Peace Today, Peace Tomorrow

Leviticus 26:6 NIV

I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid.

How Good Is Peace?

Years ago when I was a kid, I got a job delivering weekly advertisers to homes.  I had over two-hundred and fifty papers to deliver and it was very hard riding my bike with so many papers hanging from the back of my bike.  I had to roll all the papers myself and put rubber bands around them.  My route brought me far down the road from my house and it took a few hours to finish the route.  At the far end of my route I discovered that at one of the homes lived a set of brothers known for fighting and picking on younger kids. One day as was riding past their home, one of the brothers threatened to pull me off my bike if I came by his house again.  Each week my knuckles turned white and my stomach churned as I made my dreaded pass by their house, hoping I would not see ever see again the brothers as I pitched the paper as quickly as possible toward their porch and sped away down the street.  I dreaded so badly my trips by their house that I quit after a year because I could not take it anymore.

What price would you pay to have peace?  Perhaps you have it most of the time.  You have very few worries and rarely are disturbed by difficulties.  Maybe you never suffer from anxiety and don’t fret when troubles hit you.  Or it might be you are like the vast majority of people who do worry because some things are just too big to handle.  You fret over your children, ruminate about health issues, worry about relationships you have.  Maybe you do pray about these issues you face but after you pray, then what?  What do you do after praying?  Aren’t you supposed to do something, remind someone, give advice, recommend, make a change, work harder, strategize? 

When you read in the Bible that God promises you peace, it seems a bit esoteric, like something normal people don’t ever get.  What sort of peace can you have with God?  Is real peace in you even possible?  Jesus made a sweeping universal promise that must be noted first.  He said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”  (John 14:27 NIV)  Several points need to be made here.  First, this is not normal peace God is pledging.   He says it is not “as the world gives.”  The term world in this verse of course does not refer to a collection of people but only the order of life in a sin broken universe and whatever peace that comes “from the world” is just what is grabbed through circumstances and personality traits.  In other words, most of the time, the peace that comes out of the world is determined by how well things are going.  If everything is working out for you, then you feel pretty good but there is no guarantee you will have real peace when things start to fall apart. The world may have peace for you when you get a pay raise or the cancer test comes back negative or your neighbor finds your dog wandering down the next block but what sort of peace can the world give you when your son suffers brain damage in a car wreck or you are really going to lose your house or your retirement fund gets demolished by the recession?

The other day I was merging onto the freeway and just as I was moving into the second lane, suddenly a huge red pickup truck came speeding down in that lane and I had to swerve back into the lane on my right to avoid getting hit.  Of course I had the normal adrenal rush such a close call elicits and with my face flushed with anger, I stared into the side mirror of the driver and he looked back at me.  All of a sudden the driver slowed way down and pulled alongside me and with his window rolled down, gestured wildly with his hands and clearly was yelling at me although my window was rolled up and I could not hear anything he was shouting at me.  I stared back at him as we went side by side down the freeway.  Finally he pulled ahead of me and looked back at me in his side mirror as I looked back at him.  We glared at each other and then he slowed down again and pulled along-side me on my right and once more with his window down gesticulated crazily with his hand at me and loudly screamed at my rolled up window.  I stared back at him and began to size up the wild man.  He looked short and very skinny and probably on meth.  If there was a fight between his giant truck and my tiny Honda, I would lose.  But if the two of us fought, I would probably have taken him.  With my cross dangling from my rear view mirror and my mind being pulled into Christ, I just looked away and slowed down even more so I could move behind the guy and prayed.  He made one more wild motion at me and off he shot.  It was funny how much peace I had as this was happening and I must say, it was not a peace that the world gives. The world’s peace is driving along without a care listening to my favorite music.  There was a different sort of peace I needed though when the driver of the truck started screaming at me…a supernatural peace.

When Jesus says that He leaves us peace, He uses the same Greek word that is often translated “forgive”.  The idea behind forgive is that the sin is cast away, sent off so you don’t carry it with you anymore.  Jesus promises to continually cast off to you peace.  To be certain you get the gist of what He is saying, Jesus reiterates by adding, “I continually give my peace.”  If you are at the store, I give you my peace.  If you are in the dentist’s chair, I give you my peace.  If you have someone breaking into your house, even then, I give you my peace.  Wherever you go, in Iceland or South Africa or in your car driving to work, I give you my peace.  It is important that Jesus identifies for you what sort of peace He promises to continually give you.  It is His peace, the peace Jesus possesses Himself that He puts into you all the time.  The same peace Jesus had when He responded to Pontius Pilate as He in His beaten state faced crucifixion is the very peace Christ gives you today, tonight, tomorrow and tomorrow evening.  This is not a peace you have to develop but the mature peace Christ has even now.  But there is something we must make clear.  To experience God’s peace, you must give it room to operate in you.

So how do you do that?  You must decide at each turn of your life and in every circumstance you face that God is in charge of what is happening and He will make it be good for you.  Of course that is a monumental determination to make but that is the foundation of the peace Christ has.  He always kept His mind on the Father and whether Jesus was in a storm or the Garden of Gethsemane waiting to be arrested, Jesus was certain that the Father was good and in charge of what was happening to Him.  You can easily lose sight of this when something really difficult or even painful is occurring.  The moment you do, the peace of Christ stops operating in you.  The peace of Christ is still there, still available to you;, it is strong and it can carry you but you shut it down when you lose your grip on God being with you and being good to you.

To give you an idea how easy it is to forget that God is in charge of everything happening and He is good to you, consider the account of Saul as a young king of the united nation of Israel.  Almost immediately after being given by God the kingdom, Saul faced a crisis.  The warring nation of Philistia came out to attack Israel.  God told Saul to not do anything until the prophet Samuel came to offer a sacrifice.  He was to wait seven days and then the prophet would come to the front lines to make the sacrifice and call out in prayer for God’s help.  The seventh day came and Saul had no peace.  The Philistine army was ready to attack and as he saw it, Saul had no guarantee the Lord was with him at that point.  His soldiers were scared and he was too.  His rule would be awfully short if he didn’t do something.  On his own, without the prophet Samuel there, Saul offered the sacrifice himself.  As he was finishing, Samuel arrived.  Just as he finished making the offering, Samuel arrived, and Saul went out to greet him.  "What have you done?" asked Samuel.  Saul replied, "When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash, I thought, 'Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the Lord's favor.' So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering."  "You acted foolishly," Samuel said. "You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the Lord's command." (1 Samuel 13:10-14 NIV)

Even after this Saul could have had God’s peace if he would have realized that God was in charge and that with this change God was being good to him.  The peace of God is available day and night in any circumstance we face but when we panic and do not trust God to carry us through, we don’t enjoy His peace, it slips from us.  Yet as soon as we turn back to God and ask for His peace, our Lord is as generous as always and gives us His peace freely.  When Peter told Jesus that it could never be that He would die at the hands of the Jews and Romans, he could not have Christ’s peace and he did not have it.  He fell into a panic when he saw Jesus being arrested and then beaten.  His worry was so great and His peace so shallow that when Peter was confronted three different times by servants and others who said he was one of Jesus’ followers, Peter could not admit to it.  He did not believe this could be God’s plan and so he lost his peace.  It was only later when Jesus rose again and met with His Apostles in the upper room that Peter regained it.  We must be very careful that we do nothing to interrupt the peace Christ has for us.

The universe that Christ has created is built upon the foundation of trusting Him.  Without our trust in Christ we lose one of the most precious gifts that being in Him provides.  Do not trust Christ and His peace slips away from you.  Turn back to Him and His peace is there waiting for you.  The reason the world cannot have Christ’s peace is because the world does not believe Christ is in charge and no longer believes that Christ will make life good for them.  But you can and you do.  You do believe Christ is in charge of everything that happens to you and that He will make everything turn out well for you.  The perfect love of Christ controls and protects you each and every day.  To have His peace poured into you, you must let Him do it.  You are in charge of the peace you gain.  At the end of John 14: 27, as Jesus is promising you His peace, he finishes by commanding you not to let your heart be troubled.  The word translated “troubled” is the same Greek word that describes the stirring up of water in a pot as it is boiling or the raging of the sea during a typhoon.  You are in charge of not letting your heart become a storm.  God won’t do that for you.  You must do it yourself.  If you want your heart to be a boiling pot of turmoil, then you can and God won’t stop you.  But if you want the peace that Jesus has, you must decide Christ is in charge of what is happening and He is being good to you.  Then you will have the determination to ask and receive the peace that Christ has in Himself and you will become calm and serene, as peaceful as Jesus sitting in a boat during a storm.

Too Far Down the Road

Jonah 1:11 NIV

 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, "What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?"

Have You Gone Too Far?

Recently I had to take a rental car back after a trip to Los Angeles.  I needed to return it to the San Jose airport which is about a twenty minute drive from my home.  Before that though I discovered from my son that my wife’s car needed to be taken to the mechanic so after dropping it off, I headed to the airport.  No one in my family could drive my car because it is a manual transmission and it was in the church parking lot.  So it was up to my son to bring my wife to the airport to come get me.  For an hour I waited for them to arrive.  Growing frustrated, I called my wife to find out what had happened to them, only to discover that the hood of my son’s car had flown open while they were driving on the freeway and because they could not figure out how to reattach the hood, they were driving slowly back home, praying the hood would not bounce back up onto the windshield again while they were in traffic.  So what was I to do?  It was easy, I would just call one of my friends to come get me but I only had the numbers of three people in my phone who I thought I could ask.  One by one I called each of them and every time, the person I called did not take the call.  So now what was I supposed to do?  The normal answer would be, “Just solve the problem!”

What is your typical response to a difficult problem?  Do you just figure out what to do? Do you make the best of things and not worry about the outcome?  Are you a fretter?  Do you try to find an expert and get advice?  Do you just quit when you aren’t sure what to do?  How do you respond psychologically to the problems in life?  Are you most likely to take charge of the issue at hand or pretend as if nothing is wrong?  It is true that each situation is different and sometimes we react one way and other times another way.  Yet we must admit that we probably have a default setting when it comes to challenging situations; a way of approaching them that is our usual pattern.  What is going to be suggested today is that we can go too far in how we solve matters and when we do so we can be left psychologically exhausted.

What is meant by “psychologically exhausted”?  This is the state when we find it nearly impossible because of the lack of internal resources to cope emotionally in our preferred manner.  For example, rather than feeling relaxed and peaceful, you can’t hold back your anger, depression despair, anxiety and bitterness or even lust or moral limits.  Like someone who is so tired from driving that she cannot keep from falling asleep at the wheel, certain types of situations become too big for you to handle the way you wish you could or would.  You blow up at someone you really do love.  You develop a headache because of anxiety levels you have reached.  You lie or act in ways morally incompatibly with your values or you give in to an addiction you thought you were past or don’t show the sort of integrity you think you should or believe you ought to maintain.  There is a cause of psychological exhaustion that is actually quite simple.  We try to do God’s work and it is too much for us to handle.

Here is a way of illustrating this that you may have experienced personally or at least have known of happening.  A person who is not a skilled swimmer wades out into the ocean and suddenly a wave unexpectedly swells and sweeps that person off his feet and he is caught in the undertow.  Flailing wildly, the person tries desperately to get his head above the water so he can get his breath.  His heart is pounding, his mind is racing in desperation and his eyes are frantically searching for the surface.  If he does survive, he is left exhausted and even traumatized.  Spiritually it is like that for you when you are not careful.  If you take away from God the work He alone is supposed to be doing, you respond psychologically in similar ways to the panting and traumatized swimmer.  We see examples of this mistake often in scripture.

There is a strange detail in the account of Jesus’ crucifixion that although curious, rings true to human nature.  Christ was hung on a cross and on either side of him two criminals were also nailed to crosses.  Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed.  When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals — one on his right, the other on his left…One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!" (Luke 23:32-33, 39 NIV)  Isn’t this odd?  One of the two men suffering the same fate as Jesus, convulsing in terrible agony used that time to curse and mock Jesus.  His psychological pain was also great and the way he managed it was by insulting Jesus.  What had Jesus done to hurt this man?  How had he earned the fellow’s wrath?  Of course our Lord hadn’t done anything to warrant the insults and rage.  This was the case of someone dealing with a circumstance much too big for him to handle.  The terrors of impending death, the grief of a life wasted, the regrets of pain he caused others to suffer was crashing down upon him and he was trying to cope with all this on his own.  Unwilling to turn to God to carry him through his pain, he was left, like a drowning man unable to swim, without the psychological capacity to handle what he was facing and so the psychological reaction was to become angry with someone who actually loved him.

We see something similar in the Old Testament.  Unable to have children but determined to figure out some way to provide a child for her husband, Sarah, without turning to God for help and counsel, convinced her husband to take her servant girl and try to father a child through her.  We know how well this went.  Abraham was successful and the slave Hagar eventually gave birth to his son.  It was not quite as easy as Sarah imagined seeing her servant pregnant with a child her husband fathered.  When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.  Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me."  "Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. (Genesis 16:4-6 NIV)  Clearly Sarah’s jealousy was egged on by Hagar but Sarah’s plan worked perfectly except that she was not equipped psychologically to live with the consequences of her actions.  Rather than turn to God for help regarding her seeming infertility, she figured out things on her own and the result was she became psychologically exhausted trying to do God’s work.

Jeremiah 2 gives us rich insight into the difficulties we face solving all our problems without God.  "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)  The two sins are clearly to God evil and deadly.  The people quit turning to God for help and then developed their own strategies for solving their problems.  We have come to think as they did that getting along on your own is somehow noble and courageous.  But it is just the opposite.  It is foolish and ruinous.  On your own, all you have are the psychological skills you have acquired in life.  Some have quite a few and can manage well for a while without God.  Some have been so damaged by the hardships they have faced that they have almost nothing in them to keep their anger and depression and bitterness and jealousy at bay. Why do we see suicide and drug abuse and violence and crippling depression?  Without God carrying you through the troubles of life, you may or may not have the psychological strength to protect you and keep you at peace so you turn to your own brokenness to see you through.  There is however another option to independent living.

Consider the fascinating case study of Daniel who as a believer in God, prayed three times a day.  When a law was instituted that demanded no one would be allowed to pray to anyone other than the king for the next thirty days, Daniel coolly opened up the shutters covering his windows and quite publically continued praying to the Lord.  When he was caught and brought before the king, even though the king, who was desperate to try and save him from his own law, fretted in despair, Daniel seemingly did not have a care in the world and without comment bravely faced his sentence of being thrown into a pit with ravenous lions.  When the king heard this, he was greatly distressed; he was determined to rescue Daniel and made every effort until sundown to save him.  Then the men went as a group to the king and said to him, "Remember, O king, that according to the law of the Medes and Persians no decree or edict that the king issues can be changed."  So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions' den. The king said to Daniel, "May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!" (Daniel 6:14-16 NIV)  Where did Daniel get his courage and peace to see him through his trials?  He went directly to God.

Jesus’ famous promise to give his people peace is almost universally misunderstood in one important detail.  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27 NIV)  Jesus is not offering to give you a reason to have peace.  He is pledging that the peace He possesses Himself will be inserted into you when you accept it from Him. Regardless of what you have learned or not learned in life, of however many self-help books you have read or not read and however much confidence or despair is in you, God’s peace will take over and put calmness in your heart.  Christ did not die on the cross in order to give you strategies for having peace in your life.   That would leave you with the same failure rates of all other men or women who have tried to work out their problems on their own.  He died so that you might have his own personality working inside you regardless of what you face each and every day.  Stop trying to figure everything out on your own.  Let God work out things in you so that whatever challenges you face can be worked out through you.

Christ Actualization--The Second Force

1 Corinthians 6: 19-20 NIV

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.

Are You Conscious of the Second Force?

Several years ago I was with Mary Jo’s family at a lake and her brother had a ski boat.  It was exciting for our family and the other cousins because it was for many of the kids the first time any of them had ever been in a boat and more pertinently, the first most of them had ever tried skiing.  I was excited to give it a try.  I had gone water skiing about fifteen years before and although it had been a struggle, I had gotten up on my skis and had a great time jumping the wake and bouncing along on the water.  Several kids tried and a number failed getting up on the skis the first time they tried.  Most of the adults had water skied before and although it might have been a while, they all got up, some even using just one ski.  I was one of the last to try and although I was a bit nervous, I was fairly confident I could rise up on the skis and cruise around the lake.  The boat circled around me as I waited in the water for the tow rope and then it passed near enough for me to grab it.  I leaned back, bent my knees, stuck my skis straight up toward the sun and waited for the boat to work its way into position to launch me up onto the surface of the water.  Many of Mary Jo’s sisters and brothers-in-law and nieces and nephews stood on shore watching and our kids were in the boat with Mary Jo waiting to see how I would do.  All of a sudden the boat lurched forward with groaning power, I stood upon the skis, my legs still bent a bit at the knees and I immediately toppled forward, my hands firmly grasping the tow rope handle as the boat dragged me with my mouth wide open through the lake.  Finally, the force of the water pushing against me drove the handle from my grip and I slid back into the water having swallowed what seemed like half the lake in my effort to get up on my skis.  Before any movies were ever developed with this theme, I thought about what it would have been like if instead of the overweight and clumsy body I possessed, my mind had been poured into the body of someone like James Bond.  No one would have been laughing at me flopping into the water like a breeching humpback whale.

Have you ever wished you could possess the abilities of someone else?  Perhaps you would have liked to have had the math skills of Albert Einstein, the writing ability of Charles Dickens, the grace of Simone Biles, the looks of Zach Efron or Beyoncé.  All of us could use from time to time a talent, personality trait or skill of someone else.  Yet it is not possible to take on the qualities of another person because we are limited to who we are.  In a sense, we are trapped within ourselves.   We are bound to who we are and the characteristics we possess…at least that is how it seems.  The Bible though tells us that there can be more to us than the limitations of self. That is why the concept of self-realization is not only restrictive and not very hopeful, it is irrational.  There is more to us that just us.

Before humanity came upon Jesus Christ, we were constrained to just who we were.  There were no talents that could be added to us, no one else could think within us to shape our ideas or decisions: we had no moral strength or integrity other than what we developed on our own.  This all changed when Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead.  Jesus hinted at what the three days from Good Friday to Resurrection Sunday would accomplish when He promised, "Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, 'Where are you going?' Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. (John 16:5-7 NIV)  The Lord promised that the “Counselor” would be with us always.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— (John 14:16 NIV) What the Counselor would do for us is specified by Christ.  But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.  (John 14:26 NIV)

The most profound change human personality can experience is what occurs when we are born again or as it also can be translated, “begotten from above”.  Jesus stated, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. (John 3:5 NIV)  In other words, it is impossible to be Christian unless a supernatural transformation occurs, described by Christ as being born of water and the Spirit.  Now what it means to be “born of water” has long been debated but it seems clear enough based on the symbolism of water in the Old Testament that it is an idiom our Lord used for cleansing from sin.  I must, if I am to enter the Kingdom of God, have my sin washed out of me and it is the work of the Holy Spirit through the death of Christ on the Cross that takes out of me my sin and makes me new.  It is only after the Spirit of God becomes a part of you and transforms you that you are Christian.  What triggers the transformation?  When in faith we put our trust in Jesus Christ crucified to save us from our sin, the work of God begins in us. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.  "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 3:14-16 NIV)

We see this phenomenon of the Spirt of God becoming a part of people described often in the book of Acts.  Just one example of the transforming work of having the Holy Spirit join with the personality of Christian people illustrates this.  After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. (Acts 4:31 NIV)  There was something different about these people who were filled with the Holy Spirit that was not them before.  They spoke boldly about God!  This was clearly something different about them.  With the Holy Spirit now a part of them, they were courageous in their evangelism.  In the book of Romans we discover another way the Holy Spirit alters the personality of Christians when He is a part of them.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:5 NIV)  The Holy Spirit puts into the personality of the Christian the love that God possesses.  Much like a daughter gains from her father or mother the innate ability to play musical instruments, so the “chromosome” of love comes to us from God when the Holy Spirit becomes part of us.  We don’t just have our capacity to love built in us but God’s also.  It does not just end there.  Christ gives us His very own peace when the Holy Spirit becomes a part of us.  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14: 27 NIV)  We are just scratching the surface here.  If God is a part of who we are when we are born again, then there are an infinite number of possible qualities we gain from Him.  The Apostle Paul said that when he thought about the Philippian Christians, he did so not just out of his own affection for them but also because the affection of Christ was built in him too.  God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:8 NIV)

Consider just what is possible for any person who has been born again and has the Spirit of God a part of his or her personality!  We can forgive not just with our own capacity to forgive but also with God’s own ability.  We can be courageous, not just with our own bravery but also with the bravery God possesses. We can be calm and at peace in any circumstance, not just because we have a certain developed or innate ability to stay calm but also because we have now built in us the capacity of Christ to be at peace.  Even the mind of God is ours when the Spirit of God is a part of us.  The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment: "For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?"   But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:14-16 NIV)

Can you see what an inadequate and demeaning goal, self-realization is?  Why would I be interested at all in being all I can be when I can become all Christ and I can be?  It is like asking a ballerina to strive to become as graceful as one of the early prototype robots built fifty years ago.  It is like telling a nuclear physicist to try and become as competent in math as the first grader living next door.  Our goal must never be to try and become all we can be but all God built in us can be.  It is not self-actualization but Christ actualization that drives us forward.  Consider the example of Barnabas who sold land of his and gave the proceeds of the sale to the church.  This of course may have been his nest egg; the retirement he hoped would support him in his twilight years or it might have just been one piece of property among many.  It certainly seems like an extravagant gift and might have pushed him to the limits of his generosity to give it.

Let the full weight of this simple act sink in as you read the complete account of what happened.  After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.  With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet. (Acts 4:31-37 NIV)

If we are to reach our potential as people, we must never give in to the antiquated and insufficient goal of being all we can be.   With the Spirit of God as part of us, we can become as generous and kind, and loving and honest and insightful and good as God in us can be.  Consider this as we close.  As the personality of Christ works His way through us, we become the Kingdom of God moving about in practice.  When His love becomes our love, when His generosity becomes our generosity, when His courage becomes ours, we shall be as we let Christ have His way in us, the works of God wherever we go!  Now that is reaching our potential!

He Meets Us

Nothing argues as fiercely against the presence of God as the unbending hardships we face.  They press against us like pointed spears and we wonder when our deliverance will come.  We wait and pray and cry out for help and yet the oppression remains and we wonder what sort of God would allow what we face.  The Christian community is filled with silent mourners who have grown weary of praying.  Sometimes they rise up against God and bitterly denounce Him.  Other times they simply sneer when given spiritual platitudes that sound good only in theory.  Our world is broken and filled with shame and sorrow and we must face the facts as they are.  Our children's hearts are rubbed raw by their disappointments and our friends sigh without relief in sight.  Is it any wonder that God is ignored today in the very circles where we would expect His name to be praised?  There is within us though a cry rising up; a mourning hope that waits for God with the expectancy of a child.  Like the blind man on the side of the road calling out to Jesus, we wait also for Him.  With the prayer of the woman whose bleeding nearly drove her mad, we reach out to Christ.  The amazing part of God that we overlook is that He too was, as the King James translation puts it, "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."  (Isaiah 53:3)  In the Garden of Gethsemane our Lord admitted to His disciples, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death."  (Matthew 26: 38 NIV)  God did not drop us down into a universe where suffering and sorrow continue and refuse to let them both hammer Him also.  As David silently hid in the cave with his men, Christ also huddles with us in our sorrow and pain and waits with us for it to end.  The day is coming when we shall exclaim triumphantly that we are "more than conquerors through Him who loved us" but for now the faith of many is weak and the suffering brought on by a sin marred and Satan infiltrated world stands opposed to our victory cry.  The miracle of our Lord's crucifixion and resurrection is that our Savior is not aloof and His encouragement not mere cliché.  We too shall overcome this world and in the dark of night, our Lord comes to us with a tender touch of love and comfort that somehow carries us past our sorrow and lifts our spirits with supernatural joy and peace.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.      John 14:27 NIV

The Worthiness of Jesus...Heart

Psalm 73: 26 NIV

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

What Is In Your Heart?

This past week our family on the 4^th of July went to the fireworks program put on by the city of Milpitas.  It was not a huge extravaganza but it was fun and a great way to end the holiday.  There is a football field that is used for seating that is first-come, first-served.  I got there early to get a spot for my family but was disappointed to discover that because we did not get our tickets in advance, I would have to wait in line for an hour to get our passes.  My knee had been bothering me a lot and so standing in line was not an ideal way for me to spend the afternoon.  Finally I was able to get my ticket and pick out a spot for our mat and then I began the long wait for my family to arrive.  Because I didn’t have a cell phone and there were lots of people crowding onto the field, I had to be vigilant for my family’s arrival.  Rather than relax and read a book, I was constantly scanning about to see if I could spot them.  Family after family arrived with their coolers, their cold drinks and their dinners.  Kids played with their parents, adults talked together and laughed and told stories and I sat by myself waiting…waiting…waiting.  Finally, two and a half hours later, my family arrived and because I hadn’t eaten much lunch, no breakfast and had been sitting out for so long in the warm sun, I was both famished and thirsty.  But when they arrived, all that was brought for me were chips!  Chips?  Others had barbecue, sandwiches and boxed dinners from restaurants and I was handed some chips.  Not only was I disappointed that I had to sit by myself for so long, I was bent out of shape by the lack of good food and drinks.  Now we would generally speak of my anger and frustration as cause related.  I was tired, perhaps feeling lonely and definitely thirsty and hungry.  The Bible however would describe it as a heart issue.

Have you ever gotten angry or depressed over something that others might call “no big deal”?  Perhaps you lost your cool over someone cutting you off on the road or a friend’s or co-worker’s insult.  Maybe you were so frustrated by your wife or your husband that you would not talk to him or her all evening.  Have you ever hurt someone’s feelings because she reminds you of someone that treated you badly in the past?  Do you let yourself get depressed when things don’t go as you planned?  Have you fallen for someone that didn’t really like you because you were lonely and desperate to be loved?  Do emotions ever spring up within you that don’t seem justified?  Are you surprised by how badly you react to circumstances that later don’t seem so bad?

There is much about us that we can’t give a rational explanation.  It makes for good TV to make some people out to be like robots but none of us are.  We are complicated and the root of nearly all of our senseless reactions is found in what the Bible calls “the heart”.  Our modern view of the heart is different than how the Bible uses the term “heart”.  Just a few passages from the Psalms will illustrate this.  No, in your heart you devise injustice, and your hands mete out violence on the earth. (Psalm 58:2 NIV) If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; (Psalm 66:18 NIV) Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12 NIV) My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. (Psalm 131:1 NIV) Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. (Psalm 139:23 NIV)

When the Bible talks about the heart, it is referring to what we commonly speak of as the mind.  But it really is more than just the mind, the heart as the Bible uses the term, is the very core of our personality, who we are and what we shall be forever as people. Within our heart we process our experiences, decide what we will do or not do, settle on our relationship with God and take in from God His attributes and spiritual gifts.  Joy comes to the heart as does sorrow and wisdom.  The heart is bigger than our minds can comprehend and within the heart is far more than we realize.  The body may die but the heart continues to live for it is who we are eternally.

The Bible speaks of the heart of Jesus a few times.  Christ says of Himself, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:29 NIV)  This revelation of Jesus that He is gentle and humble in heart should make us pause and consider exactly the ramifications for us.  The God who created the universe is gentle and humble in heart.  He does not lord over us His power and although this world is tough and often full of pain, He is gentle.  We must always take this into account when we think of God and what we face.  His heart is gentle.  His heart is humble.  We also need to acknowledge that the heart of Jesus is compassionate.  In the small town of Nain as Jesus was walking and teaching, he noticed a funeral procession.  A widow’s only son had died and a large crowd was mourning with her.  Gazing at the poor widow, his heart went out to her and he said, "Don't cry." (Luke 7:13 NIV)  Jesus then walked over to the casket and raised the son from the dead and restored him to his mom.  Later on, during the week that Jesus was betrayed, He admitted that His heart was in turmoil over what He faced at the end of the week.  "Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say?  'Father, save me from this hour'?  No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.  Father, glorify your name!" (John 12:27 NIV)

There is one more characteristic of Jesus’ heart that is critical to note. His heart is without sin.  There is not a hint of corruption to it, cruelty, bitterness, worry, or hatred for people.  He is called in the Bible a high priest who understands all the pain and sorrow we face and realizes in His heart how difficult it is to do what is right.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet was without sin. (Hebrews 4:15-16 NIV)  In contrast, our hearts are thoroughly warped and distorted by sin and they generate all sorts of shocking behaviors.  Jesus, who understood human psychology better than anyone ever, has asserted, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” (Matthew 15:19 NIV) We like to insist that we would never do certain bad things others do and have done yet in this vast ocean of human personality called the heart is all that is needed for murder, slander, sexual immorality and theft to immerge.  There is a depth of evil in our hearts we cannot calculate but God knows exactly what is there.  As the prophet Jeremiah, speaking for the Lord put it, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 KJV)The misperception of many is that the heart is basically good but that is not the case.  Our Lord says it is tremendously wicked and warped and there is a monumental amount of evil each heart, yours and mine, can produce.

Although we are clear on how Jesus forgave our sins by dying on the Cross, the overlooked aspect of what Jesus Christ accomplished at the Cross is His work to recreate us so that we can live happily without sin.  Perhaps the most profound couple of statements ever made on the psychology of the human condition brought about through the death of Christ on the Cross are found in Romans 5.  Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.  And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.  Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:1-5 NIV)

Peace with God is not possible given the condition of our hearts.  We are irrational and uncontrollable with the heart each of us has.  Hatred and worry and lust and selfishness are always possible with us.  But something rarely ever discussed occurred when Jesus Christ died for us and in faith we gained God’s grace.  Part of that grace, perhaps the biggest part of that grace is not just that our sins are forgiven but that God has made it possible for us to have good and holy hearts.  How can that happen given what Christ has said about our hearts?  The miracle of the Cross also includes the amazing decision to pour into our hearts God’s own love.  The Holy Spirit does this and it changes the entire composition of our hearts.  They now have God’s love working out of them the corruption of Sin and making them good…good at the level of God’s goodness.  Another English translation says that God has “shed abroad” His love into our hearts which essentially means He floods our hearts with His own love, washing them of all the filth of collected Sin and hurt.  The Holy Spirit makes our hearts able to empower righteous and moral and loving actions that could not happen with God’s love not there.

Your heart though will be at war and you will never be at peace with God as part of it unless you give up your right to govern yourself.  The most miserable people in the world are those whose hearts are a battle ground between Sin and the love of God.    As soon as you let Christ take charge of your life, your heart will be at peace.  Jesus put it this way, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.” (John 14:1 NIV)  A simple practice can make the peace of God a reality for you.  When lust pops up, say to the Lord, “I trust you with this lust.”  When anger boils within, say, “Lord, I trust you with this anger.”  When it is jealousy, “Lord I trust you with this jealousy.”  You are feeling sorry for yourself, “Lord I trust you with my disappointment.”  You feel bitter about mistreatment, “Lord, I trust you with my hurt feelings.”  The happiest and most contented people in the world can be Christians if we let our Lord have control of our hearts by trusting Him with our lives.

He Meets Us

Nothing argues as fiercely against the presence of God as the unbending hardships we face.  They press against us like pointed spears and we wonder when our deliverance will come.  We wait and pray and cry out for help and yet the oppression remains and we wonder what sort of God would allow what we face.  The Christian community is filled with silent mourners who have grown weary of praying.  Sometimes they rise up against God and bitterly denounce Him.  Other times they simply sneer when given spiritual platitudes that sound good only in theory.  Our world is broken and filled with shame and sorrow and we must face the facts as they are.  Our children's hearts are rubbed raw by their disappointments and our friends sigh without relief in sight.  Is it any wonder that God is ignored today in the very circles where we would expect His name to be praised?  There is within us though a cry rising up; a mourning hope that waits for God with the expectancy of a child.  Like the blind man on the side of the road calling out to Jesus, we wait also for Him.  With the prayer of the woman whose bleeding nearly drove her mad, we reach out to Christ.  The amazing part of God that we overlook is that He too was, as the King James translation puts it, "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."  (Isaiah 53:3)  In the Garden of Gethsemane our Lord admitted to His disciples, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death."  (Matthew 26: 38 NIV)  God did not drop us down into a universe where suffering and sorrow continue and refuse to let them both hammer Him also.  As David silently hid in the cave with his men, Christ also huddles with us in our sorrow and pain and waits with us for it to end.  The day is coming when we shall exclaim triumphantly that we are "more than conquerors through Him who loved us" but for now the faith of many is weak and the suffering brought on by a sin marred and Satan infiltrated world stands opposed to our victory cry.  The miracle of our Lord's crucifixion and resurrection is that our Savior is not aloof and His encouragement not mere cliché.  We too shall overcome this world and in the dark of night, our Lord comes to us with a tender touch of love and comfort that somehow carries us past our sorrow and lifts our spirits with supernatural joy and peace.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.      John 14:27 NIV