Change

2 Kings 2:1 NIV

When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.

How Do You Feel About Change?

We all have benchmarks when monumental changes have altered our lives.  My wedding day was one for me.  At the hospital discovering for the first time that Mary Jo and I would have a child was one.  The first time I taught in Russia was one.  Some were not so pleasant such as the evening when I was fired from the first church where I was pastor and the day I got a phone call from my dad that my mom had passed away.  The morning I snapped my leg in half skiing was another benchmark.  We try our best to figure out why certain events happen.  We sometimes wish God would tell us why certain things happen to us.. 

Perhaps you have been like me.  You have wondered why you had to go through something painful or traumatic.  Maybe it was the death of a loved one close to you or the loss of a job or even a career.  It could be that you aren’t sure why you had an injury or health issue.  You might be struggling with why someone doesn’t show you love or how come a person you deeply care about is facing so many trials.  Life is sometimes like a roaring lion and it is not always reasonable or even rational.  What are you to make of the changes you have in your life?  How should you respond to them and where is God in it all?

In the middle of the Gospel of John is an interesting story that illustrates the struggle many have with the wreckage in life.  As Jesus and His disciples were walking through Jerusalem, they came upon a man who had been blind from birth.  The disciples posed Jesus with the question, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9: 2 NIV)  The assumption was that being born blind was bad and that someone was to blame for it.  God would not just let such a terrible thing happen if no one was to blame, they reasoned.  Jesus saw matters differently.  “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, “said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.  As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me.  Night is coming, when no one can work.  While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”  (John 9: 3-5 NIV) 

Many times people get mad at God for what happens to them.  Others turn their back on God when things get rough because they don’t think He has treated them fairly.  The disciples wanted to know who to blame for the blindness of the beggar they came across.  Jesus did not put blame on anyone, not God, not Satan, not the man or his parents or even on luck or fate.  He did admit that God was at work and all was not lost for the blind man; in fact Christ seemed to indicate that this blindness made it possible for God to do something in particular for the man that could not be done any other way.  We all have experienced something like this if we have lived long enough.  A restaurant was closed but you stumbled upon a café you now love.  A boyfriend or girlfriend broke up with you but then you met the person you eventually married.  A bout with depression gave you insight into deep psychological wounds that you had ignored.  Unemployment led to a new career that fits you better.  Jesus insisted that the blindness was not a curse laid upon the beggar but an opportunity for God to do something for him that would not have been possible if he had always been able to see.

The question before you is simple.  Do you really know what to make of your circumstances?  Are you certain of what your next steps in life should be?  Jesus said that He is the light of the world.  What does that mean?  Although there is much that is dark and confusing now, Jesus can help us make sense of it.  Death is irrational and cruel and sin has broken what once was a perfect universe.   In this darkness there is a light that shines and cannot be extinguished.  Where pain and sorrow seem to rule the day, it is not so.  With Christ we find that love rules the universe and that evil and death will be conquered by our Lord who died to save the world from its sin.  Yes it is hard now.  Yes we suffer many hardships and heartaches.  But there is a light that shines in the darkness and Christ will see you through whatever you face and show you the way.

The famous account of Elijah and his departure from this world in God’s chariot of fire ran on two levels…that of Elijah and that of Elisha.  For Elisha it was not quite as exotic as for Elijah.  Elijah rode God’s flaming chariot to heaven.  How exciting!  Elisha was left to sort out things on earth…life and death, loss and hardship, loneliness and trouble.  The account of the journey Elisha took with Elijah to the spot where God’s chariot would take Elijah away is fascinating from a psychological perspective.   Try to put yourself in Elisha’s shoes as he walked with his friend and mentor; knowing they did not have much time left to be together.  When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.  Elijah said to Elisha, "Stay here; the Lord has sent me to Bethel."  But Elisha said, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So they went down to Bethel.  The company of the prophets at Bethel came out to Elisha and asked, "Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?"  "Yes, I know," Elisha replied, "but do not speak of it."  Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here, Elisha; the Lord has sent me to Jericho."  And he replied, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So they went to Jericho.  The company of the prophets at Jericho went up to Elisha and asked him, "Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?"  "Yes, I know," he replied, "but do not speak of it."  Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here; the Lord has sent me to the Jordan."  And he replied, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So the two of them walked on.  (2 Kings 2:1-6 NIV)

Elisha had many hours, maybe even weeks to process what was about to happen.  You have to wonder if he was really prepared to lose Elijah his friend.  Maybe he hoped that something would change things, that Elijah could stay a week longer, or a month or a year more.  If he just kept going with Elijah they might not be parted.  Elisha had the head knowledge of Elijah leaving but did he have the heart knowledge?  Was he ready for Elijah to go?  His response to the prophets who warned him of what was to come is telling.  ”Don’t talk to me about this!”  Have you ever known something was going to happen but you were not emotionally willing to talk about it…did not want to face it?  Elisha craved every last second he had with Elijah…cherished each last moment with him. Most assuredly he was not ready to face the fact that this part of his life was about to end; that he wouldn’t have Elijah with him any longer.

It is intriguing that we have no record of how Elisha knew of what was going to happen or any explanation of why God chose to take Elijah away just then.  There is no doubt though that it was God who was behind Elijah leaving.  As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. (2 Kings 2:11 NIV)  Somehow the Lord let Elisha know what He was about to do with his friend and mentor but we aren’t told how He did so.  Yet there were no silly explanations like so many create for why people die.  No “God needed him in heaven” or “Elisha was too dependent on Elijah to keep them together” or not even “God is making Elijah into an angel to watch over Elisha”.  No nonsense like that as a justification for what God did.  It was just the raw material of God and Elisha building a new life together without Elijah there.  Our Lord does not expect you to make sense of why certain painful and difficult times strike you.  You cannot draw straight lines between the tragedies and sorrows you meet and why you face them because our Lord is not ready to show you everything yet.  We live in a world broken by sin where death and suffering continue.  He does have something in mind for you now though just as He did for Elisha.  Elijah was gone and Elisha couldn’t do anything to change that.  For whatever reason, the Lord took Elijah away.  For whatever reason, you experience difficult and sometimes terrifying times.  God does not give you an explanation though.  It is there…and God is there.

A time comes…and it may be right now for you when you must give up making sense of what you face and begin to make sense of God.  Let me illustrate.  After I broke my leg and I was confined to a wheel chair I still was left with the responsibilities I had before my leg was snapped in half.  One of them was to go around the school where we lived just before bedtime and check the doors to make sure they were locked as well as see if anyone was on the school grounds causing or potentially causing trouble.  My three children wanted to go with me and my older son pushed my wheel chair.  While walking, we came across a large gang of young adults talking loudly in the field.  As we approached them, I was very concerned about what they were doing at the school and felt like I needed to investigate but I was also afraid for my kids.  I told them to leave me and go home which the two younger ones did but my oldest son insisted that he stay with me and push my wheelchair.  When we got to the group there were four young men and four or five teenage girls.  The conversation they were having was filled with cursing and I could smell marijuana too.  They all turned around to face me as I got close and the entire group surrounded me when I told them they had to leave.  The young man who seemed to be the leader of the group cursed at me and started making threats.  The other guys also drew closer and grew increasingly belligerent.  As I sat in my wheelchair encircled by this gang, I had three thoughts.  The first was just crazy.  I was certain I could take out the leader of the group even with a cast on my leg.  I had no idea though how to defend myself against the others.  Immediately I began to wonder about my son.  What could I do to protect him?  I knew he would not leave me.  My third consideration was that God with me and so within I began to feverishly pray for His help.  My mind grew so fixed on Christ that I barely heard what the gang members were saying to me or to each other but all of a sudden one of the girls said to them all, “Let’s just leave” and that is what they did. No further confrontation.  No more threats of violence.  They just left.

Was this a miracle?  Did God change the course of events for me and my son?  I leave that up to you to decide.  All I know is that in desperation, I turned to Christ for help and I was helped.  You may be at that point too.  Something has changed for you and you could use God’s help.  Maybe it is time to find out who God really is and if He can be your Savior.  Your mind, because of what is happening, is undistracted by the Kardashians, by President Trump’s tweets or what is going on in sports, it is laser focused on God right now.  The Bible insists that because of Christ, God can live in you if you invite Him to join you.  He is there and you are there.  What sort of God is He?  Does He have any love or mercy to offer you?  Is there a hope He can give you?  Is He big enough to see you through this?  Who is this Jesus?  It is time for you to find out.  In a world broken by Sin and wrecked by death and suffering, you have a Savior who also suffered and died too.  But now He is alive and He loves you and wants to go through whatever you face with you.  You may not have your Elijah to go with you but you have Jesus.  Find out for yourself who He is.  Let Christ be a part of your life.  Take a moment to invite Jesus to go with you, to make His home in you.  Since He died on a cross to take your sin from you and give you eternal life, He might just be the friend you need right now.

Prayer Re-thought

Matthew 6:8 NIV

Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Why Do You Pray?

A couple of years ago we were awakened by a violent shaking near our bed.  It wasn’t an earthquake but for us something much worse.  Our youngest son still slept in a small bed at the foot of our bed and in the middle of the night started having a seizure.  He had never gone through one before and we had not experienced a seizure ourselves nor seen one of our kids have one.  The disorientation caused by just having been asleep and the shock of witnessing one of our children experiencing something so terrible threw us into a panic.  His eyes were rolled up into the top of his head and his body was stiff as a bamboo pole.  Not knowing what to do, we called 911 and soon emergency personnel were at our house helping us with Ben.   I rode with him in the ambulance and after a couple hours, we were sent home, reassured that the seizure had not harmed him and did not mean that he would have other seizures.  Throughout this ordeal, both Mary Jo and I prayed for Ben, prayed for wisdom about what to do for him, prayed for the nurses and doctor to know how to help him and prayed that he would recover without damage to his brain.  We did not hesitate to pray when the seizure began and never questioned the value of continuing to pray on the way to the hospital, while in emergency and after we returned with the doctor’s clearance.

Prayer is one of the most frequent activities engaged in by people world-wide and specifically within the Christian community.  Those who pray rarely question the logic of it or its validity when doing so yet there may be many times when we wonder if we should keep praying about a matter and countless hours and perhaps even days when prayer does not cross our mind.  Why do we pray?  What is a father whose child is addicted to meth hoping to accomplish by praying?  How come a woman going through a divorce prays or a young man needing work prays?  Why does a high school student pray when facing a tough final?  Is there a reason why a mother prays for her family or a grandparent prays her health?  What do you hope to accomplish by praying?

It seems so simple, right?  We pray to get something.  We see in the Bible plenty of examples of people who prayed and did hope to get something.  The accomplished and mostly good King Hezekiah found himself in a tough spot.  In the fourteenth year of his reign, Hezekiah’s country Judah was being ransacked by a huge Assyrian army and now they were at his doorstep, surrounding his hometown of Jerusalem.  It was an impossible situation; he had no hope of being able to fight off the Assyrian invaders…starvation or capitulation seemed to be the only options he and the people of Jerusalem had.  The general of the Assyrians mocked Hezekiah and the Hebrews for believing the Lord might answer their prayers and rescue them.  "Do not listen to Hezekiah, for he is misleading you when he says, 'The Lord will deliver us.' Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?  Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah? Have they rescued Samaria from my hand?  Who of all the gods of these countries has been able to save his land from me? How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand?" (2 Kings 18:32-35 NIV)

Many of us have felt like it was hopeless to pray and perhaps Hezekiah did too.  The Bible does not say that Hezekiah himself prayed for deliverance from the Assyrians although we might assume he did.  We do know however that he sent messengers to Isaiah the prophet and asked him to pray for God to drive off the Assyrians.  Isaiah’s reply was, “Tell your master, 'This is what the Lord says: Do not be afraid of what you have heard — those words with which the underlings of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.  Listen! I am going to put such a spirit in him that when he hears a certain report, he will return to his own country, and there I will have him cut down with the sword.'" (2 Kings 19:6-7 NIV)  But the Assyrians did not leave immediately.  More threats came from their general and Hezekiah himself prayed.  Now, O Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God." (2 Kings 19:19 NIV)  That night one hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrian soldiers were struck dead by a plague sent from the Lord and Hezekiah gained fresh insight into the Lord’s power and care for him and the nation of Judah.

At the age of thirty-nine, the Lord told Hezekiah through the prophet Isaiah that he was about to die.  Devastated by the news, he prayed for God not to take his life.  Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, "Remember, O Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes." And Hezekiah wept bitterly. (2 Kings 20:2-3 NIV) Of course Hezekiah was overjoyed when the Lord through the prophet Isaiah promised him fifteen more years of life and he did gain them.  Something interesting happened though in those fifteen years.  Hezekiah lost his interest in praying.  Things went so well for him and he was so prosperous that it seems he became comfortable and his interest in God casual.  There were all sorts of issues he faced we can be sure but he solved them on his own.  Hezekiah was smart and a talented leader and it seemed to him that everything was going so smoothly that he didn’t need to waste his time praying or bother his head with it…and it is true.  He was doing well.  He was successful, popular and content.

Later, a contingent of Babylonian merchants and politicians came to Jerusalem to meet with Hezekiah and the king welcomed them with open arms.  Hezekiah received the messengers and showed them all that was in his storehouses — the silver, the gold, the spices and the fine oil — his armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them. (2 Kings 20:13 NIV)  Now, this seemed like a lovely gesture of comradery and neighborliness.  Hezekiah was smartly hoping to form an alliance with an up and coming international power that could help both him and his country in the future.  Of course it was a little boastful on his part, showing off his riches and bragging a bit about his accomplishments but he had great reason to be proud of his work and what harm was it anyway to show off some.  The Lord immediately sent the prophet Isaiah to Hezekiah to explain the ramifications of what he had done in welcoming the Babylonian contingent into Jerusalem.  Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, "Hear the word of the Lord:  The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your fathers have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood, that will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon." (2 Kings 20:16-18 NIV)

Hezekiah’s reaction to this rebuke from God is fascinating but quite representative of how the mind responds to the Lord when it has lost its sensitivity to the way God thinks. "The word of the Lord you have spoken is good," Hezekiah replied. For he thought, "Will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?" (2 Kings 20:19 NIV)  God had nothing more to say to Hezekiah after that reaction to the warning.  Hezekiah was not thinking like the Lord; it was as if they had nothing in common with each other.  Now we realize that there are plenty of people who don’t care how their actions will impact the generations that follow them.  They don’t worry about what their career move will do to their children, how their divorce will impact their grandkids, what will happen a hundred years from now if they choose one school over another.  Who thinks that way?  God does.  He cares what sort of life we lay down for future generations and it matters to Him the decisions we make and their ramifications for ourselves and others.

There is an interesting statement Jesus makes about prayer and praying that has confused many Christians and non-Christians.  Talking about pagans and all who misunderstand what is to happen when we pray, Jesus commented, Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:8 NIV)  Now it is easy to confuse this statement with those of atheists who teach that praying is irrelevant and useless.  That is not at all the gist of this as Jesus goes on to explain how prayers should be presented to God.  In fact immediately after this verse He then gave us the model prayer to be certain we all know how praying should go.  If prayer is not giving God key information that He might not be aware exists, then why do we tell Him about what we want and what we need and about our concerns?  It is because as we pray, our mind comes in contact with God’s mind and all we care about becomes immersed in Him and is transformed by His thinking.  The panicked minds or the calm and faith-filled minds are all changed by going to the Lord in prayer.  As  we bring before Him the things He already knows and cares about, we find that we lose our own view of what we face and we begin to see it as He does.  It is not a terrible storm.  It is Christ in the boat.  It is not a devastating loss.  It is the Lord lifting us to a new opportunity.  It is not the end of the world.  It is the beginning of a more important journey.

Every situation we face, whether we deem it good, bad, frightening or inconsequential, we can go through it with God’s mind thinking through our mind or push forward on our own.  When we pray to Christ for help or guidance or simply to honor Him, we put ourselves in touch with God who miraculously guides us through what we face and gives us His thoughts about what is before us and what we do not yet see.  Hezekiah stopped thinking that it was important to see things God’s way but you haven’t!  You want God to tell you to relax and trust Him.  You look forward to being guided by Christ through your next crisis or job opportunity.  You want the Lord to tell you what to think about your trials as well as your victories.  Prayer is how our Savior shows us the way…even when we don’t realize we need directions.  It takes practice learning how to recognize when it is God leading you and when it is just you forming an opinion.  That is why we need to pray all the time that His voice is not a stranger to us when we need to know it is Him!