How’s It Going?

1 Kings 19:4 NIV

"I have had enough, Lord," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors."

Do You Ever Get Discouraged?

Last Sunday I was.  I came home and could not shake my frustration with how things were going.  It turned into grumpiness that led to moping about the house and not wanting to be around anyone.  I would like to say my discouragement ended that night but it didn’t.  The entire next day I felt its oppression and even into the third day.  It made me moody and I had a tough time concentrating.  The trouble is, I felt like I had a right to feel sorry for myself and be upset.  That made it almost a moral right; that anyone in my situation would and should be dejected too.  I honestly did not see any reason why I should change my mood even if I thought I could.  No one could talk me out of being discouraged, because my frustrations seemed justified.  I didn’t reach out to anyone for support and didn’t try to cheer up myself.  I was all alone in my discouragement…or at least it seemed like it.  Like crawling into a closet and closing the door behind me, psychologically, I shut everyone else out and convinced myself that no one cared how I felt.

One of the great preachers of all time, the world famous Charles Spurgeon went through long and intense bouts with depression.  He made life miserable for everyone in his family when he went through them.  He isn’t the only Christian leader who suffered from despair.  Charles Stanley, the great pastor out of Atlanta battled discouragement even while leading a great church and wildly popular radio ministry.  When you get discouraged, what leads to it?  Have you wanted to quit, isolate yourself; have you ever become hard to be around because of how dark your mood was?  There is such a matter as clinical depression and doctors speak of chemical imbalances that lead to terrible despair but that is a topic for another time.  Today we are looking at discouragement and its implications.  What should we do about our discouragement and how should we think about it?

We find many in the Bible who became so discouraged that it led to despair.  One of the great figures in the Old Testament, someone who was a shining example of courageous faith is the prophet Elijah.  The brutal honesty of the Scriptures gives us great insight into the psychology of discouragement and its spiritual roots.  Although he was a great man of God, Elijah battled despair and even his faith did not protect him from despondency.  Elijah is best known for the stand he took against paganism on Mt. Carmel.  Elijah courageously challenged the pagan priests of Israel to a spiritual contest.  Whoever’s God sent fire down from heaven and burned up a sacrifice placed on an altar would be declared the true God.  Eight hundred pagan priests stood on one side of the mountain with their altar and slain bull while just Elijah stood on the other side by his own altar dedicated to the Lord.  Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but do not light the fire."  So they took the bull given them and prepared it.  Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. "O Baal, answer us!" they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made.  (1 Kings 18:25-26 NIV)  There never was a response.  The pagan priests called late into the day but no fire came down from heaven for them.  Finally Elijah went to work.  Elijah took twelve stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, "Your name shall be Israel."  With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed.  He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, "Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood." (1 Kings 18:31-33 NIV)

It was then that a great miracle took place that verified the majesty of the Great God Almighty before the people of Israel.  At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: "O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command.  Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."  Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.  When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, "The Lord-he is God! The Lord-he is God!"  (1 Kings 18:36-39 NIV)  Immediately the people at Elijah’s command slaughtered the prophets of Baal and declared their allegiance to the Lord as the one true God.

Such a great victory should have sustained Elijah and his faith to the end of his life but it didn’t.  The queen of Israel who was a staunch follower of the pagan religions when she found out about the massacre of the prophets of Baal, immediately ordered her soldiers to track down Elijah and kill him.  Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day's journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, Lord," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." (1 Kings 19:3-5 NIV)  Even the great Elijah saw no purpose in his life and could not imagine any way things would ever improve.  That is the nature of discouragement.  It may not be rational but it is reasonable.  Elijah witnessed one of the great miracles of all time and saw just how popular the Lord was still among his people but the threat of Jezebel the queen was enough to derail him.

The battle for Elijah’s mind did not end there in the desert.  He was never the same after this and finally God took him away in a fiery chariot.  It cannot be said that Elijah lacked evidence of God’s care and protection.  He was miraculously fed by ravens during a famine and raised from the dead the son of a widow who provided him lodging during a three year famine.  Elijah had more than enough evidence to believe in God and trust Him to take care of him but for some reason his faith in God drained out of him and he gave up on ever finding a reason to live.  Discouragement is not rational.  But it is reasonable.  No one could have blamed Elijah for seeing things as he did.  He had plenty justification for being afraid and thinking his situation was hopeless.  How could he ever out run Jezebel’s soldiers and who would stand up for him when they got to him?  He had no allies, certainly none as powerful as the king and queen.  God was not taking up his cause.  If He was, Jezebel would have accepted defeat and agreed that the Lord was God just as the ones on Mt. Carmel had.  Instead the Lord left him to fend for himself against the terrible and terrifying Jezebel.

Discouragement is the self-absorbed reaction to stress.  Despair is simply discouragement taken one step further.  Elijah fell into despair because he lost track of where he was.  He wasn’t off in the desert by himself.  He was not alone to face the great threat of Jezebel’s henchmen.  He was with God and standing in His might.  Now we must be careful here as we address this matter of discouragement.  The tendency is to feel sorry for those who are discouraged because they face such great trials and they can’t help being knocked down by them.  Of course the trials we face could be monumental and life altering but they may be insignificant too and not change the course of our lives in any measurable way.  It is not the size of the threat that determines how discouraged you become.  It is the loss of perspective.  My sister-in-law once had a conversation with her son that still makes me laugh if it were not so serious to those who were in the conversation.  The son came to his mom and complained about the actions of his sister, wanting something to be done to her obviously.  My sister replied, “Now who are you in charge of?”  She wanted to establish that he was not the parent of his sister, even if she was out of line.  My nephew quickly answered, “Myself!”  This was of course correct.  That was how he was supposed to respond.  But my sister-in-law immediately realized the error in that sort of thinking because he was not in charge of himself, his parents were.   If he was in charge, then he could do whatever he wanted and that could not be the case.  To clarify, she shot back, “No you’re not, I am.”

Discouragement is the emotional reaction to forgetting God is in charge of your life.  Rather than trusting Him to work out everything, you get tired of waiting for God to do what you want done and decide you know better than He does how everything should go.  Your frustration at not getting your way can be too much for you to handle and discouragement and despair often follow. The disciples were discouraged and dismayed when Jesus was arrested but our Lord wasn’t.  It was the way God was going to work out salvation for the world.  When my ego becomes too big to let God have final authority in those matters that impact me, then I become agitated and discouraged by what I don’t understand or like.  You don’t become discouraged because things are going badly, you become discouraged because you think you are smarter than God and know more than He does about what is best for you and others.   Your frustration at no getting your way either becomes anger or discouragement and you start moping and feeling sorry for yourself.

Once you hide your life in God and trust Him to in love take care of you and those you cherish, you will find that your joy and peace will bubble back up to the surface and your discouragement will leave you like a scared lizard.  Say this prayer when you are disappointed by how things are going and there seems to be no way out of your troubles.  “Lord, I don’t have any idea what to do and I don’t feel like I can take much more of this.  I need you to protect me from Satan and from fear and from discouragement.  Give me peace today.  Give me joy and help me let go of my problems and trust you to take care of them.  In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen.”  Remember this simple little statement in the Bible.  What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31 NIV)

Heart of Gold

1 Thessalonians 5:11 NIV

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

Have You Been Searching For A Heart Of Gold?

As I was finishing my classes for my doctoral degree, I was scrambling to try and come up with an adequate topic for my dissertation.  There were countless possibilities but if I were to spend two years of my life dedicated to the project, I wanted it to be something that mattered; something that I could look back upon and feel like the work had an impact upon my field.  I knew that was a lofty aspiration, one I could probably never attain but nonetheless, it seemed worth pursuing.  While in a meeting with other staff members at work, I brought up my struggle to come up with a meaningful topic.  Several were suggested and then a friend of mine said I should do a study looking at the effect having a foster child had on the families where they were placed.  It sounded like such a great project and the research felt important to me.  What a benefit it would be to foster families if they had some idea what it would mean to them taking a foster child into their homes.  And yet I did not feel up to the challenge.  I did not have any experience with such types of research and did not know anyone at the seminary who had been involved in this kind of study and none of my doctoral advisors seemed qualified to help me with the statistical aspects of the research.  As I was about to cast the idea aside as impossible for me to pursue, one of my co-workers, who had spent several years doing research at a university, offered to help me.  She said she would meet with me and give me advice on my work.  Elaine kept her promise and the hours she spent advising me and helping me with my statistical analyses were invaluable to me and the success of my dissertation.  I have framed in my office the card she gave me congratulating me on earning my doctorate.  She was a perfect friend; one whose kindness I will never forget.

Years ago Neil Young wrote a song titled “Heart of Gold”.  In it he sung about his inability to find someone with a heart of gold despite his ongoing search that had lasted a lifetime.  It is not easy finding people like that; the truth is some never do. Many haven’t developed friendships that make them better people, never have had a real friend to count on when they are having a rough go of it.  There are those, even with countless acquaintances and work associates, who can’t think of anyone to look to for support.  The Apostle Paul near the end of his life made the heart-rending comment that when he faced a traumatic ordeal, he was all alone.  At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. (2 Timothy 4:16 NIV)

Not everyone in the Bible though struggled to find a friend when one was needed.  David, when he was running for his life from the king of Israel had a friend who was passionately loyal to him.  Hiding in the desert with a cabal of warriors, David was exhausted psychologically, spiritually and maybe even physically.  His good friend though, who happened to be the son of the man trying to hunt down David and have him killed, suddenly appeared and lifted David’s spirits.  And Saul's son Jonathan went to David at Horesh and helped him find strength in God.  "Don't be afraid," he said. "My father Saul will not lay a hand on you. You will be king over Israel, and I will be second to you. Even my father Saul knows this." (1 Samuel 23:16-17 NIV)

One book of the Bible is named after a great friend.  Ruth, who herself was a widow and struggling with her own loss, refused to let her mother-in-law be alone in her time of sorrow.  Having lost her two sons and her husband, Naomi quite understandably fell into a depression.  Feeling abandoned by God, Naomi just wanted to return to her hometown of Bethlehem and mourn there.  Yet one of her daughters-in-law, Ruth, wouldn’t let go of her.  She insisted that they stay together and was willing to leave her own village and family members and friends to remain close to Naomi.  Her pledge is one of the loveliest declarations of friendship found in literature.  "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1:16-17 NIV)

A friend of mine reminded me of a poignant scene in the movie, The Passion of the Christ.  As Jesus was carrying the Cross through Jerusalem, bloodied and bruised, He stumbled and fell to the ground.  Mary, His mother was standing nearby and saw Him collapse.  Just as this happened, her thoughts flashed back to a moment when as a child, Jesus fell and scraped His knee.  Mary rushed to Him and picked young Jesus up and comforted Him in her arms.  In a flash, Mary flung herself down before Jesus in the road, gazed into His weary eyes, and tenderly mouthed to Him, “I’m here!”

The Bible uses a vivid term to express a simple way we can make the world a better place to live.  It is the Greek word “parakaleo” and it is rendered “encourage” in many English translations of the New Testament.  It literally means, “to call alongside”.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is the “Parakletos”, the noun form of the word “parakoleo”.  It means “the encourager”, “the one who picks you up and helps you keep going”.  Jesus, by describing the Holy Spirit this way says that God in you is a strengthener, a motivator, a friend who stands by you.  God’s people are commanded to be encouragers, uplifters, faithful friends who are loyal.  How can we be that sort of people though all the time?  Won’t we get drained if we keep pouring ourselves into others?  Not if we allow the Encourager God to replenish our internal supply of courage, mental toughness and joy!  As we move toward the end of time and it gets tougher and tougher for people to avoid depression, not be pulled to commit suicide, stay out of alcoholism and drug abuse, not melt under the heat of anxiety and worry, the Bible tells us that Christian people must be there for others.  Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. (1 Thessalonians 5:11 NIV)  The Lord insists this must be a priority of ours every single day!  “But encourage one another daily…” (Hebrews 3: 13 NIV)

Who will you reassure today?  Who is on your list to comfort, to encourage?  No one wears a sign that reads, “I am depressed”.  “I am ready to quit.”  “I feel hopeless.”  “My life doesn’t matter.” There aren’t red lights on the foreheads of your family members or co-workers that flash when they are discouraged and broken.  You just have to assume that the Holy Spirit, who encourages you and wants you to encourage others, will put it in your mind those who need you to say something loving, something supportive, something uplifting.  Perhaps you will be the voice God uses to give courage to someone, to motivate someone, to breathe life into someone.  With Christ living in you and through you, I wonder who it might be that will remember you always as the one who was there when life got rough and it seemed hopeless, who became the voice of God for them.  Who might one day look at you as the inspiration that led to a new direction in life?  Who will point to you as the reason they found new life and hope when they were lost and without the love of Christ to give them strength?  Who needs you to say, “I’m here”?

In Just A Few Hours

Luke 24:1 NIV

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.

What Could Happen In A Few Hours?

When our son was four years old, I decided as the good father that I was, that it was time to take the training wheels off his bike.  This is of course a rite of passage for most of the world’s population, as important as promoting into middle school and going out on the first date.  Now I am certain that if Mary Jo was home at the time, I might not have gotten past getting the first training wheel off our son’s bike but she wasn’t and so like all good fathers who love their children I took charge of helping our son spread his wings and fly, We went out to the back of a nearby middle school where there was an acre of asphalt and basketball courts.  I got our boy up on his little bike, steadied him as he established his balance with his feet on the pedals and hands on the handlebars, said a brief prayer and then pushed him off into the adult world.  I cheered him on as he wobbled away from me, furiously trying to maintain his equilibrium, veering left, then to the right, but steadily moving forward.  There were perhaps sixteen large metal poles holding the basketball rims and backboards in place spread out over at least an acre of land.  Not one of them was shrouded in mist; none of them were hidden behind sheets, painted with special colors that camouflaged them.  Each was like the Eiffel tower standing boldly by itself, far from its matching partner, a giant mountain of metal and immovability and yet as my little boy pushed off with the enthusiasm of Christopher Columbus looking for the passageway to the Orient, he somehow not only did not avoid the basketball pole, like a bee drawn to a flower, he pedaled straight at one.  Silently he crashed into the basketball pole and there he lay crumpled on the ground.  Like a good dad, I ran to him, checked for any major structural damage to his body and comforted my son in the same way any true father would.  “Son”, I said.  “You did great!  Do you want to try again?”  He got up, dusted himself off, climbed on his bike and with a push from me, off he went again.

Now here is where I was dumfounded and could not grasp what I saw.  Why did my son, with perfectly good eyesight not notice the giant metal poles out in the middle of the wide open spaces?  How did he miss the danger before him and why didn’t he do anything to avoid running into one of them?  Yet I must admit this to you.  I also have run into my fair share of basketball poles and did nothing to avoid them.  I have failed and because of pride or an unwillingness to look at the facts have ruined parts of my life.  I have made bad decisions, thought I knew what I was doing and was wrong.  I have hurt others by what I have said, made others suffer for my mistakes and plenty of times blamed someone else for my failures.  Are you immune to failure or have you had your fair share of losses?  Have you sinned?  Do you know when you are wrong or are you like me, you tend to cover up your mistakes or ignore them?  How bad is bad when it comes to you, how seriously should you take your sins, your moral mistakes, your rebellious acts against God?  What should you make of your failures, your shortcomings, the difficulties you cause others and yourself?  Let us look at Easter and how what Jesus did two thousand years ago impacts your life.

When it comes to what we have done wrong, our own sin, we have a giant blind spot.  We make too little of it and do not realize just how destructive our sins are, the potency of their evil. The Bible has this to say about your mistakes and moral failures.   Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey — whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Romans 6:16-17 NIV) We see our violations of God’s law as silly little misdemeanors that were not intended to harm anyone.  Everything from a little lie we tell to a short adventure into porn, we laugh away as no big deal.  And yet God clearly does not see what we call shortcomings as insignificant at all.  What it took for Him to eradicate sin from His people is a clear indication of just how really horrific our sinning is and the devastating effect it has on the universe.

Look closely at what Jesus had to suffer to get rid of your sin.  Can you see the flesh being ripped from Him as the whip tears at His back, across His chest, along His legs?  Do you hear the beating His face took as he was pummeled by the guards?  Have you noticed the blood dripping down His face from the crown of one inch thorns shredding His scalp and forehead?  Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they struck him in the face. ohn 19:1-3 NIV) What about the force of the nails driven into His feet and wrists, the writhing pain He suffered as He hung on the Cross hour after hour, the ridicule He suffered as strangers laughed at His naked body hung up for all to see?  What did it cost God to take those insignificant, trivial, unnoticeable sins out of you and make you free of them?  Do those sins really seem like nothing?  Are they as unimportant as you have pretended for Christ Himself to be tortured like that, beaten like that, and ripped apart like that?  It took just a few hours for God to take our sins from us but the cost of that transaction was unbearable pain for God Himself.

I think there is one more aspect to Easter we would do well to consider.  Not only are your sins horrific and devastating for you and others, this matter of what you should think of your troubles and failures must be considered.  So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.  Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. (Matthew 28:8-9 NIV)  Ponder for a moment what sort of shock Mary Magdalene, Peter, John, Thomas and the others must have felt when they saw Jesus alive after they had watched Him shattered by pain and die.  Is there any sort of comparison we can make to it?  He was dead; everyone at the foot of the Cross, from the soldiers to the disciples to the women who watched Him be crucified, knew He was dead.  The body was a wreckage of death.  Can you picture how wide their eyes were, how violently their heart beat in their chests, how numb they were to all other sounds, all other movements, all other smells when they looked upon Jesus alive and knew beyond doubt He really was alive?  What thoughts of previous failure went through their heads, what disappointments and trials of life did they consider as they gazed upon His wondrous resurrected body?  Did any memory or plan stand in the way of just seeing Him, staring at Him, being mesmerized by Him?  Did they fuss about what they would have for dinner, complain about the back pain they suffered, get irritated by the long wait they endured as Jesus remained dead?  No sight could have been more spellbinding, no event more entrancing than just this one matter, Jesus standing before them raised from death and fully and magnificently alive before them.  Ponder this for a moment; that what we see with the disciples is just a hint at the emotions you will encounter when you too take your place among the saints who see Jesus standing before them the first time.  You too will soon enough, like the disciples be gripped by the most stupendous joy a person could ever possess and it is not that far off.

Have you ever noticed the connection the Scripture makes between the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus?  Over and over the Bible points out that it was on the third day after He died that Jesus was raised from the dead.  When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men.  They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life." And the disciples were filled with grief. (Matthew 17:22-23 NIV)   .  God gave a number to it, a very specific number to connect the two parts of the salvation equation.  Crucifixion plus resurrection after three days equals salvation.  It is not four days and it isn’t two days either.  It is the third day that everything comes together for God’s people.  No crucifixion and there isn’t the removal of Sin from us.  Without resurrection there isn’t any life to our holiness.  They must be joined as one and they cannot be separated for your eternal life to begin—crucifixion and resurrection.  The two are joined into one outcome on a particular day and no other day, the third day.  The third day…it is where all our hope rests; where your hope rests.

Keep this in mind when you think about your life right now.  Our LORD does not initiate a crucifixion without a resurrection in mind.  Yes, you have troubles, you do have hardships.  You may wonder why He lets them happen.  Why this sadness, this frustration, this failure?  I cannot say why you have faced what you have and perhaps you cannot either.  I do not know how it will all work out for you, how this trial you face will go.  It is hard maybe for you to see how your dreams can still come to pass; how your suffering can be removed, but you must see this, look squarely at this.  You have not come to the end of the matter; it is only the first day, maybe the second but it is not yet day three.  For you it is Friday or maybe Saturday.  The dread of things is still upon the wind, the troubles you face are still in the air.  Death is before you, troubles and heartache and pain and discouragement have still remained and it seems late in the game, too late for anything much to change, for any good to come of this but it is the second day.  You have not yet reached the third day.  It is Saturday, perhaps even Saturday evening but remember, God does not initiate a crucifixion without a resurrection.  Sunday will come; it is nearly here in fact. Yes, you wonder like Job with all his troubles why it is so tough, so hard.  Like Jesus’ mother, His disciples, His friends, you don’t know why Friday has to be so bad and why there is so much pain and defeat on Friday. That is because you have first day thoughts, first day emotions, first day worries, first day fears; it is still the night for a universe awaiting the dawn.  Friday has come and Saturday stands for now, but there is one more day left and then everything will change for you. There is hope in Friday, hope in Saturday because...Sunday is on its way.  All death will come to life.  All troubles shall be cast aside with the dawn of the third day.  And you will see that day!

Too Far Down the Road

Jonah 1:11 NIV

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

Have You Gone Too Far?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Internal Healing

Depression is not corrected by an ongoing inward exploration of damaged systems within.  We can gaze internally for decades and never get any further than a thousand different psychological wounds that have festered because we keep looking at them and refuse to turn away.  Unlike physical injuries, psychological injuries do not improve with increased concentration upon them.  Whenever Jesus healed, whether it was the lepers or the blind, He did not give them instructions for continued care to the damaged body part.  He made the blind man wash the mud out of his eyes and be done with it, told the lepers to go to the priest and have their clean skin verified by the priest, ordered the paralyzed man to pick up his mat and walk.  All focus was upon the new life that had come, not the old life that had been a plague of sorrow.   The injuries done to the personality are, if they are not physical in nature, the result of Sin and its penetrating corrosive work.  Whether it be the "sins of the fathers" or "the sins of the sons", we cannot say.  Sometimes we are wrecked by the sins we commit, other times it is the sins committed against us that take us apart.  Regardless, it is the Cross of Christ that must be worked into us if the psychological damage caused by Sin is to be worked out of us.  Even the most disturbed among us can be brought into joy by an ever growing trust in God that He is good and His love for us in Christ unceasing.  The simple prayer, "Jesus, you are good and I trust now in your love for me" if voiced again and again during the day will begin, perhaps slowly, to heal our personalities of the harm done to them; not because it is a magical prayer but because it opens us to the touch of Christ at points where we have not before given Him access.  Jesus asked the odd question, "Do you want to get well?" not because He was trying to draw out of the paralyzed man a profound statement of faith but because our Lord will only work in us where we give Him permission and it was not clear that the paralytic was open to God dealing with him.  If we want our personalities to get well, at some point we must take our eyes off the damaged parts of us and look squarely at Jesus and keep our eyes fixed on Him long enough for Christ to enter the inner courts of our personality and make us new.

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.              Romans 6:4 NIV

Living By Faith

Living by faith and not by sight is not a dispensation of risk-taking and adventuring.  It is the clear ground upon which every Christian is to operate his or her life.  When we let Christ become our salvation, we received the Holy Spirit as a part of our personality.  This means that He interacts with us at every level of our thinking, whether conscious or unconscious.  The warping caused by sin makes us incorrigible at points; pouty children who demand our way at the expense of living in the Spirit.  This creates a conflict in our soul and the effect upon our soul is that we develop outbreaks of anger, depression, fear, discontentment, jealousy, frustration, impatience and a loss of gratitude.   When we frustrate the Holy Spirit by our rebellion against Scripture or disregard for how He is leading us, we start to lose contact with Him.  Some Christians are just fine with that.  They are in fact pleased to not have to put up with His pestering but after a while, it becomes clear that we are miserable people when we are not walking in step with the Holy Spirit.   At that point, when we like the prodigal son realize just how badly we have chosen, we in our misery cry out to God for help.  Through our desolation we repent of our sin and the Holy Spirit presents Himself to us once more and our heart becomes soft enough to live in Him, or to put it another way, live by faith.  Faith is not an ephemeral feeling of "everything will somehow come together."  Faith is the practical doing as the Holy Spirit gives direction.   The Holy Spirit might point out a Scripture that tells you how to respond to an argument you are having with your spouse or tell you to stop working for a certain company but always, if you are to remain "Spirit filled", you must not trust your Sin marred "sight" judgment, but rather by faith let the Spirit lead your next step.  The Holy Spirit is not going to fight with you to gain your allegiance.  But if you want the fruit of the Spirit operating within your personality, you must fight with your flesh to make Him your commander and chief!

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

Branch Life

Can we step back a moment and take inventory of our condition?  Are we bearing much fruit?  Are we connected to the vine?  Are we availing ourselves to the gardener and giving Him freedom to prune us as He wishes or have we begun to argue with Him and bend away from His shears?  The branch that bears little fruit is usually the most comfortable of the branches until it begins to look about and see just how impoverished it is.  Satan does not tear at us in a mighty rush of hardship and anguish, he merely rocks us to sleep and before we know it, we have become useless but settled.  You can tell when you have given up on truly following Christ if you argue about what fruit-bearing means...Is it external to us or internal...Is fruit bearing what we do with the Gospel or what the Gospel does with us?  When the sleep gets knocked out of us by some great crisis or upheaval, we find that we are free once again to face ourselves honestly.  If we can get past the "Why is God doing this to me", there is the possibility that we might once again bear fruit and become available to God to transform both in us and through us.  Fruit that "will last" is obvious and not theologically determined but spiritually discovered by obedience and faith.  If we would just do what God tells us to do, whether a big thing or small, it will manifest itself in fruit bearing.  Much depression, discouragement, frustration and disharmony within the Christian community would be tossed aside if we would simply begin bearing fruit as Christ works His way in us and through us.

This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.    John 15:8 NIV

Forgetting The Past

Philippians 3:13-14 NIV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas Kinkade My Eulogy

Thomas Kinkade

My Eulogy

For thousands of years certain people have been bigger than life.  Perhaps unfairly, they are beloved more than they deserved and critiqued more harshly than was warranted.  The Christian community has been as guilty of this as any collection of people and this has been particularly true of our own.  And yet a strange twist on this has taken place recently that has troubled me.  Thomas Kinkade makes this point clear almost perfectly.

Beloved by many in the Christian community for his bold proclamation of his faith through his paintings, Kinkade was derided by critics in the art community for his style and technique.  His passing brought out the best and the worst in his life and made his legacy an object of public scrutiny.  Yet was it deserved?   Should this be the way we react to those who “make a name for themselves”?

Recently a number of public figures have made strong statements of their faith in Christ and their popularity among Christians has provoked a backlash that has stunned many of us.  Jeremy Lin, Tim Tebow, George W. Bush and Thomas Kinkade among others have become heroes of sorts because their success has catapulted them into the public arena where their proclaimed love of Christ has reached a broad audience.  Because that clear public loyalty to Jesus has infuriated many, they have become polarizing figures beyond the scope of their professional success.

The success certainly has fueled their exposure in the press but it has also guaranteed them undo scrutiny.  The technique, talent, skill and worth of these popular Christian artists, athletes and leaders have all been excoriated by those who just don’t like them.  Of course  they all have flaws and certainly they don’t always get it right in their private lives but must they receive such caustic contempt?

Thomas Kinkade’s brother has been quoted as saying that the extreme criticism Kinkade received in the art community hurt him badly and that does not seem implausible.  It is painful to be derided publicly or even privately by one’s peers.  Was it warranted though?  Did Kinkade have to be Dali or Picasso to deserve the popularity of his works?  Did he have to hate the Gospel or be a serial adulterer to gain favor in the art world?  Regardless of one’s take on his creativity or skill set, Thomas Kinkade did something with his art that I will forever be thankful. He made the love of Jesus Christ a topic of discussion among those who considered his works.  That can of course be said of Jeremy Lin, George W. Bush and Tim Tebow.  Each in his own way made his professional status a forum for proclaiming devotion to Jesus.

When you reach the status of viral popularity, you become a target for those who think little of your abilities and less of your acclaim.  That must be accepted but it does not need to characterize the response of the Christian community.  Cannibalism is common within every grouping.  Democrats are guilty of it as well as Republicans. Evolutionists and Creationists have engaged in it.  So too have liberals, communists and conservatives.  If one of us steps out of line, we are just as prone to turn on our own as we are to attack those outside our group.  Which brings me to my own, the Christian world. 

The Christian community must make it anathema to practice cannibalism at any level.  When finally someone of us reaches the privileged place of a Thomas Kinkade, we must do our best to protect him or her.  I am embarrassed to admit my failure to pray even once for Kinkade, to send him a single note encouraging his faith, to attend to the spiritual battle surrounding his work.  We must do our best to ignore the foibles and style points these public figures generate and simply give our best to fight spiritually for their lives. They need our help and Satan will do his best to attack the chinks in their armor.  One prayer can save Kinkade from a bar fight, rescue Tebow from sexual immorality, protect Bush from ignoring crucial advice.  We don’t need our public spokesmen but they need us.  They need our joy in their testimonies, our support for their efforts to honor Christ and our prayers for their protection and help.  The gospel does not depend on these public figures but because they are ours, they depend on us.  The body of Christ must be the safest and most supportive home another believer has and we cannot shatter this by ignoring, critiquing or disabling the ministry of others trying to be brave Christians in a disparaging and slashing unbelieving world.

I salute the Christ who called out Thomas Kinkade for more than just a shallow, muted faith.  I applaud the Father who enabled Thomas Kinkade to have a forum for honoring Jesus with his work.  I bless the Holy Spirit who gave voice to Thomas Kinkade’s longing to make of God’s grace an object of praise and wonder.  May the memory of Thomas Kinkade and the lingering evidence of his witness in his art bring us a renewed commitment to stand together in the faith and be a living laboratory of true spiritual union and love.