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.

Portal

The minute we decide we are incapable of keeping one of God's commands, we are cooked.   We have released ourselves to Satan to do with us however he wishes.   There only two options at every point of decision which has been outlined in Scripture; we are tools of Satan or friends of God.  The broad categories of acting in life are:  love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.  We weave in and out of these points of reference throughout the day.  Is this thought or action “loving God”?  Is what I am pondering or doing loving my neighbor as myself?  The more we live in Christ, the growing level of habit these two ways of being will become.  But at first, and perhaps at first for a very long time, we will have to process thoroughly what we do and think to see if we are fitting into the life of loving God and loving our neighbor.  Who has the mind or will for such a monumental project?  You do if you are in Christ.  When you are born again, the Lord joins Himself to you and the mind of Christ works within your mind so that together you can do whatever God has planned for you.  That of course does not mean we will!  We can shut down our Lord's mind by believing it does not matter what we do with ourselves.   We are then "the captain".  There is a terrible price to pay for that sort of determination.  All the wreckage of Satan's evil in the Garden becomes ours also to inflict upon the world.  It is no small thing to not love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind or to not love your neighbor as yourself.  Satan would love for you to think it is...that it really does not matter what you do right now.  The devil's lie through and through is that these moments of life are insignificant.  If they were, then God would just excuse Himself from the world time to time but He doesn't because at every instant He is bringing salvation into it.   Conversely, Satan is bringing damnation everywhere he can whenever he finds a moment available to him.   You are the portal through which either God or Satan enter a world full of desperate lives.   What you decide about loving God with all your heart soul and mind and loving your neighbor as yourself determines who it is that has sway in your specific place of influence.

Give attention to the entrance of the temple and all the exits of the sanctuary.   Ezekiel 44: 5b NIV

Secret Praying

Our Lord's admonition against public praying is full-on assault against mindlessness in being with God.  He wants us thinking and not with our mind upon those around us but upon Him.  The hypocrites are engaged in "prayerishness" but not actual praying.  When Jesus pushed for closet praying, He wasn't speaking of spaces and locations but the way of being that prayer people maintain.  He gave us structure to praying in the model prayer that provides a framework for what prayer is but not a closed in box for prayer.  If we are not praying with God at the center of what we are doing, without Him as the form of thinking we are taking, then we might as well just call ourselves pagans and be done with the exercise.  But if we have our mind on God, we come into fellowship with Him and actual transformation occurs in our praying.  No individual who met with God as God stayed the same.  Whether you consider Abraham, Moses or Peter, the work of God in each was tangible.  It is interesting that in His teaching on prayer, Jesus immediately moves into forgiveness.  Why is that?  Is this just a jumble of sayings thrown together without cohesive thought given to them or is there a connection Christ makes between prayer and forgiveness?  It seems that the natural outcome of praying is that we change...sometimes in big ways and other times in nearly imperceptible increments.  If we meet with God though, we will become different and here He gives as an example of this forgiveness.  You cannot remain attached to God as a praying person and hold a grudge against someone else.  It is reflexive.  Prayer results in a change of direction in some way, whether it is in how we judge others, the generosity of our heart, the developing loss of attachment to money and possessions, an internal integrity that defies dishonesty or a genuine love for enemies.  Prayer is not an exercise in religious development, it is an astounding union between God and His people; the outcome is building holiness grounded in humility.  The beauty of prayer is that it can be done at any moment of every single day and the bridge into the mind of our Lord is open whenever we choose to meet with Him.  The room of Matthew 6: 6 is symbolic of the determination to be with God and not let our world encroach upon that relationship.  Our God is jealous for our attention and rightfully so.  He knows just what is possible when we turn our minds to Him in prayer.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…      Matthew 6: 9b  NIV

Just a Minute

The Lord has called for heaven and earth to testify that He loves you.  You are the lover He thinks about continually, the joy of His heart.  There is nothing that can stand between you and no one can distract Him from you.  The universe is too small to keep you from Him and the curse in history will never close off His thoughts of you.  It is insurmountable this desire our Savior has for you; it is unbreachable the wall of affection He has put around you.   Pause for a moment and let Christ come to you.  Give Him time to hold you and kiss you.  There is a small voice whispering in your ear encouragement and hope.  It is a trickle it seems, a tiny little stream of affection because the hardness of your life has swept you away from the bank and so all you see is the bit of His love that you let get past your hurt and your complicated troubles.  But like the deer that comes carefully to the waters, come also.  Come with your cares, come with your trials, come with the sin you still hold, come with the empty places, come with the broken places, come with the lonely places.  Come and behold God.  Wait in His presence.  Be with Him.  The shadows may haunt you.  The losses may confuse you.  The clutter of a million desires may entangle you.  But come.  Come to your Savior.  Come to the One who watches for you; whose mind is upon you.  Come and stay for a moment.  Take your time and rest with Him just a bit longer.  You are busy and what you have to do is important but give Him just a little more of you.  Let Him be near you.  Don't run away so quickly.  There is too much love in Him to bear it all alone.  He must give you as much as you will take for as long as you let Him.  The pause is for you and Him...for you to receive His love and for Him to give it.   It is crazy to think that Jesus wants to be with you even more than you want to be with Him.  It is an ache for both of you.  Just wait a minute…

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;       Psalm 37:7a NIV

Conversion of the Mind

Matthew 7:1 NIV

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged.

Are You Opinionated?

It is one of the most natural of all human behaviors, judging others.  We may not let people in on what we are thinking but we are constantly critiquing and evaluating.  We make determinations regarding the lectures of our professors, the performance of our servers at restaurants, the job done by our hair stylists and the conversational skills of those we meet at parties.  We judge the effort given by our co-workers, the intelligence of our doctors, the creativity of our friends on Facebook and the friendliness of the clerks at supermarkets.  We give everyone we meet a quick evaluation…how well they have dressed, how they smell and how they look.  Often we pride ourselves on how accurately we assess others…their honesty, skill levels and worthiness of our time and friendship.  Fans who have never played above fourth grade baseball somehow know more about baseball than major league managers and millions watching football on TV believe they would not have thrown the “stupid” interception or made the bad pass the point guard made because they are smarter than the players they are watching.

A part of being human is the capacity to judge the skill and effort of others as well as ourselves.  Adam, even before he sinned, was given the task of naming all the animals based on his evaluation of them.  We see in the Bible a number of examples of judging, evaluating and assessing the motives and decision making of friends and co-workers.  King Saul famously decided that young David, his general, was a risk to Saul’s throne and that David’s popularity among the people of Israel might go to David’s head.  Saul came to the conclusion that David was greedy for power and could not be trusted so he tried to kill him.  Was Saul right in his determination?  Did Saul see something in David that warranted his concern?  Perhaps there was a smirk on David’s face when the women of Jerusalem sang about his exploits in front of King Saul.  Maybe David was not as respectful in the way he addressed Saul as Saul thought he should have been.  Whatever evidence Saul had though for judging David disloyal and a traitor, the King later realized it was not sufficient to warrant his mistrust.  He later admitted to David, "You are more righteous than I," he said. "You have treated me well, but I have treated you badly.”(1 Samuel 24:17 NIV)

One of the problems with judging others is that we may be dead wrong in our evaluations and a friendship or alliance that could have been wonderful and beneficial might be lost.  Family relationships can be destroyed by our judging.  Absalom, one of David’s sons became enraged when his half-brother Amnon raped his full-sister Tamar.  Their father David didn’t do anything about the crime though despite being king and having the power to punish Amnon any way he wished.  After three years, Absalom gained his vengeance on Amnon and had him murdered.  This did not settle the account fully though in Absalom’s mind.  He decided that David was wrong in this for not taking up the cause of his sister and thus not competent enough to be king, that he was an unfair and unjust ruler.  He began to gather evidence that David was not just in his other dealings.  Absalom interviewed men and their families as they entered Jerusalem on visits and asked them what they thought about the justice in the land with David as king.  “Did he treat everyone fairly?”  “Did David play favorites, only advancing the careers of those from Judah but disregarding the needs of those from other parts of Israel?

For four years Absalom criticized his father’s fairness as king.  He would get up early and stand by the side of the road leading to the city gate. Whenever anyone came with a complaint to be placed before the king for a decision, Absalom would call out to him, "What town are you from?" He would answer, "Your servant is from one of the tribes of Israel."  Then Absalom would say to him, "Look, your claims are valid and proper, but there is no representative of the king to hear you." And Absalom would add, "If only I were appointed judge in the land! Then everyone who has a complaint or case could come to me and I would see that he gets justice." Also, whenever anyone approached him to bow down before him, Absalom would reach out his hand, take hold of him and kiss him.  Absalom behaved in this way toward all the Israelites who came to the king asking for justice, and so he stole the hearts of the men of Israel. (2 Samuel 15:2-6 NIV)  With Absalom, the judgmental attitude toward his father festered into hatred that careened out of control.  Not every critical thought morphs into disgust and loathing. Some just fade to ambivalence and disinterest.  However, never does a critical and judgmental thought disappear from the mind.  It always leaves its mark; always damages in some way our personality.

Two of the Disciples, James and John, responded with rage to the lack of interest in Jesus and His ministry shown by the leaders of a Samaritan village and they made a rather troubling request of Him.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?"  But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village.  (Luke 9:54-56 NIV)  This was an extreme reaction to a mundane occurrence.  It is not like these people were ripping into Jesus or wanting to stone Him to death.  They just weren’t interested in hearing Him because He was going to Jerusalem.  Was this the only collection of people who had some sort of reason for turning aside from Christ?  Of course not!  But James and John for some reason believed they were far worse than all the other critics and skeptics of Jesus.  Our Lord rebuked them for their judgmental response to the Samaritans.  We can be certain that there was a much bigger concern of James and John than that these poor villagers didn’t want Jesus lecturing them about religion.  Perhaps racism was at the root of their criticism…perhaps it was their nationalism rearing its head in them…they were not happy that the Samaritans had a bad opinion of Jerusalem.  Whatever the case nearly every time we become judgmental, there is something behind our criticism that fuels it.  Something that runs much deeper than our sense of fashion, political beliefs or loyalty to God!

Jesus’ command during His Sermon on the Mount is unequivocal.  We must not judge others!  "Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” (Matthew 7: 1 NIV)  Luke quotes Jesus almost exactly the same way.  "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.” (Luke 6:37 NIV) This is an astounding demand of God.  We all are so good at judging others.  Not only that, our criticism is always warranted or so we think.  Yet it seems that our Lord does not care how smart we believe we are or how wise we decide our evaluations, we are not to judge others critically.  Of course this is not saying judgments are never to be made.  Those in places of authority are directed by God to make judgments when the law is broken.  Murder, vandalism, theft; God puts it in the hands of those in authority to judge crimes and determine guilt or innocence.  God has established Law as a protection for us from the evil in people’s hearts.  Jesus is not dealing with authority judgement in these passages.  He is commanding against personal judgment.

Let us be clear about this.  There is never a time when a Christian, who is not in a position of authority under the law or as a part of his or her occupation, is given permission to judge the character, motives or actions of another person, whether that person is Christian or non-Christian, in this life.  To do so puts us in direct opposition to God and His mercy.  If you or I judge someone, the Lord will judge us and we would be hard-pressed to find an instance where God’s judgment was pleasant.  Yet our Lord has made us judging people, with critical minds and discerning hearts.  Why is it that, if we are not to use those skills unless we are circuit judges, we have the instantaneous judging mechanism up and running all the time?

Our mind is wired this way by God that we might be skillful at prayer, quickly seeing what we need to bring to God and able to join with the Lord in what He shows us.  If you see an area of weakness in someone or a moral flaw, you take that to God as soon as you become aware of it.  Your professor is giving a boring lecture, pray for God to help her.  A friend has been gossiping about you, bring it to the Lord for Him to fix.  Your parent prepared something for dinner that is not very good, pray for God to help your parent do better.  A hotel clerk is snappy with you and it is irritating, rather than snap back at her or talk about her rude behavior with your wife or co-worker, bring her to the Lord for healing.  One of your relatives clearly doesn’t like you and treats you disrespectfully and you want to “tell her off.”  You cannot.  You must talk only with God about her and ask the Lord to change her ways.  The person of any use to God is the one who prays.  God’s way for us to help people is by letting Christ work through us and He will never do so if we judge them or criticize them.  Have we ever helped anyone with our criticism?  We probably have often hurt them with our criticism, but helped them…most likely not!   We can be certain we have never hurt anyone with our prayers, but we have most assuredly helped every one of those we have prayed for God to come alongside and build into perfection!  Greatness in our Lord’s Kingdom is never determined by our ability to see the faults in others but by our faithfulness to pray for each person God brings our way.

Pro-Choice

Have we seen yet that we are completely free to live within the world we choose?  We can go down one road or another and it becomes our road but what sort of world we find as we travel along the road is completely up to God.  The Hebrews did not determine the sort of country they would have when first they chose a wilderness and then Palestine.  In neither case was it up to them when the manna fell or didn't, when the storms arrived or stayed away, what hills sprang up along the way and how much dew settled upon their tents.  We choose a home but our Lord decides how that home will be.  Heaven is not up to us to build and Hell cannot be demolished by human hands.  When the poor beggar chose Abraham's country, he could not make it more delightful and when the wealthy Lazarus selected Hell, he could not take down its sorrow.   God sovereignly rules over the worlds but we are kings of the road.  The man or woman who calls for the Law of his or her own way must accept the Law to the end God has determined.  But whoever opens the door to Grace has Grace in its all its wild unpredictability.  The wine that came out of the water pots was from Jesus but the water that was poured into them came from the friend of the groom.  We each live within the economy of our choices but the value of the coin we have in our pocket is decided by God.    God's commands are built on the construct of choice.  We do them or not but His rewards for keeping them are not our choice; they flow out of the Sovereign will of our Savior's Cross.  He chose to take away our Sin, we did not.  He chose to put together a home for us, we did not.  Choice for humanity started in the Garden of Eden...the Garden was not our choice nor was the deconstructed world where Adam and Eve found themselves later but at the point between the two, choice was theirs. Take the low road of "my will" and you have what follows.    Take the high road of "sovereign grace" and every command of God will lead you up and in to a world prepared for you by the same Lord who died to save you. 

"Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road that you take.    Jeremiah 31: 21 NIV

Ridiculous or Doable

It is time to think about the possibility that we have hindered the Lord in His efforts to perfect us.  He did not say for us to "be perfect" in the sense that this is something that we should do for ourselves.  Christ more literally said that "You, yourselves shall be perfect ones" or "completed ones" in His Sermon on the Mount.  He makes this tremendous pronouncement after a rather long string of comments on the commandments and how we are to carry out our response to them.  Every time our Lord makes a demand on our personality in the sermon, He contextualizes it with impossible behavior.  No sane man or woman has ever seriously contemplated the possibility that those commands have been followed by him or her.  Only Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of Man carried them out to their end and the rest of us are perfect basket cases when it comes to not lusting, not being angry with our friends or enemies, not holding a stain of hatred toward our real enemies but really loving them, giving to those whose requests are absurd to us.  In fact, the Sermon on the Mount is more like a comedy routine than actual religion before we are born again.  Almost at every point of Matthew 5 and on into 6 and 7, we are presented with a ridiculous lifestyle that no one wants to take seriously.  The moment though we are born again, the Living Lord Jesus becomes a part of us and if we give Him room in our soul to have sway, we begin to feel the absurdity of living the old way of greed, lust, anger, bitterness, selfishness and discontent with what God has given us.  Perfect is not an impossibility in Christ, it is where we are going.  The day shall come when we will be perfect just like our Heavenly Father and as we let our Savior have His way with us rather than fight Him at every turn, we shall pull into perfect places...a kind response to someone who hates us, a nonchalance about what we have, a lack of interest in men and women whose attractiveness once held our thoughts captive.  Perfect is what we will be when Christ is so completely aligned with us that we won't be able to tell the difference between what we are doing and what He is doing.  What we want and what He wants are going to be the same and on the way, we give in to every urge of Christ we have within us.  For so long we have let our sin corrupted flesh pull us here and there.  In Christ however, we are free to live the good life without the gnawing beast of sin tearing at us and making so much we do a misery.  When we let our crucified Savior live through us...our actions and our thoughts, we find "rest for our souls".

Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.   Matthew 5:48 NASB

See Beyond Sight

We have not fully recognized how great the work is that Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross.  He not only took within Himself the Sins of the World, He destroyed the construct of Sin as a World order.  Before Golgotha, Sin was the universal condition of all creation.  Its poison reached into every particle until the sinless Son of Man came to us.  His body contained the damage of sin but not its presence.  When our Lord was crucified, Sin filled Him and corrupted His body but not the being of God.  Christ's death took Sin with it so that as Resurrected Lord not even the damage of Sin could be found in Him.  For the first time since Adam, the Created Order had a Sinless place and He is the beginning of the Sinless universe.  From Christ Resurrected comes Life not only without Sin but Life undamaged by Sin.  We find in Jesus Christ raised from the dead the beginning of the wonder of living without Sin.  Can we begin to picture life without temptation, without depression, anger, fear or selfish craving?  Have we taken time to think of what it will be like to walk without Sin boundaries and barriers; to be united with God and one another yet still ourselves?  No force of nature will hinder us for once more as it was before Adam, nature will be our dominion and not our master.  Like with Jesus, the wind and waves will obey us.  The earth will be our home and we will no longer struggle with it.  Work will be our pleasure and not our curse, the days will not exhaust us and nothing new will usher in pain.  Memories will only bring joy and dreams will never turn into nightmares.  We will never be betrayed by ourselves or others and the knee and elbow and back will forever be our friends.  The light won't reveal sorrow and the friend will remain a friend.  For the first time, we will see God and really see Him and we will never turn away from Him.  The Cross is the unveiling of Life without Sin and the uncovering of our Lord's Love for us...we now begin to see it; soon enough that Love will be the source of all sight.

Jesus said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that."   John 1:50 NIV

Christian Community

If a collection of Christians have to argue and fight over what they must do, then

they have stopped living as Christian community.  They have lost their way and become corrupted by Satan's schemes.  There are only two alternatives to get out of such a mess.  Fold and move to some other endeavor or repent and apologize to one another for each one's part in the rebellion against the Holy Spirit.  When votes have to be accumulated and forceful arguments made to gain what is needed, then God has left the building and the people are on their own to work out matters.  The Prince of Peace will not fight His way to a solution; He will wait for us to come to Him in humble submission and only then will we find the Lord in our midst.  If a house divided against itself cannot stand, why would we think God tolerates division within His Body!  We might continue to succeed in what we are doing if we leave Him out of the work but it will not be the Kingdom of God we are building.  We will have made ourselves engineers and architects and construction workers in the Kingdom of Mankind.  It could be that we accomplish very little if we give ourselves to unity and brotherly love but at least we will still be loyal to our Savior and that is the master plan of God's Church.  His command is to love one another and that can never be accomplished if our top priority is to "get our way".  It is better to lose all you have and be a "failure" in your efforts than to break the bond of peace within the Lord's community.  James declares that the antithesis of Christian living is quarreling as it is an atheistic behavior pattern that disregards the one way we are to live out our Christianity; going to God in prayer and seeking His help in every matter.  In fact, he labels infighting spiritual "adultery" and "friendship with the world".  If real love marked by submission to one another in humble confidence in God and His guidance does not reflect our Christian community, then we ought to just "call a spade a spade" and admit we no longer want Christ with us when we meet.  Nothing comes easy when we live in God; there is a sort of crucifixion that always transpires but what a marvelous and wonderful day it is when believers "live together in unity!"  (Psalm 133:1 NIV)

You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God...You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.      James 4:2, 4 NIV

Internal Healing

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

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

Mind Re-oriented

Philippians 3:15 NIV

 All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.

Are You Aware Of Everything Going On Around You?

There is nothing quite as disconcerting as discovering something has been going on without you being aware of it.  We now have webcams that can keep tabs on our homes, our pets and cities that we have never visited.  The spy in the sky is now visiting our neighborhood and looking into our backyard.  It hasn’t always been that way and even now we can be caught off guard by what we didn’t know had been happening around us.  I used to read to my children just before bedtime and often I did it while lying down on the floor with the kids on each side of me.  I read everything from the Chronicles of Narnia to the Little House on the Prairie series.  When our two oldest boys were little, I started reading to them the Lord of the Rings.  Many times I found myself dozing off as I read; slurring the words and one or both boys would immediately start shaking me to get me to read further before falling asleep.  More than once I did fall asleep in the middle of a sentence and my kids knew I was then a lost cause.  I remember waking up perhaps at around one in the morning and finding that my wife and the boys were all up and about, playing, talking, making cookies.  I was stunned; why were they still awake?  Why hadn’t they gone to bed?  What else had they done while I was asleep?  For all I knew, they could have shaved my head, taken all the money out of my wallet, gone joy riding in the car and had a drunken party in the house while I was out cold.  I had no idea what I missed while asleep and no one ever really told me either.

Perhaps you too have felt like you were left out of it, not aware of everything that was happening.  Maybe at work others seem to know more than you about what the company plans are.  Perhaps your friends seem to have the “inside scoop” and you are oblivious to it.  You might feel like you are the only one who doesn’t get the joke at the company picnic or the only one in America who has no idea why Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton are as popular as they are, why your teacher suddenly blew up at the class or why your mom treated you and your brother so differently.  In our information age, there is much we do not know and have no way of finding it out.  The internet is a blank page when it comes to some matters you care very much about and no amount of research may help you understand why your parents got a divorce or what led to your son dropping out of college.

There is within our era of information overload, a serious degree of information poverty that must be considered.  The Bible hints at this and it would be important for us to consider the possibility that there is a vast array of knowledge we could access that we are not even aware exists.  We should be disturbed by an account in the Bible that alerts us to how little we really do know about what is going on about us.  The ancient prophet Elisha faced a grave crisis or so it seemed.  A foreign ruler wanted Elisha dead and sent his army out to find him and kill him.  Elisha was staying in a village that was unable to defend themselves, let alone Elisha.  Elisha’s servant panicked when he saw the soldiers descending upon the town.  Elisha’s reaction was surprisingly calm and relaxed.  He reassured his servant that all would be well despite appearances.  "Don't be afraid," the prophet answered. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." And Elisha prayed, "O Lord, open his eyes so he may see." Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. (2 Kings 6:16-17 NIV)

We have here clear evidence that there is a significant amount of information we aren’t aware exists and never access.  Some would call this the supernatural aspect of our universe.  But it was not supernatural for Elisha or his servant.  It simply was not “seeable” before this but once their eyes were “opened”, they could see all the chariots of fire and hills full of horses and it was clear as day to them.  Afterward, if they had been asked how they could be certain of what they said they saw, they would not have an answer to give that would sound logical or even acceptable to most people.  That doesn’t mean that what they saw wasn’t really there on the hills; the inability to explain why they could see what they did doesn’t mean they hadn’t seen it.

Consider the situation here closely.  There was a great army of soldiers who had no idea that the hillsides around them were covered by horses and chariots of fire and there was an entire village that did not see any of this either.  Only two people in this huge crowd could see what was very certainly there.  This same sort of occurrence is described by the prophet Isaiah in the sixth chapter of his book.  He was in the Temple and Isaiah became aware of the Lord present there sitting upon the throne and seraphs with six wings flying about glorifying the Lord so loudly that the doorposts and thresholds shook and the room was filled with smoke.  Now it is highly unlikely that Isaiah was the only person in the Temple at the time but it may have been so.  If he was the only one present, it is strange then God’s question.  Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" (Isaiah 6:8 NIV)  It seems that this is not a personal call directed only at Isaiah to go but rather a general call to anyone who is listening.  If that is the case, then who else was to hear this?  The Seraphs?  It doesn’t seem likely.  Was there someone else present who was to hear this too?  Perhaps it was all a dream…it just happened in Isaiah’s mind.  But again, the call for someone to go was not just for Isaiah it seems.

Is it possible that there were hundreds, maybe even millions to whom this call to go was directed but no one else was available to God; everybody within “earshot” was too busy with their own thoughts and concerns to receive God’s call?  Their natures were not adapted to comprehending anything so rich and pure as the call of God.  There is something largely overlooked which Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3.  Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. (John 3:5-6 NIV)

We must sit here at the foot of this great statement of Jesus and let its implications sink into us.  It is often misunderstood at a very great point.  Many think the kingdom of God is heaven, that to get into heaven one must be born again.  This of course is true but it is only part of what this implies.  The kingdom of God is all that God inhabits and it is His Kingdom where He rules as supreme over all.  That Kingdom can only be entered by the one who has been transformed by the Spirit into someone completely new.  The Kingdom of God is all externals for the one not transformed.  It is books and lectures and church buildings and music styles and talent and rules and entertainment and possessions and personal improvement and issues and did I say rules?  But entrance into the Kingdom of God through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit is all about God…His presence, His direction, His love, His power, His mercy, His goodness and His life.  Christ is the Gate, He is the Way, He is the Life…the Kingdom of God is Him in every place.

Why are we so out of touch?  Why are we so oblivious to God all about us?  Perhaps it is because there has been so little God worked in us that we are unaware of Him.  We face a problem…a problem person…a problem with our bodies…a problem with our family or friends…a problem with work or school…and we go at it within the confines of only this kingdom, the kingdom of mankind and that is all we have…none of what is Kingdom of God decides for us how we think about a matter and how we approach it.  Until you enter into the Kingdom of God you cannot see anything or hear anything with certainty beyond the kingdom of mankind.  But when the Cross of Christ has formed Christ in you and the Holy Spirit begins leading you deeper into the Kingdom of God, you shall begin to hear the voice of God guiding you in matters and the power of God will begin to work through you and accomplishments that are impossible outside the Kingdom of God will be done by you because you are not the you that existed before the Cross of Christ formed Christ in you.  You are now Christ and you and that is the personality that exists.  It is a new personality that can see God, hear God and be empowered by God and that personality as it goes further into the Kingdom of God becomes more and more alive to God.

The temptation of Satan presented to Adam and Eve ran along two lines and for us it is the same fundamental temptation.  Satan inserted into the mind of Adam and Eve two thoughts.  God is not good enough and God is not competent enough.  If we accept either of these two thoughts, our mind will be shut out of the Kingdom of God, we will become deaf and blind to all that is opening up to us in the Kingdom of God.  Only the Kingdom of Mankind will be accessible to us because to approach God you must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrew 11:6 NIV)  Remember when the disciples wondered why they could not cast out the demon who was causing a boy to have seizures and Jesus replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:19-20 NIV)  It is as easy as breathing to stay with simple-minded determination in the realm of the kingdom of mankind and not go any further than that.  If you do, you have access to all there is in the kingdom of man but nothing more.  Faith in Christ however opens your mind to the Kingdom of God where the wisdom and power of God seep into your mind like living water nurturing the lovely plant which is your life. 

Do an experiment this week.  Make yourself completely open for God to guide you and empower your work.  In faith ask Him to guide you, ask Him to talk to you.  Only by faith in Christ will your mind be prepared ground for God’s seed to be planted there and if God has built His life in you, there will develop even this week a growing awareness of Him thinking in you and His thoughts will become clearer and clearer.  Power will be given you to see what only God can show you and bit by bit the Kingdom of God will become visible to you.  But you must start to make your mind open for Jesus Christ to work within your mind and that takes discipline and determination to not fall for Satan’s lie that God is not good enough and not competent enough to guide you!   Breathe out this prayer to the Lord. “Enable me Lord Jesus to do Kingdom of God things in a Kingdom of Mankind world.  Fill my mind O Lord with You!”  

Love Brought to Life

At each moment of contact with another person, there is a crisis of faith.  Do we believe our Lord is working in this one and recreating him or her as He is doing with us?  If we don't, then we can criticize, despise and disregard the soul before us.  If we think God is active and alive in each person we meet, then it is demonic to have anything but real love for that one we have bumped up against.  The world's own can react in any fashion they wish when people come into contact with people: irritation, scorn, lust, contempt, fear, manipulation, idolatry.  If Christ though lives in us, there is only one way to approach even our enemies; with supernaturally empowered love.  Our tangle of Sin-enflamed responses can be crucified with Christ if we let our Savior live through us as each moment of contact arises.  Whether it be a post we come across or an argument that develops, our Lord can work through our reaction and His love convert our reactions into true and real love.  The moment we begin to criticize, judge or dehumanize, God will give us the check of the Holy Spirit to hold back our anti-love response and we can be a force of Christ or Satan immediately.  The check won't last forever and we must submit our will to our Lord's instantly if we are to be God's then and there.  Wait, deliberate, hesitate and it is gone and you will likely make a mess of the opportunity to love through Christ.  Submit to God's prompt and the glorious love of your Savior will come through you and someone will sense God's presence because you are near.  Consider the possibility that by means of the love of Christ, you may be the burning bush a Moses has waited a lifetime to encounter.  The love of God, poured out through His people, makes every encounter a supernatural one.

 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.     1 John 4:7 NIV

Where Will You Go Next?

The true test of all Christians is how closely they resemble the Savior.   As we align ourselves along various scales...faith, forgiveness, confidence in the Father, indifference to what we have or don't have, love, purity, disregard for acclaim, loyalty to the Kingdom of God, honesty, unhurried devotion to prayer, patience, gratitude, we find a different sort of life coming into place.  It is impossible to be a "good Christian" without the supernatural working of Christ in us.  We are a hopeless tangle of lusts, frustrations, lies, mismanaged emotions, fears and self-absorbed loyalties.  Nothing we do can make us fit with Christianity...not with real Christianity.   Spiritually, we are like a dieter who cannot break free of too many calories.  The world can only look at the symptoms of unprocessed Christianity: road rage, drug abuse, depression, anxiety, materialism, greed and cheating spouses.  The one who is born-again sees something much more personal; the absence of Christ in daily living.  With Christ a part of us, not just as a role model but a living, interconnected part of our new personality, we can become perfect as He is perfect.  Each day is day one of Christ coming out of us in a new way; His love joined to our affections, His faith brought into our stresses, His holiness pouring into our desires.  Christ crucified does away with our Sin.  Christ resurrected breaks apart the bondage Sin has had over us and gives us the habits and behavior patterns of God Himself in the day we have before us.  What did Paul mean by, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me "?  (Galatians 2:20 NIV)Was it some quasi-spiritual gibberish or is he saying that Jesus Christ really does live in us?  Is He as He really is a part of us, living through all the decisions and behaviors of our personality?  If so, then we have real hope to be good and righteous and full of the peace and joy of God Himself.

But the righteousness that is by faith says: "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or 'Who will descend into the deep?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).  But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming:  ( Romans 10: 6-8 NIV)

The Check of God

Matthew 5:23-24 NIV

"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

Who Makes Your Decisions?

The other day I was driving on the freeway and a car was behind me in the left hand lane.  Suddenly he sped up and cut in front of me but then slowed down so that I had to put on my brakes.  I was a bit perturbed because he could have just as easily slid behind me if he had to get in my lane.  When I found myself driving five miles an hour slower because of the guy who had pulled in front of me, I began to stew over it until it became an obsessing thought.  Why did that guy have to be in front?  Was it an “alpha dog” thing?  I felt like my manhood had been stolen from me by this one simple act of this guy getting ahead of me on the freeway.  Of course my thinking about this was irrational and of course I was being immature but in a flash, I shifted lanes, punched the gas and broke into the lead, jumping in front of the guy who had cut in front of me.  Did I feel happy about what I did?  For a moment…for a moment I was quite puffed up and filled with pride…and then I just felt stupid and embarrassed and was compelled to ask God to forgive me!

Each of us has a disposition that is rooted in Sin.  Sin impacts our personality in a wide range of ways and for some of us it means we are prone to selfishness, for others greed, of using people for selfish ends or being easily insulted or angered.  Sin can lead to us being cold and indifferent to the suffering we see, make lust our dominant thought process, strip us of our compassion and honesty.  Sin wrecks our true sense of self; many despise themselves because of how Sin has affected them, others feel inadequate and generally depressed. Sin isolates us from God and from each other and makes our disposition self-absorbed and cuts us off from the spiritual realm.  By far, the most damaging effect of Sin upon our disposition is it makes us unconcerned about sin’s impact and makes us true rebels against God’s Kingdom.

There is an under-appreciated work the Holy Spirit does in us and that is He makes us aware of where we have gone wrong…how we have veered off-course.  Jesus hinted at this in the Sermon on the Mount.  "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:23-24 NIV)  The Holy Spirit checks us…causes us to pause and think about some way that we have been wrong.  In this case it is with regard to disappointing and angering those close to us.  We see in the New Testament numerous examples of how the Spirit of God changes the disposition of His people by checking their behavior.

The Apostle Paul early in his life had the dangerous linking of a violent temper, self-righteousness and the authority to wield them as he wished.  Many have bad tempers and quite a few are self-righteous but the combination of the law and social constraints keep them both in check usually.  Paul was not encumbered by either and so he was free to unleash his self-righteous fury at will.  Paul’s wrath was directed at Christians and like Stalin and Hitler and Saddam Hussein after him, he was able to let his anger determine his actions; he was given authority to beat, imprison and kill anyone he wished.  After Paul was born again and God began working throughout his personality, his temper and self-righteousness continued to plague him.  In Acts 15:37-39 we see their lingering power over Paul.  Paul was mad at a colleague who deserted him and Barnabas on their previous mission trip and he refused to forgive his actions.  Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work.  They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. (NIV)

Not much later, that temper flashed again and many would say justifiably so when Paul was being questioned by the members of the Sanhedrin when the Roman commander asked the Jewish leaders to prove the rightfulness of their charges against him. In the midst of the proceedings, the Jewish High priest, who was not known to Paul, became angry with something Paul said and ordered Paul be punched in the mouth.  Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, "My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day."  At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. (Acts 23:1-2 NIV)  Instantly, Paul responded.  Then Paul said to him, "God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!"  (Acts 23:3 NIV)  When Paul was told that he had just insulted the Jewish High Priest, Paul backed off from his angry indignation.   Paul replied, "Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: 'Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.'" (Acts 23:5 NIV) 

Now a critic of Paul might argue that the Apostle would have acted upon his anger if he had the power to do so.  What checked his temper was the force behind the Sanhedrin.  Yet, Paul was not thinking of attacking the High Priest physically, his temper only took him as far as the insult, a similar one to what Jesus used when confronting the Pharisees.  When Paul realized that he was angry with the High Priest, the Holy Spirit through the scripture checked him and he immediately backed off his temper. There is a moment when a window opens and God’s light can either come into us and fill us with His presence or we let the window close and nothing of God touches us. It is when the check of God reaches our mind and we choose to heed it or ignore it that we stand on the edge of receiving a deeper work of the Holy Spirit in us or lose that instant of intimacy with God.

The Bible often points back to the critical moment when the people of God had to decide if they were going to trust God with their lives and enter the Promised Land or close the door to Him and silence God’s voice in them.  They decided to go it on their own without God.  Of course they never would have said they were closing themselves off to God.  The Hebrews were much too religious for that.  As far as they were concerned, they were wisely not putting themselves or their families at risk.  They were still open to the Lord working with them.  He could talk to them later if He wished…that was acceptable to them.  But God doesn’t work that way something serious and terrible happened when they refused to let the check of God have its way with them.  So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did.  That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.'  So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'" (Hebrews 3:7-11 NIV)

The check of God is the door that opens the way for us to enter our Lord’s rest.  “Rest” in Scripture is not some sort of spiritual or even physical “lying around”.  It is reaching the sweet spot with Christ where we are secure in Him and despite all the chaos around us, we are at peace because we have obeyed the check of God.  Let’s examine a very practical example of this.  In Acts 16 we are told that Paul and his fellow missionaries did not go into the province of Asia because the Holy Spirit checked them.  It is not that they didn’t really want to go and preach in Asia, but the Holy Spirit somehow made it clear to them not to go into the Roman province of Asia.  Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.  (Acts 16:6 NIV)  Later, Paul did go into Asia when the Holy Spirit was no longer checking him.  He (Paul) sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia, while he stayed in the province of Asia a little longer. (Acts 19:22 NIV)  In both situations God’s peace was with Paul and his companions because they were aligned with God.

Let’s now look at the Holy Spirit check from a different angle. The Spirit can also check us to do something.  "And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there.  I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.  (Acts 20:22-23 NIV)  So Paul was directed somehow, and we do not know how, but somehow by the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem.  In this check of the Holy Spirit, he also was cautioned about what he would encounter there.  Later, a prophet from Judea traveled up to meet Paul in Caesarea and confirmed what the Spirit had already told Paul.  After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea.  Coming over to us, he took Paul's belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, "The Holy Spirit says, 'In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.'"  (Acts 21:10-11 NIV)  When the people of the church heard this warning they literally wept and begged Paul not to go to Jerusalem; they loved him so much.  But Paul was as calm and peaceful as a daisy in the springtime sun.  That is how it is when we let the check of the Holy Spirit have its way with us.  No matter what He might tell us, we are settled and unperturbed when in faith we obediently let the check of the Holy Spirit have its way in us.

It cannot be said how the check of God will come to you.  It may be through a dream, or a conversation, a moment of reflection while driving in the car or most likely a quiet moment while reading the Bible but the Holy Spirit will make known to you something that aligns perfectly with Scripture and it is going to be totally up to you how you respond to the check and then what happens next is in God’s hand.  You will have His rest like Israel could have had if you let the check of the Holy Spirit have its way with you…or you could be brought into turmoil by turning away.  No one is more peaceful and content than the Christian who is letting the Holy Spirit have His way in his or her life but the converse is also true.  No one is more miserable than the Christian fighting the prompt of God and turning aside when the Holy Spirit has made something clear.  Our Lord’s promise to you could not be any clearer.  You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. (Isaiah 26:3 NIV)  It is in your hands whether you have our Lord’s perfect peace at any moment.  With steely resolve, decide you will do what the Holy Spirit tells you to do and God’s peace will carry you through every twist and turn of your day.

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

Living By Faith

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

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