Captivity

Philippians 4:8 NIV

 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.

What Is On Your Mind?

A number of years ago before I was married I went on a white water rafting trip with some friends.  The most memorable part of the trip was a turn in the river that we reached with the water rushing beneath us in a torrent.  We were fast approaching a giant boulder on the left and our raft leader urged us to paddle as hard as we could to try and get the boat to turn to the right of it. We were all just normal people, some a bit more athletic than others but none of us were professional paddlers.  We whacked at the water with our paddles but clearly we didn’t give it our best because rather than missing the boulder we ran straight up it; three fourths of our raft out of the water resting upon the side of the giant granite rock.  As soon as we hit the boulder with a crash, the fellow on the front of the raft was popped out of it by the force of the impact and went flying ten feet up in the air, over the boulder and into the pool of water beside it.  Our eyes were as big as plates as we watched him shoot up in the air out of the raft.  Fortunately he did not hit any rocks, his life jacket kept him afloat and as soon as we worked the rubber raft off the boulder, we collected him from the icy water and continued careening down the river.  The raft leader never criticized us for not paddling hard enough to avoid the great boulder; we all knew we had avoided a great tragedy when our fellow rafter missed the rocks in his flight but we learned our lesson.  From that point onward, when our leader ordered us to paddle hard, we gave it all we had.

Looking back, it was not our bodies that failed us, it was our thinking.  We all decided individually that we were putting our best effort into paddling when we weren’t.  The thought each of us had was “I don’t need to work any harder than I am.  Of course I was wrong in how I thought and so was the person paddling next to me….all of us were wrong but nonetheless our thoughts controlled our actions.  It has always been that way for every person who has ever lived.  What you think decides what you do.  In each situation you face you might have a multitude of thoughts, some contradicting others but eventually a thought wins the moment and you do something or don’t do it.  You decide you need a new top and so you buy it.  You think you have been treated badly and you get upset.  The thought comes to you that your hair is too long and so if that thought persists, you get your hair cut.  We are both the masters and prisoners of our thoughts.  Our thoughts take us along like the rush of a mighty river and deposit us wherever they choose…unless of course we use our paddles and push against the force of the current.

A few years ago I read of a songwriter who composed and did the lead vocals on a fairly popular Christian song.  Its theme was healing and it was autobiographical.  The fellow had experienced a miraculous healing from cancer.  He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer but through prayer was cancer free.  As a result he wrote his song about believing in miracles.  There was only one problem.  He had faked his illness and fooled even his wife into thinking he had cancer.  For months he gave his testimony at concerts in vast arenas and his song climbed the charts.  It all came crashing down however when his hoax was uncovered.  Even now though, the song is sung in churches and by popular Christian groups.  Why did this nice Christian man pretend he had cancer?  We cannot say for certain but we do know that the decision to do so was the result of thoughts running through him that he did not reject or disable.

Throughout the Bible we find examples of good people who did things that seem absurd or in contradiction to who they appear to be.  Yet all we do, like them, whether good or bad, is the result of thoughts we create or accept.  Why would someone like David commit adultery with the wife of one of his bravest soldiers?  He did not stop the thoughts he had that he needed to have Bathsheba regardless of what was right or wrong.  Those thoughts grew in size and strength until his conscience was swamped by them.  Why did Ananias and Sapphira decide to pretend to the people of the church that they were giving to God all the proceeds of the sale of their property when they weren’t?  Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property.  With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet. Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?  Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God." (Acts 5:1-4 NIV) It was Ananias’s thoughts that poisoned his actions and corrupted his life with God.

We see this with Miriam who despite the respect and prestige she enjoyed as a part of her brother Moses’s inner circle of leadership, she did not think he deserved to have as much honor as he garnered among the people.  He had after all married a Cushite wife and the thought of how atrocious this was perverted Miriam’s heart so much that she tried to unseat Moses as leader of God’s people.  It is so strange, this bitterness she harbored, and yet we see the same phenomenon in every strata of life.  Families are ruined because of bitter thoughts, careers are wrecked because of poisoned ruminations and the world is filled with chaos as a result  of resentful thinking that goes unchecked.   Consider the terrible depression of Saul, the first king of Israel.  He could have no peace because he would not stop thinking that David was trying to take his throne from him and that the people would welcome David as Saul’s replacement.  When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs and with tambourines and lutes.  As they danced, they sang, "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands."  Saul was very angry; this refrain galled him. "They have credited David with tens of thousands," he thought, "but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?"  And from that time on Saul kept a jealous eye on David. (1 Samuel 18:6-9 NIV)

Ponder the painful circumstance of Naomi’s unhappiness.  She lost her husband and both her sons and the misery that brought her became unshakable.  When she returned to her hometown of Bethlehem, Naomi told her friends that they should no longer refer to her by her given name.   "Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. (Ruth 1:20 NIV)  Yet at the root of Naomi’s melancholy were her thoughts that insisted she had no happiness in her cup and God was her enemy.  We all have felt some level of this kind of misery at one time or another if we have lived a little and suffered great trials but it is the thoughts we let have life in us that keep us unhappy and prolong our depression.  The Bible insists that we are responsible for our thoughts and it is not the circumstances we face that determine our internal state but rather the way we handle our thoughts.

Regardless of what is happening, whether good or bad, difficult or easy, we are capable of managing our thoughts so that we are never miserable or bitter or overcome by rage.  God insists that with Him a part of our thinking, we can change our thoughts so that we are more peaceful and joyful.  Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. (Philippians 4:8 NIV)  You decide if you will do this.  It is not up to anyone else to help you here.  Circumstances do not decide this.  In your heart, you choose the content of your thoughts.  Lovely things or miserable things, pure thoughts or lustful thoughts, noble concerns or corrupt ideas; all of this is up to you as to what you will roll over in your mind.  We all know this is so but we most of the time ignore it, choosing to accept the fairy tale that it is what happens to us that determine our thoughts. 

Never forget that your thoughts don’t form in a vacuum.  There are two spiritual forces at work in your mind.  At all times they are jostling for dominance in the formation of your thoughts.  They never sleep, never take a break.  Either the Satanic kingdom is influencing your thinking most or Christ and the Kingdom of God.  Don’t blame either though because you decide who of the two you let roam about in your mental home.  You control the doors and you decide who takes charge.  You choose either to have God thoughts or Satan thoughts.  Although it is the Apostle Paul offering the challenge through the Holy Spirit, it can be either Satan or Jesus making this declaration.  Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me — put it into practice.  (Philippians 4:9 NIV)  If it is Christ you decide to follow and His Word you have generating your thoughts, then a miracle will occur.  As you close your mind to Satan and put into practice what the Lord has told you in Scripture, God will join you in your thinking and be a part of your inner world.  And the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4: 9 NIV)

Your thinking is often rooted in habit.  If you regularly think about your frustrations, disappointments, mistreatments and lusts, that sort of thinking will be ingrained in you and it will be hard to remove.  But if you frequently give your mind a break from evil and think about God and what you have read in Scripture and ways that you can bless and help others, your thoughts will grow increasingly peaceful and happy and contented.  Here is a habit you could develop that will help you.  Each hour turn your thoughts over to Christ with a simple little prayer.  “Lord Jesus, help me see things as you do.”  “Lord God of all peace, cleanse my thoughts of all dirty and bitter content.”  “Father, guide my thinking so that it is righteous and holy.”  Follow the prescription of the Bible and take your thoughts captive, not letting them rule over you but ruling them with the power the Holy Spirit has given you to be in charge of what you think.

Purpose

Ruth 1:18 NIV

 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Do You Have A Plan For Making Lives Better?

When I first became pastor of our church, a group of us went down to Southern California to attend a conference led by Rick Warren.  He was a popular speaker whose book, The Purpose Driven Church was widely acclaimed and becoming a framework for how thousands of congregations were being developed.  I knew that not everyone among us would agree with what Warren was advocating but I hoped that we all would get something of value out of the seminars.  It was a good time of bonding for us as we each processed what was shared and how we might put into practice what we learned.  We came back and had every intention of trying to have a “purpose driven church” like what Warren described but it did not go quite like we hoped and although we did reshape the direction of our church, it never approached anything we saw at Saddleback.  One thing I noticed though was that in trying so hard to make a difference with our church, I in some aspects lost my way.  I put much more thought and effort into the mechanics of the church rather than into my place within the church.  I forgot a foundational premise of the life of a congregation.

Because you are busy, perhaps really busy, the last thing you need is one more assignment, one additional duty.  It is ironic that the more devices we gain that make our lives easier and more manageable, the less time we seem to have to be human.  The cell phone has as we all know become a substitute for real life and real people.  If you are like most, you spend more time fussing about the lives of those you never will meet than caring about the ones you actually have with you.  Social media is frequently not much more social than two robots passing data between each other.  In it all, we have too often lost the desire or maybe more likely, the skill set needed to have closeness with those actually in our physical space.  It is of course much easier to converse with friends who cannot see your warts and deficiencies but only have an icon representing you in front of them.  Yet are we losing our humanness by not talking with actual people that we can physically touch?  If we don’t give someone time to grow with us and develop real closeness, are we missing something critical to being Christian?

Moses has for years intrigued me.  Perhaps he might interest you also.  He is full of contradictions and complicated personality traits.  Perhaps what makes him so fascinating is that we know so much about him and yet there is a tremendous amount of mystery to him.  What effect did it have on Moses surviving the Egyptian massacre of fellow Hebrew infants?  How did he reconcile his own life of luxury and privilege with the poverty his parents and siblings suffered?  What led him to believe that he was meant to lead the Israelites out of slavery and then why did he give up on the idea until he was eighty?  What sort of psychological damage did he suffer when his fellow Israelites rejected him after he stood up to the Egyptian who was beating the Israelite slave?  Did Moses’ disjointed upbringing damage his ability to be a husband and father?  How did Moses’ early life experiences impact his leadership style?  What sort of person was Moses really?  The Bible tells us that he was the humblest man on earth but how did that look?

For all the trouble Moses seemed to have with people, whether it was his brother and sister, the leaders of the Israelites or the contentious and bitter relationship he had with Pharaoh, Moses maintained for forty years a close friendship with his successor who took over leadership of the Israelites once Moses died.  Before Moses began mentoring Joshua, we know absolutely nothing about him.  He was forty years younger than Moses and from the tribe of Ephraim but for some reason at a young age he became Moses’ assistant.  Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses' aide since youth… (Numbers 11:28 NIV)  It is kind of humorous to hear the Scripture tell us that Joshua had served along with Moses since youth as he probably did not meet Moses until he was nearly forty.  Of course we are talking about two men who lived to be one hundred and ten and one hundred and twenty respectively so perhaps when you live that long, at forty you are still a kid. 

He was constantly at Moses’ side.  He went up onto Mount Sinai both times with him and was there when the Lord gave Moses the Ten Commandments and the Law.  Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God. (Exodus 24:13 NIV) Joshua camped in the Tabernacle with Moses and served as its guardian while Moses went out among the people passing along the instructions that had come from the Lord.  The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent. (Exodus 33:11 NIV)  Joshua was hand-picked by Moses to lead the Israelites into their first battle. The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim.  Moses said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands." (Exodus 17:8-9 NIV)  It was in fact Moses who changed this young assistant’s name from Hoshea to Joshua much like Jesus did with Peter.  Joshua means, “the Lord saves” and it is the Hebrew form of the Greek name “Jesus”.  Joshua was with Moses during his magnificent triumphs and his heart-wrenching trials.  When it was time to pass along the mantle of leadership it was, as the Lord put it, his “assistant” who the Lord chose to guide Israel into its conquest of the Promised Land.  But your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, will enter it. Encourage him, because he will lead Israel to inherit it. (Deuteronomy 1:38 NIV) 

When it was time for Moses to hand over the reins of leadership, there was a supernatural component to it.  Moses not only established a lasting friendship with Joshua and gave him the opportunity to be there with him during the most important times of his later life, he also gave Joshua the important aspect of what made him such a great man.  The Scripture tells us that when Joshua took over as leader of Israel, he was ready for the job.  Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites listened to him and did what the Lord had commanded Moses. (Deuteronomy 34:9 NIV)  Why was that?  It is because Moses “laid his hands on him.”  He passed along to him the Spirit of God.  This is not some training strategy or discipleship technique.  It is a supernatural work of God accomplished through the physicality of being human.  God ordered Moses to make Joshua the inheritor of the life he had with God so that he could accomplish his mission in life.  But commission Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he will lead this people across and will cause them to inherit the land that you will see." (Deuteronomy 3:28 NIV)

We see these same kinds of relationships throughout the Bible, perhaps not with the detail as the teaming of Moses and Joshua described in Exodus to Joshua but they all have the same components.  God’s people are seen in Scripture building relationships with others so that they might pass along to them the life they have in God: Naomi with Ruth, Elijah with Elisha, Samuel with David, Paul with Timothy.  Why not add your name to the list.  You have been given a mandate by God to pass along to others what you have in Christ.  It is not an optional plan; it is the command of God.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations… (Matthew 28:19 NIV)  This is not some high level spiritual directive given to super Christians.  It is your call from Christ to build up someone else and help that person reach his or her potential as a child of God.  One person in this world needs you to be a mentor, a conduit through whom the Lord pours His spirit.  You too must touch someone like Samuel did and Moses did and Naomi did.  No more of this long distance Facebook spirituality only.  It is time you let God use you to be His body so that someone else can be touched by Him.  Who is that person?  God already has someone in mind.  Keep your eyes open and watch for who He points out to you!

Will

John 6:21 NIV

Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.

What Are You Willing To Do?

When I was in college I attended a mini conference on prayer.  The speaker was not particularly charismatic and he didn’t fascinate us with his stories.  In fact his method of presentation was much like a lecture and all of us had little booklets that we used for note taking.  The auditorium was filled with college students though, all wanting to know more about praying.  At the conclusion of the seminars, we were challenged by the speaker to make a commitment to an hour of praying a day.  That was of course a stupendous challenge!  He laid out for us a methodology for praying through an hour using a wheel diagram.  As I looked at the parts of the wheel, I could not find any one of the sections that I could in good faith say needed to be eliminated to try to whittle down the time from an hour to something more manageable for me.  It was of course ludicrous for me to take an hour of my time each day to pray given my college workload.  Yet something happened to me that evening that changed the dynamic of my evaluation of the challenge.  Christ met with me and I could not deny His presence.  It was Him, not the speaker who called for me to rewrite my priorities and begin praying an hour each day.  Billy Graham could not have convinced me to make such a profound and grave commitment.  Only our Lord Himself could “talk me into it” and He did but not with His finely conceived arguments, rather He came up to my will and addressed it there.

We each have a Will and it is not some separate part of our personality; not a segment of who we are like we see with the spirit and the body and even to some degree with the soul.  It is you in totality deciding what you will do, the ruling force over your actions.  You cannot give your will to someone else any more than your body belongs to another person.  You may let people tell you what to do and you might use your body for the purposes of others but it always is your body, your spirit is always your spirit.  No one else can borrow it or live in it.  It belongs to you.  The question is never whose will is it; it is what you, your will has decided.  Your will is you choosing how to act at any given moment.  The will is a most precious and critical gift you possess and many fail to realize how valuable their will is.

Solomon, the ancient king of Israel is a classic example of how the Will can be corrupted by the lack of a clear devotion to anything.  Just as his reign began, Solomon had a momentous encounter with the Lord in which God famously asked him what he wanted as a gift.  Solomon acknowledged how difficult it would be to rightly govern the people of the kingdom and so he called for the Lord to “…give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.  For who is able to govern this great people of yours?" (1 Kings 3:9 NIV )  This request was an act of Solomon’s will and it certainly was not in keeping with how most people would respond if given the options God provided.  God graciously granted Solomon’s request and made him the wisest person on earth.  Later Solomon, in keeping with the mandate his father gave him, built the Temple to the Lord and it was lavishly constructed.  Again God met with him, this time following the dedication of the Temple to the worship of YHWH.  "As for you, if you walk before me as David your father did, and do all I command, and observe my decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father when I said, 'You shall never fail to have a man to rule over Israel.'  But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name.” (2 Chronicles 7:17-20 NIV)

The Lord laid out for Solomon clearly the terms of a covenant with him.  God would establish Solomon’s rule as a lasting dynasty if Solomon kept the Commandments and lived with faithful commitment to the Lord as his only God.  However, if he didn’t, the Lord would eventually wreck Israel and destroy the Temple that was built.  This was of course simple enough and Solomon certainly understood the ramifications of the Lord’s agreement with him.  Yet Solomon never settled this matter fully in his heart.  His Will wavered between loyalty to God and rebellion against Him.  Solomon, in opposition to the clear commands the Lord gave his kings, made himself extravagantly rich, married thousands of women, married women who were not Jewish and most egregiously of all, he joined with his wives in their worship of idols which we all know is in actuality much more than bowing before a dumb rock or statue, it is in fact a pledging of loyalty to demons and the Satanic realm.

Solomon’s Will made decisions and led to specific actions.  His Will built a Temple to God.  His Will also built altars to demons.  By his Will he wrote the Proverbs which have inspired billions in their life with God.  His Will drove him to greed, selfishness and lust.  By the determination of his will, Solomon destroyed his relationship with God and joined forces with Satan in the corruption of his kingdom.  Solomon decided to do all this not because he was forced but because His will was not thoroughly loyal to God.  In the end, Solomon died a miserable, bitter and angry man who gave up the joy God had for him because his Will stubbornly refused to be joined with the God who met him at the Temple.

To show the contrast between Solomon’s Will and the Will of others in the Bible, let me point out the surprising actions of a man who had been possessed by demons.  When Jesus met him, this fellow was wild and violent and uncontrollable, not even chains could hold him.  The Lord drove the demons out of him and in his right mind, he had a simple wish.  The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying,  "Return home and tell how much God has done for you." So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him. (Luke 8:38-39 NIV)  Rather than argue with Christ over this “rejection” or angrily pout that he was turned away, the man’s will determined a new course of action.  He told everyone he could what Jesus had done with him.  It did not matter to him what others thought of his message, the man who had been healed by Jesus turned his will toward what Christ wanted and we can only imagine what happiness it brought him.

The same could be said of Mary who had a jar full of expensive perfume, worth a year’s wages and generously poured it on Jesus’ feet and used her own hair to clean them.  When questioned about the action, Jesus retorted, "Leave her alone," Jesus replied. "[It was intended] that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial.  You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me." (John 12:7-8 NIV)  The point we have to make here is that it was the Will of Mary that decided how she would act at this gathering.  With Jesus present, she decided to be extravagant in her love for Him.  She didn’t have to use up all the perfume or any of it on Jesus’ feet.  But her will, the ruling force over her actions decided to do it.

We see this in Paul also.  Raging against Christianity and using his authority as a Jewish leader to have Christians imprisoned and executed, Paul literally met Jesus on the road as he was traveling with companions and the force of that interaction with Christ changed the way Paul saw things.  He immediately joined the Christian Church and became its most important missionary and teacher.  He was not brainwashed or talked into giving up his life of murder and hatred.  Paul’s Will decided, once he met Jesus, to act differently.  It is the same for each of us.  None of us become Christian because we are convinced we had been wrong.  No argument seizes your will or overthrows it and forces it to capitulate to Christ.  Only when Jesus breaks through in the supernatural way He does and enters your inner world, goes where your Will is and meets you, then are your free to be Christian.  He must meet you, He must come to you and then and only then can your Will truly change its course and you become Christian.

It is wrong for us to think our goal as a church, as Christian people is to talk others into following Christ.  It is not.  Our goal is for each of us to introduce others to Jesus.  He must meet them if any good is to come of their lives.  We cannot force anyone to change.  It is your Will that must decide to do something differently and follow Jesus whole­-heartedly.  The same is true of me and of each person around the world.  You decide in your Will if you will love others, be kind and generous, forgive and worship Christ devotedly.  Your Will is the great power that holds you back from the peace of God that passes all understanding and it is the force that opens the door so that the life of Christ can fill you with all the joy a soul could ever want.   

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!

Surprise Ending

John 21:21 NIV

When Peter saw him, he asked, "Lord, what about him?"

Are You Surprised By How Things Have Gone?

I like a story with surprising twists and turns.  Whether it is a book or a movie, I want it to have some unpredictability to it. I have recently been reading To Kill A Mockingbird.  It has been fifty years since I read it the first time and I had forgotten enough of the storyline to be caught off guard by parts of the book.  Yet based on popularity alone, it seems that most Americans want their stories to go as predicted.  The cute couple eventually gets together, the villain is caught, the aliens are destroyed, the good guys survive and win in the end.  Every once in a while a La La Land comes along that catches me by surprise but generally like most, I want stories to end the way I expect them to end.  There is comfort in predictability.  I get Campbell’s Tomato Soup because I know how it will taste and it is good enough for me.  That is why I choose Gala apples and vanilla ice cream.  I know what I will find when I bite into it.

When I was young and studying chemistry I was surprised to discover that electrons did not revolve around the nucleus in simple and predictable orbitals.  New information threw the old pictures of atomic structures out of whack.  It turned out that electrons move about chaotically.  One can never predict where a given electron will be.  It might be within a certain area but its action is irrational and chaotic and you cannot even know where it is when you try to find it.  Many philosophers describe the universe in a similar way.  There is chaos and unpredictability to it.  “The universe is irrational without any intelligence behind it”, they contend.    Some people are comfortable with that notion.  They like the idea that nothing is certain or trustworthy.

When it comes to Christianity, the majority of church people believe there is one place of certainty and predictability.  It is God.  They speak of Him in ways that a mathematician speaks of her field.   We want our God to be predictable, mathematically determinable.  If we do this, God does that.  When this happens, it is because God has this in mind.  God is stable.  He goes this way or that but always in a logical and understandable process.   We want God to be reasonable and sensible to us.  There must be formulas that he follows, certain equations that determine His actions.  No one would design a god who can’t be counted on to run smoothly, to make His payments and provide His dividends.  The world has its eye on a mathematical God.  Do you?

Job and his friends were certain that God was bound up in rules and obligations…that there were formulas they could use to predict his actions.  What makes the book of Job so disorienting is that all the main characters discovered the Lord was not programmable.  He did not give Job an easy life because Job was honest, moral and generous.  Job’s friends knew God had to behave in certain ways and when He didn’t, they decided something must have been wrong with Job.  Like the jurists in To Kill A Mockingbird who could not recalibrate when the evidence went against their determinations, Job’s friends could not comprehend that God would put Job through so much pain and suffering it Job was not a bad man.  They thought God was mathematical when He isn’t.

Jonah had the same problem.  He had in mind a mathematical God when he heard God tell him to go to Nineveh and preach judgment to the people there.  Jonah did not expect that kind of job.  The Lord was predictable to him.  A terrible and cruel people like the Assyrians would be burnt to a crisp by God.  They didn’t need any warnings…just fire from heaven.  Yet that was not what happened.  God gave the Ninevites a chance to repent, they took it and God mercifully gave the Assyrians the opportunity to try again.  That did not fit Jonah’s God formula and he fell into a deep depression over his miscalculations.

Consider the strange case of Josiah, one of the last kings of Judah.  He was young when he became king, just eight years old.  His grandfather was perhaps the cruelest and most ungodly king Judah ever had.  Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end — besides the sin that he had caused Judah to commit, so that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord.   As for the other events of Manasseh's reign, and all he did, including the sin he committed, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?   (2 Kings 21:16-18 NIV)  His father was no better a king and after two years of reigning, the people were so fed up with him that he was assassinated.  That left Josiah as next in line.  After eighteen years being king, Josiah ordered that the Temple of God be cleaned and restored.  For nearly sixty years it had been a center of pagan worship and it fell into ruin.  Josiah though loved the Lord and when a book of the Law was found in the wreckage, Josiah turned his life over to God and dedicated himself to following Him wholeheartedly.  Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.  He went up to the temple of the Lord with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets — all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord.  The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord-to follow the Lord and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.  (2 Kings 23:1-3 NIV)

How would God treat such a man as this, let alone a king like him?  It would seem that God would do with him as he did with Josiah’s great-grandfather who also was faithful to the Lord.  When faced with a great international threat and insurmountable odds, the Lord intervened on Hezekiah’s behalf and wrecked the army that came against him and the people.  That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies!  (2 Kings 19:35 NIV)  Plug in the variables, use your God formula and you have your answer for how things will go.  When the Egyptians formed a great army and posed a threat to Josiah’s kingdom, Josiah pulled together all his fighting forces and went up against the Egyptians in battle.  Everything would turn out fine he probably told his wife and kids as he left to go battle the Egyptians.  His generals he reassured that if they fought hard, the Lord would bring them victory.  Everything fit the God formula.  Good king.  Growing faith among the people!  What could go wrong?

While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Neco faced him and killed him at Megiddo.  (2 Kings 23:29 NIV)  So what do you make of that?  What should any good Christian brother or sister just trying to follow Jesus faithfully make of it?  How does that fit into the mathematics of God?   Even the Apostle Peter wanted to know what algebraic equation to use when trying to calculate the Lord’s plans for him.  As he and the other apostles were meeting with Jesus on the shore of Galilee after Christ rose from the dead following His crucifixion, the Lord revealed to Peter what would come of him.  “I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."  (John 21:18 NIV)

This  was in fact Jesus’ way of telling Peter how Peter would die.  That certainly didn’t fit into the equation Peter had of how God would deal with him and it must have thrown him.  It would have thrown you.  He then asked the Lord about the Apostle John, "Lord, what about him?"  (John 21:21 NIV)  He wanted to recalculate God with a better equation.  He thought He knew and understood God but now He realized he didn’t.  Christ’s reply took it all out of the realm of mathematics.  Jesus answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me."(John 21:22 NIV)  In other words, “Don’t try to predict what I will do.”  “Don’t think I can be understood with a calculator.”  The Lord is not bound by the rules of physics or logic.  His actions are not determined by what you think is best.  He does as He pleases whenever He wants.  He is absolutely free. 

There is only one way to think along God’s lines.  There is only this law through which He operates.  It is the Law of Love.  Not your love.  Not my love.  Pure, undefiled love is how you see into God.  John the Apostle, who knew Jesus as well as anyone has made this clear when He stated,  Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  (1 John 4:7-8 NIV)  The only way to get into God’s mind is to love His people.  You are as confused about Him as a rock in a creek bed if you do not love.  Love is the map to His personality, it is the glasses through which we understand His actions.  The lowest of minds can think along the lines of Jesus if love is at play but the great intellects of the world are at a complete loss to comprehend even the smallest thing of God without love.  How can you understand God and know what He is doing with you?  Stare with fixed attention upon Jesus crucified, His hands riveted to the horizontal beam with rough iron nails, His feet fixed to the vertical wooden beam with another nail and the blood drops oozing down from his head.  That is how you understand what He is doing with you.  Watch Him as He dies to take from you your sin.  Gaze upon Him as He dies to give you a new and perfect life.  That is how you figure Him out.  It is love through and through that decides for Christ what He will do at any moment.  It is love that determines His actions.  Take heed to this.  The only ones who get a grasp on God and understand His ways are those who love and invest with love in the lives of others.  Let this be the way you think about all you see of God and hear about Him.  Let it be your rule of thumb whenever you look for what the Lord may be doing with you.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. (1 John 4:16 NIV)  It may be a surprise ending when it comes to what happens next for you but you can be certain of this.  It will be because God loves you and died to save you from your sin.

The Breakthrough

Micah 2:13 NIV

One who breaks open the way will go up before them;

they will break through the gate and go out.

Their king will pass through before them,

the Lord at their head."

  

Are You Stuck In A Rut?

Years ago, not long after we moved to California, Mary Jo and I decided to take a trip back to see her family in New Orleans.   The road trip is forty hours of driving plus whatever stops you might take along the way.  We had two foster children with us and it felt like a great adventure for us all.  Our car was an old Chevy Malibu that the kids in the church called a “hooptie”.  The cloth lining to the roof was hanging down because the oldest boy had poked at it and stabbed it with a pencil.  Carved on the outside of the door he had put his name.  The Malibu had a rebuilt engine and new tires but the air conditioner was shot and it had nearly two hundred thousand miles on it.  We thought our hooptie could make it all the way and back but we weren’t sure and so with a bit of trepidation we took off down the highway.  I always drove whenever we went anywhere together; I guess I had learned that from my dad who never let my mom drive when the two of them went places together.  Our plan was to drive all night after the first day of driving and it had worked until it started raining buckets and we could barely see the road in front of us.  Not only that I got the flu and a fever began to rage through my body.  A few hours later my back went out and I could not stand when we stopped to get gas.  Mary Jo tried to take over the driving but it was clear she was too tired to go any further and so we gave up the fight and checked into a hotel.

There are times when life gets too big for us to handle.  We try our best to keep going but we have nothing left in the tank.  Maybe you have never hit that low spot when things seemed hopeless; when it felt like if you did not get some help you might fall apart.  The world is filled with people who have, who face trials and difficulties that are too big for them, too painful and too long lasting to manage on their own.  You certainly aren’t alone if what is before you is daunting, maybe even frightening.  Some have cancer and haven’t told anyone.  Others have a son who won’t try to find a job or who drinks too much.  You might know someone who has a mother with Alzheimer’s or a daughter battling depression a grandchild who is autistic or a husband who no longer can work.  The bright sunshine of the morning may cheer the hearts of many as they climb out of bed but not all of us.  You might be one who just wishes you could pull the covers over your face and stay in bed for the day…or the week…or the month.

The Bible has a number of case studies of those who came to the end of the rope.  One in particular brought most of his difficulties on himself.  Those of course are the worst kind, the ones that have years of guilt and regret attached to them.  Famous for his other name, Israel, Jacob might be described as a momma’s boy by some.  He had somehow got his twin brother Esau to trade his family right as the firstborn for a bowl of his brother’s lentil soup.  It must have been pretty good or Esau was unfathomably hungry to let go of such an important privilege but he did.  The problem with a birthright is that it doesn’t do much for you until your parents die.  It might mean you don’t have to do the dishes as often or clean out the latrine but it is a pretty inconsequential honor for the majority of your life.  Jacob had it but what was he to do with it?

His mother had an idea.  When her husband Isaac announced that he was going to bestow a special blessing on Esau which would be binding and supernaturally inspired.  Jacob tricked his blind father into thinking he was Esau and dad unwittingly gave the blessing to Jacob instead of his favorite son Esau.  Imagine what sort of fireworks this generated.  Isaac’s wife Rebekah had put Jacob up to the plan.  Isaac could not have been very pleased by that.  Esau became enraged and promised to kill his brother Jacob after his father died.  One can only guess how Isaac felt about Jacob.  The family became a boiling cauldron of fury, disgust, jealousy, distrust and fear.  Out of it jumped Jacob when he realized he had no future there.  His mom told him he needed to leave; he needed to get as far away from his brother and his steaming hatred as he could.  “Move north and move in with your uncle and see if there is someone in the family you can marry”, he was told.  He was after all forty years old.  It was time to stop being a momma’s boy and make a life for himself. 

Not all changes of course are depressing.  Some are exhilarating.  This one could not have been.  It was for Jacob the end of his world.  He had to hike over four hundred miles with the fear of his brother’s wrath nipping at his heels.  The safety of his home, the help of his servants, the doting of his mom…not to mention the wealth his family enjoyed now in his rear view mirror as he trudged along.  What a forlorn sight he must have been.  Perhaps there were tears trickling down his cheeks as he thought gloomily of the mistakes he had made, the fool he had become.  He had hiked somewhere around fifty miles when Jacob came to the outskirts of a village closed for the night.  It was out beneath the open sky housing the stars of the universe that Jacob’s life took a new turn.

When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.  He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  There above it stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.  I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south.  All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." (Genesis 28:11-15 NIV)

If you come to grips with the fact that God is behind every event of your life and that nothing happens to you that He is not turning into your benefit, you can take great comfort in what happened to Jacob.  God let his life explode so that something completely new could be made out of him.  It is clear that was what He was doing with Jacob…blowing up everything that made Jacob who he was and remaking him.  There is such mercy and generosity in God’s words here.  “I am with you”.  “I will watch over you.”  “I will give you…”  “Your descendants will be…”  “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.”  God doesn’t blow up your life to wreck you.  He does it so that something lovely and good can come out of it that wasn’t possible before He did so.  When you are content and pleased with yourself and comfortable it is hard to do anything with you.  You become disengaged from God, you lose your urgency to hear from Him, lack motivation to give Him room to work His way through you and often are resistant to do what He commands.  That is what it is like to have the nature of Adam.  We all are like that.  You aren’t alone in this.

Would Jacob have been able to believe it was really God coming to him in his dream if he was living comfortably at home, pleased with himself in his successful plundering of his brother’s fortune and standing?  It is hard to say but we do know that he was this night, destitute, on the run, shattered.  He was eager to have God come to him and comfort him.  Finally, Jacob was ready for the Lord to truly be a part of His li…the most important part.  It is interesting, the choice of words used to describe how Jacob was the next day.  Certain that God was with him and that the Lord “had his back”, Jacob started off with a new way of seeing this adventure he was entering.  Then Jacob continued on his journey and came to the land of the eastern peoples. (Genesis 29:1 NIV)  Literally the Hebrew of the verse reads, “Then Jacob lifted up his feet…”  There is a joyfulness in this description.  We would use the expression, “He had a bounce to his step.”  For the first time in days, maybe even weeks or months or even years, Jacob was ready to trust God with his life and not make a mess of things.

God almost always blows up things for us before He takes hold of us and makes us new.  It was not going to be easy for Jacob.  He would work like a slave for fourteen years just to get his wife.  He would be cheated and humiliated by his father-in-law and have to bear the blazing sun and the miserable nights sleeping on the ground out in pasture lands just to keep his sheep safe but in it all, he became a man of God with great strength and faith.  It is so frequent that it is almost an axiom of life that before God can build His life in you and give you peace and joy and freedom from lust and worry, He must break you apart and take away every crutch you have propping up your life.   But then, slowly yet surely you will become the sort of person you hoped you would be when you realized you needed Christ to fulfill you.

The Bible is filled with case studies of those who first had to be wrecked before they could be bright stars in God’s universe:  Daniel, Moses, Job, Peter, James, Paul.  Jesus might not come to you in a dream or with a bright light or a great voice but He will come to you.  You will have to decide if you trust Him to remake you, to start over with you and take all the damage to your personality brought on by sin out of you and make you free to be loving and full of hope and peace.  It takes faith to believe that every experience you face has God in it and that each person who aggravates you is used by the Lord to make you good and holy but through Christ you can have that faith and be ready to be transformed by your Savior in every part of your day.  Take a deep breath and thank God He cares enough for you to save you from you sin and make you completely new.