Inside Out

Why do we think we should be any better off than Paul or any cooler than the Apostles? God isn’t concerned about making churches cool…He wants them to be clay pots containing the Gospel. Everything else it would seem; is about us…and superfluous. Inside or out, it must be the same. The Gospel within and the Gospel without!

If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized, we’re not sure what to do, we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives. 2 Corinthians 4: 7-11 The Message

Whale Sightings

Drank 8 cups of water
It goes downhill from here...
2 bean burritos, 4 slices of pizza (maybe 5...6?) 1 large pepsi, rice in the morning

lumbered 2 1/2 laps around the track, walked an hour praying

Pulled out the scale to find the results...our kitten that has already been given 4 different names by my daughter, who claws my legs every time I step in the bathroom (maybe Beelzebub would be a good name for her) is fascinated by the scale and the needle that spins around when you get on it (which it goes around a lot when you are over two bills)is struck by two magnificent options...mangle my leg or attack the needle spinning around. She chooses the later and so it takes me about ten attempts before I can get a good read.

Dropped 3 pounds
Bottom line: down 2 pounds

I'm Trying

I have gained 20 pounds. I am not saying since when but that is the bottom line. So now I have begun an all out assault on my weight. Yesterday I drank 8 cups of water. I lumbered around the track twice. (Lumbered is the right term as Benjamin our just turned two year old went with me and kept saying, "Let's go! I kept having this image of a beached whale trying to make his way back into the water.) I ate more brocolli than usual. I only had one double cheeseburger and two apple pies for lunch. I went to bed with eager anticipation of what all this hard work would bring and when I got up in the morning, I rushed to the scale to find the results...and waited excitedly for the arrow to complete its revolution around the dial....


I gained a pound...

The Lord abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight. Proverbs 11: 1

Double click on the cartoon to be able to read the captions...pretty good

Today's Passage

I waited and waited and waited for God. At last he looked, finally he listened. He lifted me out of the ditch, pulled me from deep mud. He stood me up on a solid rock to make sure I wouldn't slip. He taught me how to sing the latest God-song, a praise-song to our God. More and more people are seeing this: they enter the mystery, abandoning themselves to God. Psalm 40: 1-3 The Message

Adam and Eve--Sin Pioneers Concluded

Continued...

A telling side bar to all this is well exposed by the commentators Keil and Delitschz. When Adam and Eve sinned by eating the fruit, the most critical concern of theirs immediately afterward was not the ugliness of their sin, it was the disgust with their nakedness and perverted sensitivity to their shame. Isn’t it like children to cry more about losing their bike for a day than to shed even the driest of tears for lying? Even for adults it is a universal tendency to care mostly about the punishment of sin and care not even the least whit about the sin itself. It is the getting caught that whips our hearts around, not any anguish about sin being evil. I read once where a writer asked why we so cavalierly toss out the expression, “God hates the sin but loves the sinner.” I understand the grace of God and the largeness of forgiveness but isn’t it true that you cannot really separate out the sin from the sinner? It is not that murder was committed. It is that a specific person committed a murder. A lie is not told as much as a specific person tells a lie. The sin and the sinner are intertwined inseparably just as flesh and blood cannot be taken from each other.

Confession is not picking out levels of culpability. I did some of it but Jane also did part of it. I have longings that make it tough to say “no”. God made me this way so He’s also to blame. The worst part of the consumerism form of Christian faith we have embraced so heartily lately is not the tendency of believers to flit from church to church or ministry to ministry based on personal likes and dislikes. It is the erosion of the “I” in confession it engenders. The focus of American Christianity is now as outward as Adam’s and Eve’s. For Adam it was Eve…for Eve it was the serpent. For modern Christians it is the music, the preaching, the coldness or the members, the flamboyance of the worship, the lack of friends, the too small children’s ministry, the youth program, the distance, the time, the mission statement, the politics. When Jim Bakker wrote his autobiography, he entitled it simply, I Was Wrong. That is a shocking assessment to make for our time. There is nothing in the title about Eve, the serpent or the boring sermons, loud music or limp handshakes that led him to do what he did. Jim Bakker simply said he was wrong. Quite nearly revolutionary for us in the Church. Can those words even come out of our mouths without a stutter? I was wrong.

The psychological tendency is as old as Adam…and Eve. Downplay the bad in me. Accentuate the bad in others. Critique and correct and you can be just as good as you want to be. I was wrong cannot camp with criticism. Peter, when given his charge by Jesus asked the universal question, “But what about John?” Confession is never about anyone but me. I sinned. I ate. I lusted. I lied. I was lazy. I ignored. I was selfish. I lacked faith. I wasted what God gave me. I was wrong.

Take one statement in scripture and ponder it a minute. The wages of sin is death. What does this mean? It means that sin is the worst of poisons. Take a second statement. All have sinned… Let this sink in for a moment. Who is that talking about? Adam thought it meant Eve and Eve thought it meant the serpent. Go to a final statement. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It certainly is pointless to ask what might have happened differently if both Adam and Eve had simply said, “I ate and I was wrong.” That part of the story is over. But the part we have here is where you and I fit into it. It is the part where I say, “I _________ and I was wrong.” You say, “I ______________ and I was wrong.” Nothing about the church you attend, the troubles you have faced or the people who have let you down is relevant when it comes to confession. I cannot go any further down this Christian road until I do the first thing…confess my sins.. “I ___________ and I was wrong.” That is how it is done.

But what happens when we do this very simple thing? There are two benefits specifically. First, God works with us in a different way than before we confess a sin. 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 7:14 NIV) We can spend all day quibbling about what “heal their land” means for each of us but it seems like a very good thing to me. Secondly, confession changes the way our life is going. 1 John 1:9, quoted earlier uses a lovely term to describe the impact confession has upon us. It is translated “cleansed” but has the idea of pruning for the purpose of making more fruitful. Each time we confess our sins, God makes us a bit more fruitful, a bit, if we can say it this way, more Christian and more effectively Christian.

A moment by moment practice of confession does more than just make us feel better about ourselves; it makes us literally better people. Confession was never intended to be a stored up unloading every time we need help; confession is a lifestyle of becoming fruitful and happy Christians. Take a moment. Consider a sin you have committed this past hour. Confess it and admit to God you were wrong in it. There is no magical formula for becoming a fruitful and happy Christian. The way is as old as Adam and Eve and as fresh as your affection for Jesus. Be the first. Say it. “I was wrong”.

A Great Passage For My Quiet Time Today

Well now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don't put it off; don't frustrate God's work by showing up late; throwing a question mark over everything we're doing. Our work as God's servants gets validated--or not--in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly...in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we're beaten up, jailed, and mobbed, working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, steady hand, in gentleness, holiness and honest love; when we're telling the truth, and when God's showing his power; when we're doing our best setting things right, when we're praised, and when we're blamed, slandered, and honored, true to our word, though distrusted, ignored by the world, but recognized by God, terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead, beaten within an inch of our lives but refusing to die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy, living on handouts, yet enriching many, having nothing, having it all...2 Corinthians 6 The Message

Adam And Eve--Sin Pioneers Part 1

Gen 3:12-13 NIV
The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."


The whole idea that you are the first at anything is a pretty cool thought. Imagine being the Wright brothers---the first to fly a plane. How about being Neil Armstrong—the first to step foot on the moon. What if you were the first to ride on a motorized vehicle, the first to sail all the way around the world or the first to talk on a telephone. The truth is that being the first at nearly anything is something. The first to mix soy sauce with Tabasco for grilling chicken. The first to climb Mission Peak wearing a red bandana tied to your waist. The first to taste a Big Mac. The first to see the premier of Batman. Now, as the first people ever, Adam and Eve were the first to do all sorts of things. They were the first to utter a word, the first people to laugh, to sing, to take a nap and the first to make eye contact. Yet none of these “firsts” is what defines them most. They are best known for being the very first to….sin. And after that, they were the very first people ever to make an excuse.

The dialogue between God and Adam and then Eve is tightly constructed. No fluff in the comments, no sidebars to interrupt the flow. God—“ Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" Adam—“The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” That’s it for Adam and God, at least for now. God’s conversation with Eve is even more compact. God—“ What is this you have done?" Eve—“ The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Neither Adam nor Eve was wrong in the assessments. It was Eve who passed the forbidden fruit on to Adam and the serpent did deceive Eve. God never contradicted their accounts. We have the complete story in the Genesis 3 account and it is just as they reported. What is more, far from evading the questioning of God, the truth is both confessed their sins. Adam admitted, “I ate it”. Eve, “I ate”. Critiquing at all these two brief confessions seems like much ado about nothing. They after all did make their admissions. No police detective would complain much about a murderer’s confession that sounded like these. The bottom line is they confessed. That is all you need out of them, all any judge needs to hear.

The only problem with this line of reasoning is the simple little detail that throws the analogy into a heap. God was not trying to pry out the truth. He was not building a case nor was He trying to figure out what actually happened. The bottom line was not, “I ate”. It was,”I’. As long as Adam pulled Eve into the discussion and Eve brought in the serpent, there was nothing to talk about. Which, explains why God doesn’t answer back to either…He simply moves on to the next one in the micro plot. The probe of God was not into the truth but rather into the heart. The heart, in both cases, was grimly cold and unrepentant. All that was left for God was punishment...

Continued in Next Blog

Batman

It is not a strange thing that Batman--The Black Knight has generated so much interest. It is a well crafted movie with lots of cool special effects, fascinating characters and an exciting plot line. What is strange is that the writers might think they are saying something new about man. The Joker, a psychotic anarchist who has no real ambition except to throw everyone into turmoil and destroy moral character (or at least reveal the depravity of man) is no more surprising a character than we find penetrating the opening scenes of Genesis. And Batman, who straddles the moral fence between pure at heart good guy and moral relativist swashbuckler has his own counterpart in 1 and 2 Samuel. Both Batman and David glide above the law and are beaten into submission to it by the evil disobedience brings. Batman lost his Rachel, David his Absalom. When given ultimate moral choices, neither could stand and neither would fall. Both David and Batman were playboys without the stomach for it and neither could avoid fighting the giant. If there is a weakness to the movie, it is that it cries out for a Savior but settles for a Black Knight. The movie masterfully depicts the generational lines of sin but cannot come to grips with the ultimate question, “How do we end it?” Joker remains suspended between Heaven and Earth and Batman faces a lifetime running from police dogs, staying one step ahead of unmasking. “Is that all there is”, we sang when we were young, and The Black Knight trails with the same harmony. Sin is not broken by a Batman or a David. Only the perfect man/God can change anything permanently. The ferries may not blow up every once in a while but the same forces that pushed decent people toward an Armageddon are still out there because the Joker lives in us all. The tension wire is not strung from the Joker to Batman; it is between Two Face and Two Face. The makers of Batman cannot write in a true Savior because they either intuitively or experientially know there can never be one…unless you write in God.

Temptation--Conclusion

I have often wondered what the allure to the forbidden fruit was. Satan told Eve that if she ate it, she would know good from evil. But didn’t she already? She knew staying away from the forbidden fruit was good…touching it was evil. The difference between the two was as plain for her as the nose on Adam’s face. So what did she hope to gain by tasting the fruit? So many have made much of the temptation being an entrance into a moral awakening, that God was keeping Eve and Adam from understanding what good was in contrast to evil. That was not the case at all. Good and evil were both known to Eve. She stated as such when she told Satan what she was to do and what she wasn’t to do. That is the knowledge of good and evil.

What Eve was being led to enter was a whirlwind of terror. The Hebrew words translated good and evil are not so centered on moral opposites They are rather decribers of outcomes. “Tov”, translated good means pleasant, good, agreeable. Evil, “rah” means misery, calamity, injury, That was what Eve had never tasted. The good she knew. Peaceful living, quiet contentment, loving relationships. That was all hers. She had tov. The misery, calamity and injury was nowhere to be found in her world though. What Satan was inviting Eve was entry into a nightmare, into rah. He was taking her from Technicolor dreams to black and white devastation. I once saw a black and white painting depicting a battle scene of blown up buildings, fire scorched trees and broken bodies littering the landscape. That was what Satan had for Eve, a world of Rah.

So why would Eve have any interest in entering a nightmare world? There are two parts to the temptation that battled fiercely against her. In Genesis 3: 6 we see the power brokers that make temptation work. The first is found in the comment, “the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye.” The word translated pleasing, means desirable. It has an attractiveness that works within the body, a physical longing. Within Eve’s body, Eve was being pulled toward the fruit. Shakira’s lyric that explains why she must decide to give in to her boyfriend’s sexual urgings, “my hips don’t lie” profoundly describes this. The body, whether it be the hips, the tongue or the eyes is a monster of strength when it comes to temptation. Physical desire combines with physical need to drive the mind to sin. Eve felt the fruit in her eyes pulling her to it.

The second part of the temptation is a bit complicated to explain but quite easy to understand. It is said that for Eve, the fruit was “desirable for gaining wisdom…” The Hebrew word translated “desirable” is most often used in a bad sense…a selfish desire, an ungoverned desire, a pleasure considered that is wrong. The Hebrew expression translated, “for wisdom” describes a pondering, a considering, a thoughtfulness. What Eve was doing was ruminating about the forbidden fruit. She couldn’t take her mind off of it. This longing for the fruit was all she thought about. It kept popping up when she was eating dinner, when she and Adam were walking through the garden and picking any of the other fruit they had. Selfish desires given free rein in the imagination are monsters to defeat.

Temptation powered by the mind and the body when both are pulling against the will can be deadly. Look at what Eve got for her money. The scripture says she and Adam when their eyes were opened realized they were naked. This was not the recognition of right from wrong as so many mistakenly interpret the outcome. Adam and Eve, by their sin, were brought into the world of nightmare. If you have ever had a dream that goes bad, quickly, you know the terror these two felt as they lived with their new choice. Once I dreamed I was drowned by a tidal wave that swept over my dad and me as we were enjoying a pleasant conversation. Sin is the dream turned nightmare…the hope made slimy and filthy. Eve, perfect in her form, lovely to her husband, confident in her endeavors, became naked. She suddenly was despised and forlorn and isolated.

Living for God could be defined as the fight against temptation. The battle to follow God is brutal and once we submit to temptation, it brings us into a nightmare that is uncontrollable and deadly and we never can be certain where it will bring us. Sin is not a servant, it is a master and it controls us, we do not control it. As the Apostle Paul put it, Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey-whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Romans 6: 16 NIV) Temptation on the other hand can be mastered but it is tough. Both our body and our mind push us unceasingly toward sin and there is only one way out. What Eve did not do, we can. Hebrews 4: 15-16 reminds us that Jesus, having been tempted in every way that we are tempted, sympathizes with our weaknesses…the press of our bodies and the pull of our distracted minds make it almost impossible not to give in to the nightmare sin brings. But verse 16 gives us the secret to not giving in to sin. Only one force breaks the power of our bodies and mind. The grace of Jesus! Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

The old game show offered three doors and only one could be chosen. If you chose poorly, you went home with junk, choose wisely, your fortune could suddenly be made. Life is an unbroken chain of door number ones or door number twos. Eve chose door number two and her life became a nightmare. What, might be behind door number one? Only God knows. But, it won’t be door number two. Just ask Eve what she thinks of that!

Temptation--Continued

...The delay in punishment…death does not come immediately and definitely doesn’t occur when the temptation is working on us, makes temptation a ruthless enemy. If Adam would have seen Eve keel over as soon as she bit into the fruit, he might have thought twice about biting into it himself. Or even Eve, if she felt sick to her stomach as she gazed upon the fruit, she might herself have stopped short. But temptation works in a timeless fashion. The punishment isn’t there for you…all you have is the object of your desire. Tomorrow doesn’t come.

Temptation works at a second level. It rejects the premise that God speaks truthfully. When Satan denied God’s assertion that if Adam or Eve touched the fruit, they would die; he stated emphatically that they most certainly would not die. Temptation is more than a nod at something to do; it is a turning from someone who is. If God is not dependable and His words not trustworthy or more importantly, He isn’t really out there; then who can say what is right and wrong. Temptation is mostly a listing toward what seems good when God isn’t there to make sense of it.

The most interesting part of Joseph’s success at fighting off the temptation of Potiphar’s wife is that he never let go of two crucial parts to the sin he was facing. Potiphar had been good to him and sleeping with his wife would be horrible. Secondly, God was still and sinning against Him by sleeping with her was even a worse thing to do. His retort, when Potiphar’s wife kept pressing in her seduction was, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house, everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” (Genesis 39: 8 NIV) If Potiphar was merely a shadow image and God just a picture on the wall, then Potiphar’s wife was pretty appealing. But if both existed, then the sin was terrible to contemplate. Temptation is like a drug that makes God go away and everyone impacted by the sin go away. They aren’t really gone, it just seems like they are. Like a child who puts a blanket over his head and thinks no one can see him, so is the one being tempted tricked into believing the temptation has mystical powers. It makes you think God is gone...

Continued in next blog...

Tempting...

Genesis 3:6 NIV
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.


We know almost nothing about Eve except what we find here in Genesis three. Was she kind and warm or cold and calculating? Did she enjoy parties or prefer to be by herself? Was Eve a thinker or driven by her feelings? How was she as a wife and later as a mom? Was Eve a good cook…a good housekeeper, a good story teller? Eve, who some estimate gave birth to as many as 100 children has a seductive, alluring aura about her that may be due to all the naked renditions that have been made depicting her in the garden and later with the fig leaves after she sinned but was she attractive, or friendly or fun to be with? Did Adam enjoy her company as they grew older? Eve, whose name sounds like the Hebrew verb that means “living”, is known almost exclusively for her brief encounter with Satan and almost immediate plunge into sin. Other women have been known mostly for their sinning…Delilah, Jezebel and Potiphar’s wife. However, no other woman is so completely associated with sin and temptation as Eve.

What is most fascinating about Eve though is not her final decision to eat the forbidden fruit; it is rather the illuminating description of how temptation worked with Eve and what lead to her fall. The scene in Genesis three is surreal, a talking serpent is the central character along with Eve in a battle that would permanently alter the condition of the human race. The serpent we are told is crafty, shrewd. Satan’s take on God’s command to not eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is telling. “You will surely not die. Now Eve had just told Satan that the Lord commanded they could not even touch the forbidden fruit lest they would be killed. Satan’s strategy in the temptation is enlightening. He immediately shifts Eve’s consideration once he discredits God’s warning by telling Eve that on the “day” she eats the fruit, her eyes would be opened and she would know good from evil.

Satan brings into the dialogue a most critical factor in temptation…time. Whereas God’s warning was not bound to a point…you die on the day you take the forbidden fruit as you would with a lethal poisoned apple, Satan’s promise was. The day you taste that fruit, a magnificent wonder will happen. Temptation rests upon this one pillar…today and not yet. Today you will have open eyes. Today you will enjoy insight into mysteries unknown to you before. Today it will be sweet and pleasant and good. Tomorrow isn’t going to happen. Tomorrow is nothing to bother you. Tomorrow is the slave of today. Every temptation works this way. I will be leading next month a seminar on child abuse and the molester does his perversion because he takes tomorrow out of the equation. Upping the ante on murder…making the penalty worse, the execution more gruesome, the hanging more public has statistically been proven to be inconsequential to reducing the rate of murders both in the U.S. and elsewhere because every homicide is done without tomorrow. The catching part of the murder, the finding it out part of it, the punishment aspect, is left out when the murder is committed. Satan’s temptation was that tomorrow isn’t but today very much is. It still works that way. When I stole candy from a store as a child, I did it because I didn’t think I would get caught…actually I didn’t even think about it. The theft was based totally on today. Get the candy. The now of the Jolly Ranchers swallowed up the tomorrow of being nabbed.

This Topic will be completed in the next blog

The Grace of the fishbowl

Take the most important part of your life and turn it up for everyone to see. Whether it be a friendship, a habit or a hope you grasp, it has power reverberating within it. It isn't as simple a thing for you as it is for everyone else glancing at it from the outside. It is rooted in your heart, entwining every nerve directing your parts and with that it is more complex than DNA, more complicated than the oil crisis. A friend has been struggling with drug addictions for years and it is so easy to discard if in fact you watch him like I watch my Beta loungining in his bowl. But if you are my friend, it is not a simple matter of shedding your skin, like some common lizard. It is frightening, and depressing and painful. It took me ten minutes to get into the lake while we were on vacation because the water was just a bit cool. Imagine tearing off your skin because someone on the other side of the bowl says you will be happier. Israel took more than a millenia to get rid of idol worship. Why are we so shocked when Christian people still gossip, still blow up, still complain, are still lazy, still pretend they are God's most able and trustworthy servants, still lie, still carelessly break promises. I see everything so clearly when I look at you. but whenever I gaze within, I find a convoluted tangle of contradictions that never really make sense to me. I am sinner living within grace. Take this any further and you are missing the most important detail of Man. We need a Savior for every single part of us...even our dreams need to be converted by Jesus. Grace is the one area of expertise the Church most needs to master...

The Jumpstart

What makes for a good day? The day we were supposed to leave for home from our vacation, my rear view mirror fell off my windshield. I went to check on the oil and I pulled the handle of the dipstick and it came off, leaving the dipstick beyond reach inside the tube leading to the engine block. After ten hours cleaning the house where we stayed and packing, finally at 5:30 PM, with everything in the car and everyone buckled into their seats, I went to start the car and it was dead. What is it about threes? So I got a jumper cable from one neighbor and the second neighbor offered to jumpstart our van from his truck. Nothing. Then I realized the cables were on the wrong terminals. We switched the terminals, tried again and it started but as soon as I took my foot off the gas, the car died. We tried several times before giving up. So what did I do? I prayed. The neighbor offered to call AAA and an hour later, a towtruck arrived. Benjamin, our two year old was thrilled to see a truck...I was praying the towtruck driver could get the van going. Immediately the van started but again, when I took my foot off the gas, it died. Finally after several tries, my neighbor suggested I just drive back with my foot on the gas the entire way. The only other option was to stay through the weekend, miss our church service and come home on Tuesday. I prayed. The road down from the cabin is treacherous...if you think you can drive the entire way downhill with your foot on the gas. Jump starting the van once again, my neighbor led me on a fifteen minute journey through the neighborhood. The first stop sign I came to was a moment of truth. I took my foot off the gas and stopped. The van did not stall out...and it didn't stall out the rest of the three hour trip home. What makes a good day...perhaps the simplicity of praying your way down the road!