The Fullness of You...Smelling

Genesis 8:20-21

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

How Do You Smell?

Smell has the unique ability to serve as a trigger within the heart.  It registers deeply within us and locates memories long forgotten or buried and drags them to the conscious mind.  The sudden whiff of a pot roast, coffee, a gardenia or a type of perfume can take us back to when we were young.  Scent is important to our relationship with God.  Smell and the use of odors were key parts of how the Israelites were to worship the Lord.  From the use of prescribed concoctions of incense in the Temple to the burning of sheep and goats on the altars, the smell of sacrifices pleased God.  As noted above, God was happy to smell the burnt sacrifices Noah offered following the flood.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man… (Genesis 8: 21a NIV)  The Temple, which was the central location for worship in Israel, at least in the beginning, produced a flood of smells that overwhelmed the nostrils.  The odors of blood, cinnamon, cooking meat, salt and smoking fire pits nearly took one’s breath away.  When Solomon dedicated the Temple, the smoke from cooking sacrifices and burning incense was so thick you could barely see.  Imagine the overworking of salivary glands as one entered into the Temple grounds and the odor of barbecuing beef and mutton reached you.

We find in the Scripture that all the smells of the Temple were to establish in the hearts of God’s people something of critical importance to God.  In Psalm 141:2 we get a hint of what God was doing through all the sacrifices and incense burning.  May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice. (NIV)  The connection between all those smells and God’s people praying was intentionally created by the Lord.  In the book of Revelation the link between the two is spelled out for us.  Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.  He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.  And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (Revelation 5:6-8 NIV) Then later in Revelation 8: 4 this is reiterated.  The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel's hand. (NIV)

If you went into the Temple, whether just the outer courts or deeper into its center, there were to be two senses that captivated you: sight with the simple beauty of the gold and woodwork and smell with the all the smoke and cooking.  The gold was to remind everyone of the majesty of God but the smells were to stir up within all who came to the Temple the call to prayer.  In speaking of the work God would soon do in bringing non-Jews into His Kingdom, Isaiah the prophet announced, “…these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.  Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations." (Isaiah 56:7 NIV)  The smell of the burnt offerings coalesced with the prayers of the people producing a sweet perfume for God.  The house of incense and cooking meat was to be God’s house of prayer and not just for Jews but for all humanity who came to Him.  Jesus’ fury was directed toward those who destroyed that plan.  Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.  "It is written," he said to them, "'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers.'" (Matthew 21:12-13 NIV)

What we discover as we turn to the New Testament again is that just as the odor of the incense and the cooking sacrifices represented the prayers of the people and were to be a continual call to prayer, so too we find out that the Temple itself was a representation of something greater than wood and stone.  One of the most misapplied verses in the entire Bible is Paul’s admonition in 2 Corinthians.  Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NIV)  The Temple built in Jerusalem was a foreshadowing of what God would do with all people who came to Him in faith.  They were going to be “houses of prayer”.  Every last one of us are built by God to be a prayer center.  When prayers are not emanating from us like the smell of incense rising into the wind, then we wreck the sanctuary of our lives.  If Christ could beat out the money changers and vendors from the Temple for taking apart the prayer of the place, how much more so does our Lord demand that as the Temple of the Holy Spirit we are to be centers of prayer!

Consider just a couple of examples to make clear how important our praying is to God.  When the ancient king Abimelech mistakenly took Abraham’s wife Sarah into his harem because Abraham had told the king that Sarah was his sister, God’s wrath broke out against Abimelech and his subjects.  The Lord warned Abimelech in a dream that He was about to kill him for taking Sarah from Abraham.  But, God gave Abimelech a chance at life.  “Now return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all yours will die." (Genesis 20:7 NIV)  God would wait on deciding Abimelech’s fate until he heard from Abraham in prayer.  Consider the high place of prayer and its exalted status.  The prayer of one man would decide the fate of another.

We see a similar situation in Job.  Job’s friends who were critical of Job and accused him of terrible sinning also found themselves under the wrath of God.  "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7 NIV)   But the Lord was willing to be merciful, depending on how Job responded. “My servant Job will pray for you and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.” (Job 42:8b NIV)  If Job prayed for his friends, the Lord would be merciful to them.  Ponder how great a responsibility that is!  One person’s praying determined how God would act.

We have in James 5: 16 the sort of odor we are to produce in this world.  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.  Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.  Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. (James 5:16-18 NIV)  If you are not obsessed with praying for others, then you have no idea who you are in Christ and what He wants you to be.  As the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Lord is a part of your personality and He operates in you and through you.  The more aware you are of God, the more He will pray through you and your prayers will become His prayers.  You are not a righteous person because of what you are on your own.  Your righteousness is the righteousness of Christ which comes to your through Christ crucified and resurrected.  Therefore, the effectiveness of your praying is not dependent upon you but upon God living in you and through you.  You make yourself a sweet odor to God and to all around you by offering prayers to God for every person God brings to your mind night and day.  The smell that God loves above all is the praying of His people and like Job and Abraham, you can change the course of history by praying. 

You Are Not Alone In This

The world is in desperate need of holy people.  It doesn't need any more sanctimonious prigs who make the world bristle at their rigid opinions.  Genuinely holy people who uphold righteousness in their personal affairs, who laugh joyously in trying times, who have confidence that God will see them through any painful circumstance, who hold the hands of the broken-hearted and forgive with genuine love and humility are the pivot upon which all radical movements of God turn.  When Elijah complained that he was the only faithful servant of God left, he did not realize how many others were walking along the same path he was.   You are not alone in your longing to have Christ built into every part of your day.  Others also want the Savior flowing out of them in contagious ways.  There is a growing desire to be truly good and the only way that is possible is if our Lord is living within us and His holiness is entering every nook and cranny of our hearts.  There are deep hidden places where we have resisted God and settled for a form of Christianity our Lord never intended when He saved us.  We have habits we have not let the Holy Spirit touch; memories we have kept in gilded cages so that the Savior cannot approach them.  Today, with your hands stretched to the heavens, surrender your life to God and give Him permission to invade every part of you and put His crucified life at work wherever He sees a need for redemption.  The atonement had one purpose, to make you so completely God's that it becomes nearly impossible to see where you end and the Lord begins.   Holiness is not what you do; it is who you are.  When you are made right with Christ, everything you do will become the fragrance of God in a world looking for evidence our Savior really does make a difference in those who join with Him!

Then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets. 1 Kings 18:22 NIV

The Fullness of You... Tasting God

Psalm 34:8 NIV

Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

How Does God Taste To You?

There are five different forms of taste.  The first is the ability to taste sweets and is associated with identifying simple carbohydrates.  The second is a recently discovered taste sense called Umami and is connected to savory foods produced by amino acids and small peptides.  Tomatoes, soy sauce, meat broths and fermented products are recognized by this taste type.  The salty taste receptors pick up on sodium and other ions.  Taste buds connected with sour notice acids and bitter taste receptors cue us in on potential toxins such as those in plant alkaloids.  How important do you think the ability to taste is?  Is its greatest benefit the pleasure it brings or its ability to help protect you from foods and drinks you should not be taking into your body?  Taste even helps you digest your food properly as it prepares the body to receive what you put into it. There is research that indicates that those who lose the ability to taste are less likely to eat and more likely to suffer from malnutrition.  Medications that have the side effect of taking away some of your ability to taste may also limit your recovery by diminishing the desire you have to fuel the body.  Have you ever thought of “taste” as important when it comes to your relationship to God?  It is and we will take a look at this today.

Perhaps the most famous verse found in the Bible on taste is Psalm 34: 8.  Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. (NIV)  It is odd to think of tasting the goodness of the Lord.  What does that mean?  Quoting this verse, the Apostle Peter notes the great value of living a holy and good life.  Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.  Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. (1 Peter 2:1-2 NIV)  If you accept these two verses as indications that taste is somehow related to our experience of God, then perhaps you could spend a bit of time considering how that is so.

There are at least three different ways taste impacts us.  The first is that it allows us to evaluate what we take into ourselves before we do so.  There are questions we may have with regard to God.  Is He good enough?  Can I count on Him?  Do I matter to Him?  How will He change my life if I invite Him to be a part of it?  The Hebrew people had questions like this when Moses came to them with a stunning proposition.  He told them that God had met him in the desert and the Lord was going to take the entire nation of Israel out of its Egyptian captivity.  At first the leaders were happy to hear of this; especially when Moses performed miracles that the Lord enabled.  And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped. (Exodus 4:31 NIV)  Encouraged by the response of the Israelites Moses and his brother Aaron immediately left to meet with the king.  Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: 'Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert.'" (Exodus 5:1 NIV) Unfortunately, the King of Egypt was not too receptive to Moses’s presentation and did not care what Moses’s God had to say.  He made it worse on the Israelites after Moses made his request or demand.   That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people:  "You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw.  But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don't reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, 'Let us go and sacrifice to our God.'  Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies." (Exodus 5:6-9 NIV)

The Israelites weren’t anti-God after their lives were made more miserable; they just were not ready to trust Him to get them out of Egypt.  They had a taste of God and He left a bitter taste in their mouths.  After the Lord sent the ten plagues however, He tasted much sweeter and they found Him worth following.  What do we do though if we cannot see anything supernatural in our lives yet?  How does God taste when we are struggling with depression or difficult circumstances?  Sometimes we take too small of a sample and don’t give God enough time to reveal His kindness and mercy.  A second taste of God could make things much clearer for us.

Taste can also tell you what your body needs.  Pregnant women are known for having strange cravings and many believe that the taste for certain foods is a way the body tells them of their nutritional needs.  Athletes have reported the same discovery.  When you taste of the Lord you might discover that what you thought was important to you isn’t or might even be harmful.  In speaking of the Israelites and their reaction to being in the desert, the Psalmist had this to say about them after they had been freed of their slavery and their enemies destroyed.  He (the Lord) saved them from the hand of the foe; from the hand of the enemy he redeemed them. The waters covered their adversaries; not one of them survived. Then they believed his promises and sang his praise.  But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his counsel.  In the desert they gave in to their craving; in the wasteland they put God to the test. (Psalm 106:10-14 NIV)

How many in the church mistake their cravings for their needs?  It is the great trap of Satan to confuse our minds and create within us disappointment with God because He won’t give in to our cravings when they don’t meet our needs.  Our Lord’s work with us is defined and unyielding.  He is making us fit for heaven.  If you are God’s and you belong to Him through our Lord’s work on the Cross, then He will not budge on this.  God will give you enough people who don’t like you, who treat you badly, to work in you love for enemies.  He will give you enough hardship and difficulty until you are grateful for the smallest blessing and satisfied with the most insignificant of gifts.  Trials will come from God that will challenge your faith so that you learn to trust Him uncompromisingly.  The Holy Spirit will take your childish lust for entertainment and bore you to tears with what once garnered your rapt attention.  Just look at your circumstances carefully and you will quickly discover what God thinks you need to be prepared for heaven.  As long as our joy is based on what we have rather than being connected to Christ in trust and love, our Lord will eliminate our sources of happiness that don’t lead us to Him or that make us selfish or self-absorbed.

If that sounds discouraging to you, then consider one more benefit of taste.  Taste can create an insatiable desire for more.  How many of us have kept eating because of the taste of our food rather than our need for it!  This may lead to unhealthy weight gain but spiritually this is a gift we must treasure.  The Psalmist describes this aspect of taste perfectly.  As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? (Psalm 42:1-2 NIV)  How often do we find Christians in this state?  It comes only through the supernatural working of God!  There are moments when our interest in Christ becomes like an explosion of light.  We are mesmerized by Him; captivated by Him.  There is an example of this that illustrates the progression of desire for God.  In Acts 5 is the account of the arrest of the Apostles by the Jewish authorities for preaching Christ at the Temple.  When commanded by the Sanhedrin to stop teaching publically about Christ, Peter spoke for all of the Apostles, responding, "We must obey God rather than men!” (Acts 5:29 NIV)  In simple obedience the Apostles refused to back down to the threats of the Sanhedrin.  But then they were flogged which was a horrific beating, a brutally sadistic beating and afterward we are told the Apostles rejoiced.  They were genuinely happy.  How could this have been?  During that space in time, their soul panted for God and nothing could keep them from that rapt attention to Him.

In moments that are so private and unpretentious we may not believe they have occurred, God comes to us in the midst of some ordinary, mundane and even boring time when we have perhaps decided Christianity is as dull as a pile of gravel.  The Lord will catch you up in His arms and you will be enveloped by the goodness of God and His love for you.  He will flood your mind and you will be brought to a state of joy that Satan is unable to mimic.  You cannot and will never plan these moments with God.  All you can do is keep your heart so ready and so pure that when He comes upon you, nothing will hinder the supernatural pleasure you will have being with Him.  Taste and see that the Lord is good…

Will-ingly

You have the opportunity to be crucified with Christ but no one can force you into this.    It requires an act of the will and the will is never taken from you by force.  Just as the spirit is unsinkable and eternal so is the will.  The will can be broken and it can be corrupted but it will never be stripped from you.  Satan can touch your will but only as it continues to be yours.  You can surrender your will but that is solely your determination.  One can be born again yet fiercely cling to the will and not let go of it.  The Holy Scripture is God's plumb line for evaluating the identity of the possessor of the will.  If I keep my will, then the Bible will be a stern taskmaster that confronts me at every turn.  I will fight over who I should forgive, how often I will let my cheek be struck by good and bad people stew over what I give away and the degree to which I will pray about everything with the consequence of fretting about nothing.  If I am crucified with Christ, then my will is in His possession and His to defend and honor.   It makes no difference to the one whose will is God's if he lives in poverty or riches, is recognized for his accomplishments or not, has made something of his life or lost the opportunity that was at hand.  The will that has been turned over to Christ cannot fret over tomorrow because it has no power over him.  What does tomorrow matter to the one who given over the will to the one controlling tomorrow.  The last bastion of idolatry is the will.  Jesus was able to steadfastly go to Jerusalem where a cross awaited Him because He settled the matter of the will…"not my will but your will be done."  All internal strife, depression and bitterness can be crucified at the point the will becomes the possession of Christ's and is not taken back from Him.

For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.    John 6:38 NIV

The Fullness of You Hearing God

Isaiah 28:23 NIV

Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say.

Why Don’t You Hear From God?

Perhaps you have had an experience like me.  I was in Russia and had gone into a

department store.  I was just exploring because I wasn’t sure what they had and I was always on the hunt for inexpensive souvenirs to bring home.  Causally I went down one aisle after another mindlessly glancing about.  I noticed there were about six store employees and I was only one of two customers in the store.  Suddenly it dawned on me that every single employee was watching what I was doing.  They were not just watching me, they were staring at me and some were following me as I left one aisle and went to another.  I began to smile inside myself.  Did they really think I was going to shoplift?  I said something to one of the clerks. joking about my intentions, but she only stared at me like I was an American spy trying to infiltrate their secret weapon system.  I did not understand Russian and the clerks did not know any English.  A great barrier stood between us of culture and language.  How could I get through to them that I was not going to take any of their toys or kitchen supplies…that I would pay for what I wanted?  I was baffled.

What if we have a similar relationship with God?  What if there are many times through the day when God is talking to us but we either aren’t paying attention or unable to grasp what He has said?  Would our lives improve if we did hear from God; did comprehend what He was communicating to us?  Is there a possibility that there is a vast number of ways God is trying to get through to us but we are missing it?  Some of us have had the experience of trying to understand what someone speaking another language was saying and being flummoxed in our efforts.  Hand signals and motioning just hasn’t worked.  Could that be happening between us and God?

I had a recent experience that caught my attention.  I went to a local church facility that is known for opening its doors for people to pray during the day and evening Tuesday-Friday.  Most of the time in the sanctuary they have live streaming worship from a sister congregation in Kansas City that has prayer and worship taking place 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Other times they have someone in their own sanctuary playing the keyboards and singing.  Every once in a while a person from their congregation reads Scripture out loud for a full hour.  What the Bible passages will be aren’t posted in advance and it varies from reader to reader what will be read without a particular order it seems.  I never know what will be happening when I arrive because I don’t know the schedule.  I came a little early before the building was opened and read my regularly scheduled Bible reading for the day.  I was in the Proverbs and read chapters 19-20 before entering the sanctuary.  When I got in I saw that someone was reading the Bible and I soon realized he was reading from Proverbs.  Not only that, he was in Proverbs 21, the very next chapter after what I had just finished reading in the car.  How could that be?  How could such a coincidence have occurred?  As I sat and listened and prayed, I wondered if God was trying to communicate with me, and if so, what was He saying.

In Isaiah 28, God makes it clear that He intends for us to hear what He has to say.  Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say. (NIV)  Through the prophet Isaiah, God makes this promise to us, The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. (Isaiah 58:11 NIV)  Perhaps the boldest statement in Scripture of our Lord’s determination to speak to us and show us the way as we go about our business is also found in the book of Isaiah.  Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." (Isaiah 30:21 NIV)  But how is this possible?  What is the way God does this?  The Holy Spirit, who our Lord puts in us, somehow gets through to us, if we are available to Him, what He wants us to hear.  But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.  (John 16:13 NIV)  If we want to hear God speak to us, He will through the Holy Spirit.

There is evidence in God’s word that we can shut down communication between ourselves and God.  King Saul is a classic example of this.  After Saul on two occasions openly disobeyed God, the Lord stopped communicating with him.  Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. (1 Samuel 16:14 NIV)  For a time this did not bother Saul as he found ways of coping without God guiding him but when a monstrous Philistine army came to attack him and his army, the craving for God to lead him reached a crescendo.  When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart.  He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. (1 Samuel 28:5-6 NIV)  Although he himself had forced all witches and mediums to go into hiding because of his pogrom against them, Saul in his desperation, tried to find a witch to raise the prophet Samuel from the dead hoping that God might speak through Samuel.  Saul then said to his attendants, "Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her." (1 Samuel 28:7 NIV)  Saul is not alone in his desperation to hear what God might say to him.  But sadly, there can be reasons for why we miss out on God speaking to us.

The most obvious is disobedience.  If you don’t do what the Lord tells you to do, God may wait for you to change your mind.  There cannot be two masters in one life.  Either the Lord is or we are.  If we are, then God will give us room to find out what that is like.  In Saul’s case, the Lord let Satan attack him so that he could feel just how weak and defenseless he was without God.  A warning from God’s word must be taken seriously.  "But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me.  So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.” (Psalm 81:11-12 NIV)  If we want to take control of our lives, then God will let us but He will back away and and give us the opportunity to see what it is like living without Him.  We may not even know God has done this for a while because it can be comfortable without having the Lord directing us.  But then a crisis hits and like Saul we look for God to guide us.  It is then that His silence can be terrible.

Another hindrance to hearing from God is having a cluttered mind.  If we are thinking about everything but God, how can we be ready when He enters our thoughts?  We can’t because we are distracted.  Like the virgins who did not bring oil to the wedding feast and were kicked out of the building, we must not be lackadaisical about the opportunity to hear from God.  Paul talks about the cluttered mind in his letter to the Corinthians.  Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly — mere infants in Christ.  I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.  You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? (1 Corinthians 3:1-4 NIV) God’s Spirit speaks to us so quietly that only those whose minds are on God can hear.  Any bit of sinful thinking, any sort of greed or hatred or lust or doubt can quench His voice in us.  Paul the Apostle says that if we want to know God’s will for us, we must not ever conform to the ways of the world; whether it is in regard to entertainment, habitual behaviors, use of our money or how we react to the people God brings us.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.  (Romans 12:2 NIV)

There is one more hindrance to hearing God speak and that is the age old problem of a lack of faith.  In Hebrews we discover, And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6 NIV)  God will speak to us in the Bible in general ways if we do not have much faith in Him and the truth is that even this form of communication will sound like gibberish to those without faith in Christ.  But, if we want to understand what God is saying to us as we drive, when at work as we are with our children or while shopping, we must have faith He will guide us and direct us.  There is no work around when it comes to faith.  Either we believe God is talking to us in a still whisper or we don’t and if we don’t think we can hear from Him, we won’t hear from Him.

So how can we begin to hear from God as we go through our days?  We must practice gratitude.  Do not let a moment pass when you are not thankful for what you have and how God is working in your life.  Do whatever God tells you to do.  Act in faith.  Believe it was the Lord who directed you and trust Him to correct you if you were wrong.  Scripture is your protection.  God will never oppose the Bible with what He tells you.  Keep your mind on God at all times.  Make Ephesians 6: 18 the standard of how you live each day.  And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.  (Ephesians 6:18 NIV)  God will not bother talking with you if you are distracted.  If you are thinking about God and you are on the edge of your seat anticipating His guidance, you will find our Lord will reward your faith by leading you through whatever difficulty, perplexing situation or relationship issue you face.  Keep your mind on God and He will come near to you with His strength, peace and guidance.

Unharried

The average modern Christian lives chaotically.  She goes from one activity to another, accomplishing countless chores and feeling the weight of ten thousand demands without a shred of the peace and contentment Jesus possessed as He went about His Father's business.  Jesus did not separate what He did from what His Father was doing through Him.  The reason is that He refused to disengage Himself from the Father relationally or psychologically.  It was not theological fluff when Christ said that He and the Father were one.  Our Lord worked at this oneness and developed it so that it was habitual.  His times on the mountain established the oneness but so did His turning inward to the Father as He ate, talked with the disciples and the Pharisees, sat on the well in a Samaritan village and strolled along the edge of the lake.  He kept His mind aligned with the Father wherever He was and refused to let the lusts of the world disrupt that connection.  There are two temptations of Satan that knock us off our block.  We want what isn't ours and we don't want what God bestows.  The struggle in our head is a violent one.  Do we believe that our Lord loves us absolutely and that His will for us is perfect and good?  When we question those two axioms of scripture we lose our bearing with God and strike out on our own.  At that point we begin to operate as the Israelites in the time of the Judges, "everyone did as he saw fit."  If you want the peace that "passes understanding", then you must doggedly remain aligned with the same God who provides that peace.  Stay attached to the Lord at every level and at all costs.  Habitually thank the Lord for what you have and what you encounter at the moment, whether it seems good or bad to you.  The gratitude of the saint is her greatest defense against depression, anxiety and conflict.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.     Colossians 3:15 NIV

Heightened Faith

There are times when our faith becomes flat and unimaginative.  We lose our sense of childishness with God.  It is odd to consider just how wide the age gap is between ourselves and the Lord and how little we know about anything compared to Him.  The silliness of our complaints and the pretentiousness of our insights would be irritating to Him if He were not God in every way.  Nothing speaks more of the   grace of our Lord's love than His response to the preening pride humanity brings to the relationship.   Like a child who screams at his mom for not letting him play with the rattlesnake on the trail, we convince ourselves we know more than the creator of the universe.  Rather than happily playing in the front yard, we sulk in the back because we have chores to do.  Faith in God brings back the joy of our childhood.  With wide-eyed enthusiasm, every experience had a touch of heaven built in it.  We loved beetles and mud puddles and hikes to the "top of the mountain" and puzzles and helping take out the trash.  Every step outside is an adventure; every trip to the store a journey.  Faith opens for us a freshness to life; a laser sharp attention to all the joy that can be found in it.  If we know that God will put our children back together and open a way out of our financial distress and take us through the loss that has devastated us, we can relax and look for the good God is working out for us.  Faith for Abraham included all the dreams he had of playing with his son as he watched his eighty-five year old barren wife start dinner.  Faith gave David as he fled from Saul's army time to day dream about the party that would be thrown when he was crowned king.  Faith brought a grin to Moses' face as he contemplated the celebration that would occur when all of Israel crossed over into the Promised Land.  It is impossible to taste the sweetness of the plum in my hand when I am fretting about the meal for tomorrow.  Faith, not success or even healing is the gateway to joy.  An entire universe of happiness is available if you would believe God will take care of you and guide you through the rough waters that have made your boat ride more adventurous than you planned.

Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith.   You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal.   Isaiah 26:2-4 NIV

The Fullness of You

Judges 20:27 NIV

And the Israelites inquired of the Lord.

Do You Hear From God?

We all communicate or try to communicate when we have relationships.  We use a wide range of methods; some are effective and others aren’t so successful.  We use touch to communicate our love or our anger, perfumes and colognes to attract attention so that we are noticed.  Clothing communicates as does the way we look at someone with our eyes.  We smile, frown, fold our arms, tap our fingers and grimace to get a point across.  Our expressions say something.  Sometimes we don’t even realize what our faces are saying to others.  A compliment, word of encouragement and criticism all are parts of communication.  Sometimes we communicate a point by being late or early, by pausing before answering or by blurting out a reply.  We are constantly communicating, sometimes even by keeping our door closed or staying in the car.  Communication is a universal part of our lives.

We are not all masters at communication; sometimes we misread the message being given us and other times we don’t realize that we are saying something unintended.  There is in the Christian community and even outside of it a level of frustration when it comes to communicating with God.  Many would like to communicate with Him but it doesn’t seem possible.  Perhaps you have been disappointed with how communication has gone for you in your relationship with God.  You have tried but either you don’t feel like God gets through to you or you don’t get through to God.  Today, we are going to look at that vital part of life, communicating with God.

When we read the second and third chapters of the book of Genesis, we get a clear picture of the psychology of sin with regard to the relationship between God and His people.  Before Adam rebelled against God, communication between them was comfortable and relaxed.  God met with Adam, gave him the responsibility of naming all the livestock, beasts of the field and birds and waited to hear what names he gave them as the Lord herded the creatures past them.  He made Eve and together they all lived as friends.  When Adam rejected God’s command to not eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, communication between them was shattered.  Adam and Eve hid from God and even though they heard the Lord moving about in the Garden of Eden, they tried to keep from being seen.  It was God who broke the silence between them.  He called out to Adam and Eve, “Where are you?”

Sin clearly wrecked the lives of Adam and Eve.  Death became their end rather than life.  It also demolished the desire of the two to meet with God and hear from Him.  We cannot overstate this.  Sin shot clear through the desire of people to be in communication with God, warped their view of God and put them at odds with Him.  God came to Adam and Eve with the very same level of affection and love but Adam and Eve due to the damage to their personalities were not able to accept it.  Adam’s reaction to God tells us all we need to know about what Sin did to him.  “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”  (Genesis 3: 10 NIV) 

God stayed the same.  He continued to be available to Adam and Eve.  It was Adam and Eve who closed the door on God.  Bombard every human with ten thousand times ten thousand the amount of sin Adam and Eve had within them while they were still in the Garden and you can easily see how huge our problem is when it comes to communicating with God.  Our door is shut pretty tight.  We almost never make our minds available to God and it takes a miracle for us to hear from Him.  The problem is not with God.  It is with us.

There are only a few people in the Old Testament who seem to be really determined to hear from God.  One would be David in his early years.  The expression, “hunger is the best sauce” seems to apply to our discussion.  When David was desperate he immediately turned to God for guidance.  The Lord gave the people of Israel the Ephod to help them hear from Him.  It was the High Priest’s responsibility to use it on behalf of the people.  In the Ephod were the Urim and Thummim which were used to answer “yes-no” questions.  They looked like dice and were tossed to get answers from God.  In 1 Samuel 23: 9, David called the priest to him and asked to use the Ephod to find out if the people of the town where he and his men were camping would protect him if King Saul and his army came to get him.  He wanted God to speak to him about the danger he faced.  When the Lord through the Ephod told David that the people of Keilah would not protect him, David fled.

This happened again and again with David.  He faced a crisis and got the priest to use the Ephod to discover what God said he should do.  He asked God whether he should pursue an army of Amalekites who had taken his wives and the wives and children of the soldiers of his little brigade captive while they were away.  (1 Samuel 30: 7)  When he wanted to know if the people of Judah would embrace him as their new king after Saul died, he consulted God with the Ephod.  (2 Samuel 2: 1)  Facing a vast army of Philistines and being greatly outnumbered, David wanted to know from God if he should attack the invading army and so he had the Ephod brought to him to see what God said.  David believed God would tell him what to do if he asked.  When there were life and death sorts of decisions to make, David took time to find out what God said he ought to do.  It is fascinating that as David solidified his hold on the country as king and foreign powers stopped being a threat to him, we no longer see David seeking out the Lord for guidance.  He certainly didn’t look to God for direction when he thought about sleeping with the married Bathsheba and later when in his pride, he considered numbering all the fighting men of Israel, David did not consult with God then either.  Both times, the consequence of not letting God direct his path was deadly and impacted the nation for generations to come.

Although we see several times, kings of Judah wanting God to speak to them, they nearly always went through prophets rather than meeting individually with the Lord themselves.  Moses of course talked with God all the time but he is the exception rather than the rule before Christ came and completely changed our relationship with God.  There is in the New Testament a titanic shift in how God makes Himself available to us.  Before Christ went to the Cross to die for our sins, the Lord promised that all who put their faith in Him for their salvation would have the Holy Spirit as a part of them.  God would live in us and become part of who we are.  The Bible makes an assumption that we must either accept as true or reject outright.  It is that the Holy Spirit is a part of every believer not just as some external force but as God joined to the personality and thus available at all times to guide, empower and help.  The Apostle Paul states, “those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” (Romans 8:14 NIV)  Sons of God are led by the Spirit of God.  That is the assumption Paul makes.  If you are born again, the Holy Spirit leads you.  His “voice” is a natural part of your life.

John 10 presents a generally overlooked proposition.  It is so clear and decided that we must face squarely God’s statement.  Using the metaphor of sheep and their shepherd Jesus said, “The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep.  The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.” (John 10:2-4 NIV)  Jesus later adds, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” (John 10:16 NIV)  He then declares, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27 NIV)

God states unequivocally that if you belong to God and are one of His, you will hear his voice because He will be speaking with you and you will know it is Him.  Why are so many Christians not experiencing this?  Why do they feel like they do not hear His voice?  We will take up that topic next week.  For now we must by faith accept this assertion by Jesus that we have God’s voice in our ear.  He speaks to us and we can and should recognize when it is Him speaking to us.  We have the most exciting and noble of all abilities; the capability of hearing God speak to us at any moment.  Those not born again are deaf to God.  They cannot understand Him speaking because it is just gibberish to them, like an American trying to make sense of Cantonese.  But the one who is one of God’s own, who is born-again is given the ability by God to hear Him speak and understand what He says.