Living by Faith

James 2:14 NIV

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?

How Does Your Faith Look?

One year when our oldest son was just eight, we went camping up in Sequoia National Park.  At the south end of the park the middle fork of the Kaweah River squirms along and near the Buckeye Flats Campground it gathers into a large pool and then works its way down out of the hills.  Our family spent a day swimming there and found two aspects to this pool exiting and fun.  One was the way the river spilled over a giant granite boulder as it poured down into the pool below.  The water had created a smooth groove in the rock that resulted in a sort of water slide that made for an exhilarating ride.  It only took a couple seconds from the top of the rock down into the icy water below but it was hilarious fun.  At the foot of the boulder the water was probably six feet deep so as you dropped into it after your slippery ride down the rock you landed with a great splash into the snow fed water.  Holding in my lap our second son who was only six, we went down together and as we each bobbed up to the surface we both burst out into laughter.  Our oldest son went down the slide too and we all found it a thrilling adventure.  As we sat in the sun together at the edge of the pool getting warm, we watched as a boy a little older than our son along with his dad climbed up a steep path that went up a cliff on the other side of the pool.  They made it to a rock outcropping that was about thirty feet above the pool of water and jumped from it and splashed into the river.  Our jaws dropped at the unexpected sight of them plunging down into the water but they came up safely and made their way back up to the outcropping and dived into the pool again.  Our oldest son was intrigued by this and after the father and boy assured us of how safe the jump was, he decided after I gave my approval to make the same dive.  He asked me to go with him and jump from the cliff but I shook my head “no”.  I had plenty of faith in my son to make the jump but I wasn’t so sure of myself doing it.  Faith is funny that way.  We all pick and choose what sort of faith we will have and when we will practice it.

If you were asked about the kind of faith you have, how would you answer? How does your faith look?  What sorts of actions define your faith?  Is your faith noticeable to others or is it quieter, almost silent?  Do you think there is a universal quality to faith or is it more individual…something each of us decides is faith?  How would it go if you were forced to prove your faith through eyewitnesses?  Who would testify to your faith and what would your witnesses say about it?  We often hear of authors and speakers building a case for faith, for having faith but rarely do we come across those who give evidence for that they themselves have faith.  Faith for most is too personal to talk about, let alone put on display.  And yet doesn’t the Bible tell us to exhibit our faith, show that we have it?

Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount seems to command us to make our faith public.  "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. (Mathew 5:14-16 NIV)  Although “faith” is not the word Jesus uses here, it certainly is the fundamental point being made.  Don’t just keep your faith to yourself, let your actions proclaim the sort of faith you have.  The expectation of Jesus is that what you believe about God will show up in what you do.  The book of James insists that faith is an activity and not just a way of thinking about things.  What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?  Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?  In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. (James 2:14-17 NIV)

Miracles in the Bible almost always were connected to a requirement for action.  Something had to be done by those who were the recipients of God’s supernatural help.  Naaman, the Aramean general was told to dip in the Jordan seven times before the Lord would heal him of his leprosy.  The Israelites, as they began their conquest of the Promised Land had to step into the Jordan River before the Lord would make it part and they could go through it on dry ground.  Before that, in order to leave Egypt, the entire Hebrew nation had to step between the great walls of water piled up on each side of them and trust God not to drown them in the Red Sea.  The crippled man who sat beside the pool of Bethesda day after day for nearly three decades hoping God might heal him unexpectedly was healed but not in the way he could have expected.  Jesus came upon him and told the man to pick up his mat and walk before He would do anything for him.  When he did, the crippled man was healed.  The woman who suffered from bleeding first reached out and touched Jesus’ clothing; then she was healed.  Lazarus’s sisters had to order the stone in front of the tomb to be moved away before Lazarus stepped out alive.  The people of Israel were given by God specific instructions about marching around Jericho before He would make the walls miraculously collapse.

One of the few times Jesus celebrated someone’s faith was when a Roman centurion told Jesus He did not need to go all the way to his house to heal his servant.  His trust in God generated an action, sending a servant to Christ and telling Him that his servant did not need Jesus’ touch, just the promise of the Lord to save him was enough.  When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel." (Luke 7:9 NIV)  It took steely resolve for the centurion to believe that Jesus did not have to go all the way to his house to miraculously heal his servant.  Jesus called that “great faith”; not the message pleading for Him to help but the action of not needing Him to actually touch the servant who was dying.

I saw that a priest of one of the churches bombed by Muslim assassins in Sri Lanka called for the people of his congregation to pray for and forgive those who planned and organized the atrocity.  That is how faith looks.  It has a face; the face of someone who does what Jesus says to do even though it is painfully hard.  A friend asks for prayer that he would get a job.  When he gets that job and begins to take ten percent of his income and return it to the Lord, that is faith.  When a mom who has cancer is healed, what she does with her Sundays will tell us about her faith.  A man I met recently saw firsthand the love and kindness of a family that his mother worked for as a nanny.  These Christian people talked about the Gospel and practiced Christianity at home.  The boy himself became a Christian because of what he saw in this family.  That is faith.  A couple who heard about the terrible condition of orphans in Haiti became convinced the Lord wanted them to adopt one of the children there and although they already had two kids, they took what extra money they had and spent countless hours going back and forth to Haiti until they finally were able to bring one of the boys in an orphanage home to be their own.  That is faith.

We do not hope in a Savior who does nothing.  He took His life in His hands and offered it up on a Cross to die for our salvation.  He believed in the will of the Father and because of that faith He did whatever the Father told Him to do.  If you have faith in Christ, you will show you have faith in Christ by obeying Him.  What will you do today that shows your faith in Jesus?  Will you pray more for others than you have been doing?  Will you help someone who doesn’t deserve your help?  Will you bite your tongue and keep your criticism to yourself?  Will you go visit someone in the hospital and pray over that person?  Will you be more generous in your offerings, pass out Gospel tracts to your neighbors, make plans to go on a mission trip, say something encouraging to someone who has treated you badly?  What will you do today to show your faith in Christ as Savior and Lord?

The Wall

Ezekiel 42:20 NIV

So he measured the area on all four sides. It had a wall around it, five hundred cubits long and five hundred cubits wide, to separate the holy from the common.

Can God Trust You At The Wall?

Years ago, when we were newlyweds, Mary Jo and I each were running to get into better shape. We

started with two miles and then three.  Eventually we were running four miles a day and we kept pushing ourselves further.  Mary Jo was actually in training, preparing to compete in the Crescent City Classic, a ten-kilometer race through New Orleans.  I did not plan on running in it but because of my pride, I did not want her outrunning me so each time she extended her runs, I did mine also.  We were running five miles, and then we were at six miles, four times a week.  Finally we were running seven miles together and then the week before the race, we ran a full ten miles.  Because the Crescent City Classic is only 6.2 miles, we both felt confident we could do well in the race.  There was only one problem.  I did not want to run in it.  Although Mary Jo kept urging me to enter, I told her I wouldn’t.   I did all the training for the race but I refused to run when it was time.  I cannot say why I wouldn’t compete.  I might have been afraid I wouldn’t do well.  It could have been that I was concerned that Mary Jo might beat me.  It’s not that I did not like to run or wasn’t prepared for the race.  For some reason, there was a wall that kept me from running in it; a wall I refused to climb.

When you or I come up against a wall, we have to decide what to do about it.  Perhaps the answer is easy; we have no interest in what is behind the wall.  It might be though that the wall seems insurmountable and although we would like to get beyond it, we give up because we are afraid to try to scale it.  We aren’t after all Spiderman; we don’t have super powers.  There are walls that seem to be morally wrong to climb.  It is against the law.  To climb the wall would require we do something that violates our values.  Maybe you aren’t sure that it is worth the effort trying to get past the wall.  Perhaps there is a wall before you right now and you haven’t decided what to do about it.  Will you pretend that you just don’t see it, will you ignore it or will you gather up all your power and try to scale it?    Will you turn away from it?  Will you consult with others who have faced similar walls and find out what they did?  Are you the only one in this world who knows about the wall you have before you?

Consider the possibility that there might be a wall you face and God is watching carefully to see what you will do about it.  He might in fact have placed that wall before you to test you, to try your resolve, reveal your character.  When the nation of Israel began its journey into the new land God had picked out for her to settle and make her home, a wall stood before the people.  For forty years the Israelites had wandered about in the desert just outside Palestine as punishment for refusing to believe God would enable them to conquer the people living in the land God wanted them to settle.  Fear kept that entire generation of Israelites out of the land that they comfortably could have inhabited.  Now, forty years later, the people had a far more difficult challenge before them if they were to live in the Promised Land.  They had to attack a walled city and bring it down.  It was a city fortress.  Now Jericho was tightly shut up because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. (Joshua 6:1 NIV) God did have a plan for how they were to attack the city.  It certainly was not a commonly practiced military strategy though.   March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days.  Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams' horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets.  When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in."  (Joshua  6:3-5 NIV)

Imagine standing before the city of Jericho and staring up at that wall with those orders to follow.  Would you have taken them seriously?   Would you have followed them or come up with another plan?  Consider this possibility; that every wall that is set before you God has a specific way of addressing it.  There are not two ways; there is not an alternative plan He has in mind.  Only one solution is acceptable to Him, only one method for dealing with it.  What if you know what He wants done and you must decide if you will trust Him in it?  Will you let Him be in charge?  Consider this possibility.  Not only Is God wanting you to trust Him with regard to the wall, He has trusted you to follow His instructions.  Is God making a good decision?  Should He trust you?  Can the Lord count on you to follow His instructions, to do things the way He wants them done?  Will you embarrass Him by the way you deal with the wall you face?

Nehemiah is often referred to as, “The Wall Builder”.  Jerusalem had for three generations remained in ruins.  A few homes had been rebuilt, some gardens started, commerce reestablished.  But its wall remained a wreck.  As long as this was the case, the few settlers in the city were in danger of being killed or enslaved by any marauding band of soldiers passing through the territory.  Nehemiah was a high ranking official in the Persian court, the cupbearer to the king.  One day his brother came to town and informed Nehemiah what he discovered when he visited Jerusalem.  Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.   They said to me, "Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire."  (Nehemiah 1:2-3 NIV)  At this point, as Nehemiah heard the news of the condition of the chief city of his ancestors, he had to process carefully what this meant for him.  The wall required someone with leadership skills to lead the rebuilding effort.  It would be a monumental task.  Nehemiah really did not  yet even know how great an effort it would take to get it done.  He did however realize that for more than seventy years nothing had been done about the demolished wall and for good reason.  No one thought the wall could be rebuilt.

Consider carefully this possibility.  The reason Nehemiah found out about how bad the situation in Jerusalem was and the condition of the wall is because the Lord gave him that information.  It was God who put together his brother’s trip to Jerusalem and his eyewitness account to Nehemiah of what he saw.  If that is the case and the Biblical view of life is that God is in charge of it all, what we see and what we hear and what we face, then, it was the Lord who gave him that information about the wall.  Now why would the Lord do that?  Why would he give Nehemiah this report of the terrible need for help in Jerusalem?  Perhaps the wall was Nehemiah’s responsibility to fix.  Maybe God was assigning this task to him.  That is why He told Nehemiah about it.  That is why he gave Nehemiah the career he had, gave him his friendship with the king of Persia.  Is it possible that the wall “had Nehemiah’s name on it”?  Nehemiah seemed to think so.  Why else did he ask the king for permission to go to Jerusalem and work on it.  The king said to me, "What is it you want?"  Then I prayed to the God of heaven,  and I answered the king, "If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it." (Nehemiah 2:4-5 NIV)

When Nehemiah got to Jerusalem he discovered that conditions were even worse than he imagined.  The people were disorganized and discouraged.   Threats were made against his life by leaders of neighboring countries who did not want the wall rebuilt.  God gave Nehemiah a wall to build but he did not make it easy for him.  In fact it was a foolish and terrifying proposition to try and rebuild the wall.  God left this wall in Nehemiah’s hands.  It was up to Nehemiah to take up the project of rebuilding the wall.  He trusted Nehemiah to make the right decision.  What if God has a wall for you to build?  What if it is too hard for you to build?  It is too much work?  It is not something anyone else thinks you should do.  Will you do it anyway?  Will you build that wall?  What if God is waiting for you to do it?  What if He trusts you with this wall?  Will you prove Him right to believe in you?    You cannot say you do not know about the wall.  He has already laid out all the facts.  What will you do about it?

It is surprising when you give it much thought how many of God’s prophets faced terrible circumstances.  Many were put in nearly impossible circumstances that that would have pushed most of us to quit.  Why tell people what God has said when no one wants to listen?  Why put yourself in danger when it seems pointless?  Why keep preaching when if feels hopeless.  The prophet Habakkuk stood on the wall of Jerusalem and saw nothing but darkness.  The Babylonians were going to come and conquer Judah.  It was impossible to stop them.  Disaster loomed and Habakkuk had no inspiring revelation from God that all would work out if he just did not lose hope.  The last words of the book he wrote are some of the most elevating found in Scripture though.  They state the sort of determination that heroes in movies and great works of literature make, that Ivanhoe or Aragorn or Captain America or Wonder Woman or the Black Panther would make.  No matter what may happen, no matter how bad it gets, I will not yield.  I will not quit.  God trusted Habakkuk to not surrender to fear, to not give in to despair.  He trusted Habakkuk with the great message of trouble.  Habakkuk made one of the most inspiring declarations found anywhere in Scripture and we must carefully let it sink in to us.  I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled.  Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us.  Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.  The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights. (Habakkuk 3:16-19 NIV)

The Lord trusted Habakkuk at the wall.  God let him see what really was going to happen, gave him the complete picture and believed his friend could handle it.  He told Habakkuk that trouble was coming, trouble that would shatter the faith of many and he watched to see how Habakkuk took it.  What if you heard that your life was going to be tough, that it would be hard what you face?  Would you stand with your eyes staring into the storm and trust Christ then?  Would you courageously believe that God will be with you and see you through the hurricane that is on the horizon?  Will you trust the Lord not just when it is sunny and clear but also when the lightning flashes and the thunder billows and the wind threatens your home?  Can God trust you at the wall?  Are you the one who has the courage to stand when others run away and hide?  Do you truly believe in Christ your Savior?  Your time will come when the evidence seems to indicate that God does not love you, that He has forgotten you and that you are alone in this.  Yet the evidence will be wrong and those who will tell you to give up on your God and your faith in Him will be wrong.  You alone will be able to quiet the critics and the noise of despair by declaring with Habakkuk.  “I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”  Decide now.  At the foot of the wall, make your declaration. “The Sovereign Lord is my strength!”  God will see you through the storm and you will be victorious.  The future is on your side!

The Loss of Self-Reliance

What Makes a Good Christian?

2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.   

How Confident Are You in Yourself?

We had a problem with gophers in the lawn next to our sanctuary and it frustrated me to see the grass being ruined.  I went and got some gopher poison and used the normal strategy of probing the ground with a metal rod to try and find the soft spots which indicated a gopher tunnel was there.  I created a small hole that led down to the tunnel, poured the poison into the tunnel with a tool I had purchased and covered the top of the hole with some sod.  Of course you don’t know right away if you killed the gopher, you have to wait a week or so to see if new mounds of dirt develop.  They did!  I tried again, used the tool to probe for tunnels, thought I found one, poured the poison pellets down the hole I made and waited another week.  Again there was a fresh mound.  This went on for several weeks.  Fresh mound, fresh mound and fresh mound!  Realizing this gopher was much smarter than me, I began to pray for God to help me.  Eventually I quit trying to kill the gopher but after a month or so, it dawned on me that I wasn’t seeing any new mounds of dirt.  Had the poison worked after all, was the gopher back in the empty field?  What happened to my little enemy?  One evening, as I stood outside stretching after a long day of writing, I glanced over where the lawn meets the field and there perched at the edge of the grass was a grey cat with her eyes fixed intently on the ground.  Perhaps, I realized, as I stood and watched the stray cat alertly on guard, I had received unexpected help in my battle with the gopher.

What is your strategy when you are facing a difficult situation?  What do you do when you are injured or sick?  How do you respond to the loss of your job or a problem in your marriage?  Do you have a plan for dealing with your kids when they get into trouble?  What would you suggest to someone having financial problems, about to lose their house or struggling with depression or anxiety?  All of us have had gophers in our lives.  The question is, what to do about them?

Let me give an example of a gopher a rather famous person from the pages of the Bible encountered.  Jesus was in a sticky situation.  He had just fed a crowd of more than five thousand men with only five small loaves of bread and two little fish and although not everyone in the great crowd saw what happened, eventually word circulated about the miracle that had taken place.  As people whispered among themselves and slowly the discussions became louder and increasingly emotional, the connection between what had just happened and how Moses had fed the masses of Hebrews in the desert with Manna was made.  The people were desperate for one like Moses, a leader of supernatural proportions who could take them out of the political and religious oppression they felt living under the rule of the Romans.  It seemed amazing to them that right here on this weedy mountainside at the outskirts of town, the hero they all longed to lead them to freedom had appeared. This was too good to be true!  At first, the people in unorganized groups speculated among themselves what this might mean.  They talked about the ramifications of having such a one as Jesus take charge.  Finally, the scattered discussions became unified in both content and direction.  They had to find some way to get Jesus to be their king.

For most of us, this would not be a gopher; it would be the opportunity of a lifetime.  Who would not want to be a king?  Jesus didn’t.  Not this way and not at this time!  He had come to die for the sins of the people, not to lead them past the Romans and their armies.  Everything our Lord planned on accomplishing would be wrecked if He took this offer.  Yet it was not just a matter of declining.  After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, "Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world."  Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. (John 6:14-15 NIV)  It is strange to think of being made king by force…a contradiction of terms.  How can one be king if forced by the subjects one rules to be that king?  Jesus wanted no part of this!  Yet how could He refuse the demand without putting His disciples at risk and keep Himself from being murdered before His time had come?  It was a gopher of immense proportions.  How did Jesus respond to this?  He went off by Himself to a mountain and the Father took care of the crowd for Him.

A casual reader might say that Jesus ran away from His gopher and this certainly could seem to be the case.  But going to a mountain by Himself we learn generally meant that He left to pray.  Sometimes He took His disciples with Him.  About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. (Luke 9:28 NIV)  We are told that Jesus often went up the Mount of Olives and we assume He did so to pray.  At least that is what He did on the night before He was crucified.  Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him.  On reaching the place, he said to them, "Pray that you will not fall into temptation."   He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed… (Luke 22:39-41 NIV)  Jesus, by leaving the crowd and climbing up the mountain made sure that He was aligned with the Father at every turn because He trusted the Father to see Him through whatever gophers He faced.

Let’s look at one more gopher, a tenacious one encountered by Jacob, the father of the nation of Israel.  After tricking his father Isaac into giving the prophetic blessing to him rather than Esau who was supposed to receive it, Jacob fled for his life.  Esau was so furious with Jacob for stealing the blessing of their father that he made plans to kill him.  More than twenty years later, Jacob decided to return home.  Jacob was rich, had two wives and two concubines, had twelve children with one on the way but he had a giant gopher facing him.  His brother also was rich, had an army of servants and friends and Jacob did not know if Esau still wanted him dead.  That is something that can keep you up at night.  The Bible tells us that when Jacob discovered that Esau with four hundred men was coming to meet him, Jacob feared not only for his life but for that of his entire family.  In great fear and distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups, and the flocks and herds and camels as well.  He thought, "If Esau comes and attacks one group, the group that is left may escape."  (Genesis 32:7-8 NIV)

Jacob’s response to the threat of his gopher was swift.  Then Jacob prayed, "O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who said to me, 'Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,' I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two groups.  Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children.  But you have said, 'I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.'" (Genesis 32:9-12 NIV)  Jacob prayed.  He was carefully and with perhaps a certain amount of hesitancy putting some of his trust in God to take care of him.  We know he did not completely believe he could trust the Lord with his gopher because he figured out a scheme that he hoped would appease his brother’s anger.

…from what he had with him he (Jacob) selected a gift for his brother Esau: two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty female camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls, and twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.  He put them in the care of his servants, each herd by itself, and said to his servants, "Go ahead of me, and keep some space between the herds." (Genesis 32:13-16)  As we shall learn later, this strategy was completely unnecessary and reflected Jacob’s belief that the gopher was bigger than the one to whom he prayed.  That evening, as Jacob remained alone on the side of the Jabbok River opposite to where Esau and his soldiers were coming, a man approached him and the two engaged in a wrestling match.  Jacob believed it was God and we can be certain it was.  For hours they fought, neither gaining the advantage.  Finally at daybreak, the Lord decided to end the match.  When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.  Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."  But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."  The man asked him, "What is your name?"  "Jacob," he answered. Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."  Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."  But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.  So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared." (Genesis 32:25-30 NIV)

There is in this exotic story something we must face and that is our tendency to rely upon ourselves for everything until we are broken by God.  Jacob prayed that the Lord would protect him and his family but he didn’t trust God to do it.  That is why he came up with his plan to pay for his brother’s forgiveness.  What is fascinating is that Esau didn’t even want the flocks, was not certain they were actually for him until after he ran to Jacob and embraced him with great weeping and joy at seeing him again.  But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And they wept.  Then Esau looked up and saw the women and children. "Who are these with you?" he asked.  Jacob answered, "They are the children God has graciously given your servant."  Then the maidservants and their children approached and bowed down.  Next, Leah and her children came and bowed down. Last of all came Joseph and Rachel, and they too bowed down.  Esau asked, "What do you mean by all these droves I met?"  "To find favor in your eyes, my lord," he said.  But Esau said, "I already have plenty, my brother. Keep what you have for yourself." (Genesis 33:4-9 NIV) Only God could work such a miracle in the human heart.  What seemed like certain disaster for Jacob was an overwhelming triumph of grace.

Let us consider the end of Jacob’s wrestling match with God and the Lord’s decision to cripple Jacob.  With all his power Jacob wrestled with the Lord; using his strength to try and gain what God was already willing and happy to give him.  Jacob wanted the Lord’s blessing and like he did with his father, tried to gain it by his own effort.  Do we not fall into the same silly pattern as Jacob, having so little trust in God to take care of us and so much faith in our own ability to take care of the gophers we face?  God took Jacob’s hip out of joint because in order to build Jacob’s life right, it had to be broken.  What seems so simple, to trust God, is perhaps the most difficult challenge we face.  Most of us fight so hard to maintain our independence when it is absolutely ridiculous!

Proverbs 3: 5 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. (NIV)  In the New Testament, the call to trust God is put this way.  May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13 NIV)  Imagine the absurdity of a five year old child telling his father that he doesn’t need to live at home any longer, he will just get a job and rent an apartment.  We are like that child stubbornly refusing to really trust God with our problems and challenges.  Why not pause and like Jesus and go before the Father and ask His help?  Until Jacob realized he could completely trust God with his gophers, he made a mess of nearly everything he touched.  Once he reached out to the Lord, God guided him through all the challenges and hardships he faced.  What about you?  Will it take God to damage your hip or worse your ego before you realize how every breath of yours is dependent upon Him?   Why wouldn’t we trust our Savior with our problems?  We might be amazed at how well God takes care of us if we would go to Him first with every need we have.  Life is too short to waste it on worry or worthless plans.  Go to God first and let Him guide you through to the end!

Compassion in the Wings

There is a part of us that wants to believe that God really will supply all of our needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus.  We strain to maintain our faith in God to provide for us but the hard, cold facts keep getting in the way of our assurance.  A bill comes that is too much to bear, an illness strikes and shatters us,  a crisis throws us into turmoil, a relationship comes apart; all of this leads to questions about God's goodness and care.  You may have had a close friend or family member "let you down" and now you struggle with trust.  How can you be certain that God really does have your best interests at heart and the ability to see you through whatever you face?  The foundation of all hope is not our circumstances or even the chronicle of our experiences; it is the Bible itself and what it says of God.  He is a good shepherd who cares for you with the tenderness and compassion of the kindest and most loving person you have ever met.  He is vigilantly watching your situation and has already planned for your help and care.  Of course it is hard to believe the Lord is looking out for you because you cannot see Him.  That does not mean it is not so, this love and protection of His!  Our Lord gave the example of the sparrows and desert flowers to articulate how easy it is for Him to watch out for you and care for you.  Such common and unassuming creatures as sparrows have God's eye and interest; how much more so you who He has lovingly shaped and given life and personality.    We sometimes think we don't matter to God and in a world wrecked by Sin and manipulated by Satan, it is easy to be fooled into thinking this.  Yet, our Savior let His life become shattered and broken for one purpose; that you and I might share our lives with Him in perfect holiness and goodness.  Christ took your Sin into Himself and lifted it up onto the Cross where it died with Him and for that, you bank your hope in God to deliver you now.  Prayer takes just a sliver of faith to operate in the supernatural realm of God and His angels.  The feeblest of saints has this in common with the Apostles of old; I can pray and God will deliver me as He has promised.  Though the mountains may shake and the lightning may shatter the rocks before me, I will trust in God because He has made His promise to stand with me in the storm and be my shelter come what may.

Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the Lord, who has compassion on you.  Isaiah 54:10 NIV

Refuge

2 Samuel 22:31 NIV

"As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the Lord is flawless.  He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.

Do You Have A Hiding Place?

 

More than a decade ago when our oldest son was only nine or ten, we went camping in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Somehow we stumbled upon a beautiful swimming hole on the Kings River at the western end of the park.  The river cascaded down giant granite boulders into a large pool that was formed in a giant basin of granite.  The pool was quite deep in places, more than twenty feet or so.  The river had carved a natural water slide that dropped into the pool and I held Noah, who was pretty young and together we slid down the rocks and splashed into the pool a number of times.  Jacob though was intrigued by a father and son who stood high above the pool looking down.  The son was not much older than Jacob and it seemed like they both were going to jump down into the water.  The spot where they were going to jump was more than twenty feet above the pool.  The cliff jutted out over the water and was directly above the deepest part of the pool.  When both father and son jumped, screaming as they fell into the water, Jacob thought he would like to do the same thing.  After the father and son climbed out of the water, Jacob asked me if I thought it was dangerous to jump there.  The father and son insisted it was perfectly safe so Jacob and I went over to the spot where he would land and studied it carefully.  The water was crystal clear; we could see the bottom perfectly and it looked plenty deep to land.  The only problem was that you had to jump out from the rock to land in the deepest part of the pool.  Jacob pondered the risks, stared up at the cliff, looked down into the water and after much encouragement from the father and son that had jumped before, began to make his climb up to the ledge where the others had leaped into the pool below.

There is for each of us, a time when you need to know if there is a safe place to land.  You will, and maybe already have, find yourself falling without a net to catch you.  It is easy to pretend like Job’s friends that only really bad people face tragic and traumatic circumstances but you know that is not the case.  Because you live in a sin corrupted universe, real troubles spring up without warning and you must face them.  Hardship and pain are here with you and sometimes it is a calamitous illness, other times a sudden loss of income, a relationship that falls apart, depression that can’t be shaken, failure crushes your sense of worth, a habit that you know you should break but you just can’t or an accident that brings irreparable damage.  When you look down from the cliff where you stand, what do you see?

Perhaps like me, you have been intrigued by the story of Ruth found in the Bible.  Newly married to a young man she clearly chose to love, Ruth was suddenly a widow.  The more we read of her story, we find ourselves captivated by her kindness, generosity and loyalty.  Why a tragedy like this would happen to someone with such a warm and loving heart is difficult to comprehend.  We can of course just wave off this calamity as a slight roadblock in her life because she later remarried and gave birth to the great-grandfather of a mighty king but that would do a tremendous disservice to the actuality of her heartbreak.  Tragedy by definition is tragic and just because some good is awaiting us down the road from it does not mean we can shake it off as inconsequential unless we have been damaged psychologically and do not respond to disasters in a healthy way.  Ruth did not “just shake off” the calamity of her husband’s death and nor should she have.  She was without the love of her life and that pain was significant.

Ruth made a dramatic decision that clearly changed the course of her life.  She decided to make the God of her mother-in-law, the God of Israel her God.  This was a conscious choice on her part based upon what she had seen in her husband, her father-in-law and her mother-in-law Naomi and how belief in God had shaped their lives.  When Naomi decided to leave Moab and go back to her hometown in Israel after the tragic loss of her own husband and two sons, Ruth was determined to leave with her.   Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. (Ruth 1:16b NIV)

Ruth was not merely changing her religion; she was completely rearranging her life with God.  Life is tragic and there is a tremendous amount of heartbreak in our world.  We cannot explain it all and like we discover about Job, there are supernatural forces working that are unseen to us bringing tremendous amounts of pain and sorrow to good people.  Ruth realized though like the Psalmists and her own great-great-grandson would later proclaim, God is a refuge for those who turn to Him.  Ruth’s future husband Boaz could see clearly that Ruth had turned to the Lord in her sorrow and found Him a great comfort.  He tenderly prayed for God to be her strength and help, “May the Lord repay you for what you have done.  May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."  (Ruth 2:12 NIV)

Ruth may have been the inspiration of David who also found God to be a refuge where we can go in our troubles and hardship.  O Lord my God, I take refuge in you; save and deliver me from all who pursue me, (Psalm 7:1 NIV)  The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. (Psalm 9:9 NIV)  Keep me safe, O God for in you I take refuge. (Psalm 16:1 NIV)  There is a supernatural work that God does for us and within us when we turn to Him in our times of trouble.  This work cannot be explained by logic or by psychological theories.  Those who have experienced this work of God have a terrible time trying to explain exactly what happens when they turn to God for refuge but that doesn’t alter the facts of His help and comfort.  You cannot explain what happens when you turn to God for refuge but like the Psalmist, you simply know what you have experienced.  God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1 NIV) 

Before he became physically king of Israel, David as a young man became the actual enemy of Israel’s king.  David hadn’t done anything wrong but Saul had become paranoid and saw David as a threat to his throne.  Saul led an army into the desert regions of Judea to hunt down David and kill him.  But David and his small band of men avoided capture.  With Saul’s soldiers camped just below where David was hiding, Saul entered the cave where David was to go to the bathroom.  There in the dark of the cave, with Saul oblivious to David and his men hidden from view, David’s men urged David to kill the king.  David crept up to Saul and cut off a part of Saul’s robe without Saul knowing.  David was conscience stricken though by how close he came to killing Saul the Lord’s anointed.  He said to his men, "The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the Lord's anointed, or lift my hand against him; for he is the anointed of the Lord." (1 Samuel 24:6 NIV)

This is a perfect example of what it means to dive into God and make Him your refuge.  Rather than take matters into his own hands and kill Saul, he gave Saul back to God to do with as the Lord wished.  He could have violently grabbed the kingdom of Israel by assassinating Saul in the cave but he trusted God to take care of him and make him king in God’s time.  Many were dependent on David to save them from Saul and his own soldiers were pushing for him to kill Saul then and there but David refused.  David took his stand in the cave that regardless of how bad it all seemed, he would make God his refuge.  This determination to dive into God and let Him protect and comfort you is found in the Psalms.  Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. (Psalm 62:8 NIV)

I heard recently of a Muslim girl who decided to become Christian despite the opposition of her family.  She risked the hatred of her parents and perhaps even physical harm to take refuge in Jesus.  This high school student did what Ruth did and what David did and what we can do too.  She has hidden her life in Christ and is trusting Him to take care of her.  What about you?  Will you trust God with your finances?  Will you tithe?  Will you trust God with your friendships?  Will you talk openly about your faith in Christ?  Will you trust God with your family?  Will you pray for them and encourage them?   Will you trust God with your work and school?  Will you let Christ guide you and direct your steps rather than just do whatever methods the world uses to get ahead?  How serious are you about being Christian?  What great things might God do through us if we put our trust in Christ and dove into Him…made Him our refuge, our source of safety and peace?

It's Not Random...But It's Not Coherent Either

There are plenty of events that cannot be explained logically.  We can go through the Bible and try to give some sort of rationale to all too many of them and we will find ourselves dumbfounded.  Paul suffered and we might say it was for his development spiritually but was he really that far bent out of shape to require all the hardships and painful trials he endured?  There is a great battle going on unseen within the universe and it is unfathomable to us its reach.  We can talk about the Civil War or World War II in general ways and feel like everything was quite reasonable but when you track the events of a single life going through it, the wars are irrational and incoherent.  Strategies are all well and good and the leaders directing armies make sense of what they are doing but for the poor soul on the battlefield, there is nothing sensible in it.  We are in the midst of a great and terrible conflict and although we are not aware of the forces operating all about us, we don't have to look far to see the collateral damage.  Anger, bitterness, frustration, broken hearts, lost dreams, shattered hopes are not far from any of us and it all seems like nonsense if we don't factor into the life equation the unseen battleground.   The devil and his forces are waging war against humanity and it is terribly brutal what is coming of this war.  Yet our Savior has promised to bind up the brokenhearted and release from darkness all those prisoners who have experienced the fury of the battlefield.  If it was all God in this, we might be able to draw a straight line of cause and effect but the devil is out there too and he is not reasonable in his workings.  Good people get blasted and terrible ones seem to have "all the luck".  Smart plans get beaten into the ground by circumstances we can't factor into our organizing.  Blessings seem to come in haphazard ways and the prayer of Jabez is a great model for good Christian people until the tent stakes are ripped out of the ground by a hurricane and what is left from the storm is rubble.  We have a Savior though who took the worst the devil could throw at Him and on the third day rose from the dead and one day the devil will be thrown into the lake of fire and the battlefield will become a paradise.  Until then, we trust in a good God who loves us and suffers with us in the "aches" of life.    Faith in our Lord's love for us is not a platitude; it is the way we have it and His love for us will triumph in the end.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  Therefore put on the full armor of God...      Ephesians 6:12-13a NIV

Wait

Endurance is not something typically glamorized either in the media or in contemporary Christian annals.  It is not faith but often an offspring of her.  The eject button symbolically represents the normal approach to difficulties, trials and painful circumstances.  If we are forced to go through something that is trying for any extended period of time, all too often we turn away from it and move to something else more rewarding.  Success resonates; forbearing carries an icy chill to the bones.  The problem with Biblical timelines is that they carry with them a fantasy feel.  One hundred years is just a quick descriptor we breeze past.  Forty years is a blink in a biographical account.  Seventy years is a parenthetical insert.  Yet the one hundred years of Noah were ten thousand days and a million hours.  The forty years of Moses were almost two generations...the time it takes to build a family and wave good-by to the kids as they put together families of their own.  The coming of the Messiah waited for entire civilizations to rise and fall a dozen times or more.  Now we wait again for our Lord to return and we face a most disconcerting Spiritual axiom.  God's people must wait.  They suffer.  They endure for lifetimes and across generations.  They wonder when the end will come and it doesn't.  They stand in line and their number doesn't get called.  Joshua waited eighty years for his day in the sun and impatient David ran for years from King Saul with no end in sight.  The character of the Christian is built upon the unyielding rock of waiting.  Waves of time beat against the stony fortress but it refuses to budge.  We must not think that we can force our will upon God's demand of standing still.  He will take the impatient soul and put him or her in a holding pattern until our Lord's character is developed within.  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not upon your own understanding" has a context.  Almost always it is a wait that seems unreasonable and unbearable that pulls out such faith and makes it true.  Do we have enough time for God to work His life into us so that it is actual rather than imagined?  As impossible as it seems, thank the Lord for your times of waiting because in them, if you are trusting in Him, God will make you the sort of person He can use for divine purposes.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.    Psalm 130:5 NIV

Planning For Tomorrow

We make all sorts of plans.  We plan our vacations, plan for retirement, plan our work schedule, plan when we will have kids, plan our class schedule and plan on getting our haircut.  We strategize how to succeed, how to invest, how to stay healthy and how to raise our children.  There is though only one strategy in the Kingdom of God and it is as simple as turning on your computer or starting your car.  In Jesus' final instructions before going to the Cross He provided the Disciples with the only plan He had for them to operate as children of God and succeed in what the Father had in store for them.    He put it metaphorically so that it would be clear as day to us what it was.  "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing". (John 15:4-5 NIV) Our laser-like attention and focus must be on this one effort.  Remain in Christ and let nothing take you from it.  Anything that distracts you from keeping your mind fixed on Christ must be hated with all the disgust you can muster.    It is not that we are to leave this world in abandonment to some monastery in the hills.  God never gave His disciples an assignment like that.  He left them in the hard scramble of life and did not pull them from it until He called them home.  It is in the crash of living that we are to remain in Christ and stay there in Him when anything from disaster to triumph arrives.   There is no panic or fear of "night" for the one whose mind is fixed on Christ.  We can be as peaceful as a cooing dove if we will do this one thing without fail.  Look to Christ in the earthquake and the storm, in the sunset and the gentle breeze.  Refuse to give in to the temptation to fuss about what you will wear or what you will eat or how mistreated you are but glue your mind to Christ and tomorrow will "take care of itself".

But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves.  For I will give you...   Luke 21:14-15 NIV

Godventure

Have you considered the possibility that, like Abram, God is about to take you to a "new country", one that will establish your legacy with Him?  Are you willing to go off on a Godventure that could be the end of the old you?  When God told Abram to go, he gave him no information about the Godventure except what he would be in the end!  It was "go" and then "here is your legacy".  All the between parts were blank pages.  Where he would stop on day twenty-nine, what he would do in year ten, how his wife would react to month forty-three were all dark as night to him and they will be for you too.  The Lord will not give you a word in advance about the troubles you will face on your Godventure nor your triumphs along the way.  He will though tell you, "I will be with you!"  There were perhaps plenty of other believers in Ur when Abram was sent away...maybe even hundreds of them but none of them gained the legacy with God Abram acquired when at seventy-five that one particular old man believer left on his Godventure.  Perhaps it seems too late in life for God to make something new of you.  Maybe you feel inadequate for the task, not prepared for your Godventure.  The Lord did not give Abram wiggle room to assess His skill sets or resources.  He simply presented the Godventure and told him what he would be when it was all done.  Faith is not a tool in your spiritual bag of tricks; it is your reaction to God sending you.    God will not push you down the hill to get you going.   He will wait for you to take that step forward but when you do take that first step, He will begin to give you a supernatural burst of power you had not felt before you went with Him on this new way of His.  There was no hesitation in Abram when the call came to him to leave and there mustn't be any in you either.  The longer you muddle through your apprehensions, the harder it will be to finally pick up and go when you finally do go and the journey will have unnecessary trials and troubles that you would not have had to face if God didn’t need to rebuild in you the faith you had before you doubted.

Then the Lord had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.  I will make you a great nation and will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  Genesis 12: 1-2 NIV

The Mind Fully Alive

The Mind Fully Aware

Joshua 1:8 NIV

Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

Are You Alert Right Now?

Several years ago my wife gave me a gift certificate for a massage at a local spa.  It is a spacious, clean, popular, legitimate spa with a good reputation so I was happy to go down and get my hour massage.  As I sat in the waiting room with several others, I rehearsed in my mind the determination to have a man give my massage.  After about ten minutes, I was ushered in through the walk-way and into the large central room where there were perhaps twenty cubicles and I was brought to one of them.  A young woman came in and gave me a towel and said that I was to undress and then place the towel over my waist area.  I asked her if a man was going to give me my massage and she said there weren’t any male masseuses available.  With that she left, giving me the opportunity to privately take off my clothes.  Now if this were some dimly lit room with a closed door and no one else around, I would have immediately gotten up and walked away but this was a public setting and a reputable spa.  I sat on the massage bed for what seemed like hours, trying to decide what I would do.  Was I going to take off my pants and underwear and let a young woman give me a massage with just a towel to cover me, would I leave on my pants and just take off my shirt, would I get up and walk away from the spa?  My conscience was working at full speed, evaluating this situation and trying its best to come to the right decision.  Should I as a Christian man and a pastor have a woman give me a full massage with only a towel covering me?

Is it possible that some of us spend too much time fussing over moral and ethical issues?  Are we sometimes overwhelmed by a super stimulated conscience?  When everyone else says something is fine to do and we don’t think it is fine to do it, do we go along with the crowd?  Do others make us feel guilty or are we alone responsible for any guilt we feel?  How much guilt should we let get hold of us?  Is guilt good for the soul or just a trouble maker?  Does your conscience ever crush you?

Sigmund Freud is universally given credit for dramatically developing and energizing the field of psychology.  It is easy to come up with a large list of his significant contributions…some would even speak of them as inventions.  He brought us the concept of carefully listening to patients and encouraging free association as they rambled on about whatever they wished.  He popularized the analysis of dreams, the concept of psycho-sexual forces within the personality, the importance of early childhood experiences and the oedipal complex.  However, by far his most critical and influential impact upon Western society and culture was his dismantling of conscience as a critical component of a healthy personality.  He coined a term, the super-ego, to discredit the conscience and render it ineffectual.  The super-ego was essentially what we call the conscience but over reaching.  He claimed that many if not most people suffer from too much guilt, silly, frivolous guilt that sickens us and makes us neurotic.  The enlarged conscience he treated like an enlarged thyroid or an enlarged heart, as something needing treatment.  Much of western culture became convinced that Freud was right, a functioning conscience was not good for people; we need to have less of a conscience, we don’t need its guilt and the bad feelings it produces.  Many in the Christian community agreed with Freud…even many pastors and so it became almost “anti-godish” to give the conscience credence or encourage feelings of guilt.  We are generally thought to be doing Christendom a disservice to incite guilt and support the functioning of the conscience.

Suppose however the conscience is more like a muscle that needs to be exercised and developed rather than a vestigial organ that sophisticated and healthy people let shrivel until it no longer functions.  Most of us have been raised to believe that what used to be called sin is actually just a minor mistake, a slip-up or maybe something to ignore.  We have given Freud the store so to speak and let him define God for us.  God (although he actually had no theology of god) thinks it is ok if you don’t get things right, struggle with your decisions, don’t live up to other’s expectations.  God is comfortable with whatever choices you make because after all, it’s all fine in the end.  What though if God is not like that?  What if He does expect us to be holy and pure and to live lives of righteousness?  What if it is not ok to sleep with your girlfriend, gossip about your boss or hold grudges?  What if God really does hate sin and it is truly unbearable for Him when we sin?  What if we have been wrong all along about what sin really is?

A typical example of the modern approach to conscience and guilt and sin is found in John 5.  A man who had been crippled thirty-eight years was healed by Jesus but seemingly did not appreciate what had been done for him nor show any loyalty toward the healer.  Later, Jesus found him in the crowd and spoke harshly to him.  "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." (John 5: 14 NIV)  How this man responded to this strong rebuke is fascinating.  He gave it not a moment’s notice.  He instead went to Jesus’ enemies to betray Him.  Surely he knew it was wrong to turn Jesus over to the authorities and we would think his conscience would have warned him against it, especially after he had just been healed of his thirty-eight years of misery by the very Savior he now was rejecting.  The point though is that Jesus defined sinning as something to stop doing or something worse may come your way.  Sin, to Jesus, is not just a mistake or a learning opportunity or a throwing off of the constraints of an over reaching super-ego.  Sin that continues is worse than being crippled thirty-eight years.

We all laud Jesus’ kindness in rescuing the woman caught in adultery from certain death by stoning but rarely do we ponder deeply Jesus’ strict admonishment to her when the crowd of accusers had left.  “Go and leave your life of sin!” (John 8: 11)  To leave a “life of sin” you must realize you have a life of sin and have begun to abhor it.  This means you have thought about it, turned over what you have done in your mind and grown to hate it.  Otherwise you just continue doing what you are doing because it brings you some desired pleasure, some comfort from your difficulties, some relief from your pain.  We sin because it does something for us we want and the only way to break away from sin is when something has converted our thinking about it…our conscience has concentrated on the sin and become its enemy.  It is only then that someone like the woman caught in adultery has the will and determination to leave her “life of sin”.

When Thomas the disciple doubted the reports that Jesus had been raised from the dead and questioned the evidence brought him by eyewitness accounts, he was left with seven days of pondering his reaction.  Of course it was logical at some level that he not believe Jesus actually was alive because He really had been dead.  There was no question Jesus died.  And yet He was wrong to doubt that Christ was alive.  Jesus had already promised He would live again after dying.  For a week Thomas had to process with his conscience his lack of faith in Jesus to actually come alive again after the crucifixion.  When that next Sunday Thomas was in the upper room with the other disciples and Jesus indeed did return and approach Thomas, the disciple was left with the realization that he had been wrong and his wrongness was sinful.  He had doubted not the resurrection but Christ Himself…He had not believed in Him.  The words of Jesus make sense to us then.  “Stop doubting!”  It was not stop doubting resurrection but stop doubting me.  “Believe!”

We want to encourage Thomas.  You had every right to doubt.  The crucifixion of Jesus was brutal.  You were traumatized by it.  Any one of us would have questioned the resurrection accounts.  Doubting is normal.  Not everyone is honest and sometimes people think they see something but are mistaken.  Of course you would have questioned the resurrection.  Jesus did not give Thomas wiggle room on this sin though.  Just as forcefully as He confronted the sin of the woman caught in adultery and the sin of the man who turned on Jesus, so He confronted Thomas.  Stop doubting.

There is a strong urge in us to make excuses for sin and ignore them altogether.  By doing this, we wreck our conscience.   We make it powerless to stop us from the evil at our door.  Before Cain’s anger blew up, he had a conscience that we must guess was warning him against the direction he was going.  God Himself spoke to him.  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." (Genesis 4:7 NIV)  We mustn’t believe Cain is the only one of us given warning before he sinned.  We are warned moment by moment.  We have the conscience God has given us to send the alarm.

We have a tremendous picture in the Old Testament of the Conscience of God given to man.  When the Law was being presented on Mt. Sinai, a miraculous event occurred.  The Cloud of God descended upon the mountain and rested upon the Law being poured out of the Mind of God.  For forty days the Cloud brooded upon the mountain with the Law word by word coming forth.  This was the original Cloud, before the Silicon Valley invented its own much, much smaller version.   Like our conscience broods over our sins and the decisions we make, the Lord brooded over the giving of the Law to man.  It is normal and wise for us to follow the Scripture that tells us,  “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” (Joshua 1: 8 NIV) 

If you meditate upon the rights and wrongs of God’s structure of the universe, you will naturally with your conscience think long and hard about the rights and wrongs of you.  It is the most normal part of life…to evaluate your deeds through God’s eyes.  “I drank too much last night.”  “I was judgmental and critical.”  “My gossip was hateful and destructive.”  “I looked at her too long because I was lusting.”  “I trusted myself rather than pray.”  “I am not reading the Bible enough.”  “I gave my wife grief.”  “I did not respect my husband.”  “I was mean to my mom.”  I was bitter and took out my problems on my children.”  “I have not been patient.”  This is not a super-ego gone manic; this is a healthy conscience taking seriously sin and its consequences.

Jesus told us without reservation and with all His faculties in place that we are to be “perfect”.  This doesn’t mean He expects us to never trip over the clothes in the house or never misspell a word we send out in a text.  But it does mean that God expects us to do what He has told us to do and never make excuses for not doing it and never pretend as if it doesn’t matter.  The person who wants her prayers answered by God and wants His blessings upon His life must do what He says to do.  We gripe and complain that God doesn’t care about us, God isn’t real because our prayers aren’t answered; God is cruel because of the difficulties we face.  God is waiting for us to take seriously our lives and do what He tells us to do.  This means we must listen to our conscience and think about the sins we have committed and hate our sins.  When we look at our sins and hate them with enough hatred to really love God and love the people God has given us, the Lord will unleash His power and give us the desires of our heart.  Because only when we truly hate our own sins will our heart be ready for God to bless it through and through.