Desert Life

Isaiah 41:14 NIV

Do not be afraid, O worm Jacob, O little Israel, for I myself will help you," declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.

What Can God Make of You?

When I first became a part of the ministries of Warm Springs Church, I wasn’t the full-time pastor.  My friend Keith Williams was the pastor but he asked me to be co-pastor with him.  So in addition to leading the youth ministries, I also shared in the preaching.  Our income came from my wife who had a good job working in management for a major corporation.  Financially we were fine.  We were living in a mobile home which we liked and our first son had just arrived and Mary Jo and I were ecstatic about having him.  People in the church liked me and were appreciative of the youth ministry we had.  We were experimenting with contemporary music in the service and that seemed to be going well.  I had a great friendship with Pastor Keith and we worked well together…we were on the same page and had a common vision for the church.  And yet something wasn’t right with me.  I was dry and lacked joy.  Although I felt like what I was doing was important, I did not have a great amount of enthusiasm for my work.  Something was missing and I could not figure out what it was. 

Have you ever felt spiritually dry?  You were doing all the right things but there was no passion to any of it, no fire, no bounce to your step.  Perhaps you are there now.  You can’t put a finger on what is missing but you know something is.  Others may not know that there is anything wrong with you but you know there is.  It might be your growing lack of motivation to get up early and read your Bible, to pray, to dedicate yourself to following God’s guidance.  You might be wondering about the whole matter of doing God things.  Is it important for you to think about God, talk about Him, hear from Him?  No one wakes up one morning and decides to be spiritually dry.  It isn’t a goal of most people to give up on having passionate faith; it just happens kind of like catching the flu or getting into an accident in a parking lot.  Plenty of people in churches are not as enthusiastic about their faith as they once were.  They may want to be passionate about God and living a Christian life but they just aren’t and they don’t have a lot of motivation to see this turn around.  You might be like that now.  You aren’t alone though!

One of the highly underrated passages in the Bible is found in the Old Testament in Isaiah 41.  Starting in verse 14, it describes the psychological and spiritual condition of many.  Do not be afraid, O worm Jacob, O little Israel, for I myself will help you," declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.  "See, I will make you into a threshing sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth.  You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce the hills to chaff.  You will winnow them, the wind will pick them up, and a gale will blow them away.  But you will rejoice in the Lord and glory in the Holy One of Israel.  "The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst.  But I the Lord will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.   I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys.  I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.  (Isaiah 41:14-18 NIV)

Not many would tolerate being called a worm.  Not even citizens of a tiny country like Luxemburg would take kindly being called a worm of a nation.  We are after all people.  We create.  We build bridges.  We write poetry.  We develop computer programs.  We fix dinner.  We have opinions about things.  We are intelligent.  Strong.  Thoughtful.  Here is the ironic part of this way the Lord addresses His people.  Does a worm know it’s a worm?  Do they think of themselves as lowly, as insignificant, weak-minded?  Probably not!  If you called a worm a worm, the worm most likely would just nod at you and see nothing significant about your name for him. Worms don’t take it as an insult to be seen as worms.  Likewise, does a desert know it is a desert?  Does it realize how dry it is or how lifeless?  The desert would probably point out a rattlesnake as a way of defending how full of life it is.  “See, a buzzard flying overhead and an iguana over there!”  “Dry?  What do you mean dry?  Just the other day there was a drop of dew on this rock.  Five months ago we had a full out thunderstorm.  What do you mean it is dry?  No vegetation?  How can you say that?  Look on the horizon.  There is a cactus.  Over there to the right is another one.”

One of the effects of sin is that it ruins our capacity to see ourselves as we actually are.  Sometimes we lose sight of our strengths and fail to recognize our abilities.  Like Moses complaining to God that he could not do what the Lord was asking of him, there are those who are unable to grasp just how capable they are.  Far more often though sin has the opposite effect.  It blinds us to our true shortcomings.   We see ourselves as more adequate than we are, more intelligent, more logical and less susceptible to making mistakes than we actually are.  Just consider how quickly sin impacted the earliest people.  Adam and Eve put on fig leaves to cover their nakedness.  Who were they trying to avoid?  God!  Did they not realize that fig leaves could keep God from seeing what they were hiding?  In the very next generation Cain killed his brother Abel and thought it was reasonable what he did.  A few generations later, Lamech killed a man because the fellow wounded him and thought such revenge was rational.  The Bible tells us that the oldest living human being died in the year of the flood, most likely because he choose to not ride it out in the ark his grandson built. 

Recently I heard a musical artist discuss how hard she worked on her Grammy winning album and in the interview she boastedof its popularity.  I did not know a single song this person had done and so I thought I would listen to some of her music.  It was terrible.  Musically the songs were awful and the lyrics were horrible.  They were perverse and filled with cursing.  I wondered if she realizes how bad her music is and how ridiculous her songs are.  Will she be proud to have her grandkids listen to her songs when she is sixty?  She admittedly is an extreme example of how sin ruins our ability to see ourselves rightly but we all face this same predicament.  We can’t really make sense of ourselves because sin keeps us from having access to enough information to have an informed opinion.

Let us consider one example of this in the Bible.  When Peter the disciple was told by Jesus that he was going to deny knowing Christ, Peter vehemently rejected the notion   Peter declared, "Even if all fall away, I will not."  "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "today — yes, tonight — before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times."  But Peter insisted emphatically, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." And all the others said the same.  (Mark 14:29-31 NIV)  We all know just how wrong Peter was and for that matter all of the other disciples too.  Peter did just as Jesus said he would and Peter was so shocked by his cowardice that he wept bitterly over it.  Peter was not being a blustery fool when he insisted he would courageously stand by Christ.  He just did not know himself because sin had done its work in him too.  He was like us all, unable to see everything in himself and what he did know he had a warped view of it.

In our Bible passage, you are told that you are a desert.  You are spiritually dry and lifeless.  You are poor and needy and do not know how to get the water that can quench your thirst.  You are a worm that is helpless and inadequate.  Not just you…me too…every one of us in fact.  We might think we are great lions and mighty eagles.   You could insist you are a fertile valley that is producing a great harvest of the sweetest fruits but you would be wrong.  God is not blinded by sin like you are.  He sees you as you are…helpless, dry and barren.  That is not a slam against you; not the cutting assertions of an insensitive critic.  It is just how you are…how I am.

Take a moment to consider what God promises to do for you.  He says He can make the parched ground in you become springs.  He is able to help you.  He can take away those mountains that are in your way.  He will not leave you to fend for yourself.  He will see you through the difficulties you face.  He will be there with you and make you into a sort of Garden of Eden, a person whose spirit is thriving rather than barely getting by on fumes.  What our Lord is promising you is something you cannot gain from friends, from family or success.  It can come only from Him.  But how do you access this “living water” that bubbles up inside you?  Jesus said this of gaining His living water.  “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." (John 7:38 NIV)  It is not a matter of doing but of believing.  As you believe Christ is with you, that He is helping you, that He is comforting you, you will find His help in all sorts of places without any logical explanation.  Encouragement will arise in you.  Guidance will come to you.  Support will be available for you.  No one can explain how Christ does it, making water bubble up in you when you are dry but He does.  Is it a miracle when God provides you a friend that you need, when He gives you some way out of your financial difficulties, when He sees you through your confusion?  Perhaps we would call it a miracle…or maybe we would just say that God loves you and has a lot of different ways to be there for you!

Miracles Today

We think of the healings of the blind, the raising of the dead and the removal of the Assyrians from Jerusalem as first order miracles when in fact they are minor supernatural events compared to the matters of the heart.  Jesus' demands of us are plainly beyond human capabilities and yet He still holds them up to us as how we are to live.  He warns us that anyone who murders is subject to judgment and none of us would argue that point.  But then he goes on to say that if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First be reconciled to your brother before returning with your gift.  Above all else, we are to keep our lives free of conflict with our fellow children of God.  This seems absurd and even unnatural but that is the normal pattern of behavior within God's Kingdom.  How can we manage such expectations?  We can't.  We must operate within the sphere of Christ where inside the human heart, both in its conscious and unconscious parts He breaks apart the barriers between people.  At every turn we are to pray and be guided by the Holy Spirit in how to respond to what we face with our fellow broken human beings.  We may lack the faith needed for reconciliation but God does not excuse our spiritual laziness.  Get back up, pray for Christ to heal the psychological wounds and eventually the relationship will be restored.  There is your part and there is God's part.  Your part is to forgive the offence you hold.  His part is to take out of the hearts of others the weight of your offending actions.  The great miracles are always the ones that put people back together into a love relationship based in forgiveness and reconciliation.  For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:20 NIV

The Great Miracle

John 5:6c NIV

"Do you want to get well?"

Do You Want God to Fix Your Life?

In the national news there was a story that was sickening to read.  It demonstrated just how wrecked our world is and how ruined it is by sin.  A man was convicted recently of raping his sister at least once a week over a four year period.  He was nine years older than her and it began when she was only nine.  The girl’s parents were often away at work and entrusted the care of their daughter to their son who was a young adult living at home.  What kind of horrible inclinations led to this perversion we cannot say but it must be stated clearly that it had a devastating effect upon the girl.  Now an adult, she tells of her longstanding anger toward her parents for letting her stay with her brother, her anxiety attacks, the loneliness she feels constantly as a young woman alone in her pain and the psychological numbness that she endures which keeps her from being able to experience closeness and make attachments with those who try to get close to her.

In a world that is warped by sin and its consequences, there is a sort of universal feeling that a new pill, a good counselor or a government program can put all the hurting and troubled people back together and make them good as new. Yet we have not seen any real success in our efforts to place bandages on a wounded social order that universally struggles to find peace and joy.  If it were just one or two people in our city who were struggling with anxiety, depression, loneliness, burn-out, bitter feelings, deep-seated anger and addictions, we could just ignore it and say, “well at least it isn’t me or someone in my family”” but it is us and it is our family affected by the damage caused by sin.  Your heart and my heart and the hearts of those close to us are damaged by Sin and that damage causes us pain and all sorts of sorrows.

The problem we face is universally experienced and it is felt in every corner of the earth.  Sin damaged hearts are everywhere and we cannot begin to express how much pain these wounds cause.  At the very center of all the wreckage brought on by Sin is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  It was Sin that brought such hatred against Him that the cries to crucify Him rung out in the court of the Roman governor, that the laughter of the Jewish priests and soldiers as his body was bloodied and His face pummeled by punches spilled out onto the hill where Christ was nailed to the cross and hung there awaiting death.  More than that though, the Bible tells us that Jesus died purposefully, to do away with Sin completely, to take it out of us and eventually take it out of the world.  He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24 NIV)  What does die to sins mean?  This is of course why Christ gave up His life on the Cross!  It is the total and complete reason why Jesus let Himself be crucified with His blood poured out at every wound He suffered.  It was to take the Sin out of us and make us thoroughly free from every part of Sin, its poison and its damage, its curse and its sorrow.  To die to Sin means that Sin no longer impacts us, no longer has a hold upon us.  What Sin works in us and how it works itself out of us, it all is dead to us through the crucifixion death of Christ.

Yet we still feel the lingering effects of Sin.  We may continue to suffer psychological and physical pain caused by Sin and we still commit sins often and regularly!  Pay careful attention to this single statement we find in the Bible because it is critical to your happiness.  Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed — not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence — continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. (Philippians 2:12-13 NIV)

When we are talking about God working in you, what do we mean by that?  We mean the Holy Spirit joined with you, a part of you.  You could never experience God as a part of your personality, in union with you if Christ were not raised from the dead.  Jesus talked about this great miracle again and again, that once He finished His work dying for the sins of the world, He would give them through the Father the Holy Spirit to be joined to them, bringing comfort, insight and direction.  By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7:39 NIV)  And later the Lord told the disciples, And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.  I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.  Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. (John 14:16-20 NIV)

How does the resurrection of Jesus Christ impact you directly?  It was only after He came up out of the dead that Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to His people.  He started with the Disciples the first Easter Sunday.  Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."   And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. (John 20:21-22 NIV)  Then on Pentecost the Holy Spirit continued to come upon God’s people and as they believed in Christ as the one who took away Sin, the Holy Spirit became  part of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.(Acts 2:4 NIV)   While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message.  The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. (Acts 10:44-45 NIV) This great miracle of having God become joined to you is perhaps the most important news you will ever hear in conjunction to Easter.  God, who takes away Sin joins Himself to you as soon as you put your faith in Him to give you eternal life.

Now let us return to the matter of the change God wants to work in you.  For it to happen, you must work out your salvation yourself.  Pay careful attention to our verse.   …continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.  Consider this crucial discovery we have in Scripture.  You will find again and again the great miracles God worked for people did not take place until obedience occurred.  Naaman was not cleansed of his leprosy until he washed in the Jordan River.  The ten lepers were not healed until they left Jesus to meet with the priest.  Jesus did not raise Lazarus from the dead until the stone was removed from the front of the grave.  The lame man was not healed until he went ahead and picked up his mat.  If so many others could not be healed and their problems solved until they did what God told them to do, why should you think it would be any different for you?

Work out your salvation is not you making yourself saved.   It is not you taking away your sin.  It is you receiving from God the changes His death on the Cross provides for you.  There are hidden places in you, deep and dark places in you that take away your joy and peace as a result of sins committed against you and sins you have committed and the Holy Spirit, a part of you will get at them and heal them and take away the power they have over you.  But you must do something.  You must do what God tells you to do.  If it means loving someone you dislike, you must do it.  If it means acting kindly towards someone who does not deserve it, you must do it.  If it means putting down your phone and praying, you must do it.  If it means cutting off a relationship because it is turning you away from Christ, you must do it.  If it means reading the Bible when it seems boring, you must do it.  If it means stop criticizing others and judging them, you must do it.  If it means giving up a career that is making you greedy and discontented with God, you must do it.  If it means starting a kids club to help illiterate children learn how to read, you must do it.  If it means talking to someone about God and sharing the goodness of Jesus Christ, you must do it

With the Holy Spirit within you, Christ resurrected can heal any broken part of you and make that your strongest part but you must work out your salvation by doing what God tells you to do.  Perhaps the problem with your finances is that you are too afraid to trust God by giving Him a tenth of all you earn.  It might be that your depression is connected to your unwillingness to thank God for what He gives you when He gives it to you.  Your anxiety might be due to bitterness you hold in your heart toward someone you have never forgiven.  The peace of God is waiting for you to trust Him with your actions.  The Holy Spirit in you can heal even the deepest wound and give joy to you when you think happiness is impossible given your circumstances.

Our Lord admits that doing what He tells you to do may involve fear and trembling on your part.  You might be even ashamed to do what He tells you to do.  But if you just obey God, the miracle of Christ in you will make you happier and more peaceful and contented than you are.  Today I watched a crow peck at a bag near the fence.  Clearly he thought there was something in it he wanted.  Like those who do not work out their salvation, he tugged at the bag, flipped it over, pulled it out into the parking lot and pecked at it.  He put his foot on it and tried to tear at the bag with his beak but it was a worthless endeavor.  Finally, the crow quit, without any satisfaction for all his effort fighting with the empty bag.  At the same time, a hummingbird, like those who work out their salvation, when from lavender bloom to lavender bloom, getting nectar from the flowers and left satisfied.  What a worthless endeavor it is to go through life without trusting the Holy Spirit to work out of you all the damage Sin has done to your heart!  But, what gladness we have when we have given God all He wants of us and as a consequence He builds within us all the strength and joy and encouragement and contentment He has to give us as we trust Him with our lives.  

Praying or Fantasizing

Mark 11:24 NIV

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

How Confident Are About Praying?

A number of years ago we went to Disneyland and our daughter was only three.  She loved to dress up in princess outfits and she had a number that she brought for our trip there.  One day she could dress as Cinderella, another as Snow White and the next she was prepared to be Belle.  In fact she could change in the middle of the day and be a different princess at lunch and dinner.  Her face would light up when she spotted Arial or Belle or Pocahontas mingling in the crowd.  We had to wait for Rachel to stand in line and greet each of the princesses she came across. There was even a lunch meet and greet that Rachel attended.  Rachel was mesmerized by the parades when the princesses all came together in one place and she stared at them all wide-eyed.  Reality and fantasy came together in a mystical union.  That is until reality rose up and trampled fantasy one cloudy afternoon when Rachel spotted one of the Disneyland princesses standing out behind a building smoking a cigarette.  She was stunned and she never forgot the disappointment she felt at the unexpected sight.

Many have given up on Christianity because they believe it is like the Disney princesses; it is all a dress up that in the end is a sham.  Perhaps you have struggled with believing the Bible.  There is much about it that is interesting and helpful but some of the stories in it appear to be too good to be true.  The promises about prayer in particular hang you up as it does not seem like God holds up His end of the bargain.  You pray but the outcome is not what you had hoped.  Or worse, your praying seems to have been a waste of time and left you discouraged and feeling snookered by empty promises of God’s help.

Two case studies found in the Bible shed a bit of light on our discussion.  When Lazarus, a good friend of Jesus, became deathly ill, his sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love is sick." (John 11: 3 NIV)  When Jesus did not do anything about Lazarus’s condition and he died, both sisters were dumbfounded by His lack of help.  When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." (John 11:32 NIV)  How closely this mirrors the experience of many who have prayed and been disappointed by the results!

Prior to the birth of Christ, an elderly widow lived at the Temple and spent her days praying.  There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. (Luke 2:36-37 NIV)  We have no idea what sorts of matters were on her prayer list but we must say she had to wait an awfully long time before meeting the Messiah.  Not only that, should we just ignore the fact that this woman of prayer lost her husband after only seven years of marriage?  How much disappointment with prayer was locked up within the heart of this elderly widow for all those years!

Our problem, when it comes to praying, is not just the seeming slowness or even lack of responses to prayer.  We face a much more daunting task when it comes to believing in God.  We lack a physical connection to Him that can make trusting in Him more reasonable and sustainable.  We can’t see Him, hear Him or touch Him and that is not normal when it comes to relationships.  It can be argued that we don’t, hear, see or touch those we meet online and yet believe they are who they say they are but experience with fraud makes many such “encounters” impossible to trust completely.  When it comes to God, we don’t even have a picture profile to consider!  Yet, is it insane to believe in a God we cannot see, touch or hear?

Author Philip Yancey suggests we should consider the case of the woman who has been blind since birth who has never seen light and cannot see it.  How would you prove the existence of light to her?  You could present her with products of light such as heat or plant life but that does not prove light to her.  Light is real and not at all imaginary but to the one who has no sensitivity to it, light is just hearsay, only taken on trust.  If everyone in the world is blind from birth, men, women and children, light as described in books is to the entire crowd “religious” or “unscientific”.  It might be considered “mythological” and yet it is as real as the birds chirping in the trees.  The doubt in the minds of those who cannot see that light exists would not mitigate the reality of light.

We certainly lack the Spiritual sense needed to scientifically “prove” the presence of demons and angels, God and Satan but that is what we must accept when we speak of God and prayer.  Jesus did not try to pretend something else was the case.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24 NIV)  Rarely does God make Himself available to our physical senses.  Yet He has done so and many of the blind in our world just won’t believe the accounts given of His presence being seen, heard, touched or smelled. There is something else we must consider when it comes to knowing about the existence of God and believing in prayer.

The American Journal of Psychiatry reported a study of Harvard students who had experienced a “religious conversion.  They discovered that these students showed a dramatic change in their lifestyles.  Their use of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes went down spectacularly.  What is more, they did much better academically than they did before their conversion and were less likely to suffer from depression and despair when compared to the rest of the student body.  What does it mean when an internal transformation which is attributed to God results in an externally proven outcome?  Religious Americans are proven to be more likely to give money to someone homeless, spend time with someone depressed, return excess change to a clerk, help someone find a job and donate blood.  At what point do those who do not have the sensory equipment to see or touch God begin to consider the facts regarding the accomplishments of the God they cannot see?

Faith is the operating system of our relationship with God and that is not going to change!  We live by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7 NIV)  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)  Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." (John 6: 29 NIV) 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)  This is the way God works with us.  We must have faith in Him that He exists if we are to have a relationship with Him that transforms our lives.  It will not be altered; this plan of God.  No amount of complaining that God does not let us see, hear or touch Him will change His mind.  The Lord will do in us and through us what our faith in Him permits.  It has been shown that with God operating in people’s lives, crime, drug use, violence and gang activities go down.  What proof do you need to recognize that you pray to a God who changes people’s lives and literally is a part of what they do?

When you pray, the Lord will transform your character, create in you a hatred of your own sin and generate a growing desire to be close to Him.  He will guide you so that you will be able to make sense of what to do.  He will work in others and change them too.  God will alter your circumstances so that in the end all you face and encounter will turn out for your good.  To pray, you must have faith to pray.  To communicate with God who is real, you must believe that He is real.  You will never be certain that God exists or that He is part of your praying until you actually decide to believe He exists and then pray.  Once that transaction takes place, the Lord will move Heaven and Earth to keep you close to Him supernaturally and coherently.  You may not yet believe God loves you fully but that will come as you trust Him enough to pray.  Faith opens your mind to pray; miracles always follow faith…they don’t come before it.  A miracle is nothing more complex than this.  It is the discovery that God is in actuality a part of your life and giving you the very best He has to offer in response to your praying.  So pray.  Pray often.  Pray with your mind on God and your heart open to whatever He gives you.

Watch Attentively

It is astounding how quickly we turn aside to some vulgar strategy for solving our relational problems!  We get angry, pout, pull in allies, defend ourselves, sulk, hold imaginary conversations in our heads, plot revenge, nurse grudges, take out our frustrations on others.  Yet have we considered the response of Habakkuk to the coming onslaught of the Babylonians?  I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me, (Habakkuk 2:1 NIV)  We would rather do ten thousand things other than watch for God and look to see what He might say about our relationships.  We forget in a millisecond the astounding work Christ has done for us on the Cross.  He did not die the brutal death to get us independent and up and running. Through the Cross He became our husband spiritually but not figuratively.  Literally He has joined Himself to us in a perfect union of love, faith and hope.  Consequently, every relationship we have can be worked through that triplet because God is in us.  Love, faith and hope will each become the guiding force of Christ in the community God has given us if we would just watch and look for what   God will say to us.  Any fool can get mad when he is frustrated by someone's bad behavior.   Where is God in the sulk, in the grudge?  What miracle of the Cross is found in the bitter feelings?  If we are born-again, there is no enemy beyond the reach of the love, faith and hope God has given us nor is there a relative or friend Christ cannot take back into our hearts.    Just one look at the word our Lord has given us will correct us if we are watching for it and the miracle of the Cross will awaken us again to Christ in us, the hope of glory.

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'  But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.     Matthew 5:43-45 NIV

Blindsided by Grace

We shuffle back and forth between believing God, questioning His goodness and forgetting His existence.  There is something God wants to do with you but it requires your perfect acceptance of His love for you in a matter and the moment you try to fix things yourself without Him working through you, the work crumbles.  Christ cannot and will not fill you if you slight God's love by complaining about your circumstance or by questioning His goodness.  Job was blindsided by the miracle of grace being worked out in Him and the Lord could not finish His work until Job threw up His hands in faith and accepted his place as creature rather than creator.  Job's friends proved to be of no help to him in this as they kept distracting him from the real development.  They pushed the discussion outside the realm of actuality by questioning Job's morality and integrity when those parts of him were never the issue.  Grace doesn't contend at the point of one's personal goodness  but rather at the spot of the Lord Himself working His own character into you.  Christ did not suffer the cross so that you could make a go at getting yourself straight or gaining some flury of accomplished gilding but rather to completely reconfigure your personality into the dynamic of God worked thoroughly through you.  Like yeast in dough, Christ risen in your heart will recreate all the promise he planted in you at the beginning through the difficulties and trials and mundane tasks of your everyday activities.  Be careless about what you're making of yourself but obsessed by the hand of God everywhere around you.

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

The miracles of Scripture were never merely a deliverance from difficulty but they always were a sign of God near.  The blind man did not find it smooth sailing after he was given sight; his parents were cast out of the synagogue and his former blindness ridiculed.  Have we come to the point where all we want is a miracle but not the God who shadows it?  If your bill got paid somehow, would you let God consecrate your lust?  If your girl loved you, would you give yourself to holiness?  If your mind became clear and you could suddenly see the big idea, would you bury your clock as you prayed?  If you steered clear of the wreck or your cancer faded, would you give a true pagan your unmitigated faith?  How would you react to a bona fide miracle; an answer to prayer too close to God to be a coincidence?  Would you shake it off...would you take note of it...would you pause in awe of the God who saved you?  What sort of miracle do you need to notice GOD?  Is the Scripture enough for you to love Him and watch for His sway in the moments you have?  I have often wondered how it was possible that nine of the ten lepers gave no notice of Jesus once they got out of sight of Him and His Word.  Perhaps though, given what we see of ourselves and those about us, the biggest miracle of that day was the pivot one leper made when he gazed upon his skin and came running back to Jesus in awe of the Light that was no longer mere shadow.  Each day I make a record of ten to twenty things for which I am thankful God gave me the past day.  I have to do this or else I will go the full twenty-four hours and run the risk of missing the extraordinary gift of moments when Christ drew near to me.