Obedience—The Great Uncovering Step 3

Romans 3:20 NIV

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.

Do You Recognize The Source Of Your Longings?

When you get married, most just assume that someday they will have children.  You may want to give yourselves some time to enjoy being newlyweds but most plan on eventually having kids.  We were like most couples in that way.  In fact before we got married, we had already picked out our first daughter’s name.  So when after eight years of being married and six years trying our best to become parents, we were flabbergasted.  In fact we became a bit desperate in our praying when it seemed we might not be able to have children.  I used to watch other people my age holding hands with their kids, pushing their babies along in baby strollers, playing catch at the park, buying their children toys at Christmas and envying them.  Sometimes I could hardly stand to watch young families because I so badly wanted what they had.  It was painful getting family Christmas cards from others with the happy smiles and blissful joy they seemed to have.  Now of course I know how rough it is to get families to all smile together and how difficult parenting is.  But back then, all I could see was the upside of having children and it didn’t seem fair that all these people could have kids and my wife and I couldn’t.  I was like the Grinch…I hated birth announcements and did not want to hear about the accomplishments and milestones of my friends’ kids.  I lusted after their lives…their happy, fun and exciting parent lives.

Nothing rots human personality like envy.  It is perhaps the most destructive force we face.  Envy has led to world wars, murders, suicides and ruined homes.  Nearly every conflict has its root in some form of envy.  Many times longstanding friendships, family relationships and marriages come apart due to some form of envy.  Envy has led to insurmountable debts, broken marriages, fractured families, ruined careers and self-loathing.  It led to the first murder and it will be the cause of the last battle on earth.  Envy led to Satan’s downfall and many billions of downfalls thereafter.  Is it any wonder that the Lord finished His Ten Commandments with a prohibition against practical envy?  "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." (Exodus 20:17 NIV)

If there was anyone who seemingly had no reason being envious, it would seem to have been Jacob, the founder of the nation Israel. There is not a much greater honor than having an entire nation named after you.  That is what happened with Israel, better known as Jacob.  How many of us have ever had a city or a street named for us?  Israel, better known as Jacob had the great privilege of being spoken of by God before he was born.  When his mother feared that something terrible was happening in her womb, the Lord reassured her that all was well; she simply had twins, fighting twins albeit.  The Lord said to her, "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger." (Genesis 25:23 NIV)  The younger was Jacob and his mother was told by God what would come of his life.  As the brothers grew to adulthood, each parent chose one of them as the favorite son.  Jacob’s mother Rebekah loved him the most; his father Isaac loved the older twin Esau best.  The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents.  Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob. (Genesis 25:27-28 NIV)  What this parental favoritism did to the personality of each of the twins we cannot say with certainty but we do know that Jacob envied his brother Esau’s place in the family; coveted in fact what belonged to him, specifically his birthright.

One day Jacob’s older brother Esau came back to camp famished after an unsuccessful hunting trip.  Jacob famously had a pot of stew on the fire and Esau craved some.  Jacob, who clearly had been thinking often of his desire to change places with Esau struck a deal with his brother.  He (Esau) said to Jacob, "Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I'm famished!" (That is why he was also called Edom.)  Jacob replied, "First sell me your birthright."  "Look, I am about to die," Esau said. "What good is the birthright to me?"  But Jacob said, "Swear to me first." So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. (Genesis 25:30-33 NIV)  This was indeed a strange transaction yet both sides were apparently quite happy with the trade.  Much is made of Esau’s disregard for his birthright as oldest son but rarely is the biting desire of Jacob to have his brother’s birthright explored.  As we learned earlier of David’s father issues, we see a similar situation here.  Jacob was the lesser son to his father also.  Jacob in his deep seated feelings of rejection and disconnect from his dad, perhaps hoped he could by getting his brother’s birthright erase some of the longstanding pain he felt about his place in the family.

One of the more misunderstood commands of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is the famous directive on sexual purity.  "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.'  But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:27-29 NIV)  This mandate turns on the word “adultery”.  It specifically is a command on marriage vows.  Adultery is the sexual relationship of a married person with someone with whom he or she is not married.  The reverse is also adultery; a single person having a sexual relationship with a married person is also committing adultery.  Adultery is not “sexual immorality” which is any sexual relationship outside of marriage; adultery is a subset of sexual immorality, it is the sin of sexually breaking marriage vows.

What we have here in the Sermon on the Mount is a stern command to not desire sexually someone who by God’s law cannot be yours.  If you are married, or someone else you notice is married, sexual looking is equivalent to adultery.  Jesus has marvelously woven together the seventh command to not commit adultery with the tenth command to not covet what belongs to another person into one very practical order.  Now this is strange perhaps to suggest and may seem even blasphemous but this part of the Sermon on the Mount is not a prohibition against single people sexually looking at other single people.  You may argue that any form of sexual looking is wrong and cite other parts of the Bible to make your point that it is wrong but sexual looking among single people is not the concern of Jesus here.  He is crushing in this stunning connection of lust and adultery the universal practice of wanting something someone else has.

It is typical of children to crave another child’s toy, even to the point of ripping it from her hand. We all have done it; most of us have watched it happen.  Our dog wants our cat’s food and the cat takes the dog’s food.  When adults and teens let their minds feast on another man’s food, it becomes a banquet from hell.  Jacob made his trade with Esau and got his brother’s right as first-born but he still had to have more.  That is the problem with craving.  It can only be stopped by the strong hand of God.  Jacob did not get what he hoped to have in his trade.  His father didn’t like him any more than before; he was still the lesser son.  When Isaac died and Jacob finally got his father’s inheritance, it no longer mattered to him because he was already rich.  The worst part of the trade though was that it fed an insatiable desire to completely usurp his brother’s place in the family and it was Jacob’s mother who found a way to try and gain that lust desire.  When his father Isaac wanted to pass along a special blessing to Esau, Jacob’s mother worked out a plan where Jacob was able to trick his father into giving it to him.  Both his father and his brother Esau were devastated by the deception.  His father shook with rage when he discovered what Jacob had done; Esau’s fury at his brother’s actions turned to thoughts of murder. He said to himself, "The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob." (Genesis 27:41 NIV) Jacob fled his home to escape his brother’s wrath and perhaps even his father’s disgust with him and wound up more than a hundred miles away at the home of his mother’s brother, never to see his beloved mother ever again.

Here is the consequence of Jacob’s coveting.   Jacob wound up essentially being a slave to his uncle for twenty years.  If he had let God work everything out instead of taking matters into his own hands, he could have gone to his uncle with his father’s blessing and with the help of his father’s riches, gained his wife Rachel instantly.  Instead, since Jacob was a fugitive and thus powerless, Laban his uncle took advantage of Jacob and forced him not only to work seven years to gain Laban’s daughter Rachel as a bride but forced him to marry also his other daughter Leah whom he did not want.  This cost him another seven years of forced labor.  He spent fourteen years paying for his covetous desires!  What is worse is that his wives, because of their jealousy of each other pushed Jacob to take on each of their servants as wives too.  Rather than build his family upon the foundation of love and loyalty, it began as a civil war and never stopped being a civil war.  His wives fought the rest of their lives for supremacy in the home not just for themselves but also for their children.  Coveting is passed along to the next generation.  It is a ravenous beast that cannot be satiated without divine intervention.  Covet once what isn’t yours and you will find yourself consumed by poisonous desires unless you let God work His way through you and free your mind of satanic longings.

Remember the first and most destructive temptation is the one to grab for what belongs to someone else.  We can follow our lust like Adam and Eve and just take it like they did the forbidden fruit or because we are afraid of acting upon our impulses, crave it until we are poisoned by the unmet desire.  Jacob lusted for his brother’s blessing because he didn’t think he could ever have his father’s love.  Could it be the same for us?  Is there something we want too much because we still bear a wound that has never healed?  Have we let Satan get in our head and think God is too small to make things right for us?  Are we afraid God is unable to fix what is wrong in us so we look for something else other than God to fix our brokenness?

There is a seldom discussed way God heals the broken parts of our unconscious world.  He does it by thanksgiving.  Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. (Colossians 3:15-16 NIV) These are not two disconnected thoughts.  The word translated “And” puts them together and makes them one linked whole.  You gain the peace of Christ when you are thankful.  Be thankful and the deep places of pain and hurt and broken dreams and lost hopes are healed by Christ peace.  Where no one can touch the wounds…not a psychologist nor a master teacher…Christ can touch it and he can heal it.  His peace passes into us when we are thankful for what He gives us.  When we look about and think “thank you Lord” for each part of our day, for every experience we encounter, the peace of Christ has more freedom to move about in our unconscious self and take out the poison that kills our happiness.  A thankful mind does not have room to lust after others or crave the things others have.  A thankful mind is a joyful mind.  Satan cannot jump the wall of a mind that is thankful to Christ for what He has done. 

Individuality Vs. Personality Part 2

Individuality Vs Personality

Part 2

John 17:11b NIV

Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name — the name you gave me — so that they may be one as we are one.

Are You Personal Or An Individual?

We fight a constant battle between individuality and personality.  Our individuality wants to elbow others away from us and our personality stretches out to connect.  Personality in its purest and rawest form is presented to us in Genesis 2 when God created the woman as part of the man and declared what physically was true and that is that they were “one flesh”.  The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,'for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (Genesis 2:23-24 NIV)  Jesus indicated that this oneness of husband and wife is more than just the same physical source of being found in Adam and Eve…it reaches a far deeper level of union which when broken is disastrous.  'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,  and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Mark 10:7-9 NIV)  The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians said that the union of husband and wife is like the union of Christ and the Church and he called it all a mystery.  "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."  This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church.  (Ephesians 5:31-32 NIV)

What we see is that in marriage God brings the husband and wife together and supernaturally joins them into a union…there is a bridging brought about by God of two personalities.  Every marriage starts out this way…God linking the two together physically and psychologically.  It is our sinful press for individuality that elbows husbands and wives apart.  Our troubles in marriage spring from this urge to be individuals rather than personalities put together by God.  The more we hold on to our outdated view of who we are, that we are “on our own”, the more damage we inflict upon ourselves because in marriage, we are not on our own.  We are joined and if we don’t elbow each other apart we find we become bigger and better personalities in the union.  Husbands and wives grow as people when they are married and become more than they would have been unmarried because that is the sense of being joined by God.  If I add you to me, I become more than I was before there was both of us.

Jesus in His prayer before He was crucified set in place the ultimate goal of Christian people being formed into the Church.  He called upon a miraculous union, "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one:  I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23 NIV)  This is actually a stupendous assertion of Jesus.  The union of Christian people is to be as complete as what exists between Christ and the Father.  If we consider the insistence of Jesus that if you see Him, you see the Father and that He and the Father are one, this is an amazing prayer. (Consider John 14: 9; 10:30 NIV)  Can we in any way fathom the depth and height of their oneness….oneness in knowing each other’s thoughts, oneness in purpose, oneness in loves and desires and values?  If the infinite God can know our thoughts and live within our mind, cannot Jesus and the Father do the same?  Would not their intimacy be at that level?

What sort of form will our oneness take when we are together in Christ?  Consider the assessment of Paul in Galatians regarding the relationship Christians have.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  (Galatians 3:28 NIV)  The assumption most make is that all this is saying is that in heaven there will no longer be ethnic, cultural or sexual categories of people and although that may be true, there is a hint of something much more.  The statement that we are all one in Christ Jesus implies a unity that is supernaturally derived from being redeemed from sin by Jesus Christ.  What He did in us, taking away the Sin that separates us from God, He also does between us.  That same Sin will stop being a barrier separating us.  It is so much more than just us getting along with each other that Jesus Christ accomplished by taking our Sin from us on the Cross.  He is in it bringing us together so that we will have the same kind of intimacy and affection with each other that the Father and Son have.  Just as the Father and Son share their thoughts, loves and will in a complete union of personalities, so we too are to have that same union with each other.

Let us look at the one more aspect of our oneness in Christ.  The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians spoke of something that many Christians have not at all fully thought through.  The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free — and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.  Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.  And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. (1 Corinthians 12:12-20 NIV)

Even though the Apostle Paul was using the concern in the church that some Christian abilities were more valued than others to teach this matter of the Church as a body, the teaching goes beyond just whose duties and abilities are most important.  We have here the very outcome of being a personality and able to connect with others in Christ.  We are a body…many parts but one body.  As Christ fills us more and more, this will become a reality that we are a body and each of us parts of the body.  The direction we are heading, and this is the direction…we are not there yet,is that there is developing a greater combining of our lives with an increasing importance to the part each of us play in how everyone else lives in Christ.  Our sinful individualism tries its best to elbow the rest of the body away.  This Sin leads us to think we are not just an eye but we also are a foot and the eye wants to be the kidney and the kidney thinks it should be and is the ear.  But that is the myth.  I am something to the body and you are something to the body but you are not two or three somethings and I am not two or three somethings.  I am what God has made me and you are what God made you and without each other, we are wrecked.  It is absurd to think I don’t need you.  I must have you and you must have me and it goes on and on like that.  The hands and arms and nose and eyes all live through one another in a body and it is that way as we become more and more in Christ.  All individualism gets knocked to smithereens.  The personality of you is joined to the personality of me and the personality of a third and it goes on and on because Christ has put us together.  The Christian who because of anger or fear or pride or self-righteousness tries to disconnect from another Christian is simply hating himself and shredding his life apart.  The love of Christ demands that we stay together…not just stay together but love each other and make each other better by being together.  We are a wreck when we separate; it is a great loss to us when we separate…but when we join with each other, and stay joined with each other, in Christ, our lives become bigger and greater and fuller than we could ever have imagined. The goal of this day is to make a go of building your life with someone else who God has brought your way.

Forgetting The Past

Philippians 3:13-14 NIV

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. 

When I was in seventh grade, there was a boy named Mark Munschausen who used to make fun of me incessantly.  I was the tallest kid in the school and he was the shortest boy in my class.  He used to try his best to humiliate me in front of my schoolmates for what reason I don’t know.  Of all the other kids at the school, I was his victim.  After perhaps six months of this, I finally exploded.  On the grass field of the school playground while a group of us including Mark were playing football, he said something to me that set me off.  I chased him down and tackled him, began punching him relentlessly and then started choking him.  All the while tears were streaming down my face.  I had never been in a physical fight before…and haven’t since.  Someone must have pulled me off Mark because I don’t remember quitting on my own.  The fight ended, as much as you could call my pummeling him a fight, and as far as I can recall, I was never disciplined for it, never even brought to the principal’s office.  We settled our dispute on the playground and he never made fun of me again.  As I look back upon the “encounter” I must say I never made it my goal to look for other Munschausens in the world to fight them.  I never took out my rage on others of German decent.  I didn’t make it my determination to crush all other short people.  The name Mark has never had a negative connotation for me since the fight.  And freckled kids (Mark was freckled) have not stirred my anger.  All I have since then is a rather indifferent attitude toward the whole business.  I don’t feel guilty for what I did and I am not in any way still disturbed by the teasing I suffered back then.  It might as well have never happened it is so insignificant to my life now.

There is much made of how our past influences who we are today and there certainly is a great deal of truth to that contention.   Children who have been abused are generally scarred for life by it.  Plenty of men and women are afraid to get married after their first marriage failed.  Many people have trust issues because they have never forgotten how someone they loved betrayed them.  Some people won’t eat peas because they got sick at one time eating them.  There are adults who have never gotten over their fear of swimming because someone they knew drowned or of dogs because they were bitten when they were young or of going into dark rooms because they were molested when they were a child.  Perhaps you had a tough time liking someone who reminded you of someone else.  You might flinch when a car comes too close to you as you are driving after having been rear ended.  Plenty of people who came out of the depression continued the rest of their lives saving milk cartons,  old cans and scraps of wood just in case they might someday need them.  Many people try to run from their past by moving as far away from their home town as possible.  Some leave careers because of bad experiences that traumatized them.  The past for many is a terrible prison where they have been trapped; for others the past has kept them from trying new things and making new friends.  The past is not always our friend.

There is a person in the Bible who never escaped his past and it caused his downfall.  The third son of David, King of Israel was haunted by his past.  His sister was raped by his older half-brother and for three long years, Absalom plotted how he might avenge the crime.  As the years went by, Absalom grew increasingly bitter about the lack of action his father took when he heard about the rape and decided he would take justice into his own hands and take vengeance on his sister’s rapist .Absalom never said a word to Amnon, either good or bad; he hated Amnon because he had disgraced his sister Tamar.  (Genesis 13: 22 NIV) Finally, Absalom made his move and murdered Amnon, his half-brother who had committed the rape.  But Absalom’s rage was not stemmed by his revenge.  He then began to plot the overthrow of his father’s government and take the crown from him.  Absalom planned four years the revolt and eventually had enough support within the nation to rebel against his father’s rule.  He was eager in fact to have his own father murdered in the process.  Absalom, for whatever reason, his father’s lack of support when Absalom was young or David’s seeming indifference to the rape of Absalom’s sister Tamar, never forgot how he had been wronged by his dad. In the end, Absalom’s inability to forget his past cost him his life when he was killed in battle trying to destroy his dad.

There are millions around the world like Absalom who do not let go of their past even though it damages them psychologically.  In contrast Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and despite winding up in prison for a crime he did not commit was not governed by all the wrong done him.  In fact he faced his brothers fully and rather than condemning them, reminded them of the part God played in his exile to Egypt.  “And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.  For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping.  But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.” (Genesis 45:5-9 NIV)

Notice in this that Joseph never blocked out his past; he saw it as redeemed by God.  He did not deny the evil that was in the hearts of his brothers, he redefined though their work.  Nothing you or I have endured is too monstrous to be reconstituted into a resurrection of sorts.  Joseph did not forget his past; he was in a sense governed by it and not how the vast majority of us are governed by our past.  Getting sold into slavery was the only way Joseph would have voluntarily left his father to resettle in Egypt.  When Joseph was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife of trying to rape her, God used her accusation to bring out Joseph’s own true loyalty to God and moral fortitude and establish the two joined together as his determining personality trait.  The idiotic assumption Potiphar made that Joseph was guilty led to Joseph gaining a rock solid trust in God to see him through any trial he might ever face.  It also landed him in the sole place where he could establish for one of Pharaoh’s most important officials the power he possessed as God’s personal servant and prophet.  We must not pass by this too quickly.  Only at the point of great desperation and need could Pharaoh’s cupbearer be ready to ascertain the most important bit of information he would encounter ever.  The Lord was intervening in his life and he might never have known this without meeting Joseph in prison; might never have been able to help Pharaoh see that God was intervening in the king’s own life if he hadn’t met Joseph in prison.

Given the monumental place our past has with regard to our present, we must see it for what it is.  The Apostle Paul had every reason to be consumed by the pain of his past.  After all, each time he made it back to Jerusalem he must have encountered some widow or orphan Paul personally put in that condition.  He came across in cities all over the western world men and women who had ugly scars because of what Paul had done to them.  It is not easy to live with a past such as Paul’s, especially given the insatiable hunger Paul had to love each soul he met.  If anyone had a dreadful past he must have wished to bury, it had to have been the Apostle Paul.  Yet he never seemed emotionally crippled by his past and he certainly never buried his past.  This is why.

Everything changes when we take for ourselves Jesus Christ crucified, including our past.  When Jesus, God in flesh died on the cross, He redeemed us.  That means He gained for Himself by dying everything there is about us and immediately transformed it into something completely new including what we have faced before.  The transformation cuts both ways…forward and backward.  We have a future that is different and eventually perfect and we have a past that is different and eventually perfect.  When we are born again, God does not leave us with a fragmented and awful heredity that leaves us psychologically crippled.  He makes our past right and good.  No experience we have had once we have been totally redeemed by the Cross of Christ is a gaping wound…it is God’s own place of strength.  Imagine a separated shoulder that after it is surgically repaired is stronger and more helpful than ever.  Your past, once God has had His way with it through the Cross of Christ is your ally and valuable resource for the enhancement of your life as well as the lives of a multitude of others.  It is only as we defy our Lord to make good of our past by unbelief that we limp about, crippled by our past.

Paul’s rallying cry, of “forgetting what is behind”, was not a spin doctor’s challenge to pretend like nothing happened to us before.  He simply stated how it is when we give our lives to Christ.  The past is just as good to us as our future not because we decide it is but because it really is.  Consider this about the forgetting.  Imagine you have suffered a terrible back injury.  All you think about is that back of yours because it through pain demands your attention.  Day and night, each movement and activity is ruled to some degree by your aching back.  Your back comes up in your daily conversations, is a big part of your praying and constitutes your rapt attention.  But suppose that back of yours begins to heal.  You think about it less, pray about it more infrequently and it comes up in fewer and fewer of your conversations.  You don’t even notice your back when you lift something or sit or take a walk.  It is so completely healed that you forget your back.  That is what Paul is talking about your past.  In Christ, as you in faith put your past into the body of Jesus crucified, your past gets more than healed; it becomes perfected…the perfect past for one as important and beloved of God as you.

The revelation from God that you have sinned is the point at which you start to see your past become your great friend.  The Bible makes it clear what you must do about your past.  Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you — even Jesus. (Acts 3:19-20 NIV) When you turn from your sin and face God squarely, which is what “repent” means, a miracle happens.  The Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you are not the same person you were before.  Christ enters you and you begin to work in His power and you think with His mind working by means of your mind and you love through Christ and bless through Christ and help through Christ and encourage through Christ and heal through Christ and pray through Christ.  Everything changes when you turn from your sin and face God.  Your mind does not think with a limp and you do not act lamely but capably, effectively as Jesus Christ lives through all you do.  Repent, for you as a Christian, does not mean a groveling, despair over your past; it is a turning to God that Christ may live thoroughly through you. Our road map through our past into our future is Galatians 2: 20.  I have been crucified with Christ.  That is your past.  And I no longer live but Christ lives in me.  That is what you are now. And the life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.  That is your past combined with who you are now determining what you will be from this point forward.  Take a moment to remember some things that you have had happen in your past…good or bad that have shaped you and influenced you now.  Fling those memories of what happened into the crucified body of Christ and miraculously, perfectly, God will transform them and they will be…each one of them, cause for you to be happy.  They are and forever will be your friend and your help as you move forward in Christ.

Absolute Focus

The brevity of a day is just the space God needs to make a planet spin, a sun explode and a soul find refuge.  Perhaps the great oddity of our Lord is that he cares about a moment in time.  Eternal and without end or beginning and yet He contemplates the second and each second with the same attention.  For us as we grow older, the days and years become a wash; a repetitive splash of wave after wave.  But God takes the moments seriously, both past and coming with  equal affection and consideration.  The instant you find your doll in the back of the car and exult, the Lord celebrates mightily with you too.  And when your baby is found dead in your womb, the Lord weeps then just as mournfully as if He had only lived that day and seen just that one sorrow.  The Lord God lives out with you the surprising joys and the devastating losses at the time it happens and He is not looking forward to the end of the saga or backwards to before it began.  He is looking with you at the same thing you are and He sees it with clarity and attention.  Your fever burns now and God is with you in it fully engaged and your all night study session is not lost on Him either even as you fight to stay awake.  You slice your finger and God flinches with you; take your fury out on your son and he weeps in the night too.  Argue with your wife and the Lord is centering in on every part of the fight, take your kids to the zoo and He is having the time of His life with you there.  It is nothing for the Lord to be riveted by what you do and say and hear and think, but it is not inconsequential to Him either.  He bores in on your life as if it were the only one contained within the universe and does not turn His back upon it even for an instant.  You may disregard the depth of your existence but God has never done so.  It is a tangle of distracted complexity to you but simple and all consuming to Him.  The Lord sees you!

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise...  Psalm 139:1-2 NIV

The Road Not Taken...Yet

How often have I wished I didn’t have to talk with a sales rep?  Not yesterday.  Victoria and her assistant (I made up Victoria’s name) found me even though they tried to come in through the wrong door.  Victoria’s father is a Hindu priest and her mother converted to Hinduism from Christianity.  As the Lord opened the way for us to discuss religion, I fumbled about for a while trying to make it reasonable for a bright, charming, educated, lovely, young woman see that she should at least give Christianity a good look before she walked away from it.  Later I wondered how our conversation would have turned if I was her uncle or professor rather than a potential customer for her company.  Perhaps not any better or worse but I know how I would have proceeded.  I would have explained to her as our great friend C.S. Lewis has noted that there really are only two strands of religion in the world and every other one is merely a warping of one or the other.  Hinduism is the first strand but not in terms of time or priority, only as it comes around for discussion.  With Hinduism, there are many, many gods and goddesses all with their own distinct personalities and corruptions.  Some are wickedly good and others are deceptively bad.  They weave in and out of rightness and selfishness and moral depravity.  The universe is built upon the foundation of justice only and every bit of badness gets squeezed out of the soul until there is nothing left to it…even if it takes thousands of reincarnations to get it done.

Christianity is the second strand but not in terms of time or priority.  There is only one Christian God who is perfectly moral and full of kindness and love.  The universe is built upon the foundations of righteousness and mercy and badness is not whipped out of us by our own suffering; it is wooed out of us by the suffering of God who loves us.  We live not to die and live and die and live until we dissolve but we live to live and to know the God who loves us like a bride in a love marriage that always boils with rising heat and desire.  Suffering does come to us as a result of badness we do but it is God Himself who suffers the pain our badness set in motion.  Rather than paying us back for what we have done, God is paid back for what we have done.  Whipped and beaten and broken by the people He came to rescue from eternal death, He died with the sins of us all buried in His own body.  And then, only then Jesus Christ, God in flesh and blood rose from the dead, eternally our only way to eternal life.  It is with this God, this God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit that we find our way and make it home, always alive, always the one who is beloved and known and never oblivion.  

The truth is I might even now be botching it trying to get the truth squared away for my friend.  In the end, it really boils down to this one verse.  For God so loved the world that He gave His one of a kind Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.  I hope Victoria finds it.  She at least got to the right door.

No Fault Divorce

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"

Mark 10:2 NIV

When a relationship of yours is broken, how do you know it is your fault?  For some they are never at fault.  Surely you don’t fit into this category of people but most have trouble accepting blame when they are squarely in the midst of an argument.  It is too satisfying to keep at it, to keep pounding away at fault, keep hammering the point.  The ability to shut-up in the middle of a fight is a God-send, but only if it results in a change of direction.  Given our tendency to lay blame, it is almost a pipe dream to hope that we could see our fault in a matter when we are steamed.  Adam and Eve proved that at the heart of sin is a propensity to lay blame, to find fault without rather than within.  One of the clear signals that we have erred and perhaps erred badly is a righteous anger that we have been wronged.  Consider the admonitions we find in scripture regarding fractured relationships.  "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.  (Matthew 5:23-24 NIV)  "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:27-28 NIV) "Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”  (Matthew 7:1-2 NIV)  "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Matthew 7:3-5 NIV) But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39-40 NIV)

The weight of scripture is stacked against you if you are making your case in a broken relationship.  Whatever argument you may have wedged into your fight, whether spoken or unspoken is nearly always wrong or at least irrelevant.  There is almost no room for squaring things off; at least if you are pretty certain it is the other person’s corner that is misaligned.  Our bent heart rarely gets it right when we begin to assess blame.  Sin warps our view of nearly every accusation we have; we are much more likely to get it wrong when we are incensed than have grasped the right thread of a matter.  Nothing violates our life with God more than playing the judge in our disagreements; acting as the accuser in our fractured relationships.  Fault may be shown but most likely it will only be our own that we find uncovered in the rubble.  Better to forgive, ignore or let go than fight on and try to take it to the mat.  Adam knew it was his wife’s fault but right or wrong in his assumption, he was given bitter toil for life for his part…one must wonder what God would have done instead if he had simply said he was wrong and left the matter at that…leaving Eve out of it.  We know our God’s mercy.  Why trifle with his patience by keeping our fights alive when we can simply end them with forgiveness and a resolve to give up the cloak demanded of us?  Blessed still are the peacemakers for they will be called the sons of God.  Isn’t it better to be happy than cling to a warped form of rightness?

Exist

I am unabashedly beside myself with joy that we have a Savior who loves so much and pours out life. I think it is beyond comprehension that God cares a whit about us and takes even the least interest in what we are. The entire concern over whether or not God exists is such a fragmented and juvenile mental tottering that sometimes it bewilders me that anyone doubts God's existence. So much proof of Him has come my way over the years that atheism could never ever confound me. But I do at times wonder why He does what He does with me and what on earth His plans can be that are so important that I must be bent over by His "furious" wind. As I look upon the dreams God has for Calista and His miraculous bringing of her parents together, it astounds me how everything is put in place by God and His perfect will. None of us would be here if it were not for His miracle of bringing two people together in union...two people who never could have thought of each other if God had not inched them into one another's arms. Marriage will survive just as babies and baby making survive because God loves all three!