The Struggle of Why

Romans 9:20 NIV

But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'"

Do You Have a “Why” Question For God?

Growing up, like you, I had many “why” questions for my parents…most of which I knew better not to ask.  Why do we have to have a Volkswagen bus instead of a normal car?  Why do you serve peas for supper?  Why do I have to wash the dishes?  Why can’t we watch my favorite TV shows?  Why would you think mashing the roast beef with the potatoes and carrots and peas and onions and other quasi food items, mixing them together and calling it “hash” would be a good idea?  Why can’t I watch the second feature at the drive-in too?  How come my allowance is so small?  Why don’t we take more votes when family decisions are made?  What made you think that a baby blue polyester leisure suit should be my Christmas present?  Could I get my hair cut by someone who earns his living at it?  Can we listen to something other than country western music?  Why does Dad need to know about my grades?  Can we go to Disney Land for our vacation rather than camping this year?  What “Why” questions would you ask of your parents if you could?

Perhaps you ask them why they treated you like you did, or why was your brother or sister the “favorite child”.  Maybe you would ask about a relative who was kind of strange or whether they were happily married or glad about their career choices or what they really thought of God.  We might have lots of questions we would ask of our parents if we thought it appropriate or if it was possible.  Are there “why” questions you have for God?  What do you “wonder why” about God’s dealings with you?  Do you have lots of “why” questions for Him or just a few?  What is your most important “why” question for the Lord?

Our “why” questions seem to grow in magnitude and number when the toughness of life bears down upon us.  There are a number of ways we attach causation to the difficulties and painful parts of their existence.  One is bad luck.  There is we guess some force in the universe that operates and sometimes the coin turns up heads and other times tails and when it is good luck we try to keep doing what we are doing and when it is bad luck, we scramble for ways to “change our luck”.  We wear different kinds of clothes, take a different route to work, give a homeless person an extra dollar.  We can just assume that everything that happens is random and without any sort of organization.  Jackson Pollock famously painted using random drips and drops and splatters to create his art and it represented this idea, that there is neither rhyme nor reason to life; it is just a bunch of splatters shot about by mindless nature.  There is another way to look at the tough parts of life and that is to blame it all on Satan.  Satan is the one who takes our lives apart and ruins them to satisfy his cruel fancies.  A fourth view of these rough times is to guess that God is mad at us and punishing us.  Sometimes we see God as cruel for He deals with us more harshly than we deserve.  Like Job, we know we haven’t been perfect but why does He come down on us as hard as He does?

Now we must see what the Bible says about those rough times we have faced.  Hebrews 12: 5-6 gives us deep insight into what goes on behind the scenes when painful experiences come our way.  And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son." (NIV) Now what is almost irritating in this is that we are told that the very experiences that tear us apart and make us miserable and even angry should encourage us.  How can we be encouraged by the loss of our job, by the long and painful illness, by the troubles we have with our children and by the discouraging things people say to us?  It is impossible unless we have Christ dwelling within us and we understand what God is doing for us.

We must realize that there is a real possibility that we may not even be aware of how much work God has to do with us.  When David committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed, he had no idea just how badly he had acted.  It is strange to consider that David, the author of so many of the Psalms in the Bible could have thought it was ok to have sex with another man’s wife and then order the general of his army to position that man on the battle lines at such a place that he would be killed.  One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"  Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her…In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah.  In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die." (2 Samuel 11: 2-4, 14-15 NIV) It seems David had grown comfortable with what he had done…so comfortable that he had no qualms about marrying the woman after her husband died.  When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him.  After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the Lord. (2 Samuel 11:26-27 NIV)

This is critical to realize when it comes to the psychology of sin.  We can sin and sin egregiously and not even rattle our conscience.  There is a masking agent attached to many sins that can render the conscience impotent.  We have seen this often in our personal experiences; Christians and non-Christians alike not aware that what they have done was wrong.  We may think that they are just trying to cover up their sin by pretending they don’t see anything bad in their behavior but we would be wrong in many cases.  Like David, the sin itself has put the conscience to sleep in the matter.  The mechanism for this is beyond our discussion today but it is too ubiquitous a phenomenon to ignore.  In David’s case, he went nine months without being affected by the damage he had caused.  It was only after the prophet Nathan confronted him that David grasped the immensity of his evil acts.  “Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites...Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." (2 Samuel 12:9, 13 NIV)

Because sin damages our personality so severely and the habit of sin is so difficult to stop once it gains momentum, God chooses to intervene with those He loves.  He “disciplines” them, Hebrews 12 insists.  The word translated “discipline” means to train up, nurture, instruct, correct.  It is often used in conjunction with children; it is in many ways a family term.  In Christ, we are a part of His family and we are His children.  Because of the severity of David’s sin and the great damage it was causing among God’s people, the Lord disciplined the king ruthlessly.  He took David and Bathsheba’s son and promised David that other children of his would rise up against him in rebelllion.  That was a dreadful blow; a horrendous shot.  David prayed with weeping when the baby Bathsheba bore became deathly ill so we know it was terrible for David but God did not give in to David.  He took the child and later two of his adult children tried to wrench the kingdom from him.  The discipline of God was severe.

It takes faith to believe that a father or mother punishes you out of love.  You can’t just accept the discipline at face value as good…at least not when you are a child.  As adults or young adults, we too need faith to believe the harsh moments in our lives are part of God’s work with us done in love.  The one to one correspondence is almost never as neat and easily recognized as we saw with David.  You have adultery and murder in you.  I will take that out of you with this discipline.  Much of the time we cannot even figure out what we might have done wrong when God disciplines us.  God’s promise though is that the hard times never come because God hates us or because they just happen, always God is in charge of what we face and it is never because He despises us.  There is a second term the Lord uses in Hebrews 12: 6.  …the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son." (NIV)    The word translated “punishes” means to “scourge”.  It is discipline capitalized.  No one can describe this as easy or comfortable.  Remember, Jesus was “scourged”.  We realize that there are many parts of us that God must work on with severity and we may cry when we face what he gives us.  God’s goal though is not for here; it’s that later we will be rid of every ounce of sin and settled in holiness…perfect children of a perfect God.

Our goal is comfort.  We love to be able to relax and enjoy the ride.  God’s goal is holiness.  He loves to develop perfect people.  These two goals can be at loggerheads; butting up against each other like two mountain goats.  As He disciplines you, our Lord is proving your holiness; showing you and all those watching you what sort of person you are in Christ.  He is making you strong that your strength can be transferred to those not as strong as you, making you forgiving so that your forgiveness can be transferred to those not as forgiving as you, making you kind toward those who mistreat you so that your kindness can be transferred to those not as kind as you.  My father went through special training that he might protect those who would need his strength and help.  You are being trained by God that you might of great good for those He brings into your life.  If you are not trained to be patient, someone who needs your patience won’t have it when she needs it.  If you are not disciplined to be at peace with the storm, those who face the storm may not have enough peace to get past it.  The one who grieves finds great comfort in a friend who has grieved herself.  You are not your own.  You were made by God to be a perfect friend to each one you meet.  The storm you face is for them…not just for you.

Fix the Mind First

The great moments of testing come without warning.  Suddenly they are upon us with the force of a hurricane.  A financial blow...a rejection...a traumatic injury...a crushing loss...despair...depression...failure...It seems impossible this life of faith.  We sigh deeply.  "What do we do now?"  There are some who it appears never have an unhappy moment but that is not me or you.  The Garden of Gethsemane was not a mythological battle of great forces thumping each other in a Shakespearean play.  Jesus Christ prayed in agony on a plot of ground that was known to real people in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel and He did so during the specific hours of a particular Thursday evening and Friday morning when Saul and Mary and Jonah and others we have not met were doing the same sorts of things you and I do at those times.  In that particular Garden Jesus took in the full force of an unraveling world and traveled the same road we have taken.  He agonized.  What He did not do though was lose His mind.  He did not fix His thoughts on what was coming up against Him.  He did not become a dandelion worrying about what to wear or a woodpecker worrying about what to eat.  He did not let His mind become a godless fury of Google searches for answers.  Jesus Christ fixed His mind on the Father and in that shelter, He found rest; even while agonizing over the Sin of the world.  The way to rest as we enter into the great swirl of life at the office, at the meeting with the principal, at the mechanic's shop, in the hospital room and the funeral home is to keep thinking on Jesus with ferocious determination.  Your mind may swell with anguish and despair, your stomach may swim in anxiety but with your thoughts on Jesus now and on Jesus a minute from now and on Jesus thirty seconds later you will have the power of Heaven working in you to give you the rest you need right then.  Worry is your terrible enemy; not the troubles that are before you.

Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.      Hebrews 3:1 NIV

Obedience—The Great Uncovering Step 3

Romans 3:20 NIV

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

Do You Recognize The Source Of Your Longings?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obedience—The Great Uncovering Step 2

Genesis 28:16 NIV

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it."

Are You Aware Of God’s Work In You?

Perhaps the most odd of all my actions in college was when I got involved in a “love triangle”.  Now I am sure that the girl in the triangle did not think of herself as being in a love triangle.  She was just having a good time going out with different guys.  My two friends though who liked her and who wanted her to choose between them felt very much like they were in a love triangle; or at least in a very attracted to this girl triangle.  For several weeks each of these two guys pined to me about his affections for her and how he could not tell if she liked him or  was just pulling him along to feed her ego.  I liked these friends and didn’t want either one hurt and so finally when I heard the girl was going out with a third guy at our school, I decided we should do something about this.  A group of us guys snatched her one day, brought her to the school fountain at the front of the campus and tossed her in it.  Now some would say this was a very mean thing to do and although the girl was laughing and mad all at the same time when she got out of the fountain and perhaps in some strange way liked all the male attention she received that day, I was doing something that had to break some rule.  Even though I never read a single regulation in the school handbook prohibiting guys from throwing girls in the fountain, I cannot say that what we did was “right”…funny perhaps but not right.  What struck me in this was that it probably revealed more about me in organizing this prank than it did about Ella who we all thought deserved to be “baptized” in the fountain.  The question is, what did this rebellious and somewhat mean spirited act reveal about me?

We are unconscious beings who carry below the surface a vast assortment of memories, ideas, convictions and desires.  Who we think we are and what we decide about ourselves isn’t necessarily the complete picture and perhaps not even a true picture of us!  There is much to us that we don’t grasp…some we recognize but try to keep from others and a lot that is hidden from us of which a little, unbeknownst to us, has trickled out where it is observed by friends family members and even strangers.  The question is not whether or not we have a significant unconscious world within; it is what shall we do about that unconscious world and will we let it determine key aspects of our lives.

The Bible provides us with rich insight into our inner world and it is of great value to study the people who are described in it.  One of the most important players in the Old Testament is David, the eventual king of Israel whom some would call the greatest of all the Hebrew kings.  David was courageous, intelligent, creative, godly and passionate.  But he also was lusty, narcissistic, bull-headed and ambitious.  He was a wild tangle of conflicted personality traits that God worked through to establish a culture of faith among the Hebrew people and make into a “man after his own heart”. (See 1 Samuel 13: 14)  David knew there was much below the surface of his personality that he didn’t understand and he invited the Lord to probe it.  Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24 NIV)

There is a powerful and critical way the Lord reveals our hearts to us and it is astounding how effective it is.  The law of God not only defines holy behavior but it also uncovers layers of buried material that unconsciously drive many of our actions.  The Sermon on the Mount is a surprisingly effective way God reveals to us our hearts and the hidden wounded parts of our soul.  Consider just the directive to forgive.  For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:14-15 NIV)  It is amazing how difficult it is for us to do this.  In fact, it could be argued that it is nearly impossible for many.

The painful description of David’s relationship with his first wife Michal illustrates just how illuminating the law of forgiveness can be.  David was the golden boy of his time, the conquering war hero who could do no wrong.  Yet it is likely that deep resentments that were developed in childhood haunted him.  His father saw so little in David that when the great prophet Samuel came to their town and called for everyone there to meet him for a sacrificial feast, the boy’s dad never bothered to call his youngest son back to the house.  He left David out in the fields tending sheep while every other child of Jesse was at the party.   To get a perspective on this, suppose Michael Jordan or Bill Gates were to come to your neighborhood and everyone on your block was invited to meet him at one of the homes down the street from you.  You had eight sons but brought only seven of them to the meet and greet.  How would it have felt to have been the only child not asked to come?  Later, we see what this mindset of the father did to David’s siblings.  When the older brothers went off to war to fight the Philistines and David’s father sent David to the front lines to bring food to his brothers, the oldest brother had a bitter reaction to David’s natural curiosity about the taunts of the giant Goliath and the way the soldiers planned on responding to Goliath’s challenge to fight him.  When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, "Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle." (1 Samuel 17:28 NIV)

Of course, we know that David not only ended up watching the battle but played the most important part in the Israelites winning the fight.  As a result of this bravery and other successful accomplishments in war, David was made a high ranking general in Saul’s army.  His popularity exploded and he was revered by the Israelites.  In fact he was more beloved than the king himself.  This infuriated King Saul and his jealousy inflamed his hatred of David.  The king concocted a plan to have David killed.  He told the boy that if he could somehow kill one hundred Philistines, he would give his daughter Michal in marriage.  Michal was in love with David and it would seem the feelings were mutual for David agreed to the bridal price.  David successfully killed one hundred Philistines and won Michal as his bride but their marital bliss did not last long.  Saul’s hatred of David grew so bitter that it became clear soon Saul would kill him if he did not immediately go into hiding. His wife Michal helped in his escape despite the risk she took enraging her father.  She knew it was possible that he would kill her for the part she played in David’s getaway.  But her love for David was too great for her to worry about her own life.  She had to help David save his.

What followed is tragic. The timeline isn’t clear but this marriage of infatuation and sacrificial love fell apart.  Abigail quickly got on a donkey and, attended by her five maids, went with David's messengers and became his wife.  David had also married Ahinoam of Jezreel, and they both were his wives.  But Saul had given his daughter Michal, David's wife, to Paltiel son of Laish, who was from Gallim. (1 Samuel 25:42-44 NIV)  Did first Saul force Michal to abandon her husband and marry someone he handpicked to replace him or did David first marry Ahinoam and Abigail and as a consequence Michal abandon her marriage to David and marry Paltiel upon her father’s direction?  We don’t know.  Probably Michal was the first one to remarry based upon Saul’s fury with David and Michal’s fear of her father.  David now had been rejected by the two most important men in his life, his father and the king who had taken him under his wing.  Michal may have been a mere pawn in her father’s hand but her rejection of David clearly stung David and his bitterness over her betrayal worked like dry rot in his soul.  He never forgave her.  One might argue that he couldn’t.   He was still the little boy whose father did not think he was good enough to warrant attendance at the party.

Ten years passed.  David had now added at least five more wives and perhaps more, fought a bitter war with Saul’s son and Michal’s brother Ish-Bosheth to gain control of all of Israel and no longer had King Saul to fear due to his death six years before.  Ish-Bosheth’s general Abner had become incensed with Ish-Bosheth and so decided to form an alliance with David and pave the way for David to be king over all Israel.  David was more than happy to make this agreement but first he had a requirement if he was to make peace with Abner and his army.  The general had to bring Michal back to David so that he could force her to be his wife again.  For perhaps ten years Michal had been with her new husband and he loved her deeply.  She was his only wife…he was her only husband.  David on the other hand had at least seven wives and many more he would take later.  What sort of bitterness of soul could lead to such a cold hearted, spiteful demand?  It was an ugly scene.  David told Abner and King Ish-Bosheth, "I will make an agreement with you. But I demand one thing of you: Do not come into my presence unless you bring Michal daughter of Saul when you come to see me." Then David sent messengers to Ish-Bosheth son of Saul, demanding, "Give me my wife Michal, whom I betrothed to myself for the price of a hundred Philistine foreskins."   So Ish-Bosheth gave orders and had her taken away from her husband Paltiel son of Laish.  Her husband, however, went with her, weeping behind her all the way to Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, "Go back home!" So he went back.  (2 Samuel 3:13-16 NIV)

Consider an imaginary conversation taking place between David and Jesus, one much like what happened between Christ and the rich young ruler.  David asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life and Jesus tells him as he tells us all in the Sermon on the Mount to forgive, “Forgive Michal for marrying Paltiel and come follow me.”  David replies, “I can’t; it’s too much to ask, to demand I forgive her!”  Now, why couldn’t he forgive Michal for remarrying?  Why did he make her return to him?  He no longer loved her.  She didn’t love him anymore it seems.  Why couldn’t David just forgive Michal and move on in his life and let her move on too?  What drove his determination to ruin Michal’s life and Michal’s husband’s life even though it is a fundamental principle of God’s Kingdom to forgive those who hurt us?  Perhaps, it was because David always had to prove he was the biggest man in the room, always had to be the conqueror, always needed to have the prize in his hand, always needed to be respected and appreciated.  He could never let anyone get the best of him, never be disrespected. He had a deep seated need to prove his worth, to be someone!  Why might that be?  Perhaps, his bitter disdain for Michal and her needs and his unwillingness to forgive her was rooted in something deep and ugly…perhaps it had to do with his battle to prove his worth to his dad.  Maybe, there was a wound in David’s soul that had never healed and when someone he cared about deeply reminded him of the rejection he experienced when he was a child, he could not let go of the hurt it uncovered.

What if though, everything went in a different direction and the rich young ruler did give up his wealth and follow Jesus and David did forgive Michal for marrying someone else?  Is it possible that in doing the command of God, by forgiving Michal, David might have been freed by God of his need to prove himself, freed of his neurotic need to live up to the expectations of his father?  We cannot say what might have been but we do know this.  The commands of God are not intended to take apart the joy we have in being independent and free.  God’s demands are based in love and if we obey Him, there is power in God to make us more free than we ever thought possible.  Consider the promise found in Malachi made to those who take God seriously enough to do as He commands; who believe that in all His ways He is good, even when He tells us to do something that we feel is too hard to do.  But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. (Malachi 4:2 NIV)

Individuality Vs. Personality Part 2

Individuality Vs Personality

Part 2

John 17:11b NIV

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

Are You Personal Or An Individual?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Religious Tinkering

What constitutes spirituality?  Is it an interest in religious matters?  Is it  the capacity to tease out the main idea in a Biblical text?  Is it a way of speaking or a propensity for charitable deeds?  For Jesus, spirituality was grounded in a determination to do whatever He saw the Father doing.  His mind's eye was fixed and never moved from that one focal point.  At every place where He went, He was given over to the will of the Father and in following Him step by step.  Spirituality is nothing more than puffed up personalized morality if it is not squared with the mind of Christ.  We have the gift of the Holy Spirit  not that we might do great deeds of godliness but that we might be at one with Jesus Christ every step.  The blood of Christ is in the washing of personality a mightier work than we grasp.  It is holiness personified...not considered, not examined.  With the cleansing Christ provides we can live a holy life because Christ is holy.    We should not take this lightly.  Holiness is the personal end game for us.  The Lord will never put up with a single bit of sinful waywardness.  He will shred us and consume us with His blazing fire until every bit of rebellion is gone.  This happens now and we should thank God He does not leave all this work until we come face to face with Him.  The trials we face today and the hardships we encounter now are all a gracious work of God to strip us clean and the more we give ourselves freely to Him, the more joyfully we will walk tomorrow.  If the "well done good and faithful servant" were left to us alone, we would simply be disgraced in the end.  But the "well done good servant" is being shaped by God in our momentary troubles and light trials.  As we turn to Christ in faith, we find the old pernicious acrimony toward the Father and what we see Him doing drained from us and replaced with the sweet, happy stream of Christ Himself welling up within.  The great days of our lives are when we are surprised to find Christ seeping out of us as we go about the normal business we have.  At those grand moments, we will grin and laugh happily that we really have been made new!

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."

John 7:38-39 NIV

The God Twitch

The God twitch is a spontaneous turning of one’s spasmodic concentration to God.  It is the sudden, spontaneous reaction to the Holy Spirit poking at your hot nerve.  Some are more reactive than others; quicker to flinch in God's direction.  If we don't realize what is happening we may mistake the poke as a crisis, as a terrible occurrence, as a heartbreak.  It is not.  It is the Lord making Himself unmistakably visible.  David felt it when Saul came after him in the wilderness.  Stephen felt it as he faced his martyrdom.  Jonah faced it as he sat in the belly of the great fish and Peter came upon it as he wept uncontrollably in the dark closet of Jerusalem Good Friday.  We may question many matters in our life but when Job like you was hit in the head by the lightning flash of God he became silent as a door knob.  There is nothing to do when God comes upon you with the force of heaven itself.  You must silently wait upon Him as He works Himself through every cell and corpuscle you possess.  Why should we think God would always deal with us peacefully and comfortably when the greatest people in the Bible were struck dumb by the weight of His awful Presence?  As Christians, we must stop making excuses for God; quit sugarcoating the ways He moves within us.  Did Ruth lose her husband or not?  Did Elijah face the terror of Jezebel or not?  Did Paul get beaten with rods or not?  It is anathema to make God out as some kind of silly puppy who bounces about mindlessly whenever we meet Him.  He is stern in His determination to make us face Him.  Should we think His glory is casual and light?  It is not!  It is as heavy as the weight of the firestorm that fell upon Sodom.  Nothing stops the force of our God's entrance when He decides to make Himself known to us with finality.  Just look at the picture we have of Jesus in Daniel 7 and try to wiggle out of this one simple attribute of God.  He is holy...terribly holy and it is a grave error to mistake Him as Santa Claus.  Sin is not a bad move on our part; it is the terrifying rebellion of a fool who dares come up against the Almighty God.  We must never mistake God as a doting father who overlooks every offence of his child.  He is not.  That is why the cross of Jesus Christ is such a roiling cauldron of chaos for Satan and the demon world.  Jesus Christ crucified is the lightning bolt of the Father that makes the entire world twitch in horror or in wonder.    The sins of the billions embedded within the dying body of the crucified King of Kings makes stones shatter in wonder and the universe come unglued in the end.   Are we so silly as to think God will only deal lightly with us when He comes upon us?

"As I looked, "thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat.  His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool.  His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze.  A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him.     Daniel 7:9-10 NIV

The Effect of the Follow

When David danced wildly before the Lord as the Ark was being brought into Jerusalem, he offended his wife Michal.  In hindsight, most of us would look upon Michal as petty and childish but she had plenty of baggage she carried with her that may have inflamed her sensitivities.  Her husband used her to make his escape from her father.  David greedily married numerous other women rather than holding fast to his loyalty to Michal.  When Michal was forced by her father to remarry, she built a new life with her husband but had it ripped from her when David demanded her back into his harem as his condition for peacefully accepting command of the united nation of Israel.  All of David's faults aside, he was doing as the Lord directed when he took up his place at the front of the procession and held nothing back in his celebration of the Lord's presence.  The backlash of his obedience hit is wife Michal squarely in the face.  Abraham as he marched up Mt. Moriah to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, had to stifle his own emotions but more importantly, let his wife suffer violently the horror of the projected outcome.  Paul never forced his young friend Silas to accompany him on the missionary journey but he did not shield him either from the brutal treatment he suffered as a result.  Our children may face terrible difficulties and our friends might suffer greatly when we do as the Lord tells us but we must not shy away from our obedience to the Holy Spirit.    Jesus knew Peter would suffer for following Him to the end but Jesus did not apologize to Peter for it nor did He waver in the call to follow.  The cross is not heavy just for us but for all those who walk with us as we heft it upon our shoulders and they heave their own crosses upon theirs.    If we are to be crucified with Christ, why would we try to prevent others from dying themselves?  Do we not want them also to have Jesus as Lord?  Are we more merciful than God Himself who lets others suffer alongside us as we take up our cross daily?  If God calls us, we must go regardless of the effect it has on others.  Jesus went to Calvary knowing full well the anguish it would bring His own mother but He did so because the Father beckoned Him onward.  If we are to follow in His steps, we cannot hesitate at the point at which we bring crises and trials upon others.  They are in God's hands just as solidly as we are and to not go would be to demand the Lord drop us and them too. 

A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Luke 23:27-28 NIV

The Great Moment

The Great Moment of our "turn around" is never at the spot when everything changes but at the point at which we decide for God.  When a paralytic was carried to the home where Jesus was teaching, the turn around was not when the man arrived.  It wasn't when Jesus bent over the cripple and told him to walk.  It wasn't even those rapid fire nanoseconds when healing flashed through the paralytic's legs.  The turn around was when it was decided to go to the Lord for help.  Repentance is a turn around.  The cry to God for help is a turn around.  The lostness that is discovered in the heart is a turn around.  As we come to grips with the  realization that every hope we have must end with God and if the truth be known, starts with Him, we meet the turn around at our doorstep.  Faith is the turn around; it is the spot at which we go outside ourselves and the miserly universe and seek the treasure trove of God's grace.  This world is never enough and will never provide us with enough.  We are always left with an empty pang in our stomach when all we do is rely upon this world for what we long to have.  It is more than metaphoric that the prodigal realized where he should have lived all along when his stomach growled uncontrollably.  We seek the Father not to get something in the end but because He is the beginning and the end.  All joy and peace and love and contentment are found ultimately in Him and although we may mistake some carnal longing for its heavenly desire, even in our most lustful cravings, we have in them the opportunity to fill our stomach with the bread Jesus offered the crowd on the hillside.   His broken body and poured out blood come to us at the moment of our hunger pangs and if we are wise, we will feast on them.  Given the voracity of our appetite, the only way we can ever be filled is by turning to Christ and letting Him fully satisfy us.    When you decide to go after the Savior, He saves you beyond the saving  you sought.

Why are you downcast, O my soul?  Why so disturbed within me?  Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. Psalm 42:5-6a NIV

When There Is Nothing You Can Do

The most frustrating of people are those who have been born again but turned away from the Lord and dismissed His fellowship.  We have the impulse to feel sorry for them; to compassionately coddle them but the Lord isn't in such misguided nurturing.  They must be allowed to go off to the far country, to squander the riches of heaven on "prostitutes" (any substitute for living in close communion with Christ) and wallow in the muck of pigs.  It is only when they reach the end of their rope that they can get a handle on the lunacy of their ways.  But if we try to keep them away from the far country, we usurp the wisdom of the Father who let His son go and did not go off chasing him down the road.  There is much to lose for the prodigal and many may be hurt by his corrupted decisions but it is no use trying to change his mind once he has taken the inheritance and left.  Husbands and wives have shed countless tears over their prodigal spouses, fathers and mothers have sat in a dejected stupor over their prodigal children but it is hopeless trying to herd them back into the pen.  They are gone and the facts must be faced courageously.  So what should be done?  As the father in Jesus' parable waited for his son, so we too must wait for the return of the prodigal.  It is the prodigal's decision alone that must rule and if he chooses to come back, then we throw a party and rejoice.  If he does not, we must accept it and let him have his way as God works the circumstances in his life to pinch him in tightly enough until he is able to face himself squarely.  Our praying does something; it unleashes the full resources of heaven on our behalf as we mourn the departure of the prodigal.  We cannot expect the Lord though to "make him return."  The prodigal is not some trained rat; he is fully human and free to decide for himself whom he shall follow.  When your own prodigal walks away, mourn as terribly as the pacing father in the Lord's story but do not extend him a lifeline.  He must make his way back himself, repent because he chooses to repent and seek out the Father because that is what he has decided to do.

When he came to his senses, he said…"Father I have sinned against heaven and against you…"  Luke 15: 17, 21 NIV

Fog

Nothing disturbs our sensibilities quite like the prayer that goes dark.  We once had a firm idea how we ought to pray and what we should expect as an outcome but then it all becomes whacked and we lose our mind over the epic disaster we face since we prayed.  We lose the game, we lose the house, we lose the daughter, we lose the marriage, we lose  the will to pray anymore.  Our expectation is that everything should work in a straight line.  Beginning and end all within the carefully orchestrated wishes we hold and yet it isn't.  We find ourselves staring at a great tangled ball of yarn that has no end to grab.  Our problem is that we have so many accounts in the Bible that wind up somewhere and we expect that too.  Job's health gets restored.  Jonah is spewed out of the fish.  Moses makes it out of Egypt.  Joseph is released from jail.  Peter winds up on the doorstep carefree.  But we forget about James martyred, Jonah stewing over the Assyrian revival, Moses pulled away from Israel just as the Exodus ends, John left upon Patmos and Noah stupidly drunk.  The brief moments when God works with us along a straight line  leave us discombobulated.  We assume that is how it always is to be.  It is our right to see things clearly, to be settled and on our way somewhere.  That is not the human experience though and it especially isn't so for Believers.  God leaves us in a fog for great stretches and does so decidedly.  We can't see our way out of our disappointment, our troubles, our frustration and we think something is wrong with us or wrong with God.  Faith is only established within the fog when you can't make heads or tails of your circumstance or God.  The Lord does not show Himself to you nor give you His "big plan" either.  Blindly you must go about your business believing in the Lord who built His life in you by giving up His life finitely in the public square.  There for all to see the love of Christ was established and decided in the heart of the Father who loved you first before you had a shred of interest in Him.    The only way you can live by faith is when faith is forced out of you; not book faith or classroom faith but actual faith played out in real life.  It is then, when the fog thickens and you are left alone to sort out all the things you hoped would come to pass that haven't that you begin to believe God as you should, as you can.  You have Christ in you, living through you and in that is great hope and promise.  For Jesus has already blazed the way for you.  He dangled from the tree with the world looking out at Him and no sign of the Father at any turn of His head.  All He could see were weeping women, crushed and hopeless men, crass and wanton soldiers,  perverse religious zealots and an agony that was unbearably cruel.  Yet there, in the fog,  Jesus Christ stayed fixed upon the Father and His determined faith is also abiding within you.  Rather than give in to the despair of the fog, fix your eyes upon Jesus who knows how hopeless life can be and has given you His faith to keep you going.

"The Lord has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud;    1 Kings 8:12 NIV

Love Beyond Measure

Nothing diminishes us more than the desire to be someone else--to possess in ourselves a benefit someone else has.  At perfect points in our lives, the Lord gives us something...an insight, a strength, an ability, an accomplishment and it is as magically attached to us as our shadow.  Our problem is we do not trust the Lord enough to be full of love in how He distributes His gifts; specifically how He allots them with regard to ourselves.  If the Lord did not like you, then He would never have made you, never have let you in on His grace, never have called you friend.  Our God is perfectly truthful in all of His dealings; if not then He is a devil and should be despised.  He has told you that He loves you and that love is complete and without room for more so in it He audits what comes your way and does so to guarantee your total joy.  But when you snivel and complain and try to wiggle out from under the dominion of Christ, you make a mess of all you have.  Like a child who breaks his toy because he wants his brother's toy, you smash your own happiness in the discontent you hold in your hand.   The parable of the workers who were all paid the same wage but worked for different lengths of time is not a teaching on the seeming unequal treatment of the Father; it is rather a statement of how childish we all are with regard to the generosity of God.  Our work is in God's strength and His ability, our adherence to the scriptures is by His power and determination, our popularity and success  is through His good fortune.  We are God's in every way and the sway of our lives is His too so it is sheer lunacy to get bent out of shape over the wage He gives you...it is far more than He needs to give and it is perfect in its ultimate good.  What if those workers, instead of moaning about the coin handed them at the end of the day rejoiced instead that it was a coin and it had the blessing of God stamped upon it.  The coin could become a thousand coins in a moment as the Father determined and it could be kept at one because the one was more likely to bring happiness than ten or ten thousand.    Who would in their right mind want van Gogh's great talent at the cost of acquiring at the same time his misery or would beg incessantly for Hitler's power to attract a crowd and have along with it his filthy end.  And on the other hand, how many of us shoot for Stephen's lone convert as the end game to our work...Imagine the child complaining about the terrible drive down to L.A. just as his father pulls into the parking lot at Disneyland.   

But he answered one of them, "Friend, I am not being unfair to you..." Matthew 20: 13a NIV

The New Year Resolution...Biblical?

Try as you may, you will be hard-pressed to find a single man or woman of God in Scripture making New Year's Resolutions or goal setting.  They attempted the impossible but not as some long term plan.  Perhaps Solomon alone would be classified as a goal setter but this flowed more out of his love of the world order than any developed affinity for God.  Jesus had one goal in mind and it began before birth--go to the Cross and die there.  This is a far cry from the goals and resolutions we hear bandied about in Christian circles and meetings.  Ask a Christian worker or church attender what his or her goals may be and they will never sound like what Jesus settled upon as His clear direction.  If anything, the normal way of Christ was simple day-by-day dependence upon the Father to guide you in what He had where He was.  Jesus  stayed in a town until the Father directed Him away from it, healed those the Father brought Him and taught whoever He was given at the moment.  He didn't set goals for attendance at His Sermon on the Mount and made no resolution to quit drinking or cut down on His calories.  He remained so close to the Father that He just did as He was directed and trusted in the process of Life working within Him.  Nothing frustrates the will of God more than the determination of a Christian to accomplish his set goals without regard for the still small voice entering His world in real time.    Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:34 NIV

The Dawn Is Upon You

At what point do you begin to question the sanity of chasing after Jesus, of wanting to please the Father, of listening for the Holy Spirit to guide you?  Is it after the disastrous decision you made, during the long wait for the hope you had being fulfilled or while you sing dispassionately of the God you once trusted.  Nothing speaks more of your faith than your determination to shake off the conundrums of misplaced affections.  The Lord who saved you will not allow any desire or longing replace Him as King of your hopes and dreams.  You were not called out of darkness to stay in the shadows.  The light of Christ will shine brightly within you but only as you give Him access to the dark places where lurk the aspirations you have for getting your way, your way.  The Lord must put a halt to your self-reliance before you can progress much further in the joy of your salvation.  Rejoice, the dawn is upon you!    The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn...Proverbs 4:18 NIV

The Movement Past Conscience

At what point do you suddenly realize you have gone too far, looked too long, reacted too harshly, listened to too much, pushed past where you should have stopped?  Is it when you heard something telling you to stop, when you felt a tug to quit, when your mind began to cloud over with guilt?  When is too much too much? We speak of the conscience as the perpetual nerdy friend who doesn’t like to have a good time.  Or else the conscience is the ultimate arbiter of good and evil, the one sure scale on which to measure right from wrong.  We hear this sort of statement often.  “Well, it may not be right for you but it is for me.”  The implication is that personal conscious is the guide for right living.

Every one of us has some sort of conscience; it is along with language the mark of being human.  Shades of right and wrong do not slip into the thinking of the beasts; it is we who sink into that abyss, or would it be better to say who climb those heights.  Because the conscience is natural and organic, it is also arbitrary.  There is not a “uniform” conscience; one that defines us all.  Your conscience will not be the same as your friend’s or even your brother’s. Joseph Stalin had one conscience, your uncle another.  It is impossible to say conclusively that Adolph Hitler did not follow his conscience in what he did nor that Mother Teresa always followed hers.  My “too far” probably is not yours and will not be Mick Jagger’s.

Is there though a real “too far”, just as there is a real mile or a real pound?  How do we measure right and wrong, good and bad in actual time and space?  Does it exist…such a true measure? Jesus was asked by the rich young ruler what good thing he had to do to inherit eternal life.  This was not a simpleton’s question.  It was asked by a true thinker who recognized the human condition.  At some point we cannot just rely on our conscience; we need to look into what is always right and what is always wrong because it does matter.

There is something most casual readers of the New Testament fail to realize and that is how Jesus analyzed his own behavior and approach to situations.  He let the scripture and the guidance of the Father determine each step He took.  At the time of temptation in the wilderness, Jesus used the Bible to arbitrate for Him how He should act.  That was almost an unconscious guide because He used His mind to know it so well.  Clearly Jesus studied the Bible enough to know at each space in life what it might have to say about a matter.

But there was another hedge He had in deciding right and wrong.  He constantly communicated with the Father on what He was doing and thinking and facing. 

This statement of Jesus in John is most informative.  “For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.”  (John 12:49 NIV)  Somehow, and we are not told how, Jesus heard from the Father even in the details of His behavior what He was to do.  At the point of what specific things to say at any given moment and in what tone of voice to use, Jesus had direction from the Father on good and bad, right and wrong.  This is different from the prodding of conscience; this is a direct line to what is really right and what is really wrong.  If we could get past our individualistic and arbitrary conscience to the actual measure of right and wrong, we would know where to start in living.

How was Jesus so perfectly in tune with the guiding of the Father?  He was, like the first Adam free of sin and so had the same ability the first Adam had.  He could and did walk with the Father as He went about His business.  Like the two disciples who went with Jesus on the road to Emmaus and heard the real accounting of how the crucifixion and resurrection fit into the plan of God, we too can “walk with God” and hear from Him as Jesus heard from the Father.  We have the promise of Jesus that the Holy Spirit, God too just as the Father and Son are God, would by faith in Christ be with us.  And Jesus also has promised to be with us always.  What do we make of this?

We have at our finger tips, or even closer always the right and wrong there to know and understand.  It is not a matter of my right and wrong or your right and wrong; it is right and wrong as it really is.  We are within reach at any moment when Christ is ours by faith the knowing of good and bad.  Not just knowing by a swing and perhaps a miss but a knowing that is certain.

How do we get to this point where we know exactly what to say and how to say it, what to do and how to do it?  The caveat is simple.  You must have decided that is what you want to know.  If you do not really want to know, Jesus will let you walk away from it just as easily as the rich young ruler did.  But if you want to know, you must be determined to know the scriptures.  You must be able to tell the difference between what is a really right or wrong and what is merely a tangle of your conscience.  There are miles of issues we can discuss that have a level of right and wrong to them but if we do not know the scripture…really know the scripture, we cannot be certain we are not just sifting them through our conscience rather than the actual right and actual wrong of a matter.  That is why it is so difficult discussing the big moral issues of our age: abortion, homosexuality, integrity, war, globalization, pornography.  The scripture is either ignored or not known well enough to arbitrate between consciences.

There is a bigger issue though before us and that is how to get at the details of right and wrong as arbitrated directly by God.  It is easy to just lay out three bullet points or six directives but if that were the case, we would have far more Christians acting upon right and wrong.  The hearing from God is much more organic and familial.  You must become familiar with the way God speaks to you directly. It is an experiment in holiness.  As God prods you in a right or a wrong, whether by the remembrance of a scripture or some very personal way He guides you, then you act upon it and even if you feel guilty from your conscience or disappointed because of your lusts, you fight through it and do the thing or don’t do it.  The next time you sense the prod of God, you act upon it then and there.  The more you do this, them more familiar you will be with the actual God behind you way of seeing and thinking.  You will become more comfortable with the real presence of God; more alert to Him too.  Every child has a conscience; only the child of God has the true right and wrong within.  You must though like Jesus give God room in your heart to guide you and holiness will not just be something you consider, it will be yours as a real possession.