Who Are You?

Matthew 16:15 NIV

 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"

Who Do You Say He Is?

Last year I coached the Little League Baseball team of our youngest son and the only reason I did it was because the league was desperate for more managers.  I had the youngest of the teams in our division and had no experience ever coaching baseball.  No one thought our team would be any good…least of all me.  We held practices and the kids worked hard and miraculously we won our first game and it happened to be against the best team in our level.  We then won the next game and the next game and the one after that and suddenly everyone in our league began to take notice of us.  Parents I did not know were talking about me and our team and before games people would walk up to me and congratulate me for our team’s success.  One of the grandparents of a player of ours one evening walked up to me and made this funny comment.  Our team had won all six games we had played thus far and so it became somewhat legendary what we were doing.  “Everyone is going to want a pastor to coach their team now”, he told me.  I just laughed and wondered if that were really the case.  Did all these parents really want a pastor in charge of their kids?  Did they want me coaching their children?  What was I to these people who barely knew me?  Was I coach?  Was I pastor?  Was I parent just like they were?  Was I a strange guy who has a loud voice?

Our tendency, before we get to know someone is to objectify that person.  He is a policeman.  She is a doctor.  That one is a waiter.  Those are students.  They are Malaysians.  He is good looking.  She is smart.  There are a thousand different categories we use to objectify people.  Because it is difficult getting to really know everyone we come across, it is much easier for us to shelve them all into mental spots of categories so we don’t have to bother with their humanity.  We all do this at one level or another.  It is why racism is found in every region of the world and the reason totalitarian governments and feudalism and caste systems can survive.  It seems like the internet for all its good can perpetuate this approach to people.  You are what your comments are rather than a real person who lives a life of trials and celebrations and mundane chores.  It is human that we don’t want to be known as a category of a person.  We want to be ourselves…unique, this one and only this one.  We know how complicated we are…how changeable and multi-faceted.  I am not a tall, white pastor.  I am me.  You are you.

Our Lord addressed this concern with His disciples.  He wanted to know what sort of impression the disciples thought  He was leaving upon the world…what was the category people were using to describe Him.  He asked them.  "Who do people say I am?" (Mark 8:27 NIV)  The responses were varied:  John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets.  The people believed He was a spokesman for God; that was clear.  Jesus wanted to know what His friends thought of Him.   "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" (Mark 8:29 NIV)  Now this question is well phrased and gets at the heart of the matter.  He does not ask, “What do you say I am?”  That is a question that would lead them to objectify Him.  What sort of category do you place me?  Jesus didn’t want that.  The crowds who kept track of Him were doing that.  Jesus wanted His friends to personalize Him.  “Who do you say I am?”  Now this is a critical question to be asked!  Who is Jesus?  Not what is He?  That is a lazy way of considering Him.  Who is He?  It takes real mental effort to get at that.

I wonder what others besides the disciples would have said about who He was and is!  There was an older man who had been crippled thirty-eight years.  Day after day he reclined beside a pool that many thought had magical powers to heal.  You had to be the first one to get into the water after bubbles mystically appeared on the surface or it didn’t do anything for you.  At least that was what was thought.  Here he waited for his chance of having his legs healed but nothing happened.  No one helped him get into the water just as the bubbles floated up to the top.  He was all alone is a sea of destitute and handicapped people.  One day Jesus arrived and the crippled man had no idea who he was.  When Jesus told him to pick up his mat and walk, the fellow did and low and behold he could stand when he tried and he could walk.  It seems that he never bothered to thank Jesus for what He had done for him; never even seemed compelled to find out who Jesus was.  I wonder how this guy would have answered Jesus question, “Who do you say I am?”

The Temple in Jerusalem had several sections, each designed to give specific groups of people an opportunity to worship and pray and talk about God.  It worked well with the sections for Jewish men and perhaps even Jewish women but it was a train wreck where non Jewish people were to go to pray.  The area had been turned into a bazaar.  Goats and sheep and breads being hawked all about.  Money changers worked deals for out of towners who needed Jewish shekels to give their offerings.  When Jesus came into the Gentile section of the Temple, He was appalled by what He saw and threw a fit.  He overturned tables, chased away animals and created a ruckus.  He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.  And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: "'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'?   But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'" (Mark 11:15-17 NIV)  What would the merchants and priests in the Court of the Gentiles that day have replied if Jesus asked them, “Who am I?” 

Pilate could have been asked this question.  “Pilate, who am I?”  As Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus, using brutality to get at Him, Jesus might have been a “what” for Him.  Yet as He watched Jesus get beaten without begging for the guards to stop, refuse to give a defense for Himself when the priests and their cronies made all sorts of bizarre accusations against Him, did not plead for Pilate to let Him go, Jesus must have at some point become a person to Pilate.  Pilate’s wife came to him, imploring Pilate to release Jesus because of a dream she had about Him. This must have shaken him a bit and pushed the Roman governor to look at Jesus more closely.  When Pilate finally sent Jesus off to be flogged and crucified, I wonder what his answer to Jesus’ question would have been.  “Who am I?

When the Lord suddenly appeared in the room where Thomas and the other disciples were, just seven days after He was raised from the dead in a new resurrected body, the thought must have crossed Thomas’s mind for a split second, “Who is this?”  Quickly he regrouped after Jesus got his full attention.   A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!"  Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." (John 20:26-27 NIV)  Thomas immediately blurted out to Jesus, "My Lord and my God!"  (John 20:28 NIV)  This sudden apprehension of Jesus is shocking and disconcerting when like Thomas, we have it.  If He is your good friend, that is one thing.  If He is an absent father who doesn’t pay attention to your, that is another.  If He is a critic who finds all your faults and puts you down, that is still something else.  If He is weak and incompetent and has nothing to offer, then that is even another way of deciding.  If though, He is your Lord and God, you must consider the ramifications of that.

No one can talk you into this; it requires the revelation of God to make it clear.  There isn’t a pastor or book or video that can convince you of this that Jesus is your Lord and God.  Only the Father in Heaven can make that certain but once He does, once you come to that conclusion, you must act upon it.  You must make a clear break from every other loyalty that keeps you from Him as your Lord and your God.  At one time you were happy to follow Jesus.  It was easy then because you were fascinated by Him.  Now though it is hard and life has taken a toll on you and there Jesus is before you, calling to you to come after Him.  Is He still your Lord and God?  Does He still have your absolute loyalty?  Can He do with you as He wishes, take you where He wants, give you whatever task He decides?  Until you make this dramatic shift in your will, that Jesus Christ is your Lord and your God, nothing much will happen with you.  You will get along; you won’t however be joined with Him in His great mission.  But once you do decide He is your Lord and your God, He will align you with Him so that you will be in step with God and part of what He is doing in this world. 

Not All Believing Is The Same

Have you made a decision to believe in Jesus?  Are you ready to commit yourself to Him?  This is very different than believing in a good outcome, a certain view you hold about Him or the way He should deal with your circumstances.  Jesus Christ is not a doctrine or a weaver of fairy tales put together in our minds.  He is the real Son of God and Son of Man and He is completely free to be precisely who He is and not who we think He should be.  Our disappointments come when we believe in something about Christ rather than Christ.  We get discombobulated spiritually if we try to make a pet thought about Christ and how we think He should do things what we believe.    Even great men and women of God waste much time trying to prove some doctrine they hold rather than build the bond with Christ and let Him "show the doctrines" to us.  Leaders throughout the ages have broken with God to pursue a "work of God".  Rather than operating out of Christ and His life coming through them, they live with the strength and wisdom of the flesh, not realizing how far they have strayed from the Lord.  Christ is never less than what we have revealed of Him to us in Scripture and what He shows us of Himself for all time will never contradict what has been said of Him in the Bible.  We may misunderstand what we find in Scripture and believe something we shouldn't about Christ but we are never wrong in believing in Christ.  He is forever our Savior and the keeper of our souls and that very love of Christ we see in Him dying for us on the Cross will never be less than that and later we will discover  in fits and starts just how much grander His love for us is than we have realized.  You may need to give up your beliefs about Christ but do not give up an ounce of your belief in Christ.   Believe in Him during the bleak and dreary nights and as the sun rises at the break of day, continue to believe in Him.

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.   John 17:20-21 NIV

Taken Apart

When God begins to work in us, He leaves no stone unturned.  He takes apart our entire personality bit by bit and regenerates it by fire.  From head to toe, where sin has marred us and warped our being, our Savior gets in there and goes to work.  Paul called it "being crucified in Christ".  James labeled it "the testing of your faith".  Peter spoke of it as "judgment" that starts with the "family of God".   John the Baptist described the work of Christ as that of baptizing "you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Jesus called it a pruning.   God will not let go of us until we are a holy people who love with the same love Christ loved us.  It is a shame that so many speak only of the blessings of God without including within those blessings the purifying work of our Lord to make us free of Sin and righteous not just by decree but in actual day to day living.  There comes a point when we must decide if we really want to be wholly God's or if we are satisfied with the world having a part of us too.  The Lord won't force Himself upon you.  He won't tackle you and make you beg mercy.  He lets you go on your way but if you are born again, you will never be settled with the corrosive effect of sin working through you; you will want it out of you and it is then that a transaction occurs.  It will be your life for His.  You give God your life and He gives you His and God, like a surgeon, begins to go at all the damage your sin has caused you and others.  Meticulously He works on the habits you have developed that make you impure.  He grinds down the thought patterns that corrupt your actions.  The burdens that you grip with terrible force that other sinners have placed on your shoulders, He lifts from you.  God will not be satisfied with you until He has given you a "clean bill of health" and you are holy.  You may not even realize what our Lord has done for you until it suddenly dawns on you what a new person you are; that you are really transformed and have all the earmarks of Christ in you, the hope of Glory.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.     2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV

Facts

There is a point at which we know something about God is true and it percolates there in our heart.  It is not a matter of being convinced; we just realize it is so.  As we begin to think about it, we lose our certainty and come to a different conclusion.  In the Spiritual realm this is called "unbelief".  As Jesus opened the Scriptures during His first sermon, there was widespread happiness in what our Savior was saying.  All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. (Luke 4:22 NIV)  But then they began to think about the ramifications of what they had decided.   "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked. (NIV)  Collectively the group began to talk themselves out of what they knew was true.  How could God be speaking to them through Joseph's son?  What good can come of His teaching?  We do this a thousand different ways when it comes to faith, giving to the poor, forgiveness, complaining, gratitude, anger.  We know it is God dealing with us and then we talk ourselves out of it.  Our cunning gets the best of us and like the people of Nazareth who decided it made sense to just chuck Christ off the cliff, we turn aside from what our Lord has shown us and pretend we never saw it.  What did Jesus' neighbors and relatives lose by convincing themselves their hearts were wrong about Jesus?  Healing?  Peace and Joy?  Comfort in times of trouble?  Insight into the decisions they had to make?  It is impossible to estimate the damage they brought to themselves by turning away from Him!  We must rethink our relationship with God and how the Holy Spirit is dealing with us.  Do we believe God is right when He tells us how to live or are we a bit concerned that He is out of touch with the "real world"?  Have we got that adventurous spirit of Peter; willing to go out upon the real water before us and trust God to guide us through whatever comes our way or are we afraid to rely on Him?  Facing facts does not mean we talk ourselves out of what God says to us in Scripture or in our heart.  The opposite is actually the case.  Satan got Adam and Eve to "face the facts" and it turned out they wound up turning away from the "true facts".  Not all facts are the same.   Be careful when the lawyer in your head puts on trial what God has already declared in your heart.

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this.  They got up, drove him (Jesus) out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff.    Luke 4:28-29 NIV

Choice

Proverbs 8:10 NIV

Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold,

Is The Choice Yours?

When I was twelve or so, I was hanging out at my friend’s house when he suddenly went inside and brought me something to see.   I was not psychologically prepared for what I was about to encounter; no one had gone over with me such a time as this and I reacted reflexively rather than thoughtfully.  He had a pornographic magazine in his hand that he had pulled out of his father’s closet.  I had never seen pornography before; never encountered it, never in my life had to decide if I was going to look at pornography.  I didn’t know what the long term ramifications would be if I leafed through it with my friend.  It was of course a moral choice for me long before I understood the concept of moral choices.  I believed in God, was already a born again Christian, had been baptized and taught the Ten Commandments and the basic stories of the Bible.  Pornography was new to me though.  I liked girls, noticed them, was attracted to them and already had picked out several I wanted to like me.  Pornography though was several steps beyond my previous moral choices and I was the one who had to decide if I would look or not.

Life is filled with choices.  All living creatures have choice…plants and single cell organisms and bugs make mechanical choices.  They set their roots down here or there, move into this section of the water or not, leave the ant hill or stay and build the tunnels.  These choices though are mechanical; there is no thought given to them.  Squirrels and crows also make choices but their choices are instinctual, perhaps they think about what they choose but it is not highly organized thought, not strategic.  Dolphins and chimpanzees are able to make choices and think more about what they decide than crows certainly.  They show signs of loyalty and care in their choices sometimes but how much of what they decide is based on values of right and wrong we cannot say.  Can any animal choose to rebel against God or reject His will for it; it doesn’t seem so.  The Bible though tells us who certainly can choose for or against God; who has the ability to say “yes” or “no” to Him.

Our discussion today is not centered on all choices but one kind of choice—the moral choice. Let us make clear what a moral choice is.  A moral choice is the decision to agree or disagree with God in what you do.  Because God determines what is right or wrong and we don’t; it does not matter what our opinion is about something; the moral choice is built on how we respond to God and what He says to do or not do.  Some moral choices are easy to comprehend…do I commit adultery or not, do I steal from my brother or not, do I beat up the guy who took my parking space or not.  Other moral decisions take work to get at them.  We have to study the Bible carefully to get at them.  Do I have an abortion or not?  Do I party with my friends at a bar or not?  What sorts of movies should I watch? 

We all make moral choices, perhaps daily or even hourly but why is that so?  It is because God has made us free to make moral choices.  Consider the moral choice God gave the Israelites as they began their new life in the Promised Land.  "But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15 NIV) Not only do natural beings make moral choices because of God’s freedom granted to them, so also do supernatural beings such as Satan.  Satan has freedom to obey God or not as seen in the ancient book of Genesis.  Satan enticed Eve to disobey God and after Adam and Eve did make the moral choice to eat the forbidden fruit, God punished Satan for that moral choice of disobeying Him.  Of course Adam and Eve also were punished and for the first time in human history, sin became a part of the existence of mankind.  What was Satan’s first moral choice?  We do not know but we are told about the one involving mankind.  Satan was given freedom by God to support Him with regard to Adam and Eve’s moral development or rebel against Him and of course He rebelled.

If God were not morally free to choose right and wrong, then the universe would be run by a mechanical engine bound by limitations such as a computer has.  God however is free and therefore His decisions are real decisions He makes.  So why did He choose to make Satan morally free?  Why make people morally free?  What is the good in that if evil has a way into the universe through that freedom?  Now we must examine this question honestly and with care.

Consider our Lord’s options.  He could live forever within the Trinity with never another being in existence.  Clearly His love moved Him away from that option.  He could create other beings who were not morally free, who were mechanical in regard to morality.  They could only do what God said to do but then they would never have fellowship with Him in the same way those who are morally free can.  There are certain parts of a relationship that are not possible if you are not morally free.  You cannot have faith if you are not morally free.  You cannot hope without moral freedom.  And you cannot love if you are not morally free.  To hope, you must be able to choose not to hope.  It is the same with faith.  To have faith, you must be free not to have faith.  Most importantly, to love, you have to be able to not love.

Let’s examine this matter of love.  Love can be mimicked mechanically.  A creature licks your hand because that is what that sort of creature does.  Another creature can wag its tail when it sees you because that is the mechanical response.  We can trick ourselves into believing it is love because it looks like love and we feel love toward that creature but we know it isn’t love it has toward us.  Perhaps we even like that sort of thing more than the risk of real love but we have chosen something much less than love.  We have gone for a mechanical licking creature rather someone who chooses to love us.  Imagine a woman with a man only because he is rich and provides her family a house.  She may kiss him and hug him and write him love letters but she does it so that he will continue to provide for her.  We would never call that sort of relationship love because it is mechanical…it is forced, either by greed or need.  Love is a freely chosen response to another and must be so for it to be love.

God makes us morally free because that is the only way He can enter into a love relationship with us.  And here is the risk.  If we are free to love, then we are free to hate.  We are free to manipulate and free to ignore, disrespect and mistreat.  We are like the prodigal son, free to reject the one who loves us and again like him, free to come back to him in humility and a new sense of appreciation of what we have in that one we love.  If we are morally free, then we can do anything we wish to holiness, love and goodness.  We can hate, destroy, use, ruin, cheat, lie or kill ourselves.  We can do these things because we are morally free.  Here is the rub though.  Many are angry that God would create a universe where evil is possible.  They wonder what sort of cruelty would lead to a creation where corruption can take a seat alongside goodness, love and kindness!

Consider this.  Because God is love, he is free to love at a level that goes beyond our ability to fathom.  He took all our evil, all the sin we have produced through our moral freedom and absorbed it into Himself.   To understand God in this, we must listen carefully to the first part of John 3: 16.  For God so loved the world…  Not only did God love us so much that He gave us moral freedom, He loved us enough to take all the evil our moral freedom has produced and accepted the punishment Himself for it.  He took in Himself the damage our unholy choices have caused and died with them so that we would not have to live with the consequences of our moral choices.  God’s choice was to let us be free to make moral choices of good and evil. Even supernatural beings like Satan he gave moral freedom to choose good or evil.   Because we all have chosen evil and unholy living, God also chose, out of His moral freedom to take upon Himself the consequences of our sin…to die for them.

Some are angry with God for letting us choose evil.  They are mad that others can sin freely, can hurt people and wreck their lives.  That is the cost of being free to make moral choices.  Imagine though someone being mad at her mom for giving her a ride to school or being mad at his son for making him breakfast or being upset with his wife for being loyal to him and declaring her love for him.  How terrible would that person be?  Our God is so full of love for us that He gives us the freedom to act hatefully and bitterly and despise the freedom He has given us and then take all that hatred and bitterness into Himself and suffer the pain it has caused.   More than that, He chooses when we let Him, to join with us and make us completely new.  He gives us His life joined with our life and we gain His will to be holy and His strength to love completely.  What is the grace of God?  It is God’s choice to suffer the consequences of our moral choices, to give us the freedom to make those choices and then give Himself to us to be a part of us without, eventually, any of the damage our moral choices have caused us.

There is an old story of a little dog that loved a lion so much that after barking at the lion to stop heading into a hunter’s trap, he went after the lion that ignored his warning and jumped in front of the arrow that was intended for the lion.  As the dog lay dying, the lion roared at the little dog, complaining that the dog didn’t stop his headlong dash into the hunter’s trap.  He cursed the dog and complained about his wickedness for letting the hunter shoot his arrow.  The little dog smiled and simply whispered with his last breath, “I love you lion.”  How would that lion greet the little dog if three days later, the dog came back to life?  Would he hate him for his sacrifice?  Would he walk away from the dog’s warm embrace?  Would he realize what a great treasure that dog’s love is?  Would he forever be loyal to such a friend as that?  For God so loved the world…

Download of Righteousness

The Gospel is the very best God has to offer us.  It is the fulfillment of all His thinking and rises monumentally above every invention of mankind and is beyond the complexity of the most impressive of His own creations.  The Gospel is the culmination of love; love taken to the furthest dimension.  God's thought entered physicality when He placed in Jesus Christ the totality of the sins of the world and gave man the right to execute Him.  Pay careful attention to 2 Corinthians 5:21.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (NIV)  For our sake, Jesus Christ became sin.  He was all the sin of all the world when He was crucified.  For what reason?  It was so that all the righteousness of God might be our righteousness.  Actually, it is more that all the righteousness of God might be us.  This is odd to consider.  We always think of our righteousness as doing the trick when it comes to God or at least hoping it does.  We make our choices and do what is good...most of the time...sometimes...at times.  Yet God has made a trade with us in Christ.  He took our sin and gives us His righteousness.    There is nothing like this in all of religion...only real God could come up with such a plan.  It is grace to the nth degree.  The Christian life is not a matter of trying to get things right.  It is developing the habit of letting the rightness of God come out of us.  Every skill set you see in the Sermon on the Mount is possible because we are the rightness of God in flesh.  This body, which has been so many times an instrument of rebellion against God is noble for this very reason.  The rightness of God is part of it and like a sponge that is squeezed; His rightness comes out of this body when we let the Holy Spirit bring the mind of Christ into full focus as we think.  Thinking in God is simple.  We just have to train our wild pony of a mind to do it by making the Scriptures our framework for how we process everything we encounter.

As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame."       Romans 10:11 NIV

Crucified

You must settle in your mind how the Cross of Christ organizes the universe.  It is the power of God for salvation first to the Jews, then to everyone not Jewish.  This is never violated nor reduced to rhetoric.  The Cross of Christ is not a tool of propagandists to win over converts.  It is how we are taken out of the slavery of sin and made new creations.  All the world is bent by its will to redeem and the stars and the planets will be swept away by its power to remake them free of all Sin.  The Cross of Christ contains everything we need to know about life and death and eternity.  Whatever religion one may hold, it is all a barren tree if the Cross of Christ does not fill it through and through.  "Repent", John the Baptist proclaimed.  Why?  You cannot enter into the work of the Cross of Christ unless you repent.  "Believe" our Savior announced.  Why?  You do not have life unless you believe the work the Cross of Christ has done.   It is the stone over which the entire world stumbles and until we stand upon this great stone of life, we are crushed under the weight of our sins...we are wrecks that are wasting away from sin's wresting power.    In the Cross, our blood becomes mingled with our Lord's so that as we are transformed by the Crucified Son of Man, we have Him as a part of us.  There is no other name under heaven by which we may be saved but the Name of the One whose blood poured down from an old clumsy Cross.  Nothing matters but the salvation of our crucified Lord...all else falls apart under the weight of Sin.    A day like today is the one when the Savior of the World died; a day like today is one upon which He will return and take all those carried out of the slavery of this world and bring them into the Crucified Home.  The Cross is at the Center of the Gospel; it is The Good News!

The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.     Matthew 28:5 NIV

Wait

Endurance is not something typically glamorized either in the media or in contemporary Christian annals.  It is not faith but often an offspring of her.  The eject button symbolically represents the normal approach to difficulties, trials and painful circumstances.  If we are forced to go through something that is trying for any extended period of time, all too often we turn away from it and move to something else more rewarding.  Success resonates; forbearing carries an icy chill to the bones.  The problem with Biblical timelines is that they carry with them a fantasy feel.  One hundred years is just a quick descriptor we breeze past.  Forty years is a blink in a biographical account.  Seventy years is a parenthetical insert.  Yet the one hundred years of Noah were ten thousand days and a million hours.  The forty years of Moses were almost two generations...the time it takes to build a family and wave good-by to the kids as they put together families of their own.  The coming of the Messiah waited for entire civilizations to rise and fall a dozen times or more.  Now we wait again for our Lord to return and we face a most disconcerting Spiritual axiom.  God's people must wait.  They suffer.  They endure for lifetimes and across generations.  They wonder when the end will come and it doesn't.  They stand in line and their number doesn't get called.  Joshua waited eighty years for his day in the sun and impatient David ran for years from King Saul with no end in sight.  The character of the Christian is built upon the unyielding rock of waiting.  Waves of time beat against the stony fortress but it refuses to budge.  We must not think that we can force our will upon God's demand of standing still.  He will take the impatient soul and put him or her in a holding pattern until our Lord's character is developed within.  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not upon your own understanding" has a context.  Almost always it is a wait that seems unreasonable and unbearable that pulls out such faith and makes it true.  Do we have enough time for God to work His life into us so that it is actual rather than imagined?  As impossible as it seems, thank the Lord for your times of waiting because in them, if you are trusting in Him, God will make you the sort of person He can use for divine purposes.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.    Psalm 130:5 NIV

Forgiveness Journey

Hebrews 9:22 NIV

In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

How Is Forgiveness Working For You?

A number of years ago I went whitewater rafting with some friends.  We were going through a particularly rough stretch of water when we came upon a bend in the river where a giant boulder stood at the turn.  The water was rushing fiercely through the gorge there and despite our river pilot in the back urging us to with our paddles turn the raft to the left, we didn’t make it and we came barreling into the boulder.  The force of our impact cause one of the guys at the front of the rubber inflated raft to be catapulted into the air and he went flying ten feet in the air backwards and into the pool of water behind us.  At that moment, we watched in shocked disbelief as he shot past us; we were going one way and he another.  We were suddenly going on separate journeys, us sliding upon onto a rock and down the river and him soaring through the air and back into the chaos of the swirling caldron of white-water.

All of us are on journeys; some going one way, others a different road.  There are those heading for higher education, others not interested in further schooling.  Some are building families, others prefer to stay single.  Many are trying to save all the money they can, still more looking for ways to spend it.  There are those wanting to connect with as many people as they can, others would prefer to be left alone.  Some like to take it easy, others would rather work hard.  Sometimes we decide what journey we take, other times the journey decides who we are.  You might be on a journey of honesty and integrity or a journey of fraud and corruption.  Our journeys may be similar or quite different but every one of us is on a journey and eventually it will bring us somewhere.

It seems that the Bible has described a pair of journeys that between which we all must choose.  The first is the journey of Sin and the other of Forgiveness.  Sin is what the Bible calls the “broad road” and many enter through it. (Matthew 7:13 NIV)  The journey of Forgiveness is narrow because few choose to take that path.  Sin is your default direction.  All are sinners and come short of God’s glory.  The result of being sinners is that we die in our sin.  The other journey is that of forgiveness.  Acts 10: 43 declares that from ancient times, the Lord has been telling us through His prophets that we can enter a journey of forgiven sins.  All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name." (NIV)  The Bible throughout declares that one day and now it has come to pass, our sins would be taken from us, as the Psalm puts it, “as far away as the east is from the west.”  Through Jesus dying on the Cross, that has happened.  Paul in Ephesians 1:7 lists two results of Him dying on the Cross.  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace… (NIV)  We are no longer slaves to sin and sinning and the guilt of our sin is removed.  We are now free to live completely in line with God and our lives immersed in Him.

Sin has a devastating effect upon our personality.  It leads to confusion, frustration, bitterness, depression, anger, selfishness, pride, discouragement, stress and worry.  The sins we commit always damage us and the long range effect cannot be calculated for it is too immense.  The sins others commit injure us terribly and we are mangled by both ends of sin.  What Christ has done by pouring out His blood on the Cross is begin the work of making us holy and free of the damage sin has caused us.  He is “redeeming” us, taking us out of it.  Because we have lived in a world of Sin and that is all we know, we are like a frog slowly cooking in a pot of water growing hotter by the hour.  We have never known life without the damage of sin and so we are not conscious of all it has done to us.  The Bible says that what Sin brings us is death…psychological death, social death, emotional death, mental death and eventually physical death.  The miracle of all time is that God decided to put an end to the destruction of Sin by placing all the sin of the world upon His Son Jesus Christ and letting the Sin itself die in His crucified body.

This of course may be “old hat” to you.  You understand the Cross and God’s work with Sin but here is something that must be considered profoundly in regard to sin forgiveness.  Jesus declared that our determination to forgive sins is linked to God’s generosity in forgiving our sins.  This is underscored in the model prayer He taught us during the Sermon on the Mount but given naked expression in Matthew 6:14-15.  For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (NIV)  There is an undeniable link between our forgiveness of the sins of others and God’s forgiveness of our sins.  Often it is thought that if we don’t forgive the sins committed against us, then God won’t forgive our sins.  But then, what is the point of Christ dying on the cross if not to put away our sins...if it is really dependent on what we do?

Paul cements this relationship between God’s forgiveness and ours in Colossians 3: 13.  Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (NIV)  It is established by Christ and the Apostle Paul that all Christians are forgiving people.  They put up with the quirks and difficult behaviors of those in their circles and they forgive or “show grace” as it literally is, to those who treat them badly.  Now the Greek which Paul used to give us this teaching is a bit tricky.  Literally it reads, “As also the Lord showed grace to you, so also you”.  To show grace to someone is a bit broader than to forgive the sins of that person but it includes it.  The primary teaching here is that as Christ has done for us, the same is to flow out of us to others.  If that does not happen, then we have to ask what is wrong with us.

There is a most fascinating teaching found in Hebrews 9:22ff.  In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness...But now he (Jesus) has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself…so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. (NIV)  Paul here declares that forgiveness of sins is not possible without the shedding of blood.  That means that I cannot, even if I wished, forgive a single sin of any person, regardless of how good or bad I view that one—good or bad.  It is beyond the scope of my ability!  So why does Christ and Paul insist we forgive sins?  There is only one explanation.  Through Christ’s death on the Cross, He brought us into His redeeming work.  He made us the freer of slaves.

Christ’s poured out blood upon the Cross completely altered the moral landscape of the world.  Every sin, before that, was irrevocable…it could not be removed and had to be punished.  If you sin against me, whether it seems important to us or insignificant, it was a deadly sin and we could not change its impact upon the one who sinned.  Paul stated this clearly.  “For the wages of sin is death…”  (Romans 6:23a NIV)  Before our Lord’s blood shedding, I could not help you out of your sins against me, even if I wanted to do so.  I could not wave it off and say “no big deal” because it wasn’t for me to decide.  God’s law said the sin brought death and that was the end of the matter.  But with Christ’s death and His loving forgiveness through it, I now can forgive the sins of anyone that has hurt me or offended me.  I am joined with Christ through His poured out blood in the work of forgiveness.

Consider this one aspect of sin.  Each sin has a devastating impact upon the personality.  One sin wrecked Adam and Eve and if you multiply that ten thousand times, there are layers and layers of damage in each of us.  Forgiveness is God’s way of healing us and making us whole.  Somehow, God uses us to bring forgiveness to those we encounter and it is no small privilege or responsibility.  Every forgiven sin is a removed sin.  What does this mean?  Forgiveness as a Biblical teaching is not me accepting whatever you have done wrong to me and saying, “No big deal!”  Forgiveness is the removal of sin in an actual way.  The word Jesus used in saying we are to forgive the sins or “transgressions” of others means “to put away”.  In other words, we do something with the sin, at least as far as it is connected to us.  Of course, that is only possible because of the pouring out of Christ’s blood.

Here is a crazy analogy on the part we play forgiving sins.  When Jonah began his journey running away from God, the Lord did not let him go very far before he sent a gigantic storm to get his attention.  It was a blazing light of chaos for everyone on board the ship…not just Jonah.  The only way the storm could be shut off, it was discovered, was to throw Jonah overboard.  Jonah knew it and he convinced the sailors it was so.  But no one wanted to actually toss Jonah into the raging sea…they felt badly about it.  We are like that with forgiveness.  We don’t want to let go of the sin.  We prefer to nurse it, coddle it, relive it and cling to it.  God though tells us to toss it away.  Forgive it.    Meanwhile, for the sailors and for us, the storm continues to rage.  The damage of sin keeps increasing as we hold onto it.  Only, when by the power of the blood of Christ, we toss the sin away does God stop the storm it creates.  Jonah, the one who caused the storm, also began a new journey when he was thrown into the sea.  He was in fact rescued and given a new life by being tossed overboard.  When we forgive the sins of someone, we in a way rescue that person.  We give him or her a fresh start.  A forgiven sin stops being an active sin; it is a crucified sin and is no longer able to damage either the one who forgives it or the one who has had the sin forgiven.  It is a new journey when a sin is forgiven…a journey of peace within and without.  We can either refuse to forgive a sin and continue being damaged by it, or forgive it, and be set free from it.  Somehow, in a way only God can explain, when we forgive a sin we join Christ in His work on the Cross and by His blood, keep the sin from hurting us or others anymore.  

Championship Pedigree

Have we caught a glimpse yet of just how monstrous our sins are and how monumental God's forgiveness is?  Perhaps a small bit of perspective is needed.  For one hundred years, Noah and his family worked on the ark that would protect them from the coming flood.  Apparently, no one thought much about the impending rain storm.  They were busy with cooking and hunting and farming and making a life for themselves.  But the most important thing, the approaching deluge was never pondered seriously by anyone except maybe Noah's family.  It was preposterous perhaps; insignificant certainly.  When the forty-two boys ridiculed Elisha and called him an "old baldhead", they were completely unprepared for what followed.  The two female bears that mauled them were the furthest things from their minds.  That is because they had no respect for the prophet of God and were oblivious to the power he possessed.  We can be thoroughly unaware of the immense iceberg before us because we are not scanning the horizon for danger.  The danger we face currently is the gross neglect of contemplation of Sin and its relationship to us.  We pass it off as a mistake or two, as an error in judgment and God declares it much worse than that.  Sin is the complete corruption and ruin of humanity and it is due to a mind saturated in rebellion against God.  When once we grab hold of the realization that Sin is far more horrific than we can conceive and that for God to overlook it is as idiotic as putting a loaded gun in the hands of a toddler, we will begin to hold to a rational view of life as it is.  Our Lord , by dying upon the Cross, evaluated the condition of humanity and determined that if He loved us, He must save us from our sins.  Save, we must use in the sense of pulling a drowning child out of the water or giving mouth to mouth resuscitation to a heart attack victim.  God has saved you out of mercy, not pity, not necessity, not obligation but out of real kindness and love for you.  You are not a victim, God was the victim.  So now you are the victor and He the champion of the world.  Consider what was accomplished when our Savior poured out His blood upon the Cross.

Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).         John 19:17 NIV

Fine Dining

You are not here to make the world comfortable.  When Christ comes dripping out of you at first, then a sprinkle and eventually a great torrent, it will not land you in the preferred spots at the table.  Even our Lord was pushed aside in the Samaritan village, mocked in Jerusalem and nearly knocked off the cliff in His home town.  You cannot expect to be beloved everywhere you go if God is seeping out of you!  His love, His patience, His calm assurance, His holiness and humility do not win over Pharisees or judges but the aroma of Christ will entice some to want a taste of what you have.    The "least of these" are frantically scanning about for a sign that the universe is more than just a wasteland...that there is real life somewhere.  You come to them with the Breath, the Light and suddenly darkness is not oppressive, the empty spaces are not a vacuum.  There is real hope and you possess it; a reason to believe and you hold it in your hand.  Do not neglect the life of God within you.  Do not starve it by letting the world be your nourishment.  You are God's gift to the world, His fine banquet.  Be filled with the Holy Spirit, eating with ravenous hunger the Scriptures, drinking deeply of Christ in prayer.  Never let a day pass when you do not put into practice something you see God is working into you.  Whether it be forgiveness, mercy, calm assurance, wisdom, pure actions, guarded words or generosity, let the Spirit bring it out of you.  At times God may have to squeeze it out of you like juice from the grape but when He does, you can be certain it is not in vain.  The pressure that breaks the bread and crushes the grape produces a rich meal for a "God-starved" world.  If you are squeezed, don't panic or fight to get out of God's grip, let Him produce in you a feast that is irresistible when the right guest sits at the table.

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples,         Isaiah 25:6a NIV

The Struggle of Why

Romans 9:20 NIV

But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'"

Do You Have a “Why” Question For God?

Growing up, like you, I had many “why” questions for my parents…most of which I knew better not to ask.  Why do we have to have a Volkswagen bus instead of a normal car?  Why do you serve peas for supper?  Why do I have to wash the dishes?  Why can’t we watch my favorite TV shows?  Why would you think mashing the roast beef with the potatoes and carrots and peas and onions and other quasi food items, mixing them together and calling it “hash” would be a good idea?  Why can’t I watch the second feature at the drive-in too?  How come my allowance is so small?  Why don’t we take more votes when family decisions are made?  What made you think that a baby blue polyester leisure suit should be my Christmas present?  Could I get my hair cut by someone who earns his living at it?  Can we listen to something other than country western music?  Why does Dad need to know about my grades?  Can we go to Disney Land for our vacation rather than camping this year?  What “Why” questions would you ask of your parents if you could?

Perhaps you ask them why they treated you like you did, or why was your brother or sister the “favorite child”.  Maybe you would ask about a relative who was kind of strange or whether they were happily married or glad about their career choices or what they really thought of God.  We might have lots of questions we would ask of our parents if we thought it appropriate or if it was possible.  Are there “why” questions you have for God?  What do you “wonder why” about God’s dealings with you?  Do you have lots of “why” questions for Him or just a few?  What is your most important “why” question for the Lord?

Our “why” questions seem to grow in magnitude and number when the toughness of life bears down upon us.  There are a number of ways we attach causation to the difficulties and painful parts of their existence.  One is bad luck.  There is we guess some force in the universe that operates and sometimes the coin turns up heads and other times tails and when it is good luck we try to keep doing what we are doing and when it is bad luck, we scramble for ways to “change our luck”.  We wear different kinds of clothes, take a different route to work, give a homeless person an extra dollar.  We can just assume that everything that happens is random and without any sort of organization.  Jackson Pollock famously painted using random drips and drops and splatters to create his art and it represented this idea, that there is neither rhyme nor reason to life; it is just a bunch of splatters shot about by mindless nature.  There is another way to look at the tough parts of life and that is to blame it all on Satan.  Satan is the one who takes our lives apart and ruins them to satisfy his cruel fancies.  A fourth view of these rough times is to guess that God is mad at us and punishing us.  Sometimes we see God as cruel for He deals with us more harshly than we deserve.  Like Job, we know we haven’t been perfect but why does He come down on us as hard as He does?

Now we must see what the Bible says about those rough times we have faced.  Hebrews 12: 5-6 gives us deep insight into what goes on behind the scenes when painful experiences come our way.  And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son." (NIV) Now what is almost irritating in this is that we are told that the very experiences that tear us apart and make us miserable and even angry should encourage us.  How can we be encouraged by the loss of our job, by the long and painful illness, by the troubles we have with our children and by the discouraging things people say to us?  It is impossible unless we have Christ dwelling within us and we understand what God is doing for us.

We must realize that there is a real possibility that we may not even be aware of how much work God has to do with us.  When David committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed, he had no idea just how badly he had acted.  It is strange to consider that David, the author of so many of the Psalms in the Bible could have thought it was ok to have sex with another man’s wife and then order the general of his army to position that man on the battle lines at such a place that he would be killed.  One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"  Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her…In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah.  In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die." (2 Samuel 11: 2-4, 14-15 NIV) It seems David had grown comfortable with what he had done…so comfortable that he had no qualms about marrying the woman after her husband died.  When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him.  After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the Lord. (2 Samuel 11:26-27 NIV)

This is critical to realize when it comes to the psychology of sin.  We can sin and sin egregiously and not even rattle our conscience.  There is a masking agent attached to many sins that can render the conscience impotent.  We have seen this often in our personal experiences; Christians and non-Christians alike not aware that what they have done was wrong.  We may think that they are just trying to cover up their sin by pretending they don’t see anything bad in their behavior but we would be wrong in many cases.  Like David, the sin itself has put the conscience to sleep in the matter.  The mechanism for this is beyond our discussion today but it is too ubiquitous a phenomenon to ignore.  In David’s case, he went nine months without being affected by the damage he had caused.  It was only after the prophet Nathan confronted him that David grasped the immensity of his evil acts.  “Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites...Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." (2 Samuel 12:9, 13 NIV)

Because sin damages our personality so severely and the habit of sin is so difficult to stop once it gains momentum, God chooses to intervene with those He loves.  He “disciplines” them, Hebrews 12 insists.  The word translated “discipline” means to train up, nurture, instruct, correct.  It is often used in conjunction with children; it is in many ways a family term.  In Christ, we are a part of His family and we are His children.  Because of the severity of David’s sin and the great damage it was causing among God’s people, the Lord disciplined the king ruthlessly.  He took David and Bathsheba’s son and promised David that other children of his would rise up against him in rebelllion.  That was a dreadful blow; a horrendous shot.  David prayed with weeping when the baby Bathsheba bore became deathly ill so we know it was terrible for David but God did not give in to David.  He took the child and later two of his adult children tried to wrench the kingdom from him.  The discipline of God was severe.

It takes faith to believe that a father or mother punishes you out of love.  You can’t just accept the discipline at face value as good…at least not when you are a child.  As adults or young adults, we too need faith to believe the harsh moments in our lives are part of God’s work with us done in love.  The one to one correspondence is almost never as neat and easily recognized as we saw with David.  You have adultery and murder in you.  I will take that out of you with this discipline.  Much of the time we cannot even figure out what we might have done wrong when God disciplines us.  God’s promise though is that the hard times never come because God hates us or because they just happen, always God is in charge of what we face and it is never because He despises us.  There is a second term the Lord uses in Hebrews 12: 6.  …the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son." (NIV)    The word translated “punishes” means to “scourge”.  It is discipline capitalized.  No one can describe this as easy or comfortable.  Remember, Jesus was “scourged”.  We realize that there are many parts of us that God must work on with severity and we may cry when we face what he gives us.  God’s goal though is not for here; it’s that later we will be rid of every ounce of sin and settled in holiness…perfect children of a perfect God.

Our goal is comfort.  We love to be able to relax and enjoy the ride.  God’s goal is holiness.  He loves to develop perfect people.  These two goals can be at loggerheads; butting up against each other like two mountain goats.  As He disciplines you, our Lord is proving your holiness; showing you and all those watching you what sort of person you are in Christ.  He is making you strong that your strength can be transferred to those not as strong as you, making you forgiving so that your forgiveness can be transferred to those not as forgiving as you, making you kind toward those who mistreat you so that your kindness can be transferred to those not as kind as you.  My father went through special training that he might protect those who would need his strength and help.  You are being trained by God that you might of great good for those He brings into your life.  If you are not trained to be patient, someone who needs your patience won’t have it when she needs it.  If you are not disciplined to be at peace with the storm, those who face the storm may not have enough peace to get past it.  The one who grieves finds great comfort in a friend who has grieved herself.  You are not your own.  You were made by God to be a perfect friend to each one you meet.  The storm you face is for them…not just for you.

Portal

The minute we decide we are incapable of keeping one of God's commands, we are cooked.   We have released ourselves to Satan to do with us however he wishes.   There only two options at every point of decision which has been outlined in Scripture; we are tools of Satan or friends of God.  The broad categories of acting in life are:  love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.  We weave in and out of these points of reference throughout the day.  Is this thought or action “loving God”?  Is what I am pondering or doing loving my neighbor as myself?  The more we live in Christ, the growing level of habit these two ways of being will become.  But at first, and perhaps at first for a very long time, we will have to process thoroughly what we do and think to see if we are fitting into the life of loving God and loving our neighbor.  Who has the mind or will for such a monumental project?  You do if you are in Christ.  When you are born again, the Lord joins Himself to you and the mind of Christ works within your mind so that together you can do whatever God has planned for you.  That of course does not mean we will!  We can shut down our Lord's mind by believing it does not matter what we do with ourselves.   We are then "the captain".  There is a terrible price to pay for that sort of determination.  All the wreckage of Satan's evil in the Garden becomes ours also to inflict upon the world.  It is no small thing to not love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind or to not love your neighbor as yourself.  Satan would love for you to think it is...that it really does not matter what you do right now.  The devil's lie through and through is that these moments of life are insignificant.  If they were, then God would just excuse Himself from the world time to time but He doesn't because at every instant He is bringing salvation into it.   Conversely, Satan is bringing damnation everywhere he can whenever he finds a moment available to him.   You are the portal through which either God or Satan enter a world full of desperate lives.   What you decide about loving God with all your heart soul and mind and loving your neighbor as yourself determines who it is that has sway in your specific place of influence.

Give attention to the entrance of the temple and all the exits of the sanctuary.   Ezekiel 44: 5b NIV

Secret Praying

Our Lord's admonition against public praying is full-on assault against mindlessness in being with God.  He wants us thinking and not with our mind upon those around us but upon Him.  The hypocrites are engaged in "prayerishness" but not actual praying.  When Jesus pushed for closet praying, He wasn't speaking of spaces and locations but the way of being that prayer people maintain.  He gave us structure to praying in the model prayer that provides a framework for what prayer is but not a closed in box for prayer.  If we are not praying with God at the center of what we are doing, without Him as the form of thinking we are taking, then we might as well just call ourselves pagans and be done with the exercise.  But if we have our mind on God, we come into fellowship with Him and actual transformation occurs in our praying.  No individual who met with God as God stayed the same.  Whether you consider Abraham, Moses or Peter, the work of God in each was tangible.  It is interesting that in His teaching on prayer, Jesus immediately moves into forgiveness.  Why is that?  Is this just a jumble of sayings thrown together without cohesive thought given to them or is there a connection Christ makes between prayer and forgiveness?  It seems that the natural outcome of praying is that we change...sometimes in big ways and other times in nearly imperceptible increments.  If we meet with God though, we will become different and here He gives as an example of this forgiveness.  You cannot remain attached to God as a praying person and hold a grudge against someone else.  It is reflexive.  Prayer results in a change of direction in some way, whether it is in how we judge others, the generosity of our heart, the developing loss of attachment to money and possessions, an internal integrity that defies dishonesty or a genuine love for enemies.  Prayer is not an exercise in religious development, it is an astounding union between God and His people; the outcome is building holiness grounded in humility.  The beauty of prayer is that it can be done at any moment of every single day and the bridge into the mind of our Lord is open whenever we choose to meet with Him.  The room of Matthew 6: 6 is symbolic of the determination to be with God and not let our world encroach upon that relationship.  Our God is jealous for our attention and rightfully so.  He knows just what is possible when we turn our minds to Him in prayer.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…      Matthew 6: 9b  NIV

Just a Minute

The Lord has called for heaven and earth to testify that He loves you.  You are the lover He thinks about continually, the joy of His heart.  There is nothing that can stand between you and no one can distract Him from you.  The universe is too small to keep you from Him and the curse in history will never close off His thoughts of you.  It is insurmountable this desire our Savior has for you; it is unbreachable the wall of affection He has put around you.   Pause for a moment and let Christ come to you.  Give Him time to hold you and kiss you.  There is a small voice whispering in your ear encouragement and hope.  It is a trickle it seems, a tiny little stream of affection because the hardness of your life has swept you away from the bank and so all you see is the bit of His love that you let get past your hurt and your complicated troubles.  But like the deer that comes carefully to the waters, come also.  Come with your cares, come with your trials, come with the sin you still hold, come with the empty places, come with the broken places, come with the lonely places.  Come and behold God.  Wait in His presence.  Be with Him.  The shadows may haunt you.  The losses may confuse you.  The clutter of a million desires may entangle you.  But come.  Come to your Savior.  Come to the One who watches for you; whose mind is upon you.  Come and stay for a moment.  Take your time and rest with Him just a bit longer.  You are busy and what you have to do is important but give Him just a little more of you.  Let Him be near you.  Don't run away so quickly.  There is too much love in Him to bear it all alone.  He must give you as much as you will take for as long as you let Him.  The pause is for you and Him...for you to receive His love and for Him to give it.   It is crazy to think that Jesus wants to be with you even more than you want to be with Him.  It is an ache for both of you.  Just wait a minute…

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;       Psalm 37:7a NIV

Conversion of the Mind

Matthew 7:1 NIV

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged.

Are You Opinionated?

It is one of the most natural of all human behaviors, judging others.  We may not let people in on what we are thinking but we are constantly critiquing and evaluating.  We make determinations regarding the lectures of our professors, the performance of our servers at restaurants, the job done by our hair stylists and the conversational skills of those we meet at parties.  We judge the effort given by our co-workers, the intelligence of our doctors, the creativity of our friends on Facebook and the friendliness of the clerks at supermarkets.  We give everyone we meet a quick evaluation…how well they have dressed, how they smell and how they look.  Often we pride ourselves on how accurately we assess others…their honesty, skill levels and worthiness of our time and friendship.  Fans who have never played above fourth grade baseball somehow know more about baseball than major league managers and millions watching football on TV believe they would not have thrown the “stupid” interception or made the bad pass the point guard made because they are smarter than the players they are watching.

A part of being human is the capacity to judge the skill and effort of others as well as ourselves.  Adam, even before he sinned, was given the task of naming all the animals based on his evaluation of them.  We see in the Bible a number of examples of judging, evaluating and assessing the motives and decision making of friends and co-workers.  King Saul famously decided that young David, his general, was a risk to Saul’s throne and that David’s popularity among the people of Israel might go to David’s head.  Saul came to the conclusion that David was greedy for power and could not be trusted so he tried to kill him.  Was Saul right in his determination?  Did Saul see something in David that warranted his concern?  Perhaps there was a smirk on David’s face when the women of Jerusalem sang about his exploits in front of King Saul.  Maybe David was not as respectful in the way he addressed Saul as Saul thought he should have been.  Whatever evidence Saul had though for judging David disloyal and a traitor, the King later realized it was not sufficient to warrant his mistrust.  He later admitted to David, "You are more righteous than I," he said. "You have treated me well, but I have treated you badly.”(1 Samuel 24:17 NIV)

One of the problems with judging others is that we may be dead wrong in our evaluations and a friendship or alliance that could have been wonderful and beneficial might be lost.  Family relationships can be destroyed by our judging.  Absalom, one of David’s sons became enraged when his half-brother Amnon raped his full-sister Tamar.  Their father David didn’t do anything about the crime though despite being king and having the power to punish Amnon any way he wished.  After three years, Absalom gained his vengeance on Amnon and had him murdered.  This did not settle the account fully though in Absalom’s mind.  He decided that David was wrong in this for not taking up the cause of his sister and thus not competent enough to be king, that he was an unfair and unjust ruler.  He began to gather evidence that David was not just in his other dealings.  Absalom interviewed men and their families as they entered Jerusalem on visits and asked them what they thought about the justice in the land with David as king.  “Did he treat everyone fairly?”  “Did David play favorites, only advancing the careers of those from Judah but disregarding the needs of those from other parts of Israel?

For four years Absalom criticized his father’s fairness as king.  He would get up early and stand by the side of the road leading to the city gate. Whenever anyone came with a complaint to be placed before the king for a decision, Absalom would call out to him, "What town are you from?" He would answer, "Your servant is from one of the tribes of Israel."  Then Absalom would say to him, "Look, your claims are valid and proper, but there is no representative of the king to hear you." And Absalom would add, "If only I were appointed judge in the land! Then everyone who has a complaint or case could come to me and I would see that he gets justice." Also, whenever anyone approached him to bow down before him, Absalom would reach out his hand, take hold of him and kiss him.  Absalom behaved in this way toward all the Israelites who came to the king asking for justice, and so he stole the hearts of the men of Israel. (2 Samuel 15:2-6 NIV)  With Absalom, the judgmental attitude toward his father festered into hatred that careened out of control.  Not every critical thought morphs into disgust and loathing. Some just fade to ambivalence and disinterest.  However, never does a critical and judgmental thought disappear from the mind.  It always leaves its mark; always damages in some way our personality.

Two of the Disciples, James and John, responded with rage to the lack of interest in Jesus and His ministry shown by the leaders of a Samaritan village and they made a rather troubling request of Him.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?"  But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village.  (Luke 9:54-56 NIV)  This was an extreme reaction to a mundane occurrence.  It is not like these people were ripping into Jesus or wanting to stone Him to death.  They just weren’t interested in hearing Him because He was going to Jerusalem.  Was this the only collection of people who had some sort of reason for turning aside from Christ?  Of course not!  But James and John for some reason believed they were far worse than all the other critics and skeptics of Jesus.  Our Lord rebuked them for their judgmental response to the Samaritans.  We can be certain that there was a much bigger concern of James and John than that these poor villagers didn’t want Jesus lecturing them about religion.  Perhaps racism was at the root of their criticism…perhaps it was their nationalism rearing its head in them…they were not happy that the Samaritans had a bad opinion of Jerusalem.  Whatever the case nearly every time we become judgmental, there is something behind our criticism that fuels it.  Something that runs much deeper than our sense of fashion, political beliefs or loyalty to God!

Jesus’ command during His Sermon on the Mount is unequivocal.  We must not judge others!  "Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” (Matthew 7: 1 NIV)  Luke quotes Jesus almost exactly the same way.  "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.” (Luke 6:37 NIV) This is an astounding demand of God.  We all are so good at judging others.  Not only that, our criticism is always warranted or so we think.  Yet it seems that our Lord does not care how smart we believe we are or how wise we decide our evaluations, we are not to judge others critically.  Of course this is not saying judgments are never to be made.  Those in places of authority are directed by God to make judgments when the law is broken.  Murder, vandalism, theft; God puts it in the hands of those in authority to judge crimes and determine guilt or innocence.  God has established Law as a protection for us from the evil in people’s hearts.  Jesus is not dealing with authority judgement in these passages.  He is commanding against personal judgment.

Let us be clear about this.  There is never a time when a Christian, who is not in a position of authority under the law or as a part of his or her occupation, is given permission to judge the character, motives or actions of another person, whether that person is Christian or non-Christian, in this life.  To do so puts us in direct opposition to God and His mercy.  If you or I judge someone, the Lord will judge us and we would be hard-pressed to find an instance where God’s judgment was pleasant.  Yet our Lord has made us judging people, with critical minds and discerning hearts.  Why is it that, if we are not to use those skills unless we are circuit judges, we have the instantaneous judging mechanism up and running all the time?

Our mind is wired this way by God that we might be skillful at prayer, quickly seeing what we need to bring to God and able to join with the Lord in what He shows us.  If you see an area of weakness in someone or a moral flaw, you take that to God as soon as you become aware of it.  Your professor is giving a boring lecture, pray for God to help her.  A friend has been gossiping about you, bring it to the Lord for Him to fix.  Your parent prepared something for dinner that is not very good, pray for God to help your parent do better.  A hotel clerk is snappy with you and it is irritating, rather than snap back at her or talk about her rude behavior with your wife or co-worker, bring her to the Lord for healing.  One of your relatives clearly doesn’t like you and treats you disrespectfully and you want to “tell her off.”  You cannot.  You must talk only with God about her and ask the Lord to change her ways.  The person of any use to God is the one who prays.  God’s way for us to help people is by letting Christ work through us and He will never do so if we judge them or criticize them.  Have we ever helped anyone with our criticism?  We probably have often hurt them with our criticism, but helped them…most likely not!   We can be certain we have never hurt anyone with our prayers, but we have most assuredly helped every one of those we have prayed for God to come alongside and build into perfection!  Greatness in our Lord’s Kingdom is never determined by our ability to see the faults in others but by our faithfulness to pray for each person God brings our way.