Nothing More, Nothing Less

Exodus 3: 11 NIV

But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

What Does God Want to Do With You?

I can remember only one time my dad took me and my brother fishing.  There may have been other times but I can only recall one.  I cannot remember my dad ever fishing.  I don’t know of any times he went out with his buddies to fish.  I can’t think of a time in all our family camping trips my dad broke out fishing poles except this one time.  He got us some nice backpacking fishing poles and on a camping trip took us to a stream to fish for the first time.  It was a beautiful location; the water was brilliantly clear and sparkling with the mountain sunlight lathering it with the effervescence of its white rainbow.  We could see trout passing in and out of the rocky caves and crevices.  My dad showed us how to push the salmon eggs onto the hook, put the lead weights on the line on which we each had a bob to keep track of where our hooks settled.  I can’t remember much advice my dad gave us on how to cast our lines; I am not sure how much he knew about it himself.  I reared my pole back and got my hook caught in a bush behind me.  Then I tried again and forgot to release the button on the reel to let out the line and the hook came flying back at me.  I gathered myself, pitched back my pole and with all my strength sent the hook and weights and bob out toward the middle of the stream but it got no further than the edge of the shore.  Eventually I just leaned my pole out over the water and without casting, dropped the hook down into the water.  I caught a piece of wood, some plants growing near the shore, a large rock at the bottom of the stream and some very nice twigs.  It was not a very long fishing adventure.  I think in about an hour or so we all gave up on it.  Later I discovered my dad didn’t even like fish and probably not fishing either.  He took us though and we all did pretty poorly at fishing.  Looking back after almost thirty years of parenting, I realize that fishing trip was never about fishing.  It was about my dad wanting to be with us; to do something with us that we might find fun.  Fish did not figure into the equation at all.  The fishing trip was about family…nothing more, nothing less.

What for you is a nothing more, nothing less deal?  For Scrooge it was making money.  For Huck Finn, it was no controls upon his life.  For Ronald Reagan it was the end of communist tyranny.  For George Washington it was the establishment of a new country.  For Abraham Lincoln it was the preservation of the Union.  For Martin Luther King Jr., it was the equality of all races.  For Captain “Sully”, it was the survival of his passengers.  For Michael Jordan, it was complete domination of the basketball world.  For many parents it is the success of their children.  What is the bottom line for you?  What is your “nothing more, nothing less” determination?  Is there an all-encompassing goal for your life that if you don’t reach it, you will feel like you failed?  Have you thought about what matters most for you?

As a “great fisherman myself”, I have often thought about the offer Jesus made to Peter and his brother Andrew to make them “fishers of men”.  "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." (Matthew 4:19 NIV) These disciples and all the others often misunderstood Jesus’ intentions and perhaps they didn’t grasp in this case what mattered to Jesus.  The men already had a fishing business going and perhaps they assumed that being “fishers of men” would be much the same as being fishers of fish.  They would acquire some important skills from a mentor, practice what they learned and then off they would go, “fishers of men.  Many Christian and non-Christian people make this mistake when they read the passage too.  God wants to teach us a few things that will make our lives better and with our fresh insight we will be good people.  What is completely overlooked by both those within the Christian faith and outside it is that God is not a lecturer who provides the keys to success.  We mistakenly think and perhaps the disciples did too that our Lord’s call was about fishing.  It was not!  It was about the clause in the center of the call.  “I will make you…”  This is the core of what Christianity is.  Christ will make you.  It does not really matter at all what He might make you…a fisherman, a missionary, a leader, a musician, a teacher, an astrophysicist.  All of that is subordinate to the purpose of God.  He will make you.

We have analyzed and reanalyzed Moses so many times that it feels a bit redundant to look at him again but it seems important to put his calling by God into its proper perspective.  When God called to Moses from a bush supernaturally on fire, Moses was stunned, not by the miracle of the bush in flames but not being consumed or by the voice coming from seemingly nowhere, but by what the Lord had to say to him.  The Lord said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.  So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey — the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.  And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.  So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

(Exodus 3:7-10 NIV)

You and I cannot fault Moses for his reaction to the pronouncement because we probably would have responded much like him.  “Who am I to do such a thing?”  How could I get this done?   But Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" (Exodus 3:11 NIV)  Nearly a chapter and a half is given to Moses trying his best to get out of going down to Egypt and God countering every one of Moses’s excuses.  It is almost comical, the exchange, and yet the drama of whether or not Moses agrees to go with God takes a back seat to th revelation of how disconnected Moses was from God.  His immediate reaction to discovering that it was the Creator of the universe who was talking to him was to shrink back in fear but all too quickly Moses began to think of himself as the Lord’s peer.  If you read this the first time and did not know just how God actually is, you might be waiting for the Lord simply to strike Moses dead because of Moses’s cheekiness and move on to someone else.  It is all too easy for us to miss what God is actually doing with His people if we misunderstand the personality of God.

Moses really was a perfectly silly man.  He thought he was responsible for getting the Israelites free of the Egyptians and out of Egypt.  It was as absurd as any of the disciples thinking God’s challenge was for them to figure out how to be fishers of men.  Moses thought God somehow needed him to get this monumental task done.  If you read again what God had to say about it, He kept reiterating over and over what He was going to do to free the Israelites; what He was going to do through Moses.  When God was done with Sodom and Gomorrah, He simply wiped them out with fire and brimstone.  He could have done that with the Egyptian problem.  Even the ancient account of Abraham and Abimelech reminds us of how easy it was for God all by Himself to take out of Egypt the Israelites.  When Abraham acted like a child and pretended that his wife Sarah was merely his sister so that the King Abimelech or any of the men of Gerar where he had moved would not kill Abraham in order to steal his wife from him, Abraham succeeded.  King Abimelech took took Sarah into his harem without killing Abraham.  Abraham though lost is wife and the Lord was not happy.   The Lord immediately closed up all the wombs of the women of Gerar and then in a dream Abimelech was warned by God that he and all his subjects would be killed off if Abimelech did not quickly release Sarah back to her husband.  The Lord had the ability to wipe out anyone He wished if it suited His purposes and the people of Gerar, like the Egyptians enslaving the Israelites were not exceptions.  God could easily separate out who He wanted to keep and who He wanted to destroy without any help from Moses or anyone else. 

This is what God wanted.  He was making an offer to Moses, just like He did to the disciples to join Him and be a part of Him.  It wasn’t about God needing someone to fish for men or rescue Israelites from slavery.  The Lord was giving them the opportunity to be joined with Him, the Lord’s life built into theirs and their lives built into His.  If they refused, it would be tragic for them, not for God’s cause or for those they could have helped.  They would have lost the opportunity to have God’s personality become a part of theirs, His life merged with them and then together do all God wanted to do.  Moses would never have lifted his staff and seen the Red Sea part and John never would have been held by the resurrected Jesus Christ and gained the power of the Holy Spirit if they did not let God join Himself to them.  We cannot know what God might do with us if we let Him make us into His people but it will be certain that whatever it might be will be far greater than what we might do just on our own.  The words of Paul express perfectly what it is like to have Christ joined with us.  I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.  I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  I can do everything through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:11-13 NIV)

What more could we want out of life than this?  Some people would sell their souls to have what Paul had!  Rich and poor, successful and failing…all alike would love nothing more than to be content in any and every situation.  And what is more, Paul said anything he needed to do, he could through Christ who gave him strength.  The best you can have in life is for Christ to be a part of it, living through you in all you do.  He chooses what comes your way and just think of that.  The same one who died to save you decides for you what your life will become.  Contentment and the peace of knowing that a loving Savior has your days ordered makes for what I would call a perfect life.  Nothing more, nothing less!

Praying or Fantasizing

Mark 11:24 NIV

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

How Confident Are About Praying?

A number of years ago we went to Disneyland and our daughter was only three.  She loved to dress up in princess outfits and she had a number that she brought for our trip there.  One day she could dress as Cinderella, another as Snow White and the next she was prepared to be Belle.  In fact she could change in the middle of the day and be a different princess at lunch and dinner.  Her face would light up when she spotted Arial or Belle or Pocahontas mingling in the crowd.  We had to wait for Rachel to stand in line and greet each of the princesses she came across. There was even a lunch meet and greet that Rachel attended.  Rachel was mesmerized by the parades when the princesses all came together in one place and she stared at them all wide-eyed.  Reality and fantasy came together in a mystical union.  That is until reality rose up and trampled fantasy one cloudy afternoon when Rachel spotted one of the Disneyland princesses standing out behind a building smoking a cigarette.  She was stunned and she never forgot the disappointment she felt at the unexpected sight.

Many have given up on Christianity because they believe it is like the Disney princesses; it is all a dress up that in the end is a sham.  Perhaps you have struggled with believing the Bible.  There is much about it that is interesting and helpful but some of the stories in it appear to be too good to be true.  The promises about prayer in particular hang you up as it does not seem like God holds up His end of the bargain.  You pray but the outcome is not what you had hoped.  Or worse, your praying seems to have been a waste of time and left you discouraged and feeling snookered by empty promises of God’s help.

Two case studies found in the Bible shed a bit of light on our discussion.  When Lazarus, a good friend of Jesus, became deathly ill, his sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love is sick." (John 11: 3 NIV)  When Jesus did not do anything about Lazarus’s condition and he died, both sisters were dumbfounded by His lack of help.  When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." (John 11:32 NIV)  How closely this mirrors the experience of many who have prayed and been disappointed by the results!

Prior to the birth of Christ, an elderly widow lived at the Temple and spent her days praying.  There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. (Luke 2:36-37 NIV)  We have no idea what sorts of matters were on her prayer list but we must say she had to wait an awfully long time before meeting the Messiah.  Not only that, should we just ignore the fact that this woman of prayer lost her husband after only seven years of marriage?  How much disappointment with prayer was locked up within the heart of this elderly widow for all those years!

Our problem, when it comes to praying, is not just the seeming slowness or even lack of responses to prayer.  We face a much more daunting task when it comes to believing in God.  We lack a physical connection to Him that can make trusting in Him more reasonable and sustainable.  We can’t see Him, hear Him or touch Him and that is not normal when it comes to relationships.  It can be argued that we don’t, hear, see or touch those we meet online and yet believe they are who they say they are but experience with fraud makes many such “encounters” impossible to trust completely.  When it comes to God, we don’t even have a picture profile to consider!  Yet, is it insane to believe in a God we cannot see, touch or hear?

Author Philip Yancey suggests we should consider the case of the woman who has been blind since birth who has never seen light and cannot see it.  How would you prove the existence of light to her?  You could present her with products of light such as heat or plant life but that does not prove light to her.  Light is real and not at all imaginary but to the one who has no sensitivity to it, light is just hearsay, only taken on trust.  If everyone in the world is blind from birth, men, women and children, light as described in books is to the entire crowd “religious” or “unscientific”.  It might be considered “mythological” and yet it is as real as the birds chirping in the trees.  The doubt in the minds of those who cannot see that light exists would not mitigate the reality of light.

We certainly lack the Spiritual sense needed to scientifically “prove” the presence of demons and angels, God and Satan but that is what we must accept when we speak of God and prayer.  Jesus did not try to pretend something else was the case.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24 NIV)  Rarely does God make Himself available to our physical senses.  Yet He has done so and many of the blind in our world just won’t believe the accounts given of His presence being seen, heard, touched or smelled. There is something else we must consider when it comes to knowing about the existence of God and believing in prayer.

The American Journal of Psychiatry reported a study of Harvard students who had experienced a “religious conversion.  They discovered that these students showed a dramatic change in their lifestyles.  Their use of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes went down spectacularly.  What is more, they did much better academically than they did before their conversion and were less likely to suffer from depression and despair when compared to the rest of the student body.  What does it mean when an internal transformation which is attributed to God results in an externally proven outcome?  Religious Americans are proven to be more likely to give money to someone homeless, spend time with someone depressed, return excess change to a clerk, help someone find a job and donate blood.  At what point do those who do not have the sensory equipment to see or touch God begin to consider the facts regarding the accomplishments of the God they cannot see?

Faith is the operating system of our relationship with God and that is not going to change!  We live by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7 NIV)  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)  Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." (John 6: 29 NIV) For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)  This is the way God works with us.  We must have faith in Him that He exists if we are to have a relationship with Him that transforms our lives.  It will not be altered; this plan of God.  No amount of complaining that God does not let us see, hear or touch Him will change His mind.  The Lord will do in us and through us what our faith in Him permits.  It has been shown that with God operating in people’s lives, crime, drug use, violence and gang activities go down.  What proof do you need to recognize that you pray to a God who changes people’s lives and literally is a part of what they do?

When you pray, the Lord will transform your character, create in you a hatred of your own sin and generate a growing desire to be close to Him.  He will guide you so that you will be able to make sense of what to do.  He will work in others and change them too.  God will alter your circumstances so that in the end all you face and encounter will turn out for your good.  To pray, you must have faith to pray.  To communicate with God who is real, you must believe that He is real.  You will never be certain that God exists or that He is part of your praying until you actually decide to believe He exists and then pray.  Once that transaction takes place, the Lord will move Heaven and Earth to keep you close to Him supernaturally and coherently.  You may not yet believe God loves you fully but that will come as you trust Him enough to pray.  Faith opens your mind to pray; miracles always follow faith…they don’t come before it.  A miracle is nothing more complex than this.  It is the discovery that God is in actuality a part of your life and giving you the very best He has to offer in response to your praying.  So pray.  Pray often.  Pray with your mind on God and your heart open to whatever He gives you.