What Is This?

"Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears.”

Ezekiel 24:16 NIV

Is Your Life Going Smoothly?

Perhaps you have had a day like this.  I got mad at my kids.  I was late to work.  I argued with my wife.  I had a headache.  I got grease on my dress shirt and it was too late to change it.  Someone cut in front of me on the freeway.  I was frustrated by my job performance.  Did I mention that I had a headache?  For someone without food or water living in war ravaged Somalia this probably would have been considered a great day.  I did not see it that way though and I admit that I complained to God about my circumstances.   I read recently about the acorn woodpecker which beats a hole with its beak into wood posts and then carefully stuffs an acorn in it.  Later, the woodpecker returns for a tasty snack.  However, sometimes squirrels climb up the posts and snatch the acorns and feast on them before the woodpecker gets back to it for a winter snack.  That is a bad day for the woodpecker when it discovers the thievery and no acorn to quiet the rumbling in its belly.  I could imagine it squawking up to the heavens in frustration.

What do you consider a bad day?  We all have them…or at least we think we do.  No one else decides for you if your day is going well or poorly.  You are the judge of that.  Sometimes you may wonder why so much trouble comes your way.  What did you do to “deserve” what you have faced?  Is it karma, bad luck or some punishment from God?   What sort of God lets such trouble afflict good people like you?

One of the most enigmatic moments described in Scripture is the time God told his beloved spokesman Ezekiel that he was going to lose his wife.  The word of the Lord came to me: "Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears.  (Ezekiel 24:15-16 NIV)  Try to explain this demand of God’s and the action He took and you most likely will be stumped.  Justify this to your nonreligious friends and you won’t have a receptive audience.  We know of course that this stoic response to his wife’s death was to be a sign to the Israelites living in Babylon that they were not to weep or complain when God let the Babylonian army destroy Jerusalem.  It was divine judgment upon a wicked and arrogant people who were murderous and corrupt.  Yet, does that make it any easier for Ezekiel who lost the “delight” of his eyes?  It was not like Ezekiel was tired of marriage and coldly indifferent to the fate of his wife.  She was his beloved, someone he adored.

No one is immune to devastating losses and tremendous hardships.  As Jesus Himself noted, “He (the Father) causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.“ (Matthew 5:45 NIV)  We are told in Scripture that every person who has been born again is going through a transformation process on this side of heaven.  Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (2 Corinthians 4:16-17 NIV)  What you and I call the trials of life or maybe even more correctly, the unfair hardships of life, God calls the normal transformation process all Christians experience as He reworks them.  Consider it the universal maturation experience worked out in us by the Father.   It is spiritual aging as it were, normal and to be expected.  We look at these problems and hardships as terrible or dreadful; God sees them as the means by which He peels away layers of sin wrecked and contaminated parts of our personality.  Like an onion, our Lord uses troubles and even pain to strip away from you the scales that are no longer useful or helpful to living in Christ forever.

The last part of the book of Acts gives the account of the terrifying storm the Apostle Paul endured while being transported by sailing ship to Rome to face trial in front of Caesar.  Not only was he being unjustly imprisoned for crimes he did not commit, he also had to suffer near starvation conditions and drenching rain for two weeks as a raging tempest pounded the vessel.  It was not fair and certainly unwanted but Paul had to go through it anyway.  In 2 Corinthians Paul listed the experience as one of the many horrific miseries of his life after he became a Christian.  The truth is that being in the terrifying storm and then shipwrecked was perhaps one of the less painful distresses he faced.  Yet this is what Paul thought of all the troubles he had.  That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:10 NIV)

Who would consider it natural or normal to think of suffering as something good and beneficial?  We do our best to avoid it and certainly don’t look forward to it.  The Bible never encourages Christians to look for opportunities to suffer.  There is no masochistic theology within Scripture; only a realistic understanding of what suffering accomplishes.  I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.  The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.  (Romans 8:18-21 NIV)

It is not just you that is frustrated by your suffering; all of creation is frustrated.  Perhaps you have not thought of eagles or redwood trees or mountain ranges as frustrated with what they face but there is in the universe a ubiquitous groaning as it were, a straining in trial that is comparable to childbirth.  What mother looks forward to the searing pain as her baby prepares to leave her body?  Have you known any smiling as they go through the final moments of birthing a child?  Yet each and every contraction is a movement toward joy.  Would a woman consider her newborn a punishment?  Perhaps some in the most trying and horrific of circumstances might but in a normal delivery, the strain of the mother is cause for hope and coming happiness.  What is God doing in you when you go through the normal suffering and troubles of life?  He is birthing a new you.

At this point we shall speak of something that is much too profound and mystical to have any sort of depth in discussing.  Let us admit that we are entering at a point in Scripture that is beyond our knowledge base but must be given great thought.  In Hebrews comes this magnificent declaration.  During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.  Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 5:7-9 NIV)

Suffering made Jesus a better man.  It completed Him as God’s perfect sacrifice for Sin.  Something was missing in Him that only suffering could produce.  If Jesus needed suffering to put in Him some part of His personality that would make Him “perfect”, how much more so is suffering a requirement for us to be complete as God’s children.  Try and think of the best people in Scripture who we have an abundance of data to study that did not suffer.  James and Peter and the mother of Jesus and before them to Joseph, Jacob, Abraham, Ruth and Sarah all suffered great sorrow and hardship.  Suffering is the transformative catalyst God uses to put in perfect order the Christian personality.  It is like sunlight for a plant or yeast in bread.   It is how God instills holiness and goodness in His people.  You must suffer for the strength of God to be built in you.

Consider any of the great leaders of American history and you will find they all suffered horrific pain or sorrow.  Whether you look into the life of George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, suffering built the character of each of them.  Just think of Moses who many call the “Savior of the Jewish people.”  He failed miserably at his first attempt to lead his people out of slavery.  He was mocked and despised by them and then spent forty years in the blazing sun of the Middle Eastern desert before God was ready to make him his leader of Israel.  How many years did Moses question the goodness of God and wonder why his life was so wrecked?  Yet in it all, in those thousands of hours baking in the wasteland the Lord was watching over him and putting in Moses the humility and patience he would need to be the perfect servant God wanted to carry out His work.

What about you?  What sort of trouble and pain are you going through now?  What kind of desert are you in at this moment?  It is not wasted, this time of waiting and enduring.  God is perfecting you. Making you the kind of person He can use for the most important matters on His agenda.  Bread must be broken before it can be eaten and grapes must be crushed before they produce juice.  Your life is broken bread for others to consume.  The patience you acquire and the humility that is built in you are critical for some who God will and is putting in your life.  Remember this.  You are not and never have been your own.  You belong to God and He must make you in such a way that your life will feed others and provide them with nourishment to be perfect.  Someone is watching you and needs the strength your suffering and sorrow has generated.  It is up to you what you will make of the trouble you have faced and how you will respond to God’s work in you through them.  Will you be bitter vinegar that must be spit away or sweet juice that brings joy to those who drink from it?

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 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 Dogs of Your Winter

It is simply unheard of within scripture of someone with great faith not being tested in that faith.  Try as you may, you will not come across a God beacon who avoided being sorely tried.  Noah, Moses, Ruth, David, Daniel, Mary, Peter, Mary Magdalene, Paul; they all were sent careening off the cliff at some point and you will also come upon your own cliff.  It may not appear suddenly but could gradually arise but you will face it if your love of Christ is actual.  The most comfortable life there is right now is the one without hope, without promise.  Hope is not for the pagan or the atheist but only for the one going through the fires of faith.  If you want to look around at all the pitch dark souls wandering around without Christ and long for their settled existence, you certainly can.  But it would be like Noah's wife perched in the ark ruminating over how easy her aunt has it back in the village.  You are going to face tremendous trials that will bark at your faith but that is all they can do...bark.  The trials have no bite for they cannot get at where you are...hidden with Christ in God.  You are dead and that is what the Lord declares  you to be.  Imagine a great bear snarling at the Lord Jesus Christ glorified.  It is as ridiculous as your trial besting you.  The Lord has you and yes your faith is being tested but that is just the beginning of birth pains for you as you triumph in them and come out victoriously to your place in the pantheon of God's great hall of saints purified by trial.  Resist the urge to envy the untroubled.  Nothing can take away the joy you possess ultimately and it doesn't need to be dispossessed now.  The trial will pass but you will stand and stand with a smile gracing your face as you look back upon it as a toothless barking dog .  Be resolute in your determination to trust Christ fully at the moment the hounds come after you.

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.    Colossians 3:3-4 NIV

Spacemen and Zombies

Our four-year old son drew a picture for me yesterday. It had four circles in a vertical row on one side and next to them were two much bigger circles in a vertical row beside them. The two circles on the right had smiley faces on them and the four circles on the left were blank. For all those Freudians, here is my son’s explanation of his drawing. The four circles on the left were him and his siblings. The two on the right were me and my wife. We were smiling because we had just punished his older brothers and the children had nothing for faces because they were sad.


What do you do when you hear that? I was stunned for a moment. I glanced across the page and there he had drawn four hearts with the initials of him and his siblings in them and below two bigger hearts labeled “mom” and “dad”. So on this spontaneously sketched page was illustrated the terrible tension in every home…happiness and trouble, discipline and pleasure, separation and joining.

How can you smile when failing grades are brought home or towels are casually tossed about the room or rapid fire insults are swirling around the dinner table? Who grins contentedly when one child smashes another’s sword or milk is left dripping off the table for mom or dad to clean? It is an impossible task being a parent and yet somehow we do it. Sometimes I come home from work and immediately start hunting for the bomb shelter. My kids have one. Most people call it the bathroom.

Recently the four-year old hit one of his younger friends at church and we took away his dessert and made him have water for dinner. Brutal I know…but it had to be done. If our children were interviewed by reporters for the National Enquirer, imagine how the stories would read. “Parent traps son in torture chamber! Sends him to his room.” “Father humiliates son! Takes away his Xbox for the week.” “Mother berates daughter about grades! Makes her do her homework!” Parents can’t win. Kids probably feel the same way. I know I did. I still do.

Families are the crucibles in which all joy is squashed and all contentment is obliterated and yet we still get married at staggering rates and we continue to have children. Why? It is nice to have someone to pray with as you drop off for the night and no one can hold you like your husband or your wife. The other day Ben and I were holding hands as we walked together after dinner. He was wearing his space man costume and I pointed up at a planet and told him I thought it was Mars. He agreed and asked me a deep philosophical question. “Do astronauts really pee in their spacesuits? “ Perhaps it’s not so bad being a parent…

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.” Isaiah 55: 6

Uz Too! Part 2

When Job settles into the horror of his situation, he does what all of us try to do given rough circumstances. He tried to make some sense of it. The question is out there for him. “What is happening?” But like so many of us, Job doesn’t really think he will ever get a chance to ask it. I know for many the turning point in Job is God’s response to him out of the whirlwind. But I don’t think it is. The fulcrum of Job is his call for a “hearing” with God. Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing. (Job 9:16 NIV) He doesn’t think it will happen but that is what he wants. Not success, not power, not health; all those things he has lost interest in as priorities. What Job wants is answers. “What are you doing God?” “What is happening?”

What is happening of course is that Satan was trying to shake Job free of his devotion to YHWH. But that does not explain God’s part in this. Was God watching with eager anticipation to see if Job would give up his faith in the same sort of way we watch the Olympics to see who wins or was God doing something else with Job that was not quite so small as Him showing off Job’s resilience as one might show off the skills of a prized racehorse? It certainly sounds ridiculous and certainly is ridiculous to think God at any point is waiting with eager anticipation to see how things turn in any part of the Universe and it is just as absurd to think God is vain and must show off His stuff to make Himself feel good.

If it is true that every person would like a hearing with God and is wondering often enough, “What is going on”, then it seems that Job as the ultimate transcript of human despair and God longing should give us something to help us know what we should do with our feelings toward God. Of course the book ends with very little to say about why God let Job suffer so much and it gives us little to hope that any of us should ever expect an explanation in this lifetime for what we go through. Job’s friends thought it was the “what goes around comes around” karma God they had but if there is anything that clearly comes out of the book it is that God does not operate that way in any sense. Karma does not govern any part of the universe and Job’s friends, for positing it as the reason for Job’s suffering were fiercely rebuked by God and made to offer animal sacrifices and beg for Job’s prayers to avoid an undisclosed punishment for their “folly”.

There are three clear conclusions we can make from Job that help us understand God’s dealings with us. First, as mentioned above, life is not a wrap around. What comes around goes around is a ludicrous view of life. If that were the case, then we all would be burned up in a ball of fire by now for our sins stink to heaven. God does not treat us as we deserve. I understand that the Proverbs point out the value of right living and that God does punish sin but as we see in Job, there is not and has never been a one to one correspondence of action by us and reaction by God. Bad people prosper and good people fail and good people prosper and bad people fail and that is the way it is. God never apologizes for this to Job, Job’s friends or anyone else. Karma, instant or otherwise is a myth.

Second, God is not overly concerned about our prosperity. Prosperity has never been the ideal Christian life although we seem to be enamored with it. Just a casual reading of Hebrews 11 makes that quite clear. Oh we love the teaching of verses 32-35. And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Now that sounds like good theology doesn’t it? Joel Osteen must love this passage.

To Be Continued...

Today's Passage

I waited and waited and waited for God. At last he looked, finally he listened. He lifted me out of the ditch, pulled me from deep mud. He stood me up on a solid rock to make sure I wouldn't slip. He taught me how to sing the latest God-song, a praise-song to our God. More and more people are seeing this: they enter the mystery, abandoning themselves to God. Psalm 40: 1-3 The Message

What Do You Do?

What do you do when nothing you attempt works? What do you do when you can't understand something simple? What do you do when you don't have enough time or enough money or enough energy? What do you do when you pray and it just doesn't seem to be enough? The reason why giving up is such a common occurence is because so much life is hard. The finish lines are cool because the race is over and you made it all the way but the race...now that is a different story. I think the reason why I don't like artsy movies that don't ever really conclude and I dislike even more the story that turns out badly for the one character I really like is that it hits too close to home. I feel like I am always waiting for the miracle, the surprise intervention, the mystic turnaround. The cell group that is too small, the offerings that hamstring ministry, the discipleship effort that just fades all are a part of this garden where we have been commisioned. Holding on is not just a catch phrase, it is the ministry. It is the life. Weedless gardens are ours but just not yet. Until then, we make our best effort to love...to listen... and to hug...Baby Emma reminds me of just how lovely it is be a child. I remember pretending to be asleep when the movie at the drive-in theater was over just so that my dad would carry me from the car into the house. Perhaps that is the best part of life. Being carried by Jesus...life isn't that bad!

Restore us, O God; make your face shine upon us, that we ay be saved. Psalm 80: 1 NIV