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.

The Loss of Self-Pity

Genesis 27:38 NIV

Esau said to his father, "Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father!" Then Esau wept aloud.

Do You Ever Feel Sorry For Yourself?

I have been limping for about three months now and I must admit that I have begun to wonder if I will ever walk normally again.  I have to hold the rail as I go up steps, I can’t stand very long before I have to sit in a chair, I stopped going door-to door inviting people to our church because of how badly my knee hurt.  Now I don’t want to feel sorry for myself but I have had a difficult time trying to see what good this limping has done for me.  Should I thank God for the pain I am suffering?  Is it wrong to pray for God to heal me?  What should I say when people ask me why I am limping?  Is there a right way for me to respond that lets people know that I am not feeling sorry for myself or can I be brutally honest about how frustrated I am not being able to walk very far?  What is the right way to deal with difficulties?

Perhaps you have faced these same questions and were not sure what you should do.  Should you complain to anyone about your troubles?  Is it Christian for you to be upset by your circumstances?  Do you try to be stoic about your hardships?  Maybe you are good at hiding your difficulties from others.  You pretend as if everything is ok when your world is falling apart.  Should you be commended for this?  When people ask you how your day went, do you automatically say, “Good” even if it wasn’t?  Is it better to be honest about how you feel and let people know when you are struggling with your problems than to keep them to yourself?  What is the best way to deal with your troubles?

Sometimes we can’t help but laugh at some of the actions people in the Bible have taken.  The story of Jonah, the unwilling missionary is one such example.  He famously tried to run from God when given the assignment of going to the pagan city of Nineveh to warn the people there that the Lord was about to judge the city for its wickedness.  Jonah did not want the city warned; he just wanted the people judged and so he fled.  When he ended up in the belly of a great fish, Jonah agreed to go preach in the city and the fish spit him out on shore.  After Jonah spent a day preaching that in forty days the city would be overturned, the people repented and sought the Lord’s forgiveness.  When God relented and did not destroy the people, Jonah in a huff went up onto a hillside overlooking Nineveh and angrily stewed.  Because it was blazing hot, God caused a vine to grow and provide shade for Jonah and this made Jonah happy.  But that night, God killed the vine and Jonah was left without shade the next day.  Angrily he told the Lord that he wanted to die.  Now isn’t this interesting.  He was sitting out in the hot sun by himself because he was mad God let the people of Nineveh live.  Rather than sitting comfortably in one of the nice homes in Nineveh, he stubbornly resisted the hospitality of the peopleand baked under the blazing sun.  He also was mad that God killed the vine that had given him some shade and for these two reasons the reluctant preacher wanted to die.  We know exactly what was going on with Jonah.  He was feeling sorry for himself and angry with God for not treating him better.  We might have even laughed at Jonah if we were with him for the little pity party he was having.  Of course, Jonah was only hurting himself we might argue.  What harm was there in him pouting?

The case of Lot is a bit more serious because of how his self-pity impacted his daughters and the generations that followed.  Lot was the cousin of Abraham who went on to become the father of two great nations.  His life took a turn for the worse when he and his cousin went separate ways.  Lot and Abraham each had great herds of sheep and goats but because of the difficulty finding grass and water for such large flocks, the shepherds of Abraham and Lot could not get along and fought over the limited resources they had to share.  To quell the infighting among the shepherds, Lot and Abraham decided to move away from each other and Abraham gave Lot the option of choosing first where to settle.  Lot decided on the fertile plain near Sodom and so he settled there.  Apparently, Lot gave up his shepherding eventually because he wound up living in the city of Sodom, married and had two daughters.  After perhaps two decades living in Sodom, Lot had become comfortable with his new life.  When God sent His two angels to rescue Lot and his family from the destruction that was about to come, Lot was hesitant to leave and he and his family had to be nearly dragged out of Sodom by the angels.  Although they had been told not to look back at Sodom as the fire and brimstone fell upon it, Lot’s wife did for some reason and she was turned into salt.

After escaping the destruction of the cities of the plain, Lot and his two daughters hid in a cave.  The text says that Lot was afraid of living in the village of Zoar where they originally fled and set up camp in the cave.  What probably the daughters thought would just be a temporary stay became a permanent home.  It seems that at some point Lot must have known that it no longer was a risk for him to leave the cave and yet still he remained, year, after year after year, keeping himself and his daughters isolated from the rest of the world.  His daughters, feeling the heaviness of growing old without children made the perverse decision to get their father drunk so that he could get them pregnant.  The children they bore became the founders of two nations, each wicked and pagan.

What do we make of Lot and his decision to hole up in a cave?  Certainly his cousin Abraham would have welcomed him with open arms and he could have lived like a king with Abraham and his clan.  Lot and his girls would have been safe and could have rebuilt their lives.  The daughters might surely have had real husbands and a normal family life.  Lot apparently never recovered psychologically from the destruction of his home and the loss of his wife.  It wasn’t just Lot’s wife who looked back at ruin of Sodom; Lot too became as stiff as a statue psychologically after leaving it behind.  Did self-pity destroy Lot’s personality?  Was he incapacitated emotionally due to feeling sorry for himself?  It is not a stretch to think that perhaps Lot gave in to despair and dragged his daughters down with him.  Did he not see how sad they were not having husbands or did he just ignore all the signs, all the comments they made alluding to their disappointment.  That is what self-pity does to us.  It makes us so self-absorbed that we can’t see past our own wounds.  Those we love become shadows for us; vapors in our insulated world of hurt.

Our world is tragic, we must face the facts.  Sin has brought death to every corner of life.  Yet that does not mean we have to feel sorry for ourselves.  Paul said that we are to do everything without complaining.  Do everything without complaining or arguing, (Philippians 2: 14) That seems nearly impossible even for the most upbeat of us.  There is so much to complain about in our lives!  The waiter doesn’t pay attention to our order, our back is giving us trouble again, the traffic is bad, we have an aunt with cancer, the kids aren’t doing their chores, work is too demanding.  There is in Hebrews 2:10 something that must be examined with great reverence. In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. (NIV)  The Greek word translated “perfect” has as its primary meaning, “completed” or “finished”.  Christ did not need to become more holy than He was.  What temptation did though in making Christ resistant to sin and fit to follow the Father in every way, suffering also did in making Him resistant to self-pity and self-absorption!  He became through His suffering completely trusting in the Father to do what was right with His life.

Self-pity and its weaker cousin, feeling sorry for ourselves are the disciples of atheism.  If God has said that He is making everything in our lives turn out for our good, self-pity is a rejection of that promise and a rejection of God.  And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 NIV) Why would I feel sorry for myself if I know that the result of what I face today will end in something far better than what I had before?  It would be incredible for a child to cry about getting a million dollars when he expected a nerf gun.  What sort of fool would feel sorry for himself if he were given a great mansion rather than a small shed to live out his life?  Jesus never complained about any of His suffering because He trusted the Father explicitly!  If I face an illness, God will work it for something good.  If I am poor, God’s riches will be poured into me.  If my family is struggling, our Lord will put it together better than it was.  When we complain and feel sorry for ourselves, we throw Christ off the throne and sit there in His place judging Him and His care for us.  Self-pity is open rebellion against God and to keep feeling sorry for yourself means you don’t think the Lord is good or reasonable despite his promises to take care of you.

Certainly we feel the pain of suffering and sorrow and no one can make light of the horrors so often found in this world.  Terrible things happen and we face them too.  Surely Christ wanted His friends to stay with Him as He suffered the anguish of what was to come while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.  We also need our friends and our friends need us when the evil of sin and Satan crush us.  That does not mean though that we need to feel sorry for ourselves and wallow in self-pity. Let go of your frustration that others don’t treat you fairly or respect you like they should.  Quit feeling sorry for yourself and turn your thoughts to Christ who is taking care of you.   We have a God who is within us giving us strength and in all that we face, the love of Christ will turn it for our good and we will see soon enough that He has blessed us beyond measure in every way.  All great and joyous men or women of the past have faced sorrows and painful experiences and been mistreated but they refused to feel sorry for themselves.  Their greatness was realized and unveiled the moment they decided God is good, that He loves them and that in the end He can be trusted with their lives despite how others treat them or think of them.  Do you believe God loves you and has your best interests at heart?  If you do, then be glad He has you right where He wants you to be!

An Aching World

Psalm 49: 20 NIV

A man who has riches without understanding is like the beasts that perish.

What Do You Possess?

Last week I was in a high school class and I asked the students what particular strengths they possessed.  One mentioned that he was good at connecting with people, that he had the ability to look them in the eye and pay attention to them.  The rest of the class was either dumbfounded by the question or too shy to answer.  One young man, who I had gotten to know a bit had a strong speaking voice and I told him I saw that in him.  Several students gave examples of how his powerful voice would benefit him.  I asked another young man what a strength of his was and he could not give me an answer.  He could not think of a single talent or skill set that he possessed that was of any value.  In fact, he insisted that he was not good at anything.  Now I realize that the setting might have made it difficult for him to admit what he saw as something good about himself but it struck me what a tragedy it was for a person to have nothing to claim as a personal strength.  Perhaps there are many others who cannot come up with personal qualities that would benefit themselves or others.

Is it possible that you too really don’t know who you are, don’t know what lies within you that could be considered great or even spectacular.  What really are the strengths you possess?  Recently it was mentioned just how broken we are in places we aren’t even aware exists.  We don’t know the depths at which sin has damaged us.  Our heart is so vast and unexplored by us that we cannot really know what destruction our heart has incurred.  Yet there is another side to this discussion that must be considered and that is what sort of power we possess in Christ.  Are we certain we know what has been given us by God and the value of what we have?

Psalm 49: 20 declares the great loss there is to us if we possess riches that we don’t know we have.  A man who has riches without understanding is like the beasts that perish.  There is a witlessness to us when we are not aware of what great possessions are ours.  It is like we are as dumb as an ox if we have never noticed the wealth we own.  Consider the immensity of the claim found in Colossians 1: 27.  To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (NIV)  The implication is that when Christ becomes a part of us, joined to us as a “new creation”, there are great riches abiding within us and it must be acknowledged that the vast majority of Christians have no idea what those riches are.  Is it possible that we live in nearly complete ignorance of what runs deep within us?

One of the most fascinating aspects to the relationship between Christ and the Father is the approach the Father took to the treatment Jesus received at the hands of those who despised Him. It was always the same.  Not everyone thought Jesus was a great man sent by God.  Many thought He was either a lunatic or possessed by demons.  Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat.  When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind."  And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons." (Mark 3:20-22 NIV)  How did the Father respond to this unfair criticism?  He did not do anything.  He let their hurtful comments go unaddressed.  The Father simply let our Lord absorb them without shielding Him from the blows.

At Jesus’ most vulnerable point when it seemed like the entire world turned on Him, the Father refused to defend Christ.  Without a bit of evidence to convict Him, the religious leaders tried their best to come up with some way of having Jesus put to death but the Father did not send a single person Christ’s way to help Him.  The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death.  But they did not find any, though many false witnesses came forward. (Matthew 26:59 NIV)   When Christ faced the terrors of Roman brutality, the Father left Him alone.  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. (John 19:1-3 NIV)  To the very end, the Father did nothing to ease our Lord’s suffering or humiliation.  Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him.  They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him,  and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said.  They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again.  After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him. (Matthew 27:27-31 NIV)

How can we account for the Father’s total neglect of the Son in His horrific trials? What did He have to gain by His response to the Son?  Whatever supernatural signs the Father did to support His Son’s work were never associated with His suffering or humiliations.  The Son was left, if we can be so almost heretical sounding in this, without the resources of the Father to help Him with all He suffered.  He was in a sense “on His own.”  The great force of our Lord’s own personality faced the worst that Satan and the World could throw at Him and yet without a hint of bitterness, self-pity or lust for revenge, He endured it all.  The Father offered nothing supernatural at all to the Son for His endurance; He left it up to the power of the perfect Son of Man’s own will to love without hatred and persevere without quitting.

This must be processed thoroughly.  Jesus had within Himself the power to love the most hateful sinner, endure the most demeaning criticism without having to despise the critic or try to defend Himself against the unfair charges.  He was able to face any seeming defeat without becoming at all discouraged.  Whatever else we might contemplate regarding everything Jesus suffered to bring an end to Sin in the World, we must also consider just how much strength was contained within the scope of His personality to face it fully without hatred or despair!  It all reached a crescendo when He cried out from the Cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. (Luke 23:34 NIV)

If we simply take a step back from the primary work of Christ in bringing salvation to humanity on the cross, there is a secondary effect that we must see.  Think about the immensity of this statement regarding the state of mind of our Savior just before He was crucified.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2 NIV) Our Lord, by what He suffered and how He responded to His suffering, revealed what is possible within the human personality when it is joined to that of Christ.  If you have been born again, you have Christ in you and all He has within Himself to face any difficulty or trial, you also possess by Him being a part of you.  The problem, and this is a most troubling problem, is that you most likely don’t even realize what our Lord places within you when He joins Himself to you.  It takes a great crisis, a tremendous force of evil for you to see what it is you have in Christ.

When the Apostles faced the greatest trial of their lives, the arrest and crucifixion of Christ, they failed miserably.  They were cowardly, self-pitying and without faith.  How could they ever know just what power they held within themselves with Christ a part of them if all they had to assess it was how they acted during the last days of His life.  God gave them an opportunity to discover it in a way most of us would try our best to avoid.  After they had been boldly preaching about Christ, the Jewish priest and leaders of the Jewish religious community rounded up the Apostles.  They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.  Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ. (Acts 5:40-42 NIV) How would they have responded to this horrid beating before Christ and His courage and joy had become a part of them?  Most likely in the same they did to Christ being arrested.  They would have felt sorry for themselves and quit preaching.  Not now though, not with Jesus and all His strength and courage and love a part of them.  Instead, they were happy the Lord found them worthy to be humiliated because they lived with Christ.

What we must face squarely is this supernatural strength of character to peacefully find joy and the ability to forgive even when faced with brutal, beastly treatment.  The effect of this supernatural response to terrible circumstances may not be immediately seen but that does not mean it will not work eventually in the hearts of those without Christ who witness it firsthand.  Without the sheer weight of the cruelty faced by Christ it might never have been known just how much power was contained in the heart of Christ.  Anything less than this great show of force could have been disregarded because it was no more miraculous than the work of a Gandhi or Socrates.  This response of Jesus and then of the Apostles to terrible difficulties and brutal treatment was as wondrous a miracle for those present as the parting of the Red Sea for it showed just what a real person has inside when Christ is living within.  There are monumental trials Christian people face and they are sometimes horrific and God does not deny just how terrifying and difficult they are.  But our Lord lets Satan initiate them for this one purpose.  In them the power of God is revealed in its full glory.  Those who could never forgive true evil, who could never love hateful people, who could not on their own be courageous in such circumstances are courageous and joyful because of Christ within and that is seen for what it is; a true miracle of God.  You cannot know the full extent of God’s power in you until you face overwhelming circumstances.  You will not know just how great the love of Christ is within you if you never encounter someone you cannot love on your own.  Who would have known what our Lord could do if He never was crucified and your friends and family might not know just how great and wonderful Christ in you is if you do not encounter a hardship only Christ in you can overcome and in that hardship have supernatural joy in the midst of it!

He Meets Us

Nothing argues as fiercely against the presence of God as the unbending hardships we face.  They press against us like pointed spears and we wonder when our deliverance will come.  We wait and pray and cry out for help and yet the oppression remains and we wonder what sort of God would allow what we face.  The Christian community is filled with silent mourners who have grown weary of praying.  Sometimes they rise up against God and bitterly denounce Him.  Other times they simply sneer when given spiritual platitudes that sound good only in theory.  Our world is broken and filled with shame and sorrow and we must face the facts as they are.  Our children's hearts are rubbed raw by their disappointments and our friends sigh without relief in sight.  Is it any wonder that God is ignored today in the very circles where we would expect His name to be praised?  There is within us though a cry rising up; a mourning hope that waits for God with the expectancy of a child.  Like the blind man on the side of the road calling out to Jesus, we wait also for Him.  With the prayer of the woman whose bleeding nearly drove her mad, we reach out to Christ.  The amazing part of God that we overlook is that He too was, as the King James translation puts it, "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."  (Isaiah 53:3)  In the Garden of Gethsemane our Lord admitted to His disciples, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death."  (Matthew 26: 38 NIV)  God did not drop us down into a universe where suffering and sorrow continue and refuse to let them both hammer Him also.  As David silently hid in the cave with his men, Christ also huddles with us in our sorrow and pain and waits with us for it to end.  The day is coming when we shall exclaim triumphantly that we are "more than conquerors through Him who loved us" but for now the faith of many is weak and the suffering brought on by a sin marred and Satan infiltrated world stands opposed to our victory cry.  The miracle of our Lord's crucifixion and resurrection is that our Savior is not aloof and His encouragement not mere cliché.  We too shall overcome this world and in the dark of night, our Lord comes to us with a tender touch of love and comfort that somehow carries us past our sorrow and lifts our spirits with supernatural joy and peace.

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

Rest for a Weary Soul

We love to make much of our choosing God and doing something for Him when it is all backwards.  We did not choose Him.  He chose us.  And our work for God is like a candle set up against the sun when compared to the work of His for us.  We get disappointed when ministries do not go well.  Sometimes we grumble about how tough we have it and how hard is our lot in life.  Take a moment to stare up at Christ crucified.  Listen to Him groan as tries to lift up to gather in one more breath.  Taste the blood that drips down from His forehead and onto His cheeks and falls down to the dusty hill below Him.  Smell the sweat as the soldiers pass by you after they finish flogging Him.  Feel the vibrations of the hammer beating down upon the spikes going through His wrists and into the beams of the Cross.  Watch as His body trembles with another blow across His back.  Weep with Christ as the Disciples flee and Judas hangs himself.  Shake in agony over the crowds calling for His crucifixion and the nine lepers running off without looking back to thank Him for their healing.  Stare in bewilderment at the Disciples who fall asleep in Gethsemane and cannot pray with Him for just an hour.  It is all too much to consider, the agony of Christ as He worked His way up to Jerusalem without a single soul walking  at His side that He could count on to lighten His load; to reduce His burden.  The whole mass of humanity was upon Jesus' shoulders and He kept going to the end without a grumble or a complaint.  We live in a fallen world filled with disappointment and suffering and ministry is almost unbearable at times.  Yet we are not alone.  We have a Savior who lifts up from us the full weight of our troubles and carries them upon His own back as we regain our strength and have our hope restored.  Sit down for a moment and let the Holy Spirit sweep you up in His arms like a shepherd gathering a fallen lamb to his breast and be still with all your sorrows and pain.  Our Lord loves you and He will carry you in your time of trouble and heartache.   Give Him time to hold you for He knows how you have suffered and how hard it is for you to breathe.

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."    Exodus 14:14 NIV

Operating With Heaven In Mind

The great object of our life is to be brought into a perfect union with Christ and that does not happen along a straight line.  It comes in fits and bursts as we allow God's Word to conform us to God Himself. The universal law is that we are stubborn brutes and we fight tooth and nail to maintain our independence of God.  It is painful to let Him have a reaction, an attitude or a desire.  All of our stretch is corrupted by sin and because it has such hold of us, it is like separating our blood and flesh...it comes at great cost.  We think we are so very good and ready to live holy lives and yet let God take just one small object of love from us and we are cracking with frustration and confusion.  "How can God love me if He ruined that plan?"  "How can He be here if He is not reasonable in this?"  We do not recognize the sin strangling our faith and love but can see it plainly in others.  The Cross of Christ redeems our totality and God will not cease in re-working us until it is just as finished as Calvary is finished.  Our sin corrupted interests and desires and hopes must be crucified as well if we are to have pure and undimmed fellowship with God and one another.  It was painful for Paul and Peter and John and Abraham and all the rest of the "heroes of the faith" to be crucified with Christ.  Why would we think it should be less so for us.  We read the account of Abraham taking his boy up to Mt. Moriah as if it is some sort of fairy tale.  Was it not psychologically as devastating for Abraham and then for Isaac and for Sarah as our own "misfortunes" are?  Did not Sarah weep with bitter sorrow at the sight of Abraham leaving with Isaac?  Should we think sin is less treacherous for us than it was for Abraham and Sarah?  Do we really believe that God must be less the surgeon with us than He was with His finest saints?  God's scalpel comes without warning but the sin that makes us limp believers will be cut out of us and the health of Heaven will make us as lively as the greatest Christians the world has ever seen!

Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered … Hebrews 5: 8 NIV

More Than A Difficulty

It is nearly impossible to get the sufferer to believe that what is happening is for good.  Etched in our personality is the determination to want none of the trials we face.  Adam and Eve groaned under the weight of Satan's temptation and refused to endure it courageously; consequently the rest of us are marred by their heritage.  For most seeds to sprout, the ground must be broken and torn apart, a violent tearing of what was settled and at peace.  Even the seed itself must be blown to bits before it can find its place in God's design.  The Lord's yoke is the most profound way He transforms us into living, breathing images of His perfect glory.  No trouble or hardship or difficult person comes to you without God's loving hand making the gate swing wide open.  The yoke is easy as long as you keep your mind fixed on Christ and do not let it be split apart by Satan's accusing and your own whining.  There is kindness and goodness and humility and patience and sincere faith and hope ready to be born in you if you will just settle your thoughts on the crucified Savior who has suffered for your complete salvation.  Nothing is finished with you; you must bear the yoke before you can move along into perfection.  The character of the yoke bearing Christian is the loveliest sight in all the universe.   Imagine the hunk of marble barking at Michelangelo for wrecking his day.  Look in the mirror.  Are you the canvass upon which Rembrandt is recklessly slopping paint or the paper that Mozart is scratching his notes?   Are you not in the hands of a far greater genius who has a plan for you that will be worked out perfectly?   "But the yoke", you cry.  Why this yoke?  The greater the yoke, the more settled your Lord's determination to make you into a masterpiece of love and glory.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  Matthew 11:29-30 NIV

Inner Working

There are times when we are irritated and irritable and nothing satisfies us.  We are unhappy with ourselves and unhappy with everyone  about us.  We want to disappear into a hot tub or slip off into a movie theater but we have responsibilities and we must gut out our frustrations.  Pain and disappointment are like psychological bobs; they bring up to the surface those parts of us we have tried our best to keep hidden.  And yet our anger is really there, our despair is still there, our deep sadness and weeping losses are still there.  Sin has stung us all both within and without and it changes the dynamic of our inner world living with its pain and sorrow.  When through trials and suffering our inner world works its way out of us and splatters the ones God brings our way, we confuse our reaction to hardship with the troubles we have.  The Lord as He hung upon the Cross with His shattered flesh screaming in pain did not stifle His inner world as His outer world hit up against it.  The one thief railed against Jesus and the Lord stayed silent and did not rail back because His inner world was at peace.  The other thief, who we forget also brought a flurry of hatred against Jesus came to his senses and sought our Lord's mercy.  Rather than letting His inner world be corrupted by the sin of the outer world, Jesus loved the second thief and gave Him the kindness that filled His heart to the brim.  It was that inner world that spilled out of Jesus...love untainted by hatred or despair, unhindered by all the humiliation and criticism brought to bear against Him, His inner world of peace and joy unmarred by the rejection and scorn leveled at Him .  That very nature; that continuous confidence in the Father and unwillingness to be corrupted by the pain He suffered is the nature the Lord will give us if we give Him room to do it.  We must trust Him with our inner world; allow the Lord to rework it that it might be born again.  The hatred we feel is real hatred; the bitterness over our losses is real bitterness.  Yet that is no longer our lasting world.  We have a new home, a home built in Christ and it is the most peaceful of sanctuaries.  The sign that we have settled into our new inner world is that what spills out of us when we are rattled by disappointment, trauma or ridicule is the same settled confidence Christ had that nothing came to Him except what the Father in His good and faithful love allowed and approved.  What insult can shake us when we have the nature of Christ within us?  What hardship is there that Christ did not face Himself and peacefully let pass?  What frightening possibility is there that is too much for the loving Father?  We have the mind of Christ and If we think through Him, what will come out of us during the furious storm will  heal the nations the Holy Spirit places along the way of our journey.

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Psalm 51:10 NIV