Seriously?

Isaiah 53:2 NIV

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.  He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

What Do You Make of Jesus?

I feel like I am often in the minority.  Somewhere around eighty percent of Americans have bought a lottery ticket, but I never have.  According to Consumer’s Research magazine, lotteries have the worst odds of any form of legalized gambling.  Only eight out of One Hundred million who play the lottery ever win a million dollars.  The odds of hitting the jackpot in California is one in fourteen million.  What is worse, if you were to win, a million dollars, the IRS takes twenty percent off the top.  After state and local governments take their part, you are only left with $560,000.  It gets worse.  The state pays only the first $50,000 in cash and then pays the rest over twenty years, saving itself $100,000.  In the end, the one-million-dollar prize is only worth about $468,000.  It doesn’t always go well for lottery winners either. In 1985, Donna Sobb won $100 in the California lottery, which qualified her for a 2 million-dollar jackpot.  But when her picture showed up in the local newspaper, a police officer recognized Sobb and she was arrested on an eight-month-old shoplifting warrant.  In 1986, the California lottery winner Terry Garret was arrested only months after winning one-million dollars.  He was caught selling cocaine out of the sports car he bought with the winnings.

The other day I was told in a conversation that my view of Christianity was fine for me but not hers in such a way that it seemed this person could not stomach it like a vegetarian looking at my hamburger or a MAC owner complaining having to put up with my PC.  What must be realized is that this person has the majority view of most people, at least here in California.  Many no longer take Christ seriously…certainly not the totality of Him.  They respect much of what Christianity has accomplished but reject the Lordship of Christ and the need for salvation.  There is no comprehension of the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, the Bible is devalued and disregarded and the goodness of a life lived in Christ is disdained.

The Bible predicted this low view of Jesus nearly three thousand years ago.  He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.  He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. (Isaiah 53:2 NIV) The root coming out of dry ground is worthless; has no future, no hope in it.  Jesus, the Bible said, would not be taken seriously, have no intrinsic value, nothing to draw people to Him. The miracles, the teaching, and most importantly the Cross would go unnoticed and disregarded.  The Bible admits that those who should have been most likely to embrace Jesus, the crowds of Jerusalem, screamed for His crucifixion.    The Pharisees and Sadducees and other religious leaders of His time tried to poke holes in His logic.  The Roman soldiers who took charge of Him when the Jewish authorities wanted Him killed mocked Jesus and cruelly abused Him.  Even today, the major religions of our time have not taken seriously what is said of Him in the Bible.  The Mormons claim He was the brother of Lucifer and never God in flesh.  The Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe He was God and deny that He actually died on the Cross.  Hinduism, Iglesia Ni Christo and Islam all reject the premise that He is God and the only source of Eternal Life.  Jesus is not “good enough” to most of the people of this world and we cannot count on this turning around.

So, what should we do about the reaction of the world to Jesus Christ?  How should you respond to a great crowd of skeptics who work with you, go to school with you, go to the same parties, are at family gatherings you attend and work on your hair?  Make it clear that each person’s sins are monstrous and must be forgiven, that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of the world and the one source of eternal life, that God can transform anyone into a new Creation who has the Spirit of the Lord living within, that every person must be born-again and given a new life through Jesus Christ.  What benefit is there to saying these kinds of things If the people hearing it have no respect for Jesus and don’t really believe in Him?  Consider the Scripture’s take on what is possible when God gets involved in a person’s life.

In Luke 13: 18 is a most provocative and critical statement made by Jesus.  He said that the Kingdom of God is like a tiny mustard seed.  Then Jesus asked, "What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to?  It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches." (Luke 13:18-19 NIV) A mustard seed is the most insignificant and inadequate little package of life you will ever encounter.  It holds absolutely no promise when you gaze upon it yet the most wondrous and glorious of flowering beacons of splendor rise up out of it.  You may tell a completely disinterested and self-satisfied soul that she needs Jesus to put her life together and it could seem like a waste of time and effort on your part, but it won’t be.  Immediately, God will plant a little bity seed of doubt in that heart.  A slight, imperceptible crack in the self confidence of that person will develop.  No one may see it.  No human eye will spot it but the doubt will begin to take root that everything is “fine with me”.  “It is not well with my soul” will begin to develop.

It is this planted Gospel mustard seed that will trigger a chain of events that can be devastating for the soul clinging to the lie that salvation is not needed and sin inconsequential.  God will bring circumstances that make unbelief illogical and untenable.   Questions will arise about eternity and life after death and relationships and purpose and direction.  Christ will become the elephant in the room; always lurking in the mind but avoided like the plague.  Something will happen though that will force a decision about Jesus; turn to Him for help or reject Him and hide from salvation.  It will be a great battle in the soul, a spiritual crisis of epic proportions.  What will come of it, we cannot say, but this will be true.  Jesus will be faced and given serious thought.  If He is received as Savior, all of Heaven’s power will come and join those souls and what seemed so meaningless and small will become the greatest force of good found anywhere in the universe.  When Christ becomes a part of them and He begins to transform them into mighty children of God, the amazement they will have as they look back on what they once were and how beautiful their lives are now with Jesus, they will wonder how they ever thought they could get along without Him.  If someone would try to convince them once they have Christ that salvation is unnecessary and the putting away of sins inconsequential, they would shake their heads and have this one response, “Seriously?”

Spirituality—an Infused Presence

Genesis 2:7 NIV

…the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

What Is In You?

What makes you unique?  For me it is my last name.  In high school kids made fun of it.  Often when asked my last name, I have to spell it because receptionists reflexively start writing it as Walker rather than Walkup.  Just recently I was substitute teaching at a high school and kids in two different classes made fun of it.  My son did an internet search of our last name and it turns out a descendant of ours with our last name was a member of Scottish royalty and named his castle after our name.  My wife’s first name, Mary Jo is unique in Northern California.  Combine it with Walkup and it seems inconceivable that anyone else has the same name.  Well it turns out there is another Mary Jo Walkup in the Bay Area and when we first moved here, we started getting her mail and the library confused the two of them.  Yet you cannot hide behind someone else.  You are different from every other person that has ever existed and nothing you do can keep this from being true.  You may have plastic surgery to make you look like Barbie or feign a British accent so that you sound more charming but in the end you are who you are and no one else and that cannot be changed.  You are made by God with a unique soul that no one else can ever possess.

When God put together his first human being, it was such an ignoble work.  He scraped together some dirt and formed him out of the common stuff of the earth.  It was like a child scooping up clumps of mud and patting the mess together into a shape of his own imagining.  No fanfare or shouts of acclimation greeted the new creation.  But the Lord wasn’t finished yet.  At the end of it, He did something that is difficult to assess.  The Lord breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life and from that point forward he and each one who came from his line became a “living soul”.

The Hebrew term translated “being” in the NIV and “soul: in the KJV is “nephesh”.  It describes you as you, distinctly different from every other person that has ever been or will be.  Without the breath of God, Adam was just a body, an organic collection of matter.  Once though God breathed into him, Adam came alive; became “him”.  A parallel term found in the Greek Bible is “psuche”, from which is derived the English word “psyche”.    The idea of both words in their Biblical context is that they describe you as the combination of body and spirit.  Take out the spirit and the psuche or nephesh ends.  You have a body stranded without life.  James the brother of Jesus references this body without spirit condition and uses it to compare it to faith without works.  As the body without the God,spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. (James 2:26 NIV)  The Apostle Paul hints at the time when a separation will take place between him and his body.  Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.  We live by faith, not by sight.  We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:6-8 NIV)

The book of Proverbs speaks of the souls (nephesh) of animals and says that the righteous man cares for the animal soul.  A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal… (Proverbs 12:10 NIV)  It is literally, “A righteous one knowing the soul of his animals.  The word translated animals is a term used for any creature other than humans and comes from a root that means “tongue tied” or without language.  It is all those beasts that God did not breathe into and make living souls.  The Bible differentiates between the spirit the animals possess and the sort of spirit people have.  Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?" (Ecclesiastes 3:21 NIV)  The question raised has to do with the ultimate destination of the human spirit vs. the animal spirit but the point is that they are different; animal spirit and human spirit.  What separates one from the other?  All we have and it is an important difference is that the Bible says that God breathed into the first human being and by doing so gave people something He did not give animals…something called a “living soul”.

What are we to make of this breath God put into Adam?  The only other time we see in the Bible God pushing out His breath into someone, it is when Christ during His resurrection breathed upon the disciples the Holy Spirit.  And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22 NIV)  There are three considerations here.  The first is that this is something from God that the animals don’t possess.  Second it is spirit; something beyond physical.  Third it is of God, it comes out of Him.  In our modern age we think of anything “spiritual” as not really real.  Like a metaphor, something spiritual stands for a way of seeing, a way of viewing an aspect of life.  If it is spiritual, then that is code for this is deeply personal, it flows out of me and how I live my life.  Yet the Bible insists that the things of the Spirit are super real, are eternal real rather than temporary real.  God and Spirit are not just real, they are the basis behind all reality.  They make reality actual, not just digital imagery or something coming out of a machine.  The fact that God’s breath is in you and sustains you is why you are not just a thought; you are by God’s action, “really real”.

What is exceptional about God breathing into the first human being and the result of the breath being passed along across every generation and through every person that has been conceived is that something of God is in each of us.  The Biblical term for this is that we are made in “God’s image”.  What a marvelous miracle that is!  All of us have “Godness”; it is in a sense, in our DNA.  No matter how bad we might be, how corrupted by Satan and debased by our behaviors, God is still a part of who we are, the life behind our being.  When Jacob, after a twenty year absence finally met up with his brother Esau and found him full of forgiveness and no longer holding against Jacob his grudge, Jacob said of him, “For to see your face is like seeing the face of God”. (Genesis 33:10 NIV) Perhaps there is more truth to that statement than Jacob knew at the time.

What is possible for someone who has God a part of him or her?  Love and forgive with supernatural strength come to mind.  Author Philip Yancey in his book Rumors of Another World  reminds you and me of the great power those who have Christ in them possess.  When the transition of power took place in South Africa as the apartheid government based on racial injustice was replaced by a demographic coalition of blacks and whites led by the recently released Nelson Mandela, there were many atrocities of the past racist leaders that needed to be addressed.  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Bishop Desmond Tutu brought white policeman and army officers in to face their accusers over crimes they had committed while in power.  The rules were these: if when voluntarily facing his accusers, the officer confessed his crime and fully acknowledged his guilt, he could not be tried and punished for the crime.  One police officer told of a time when he and his fellow policeman shot an eighteen year old and burned his body to ashes to destroy the evidence.  Later the same officer returned to that house and seized the boy’s father.  While his wife was forced to watch, the police tied her husband to a wood pile, poured gasoline all over his body and set him on fire.

After hearing the police officer describe his crimes, the widow, who was also the mother, was given the opportunity to speak.  “What do you want from Mr. van de Broek?” the judge asked her.  She replied that she wanted him to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body, gather the dust and make it possible for her to give her husband a decent burial.  The police officer hung his head in shame and agreed to do so.  But then the widow added, “Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him.  And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too.  I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.”  As she left the witness stand to go to the police officer, the widow had to stop because overwhelmed, the officer had fainted. (p. 223-224)

What can you do with God a part of you, what is possible with Him living through you?  Adam had a chance to find out just what sort of goodness could flow from him into the world all about him.  Now that we live in the age of sin and death, it is certainly more difficult to believe that we possess the love and kindness of God but we do.  The promise is still valid today.  I can do everything through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:13 NIV)  Today you can love like God.  Today you can forgive like Jesus.  Today you can be kind like Jesus.  Today you can get rid of your temper, be done with your addictions, leave behind your lusts and be patient in any and every circumstance just like Jesus.  With Christ a part of us, it is possible!

Time Out

Revelation 12:14 NIV

The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach.

Have You Been Sent To Time Out?

When I first arrived at the college where I would earn my degree, I came by plane, was picked up at the local airport by a college representative and dropped off at the dormitory where my room was on the second floor.  Carrying my two suitcases up the stairs, I was all alone.  I did not meet anyone in the lobby.  No one was in the hallway on the first floor; no one was in the hallway on the second floor.  I came to my room, which was empty except for two beds, two dressers, a sink and a phone on the wall and I tossed my suitcase on the floor and began to unpack it.  My roommate would not be arriving for two days.  I pulled the blanket and sheets out from my suitcase, made the bed and lay down on top of the covers, wondering what it would be like to go to school here.  Outside my window, I heard laughter and male and female voices chattering.  It sounded like there was a party going on below my room and I wasn’t invited.  I cannot say what is more lonesome.  Being alone in a great circle of emptiness or being by yourself when you can hear the crowds having fun without you.    That night, without a single soul to keep me company, two thousand miles away from my family, my church and my friends, I felt like I had been sent to time out.

“Time out” as an expression has shifted in meaning over the years.  It used to mean “taking a break”.  In basketball or football it is the term used for regrouping and talking about what to do next as a team.  It also has been the idiom for going off and having fun; taking in a movie, hanging out with friends, going dancing, eating at a restaurant.  The field of psychology embraced the term as a descriptor for a mild punishment given to a youngster who is disruptive or disobedient.  If a parent sends a child to time out, it means the child is ordered to go sit alone for a certain period of time in a boring place and “learn a lesson” about how to act properly.  Not many kids like being sent to time out and rarely do we adults either.  “Jail time” is the grown-up version of it.  A boring, inconsequential job is too.  Many of us feel like from time to time we have been sent to time out and it generally isn’t something we like.

The Bible is filled with examples of its most famous people stuck in time out.  Imagine what it must have been like for Joseph, the son of Jacob to wind up in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and languish there for twelve years.   What about Sarah, the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac who was left behind in camp at the foot of Mt. Moriah as her husband took her only child off to make a sacrifice to God somewhere out in the mountains.  She had to have noticed the taunt and grim expression on Abraham’s face as he shuffled away and wondered what was about to take place and why she couldn’t go with them.  Thomas, the apostle, suffered a sort of time out when for seven days he lived with the disappointment of being the only one of the Disciples not to see Jesus alive after He had been crucified. How about Moses and his forty years of time out after he had to flee Egypt and live in Midian?  Was it not a time out for Jacob, the father of the Jewish nation when he had to run away from his brother and live in near slavery, serving his uncle Laban as a shepherd?  How about the time out Mary, the mother of Jesus, experienced when she left her home in Nazareth to go stay with her cousin Elizabeth because she was pregnant and not married?  David wandered about in the desert wilderness of Israel almost ten years trying to avoid capture because the crazy king Saul wanted him dead.  Was that not a time out?

We almost always assume that when we are in time out, it is something terrible or at least frustrating.  Our time outs keep us from what we like doing, make us wait for something we want, take us away from exciting activities others get to enjoy.  When God engineers our time out, we don’t know what to make of it.  Is He cruel?  Am I out of favor with Him?  Have I lost my best and most productive years?  Am I wasting my life?  Sometimes and we must be open to seeing this is so, we are absolutely off base when it comes to understanding our circumstances. 

In 1889, a publication called The Literary Digest had this take on the automobile.  “The ordinary ‘horseless carriage’ is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course come into as common use as the bicycle.”  Dr. Alfred Vlepeau, speaking for the medical community in 1839 wrote, “The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera.  It is absurd to go on seeking it today.  Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient.  To this compulsory combination we shall have to adjust ourselves.”  It was only seven years later that anesthesia was introduced into the medical world.  One more example to make this point!  The “Father of Radio”, Lee De Forest, in 1926 insisted, “While theoretically and technically television will be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.”

Even the brightest and most highly educated among us can be and have been thoroughly wrong.  You too are wrong if you think God is wasting your time because you are in time out.  God cemented Mary’s faith in Him and His plan for bringing the Savior into the world while He wasted her time at Elizabeth’s house.  David developed a theology of what a good and faithful king should be when God wasted his time in the desert.  Jacob learned how painful it is to be deceived and the value of integrity when God wasted his time at his uncle’s house.  Moses learned patience and confidence in God when God wasted his time in Midian.  Sarah learned hope and trust in God’s goodness when God wasted her time as she waited for her husband and son to return.  Joseph learned mercy and forgiveness when God wasted his time in the Egyptian prison.

We are mistaken if we think this promise of God’s is just about the future!  It is about now, today.  For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV) Our Lord knows what He is doing with you at this moment, with the time He is wasting now.  You may not have any idea what that plan is and He may not tell you but Christ has thought this through and He has every detail, every moment that seems so wasted plotted out so that you will be exactly the sort of person He wants you to be when He gets this done.  Why did Jesus waste so much time being an infant, and then a child, a teen and a young adult?  Why not just be settled on earth as a man fully grown, get those disciples and in only three years save the world?  It is because God had a plan and for Jesus to save the world, He had to be a human being in every way…and that meant wasting His time being born, growing up and dealing with all the frustrations and pleasures of being an actual human being.

God has your life thought through in His mind and He has you right where you need to be so everything He wants to make of you can and will be accomplished. The Mona Lisa took time.  The Sistine Chapel took time.  The Golden Gate Bridge took time.  And you also take time to finish or to put it more precisely, to perfect.

Captivity

Philippians 4:8 NIV

 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.

What Is On Your Mind?

A number of years ago before I was married I went on a white water rafting trip with some friends.  The most memorable part of the trip was a turn in the river that we reached with the water rushing beneath us in a torrent.  We were fast approaching a giant boulder on the left and our raft leader urged us to paddle as hard as we could to try and get the boat to turn to the right of it. We were all just normal people, some a bit more athletic than others but none of us were professional paddlers.  We whacked at the water with our paddles but clearly we didn’t give it our best because rather than missing the boulder we ran straight up it; three fourths of our raft out of the water resting upon the side of the giant granite rock.  As soon as we hit the boulder with a crash, the fellow on the front of the raft was popped out of it by the force of the impact and went flying ten feet up in the air, over the boulder and into the pool of water beside it.  Our eyes were as big as plates as we watched him shoot up in the air out of the raft.  Fortunately he did not hit any rocks, his life jacket kept him afloat and as soon as we worked the rubber raft off the boulder, we collected him from the icy water and continued careening down the river.  The raft leader never criticized us for not paddling hard enough to avoid the great boulder; we all knew we had avoided a great tragedy when our fellow rafter missed the rocks in his flight but we learned our lesson.  From that point onward, when our leader ordered us to paddle hard, we gave it all we had.

Looking back, it was not our bodies that failed us, it was our thinking.  We all decided individually that we were putting our best effort into paddling when we weren’t.  The thought each of us had was “I don’t need to work any harder than I am.  Of course I was wrong in how I thought and so was the person paddling next to me….all of us were wrong but nonetheless our thoughts controlled our actions.  It has always been that way for every person who has ever lived.  What you think decides what you do.  In each situation you face you might have a multitude of thoughts, some contradicting others but eventually a thought wins the moment and you do something or don’t do it.  You decide you need a new top and so you buy it.  You think you have been treated badly and you get upset.  The thought comes to you that your hair is too long and so if that thought persists, you get your hair cut.  We are both the masters and prisoners of our thoughts.  Our thoughts take us along like the rush of a mighty river and deposit us wherever they choose…unless of course we use our paddles and push against the force of the current.

A few years ago I read of a songwriter who composed and did the lead vocals on a fairly popular Christian song.  Its theme was healing and it was autobiographical.  The fellow had experienced a miraculous healing from cancer.  He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer but through prayer was cancer free.  As a result he wrote his song about believing in miracles.  There was only one problem.  He had faked his illness and fooled even his wife into thinking he had cancer.  For months he gave his testimony at concerts in vast arenas and his song climbed the charts.  It all came crashing down however when his hoax was uncovered.  Even now though, the song is sung in churches and by popular Christian groups.  Why did this nice Christian man pretend he had cancer?  We cannot say for certain but we do know that the decision to do so was the result of thoughts running through him that he did not reject or disable.

Throughout the Bible we find examples of good people who did things that seem absurd or in contradiction to who they appear to be.  Yet all we do, like them, whether good or bad, is the result of thoughts we create or accept.  Why would someone like David commit adultery with the wife of one of his bravest soldiers?  He did not stop the thoughts he had that he needed to have Bathsheba regardless of what was right or wrong.  Those thoughts grew in size and strength until his conscience was swamped by them.  Why did Ananias and Sapphira decide to pretend to the people of the church that they were giving to God all the proceeds of the sale of their property when they weren’t?  Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property.  With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet. Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?  Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God." (Acts 5:1-4 NIV) It was Ananias’s thoughts that poisoned his actions and corrupted his life with God.

We see this with Miriam who despite the respect and prestige she enjoyed as a part of her brother Moses’s inner circle of leadership, she did not think he deserved to have as much honor as he garnered among the people.  He had after all married a Cushite wife and the thought of how atrocious this was perverted Miriam’s heart so much that she tried to unseat Moses as leader of God’s people.  It is so strange, this bitterness she harbored, and yet we see the same phenomenon in every strata of life.  Families are ruined because of bitter thoughts, careers are wrecked because of poisoned ruminations and the world is filled with chaos as a result  of resentful thinking that goes unchecked.   Consider the terrible depression of Saul, the first king of Israel.  He could have no peace because he would not stop thinking that David was trying to take his throne from him and that the people would welcome David as Saul’s replacement.  When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs and with tambourines and lutes.  As they danced, they sang, "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands."  Saul was very angry; this refrain galled him. "They have credited David with tens of thousands," he thought, "but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?"  And from that time on Saul kept a jealous eye on David. (1 Samuel 18:6-9 NIV)

Ponder the painful circumstance of Naomi’s unhappiness.  She lost her husband and both her sons and the misery that brought her became unshakable.  When she returned to her hometown of Bethlehem, Naomi told her friends that they should no longer refer to her by her given name.   "Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. (Ruth 1:20 NIV)  Yet at the root of Naomi’s melancholy were her thoughts that insisted she had no happiness in her cup and God was her enemy.  We all have felt some level of this kind of misery at one time or another if we have lived a little and suffered great trials but it is the thoughts we let have life in us that keep us unhappy and prolong our depression.  The Bible insists that we are responsible for our thoughts and it is not the circumstances we face that determine our internal state but rather the way we handle our thoughts.

Regardless of what is happening, whether good or bad, difficult or easy, we are capable of managing our thoughts so that we are never miserable or bitter or overcome by rage.  God insists that with Him a part of our thinking, we can change our thoughts so that we are more peaceful and joyful.  Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. (Philippians 4:8 NIV)  You decide if you will do this.  It is not up to anyone else to help you here.  Circumstances do not decide this.  In your heart, you choose the content of your thoughts.  Lovely things or miserable things, pure thoughts or lustful thoughts, noble concerns or corrupt ideas; all of this is up to you as to what you will roll over in your mind.  We all know this is so but we most of the time ignore it, choosing to accept the fairy tale that it is what happens to us that determine our thoughts. 

Never forget that your thoughts don’t form in a vacuum.  There are two spiritual forces at work in your mind.  At all times they are jostling for dominance in the formation of your thoughts.  They never sleep, never take a break.  Either the Satanic kingdom is influencing your thinking most or Christ and the Kingdom of God.  Don’t blame either though because you decide who of the two you let roam about in your mental home.  You control the doors and you decide who takes charge.  You choose either to have God thoughts or Satan thoughts.  Although it is the Apostle Paul offering the challenge through the Holy Spirit, it can be either Satan or Jesus making this declaration.  Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me — put it into practice.  (Philippians 4:9 NIV)  If it is Christ you decide to follow and His Word you have generating your thoughts, then a miracle will occur.  As you close your mind to Satan and put into practice what the Lord has told you in Scripture, God will join you in your thinking and be a part of your inner world.  And the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4: 9 NIV)

Your thinking is often rooted in habit.  If you regularly think about your frustrations, disappointments, mistreatments and lusts, that sort of thinking will be ingrained in you and it will be hard to remove.  But if you frequently give your mind a break from evil and think about God and what you have read in Scripture and ways that you can bless and help others, your thoughts will grow increasingly peaceful and happy and contented.  Here is a habit you could develop that will help you.  Each hour turn your thoughts over to Christ with a simple little prayer.  “Lord Jesus, help me see things as you do.”  “Lord God of all peace, cleanse my thoughts of all dirty and bitter content.”  “Father, guide my thinking so that it is righteous and holy.”  Follow the prescription of the Bible and take your thoughts captive, not letting them rule over you but ruling them with the power the Holy Spirit has given you to be in charge of what you think.

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!

The Breakthrough

Micah 2:13 NIV

One who breaks open the way will go up before them;

they will break through the gate and go out.

Their king will pass through before them,

the Lord at their head."

  

Are You Stuck In A Rut?

Years ago, not long after we moved to California, Mary Jo and I decided to take a trip back to see her family in New Orleans.   The road trip is forty hours of driving plus whatever stops you might take along the way.  We had two foster children with us and it felt like a great adventure for us all.  Our car was an old Chevy Malibu that the kids in the church called a “hooptie”.  The cloth lining to the roof was hanging down because the oldest boy had poked at it and stabbed it with a pencil.  Carved on the outside of the door he had put his name.  The Malibu had a rebuilt engine and new tires but the air conditioner was shot and it had nearly two hundred thousand miles on it.  We thought our hooptie could make it all the way and back but we weren’t sure and so with a bit of trepidation we took off down the highway.  I always drove whenever we went anywhere together; I guess I had learned that from my dad who never let my mom drive when the two of them went places together.  Our plan was to drive all night after the first day of driving and it had worked until it started raining buckets and we could barely see the road in front of us.  Not only that I got the flu and a fever began to rage through my body.  A few hours later my back went out and I could not stand when we stopped to get gas.  Mary Jo tried to take over the driving but it was clear she was too tired to go any further and so we gave up the fight and checked into a hotel.

There are times when life gets too big for us to handle.  We try our best to keep going but we have nothing left in the tank.  Maybe you have never hit that low spot when things seemed hopeless; when it felt like if you did not get some help you might fall apart.  The world is filled with people who have, who face trials and difficulties that are too big for them, too painful and too long lasting to manage on their own.  You certainly aren’t alone if what is before you is daunting, maybe even frightening.  Some have cancer and haven’t told anyone.  Others have a son who won’t try to find a job or who drinks too much.  You might know someone who has a mother with Alzheimer’s or a daughter battling depression a grandchild who is autistic or a husband who no longer can work.  The bright sunshine of the morning may cheer the hearts of many as they climb out of bed but not all of us.  You might be one who just wishes you could pull the covers over your face and stay in bed for the day…or the week…or the month.

The Bible has a number of case studies of those who came to the end of the rope.  One in particular brought most of his difficulties on himself.  Those of course are the worst kind, the ones that have years of guilt and regret attached to them.  Famous for his other name, Israel, Jacob might be described as a momma’s boy by some.  He had somehow got his twin brother Esau to trade his family right as the firstborn for a bowl of his brother’s lentil soup.  It must have been pretty good or Esau was unfathomably hungry to let go of such an important privilege but he did.  The problem with a birthright is that it doesn’t do much for you until your parents die.  It might mean you don’t have to do the dishes as often or clean out the latrine but it is a pretty inconsequential honor for the majority of your life.  Jacob had it but what was he to do with it?

His mother had an idea.  When her husband Isaac announced that he was going to bestow a special blessing on Esau which would be binding and supernaturally inspired.  Jacob tricked his blind father into thinking he was Esau and dad unwittingly gave the blessing to Jacob instead of his favorite son Esau.  Imagine what sort of fireworks this generated.  Isaac’s wife Rebekah had put Jacob up to the plan.  Isaac could not have been very pleased by that.  Esau became enraged and promised to kill his brother Jacob after his father died.  One can only guess how Isaac felt about Jacob.  The family became a boiling cauldron of fury, disgust, jealousy, distrust and fear.  Out of it jumped Jacob when he realized he had no future there.  His mom told him he needed to leave; he needed to get as far away from his brother and his steaming hatred as he could.  “Move north and move in with your uncle and see if there is someone in the family you can marry”, he was told.  He was after all forty years old.  It was time to stop being a momma’s boy and make a life for himself. 

Not all changes of course are depressing.  Some are exhilarating.  This one could not have been.  It was for Jacob the end of his world.  He had to hike over four hundred miles with the fear of his brother’s wrath nipping at his heels.  The safety of his home, the help of his servants, the doting of his mom…not to mention the wealth his family enjoyed now in his rear view mirror as he trudged along.  What a forlorn sight he must have been.  Perhaps there were tears trickling down his cheeks as he thought gloomily of the mistakes he had made, the fool he had become.  He had hiked somewhere around fifty miles when Jacob came to the outskirts of a village closed for the night.  It was out beneath the open sky housing the stars of the universe that Jacob’s life took a new turn.

When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.  He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  There above it stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.  I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south.  All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." (Genesis 28:11-15 NIV)

If you come to grips with the fact that God is behind every event of your life and that nothing happens to you that He is not turning into your benefit, you can take great comfort in what happened to Jacob.  God let his life explode so that something completely new could be made out of him.  It is clear that was what He was doing with Jacob…blowing up everything that made Jacob who he was and remaking him.  There is such mercy and generosity in God’s words here.  “I am with you”.  “I will watch over you.”  “I will give you…”  “Your descendants will be…”  “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.”  God doesn’t blow up your life to wreck you.  He does it so that something lovely and good can come out of it that wasn’t possible before He did so.  When you are content and pleased with yourself and comfortable it is hard to do anything with you.  You become disengaged from God, you lose your urgency to hear from Him, lack motivation to give Him room to work His way through you and often are resistant to do what He commands.  That is what it is like to have the nature of Adam.  We all are like that.  You aren’t alone in this.

Would Jacob have been able to believe it was really God coming to him in his dream if he was living comfortably at home, pleased with himself in his successful plundering of his brother’s fortune and standing?  It is hard to say but we do know that he was this night, destitute, on the run, shattered.  He was eager to have God come to him and comfort him.  Finally, Jacob was ready for the Lord to truly be a part of His li…the most important part.  It is interesting, the choice of words used to describe how Jacob was the next day.  Certain that God was with him and that the Lord “had his back”, Jacob started off with a new way of seeing this adventure he was entering.  Then Jacob continued on his journey and came to the land of the eastern peoples. (Genesis 29:1 NIV)  Literally the Hebrew of the verse reads, “Then Jacob lifted up his feet…”  There is a joyfulness in this description.  We would use the expression, “He had a bounce to his step.”  For the first time in days, maybe even weeks or months or even years, Jacob was ready to trust God with his life and not make a mess of things.

God almost always blows up things for us before He takes hold of us and makes us new.  It was not going to be easy for Jacob.  He would work like a slave for fourteen years just to get his wife.  He would be cheated and humiliated by his father-in-law and have to bear the blazing sun and the miserable nights sleeping on the ground out in pasture lands just to keep his sheep safe but in it all, he became a man of God with great strength and faith.  It is so frequent that it is almost an axiom of life that before God can build His life in you and give you peace and joy and freedom from lust and worry, He must break you apart and take away every crutch you have propping up your life.   But then, slowly yet surely you will become the sort of person you hoped you would be when you realized you needed Christ to fulfill you.

The Bible is filled with case studies of those who first had to be wrecked before they could be bright stars in God’s universe:  Daniel, Moses, Job, Peter, James, Paul.  Jesus might not come to you in a dream or with a bright light or a great voice but He will come to you.  You will have to decide if you trust Him to remake you, to start over with you and take all the damage to your personality brought on by sin out of you and make you free to be loving and full of hope and peace.  It takes faith to believe that every experience you face has God in it and that each person who aggravates you is used by the Lord to make you good and holy but through Christ you can have that faith and be ready to be transformed by your Savior in every part of your day.  Take a deep breath and thank God He cares enough for you to save you from you sin and make you completely new.

Follow

“Come, follow me,” Jesus said…

Matthew 4:19 NIV

Are You A Follower?

The mushroom is an interesting plant.  It does not require sunshine; it can be found in dark corners under logs or tucked away beneath a shroud of leaves.  Mushrooms provide for the forest a critical function.  They fasten themselves to dead logs and gradually break them down, thus clearing the forest floor of stockpiling old wood.  Because the mushroom is a fungus, it sends out tiny spores that are too small to be seen by the naked eye.  These spores flit about upon the wind, having been found as high as thirty-five thousand feet, soaring about in the jet stream with commercial airliners.  When a spore lands upon some dead piece of plant material, it starts to grow, taking out of either a log or a fallen pile of leaves the nutrients it needs to thrive.  As we well know, although mushrooms are tasty on pizza and in spaghetti sauce, the wrong types of mushrooms when eaten can kill you.  Suppose you have a friend who is an expert on mushrooms and warns you not to eat a particular mushroom growing in your back yard.  You had plans for that mushroom and had hoped to add it to your salad.  How would you respond to her admonition?  Are you the sort to be offended by the directive to not eat the mushroom or would you be grateful for the correction?

The other day I was in a church service when a college student gave her thoughts about what her church should do to stay relevant in an ever changing society.  She shared her concern that if young adults are going to be a part of churches, they want be free of judgment and condemnation.  Of course I can’t think of too many of us who want to be criticized for our behavior; we all like to get a pat on the back and be affirmed.  Yet, should the church metaphorically chop out the rules and commands in the Bible that many find incomprehensible or even reprehensible to keep everyone happy?  What are we to do with all the “thou shalt nots” and “thou shalts” found in the Bible?  Is God too restrictive for our generation or those who follow?

The student, during her presentation on what the church must do to stay relevant and inviting, made as the centerpiece of her talk the contention that her church must be all about love.  Without love being exhibited she argued, young people will not want to be a part of the worship services or Bible studies.  Who could argue with her!  What sorts of people want to join a church that is hateful and mean spirited?  Yet here is where we must careful.  Is it “loving” to ignore the commands of God or never speak of them?  Should we pretend as if the commands of God don’t exist to get those outside the church to “buy into” Christianity and believe the Church is comprised of loving people?

The Bible insists that God is love.  God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16 NIV)  Rightfully, we emphasize our own behavior in this equation.  Because God is love, we too must live in love.  But let us turn this around for just a moment.  God is love.  That is the insistence.  God is love.  Continually God is love.  In every circumstance and interaction, God is love.  With every determination God makes God is love.  This reaches into every single aspect of God…what we know of Him and what we don’t.  God is love.  His motivation is pulled out of love, His relationships all come out of love, each word that comes from Him is determined by love.  Consider this carefully.  The verb in the statement is one of continuous being.  In every single way and at every moment in time, God is love.  It is not that God is loving which of course is important but not the critical point.  It is that God is love in every way…not just in what He does but also in how He thinks, what He believes, the way He makes decisions and what He commands.  God is love and that filters down to what He insists His people do.  Even the commands of God are love.

Let us go back to the discussion of mushrooms.  If you know that the person who tells you that you must not eat a certain mushroom ever is filed with love and only says what He does to you because love directs Him to do so and not just any love but perfect love, then the way you think about the command to not eat a certain mushroom must be evaluated with that in mind.  Suppose that the person who told you not to eat that one mushroom also knows all the ramifications of eating the mushroom and all the particular outcomes of eating the mushroom and out of love has given you the command.  What do you make of what you have been told?  Is it restrictive?  Is it limiting?  Is it hard to accept?  It might be.  But the way we view the command must fit the character and the knowledge of the one issuing the command.  Should you be embarrassed to tell your children not to eat the certain mushroom that is growing in your backyard?  Should you keep the warning to yourself because you are afraid of what others will think about you if you tell them not to eat the mushroom growing in your backyard?  What if everyone in the world insists that eating that mushroom in your backyard is the best thing for you and that only fools would demand the mushroom remain off limits?  Does the command become less loving or unnecessarily restrictive simply because six billion people don’t like it?

Admittedly we must decide if we are to believe the Bible is true or not but if you do, then you cannot throw out the commands of God as something mean and reprehensible if they came from God and He is in every way love.  The commands too are love because He issued them and they are for our good because He tells us that we are to obey them and it is His love that forms and shapes every command of His.  Jesus began His public ministry by issuing a simple invitation.  “Come follow me.”  Many chose not to follow Christ just as it is today.  They did not trust Him.  They did not think He loved them.  They were afraid He would not take care of them.  But some did follow Christ.  It may not have been easy for them to go with Him.  They might not have all received support from family members and friends when they made the decision.  Some may have been despised for following Christ.  Eventually though, each one discovered that Christ is love.  They kept on following Him even when it got rough.  Even when it was frightening and they did not know where Jesus was taking them they kept following.

You cannot follow Jesus and disregard what He says to do.  It is like a Himalayan guide taking her group to the left and one of the members going right instead.  At that point the climber is no longer following.  In John 21 is the account of Jesus talking privately with John and Peter during the period of the resurrection meetings.  Christ told Peter of the painful trials he could expect and the horrible death he would suffer as an apostle but did not mention any troubles that John would face.  Peter asked Jesus what he thought was a reasonable question. "Lord, what about him?" (John 21:21 NIV)  “What about John?”  Our Lord’s reply closed the discussion.  Jesus answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me." (John 21:22 NIV)  If you are to follow Jesus, then He is in charge of what you do and how you do it.  You can decide to not follow Jesus and He will let you go on your way.  If you are going to follow Him though, then he makes the decisions for you.

At least forty times in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the Lord tells us to follow His commands.  The idea that it doesn’t matter what we do as long as we just love God is ludicrous.  Jesus Himself made it clear that there is no love for God without doing what He says to do.  Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.  He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.  (John 14:23-24 NIV)    If we do not obey God, we run the risk of not having Him make His home in us.  This does not mean we are not saved or that we will be condemned for our sins.  It does mean that there is no intimacy with God if we disobey Him, no closeness.  Jesus asked, "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?”  (Luke 6:46 NIV)

Six times in the Gospel of Matthew alone, Jesus said to different ones, “Follow me!”  Some did, many didn’t.  Plenty believed He was the Messiah, countless others knew He was sent by God to be a prophet and teacher.  Only a few though decided to follow Jesus.  In Mark 10 is the fascinating account of a fellow who was a great success story.  He came to Jesus though in tremendous need, falling on his knees before Christ, wanting to know how he could inherit eternal life.  Jesus never answered the question though.  Instead He peeled back the layers of religious garb that were strangling his faith.  "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good — except God alone.”  (Mark 10: 18 NIV) Jesus put matters in this passionate Jew’s hands.  He had to decide then and there what to make of Jesus.  Was He good?  Then He was God.  If He wasn’t, then there was no point in continuing the discussion.  Jesus pushed harder. “You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.'" (Mark 10: 19)  Was this man going to obey the commandments or walk away from following God?  He replied quite firmly, "Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy."  (Mark 10: 20) Now remember this most important fact about God.  He is love.  Everything He does comes out of love.  God never acts without love driving every part of it.  Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." (Mark 10:21 NIV)

Some may say that this was a cruel and mean spirited response to this spiritually thirsty soul.  Why tell Him to sell all he had and give it to the poor?  Why push the envelope like that and make the man give up so much to prove his loyalty to God?  Not everyone is willing to follow Jesus and many will turn away.  We cannot say with any real certainty why Jesus told this one man to get rid of his wealth but we can be sure He did so to bless the man and make his life much better.  Some do fine with wealth but most do not.  Some can handle success and fame but the vast majority of us cannot.  If in love our Lord told Him to give his wealth away, then we can be certain Christ was not testing him like a school boy in a class.  Nor was Jesus giving this eager young disciple an initiation rite to see if He was fit to come follow Him.  Notice the psychological reaction of the man when he stumbled over his wealth.  At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. (Mark 10:22 NIV)

Shouldn’t he have gone away with tremendous happiness because he had great wealth?  When we don’t believe God loves us beyond measure and knows perfectly what is best for us, we walk away from His commands with sadness.  God has a command for you and to follow Him, you must obey it.  It might be Sunday worship.  It could be tithing.  It might be sexual purity or forgiveness or kindness.  The command before you could be some sort of ministry or service or sacrifice.  It might be some habit that you need to quit.  Whatever God is telling you to do, remember that Christ loves you perfectly and His way with you is just what you need to have the best of lives, one that will fill your heart with joy forever.