Happiness or Joy

1 Kings 4:20 NIV

The people of Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand on the seashore; they ate, they drank and they were happy.

What Is The Value of Happiness?

San Francisco used to have a rather famous local celebrity who was known as “the bush man”.  It wasn’t that he was from some remote part of Africa, but rather it was how he used to torment tourists who came to Fisherman’s Warf.  He kept with him a big, leafy branch that he hid behind as someone approached him on the sidewalk.  The bush man waited until just the last second as the tourist came up to him unawares and he suddenly threw his branch aside, rose up from his haunches and screamed.  Tourists would immediately scream themselves and some would drop their bread bowls and cokes, most would just jump aside in fear.  Then everyone on the sidewalks on each side of the street who were anticipating the prank would laugh and for his effort, the bush man expected the startled tourist to give him some money for being the butt of his joke.  My pleasure in all this came afterwards as I watched the embarrassed tourist walk away.  Some would smile broadly and laugh with their companions, happy to have been made a public spectacle.  Other shuffled off clearly disgruntled, perhaps their entire day wrecked by the experience.  All the rest of us in the impromptu audience of the bush man were mostly happy…perhaps because what we saw was funny, perhaps because we were glad the bush man had not humiliated us instead.

What makes us happy?  Is it good health?  Are we made happy by winning the lottery or getting a promotion?  Do children make us happy?  Are we happy on our birthdays?  Perhaps when our favorite team wins the championship…or just a game…we are happy.  Do romantic evenings make us happy or exotic vacations?  Does your pet doing a new trick make you happy?  Has an effective medicine ever made you happy or a tax refund?  Have you found happiness going to school or to a movie or at the mall picking out shoes?   Were you happy on your wedding day, your graduation day, your last day at work before your retirement began?  Have you ever made someone else happy?  Are you happy?  Do you think you will be happy tomorrow…or next week…or next year?

Thirty times or more a form of happy or happiness is used in the Bible and it nearly always describes the reaction to some sort of external circumstance.  Leah said she was happy because she had given birth to a son. (Genesis 30: 12)  The people of Israel and Judah were happy over the prosperity they enjoyed with Solomon as their king. (1 Kings 4: 20) Haman, the assistant to the Persian king Xerxes was happy that the queen had invited him to a private banquet she was hosting. (Esther 5:9)  Yet later his happiness was usurped by fury when the Jew, Mordecai refused to bow to him.  Paul the apostle recounted the observable happiness of his friend Titus who upon his return reported how refreshing it had been to spend time with the church at Corinth. (2 Corinthians 7:13)  As sick as it may sound to us, the Psalmist indicated that anyone who bashed in the skulls of Babylonian children would be happy. (Psalm 137: 8-9)  We know it is possible for this sort of happiness because we have seen it ourselves that miserable people can find happiness by bringing misery to others.

The challenge facing happiness seekers is how to sustain happiness.  It is fleeting in most cases; usually dependent on everything breaking the right way.  Some have a personality that tends toward happiness but unfortunately not everyone is so disposed.  Many have a tough time finding happiness even in normal circumstances, let alone when times are tough.  Is there any hope for the majority of us who find it difficult being happy, especially when we can’t find a good reason for being happy?

Joy is usually considered a synonym of happiness but there is a distinct difference between the two terms, particularly in the way the Bible applies them.  Joy often is no different than happiness.  It is simply the reaction to some sort of pleasure and joy means no more than the celebration of the soul over some accomplishment, acquisition or change in circumstances.  But there is another way joy is mentioned in the Bible and how this usage differs from the normal discussion of joy is the source of it and that is what we must examine now.

Nehemiah hints at the difference in the Bible’s use of the terms joy and happiness. 

Nehemiah said, "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." (Nehemiah 8:10 NIV)  The reason Nehemiah needed to prod the Jews in Jerusalem to celebrate was because many of them were upset over how terribly they and their descendants had acted and the extent to which they all had violated God’s law as found in the Scriptures.  Instead, Nehemiah encouraged celebration and feasting because of God’s mercy and generosity.  He then made a critical observation.  “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”  God’s joy is your strength.  Not your joy, but His joy.  Notice also that joy is not due to circumstances as we normally think of it.  The joy is found in the existence of God.

Later in the book of Nehemiah is found this statement.  And on that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced. The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away. (Nehemiah 12:43 NIV)  The people of Jerusalem rejoiced because God had given them great joy.  The subtlety of this should not be ignored.  It was not because God had made their city safe that they rejoiced nor that their hard work had paid dividends or even that now they were prospering after all the difficulties they overcame.  The cause of rejoicing was as simple and complex as this.  God had given them great joy.

The prophet Habakkuk was a pioneer when it came to joy and how to gain it.  As he considered the coming onslaught of the Babylonian army and the leveling of Judah and Jerusalem, he made a determination.  Even if there was nothing left of the land and all forms of income were gone, he decided, “I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” (Habakkuk 3:18 NIV) Note carefully the wording.  He is not saying he will rejoice because of the Lord or due to anything God was doing for him.  He was not going to be joyful as a result of some outcome he hoped would occur.  His joy was not about the Lord; his joy was through the Lord.  The source of joy was neither his situation nor his impression of God.  Habakkuk’s joy came directly from God like a pitcher pouring its contents into a cup.

Jesus declared this very means of gaining joy, was not only realistic, it was His promise to us that we could have joy this way.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. (John 15:11-12 NIV)  It is so imbedded in our approach to life that we must somehow find an accomplishment, a purchase or a relationship to have joy that it seems almost absurd that we can have joy simply by being connected to Jesus Christ.  But He reiterated this later that same evening.  "I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. (John 17:13-14 NIV)  This is certainly not a logical approach to happiness and joy.  We dig in our heels at this point.  If I get a new car or a boat, or if my wife stops arguing with me or if my husband would finally treat me affectionately or if my finances improved or if my test scores got better or if I have a great time on my date, I will have joy but if something turns sour, I am left bummed and frustrated. Paul completely flipped the normal joy equation around when he explained, For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. (Romans 14:17-18 NIV)  Not only is joy not determined by what we do or gain, it is ours as a result of God giving it to us freely.  May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13 NIV)

Let me use a story Jesus told to illustrate the difference between typical happiness and the joy that is infused from God.  There were two brothers who had completely different life goals.  They shared the same father, the same upbringing and the same advantages in life.  One decided to kill the golden goose and get his inheritance early.  He spent all his father gave him and wound up impoverished and in despair.  The other brother remained a hard-working productive person who never placed any demands upon his rich father.  When the younger brother returned home a beggar, to the older brother’s shock and great displeasure, the father threw a lavish party to welcome the younger brother back into the family.  The older brother stomped around and bitterly denounced his father for his actions.  The father had never thrown him a party!  He had worked faithfully in the family business and he never got so much as a barbecue.  Looking at this story from the outside, you wonder how the older son could have been so upset.  Why did he not realize that all the father had was his too?

Here is the great issue of joy.  Just as the older son forgot that the source of his true happiness was not in what the father doled out but it was the father himself, so we too err greatly here.  We fail to see that all true joy comes from Christ through the Holy Spirit and if we would keep our eyes on Him, we would have enough joy to fill the entire world.  It is when we look away from the goodness and mercy found in God and turn to all the things we wish we had or hate we now have or might have, we lose the joy that is ours at any moment.  The typical reaction when discovering that Jesus turned the water into wine is that a big deal is made out of that act as if that were the great miracle.  That was not and still is not the miracle, but rather just the sign of the miracle.  The miracle is that Jesus Christ can and will infuse us with Himself at any moment and the water transformed into wine is the sign of what Jesus can do within us if we are ready for His joy to overflow throughout our total personality.  What sort of home might we develop if the joy of the Lord entered it, what sort of work environment could we help develop with the joy of the Lord there, how could we change the way our churches operate if we had the joy of the Lord invading them?  There is plenty of joy in Christ for us to be happy if we would simply turn to Him in prayer at any moment we feel overwhelmed or disappointed or scared or angry or frustrated and just like the water was turned into wine, Jesus Christ can turn the mood of our personality to joy.

Why Are You Praying?

One of the great misconceptions in Christian circles is that God must give us what we ask because of our great need...or because we are so fervent in our praying...or because what we ask is not selfish or intended to feed some ungodly lust.  Our Lord answers our prayers because of the work of Christ on the Cross.  Sin is the great destroyer of all praying and, regardless of our determination to get what we want, it is fool's gold to reach out to God for anything but His forgiveness and transformed life.  Have we come to realize that Satan can give us what we ask and we can gain great treasure on earth without a drop of God in it?  The only proof you have that God is coming to you in your praying is if your faith is in Christ alone to save you.  His blood upon your heart is the mark of your citizenship and family heritage.  What good is it to gain the whole world and lose your soul!  What good is it to have a new car, a better job, a string of new friends or a fixed home if the blood of Christ does not seal them with redemption?  Prayer is the grand opportunity we have to give ourselves completely over to Christ to care for us and transform our will which we have from conception as a gift of God.  Wants and needs are never to be the center of praying.  It is the remade personality we have through the crucified life of our Lord that must take center stage.  At some point, we will discover in our praying that we have not a shred of worrying in our praying, that we have become like little children who trust absolutely in the Good Father due to the transforming work of Christ in our crucified praying and the fret will be gone that perhaps we have been abandoned in our needs and wants.  The theology of praying must never be bound up in the getting but always in the receiving.  These are two very different ends and it can take a lifetime to know the difference between the two.

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.  Mark 11:24 NIV

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

What Do You Want?

It was such a seemingly harmless request of James and John.  “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”  We too have this way of going about our business.  It is in fact the essence of much Christianity.  God is the god of doing for us what we ask.  Whether it be honor, achievement, affection or some sort of toy, we expect God to give us something so that we can have a good religion, a comfortable religion.  The Christian world leans into stuff as much as the sensible unbeliever.  We have seen it; much of the Christian world grabs and gathers just like all the good neighbors who never open Bibles.  When Jesus asked the brothers if they could drink the cup He was drinking and be baptized with His same baptism, James and John hardly blinked.  “Of course they could”, they insisted.  It turns out they were going to drink from the same cup and be baptized with the same baptism but they were as dumb as doorknobs when it came to realizing what that meant.  And fortunately for us, so are we generally when we enter into real discipleship.  This is when many good Christian people start to fade into the shadows.  They slip away into the night.  Are they willing to take rejection, loss, painful ministries or isolation?  Will they absorb as Christ did the damage brought by world sin?  A famous missionary once wrote, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”  How many Christians believe that?  Is there much real sacrifice and painful holiness in the Church or are most of our claims of following Christ lip service.  Many name Christ as a giver of good things but stop short of taking up the cross.  How many of us will drink the cup He drank and not squirm out of His baptism?  Will you be His disciple and not a caricature of what one is?  The call is clear.  Come follow me!  To do so means that you must take the path through Gethsemane and into Golgotha before you will ever make much progress with Christ as Lord.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 10: 45 NIV

Living by the Moment

The danger for the Christian is not that he or she might fall into terrible sin.  It is that the comfort of one’s own goodness and intelligence is enough to get along.  Great sin creates a rush of horror and it wrecks the personal confidence one has.  It is then that the Shepherd is known intimately to be good.  Experientially the blood of Christ must work its way through and through until the love of God is certain.  Before then it seems a fantasy, this mercy of God, this dependence upon Christ for everything.  We have life worked out, we are pretty good, our job may not be perfect but it pays the bills, our loves aren’t always agreeable but they keep us warm and responsible.  Yet this is a sham; fool’s gold.  We are dead in our sins and hopeless without Christ.  It is not damaged goods but utter wreckage we have and that great need we faced when we were lost in our sin has not diminished a whit since we came to Christ and were born again.  We need Him just as much now as that spot of time we faced ourselves fully and saw the hatred and filth and hopelessness and cried out to God for a Savior.  God has not called us to succeed.  He has brought us into complete immersion in the life of Christ that we might fully live in Him.  Are we to pray by the day or the week?  It is moment by moment that we need our Lord and it is in those moments that we succeed at the point of His call.  Why do we become satisfied with the ebb and flow of Holy Spirit living when we can be living on the mighty Mississippi of filling?  Certainly we can act as if it doesn’t matter whether or not we are in union with Christ at any given moment of the day but it is sheer arrogance to think we have enough of God to function well.  What does it take to make us see our need?  A fierce burst of anger, a jealous rage, a wicked spell of depression, a broken heart, the flaring fear of loss, a dirty little mind that feeds off lust, a swelling loneliness that public places exacerbate; what makes us pause long enough seek out our Savior?  There is a gate that is wide as Kansas and it takes us into the far away country where everything is plastic and full of selfies.  But there also is a narrow way where we are never alone and we can live with the Glorious Christ who loves and nourishes our souls and who massages our troubled minds with tender hands.  Can you pause just long enough to gaze into the mind of your Savior?  Do you need to take time with Jesus?

To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.  Revelation 21:6 NIV

Thinking Twice

We are mistaken if we think repentance is feeling badly about what we have done.  The man or woman who wakes up demoralized by the resultant wreckage brought on by a drunken catastrophic act the night before is not repentant.  The teen, who angrily slams a fist into the dashboard after getting a speeding ticket, is not repentant.  The child who cries when punished by a parent for stealing is not repentant.  The New Testament take on repentance is resolute.  If there is repentance, holiness must be its outcome.  Otherwise, it is just wounded pride, disturbed ambition, natural pain response or petulance.  Judas was sorrowful over his betrayal of Jesus but never as far as we can tell repentant.  Korah and his family members may have screamed in panic when the ground began to swallow them but that did not make them repentant.  Repentance by definition requires a shift from an old way of being to operating from a converted will.  It was repentance that determined Zacchaeus’s course of action and Paul’s too.  The former paid his victims back four times what he stole and the later became the chief evangelist of the message he tried to destroy.  There may be a gloominess to the conviction of wrong but that is the shadow of repentance; transformation is the substance.  Biblical repentance requires a Savior and for repentance to take place, the Cross of Christ must work its way into the core of Sin.  Sin is the determination that I do as I see fit; the crucifying work of God kills that resolve and replaces it with the life of resurrected Christ working in and through my new personality.  It must never be the goal to stop doing wrong; rather we are to stop being wrong.  That can only happen as Christ lives in and through us.  When I see the Sin, then I am ready to be transformed by the power of the crucified Christ into a new personality who lives in the God who saves and sanctifies.  Repentance is the full turn into Christ for salvation and then in Him a resulting holiness.  If there is no holiness, there has been no repentance.

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you — even Jesus.   Acts 3:19-20 NIV

Urgent Care

Can we bear a bit of honesty?  The Church has as a whole forgotten to pray.  We organize meals, put together events, talk extensively about the Bible, argue over by-laws and form endless numbers of committees but give prayer the once over and then we’re off to something else.  We pray and then try to get something accomplished as if the accomplishing is not occurring in the praying.  The Disciples asked the Lord to teach them how to pray.  We know how to pray.  We don’t know how to start praying with determination and abandonment to the work of prayer.  Would Peter have been led out of prison by the angel if the band of believers quartered in the home of John Mark’s mother had not been praying?  We cannot say for sure one way or another but they certainly were juxtaposed with each other in the Scripture.  Would Lot have escaped Sodom if his uncle were not praying?  Would Job’s friends have escaped judgment if Job had not prayed?  Would Jericho have ever been taken if for seven days straight the Israelites had not prayed?  Given the stakes, why do we do so little praying?  The Lord insists that He will do the heavy lifting if we would just put the shovel down for a while and pray.  The seeds need rain and sun and good soil to bring about the harvest.  All of these required necessities come from God.  Only the seed distribution is our responsibility.  If three-fourths of the work is God’s and we must go to Him in prayer to gain His help in them, why do we give most of our time to seed casting?  It is the praying that is the most critical part of the harvest because to be brutally honest, we can chuck our seeds anywhere and God can make them sprout right where they land. We have so little confidence God actually exists and carries those who go to Him in prayer that we make prayer perfunctory and everything else a necessity.  Our Lord is not scanning the horizon for better workers to bless; He is searching for more faith-full workers who have come to rely upon prayer above all else to make it through their days.  Would the world collapse in a heap if you gave an entire day to praying and reading the Scriptures?   Would your family be crushed by the weight of your devotion to praying?  Or might it just be that more can be done in ten hours of prayer than a lifetime of plowing?

                                                                            

"When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.   2 Chronicles 7: 13-15 NIV  

Real Time Christianity

Have you ever been confounded by some lack of a particular spiritual experience…felt impoverished some way in your life with God?    No one is quite so dumbfounded by “missing parts” as the believer hoping to move rapidly through the stages of Christian faith.  It feels unfair that some have this great encounter with God and others that divine revelation that super-charges them.  We seem to be the only ones stuck in the humdrum, jammed into a cubicle spiritually.  Consider the elation Christ felt as a young boy of twelve in His Father’s house.  The scriptures were there before Him, every letter of the Law available to His twitchy finger tips.  He was free to probe the greatest of the rabbis and test their mettle with His questions.  Day and night He was able to breathe in the Father’s words without the commonplace distractions of mundane Nazareth; did not have be interrupted by the roar of his brothers and sisters constant badgering and harassment.  No dishes to wash, no cabinets to repair, no fussy parents to please.  There in the Temple He was free to suck in the full majesty of the Jewish religious experience…but if He had stayed there even a moment past His mother’s press to return home, it all would have spilled out upon the ground like a cracked nightmare.  Jesus went home and in the poverty of an academically barren village, He lived the life given Him and He lived it well.  He gained what visions and ecstatic experiences could not provide Him; a grown up view of Kingdom life.  There is no record of Jesus miracles during the next eighteen years of His life, no burning bushes, no chariots of fire.  It was just weekly trips to the synagogue, daily having to trudge to the well to get water jars filled, nightly sleeping on the same worn out blankets.  Oh, he had the glow of the stars to brighten His evenings and the stir of the crickets to awaken His slumber but everything was always very much the same…the sunrise and the sunset, the musty sun-scorched breeze that never really cooled.  Did Jesus speak in tongues then…did He get slain in the Spirit…did He “prophesy”?  We have no record of any of that.  We simply have Jesus learning obedience in what He suffered so that when His time of glory came, He was ready to follow it through to the end.    Nothing will sanctify you any more than simply doing what God gives you to do and being thankful for the extreme mercy of the Father in showering your heart with the love of Christ.

Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

Luke 2:51-52 NIV 

Religious Tinkering

What constitutes spirituality?  Is it an interest in religious matters?  Is it  the capacity to tease out the main idea in a Biblical text?  Is it a way of speaking or a propensity for charitable deeds?  For Jesus, spirituality was grounded in a determination to do whatever He saw the Father doing.  His mind's eye was fixed and never moved from that one focal point.  At every place where He went, He was given over to the will of the Father and in following Him step by step.  Spirituality is nothing more than puffed up personalized morality if it is not squared with the mind of Christ.  We have the gift of the Holy Spirit  not that we might do great deeds of godliness but that we might be at one with Jesus Christ every step.  The blood of Christ is in the washing of personality a mightier work than we grasp.  It is holiness personified...not considered, not examined.  With the cleansing Christ provides we can live a holy life because Christ is holy.    We should not take this lightly.  Holiness is the personal end game for us.  The Lord will never put up with a single bit of sinful waywardness.  He will shred us and consume us with His blazing fire until every bit of rebellion is gone.  This happens now and we should thank God He does not leave all this work until we come face to face with Him.  The trials we face today and the hardships we encounter now are all a gracious work of God to strip us clean and the more we give ourselves freely to Him, the more joyfully we will walk tomorrow.  If the "well done good and faithful servant" were left to us alone, we would simply be disgraced in the end.  But the "well done good servant" is being shaped by God in our momentary troubles and light trials.  As we turn to Christ in faith, we find the old pernicious acrimony toward the Father and what we see Him doing drained from us and replaced with the sweet, happy stream of Christ Himself welling up within.  The great days of our lives are when we are surprised to find Christ seeping out of us as we go about the normal business we have.  At those grand moments, we will grin and laugh happily that we really have been made new!

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."

John 7:38-39 NIV

Loyalty and Its Cost

Is it wrong to want others to like us, to value us and respect us?  Should it not be a noble goal to have people speak highly of us at our funeral, for them to have fond memories of our life and testify of what a good and generous person we were?  So do we leave the path of rightness if it matters to us what sort of reputation we have developed and we care about the popularity we acquire?  Jesus insisted that if we follow Him there will be those who hate us and reject us because of Him.  Does that possibility frighten us?  Are we disturbed by how the Gospel in us is received?  When Christ works His way through our personality, it is not a trifling matter.  It is revolutionary; as upsetting as the day the colonies declared independence from England; as chaotic as when the realization strikes us that our children really are adults and no longer ours to keep in place.  The supernatural effect of the Cross is that the Lord Jesus Christ becomes Lord over one dealing after another and it will crack the care-free web of interacting we have built.  God’s peace does not please everyone.  Hope does not make everyone happy.  Holiness is frightful to many…so is kindness, generosity and mercy.  The world is not ready for a Christian man or woman who fully intends to let God live through the complete personality.  It will jar plenty; stun and mystify enough of the crowd to send some shivers down our spine.  You will not be prepared for being hated because Christ lives through you.  It will seem to you that God should have worked that out in advance; that if you are reworked by the Holy Spirit, He will make the path clear of boulders and thorn bushes for you.  But He won’t.  Just as the seedling needs the pushback of the soil to make it prosper and grow strong, you need the opposition of friends and family to develop spiritual backbone.  You are to be strong and mighty in God and it must be steady she goes for you as you gain some of the circle of isolation Christ faced.  Let Christ be the center of all you are becoming and soon enough you will be able to love those who hate you and let your critics have their say without being perturbed.  In the darkness of strained and ruined relationships, the light of Christ will shine brightly enough to guide your way through to the other side of the dismay you feel.  Just don’t let your attempts at realizing yourself be the instigator for your conflicts.  You are not, and forever will not be your own.  It is you and the love of Christ in all you do now.  Let Him have His way in your visceral response to broken humanity…in particular the part of that humanity living next door to you…or in your house.

Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.   Jude 21 NIV

Comfort Re-examined

What makes you so certain you have all the facts?  Do you know everything you need to know when you make your decisions?  Are you clear on all the factors involved as you move forward?  We find in 2 Thessalonians 2: 7ff that there is a great set of unseen forces at work all around us and we are like mindless bobs bouncing at the whim of a seething  ocean storm if we do not seek the Lord in all we do and say.  The deception is at every level and in each turn; everything that is of God is opposed by the power of lawlessness and we pretend to our great harm that it is not present in our spot of the world.  The vast majority of our personality is hidden from our view and therein is the rub.  What we don't see we pretend doesn't exist but we cannot continue to hide from it.  Forces are at work within us and without and it is the fool who does not bring Christ into each part of his day because those forces are most certainly there already.  If insanity is the mental deviation from the norm, then it is insanity to take into consideration forces operating within each of your moments influencing your emotional reactions and marring your mental acuity.  Yet insanity is sanity when reality goes unnoticed and denied by the acknowledged "norm".  Jesus Christ died to free you from slavery to the rebellion in the universe and to let yourself be subservient to that rebellion without a care is the remaking of General Custer's march into the Little Big Horn.  The Lord broke your bondage to Satan and the will of his cohorts; why put back on those chains by ignoring the working of Holy Spirit in your heart; guiding you, inspiring you, elevating your view.  The man of lawlessness is no comic book character...he is at the heart of our world's misery even in your corner of the world.  Take action.  Pursue with determined fortitude the power and might of Holy Spirit at the very spot where you are in your day through all those spots of your day.  You are at the front line of the battlefield and you must have the eyes of God Himself seeing through you if you are to be of any good in this fight.

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing.  They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.  2 Thessalonians 2: 9-10

Are You Aware of the Big Picture?

There is with each of us a great mountain of unexplored territory.  Our personality is beyond our grasp, even the smallest parts of it.  That is why egotism is such a dastardly sin against ourselves because what we think we are is so far from the actuality.  Just consider your dreams and how profoundly they explore your depths.  You dream of someone you cannot recall ever seeing, create a narrative that is far more complex with plots and subplots than anything you could ever put down in writing, express fears and colossal desires you did not know existed.    In your dreams, lusts and cravings spring up from the pit of you that astound and perplex you.  That is just the brief snippets of the dreams you recall after the first minute of waking.  The boundaries of you that are versus what you think those boundaries of you are far surpass the difference between all of Asia and the little mosquito dancing near a swamp in Viet Nam.  You are not merely the sum of your parts…you go beyond all your parts and all the parts of everyone you know of those you have met over the course of your life.  The shepherds were amazed by the angels…first one and then thousands because they never imagined something so wonderful and spectacular.  Come to Jesus and you will find that what you know of Him and what you think you know of Him is even less than what you know of yourself.  Consider the wonder and awe of those first moments when the shepherds looked up into the night sky and watched the heavenly dance played out above them.  They could not have realized that what the angels announced was so much greater than what they presented of themselves.  Why are we so dreary and lackadaisical when it comes to knowing Jesus Christ?  We seem to be like the poor man who smashed his TV to get at the little people who lived in his box and talked to him from inside it..  Can we not see that Jesus Christ is mercy and love and joy beyond our wildest imaginings and that the glory of His being is the most magnificent of discoveries and one that brightens exponentially with each new exploration into Him?  Have we the persistence of the shepherds who scrambled to see the Christ Christmas morning?  Have we an idea of what consists of the “big picture“?  Do we realize how big Jesus is?

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.      Luke 2:16 NIV

In or Out

The moment we begin to dwell upon ourselves, our mental state, our condition, our circumstances, our finances, the things we have or want to have, we have lost our way.  Dwell means to live in a place and as soon as we live at what and who we are, we are stalling the progression God has set before us.  The mirror is a metaphor of our spiritual predicament.  Do we stare into it or look away to Jesus?  Is our eye fixed upon our depression, our loneliness, our discouragement, our frantic search, our health or is it looking away to the Cross of Christ where all the life of God comes bolting forth?  Jesus' statement about clothing and food and not worrying about them in the Sermon on the Mount is mostly misunderstood.  Like the disciples in the boat, we think He was talking about stuff...bread stuff...clothing stuff...car stuff...house stuff...body stuff...relationship stuff.  If that was the point of His rebuke, then Jesus aimed pretty low.  The Cross of Christ was not a triumph for the protection and distribution of stuff.  It was the devastating death blow to all sin and life is the working out in us of the life of Christ within the humdrum of all we do and think.  The moment we fix our eyes on our internal condition, focus upon what is wrong with us or right with us or necessary for our pleasure or happiness, we are like the child who stares into the sun and then can't see a thing.  Only with our eye fixed on Jesus, either through the scripture, by prayer or in doing what God tells us at the moment He tells us to do a thing can we see clearly.  We see the love God has for us.  We see the power the Lord holds in His hand.  We sense His love and mercy and care for us.  We trust God and believe Him.  We live.  Gaze at myself and I shrivel like C.S. Lewis's bus riders in The Great Divorce.  Look to Jesus and keep my mind on Him and the world shrinks and God grows large and I become more and more fit for the Glory I am meant to possess as a Child of the Great King.  As soon as the prodigal son determined to make his way back to the presence of His Father, he lost the identity of me and found Himself to be Us.  The world is too small for us when God makes us His home.

Jesus said to her, "Mary."  She turned toward him…      John 20:16 NIV

Are You Really You?

Why do the ramifications of being born again startle us?  When a child is born into a family, it is a complete revelation to the home, a revolutionary break with the old structure and forms.  Each child, even when added to large families destroys absolutely the old family and restructures it into a new dynamic that permanently ruptures all of the relationships built before.  Abortion is the ultimate fear of the new beginning.  So to think that when one becomes a Christian we are to be the same old person with a religious overcoat thrown on top of us is ludicrous.  We mustn’t let the stored memories and genetic layering fool us into believing that we are the same when Christ comes to us and makes us new.  We are new and it is not temporary.  We play mental games with ourselves thinking the old behavior patterns that made up our days before will be able to continue into our newness.  The bitterest and saddest and most disappointed people in the world are those Christians who try to keep up the charade of living and doing as they did when there was no Holy Spirit a part of them.  The adultery and corrupt business practices and snobbish indifference to grudges bottled within are not just contemptible within the Christian community, they are a sign that the believer has failed to acknowledge just how new he or she is.  Perfect peace and sustained joy are given over to us when we live freely in Christ and not when we remain bound in the chains of our old way of being.  Dogs return to their vomit but Christians grow increasingly disgusted with the old patterns of sin.  We are born again that we might become perfect and holy…it does not go another way than that.  The sooner we accept our lovely fate, the speedier will come our peaceful happiness.  Dogs gnaw on bones, bears hunt for berries, otters dart about in the water, eagles build nests in the cliffs and each species holds true to itself as the years pass.  A Christian who thinks like a prostitute, dreams like a miser, whines like a selfish prig and is petulant like an unrestrained child is good for nothing.  All the sweetness and courage and steadfastness and contentment put in him by God is wasted by the believer who will not walk in the Spirit and live by the Scriptures.  You are made good by Christ that you might live good; to do otherwise is like dropping diamonds down the drain. 

He put a new song in my mouth…     Psalm 40:3 NIV

The Evil Eye

Have you come to the spot where you notice something wrong with another person?  Do you see clearly that person’s flaws, moral inadequacies or bad behavior?  Do you recognize what that person must do to get things straight so he or she can be a better person?  Well great!  Pray about it.  Pray with humility and great respect for the work of God already accomplished in that one person.  Pray, recognizing God’s sovereignty in that life as the creator and sustainer and the finisher of the work He has already begun.  Bite your lip and slap your face though as you start to be God and point out what you have seen wrong with the person.  Cut out your tongue before you try to get out a word of criticism.  Be as harsh with your soul as Pontius Pilate was with Jesus if you think you should begin to give way to your urge to judge one of the Lord’s own.  You open yourself up to all the flaming darts of the evil one if you begin to take your place as corrector and faultfinder because, as well-intended as you mean to be, you have stood in the place of Satan and usurped him in his obscene work.  Satan is the accuser and if you wish to join him in his rebellion against the Lord, then at least be prepared for the consequences.  Nothing shuts down the work of God in us quicker than our sharp tongue and critical evaluations.  We cannot advance at all with God if we take this stance abrogating God’s authority.  Of course we mean well when we point out flaws and correct personality deficiencies…just like Eve meant well when she offered Adam the fruit.  Given how high the stakes, would it not be better just to swallow our criticisms like a deadly poison pill than let them get out into the open and make ourselves enemies of God?  If you see something wrong with another person, pray about it and let the matter rest with Jesus Christ who knows what to do with such things.

Do not judge or you too will be judged.  Matthew 7: 1 NIV

The God Twitch

The God twitch is a spontaneous turning of one’s spasmodic concentration to God.  It is the sudden, spontaneous reaction to the Holy Spirit poking at your hot nerve.  Some are more reactive than others; quicker to flinch in God's direction.  If we don't realize what is happening we may mistake the poke as a crisis, as a terrible occurrence, as a heartbreak.  It is not.  It is the Lord making Himself unmistakably visible.  David felt it when Saul came after him in the wilderness.  Stephen felt it as he faced his martyrdom.  Jonah faced it as he sat in the belly of the great fish and Peter came upon it as he wept uncontrollably in the dark closet of Jerusalem Good Friday.  We may question many matters in our life but when Job like you was hit in the head by the lightning flash of God he became silent as a door knob.  There is nothing to do when God comes upon you with the force of heaven itself.  You must silently wait upon Him as He works Himself through every cell and corpuscle you possess.  Why should we think God would always deal with us peacefully and comfortably when the greatest people in the Bible were struck dumb by the weight of His awful Presence?  As Christians, we must stop making excuses for God; quit sugarcoating the ways He moves within us.  Did Ruth lose her husband or not?  Did Elijah face the terror of Jezebel or not?  Did Paul get beaten with rods or not?  It is anathema to make God out as some kind of silly puppy who bounces about mindlessly whenever we meet Him.  He is stern in His determination to make us face Him.  Should we think His glory is casual and light?  It is not!  It is as heavy as the weight of the firestorm that fell upon Sodom.  Nothing stops the force of our God's entrance when He decides to make Himself known to us with finality.  Just look at the picture we have of Jesus in Daniel 7 and try to wiggle out of this one simple attribute of God.  He is holy...terribly holy and it is a grave error to mistake Him as Santa Claus.  Sin is not a bad move on our part; it is the terrifying rebellion of a fool who dares come up against the Almighty God.  We must never mistake God as a doting father who overlooks every offence of his child.  He is not.  That is why the cross of Jesus Christ is such a roiling cauldron of chaos for Satan and the demon world.  Jesus Christ crucified is the lightning bolt of the Father that makes the entire world twitch in horror or in wonder.    The sins of the billions embedded within the dying body of the crucified King of Kings makes stones shatter in wonder and the universe come unglued in the end.   Are we so silly as to think God will only deal lightly with us when He comes upon us?

"As I looked, "thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat.  His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool.  His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze.  A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him.     Daniel 7:9-10 NIV

Inner Working

There are times when we are irritated and irritable and nothing satisfies us.  We are unhappy with ourselves and unhappy with everyone  about us.  We want to disappear into a hot tub or slip off into a movie theater but we have responsibilities and we must gut out our frustrations.  Pain and disappointment are like psychological bobs; they bring up to the surface those parts of us we have tried our best to keep hidden.  And yet our anger is really there, our despair is still there, our deep sadness and weeping losses are still there.  Sin has stung us all both within and without and it changes the dynamic of our inner world living with its pain and sorrow.  When through trials and suffering our inner world works its way out of us and splatters the ones God brings our way, we confuse our reaction to hardship with the troubles we have.  The Lord as He hung upon the Cross with His shattered flesh screaming in pain did not stifle His inner world as His outer world hit up against it.  The one thief railed against Jesus and the Lord stayed silent and did not rail back because His inner world was at peace.  The other thief, who we forget also brought a flurry of hatred against Jesus came to his senses and sought our Lord's mercy.  Rather than letting His inner world be corrupted by the sin of the outer world, Jesus loved the second thief and gave Him the kindness that filled His heart to the brim.  It was that inner world that spilled out of Jesus...love untainted by hatred or despair, unhindered by all the humiliation and criticism brought to bear against Him, His inner world of peace and joy unmarred by the rejection and scorn leveled at Him .  That very nature; that continuous confidence in the Father and unwillingness to be corrupted by the pain He suffered is the nature the Lord will give us if we give Him room to do it.  We must trust Him with our inner world; allow the Lord to rework it that it might be born again.  The hatred we feel is real hatred; the bitterness over our losses is real bitterness.  Yet that is no longer our lasting world.  We have a new home, a home built in Christ and it is the most peaceful of sanctuaries.  The sign that we have settled into our new inner world is that what spills out of us when we are rattled by disappointment, trauma or ridicule is the same settled confidence Christ had that nothing came to Him except what the Father in His good and faithful love allowed and approved.  What insult can shake us when we have the nature of Christ within us?  What hardship is there that Christ did not face Himself and peacefully let pass?  What frightening possibility is there that is too much for the loving Father?  We have the mind of Christ and If we think through Him, what will come out of us during the furious storm will  heal the nations the Holy Spirit places along the way of our journey.

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Psalm 51:10 NIV

The Effect of the Follow

When David danced wildly before the Lord as the Ark was being brought into Jerusalem, he offended his wife Michal.  In hindsight, most of us would look upon Michal as petty and childish but she had plenty of baggage she carried with her that may have inflamed her sensitivities.  Her husband used her to make his escape from her father.  David greedily married numerous other women rather than holding fast to his loyalty to Michal.  When Michal was forced by her father to remarry, she built a new life with her husband but had it ripped from her when David demanded her back into his harem as his condition for peacefully accepting command of the united nation of Israel.  All of David's faults aside, he was doing as the Lord directed when he took up his place at the front of the procession and held nothing back in his celebration of the Lord's presence.  The backlash of his obedience hit is wife Michal squarely in the face.  Abraham as he marched up Mt. Moriah to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, had to stifle his own emotions but more importantly, let his wife suffer violently the horror of the projected outcome.  Paul never forced his young friend Silas to accompany him on the missionary journey but he did not shield him either from the brutal treatment he suffered as a result.  Our children may face terrible difficulties and our friends might suffer greatly when we do as the Lord tells us but we must not shy away from our obedience to the Holy Spirit.    Jesus knew Peter would suffer for following Him to the end but Jesus did not apologize to Peter for it nor did He waver in the call to follow.  The cross is not heavy just for us but for all those who walk with us as we heft it upon our shoulders and they heave their own crosses upon theirs.    If we are to be crucified with Christ, why would we try to prevent others from dying themselves?  Do we not want them also to have Jesus as Lord?  Are we more merciful than God Himself who lets others suffer alongside us as we take up our cross daily?  If God calls us, we must go regardless of the effect it has on others.  Jesus went to Calvary knowing full well the anguish it would bring His own mother but He did so because the Father beckoned Him onward.  If we are to follow in His steps, we cannot hesitate at the point at which we bring crises and trials upon others.  They are in God's hands just as solidly as we are and to not go would be to demand the Lord drop us and them too. 

A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Luke 23:27-28 NIV

Reflecting Upon Narcissus

How many times do we make an assessment or give a justification for some action of ours or inaction and frame it as an indisputable fact?  Oh I did not have time to pray much.  Really?  I was unable to keep my promise.  Truly?  I can't afford to tithe.  Is that so?  I was prevented from reading my Bible.  Oh?  I don't know a soul who is ready to hear the Gospel.  What?  I was too busy to participate in congregational worship.  Huh?  If God stuck His nose in our business and dug around a bit, would He make the same determinations as us?  We shake our heads at Ananias and Sapphira and piously declare their wrongfulness but have we not also lied to the Holy Spirit on occasion?  Have we not thrown up our hands and most honorably asserted our inability to do what God has said clearly to do?  Have we not pretended not to hear when He knows we have heard?  Do we not pretend to be something we aren't...feebler than we are, more busy than we are, poorer than we are, less capable than we are?  Thank God for His mercy that He has not struck us down for the very same sins of Ananias and Sapphira!  Too often we say we can't when what is really so is that we won't.  We won't have faith.  We won't make the effort.  We won't stop loving the world.  We won't quit being lazy.  We won't turn away from temptation.  Narcissism is at its core is far worse than simple vanity.  It is the determination to keep your eyes fixed upon yourself rather than looking up to the God who saves you.  We don't lie to the Holy Spirit because we are trying to fool Him; we do it to try to fool ourselves into justifying our lame spirituality.  The Lord is good enough, strong enough loving enough and resourced enough to give us great power and ability.  Paul instructs all good Christians who walk by faith.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  There is little room in that assertion for "I couldn't!"

"My people have committed two sins:  They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." Jeremiah 2:13 NIV

The Great Moment

The Great Moment of our "turn around" is never at the spot when everything changes but at the point at which we decide for God.  When a paralytic was carried to the home where Jesus was teaching, the turn around was not when the man arrived.  It wasn't when Jesus bent over the cripple and told him to walk.  It wasn't even those rapid fire nanoseconds when healing flashed through the paralytic's legs.  The turn around was when it was decided to go to the Lord for help.  Repentance is a turn around.  The cry to God for help is a turn around.  The lostness that is discovered in the heart is a turn around.  As we come to grips with the  realization that every hope we have must end with God and if the truth be known, starts with Him, we meet the turn around at our doorstep.  Faith is the turn around; it is the spot at which we go outside ourselves and the miserly universe and seek the treasure trove of God's grace.  This world is never enough and will never provide us with enough.  We are always left with an empty pang in our stomach when all we do is rely upon this world for what we long to have.  It is more than metaphoric that the prodigal realized where he should have lived all along when his stomach growled uncontrollably.  We seek the Father not to get something in the end but because He is the beginning and the end.  All joy and peace and love and contentment are found ultimately in Him and although we may mistake some carnal longing for its heavenly desire, even in our most lustful cravings, we have in them the opportunity to fill our stomach with the bread Jesus offered the crowd on the hillside.   His broken body and poured out blood come to us at the moment of our hunger pangs and if we are wise, we will feast on them.  Given the voracity of our appetite, the only way we can ever be filled is by turning to Christ and letting Him fully satisfy us.    When you decide to go after the Savior, He saves you beyond the saving  you sought.

Why are you downcast, O my soul?  Why so disturbed within me?  Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. Psalm 42:5-6a NIV

An Extension of Christ

Do you know a "hard case", someone who is so far from God that he seems to be impossibly lost?  Have you come across the soul who is irascible, who is such an irritant that you are ready to be done with her?  The great temptation is to give up on certain people; to dump them in the hopeless bin.  And yet there is not a single person who is "hopeless"; otherwise what good is the cross of Christ.  Zacchaeus was content in his greed and selfishness and certainly many must have prayed for his demise.  Was he hopeless?  Saul was a human butcher, cruel and a prig.  He must have been the subject of many a cry for destruction, the Christian community surely longed for God to take him apart.  Was he hopeless?   We are astonished by David's miserable wailing when he found out Absalom had been killed because it was Absalom who despised David more than even his worst enemies; who although a son, wanted him dead and publicly humiliated.  Was Absalom hopeless?  David didn't see him that way and he is our standard for evaluating others.  No one is too wicked to be scorned; no one is too lost to be rejected.  Jesus died for all, not just those who were good prospects for holiness.  If His love extended beyond the natural bounds of affection, then ours can and must too because He lives within us.  We never have an excuse for giving up on another; for quitting on her.  We may be discouraged by the outer show of things but our Lord went straight for  the heart and loved even the most haughty of sinners.   We must stand firm in Christ and let Him love through us and not confound His efforts by letting our dislike for someone keep us from being the Lord's good and faithful servant.  It is no use complaining to the Lord who was beaten in the courtyard of Caiaphas.  The Lord sees a place of hope in your Pilates and Matthews.  Nothing warms the heart of our Lord quite as much as having a friend who sees that hope too.   Ananias did not want to go to Saul and touch Him but he did and the world has not been the same.  Extend your reach past your feelings and let Christ win you over.

Then Ananias went to the house and entered it.  Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord--Jesus…"  Acts 9: 17

Undecided

It is one thing to choose Jesus Christ for your salvation; another matter altogether to decide He is Lord.  We circumvent the question  by passing over its implications.  Are we ready to pray a while longer with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane?  Do we have the heart for storing up in our own bodes the blows intended for Christ?  Have we really taken up the call to "make disciples of all nations"?  Is there a flinch, a hesitation to the demand to let the world run roughshod over us that we might be salty salt and a city on a hill?  It is a clear sign that we are not altogether given over to the determination that Jesus Christ is Lord over us when we get bent out of shape over how He has mistreated us, how He has mishandled us, how He has misappropriated our skills and talents.  "What a waste of my time or abilities", we whine .  "How foolish that I must endure this", we complain.  Are we ready to declare that Jesus Christ is Lord over us wherever He has us land and that the complaint we mutter over our trying circumstance is nothing but full out mutiny?  We certainly have a right, even as God's child, to be upset that we have not gotten a fair shake in life and that we deserve better treatment than we have received.  But we mustn't lie to ourselves that Christ is Lord over us.  He is not.  We have let our wounded ego get the upper hand.  If Christ wishes to crush us with troubles and disappointments that the sweetness of Him might seep out of us, then so be it.  He is Lord.  If wants to break apart our plans and aspirations that something of us that is altogether His might become consecrated bread for the world, then rejoice for He is Lord.  Once the boy gave Christ his loaves and fishes, they were God's to do with as He wished and it would have been a ridiculous absurdity for him to complain when the disciples gave some of that bread and fish to a neighbor he despised.  It was God's alone to dispense as He saw fit the moment the loaves and fishes were handed over to Christ.  Once you declare Jesus Christ is Lord, you are His to do with as He wishes so settle down and with the same faith you had at the beginning when you made your decision to give Him your life, hold to that decision now as you discover He really intends to do with you as HE intends.

...then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve… Joshua 24:15 NIV

What Are You Really?

The most gracious work of God that occurs for the developing believer is the realization he is inconsequential.  His knowledge base is minuscule.  His benefit to others is minimal, if not harmful.  His goodness is impoverished.  It is then that God can do something with him.  Abraham finally threw his hands up after the Ishmael mess and realized he and his wife had no idea what they were doing.  Jacob in all his brilliance couldn't make out Leah from Rachel and Moses thought killing an Egyptian foreman would turn things around for the Hebrews.  The perfect mess is just a mess unless we get at the main thing in life.  We are nothing but a developing corpse if Jesus Christ is not working His way through us.  The silence of God won't last but it will continue long enough until we grip hard on the absurdity of leaving our Lord out of what we do.  God may have shown you something at one time but you let it pass.  He may have pushed you toward something but you turned away.  Jesus had one purpose in life, to do the will of the Father.  Nothing distracted Him from it and as a result, at each point He knew what to do.  Do you know what to do?  Do you know what the Father is doing with you?  You can avoid the place where God developed your course or you can return to it and do the one thing you know He wants you to do.  It is up to you; the Lord won't make it easy on you by manipulating your thoughts or backing you into a corner.  You must decide the Lord is LORD and then turn into Him.  As you do, you might have to abandon some long standing belief of yours or an important person's view of you but do it today.  Do it now.  As the Lord works His way through you, He will work His way out of you and you will be like sparkling ice water in a thirsty land; you will be a well from which living water flows. It may be startling  the ways in which God refreshes and transforms lives through you.

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.  John 7:38 NIV

How Long Will You Wait?

The problem we face as Christians who sincerely want to see our neighbors and friends come to Christ is the misconception we have about what this means for them to make such a dramatic left turn.  The vast majority of people we contact daily who are not born from above are completely content as they are.  They don't want our assertions or our "great opportunity".  It is absurd to them that they should change their lives so dramatically as we insist and their conscience is not the least bit troubled by what they do.    Divorce is reasonable if they are no longer in love, pornography is enjoyable and maybe even helpful, what we call sexual immorality is moral to them and greed honored.  The itch is meant to be scratched every time it surfaces and the audacity of demanding something approaching limits to freedom is irrational to them.  We are not, and never have been offering something so enticing it cannot be rejected.  Jesus did not say He came to bring peace but a sword.  Most people do not see Christianity as a better life; a less tolerable one perhaps, a constricted one probably.  Even many Christians are a tad bitter about what they find Christianity to be.   The deceit of Satan is thorough and penetrating.  The lie that being in Christ is a meager and impoverished existence is believed almost universally, even many times within the church.  Why would those infatuated with death want to cross over to life?  The Gospel is not seen as good news but a bitter pill to swallow.  What can we do about this?  The Lord has given us two directives.  Pray for the hearts of our family, friends and neighbors and say the Gospel clearly.  Rather than being confounded by a  wasteland of wrecked souls, grab the hope Jesus Himself had when He happily proclaimed His mission...The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.  (John 10:10 NIV)  Not everyone will realize their lives are bankrupt without Jesus but some will.  Not everyone will want to hear what you have to say but some will.    We must not be dismayed by the prevailing blindness.  The Lord is present shedding light in the darkness so not every soul is trapped in the shadows.   The Gospel is even now unlocking rusted padlocks binding hearts and you have that same key in your hand.  Don't worry yourself with strategies for trying to convince people to come to Christ.  Let the Holy Spirit do that work.  Give  the Gospel  away though as if it were the  hope of all mankind; don’t hold back when your time has come to be the great angel of grace, God's personal messenger.  Someone is waiting for you.  God has prepared the way!

Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."   Luke 9:60 NIV