The Importance of Your Praying

Genesis 20:7 NIV

 Now return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all yours will die."

What is the Big Deal about Prayer?

I have a shirt that across the front has in bold, bright letters, “Pray”.  I enjoy the reaction it stirs.  I usually wear it when I am going to be around a lot of different people.  It would be fun to have a web cam record the response of those who notice it for the first time.  A typical reaction is for a person to glance at the letters, then pause a moment as if trying to grasp the meaning of the word found on my shirt.  Almost always, the woman or man quickly looks away without meeting my eyes.  It is as if I stop being a real person to many, just a walking billboard.  Some smile and tell me they like the shirt, most try to pretend they didn’t see it or me.  I did not realize prayer was controversial, or something that made people uncomfortable.  Perhaps it is now; maybe prayer is no longer recognized as a critical part of being human; not thought to be important to making life better.

It seems odd that there has to be a rationale given for prayer but perhaps one must be given.    Does it really matter if you pray or not?  Is anyone affected by the shortness of your praying or your lack of prayer?  The problem is that you almost never get any feedback on how you pray.  If you diet or don’t, you see how you are doing.  When you send a check to a charity, you get a note back thanking you for the support and perhaps even a report of how much help you provide.  If you save for your retirement, eventually you find out what your disciplined living did for you.  Fail to keep oil in your car and at some point you will find out how important oil is to your car engine.  It is not like that with prayer.  How do you ever find out what your praying did or didn’t do for yourself or others?  You never get a report card.  No one knows how effective your praying is and you probably don’t know either.  Unless you are someone like George Muller who kept rigorous records of his praying and how his prayer requests fared, you probably haven’t a clue about your prayer success rate.  The default setting for most people is that they just don’t pray much for themselves or others because they don’t know why they should.  Is there a reason why you should pray often?  Let us look at this question carefully because it may really matter how much you pray.

The Bible has an intriguing account of prayer that must be considered.  The book of Job is most famous for its report of the terrible suffering of Job and how he tried to understand why God let him face such horror.  Yet it could be argued that the most important point made in the book is not even the narrative of Job and his trials but rather what we are told at the end.  Job had three friends who came to him ostensibly to comfort him but ended up berating Job for imaginary wrongs he had committed.  The friends decided that Job had to have been a terrible sinner for God to make him suffer so much.  More than half the book is a dialogue between Job and his friends; the later accusing Job of secret sins and the former denying the charges and asserting his holiness.  Famously Job pleads for someone to intervene for him, someone to defend him to God.  He insists, “…God has wronged me and drawn his net around me. “ (Job 19:6 NIV)

The final chapters of Job are given over to the Lord’s response to Job’s accusations.  God never explains His actions; He merely makes it clear that He is sovereign Lord over all and that no one rises above Him in authority and power.  God challenges Job to bring his charges directly to Him.  The Lord said to Job:  "Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?  Let him who accuses God answer him!"  (Job 40:1-2 NIV)  Job’s response is quick and decided.  Then Job answered the Lord:  "I am unworthy — how can I reply to you?  I put my hand over my mouth.  I spoke once, but I have no answer — twice, but I will say no more."  (Job 40:3-5 NIV)  Then we come upon perhaps the most compelling aspect of the entire book…at least as far as we discover the value God gives His people and the part they play in the course of history.

At the conclusion of the book of Job, the Lord turns to Job’s friends and addresses their critique of Job.  After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.  So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.  (Job 42:7-8 NIV)  What an astonishing revelation!  God will wait for someone to pray before He acts.  In this case it is Job.  Consider the implication.  After God’s monologue in which He declares His supreme authority over the universe, He warns Job’s friends that if they do not want to face the consequences of making false accusations against Job, they must depend upon Job to pray for God’s mercy.  Why did God have Job pray for his friends?  Clearly it was because the friends needed Job to pray for them.

This is a stupendous revelation!  God waited for Job to pray before He decided the fate of Job’s three friends.  It is as if you did not want to act until one of your friends gave her opinion.  Or it is more like your father not punishing your brother until you said whether he should or not.  Prayer has a real effect with God and changes the course of human events.  Remember what Jesus said about His people?  I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15 NIV)  One characteristic of friendship is that friends influence each other.  They start to think alike as the bond between them strengthens.  Friendship is never a one-way street.  Friendship is by definition the linking of people so that they impact each other through love and loyalty.  If prayer is the way we bond with God, then it seems reasonable that in our prayers, there is a back and forth impact that takes place between us.  As your friend, God cares about what matters to you and He is affected by the way you think and how you feel about things.  We think of God as some isolated independent being who does everything on His own but He isn’t.  Our Lord is your friend and your Father and He loves you as your friend and your Father.   That is why prayer is so important.  God is, in some way that cannot be explained, influenced by you.

Consider the implications of Ephesians 6:18.  And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. (NIV)  Jude 20 has a similar admonition.  But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. (NIV)  This verse, when considered in its original Greek setting is almost identical to Ephesians 6:18 because it literally directs us to “in the Holy Spirit continually be praying ones”.  To pray “in” the Holy Spirit is like a fish living “in” the ocean or a bird living “in” the atmosphere.  The “in” of being in the Holy Spirit is an “in” of complete immersion, of total envelopment.  The bird absorbs the atmosphere as well as moves within it.  If you pray in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is all about you in your praying.  He is “in” what you pray, the guide to your praying, He is why you pray and the reason you have trust in God as you pray.  When you “pray in the Holy Spirit”, it means that the Holy Spirit is a part of every aspect of your praying.

But how does God our friend want us to pray?  He wants us to pray about anything the Holy Spirit brings to mind but especially He wants us to pray for every single Christian who comes to mind.  Why should we pray so much?  It is because God cares about our opinion of things: He wants to hear what we have to say about others.  In fact He cares so much that He waits for us to pray before He acts.  Job had the same task we have, to bring his concerns about people to God and ask for Him to help them.  How can we know what to pray about for others?  When we are in the Holy Spirit, immersed in Him, thinking with Him and through Him, we will get it right.  Our prayers will match what God wants to do for them.

Without the Holy Spirit directing our thinking as we pray, it is a hit or miss proposition.  Praying becomes irrational and filled with chaos.  The Spirit straightens out our praying, makes it coherent.  We know what we ought to pray and how we should pray because the Holy Spirit makes sense of it for us.  We have the foundation for confident praying in Romans 8, perhaps the most important chapter in the entire Bible.  In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.  (Romans 8:26-27 NIV)

Let this sink in a moment.  On our own we have no idea how to pray.  In our sin weakened state we are incompetent at prayer.  But with the Holy Spirit working within us, we have no limits in prayer, there is no ceiling.  Just think about what you could do for others if you become locked in on the Holy Spirit and were in total sync with God.  You could bring real peace and joy to the world…to those your love.  Imagine the good you could do if you took prayer seriously; if you made it your top priority!  It would not be a stretch to state that the book of James provides us with the greatest encouragement to pray found anywhere in literature.  Consider its implication.

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.  Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.  Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.  (James 5:16-18 NIV)  Elijah was a person just like you with all your faults and weaknesses, with all kinds of idiosyncrasies and quirks just like you.  Yet he could pray and a drought came to pass because of his praying and then after three and a half years the drought ended because of his praying.  That could be you, praying just like Elijah.  You may argue that you aren’t righteous though.  The truth is that because of Christ in you, your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of Elijah and all the other greats of the Old Testament.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7 NIV)  And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ — to the glory and praise of God.  (Philippians 1:9-11 NIV)  It is not a righteousness issue for you when it comes to praying.  It is a willingness issue.  Are you willing to stay close enough to the Holy Spirit that you can make a supernatural difference in your circle of influence when you pray?  Do you through the most powerful tool you have, prayer, want to make the lives of others better.  You can.  You just have to decide if you are willing to put in the effort to pray.

God is Love

God is love

1 John 4: 16 NIV

The last great frontier spiritually is the discovery that God is love.  With the world oozing broken dreams and shattered lives, it has the feel of mythology to assert the declaration of Scripture that God is love.  The scent of Job’s ruin permeates every corner of our universe.  And yet it is true that God is love.  He is love on the battlefield, He is love in the convalescent home, He is love in foster care and He is love at the divorce court.  Everywhere you look God is love and this is the unbending rule of time and space.  It may take faith to accept this and some of the most intelligent and creative minds speaking today might scoff at it but God is love.  Put yourself in Abraham’s place as he trudged up Mt. Moriah with his son Isaac beside him.  The impossible dream of a true heir was dying and it would be moments before he would raise his dagger above his son and make him a blood sacrifice to God.  It was between life and death, between ruin and resurrection that God is love seemed such a fable.  In the twilight of faith before the dawn of sight, we stumble in our acceptance of this.  Yet God is love at the altar as well as the joyous journey home.  Abraham believed that God was love before he had Isaac; when he brought him back to Sarah fully alive, he knew he had been right.  You too will one day know it is the Bible is right.  God is love.  Until that time when you have become certain of it, keep going by faith in what others have discovered along the way.  God is love today…just as surely as He is tomorrow.

Deep Cleansing

1 Thessalonians 5:23 NIV

 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

How Clean Do You Want To Be?

When I was in high school I had a pretty severe case of acne.  I used to lay out in the sun for hours trying to dry out my back and face and sometimes was in serious pain from sunburn.  My mom brought me to a dermatologist and I got a prescription for a topical skin lotion as well as pills that were supposed to reduce the oiliness of my skin.  I must say it did work.  If you look at my senior picture, you can see the effect it had on me.  It caused my face to tan and for two or three weeks I had dark brown skin and my pimples faded.  But then, like something from a fairy tale, my skin started peeling, small sections coming off at a time so that part of my face was like the girl from Ipanema and the rest like the Riddler.  Then I was back to my normal blotchy complexion until the combination of the sun and my medication began to interact again.  The pills used to turn my skin so dry that my hands inside the knuckles would split open and I had to put band aids around my fingers to be able to play basketball.  I endured this because  I was desperate to get rid of my acne.  What I needed was some sort of deep cleaning treatment that would clear my pores but I never found anyone who could do that for me.

Have you thought about the possibility that you might need a deep cleansing of your soul?  You may contend that you don’t need any radical work done in you.  Perhaps you just have a few issues that you could use fixing but nothing really critical, nothing very important.  If that is how you see things, then you are like most people who feel like they could use a little tweaking but nothing dramatic like psychological counseling or psychiatric care.  Perhaps there is a gnawing sense of inadequacy in you or a slight throbbing that something is not quite right.  At the risk of sounding melodramatic, most alcoholics never go to an AA meeting and how many commit suicide without ever attending a session with a counselor.  It is the natural tendency for nearly all of us to ignore what is wrong with us for as long as possible  and this may be true of you too.  Perhaps there is something of great value God could do in you, something necessary that you would one day be most grateful for Him to have done.   You would not be the first person to be thankful for God doing something new in you, that He brought changes to you that you did not realize you needed.  Consider the possibility that there is more to having Christ build His life in you than you expected.

Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit wrote out a most enlightening prayer in 1 Thessalonians 5: 23.  May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NIV)  This prayer stretches across the centuries to you and it is just as valid now as it was in Thessalonica in 55 AD.  He is asking God to sanctify you through and through.  The Greek term translated “sanctify” is a tricky word to translate.  It could be rendered “make holy” which is perfectly fine except many misunderstand what the term holy means.  The second important term is one Greek word that is rendered here “through and through”.  It means to be completely or all the way or the whole of you made something.  A picture of this is a sponge that is so completely saturated that there is no room in it for anything else.  It is what you see in John 2 when Jesus tells the servants at the wedding to fill the water pots all the way to the top so that not another drop could be put in them or they would spill over on the ground.

There is built within the curse of sin in you and me a certain disdain for too much God in us.  It is as if there is a tolerance level fixed by the spiritual and even psychological damage done to us when sin entered our lives that makes it almost painful to have Christ get deeply involved in us.  We see this manifested in common activities.  There is only so much Bible we can read before we need something more entertaining.  There is only so much Christian music we can play before it gets old, only so much preaching we can hear before we are bored, only so far we can go with forgiveness or kindness or generosity or goodness or praying before we grow weary of it.  It is strange but we all seem to have a holiness fill line which if we go past it results in us growing uncomfortable with God and God activities.

There are parts of you, which you aren’t even aware exist, that are wrecked by sin.  Your spirit, which is who you are forever, is in need of a total transformation if you are going to be completely healthy and happy.  The Bible speaks of your spirit needing to be sanctified through and through.  Sanctified, at least when the Bible talks about it, means that God gets worked into every part of you.  You become saturated with Christ.  All of Christ’s personality traits, whether they are His courage, His peace, His loving kindness or His moral purity, become in sanctification your personality traits.  This is much different than trying hard to be like Jesus.  That is impossible anyway if you have nothing in you that Christ has in Him to live like He does!  Imagine a turtle trying to do calculus like a math professor or a walrus trying to make an apple pie like your grandmother.  It is impossible because these creatures have none of the mental tools necessary to undertake the effort.   Without Christ in you, it is impossible to copy His behaviors or imitate His way of dealing with life.

The problem we face is that we have so much damage to us that we are impossibly separated from real goodness and holiness on a consistent basis.  In spurts we are good or at peace or full of faith but without warning it all falls apart.  The ruin is in hidden places that are buried within us.  Just consider the strange case of Saul, king of Israel.  His best and most successful general drove him crazy…literally crazy.  Although David was crucial to Saul’s success and thoroughly loyal to him, Saul could not bear David’s popularity and tried a number of times to kill him. There was nothing logical about Saul’s jealousy.  It wasn’t David’s fault.  The root of Saul’s bitterness was all within his spirit somewhere.  It may have confused Saul and tormented him, this irrational hatred for David but it could not be denied.  Something was very wrong with Saul and he could not fix it.

The same could be said of David himself.  When he sent his servants to fetch Bathsheba so that he could sleep with her, it was irrational what he did.  There were plenty of beautiful single women that David could have had.  He had numerous lovely wives and concubines; so why did he need Bathsheba, who was married to one of his most loyal and courageous officers?  It isn’t like he did not know wrong when he saw it.  When Nathan the prophet confronted David about his sin of sleeping with Bathsheba and having her husband murdered, he did so by telling David a story about lust.  "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.  Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him." (2 Samuel 12:1-4 NIV)

David’s reaction to hearing of this terrible act was appropriate rage.  David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity." (2 Samuel 12:5-6 NIV)  Yet the evil David could see in another, he could not find in himself until that evil bore fruit.  This is a universal trait of sin wrecked humanity.  We easily see as Jesus put it, the splinter in the eye of someone else but do not realize there is a beam of wood in our own eye.  Why is that?  It is because the power of evil in us is hidden in deep places of our spirit.  It surprises us when the ugly ungodliness comes to the surface, confuses us and we react to it with the defense mechanism parents use when they hear about the evil acts of their children: denial and befuddlement.  “How could this happen?  She wouldn’t have done that?  She must have been provoked.”

The absurd pockets of evil in your spirit and in my spirit contradict what we think we are.  We get fooled by the initial positive results of becoming Christian into thinking that everything is right in us when it isn’t.  We need a complete reworking, or to put it another way, a deep cleansing of the spirit.  The Bible insists there is much wrong with us that only Christ can fix.  We must face this squarely if we want to be perfect.   This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.  If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. (1 John 1:5-6 NIV)  The difference between the evil we have in us and the absolute goodness found in Christ is a great abyss…an uncrossable chasm.  Yet God Himself can get at those deep places of evil that sin has wrecked in us and cleanse them, or to be precise, purify them.  Consider the immensity of the promise found in1 John 1: 7.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7 NIV)  Examine this closely.  The tiny word “if” makes clear that we might not walk in the light.  This is not automatic; it is up to us to do.  Walk is a metaphor that means to live and the verse is saying it is possible for us to continually live in the light, to always do what we do with God in charge showing us the way.  We do not have to abandon God or go on our own, we can at every moment walk hand in hand with Him, guided by Him, enabled by Him to live like Christ lives.  There is a second part to the verse. As we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus purifies us continually from all sin.  The term translated “purifies” means to cleanse constantly, to rework every moment of every day.  It is the Greek word from which we get our English word “cauterize.   It is used to describe what happened when Jesus removed the leprosy from those He healed.  When we are in tune with God and giving Him authority over what and how we do things, a miracle occurs during these times.  The blood of Christ works out of us the damage sin has worked in us. 

If you just stay aligned with Jesus, just keep praying to Him as you go through the day and let Him lead you when you sense His guiding, the damage Sin has caused in your personality, your unconscious thinking and in the way you live your life will be removed and healed bit by bit.  There is no cure for certain broken and wrecked parts of you except what Jesus can do if you let Him get hold of you.  This week make a conscious effort to stay close to Jesus, to make Him the center of your concentration as often as possible…no, as often as you are willing to do so. 

The Wall

Ezekiel 42:20 NIV

So he measured the area on all four sides. It had a wall around it, five hundred cubits long and five hundred cubits wide, to separate the holy from the common.

Can God Trust You At The Wall?

Years ago, when we were newlyweds, Mary Jo and I each were running to get into better shape. We

started with two miles and then three.  Eventually we were running four miles a day and we kept pushing ourselves further.  Mary Jo was actually in training, preparing to compete in the Crescent City Classic, a ten-kilometer race through New Orleans.  I did not plan on running in it but because of my pride, I did not want her outrunning me so each time she extended her runs, I did mine also.  We were running five miles, and then we were at six miles, four times a week.  Finally we were running seven miles together and then the week before the race, we ran a full ten miles.  Because the Crescent City Classic is only 6.2 miles, we both felt confident we could do well in the race.  There was only one problem.  I did not want to run in it.  Although Mary Jo kept urging me to enter, I told her I wouldn’t.   I did all the training for the race but I refused to run when it was time.  I cannot say why I wouldn’t compete.  I might have been afraid I wouldn’t do well.  It could have been that I was concerned that Mary Jo might beat me.  It’s not that I did not like to run or wasn’t prepared for the race.  For some reason, there was a wall that kept me from running in it; a wall I refused to climb.

When you or I come up against a wall, we have to decide what to do about it.  Perhaps the answer is easy; we have no interest in what is behind the wall.  It might be though that the wall seems insurmountable and although we would like to get beyond it, we give up because we are afraid to try to scale it.  We aren’t after all Spiderman; we don’t have super powers.  There are walls that seem to be morally wrong to climb.  It is against the law.  To climb the wall would require we do something that violates our values.  Maybe you aren’t sure that it is worth the effort trying to get past the wall.  Perhaps there is a wall before you right now and you haven’t decided what to do about it.  Will you pretend that you just don’t see it, will you ignore it or will you gather up all your power and try to scale it?    Will you turn away from it?  Will you consult with others who have faced similar walls and find out what they did?  Are you the only one in this world who knows about the wall you have before you?

Consider the possibility that there might be a wall you face and God is watching carefully to see what you will do about it.  He might in fact have placed that wall before you to test you, to try your resolve, reveal your character.  When the nation of Israel began its journey into the new land God had picked out for her to settle and make her home, a wall stood before the people.  For forty years the Israelites had wandered about in the desert just outside Palestine as punishment for refusing to believe God would enable them to conquer the people living in the land God wanted them to settle.  Fear kept that entire generation of Israelites out of the land that they comfortably could have inhabited.  Now, forty years later, the people had a far more difficult challenge before them if they were to live in the Promised Land.  They had to attack a walled city and bring it down.  It was a city fortress.  Now Jericho was tightly shut up because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. (Joshua 6:1 NIV) God did have a plan for how they were to attack the city.  It certainly was not a commonly practiced military strategy though.   March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days.  Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams' horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets.  When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in."  (Joshua  6:3-5 NIV)

Imagine standing before the city of Jericho and staring up at that wall with those orders to follow.  Would you have taken them seriously?   Would you have followed them or come up with another plan?  Consider this possibility; that every wall that is set before you God has a specific way of addressing it.  There are not two ways; there is not an alternative plan He has in mind.  Only one solution is acceptable to Him, only one method for dealing with it.  What if you know what He wants done and you must decide if you will trust Him in it?  Will you let Him be in charge?  Consider this possibility.  Not only Is God wanting you to trust Him with regard to the wall, He has trusted you to follow His instructions.  Is God making a good decision?  Should He trust you?  Can the Lord count on you to follow His instructions, to do things the way He wants them done?  Will you embarrass Him by the way you deal with the wall you face?

Nehemiah is often referred to as, “The Wall Builder”.  Jerusalem had for three generations remained in ruins.  A few homes had been rebuilt, some gardens started, commerce reestablished.  But its wall remained a wreck.  As long as this was the case, the few settlers in the city were in danger of being killed or enslaved by any marauding band of soldiers passing through the territory.  Nehemiah was a high ranking official in the Persian court, the cupbearer to the king.  One day his brother came to town and informed Nehemiah what he discovered when he visited Jerusalem.  Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.   They said to me, "Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire."  (Nehemiah 1:2-3 NIV)  At this point, as Nehemiah heard the news of the condition of the chief city of his ancestors, he had to process carefully what this meant for him.  The wall required someone with leadership skills to lead the rebuilding effort.  It would be a monumental task.  Nehemiah really did not  yet even know how great an effort it would take to get it done.  He did however realize that for more than seventy years nothing had been done about the demolished wall and for good reason.  No one thought the wall could be rebuilt.

Consider carefully this possibility.  The reason Nehemiah found out about how bad the situation in Jerusalem was and the condition of the wall is because the Lord gave him that information.  It was God who put together his brother’s trip to Jerusalem and his eyewitness account to Nehemiah of what he saw.  If that is the case and the Biblical view of life is that God is in charge of it all, what we see and what we hear and what we face, then, it was the Lord who gave him that information about the wall.  Now why would the Lord do that?  Why would he give Nehemiah this report of the terrible need for help in Jerusalem?  Perhaps the wall was Nehemiah’s responsibility to fix.  Maybe God was assigning this task to him.  That is why He told Nehemiah about it.  That is why he gave Nehemiah the career he had, gave him his friendship with the king of Persia.  Is it possible that the wall “had Nehemiah’s name on it”?  Nehemiah seemed to think so.  Why else did he ask the king for permission to go to Jerusalem and work on it.  The king said to me, "What is it you want?"  Then I prayed to the God of heaven,  and I answered the king, "If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it." (Nehemiah 2:4-5 NIV)

When Nehemiah got to Jerusalem he discovered that conditions were even worse than he imagined.  The people were disorganized and discouraged.   Threats were made against his life by leaders of neighboring countries who did not want the wall rebuilt.  God gave Nehemiah a wall to build but he did not make it easy for him.  In fact it was a foolish and terrifying proposition to try and rebuild the wall.  God left this wall in Nehemiah’s hands.  It was up to Nehemiah to take up the project of rebuilding the wall.  He trusted Nehemiah to make the right decision.  What if God has a wall for you to build?  What if it is too hard for you to build?  It is too much work?  It is not something anyone else thinks you should do.  Will you do it anyway?  Will you build that wall?  What if God is waiting for you to do it?  What if He trusts you with this wall?  Will you prove Him right to believe in you?    You cannot say you do not know about the wall.  He has already laid out all the facts.  What will you do about it?

It is surprising when you give it much thought how many of God’s prophets faced terrible circumstances.  Many were put in nearly impossible circumstances that that would have pushed most of us to quit.  Why tell people what God has said when no one wants to listen?  Why put yourself in danger when it seems pointless?  Why keep preaching when if feels hopeless.  The prophet Habakkuk stood on the wall of Jerusalem and saw nothing but darkness.  The Babylonians were going to come and conquer Judah.  It was impossible to stop them.  Disaster loomed and Habakkuk had no inspiring revelation from God that all would work out if he just did not lose hope.  The last words of the book he wrote are some of the most elevating found in Scripture though.  They state the sort of determination that heroes in movies and great works of literature make, that Ivanhoe or Aragorn or Captain America or Wonder Woman or the Black Panther would make.  No matter what may happen, no matter how bad it gets, I will not yield.  I will not quit.  God trusted Habakkuk to not surrender to fear, to not give in to despair.  He trusted Habakkuk with the great message of trouble.  Habakkuk made one of the most inspiring declarations found anywhere in Scripture and we must carefully let it sink in to us.  I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled.  Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us.  Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.  The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights. (Habakkuk 3:16-19 NIV)

The Lord trusted Habakkuk at the wall.  God let him see what really was going to happen, gave him the complete picture and believed his friend could handle it.  He told Habakkuk that trouble was coming, trouble that would shatter the faith of many and he watched to see how Habakkuk took it.  What if you heard that your life was going to be tough, that it would be hard what you face?  Would you stand with your eyes staring into the storm and trust Christ then?  Would you courageously believe that God will be with you and see you through the hurricane that is on the horizon?  Will you trust the Lord not just when it is sunny and clear but also when the lightning flashes and the thunder billows and the wind threatens your home?  Can God trust you at the wall?  Are you the one who has the courage to stand when others run away and hide?  Do you truly believe in Christ your Savior?  Your time will come when the evidence seems to indicate that God does not love you, that He has forgotten you and that you are alone in this.  Yet the evidence will be wrong and those who will tell you to give up on your God and your faith in Him will be wrong.  You alone will be able to quiet the critics and the noise of despair by declaring with Habakkuk.  “I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”  Decide now.  At the foot of the wall, make your declaration. “The Sovereign Lord is my strength!”  God will see you through the storm and you will be victorious.  The future is on your side!

Loyalty

 

Mark 12:30 NIV

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'

What Is Your Top Priority?

I was either nineteen or twenty.  I did drive and had my own car and although I lived at home I had the freedom to do pretty much whatever I wanted to do as long as I did not make things tough on my parents.  A friend invited me to her house for her party.   I had a great time dancing and meeting new people.  The music was loud and the lights were dim and the adventure of pursuing a romance that evening electrified the moment.  My faith in Christ was developing rapidly and I was committed to following Him so I wasn’t exactly a wild partier…I was not even a partier at all but this was my opportunity to start.  The smell of marijuana floated about and there were coolers filled with a variety of alcoholic beverages.  Never before had I even tasted a beer so I was walking about in a new territory.  Because everyone else was drinking, I grabbed a beer, popped the top and took a sip.  About ten minutes later I took another sip.  As I mingled through the room, I held my beer with a ferocious tenacity, refusing to let go of it but dumbfounded by its presence.  Now you must realize that I did not have any strong opinions about drinking at the time, did not know of any Scriptures that condemned it, was not certain if the Bible was in favor of drinking or not and had never been warned by my parents about the dangers of alcohol.  Although I had grandparents who died from alcoholism, I was not aware of it at the time.  Yet as I danced and visited with girls and guys I was just meeting, a gnawing certainty came over me that this was an important moment in my life.  Somehow, without any mystical or supernatural form of communique, I knew that a line had been drawn in the sand for me.  God was setting before me a call to loyalty and the point of determination was the beer in my hand.  Would I drink or would I walk with Him.  Of course I know this sounds absurd and I did not have a single clear explanation for why God might be calling me to this life-long standard but as the evening went along, I was certain God was demanding this of me.  Give up alcohol and be His disciple.  With a room full of people who barely knew me, the Lord had pulled me into a corner and asked me who would I serve and who would rule my heart.  With no pastor to guide me and not a single friend to counsel me, I had a decision to make on the outskirts of a dimly lit dance floor.

It is funny how few people are even aware of what Jesus meant when He invited Peter and His brother Andrew to “Come follow me…”  (Matthew 4: 19 NIV)  Perhaps He used the same phrasing to call the other disciples and many more even to go with Him but we can’t say because much is left out of the Scriptures regarding particulars.  We know of at least one other person who was also asked by Jesus to come and follow Him but that man turned away and decided he wouldn’t…at least for the moment.  This does not mean that the famously labeled “rich young ruler” did not have salvation but he did decide not to have the sort of life God offered him.  You can decide to not “follow Christ” and still have eternal life.  You can be as rough and self-driven as you wish and the blood of Christ will wash away all your sin if you take Jesus at His word and put your hope in Him for salvation.  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  (Romans 10:13)  The question before you today is not whether or not you will have eternal life but rather one much simpler and searching.  Will you follow Jesus?

Joshua asked a question similar to this of the Hebrew people as he came to the end of his earthly days.  A world of promise and opportunity rose before God’s people.  They had just conquered many parts of the Promised Land and were settling into their new homes.  All around them were pagan people who lived however they pleased.  Their morality and values were not taken from God and the Ten Commandments were not sacred to them.  The Israelites could live like their international neighbors or be different from them.  It was up to them.  God would not force His own values upon them.  Generations who followed would be impacted by the decision they were about to make though and the direction they headed spiritually could impact the course of history.  Joshua stood before the fledgling nation and spoke for God.  "Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.  But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.” (Joshua 24:14-15 NIV)  If that was you standing in the crowd and you had to give an answer to this challenge, how would you reply?  Joshua made it clear where he stood on this.  “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord."

(Joshua 24:15 NIV)  God does not demand this of you that you serve Him.  It is up to you what you choose to do with this life!

We have in the New Testament a fascinating peek into the personality of God.  As a great number of followers of Jesus decided to walk away from Him, Jesus asked Peter and the other eleven or so who were standing around what they wanted to do.  “Are you going to give up on me too?”  For any of the rest of us that are broken by sin, His question might hint at a tinge of insecurity.  He wasn’t quite sure where He stood with them.  But Jesus, who was pure in His intentions and clear in His thoughts about Himself, asked them so they could decide if they would remain loyal to God or abandon Him.  Peter was certain of what He was going to do.  Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.  We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."  (John 6:68 NIV)  How would you have responded to Jesus’ question?

The last great king of Judah is best known for his tragic decision to take his army and fight against the Egyptians who were on their way to do battle with the Babylonians.  Before that however, Josiah made the most important determination of his life.  Josiah’s father, King Amon reigned only two years but during that time he followed in the footsteps of his father Manasseh who was probably the most wicked and dishonorable king Judah ever had.  

He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done.  He (Amon) walked in all the ways of his father; he worshiped the idols his father had worshiped, and bowed down to them.  He forsook the Lord, the God of his fathers, and did not walk in the way of the Lord.  Amon's officials conspired against him and assassinated the king in his palace.  (2 Kings 21:20-23 NIV)  Not many move away from the patterns established by their parents and grandparents but Josiah did.  By age twenty-four, Josiah was actively pursuing Godliness and trying his best to re-establish worship of God in his country.  His first major project was to clean out the Temple of God in Jerusalem and make it fit to worship the Lord there once more.  During the renovations, a copy of the Old Testament was found and for the first time in decades, the people understood what God wanted of His people.  The Law was rediscovered and Josiah had to decide if he would follow it or comfortably ignore it.  There was a line for him to cross regardless if any of the people he ruled chose to go with him.  All eyes were on Josiah to see what he would do about the Word of God.  Josiah called all the leaders of Judah together and had the Scriptures read publically at the temple of the Lord.  The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord-to follow the Lord and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.  (2 Kings 23:3 NIV)  Josiah chose to pledge his loyalty to God and follow Him wherever the Lord took him.  Clearly, based upon the record, Josiah was rare among his ancestors and those who followed him as king to choose God as Lord.  How would you have responded to the scriptural call to absolute loyalty to God?

The Apostle Paul made a statement that is nearly always viewed from God’s perspective but never from Paul’s.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 8:38-39 NIV)  God of course will not let His people be kept from Him.  When Christ died on the Cross, God’s salvation became irrevocable and unassailable.  Nothing could stop His forgiveness of Sin or the salvation He provides from reaching those who turn to Him.  Jesus made certain this was understood when He declared, I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.  My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand.  (John 10:28-29 NIV)

Turn the statement around in Paul’s direction.  Is he also proclaiming that nothing can keep him away from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus?  Demons, angels, height, depth, what is happening now or what might happen in the future are all not going to stop Paul or others like him from having the love of God in his life.  It is perhaps too odd to consider this passage this way but could it not be so?  Might it also be that Paul would not let anything stand between him and God?  Consider all Paul suffered following Christ!  Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.  Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without…  (2 Corinthians 11:24-27 NIV)  He went through all this for one reason.  Paul refused to let anything stand in the way of him living for Christ.   Do you have that same loyalty?

The question is not whether or not you have eternal life.  Nor is it, “Are your sins forgiven?”  Salvation is settled for you by what Jesus did when He took your sins from you on the Cross.  Many Christians never go any further than this.  They never want anything more from God than the knowledge that they have a home waiting for them after they die.  Some though want to live with Christ now.  They cannot bear to dishonor God by how they live.  They are hungry for God, thirsty for Christ, they crave more and greater intimacy with the Holy Spirit.  Is that you?  Are you all in?  Will you go with God regardless of what others do.  Are you, like the Apostle Paul, “not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile”?  (Romans 1:16 NIV)  Are you willing to declare your absolute loyalty to Christ as the Lord of your life?  Take your stand with millions of other Christians across the ages and state before God that you will follow Him wherever He leads you and go with Him loyally wherever He takes you.