and defined line of demarcation between two parts of humanity.  There are those who live without any consciousness of God, who live within the world and see nothing beyond it but the wins and losses of what they do and what they face.  God, the real God Jesus Christ, is beyond their mental scope.  The second group is made up of those who worship Christ, who love Him and yearn for His affections.  Worship is the mechanism through which those who are born-again experience Christ; it is the means by which God becomes known to us.  Like your ears enable hearing and your eyes seeing, worship enables you to be aware of Christ.  You cannot know God without worship.  You can read about Him, think about Him or have conversations discussing Him but you cannot know God without worship. 

A disturbing statement made by the Apostle Paul under the direction of the Holy Spirit is found in the book of Romans.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  (Romans 1:21 NIV)  Literally, it reads, “Formerly knowing God not as God they neither glorified nor gave thanks…”  In other words, what knowledge these people had of God did not lead to them worshiping Him or thanking Him.  The result of this was that they could not think clearly or understand what they saw.  Without worship, you become irrational and mentally dull.  Worship of Christ is the gateway to seeing and understanding what you see.  Why is worship so critical to the church service?  It enables you to see God as He is and live with your eyes wide open and your mind able to comprehend what you face.  To skip worship or to not try to worship is like taking a pill that shuts down your brain and deadens your ability to comprehend.

When you are born again and have Christ as your Savior, your operating system is completely reworked so that worship of Christ is the way you connect with God and access His gifts.  Peace, joy and wisdom all flow into a heart that worships Christ and without that worship, it all gets blocked.  Practice worship this week.  You might not be very good at it.  You might get quickly bored with it.  But like any habit crucial to your well-being, practice is the only way you will develop it so that your mind will know Christ and understand God as He works in your life.

The Two Forces Driving Humanity

Ecclesiastes 2:10 NIV

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.  My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor.

What Matters Most To You?

This year I have been working as a substitute teacher.  I receive class assignments by going to a website that tracks my workdays on a calendar.  When a teacher makes a substitute teacher request, it pops up on my calendar and then I can decide if I want to accept the assignment or not.  Some are for half a day and other for six full hours.  Sometimes teachers request me personally but usually the assignments go out to all the pool of substitute teachers and the first of us to accept the job for the day gets it.  Recently I accepted a job working in a kindergarten class at a particular school but within an hour, I was removed from the job and the notice came to me that my services were no longer needed.  I was disappointed to hear this as you never know when a job will come available or even if one will.  A week later another kindergarten class assignment from the same school popped up and I quickly accepted the assignment but again, after a few hours, I was notified that my services were no longer needed.  I had heard that sometimes teachers post jobs and then remove them if a favorite substitute of theirs becomes available to take their class and I grew increasingly offended the more I thought about this.  I had never worked at the school that had these kindergarten assignments and so I was pretty certain the teachers there didn’t know me.  Did the teacher pull the assignments from me because I was a man?  It smacked of discrimination to me!  What also bothered me was that once a substitute teacher accepts an assignment for a certain day that person is locked into it and is not notified of other possible assignments for the same day.  One can decide to not take the assignment later but then that person can’t work that day for any other teachers.  If a teacher cancels an assignment too late, the substitute is prevented from accepting another job for the day.  I began to stew over this and I considered sending the teacher that pulled my assignment an email expressing my feelings about her doing so.  It felt like I was rejected and treated unfairly.  I wanted the teacher to know that I was not just a name on a list but a real person who did not like being rejected or considered not good enough for her class.  I counted; my needs were important and I deserved more respect.

Perhaps you too have felt rejected and wanted to make sure others knew you counted, that you ought to be appreciated.  You have been pushed aside or gone unnoticed.  Have you ever wanted to shout, “Look at me”?  “I can do the job!”  “I should get the promotion!”  “Love me too!”  “Pay attention to me!”  “Care about me!”  Maybe you feel that way now; that your hard work and creativity and sacrifice is not given the value it deserves.  You feel frustrated that you might never achieve your goal, never accomplish in life what you think you should.  You are at a dead end and it is maddening to consider that your life is unfulfilled and you may never reach your potential.  What should you do?  How does one respond to feeling boxed into a corner of lost dreams and anonymity?  Should you in some way “fight back” and reclaim your life?

A pillar of modern humanist psychology is the call for “self-realization”.  By humanist, I mean any treatment of psychology that does not view humanity mechanistically as if people are little more than machines.  Nearly everyone who sees people as really free and independent believes that a goal for all of us is “self-realization” or the very similar “self-actualization”.  It is held by nearly all that we ought to make it our goal in life to assert ourselves, to gain our place of prominence among others and fulfil our purpose.  Many Christian teachers believe these strivings are essential to having a good life.  In fact it is assumed by many that self-realization is God’s plan for us.  We do of course see examples of self-realization being practiced in the Bible; it is not just a modern phenomenon…one could say it goes as far back as Adam and Eve.

Let’s consider each of the three strivings that put together are known as self-realization.  The first, the urge to establish one’s worth is illustrated by King Hezekiah’s actions when representatives of the Babylonian government came to visit him.  Hezekiah received the messengers and showed them all that was in his storehouses — the silver, the gold, the spices and the fine oil — his armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them. (2 Kings 20:13 NIV)  Most of us would say that there is nothing wrong with asserting ourselves.  We need to let others know who we are and what we have done.  In Hezekiah’s case, he simply pointed out how productive his work had been and the success he achieved.  Hezekiah extended his own reputation by giving the tour of his possessions but forgot something critical in doing so.  He did not gain his wealth on his own. 

A second component of self-realization is the push to gain prominence.  We all believe we should be given the opportunity to make something of ourselves and Aaron and Miriam were not exceptions to this.  The two were frustrated that Moses their younger brother, who was charged with leading the nation of Israel out of Egypt and into the Promised Land was not giving them enough say in the decisions being made.  The nation of Israel needed their leadership they believed and it offended them to not be more involved in how the nation was run.  Miriam and Aaron wanted Moses to show them respect by deferring more to them when he made decisions and directed the people.  Finally their frustration spilled out in the infamous complaint, "Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?" they asked. "Hasn't he also spoken through us?" And the Lord heard this. (Numbers 12:2 NIV)  Is this any different than trying to get a promotion you think you deserve, wanting your husband or wife to respect all you do for the family, being upset that you aren’t recommended for a teacher’s assistant position, getting frustrated for the lack of support you receive in the church motions you present, or being left off a committee because others in the club are move popular?   Who doesn’t want to be known for the good they have done and the insight they have?  The push to gain prominence is natural and normal.

A third component to self-realization is the common goal of wanting to fulfill one’s purpose.  Books have been written on this topic and many have decided this is our most important task in life, fulfilling our purpose.  If we look at Demas from this perspective, we can take exception with the Apostle Paul’s complaint about him.  Paul said of Demas,

“Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica.” (2 Timothy 4:9-10 NIV)  No one wants to be accused of desertion but if you take Demas’s position in this, he was simply fulfilling his purpose.  Who knows why he left Paul?  Maybe his family needed him.  Perhaps he wanted to take up leadership in a church where his talents could be put to better use.  It might be that he had always wanted to be a lawyer and so he was following his dream.  Can we really fault Demas for wanting a change?  Perhaps Demas really did know what was best and he was upgrading the quality of his life.  Can that be criticized?

In every example described we have self-realization exhibited in real lives.  None of these people thought that what they were doing was wrong.  They in fact probably were congratulated by friends and perhaps also family members for making tough decisions to put their lives together.  Self-realization is reasonable and even celebrated yet it is not Christian and not even possible.  For those who decide to build their lives without God, self-realization is normal and natural.  The belief that we stand alone in a world that is sometimes for us and other times against us is growing in popularity but irrational.  The push for self-realization rests upon the belief that in the end it is just me and just you who must decide how we are to live and what we will do about the direction of our lives.  But what if we aren’t alone in this?  What if each of us is more than just one?

There is a declaration the Apostle Paul makes that is rarely taken as seriously as its importance to humanity warrants.  Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NIV)  This conclusion that Paul draws and that we must consider if we are to fully think through who we are and what we are doing with our lives is that each of us is never independent.  Job, despite his misery, realized not pessimistically but realistically the part God plays in each life. Man's days are determined; you (God) have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed. (Job 14:5 NIV)  It is impossible to be in charge of what we do with ourselves if God decides how long we shall live and what will come of our accomplishments.  The prophet Daniel told the Babylonian king Belshazzar that it did not matter what he hoped to get done, the Lord would not let him live until morning and the kingdom he so proudly ruled and worked to preserve would be pulled apart.  “…God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end…Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians."  (Daniel 5:26-28 NIV)  The prophet Isaiah quoted God when he declared the situation each person faces, For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him?  His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?  (Isaiah 14:27 NIV)

Whatever we have planned or look forward to getting done must take into account that how long we live is determined by God.  The writer of Ecclesiastes, whose wisdom is unmatched by those not named Christ or Paul, pointed out that no matter what we accomplish or how close we come to reaching our potential, the entirety of our accomplishments slip from our hands in the end and all we will be left with is our souls, the fate of which is determined by our Creator.  The myth of self-realization is as ludicrous as the belief that the moon is made of green cheese.  Every decision we make must take into account God and what He is doing with us.  The thought that is the most reasonable and rational at any moment is the one Paul offers.  “I am not my own.  I am bought with a price.”  Because this is so, self-realization is impossible.  As we shall see, God not only determines what will be the outcome of our lives, He is a part of every action we take and every thought we generate.  We don’t exist as just self.  There is more to us than that.  And we might add, “Thank God it is so!”