Purpose

Ruth 1:18 NIV

 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Do You Have A Plan For Making Lives Better?

When I first became pastor of our church, a group of us went down to Southern California to attend a conference led by Rick Warren.  He was a popular speaker whose book, The Purpose Driven Church was widely acclaimed and becoming a framework for how thousands of congregations were being developed.  I knew that not everyone among us would agree with what Warren was advocating but I hoped that we all would get something of value out of the seminars.  It was a good time of bonding for us as we each processed what was shared and how we might put into practice what we learned.  We came back and had every intention of trying to have a “purpose driven church” like what Warren described but it did not go quite like we hoped and although we did reshape the direction of our church, it never approached anything we saw at Saddleback.  One thing I noticed though was that in trying so hard to make a difference with our church, I in some aspects lost my way.  I put much more thought and effort into the mechanics of the church rather than into my place within the church.  I forgot a foundational premise of the life of a congregation.

Because you are busy, perhaps really busy, the last thing you need is one more assignment, one additional duty.  It is ironic that the more devices we gain that make our lives easier and more manageable, the less time we seem to have to be human.  The cell phone has as we all know become a substitute for real life and real people.  If you are like most, you spend more time fussing about the lives of those you never will meet than caring about the ones you actually have with you.  Social media is frequently not much more social than two robots passing data between each other.  In it all, we have too often lost the desire or maybe more likely, the skill set needed to have closeness with those actually in our physical space.  It is of course much easier to converse with friends who cannot see your warts and deficiencies but only have an icon representing you in front of them.  Yet are we losing our humanness by not talking with actual people that we can physically touch?  If we don’t give someone time to grow with us and develop real closeness, are we missing something critical to being Christian?

Moses has for years intrigued me.  Perhaps he might interest you also.  He is full of contradictions and complicated personality traits.  Perhaps what makes him so fascinating is that we know so much about him and yet there is a tremendous amount of mystery to him.  What effect did it have on Moses surviving the Egyptian massacre of fellow Hebrew infants?  How did he reconcile his own life of luxury and privilege with the poverty his parents and siblings suffered?  What led him to believe that he was meant to lead the Israelites out of slavery and then why did he give up on the idea until he was eighty?  What sort of psychological damage did he suffer when his fellow Israelites rejected him after he stood up to the Egyptian who was beating the Israelite slave?  Did Moses’ disjointed upbringing damage his ability to be a husband and father?  How did Moses’ early life experiences impact his leadership style?  What sort of person was Moses really?  The Bible tells us that he was the humblest man on earth but how did that look?

For all the trouble Moses seemed to have with people, whether it was his brother and sister, the leaders of the Israelites or the contentious and bitter relationship he had with Pharaoh, Moses maintained for forty years a close friendship with his successor who took over leadership of the Israelites once Moses died.  Before Moses began mentoring Joshua, we know absolutely nothing about him.  He was forty years younger than Moses and from the tribe of Ephraim but for some reason at a young age he became Moses’ assistant.  Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses' aide since youth… (Numbers 11:28 NIV)  It is kind of humorous to hear the Scripture tell us that Joshua had served along with Moses since youth as he probably did not meet Moses until he was nearly forty.  Of course we are talking about two men who lived to be one hundred and ten and one hundred and twenty respectively so perhaps when you live that long, at forty you are still a kid. 

He was constantly at Moses’ side.  He went up onto Mount Sinai both times with him and was there when the Lord gave Moses the Ten Commandments and the Law.  Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God. (Exodus 24:13 NIV) Joshua camped in the Tabernacle with Moses and served as its guardian while Moses went out among the people passing along the instructions that had come from the Lord.  The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent. (Exodus 33:11 NIV)  Joshua was hand-picked by Moses to lead the Israelites into their first battle. The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim.  Moses said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands." (Exodus 17:8-9 NIV)  It was in fact Moses who changed this young assistant’s name from Hoshea to Joshua much like Jesus did with Peter.  Joshua means, “the Lord saves” and it is the Hebrew form of the Greek name “Jesus”.  Joshua was with Moses during his magnificent triumphs and his heart-wrenching trials.  When it was time to pass along the mantle of leadership it was, as the Lord put it, his “assistant” who the Lord chose to guide Israel into its conquest of the Promised Land.  But your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, will enter it. Encourage him, because he will lead Israel to inherit it. (Deuteronomy 1:38 NIV) 

When it was time for Moses to hand over the reins of leadership, there was a supernatural component to it.  Moses not only established a lasting friendship with Joshua and gave him the opportunity to be there with him during the most important times of his later life, he also gave Joshua the important aspect of what made him such a great man.  The Scripture tells us that when Joshua took over as leader of Israel, he was ready for the job.  Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites listened to him and did what the Lord had commanded Moses. (Deuteronomy 34:9 NIV)  Why was that?  It is because Moses “laid his hands on him.”  He passed along to him the Spirit of God.  This is not some training strategy or discipleship technique.  It is a supernatural work of God accomplished through the physicality of being human.  God ordered Moses to make Joshua the inheritor of the life he had with God so that he could accomplish his mission in life.  But commission Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he will lead this people across and will cause them to inherit the land that you will see." (Deuteronomy 3:28 NIV)

We see these same kinds of relationships throughout the Bible, perhaps not with the detail as the teaming of Moses and Joshua described in Exodus to Joshua but they all have the same components.  God’s people are seen in Scripture building relationships with others so that they might pass along to them the life they have in God: Naomi with Ruth, Elijah with Elisha, Samuel with David, Paul with Timothy.  Why not add your name to the list.  You have been given a mandate by God to pass along to others what you have in Christ.  It is not an optional plan; it is the command of God.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations… (Matthew 28:19 NIV)  This is not some high level spiritual directive given to super Christians.  It is your call from Christ to build up someone else and help that person reach his or her potential as a child of God.  One person in this world needs you to be a mentor, a conduit through whom the Lord pours His spirit.  You too must touch someone like Samuel did and Moses did and Naomi did.  No more of this long distance Facebook spirituality only.  It is time you let God use you to be His body so that someone else can be touched by Him.  Who is that person?  God already has someone in mind.  Keep your eyes open and watch for who He points out to you!

Nothing More, Nothing Less

Exodus 3: 11 NIV

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

What Does God Want to Do With You?

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

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

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

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

(Exodus 3:7-10 NIV)

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

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

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

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

Heightened Faith

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

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

Beyond the Intellect

Without faith in God, you will not make "heads or tails" of God or much of anything found in the Bible.   First we believe; then we understand.    Before our faith in Him becomes operational, we may be perfectly content with our opinions of both God and Scripture.    However as we begin to believe in Christ, our ideas get sorted through and most of them we sheepishly discard.  Nothing is more useless than waiting for God to show Himself to us before we will believe.   Faith unlocks the universe of God.  By faith, we see Him in our trip to the store.  We see Him during our illness.  We see Him at work and while we study.  Without faith, we have blinders but the moment we begin our believing, the Lord sneaks into view.  Moses' parents saw God as their son was lifted out of the basket by the Egyptian princess.  Abraham saw God as he began his journey away from Ur.  Paul saw God following His baptism.  If God tells us that faith in Him is required to access knowledge of Him, why would we take faith so lightly in our daily operations?  In Jesus' hometown, He showed only a bit of Himself and most did not even see that because their faith was impoverished.   And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith. (Matthew 13:58 NIV)   Too many in the Christian community have a wait and see attitude toward God when they ought to be crying out to Him like the apostles, "Increase our faith!" (Luke 17: 5 NIV)  Until our faith begins to leap out of our chests, we ought to have little to say about God, miracles or the Bible.   We are as ignorant in our understanding of them as little children trying to explain quantum mechanics if we lack faith.  Our intellect must align with developing faith if we are to know anything of substance in the realm where God lives and has His being.  Someone somewhere who claims theological authority decided this is not the age of miracles but it was not God who made that determination. There are only two camps...one comprised of those who live by faith and one for those who live by sight.  The faith camp keeps catching glimpses of God but the sight camp is as blind as a bat and oblivious to the supernatural handiwork of God.   What have you seen lately?  Have you been living by faith?

We live by faith, not by sight.  (2 Corinthians 5:7 NIV)

Martyr's Hill

One of the most devious tricks of the devil is to get us to say, "I can't" to God.  Is it really that you can't or that you won't?  Every creature, from the snail to the leopard is made perfectly by God for whatever purpose our Lord has planned.  We make much of genetic deformities as if that is sensible.  What we may call a deformity is in fact a way of expressing disbelief in God's handiwork...as if He is a flawed artist.  If at any point God gives you direction and you are clear it is God, you can be certain you are equipped and prepared for the task.  Nothing about you is out of place or lacking.  It must be dumbfounding to the angels that any born-again Christian would question God's call based on skill sets and talents.  Yet even Moses stood at the burning bush arguing with Almighty God over his fitness to lead Israel out of Egypt!  What slander to confuse defamation of God's work in you with humility!  It is not humble to turn down our Lord because we think we are inadequate for the task!  It is rather outright rebellion against His rule.  Nothing amazes the world quite as much as the fisherman who stands the world on its ear with his preaching or the tax collector who composes the very first book of the New Testament or the lunatic who Christ proclaims will be remembered eternally for her holy devotion.  How will heaven remember you?  Will you be compared to all those called by God who turned aside out of fear or indifference or will you be known as the one who scorned the devil's mocking of your readiness for the task and gave God all you had for your Savior's glory?   Will you stand on the hill of your martyrdom and plant the banner of Christ there, declaring the land irrevocably God's and His alone? 

 "Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them.     Jeremiah 1:17-18 NIV

Certainty

2 Timothy 1:12

Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.

How Do You Know That You Know?

Twenty five years ago our family packed up all we had and moved from New Orleans to

Northern California.  It was a dreadfully long trip but on the way we decided to take some educational side trips.  One of our stops was at the world famous Carlsbad Caverns.  As a child I had looked seen pictures of it in National Geographic and had dreamed of one day going to it.  I had been to a number of caves before; seen stalactites and stalagmites, explored creepy caves and stood in caves with all the lights out deep below the earth.  What intrigued me most about the Carlsbad Caverns were the stories I had read of all the bats in the cave.  I had seen pictures of bats flooding out of the cave but I couldn’t imagine so many bats coming all at once.  When we had the opportunity to stand at the entrance to the cave when the bats all came out to feed in the evening, I was not prepared for what took place.  As if shot from a cannon, just as the sun was setting, without warning, millions of bats in a great cloud of flapping fury exploded out of the cave, covering the sky as if a thunderstorm had come upon us.  For several minutes it was nothing but bats whizzing past until the great host was gone.  It was far more bats than I imagined existed in the entire world came out of that cave and I was struck by how inadequate were the descriptions I had read of the bat exodus from Carlsbad Cavern.  The experience of it went far beyond my imagining.  I was no longer a “doubting Thomas” that something so spectacular was possible as millions of bats flooding out of a cave all at once was possible.

Have you ever had a hard time believing something you were told could be true?  Perhaps a movie everyone is talking about can’t possibly be as good as they say.  Maybe a book your friend is raving about won’t live up to the expectations.  It could be a TV show that you have been told is “so funny” won’t be.  A speaker you have been told to catch on a podcast won’t keep your attention.  A college that has been recommended to you is not going to be as good as you have been told.  It could be that someone told you to move to a certain town because it is such a wonderful place but you don’t think you will like living there.  Maybe you don’t believe that someone’s story about what they did is true.  Have you been skeptical of the hype about a political candidate or of a religious teacher or perhaps all that is promised about Christianity?  Do you have some doubts about what you believe?

Of all the people described in the Old Testament, I am most intrigued by Moses.  He was one of only two people who met with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration and he is known by many as the “Great Deliverer” because of his role in Israel being freed from slavery.  He was a man of great passions and yet described as a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. (Numbers 12:3 NIV)  He most likely had a troubled marriage, was a bit self-righteous and like many of us, blamed others for some of his biggest mistakes.  Most importantly, for the sake of our discussion, Moses was not always certain he could trust God.

We are not sure how he came to this conclusion but Moses at some point, before he turned forty, believed God would use him to help his fellow Israelites escape the bondage they were under in Egypt.  His childhood was unusual.  He was born during a tempestuous time in his nation’s history.  The Israelites had settled in Egypt some four hundred years earlier and now were a persecuted people in their adopted land. The king of Egypt became afraid the Israelites would revolt if they continued to increase in number so he ordered that all male Israelite babies be killed.  Moses’s mother put her baby boy in a water-tight basket to try and keep him from being discovered by the Egyptian soldiers and the daughter of the king of Egypt found him floating in the Nile River while she was bathing.  As soon as she saw baby Moses, the Egyptian princess decided to adopt the boy, thus saving him.  Now was this a coincidence that Moses survived the pogrom of Hebrew babies this way?   Was it just luck Pharaoh’s daughter found Moses floating in the basket and when she saw him, loved him and wanted to save him, raising him in her own house and making sure he was educated by the best teachers of the land?  Or was this a miracle and it was God who saved him through Pharaoh’s daughter?  Your interpretation of this fortunate circumstance depends on your point of view.  Those who don’t believe in God would call it a random fluke of life; those who believe in a personal God who operates within our world might say it was God who rescued Moses and prepared him for leadership. 

Certainly Moses had decided something about his survival as a baby and how it came about and by the time he was forty, he had an opinion about God’s existence.  We know he believed God was working through people in normal circumstances of life because when he was forty he was convinced that God wanted him to kill an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite.  The prophet Stephen, in his last sermon lets us in on Moses’s thinking when he came upon the maltreatment of the Israelite.  "When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites.  He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian.  Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. (Acts 7:23-26 NIV)  It did not turn out well for Moses though.  The Israelites did not rally to Moses as their deliverer; in fact they rejected him and it was reported to Pharaoh what he had done.  Pharaoh was furious and word got back to Moses that he would be executed for his crime.  Moses escaped to Midian where he lived forty years as a fugitive.

What is intriguing about this biographical account is the shift in Moses’s thinking about God and God’s presence in the world.  We can understand how Moses could have thought God wanted him to kill the Egyptian.  It was just as sensible for Moses to think the Lord wanted to use him to lead a rebellion against Egyptian domination as it was for him to decide that God saved him as a baby from the fate suffered by other baby boys of his generation.  An atheist might come to another conclusion.  The fact that Moses lived when other’s died was just a quirk of chance and his belief that he was to lead Israel was something he concocted himself or through the influence of friends or family members but there was no God involved in any of it.  This may very well have been the evolution of Moses’s thinking as he developed a new life far from his fellow Israelites and the Egyptian oppressors.   He fell into a very ordinary existence.  He got married.  He had children.  He raised sheep.  He watched his children move through the normal stages of growth.  He looked for watering spots for his sheep and fought off bears or lions that tried to attack the flock.  Moses kept moving his flocks about in search of pastures.  He fought with his wife and made love to her, had interesting conversations with his father-in-law and the other men of the village.  Slowly he gave up on the idea that God wanted him to help rescue his fellow Israelites from slavery.  Thoughts of God may have continued and he might have even led his family in prayers but any vibrant expectancy that the Lord was personally involved in his life gradually faded.  He had bills to pay and mouths to feed and you can’t look to God to do those things for you.  Forty years without any sign of God makes you more of an atheist than you might care to admit.  Not all atheism is created equal.  Some forms of it are casual and incidental; not a well thought through view of life…more a developed disregard for anything personal about God.  Atheism can be a way of life; it doesn’t have to be a philosophy.

As the silence of God continues, our faith in Him wanes and we pay less attention to Him operating in our world.  Disappointment may be the biggest cause of atheism.  Why didn’t God help me with this problem?  How come God doesn’t change my circumstances?  I thought God would get me a job, make my daughter well, save my marriage, stop me from drinking, grant me a pardon.  We don’t intend to stop believing in God.  It just happens as our disappointments and busy lifestyles deconstruct our faith in a personal and interactive Lord.  I am pretty certain it happened with Moses.  His reaction to the burning bush is a snapshot of practical atheism.  God let him down back in Egypt, why should he trust the Lord now forty years later when God clearly was meeting him out in the hills of Midian.

Imagine if Moses continued to sulk when he met God at the burning bush.  What if he had turned around and walked away when the first sign of God appeared to him?  How different our history would be.  How different would have been everything for Moses?  It is a most amazing moment when God comes to us and it really is God.  We can’t perhaps put our finger on how we are so certain it is God but it is God and the moment we know it is God we are either going to respond with anger and disgust over all the wrong we feel He has done us or we are going to awaken, like a child opening her eyes to the morning light, and recognize the love in His call to us.

The Lord told us to watch for Him to come to us.  He means for us to be ready to see Him.  He won’t prepare us for His entrance.  There will be no trumpets blaring to warn us He is near.  He will simply come.  And when He comes it will be as certain to you as a friend entering into your house that He is there.  His entrance may not be logical…it may make no sense to you at all but He will be with you and you will know He is with you and nothing will be the same from then onward.  Micah the prophet recognized that no one else may watch and wait for the Lord to come to them but he would.  But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.  Do not gloat over me, my enemy!  Though I have fallen, I will rise.  Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light. (Micah 7: 7-8 NIV) When the Lord comes, you will be surprised by Him and you won’t be prepared for what He does next with you.  He might speak through you or love someone through you or heal through you.  His presence will be most wonderful and although you may have fallen, like Micah, you will rise.  You will rise above your sin and rise above your hurt and rise above your disappointment and rise above your failure and the Great God of All will be there with you.  Nothing can stop the Lord from coming to you.  You will be amazed and in your heart cry, “That is the Lord.”  Watch for Him!  Look for Him.  Listen for Him.  The Lord will come to you.  Be prepared to meet Him! 

Today See God

Is it a crazy assumption that God will do now as has been described of Him doing in the past?  Nothing unsettles our sensibilities quite like the long wait for God to act today as we have heard He did before.  Every rational thought argues against willful  anticipation of supernatural entries into our fussy world.  It seems absurd to the common mind that the Lord still operates within the same paradigm as records indicate He once did.  And yet that is precisely what we are expected to believe when we take even the most casual glance at the Scriptures.  The" Fairy Tale" motif swirls about within the interpretive dance steps of  the normal Christian's take on life lived out daily.  In fact what is "Christian" today is generally not what once was Christian when everything said about God in Scripture was believed.  The Church assumed rightly God acted in their today as He had during the today of Moses or Elijah.  They realized the Lord would grip them relentlessly "now" even when they went through the fire, even when they fell into the water.  It did not come easily.  Peter had to first get wet and Silas had to wait in twitching pain for his prison midnight but eventually they came around.  Personal experience made the difference for them just as it does here for us.  The prayer had to be uttered, the cry bellowed, the worship to the God of heaven offered.  It was only then that Elijah saw things just as Moses had, Peter saw things as Elijah had and Paul saw things as Peter had.  The skeptic does not die peacefully but in fits and starts and with loud moans and lusty screams.  The man without God is a hollow shell.  But add the Lord Jesus Christ to him and He lives vivaciously, vividly, like a bright beam of sunlight piercing the night sky.  You, joined with the Lord will see all that Elijah did, all that James did and not feebly either but decidedly, firmly.    We stumble over little unseen miracles because we live with meager faith; we grip the majesty of God with the loosest of holds because we are  more content to hear about God than we are to know Him.  "Taste and see that the Lord is good", implies that you must do something about your hunger and thirst if you are ever to gain the smallest sense of God.  The historical documents have been given us not that we might dream of days gone by but that we might do the very things the saints of the past did.  Stay in the shallows of common faith and you will merely read the tales of God; go out of the harbor where storms threaten to dump you in the sea and the Majesty of the Almighty will find you .  You will no longer make your way through the shadow lands of legendary ghosts;  you will instead enter the actual world where Christ reigns and you join with Him in His Glory.  Stop making so much of the God of ancient times if you don't intend on taking hold of the Christ who today stands before you and whispers, "Come".

Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, "You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread?  Matthew 16: 8 NIV

The Dogs of Your Winter

It is simply unheard of within scripture of someone with great faith not being tested in that faith.  Try as you may, you will not come across a God beacon who avoided being sorely tried.  Noah, Moses, Ruth, David, Daniel, Mary, Peter, Mary Magdalene, Paul; they all were sent careening off the cliff at some point and you will also come upon your own cliff.  It may not appear suddenly but could gradually arise but you will face it if your love of Christ is actual.  The most comfortable life there is right now is the one without hope, without promise.  Hope is not for the pagan or the atheist but only for the one going through the fires of faith.  If you want to look around at all the pitch dark souls wandering around without Christ and long for their settled existence, you certainly can.  But it would be like Noah's wife perched in the ark ruminating over how easy her aunt has it back in the village.  You are going to face tremendous trials that will bark at your faith but that is all they can do...bark.  The trials have no bite for they cannot get at where you are...hidden with Christ in God.  You are dead and that is what the Lord declares  you to be.  Imagine a great bear snarling at the Lord Jesus Christ glorified.  It is as ridiculous as your trial besting you.  The Lord has you and yes your faith is being tested but that is just the beginning of birth pains for you as you triumph in them and come out victoriously to your place in the pantheon of God's great hall of saints purified by trial.  Resist the urge to envy the untroubled.  Nothing can take away the joy you possess ultimately and it doesn't need to be dispossessed now.  The trial will pass but you will stand and stand with a smile gracing your face as you look back upon it as a toothless barking dog .  Be resolute in your determination to trust Christ fully at the moment the hounds come after you.

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.    Colossians 3:3-4 NIV

Tyranny of Doing

When Moses went up Mt. Sinai to the top to meet with God and receive the rest of the law, he firmly ordered Aaron and the other older leaders to wait on the mountain for him to return.  For some reason, they didn't; they went back to the camp to do whatever they thought was more necessary.  One has to wonder if the entire business of the golden calf would have been avoided if Aaron had simply stayed at his post rather than find something "better" to do down below.  There is a time to go down to the camp but also a time to wait for the clear directive of God.   Few things chaff us as severely as the wait God institutes.  We develop a fine constellation of ideas during the wait and are hell-bent on trying them out before the Lord has given us His "go".  We constantly are confusing the going and waiting; all the time wrecking this and that because we are not patient enough to get to know God's voice and faithful enough to heed His call.  We are like little children who must try everything when the great Counselor is patiently waiting for us to turn into Him for Divine Direction.  Not every jar contains arsenic but some do and our Lord is good enough to tell us in advance how to stay away from it.   Not every opportunity is good; some will take us far from the perfect peace God has prepared for us and those we love.  You certainly can do something but it may be the worst of your possible options and reward you with a lifetime of regret.  Perhaps we could wait upon the Lord just this one time; take time to let Him work Himself into us so that we can get it right when He finally gives us something to do.  Has anything been quite so disastrous as the obeisance we give to the adage of striking while the iron is hot?  Can we not pause even for an instant to be with God in whatever matter is before us?  Do we always have to do?

He (Moses) said to the elders, "Wait here…"   Exodus 24:14 NIV