The Evil Eye

Have you come to the spot where you notice something wrong with another person?  Do you see clearly that person’s flaws, moral inadequacies or bad behavior?  Do you recognize what that person must do to get things straight so he or she can be a better person?  Well great!  Pray about it.  Pray with humility and great respect for the work of God already accomplished in that one person.  Pray, recognizing God’s sovereignty in that life as the creator and sustainer and the finisher of the work He has already begun.  Bite your lip and slap your face though as you start to be God and point out what you have seen wrong with the person.  Cut out your tongue before you try to get out a word of criticism.  Be as harsh with your soul as Pontius Pilate was with Jesus if you think you should begin to give way to your urge to judge one of the Lord’s own.  You open yourself up to all the flaming darts of the evil one if you begin to take your place as corrector and faultfinder because, as well-intended as you mean to be, you have stood in the place of Satan and usurped him in his obscene work.  Satan is the accuser and if you wish to join him in his rebellion against the Lord, then at least be prepared for the consequences.  Nothing shuts down the work of God in us quicker than our sharp tongue and critical evaluations.  We cannot advance at all with God if we take this stance abrogating God’s authority.  Of course we mean well when we point out flaws and correct personality deficiencies…just like Eve meant well when she offered Adam the fruit.  Given how high the stakes, would it not be better just to swallow our criticisms like a deadly poison pill than let them get out into the open and make ourselves enemies of God?  If you see something wrong with another person, pray about it and let the matter rest with Jesus Christ who knows what to do with such things.

Do not judge or you too will be judged.  Matthew 7: 1 NIV

The God Twitch

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

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

Inner Working

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

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

The Effect of the Follow

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

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

Reflecting Upon Narcissus

How many times do we make an assessment or give a justification for some action of ours or inaction and frame it as an indisputable fact?  Oh I did not have time to pray much.  Really?  I was unable to keep my promise.  Truly?  I can't afford to tithe.  Is that so?  I was prevented from reading my Bible.  Oh?  I don't know a soul who is ready to hear the Gospel.  What?  I was too busy to participate in congregational worship.  Huh?  If God stuck His nose in our business and dug around a bit, would He make the same determinations as us?  We shake our heads at Ananias and Sapphira and piously declare their wrongfulness but have we not also lied to the Holy Spirit on occasion?  Have we not thrown up our hands and most honorably asserted our inability to do what God has said clearly to do?  Have we not pretended not to hear when He knows we have heard?  Do we not pretend to be something we aren't...feebler than we are, more busy than we are, poorer than we are, less capable than we are?  Thank God for His mercy that He has not struck us down for the very same sins of Ananias and Sapphira!  Too often we say we can't when what is really so is that we won't.  We won't have faith.  We won't make the effort.  We won't stop loving the world.  We won't quit being lazy.  We won't turn away from temptation.  Narcissism is at its core is far worse than simple vanity.  It is the determination to keep your eyes fixed upon yourself rather than looking up to the God who saves you.  We don't lie to the Holy Spirit because we are trying to fool Him; we do it to try to fool ourselves into justifying our lame spirituality.  The Lord is good enough, strong enough loving enough and resourced enough to give us great power and ability.  Paul instructs all good Christians who walk by faith.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  There is little room in that assertion for "I couldn't!"

"My people have committed two sins:  They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." Jeremiah 2:13 NIV

The Great Moment

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

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

An Extension of Christ

Do you know a "hard case", someone who is so far from God that he seems to be impossibly lost?  Have you come across the soul who is irascible, who is such an irritant that you are ready to be done with her?  The great temptation is to give up on certain people; to dump them in the hopeless bin.  And yet there is not a single person who is "hopeless"; otherwise what good is the cross of Christ.  Zacchaeus was content in his greed and selfishness and certainly many must have prayed for his demise.  Was he hopeless?  Saul was a human butcher, cruel and a prig.  He must have been the subject of many a cry for destruction, the Christian community surely longed for God to take him apart.  Was he hopeless?   We are astonished by David's miserable wailing when he found out Absalom had been killed because it was Absalom who despised David more than even his worst enemies; who although a son, wanted him dead and publicly humiliated.  Was Absalom hopeless?  David didn't see him that way and he is our standard for evaluating others.  No one is too wicked to be scorned; no one is too lost to be rejected.  Jesus died for all, not just those who were good prospects for holiness.  If His love extended beyond the natural bounds of affection, then ours can and must too because He lives within us.  We never have an excuse for giving up on another; for quitting on her.  We may be discouraged by the outer show of things but our Lord went straight for  the heart and loved even the most haughty of sinners.   We must stand firm in Christ and let Him love through us and not confound His efforts by letting our dislike for someone keep us from being the Lord's good and faithful servant.  It is no use complaining to the Lord who was beaten in the courtyard of Caiaphas.  The Lord sees a place of hope in your Pilates and Matthews.  Nothing warms the heart of our Lord quite as much as having a friend who sees that hope too.   Ananias did not want to go to Saul and touch Him but he did and the world has not been the same.  Extend your reach past your feelings and let Christ win you over.

Then Ananias went to the house and entered it.  Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord--Jesus…"  Acts 9: 17

Undecided

It is one thing to choose Jesus Christ for your salvation; another matter altogether to decide He is Lord.  We circumvent the question  by passing over its implications.  Are we ready to pray a while longer with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane?  Do we have the heart for storing up in our own bodes the blows intended for Christ?  Have we really taken up the call to "make disciples of all nations"?  Is there a flinch, a hesitation to the demand to let the world run roughshod over us that we might be salty salt and a city on a hill?  It is a clear sign that we are not altogether given over to the determination that Jesus Christ is Lord over us when we get bent out of shape over how He has mistreated us, how He has mishandled us, how He has misappropriated our skills and talents.  "What a waste of my time or abilities", we whine .  "How foolish that I must endure this", we complain.  Are we ready to declare that Jesus Christ is Lord over us wherever He has us land and that the complaint we mutter over our trying circumstance is nothing but full out mutiny?  We certainly have a right, even as God's child, to be upset that we have not gotten a fair shake in life and that we deserve better treatment than we have received.  But we mustn't lie to ourselves that Christ is Lord over us.  He is not.  We have let our wounded ego get the upper hand.  If Christ wishes to crush us with troubles and disappointments that the sweetness of Him might seep out of us, then so be it.  He is Lord.  If wants to break apart our plans and aspirations that something of us that is altogether His might become consecrated bread for the world, then rejoice for He is Lord.  Once the boy gave Christ his loaves and fishes, they were God's to do with as He wished and it would have been a ridiculous absurdity for him to complain when the disciples gave some of that bread and fish to a neighbor he despised.  It was God's alone to dispense as He saw fit the moment the loaves and fishes were handed over to Christ.  Once you declare Jesus Christ is Lord, you are His to do with as He wishes so settle down and with the same faith you had at the beginning when you made your decision to give Him your life, hold to that decision now as you discover He really intends to do with you as HE intends.

...then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve… Joshua 24:15 NIV

What Are You Really?

The most gracious work of God that occurs for the developing believer is the realization he is inconsequential.  His knowledge base is minuscule.  His benefit to others is minimal, if not harmful.  His goodness is impoverished.  It is then that God can do something with him.  Abraham finally threw his hands up after the Ishmael mess and realized he and his wife had no idea what they were doing.  Jacob in all his brilliance couldn't make out Leah from Rachel and Moses thought killing an Egyptian foreman would turn things around for the Hebrews.  The perfect mess is just a mess unless we get at the main thing in life.  We are nothing but a developing corpse if Jesus Christ is not working His way through us.  The silence of God won't last but it will continue long enough until we grip hard on the absurdity of leaving our Lord out of what we do.  God may have shown you something at one time but you let it pass.  He may have pushed you toward something but you turned away.  Jesus had one purpose in life, to do the will of the Father.  Nothing distracted Him from it and as a result, at each point He knew what to do.  Do you know what to do?  Do you know what the Father is doing with you?  You can avoid the place where God developed your course or you can return to it and do the one thing you know He wants you to do.  It is up to you; the Lord won't make it easy on you by manipulating your thoughts or backing you into a corner.  You must decide the Lord is LORD and then turn into Him.  As you do, you might have to abandon some long standing belief of yours or an important person's view of you but do it today.  Do it now.  As the Lord works His way through you, He will work His way out of you and you will be like sparkling ice water in a thirsty land; you will be a well from which living water flows. It may be startling  the ways in which God refreshes and transforms lives through you.

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.  John 7:38 NIV

How Long Will You Wait?

The problem we face as Christians who sincerely want to see our neighbors and friends come to Christ is the misconception we have about what this means for them to make such a dramatic left turn.  The vast majority of people we contact daily who are not born from above are completely content as they are.  They don't want our assertions or our "great opportunity".  It is absurd to them that they should change their lives so dramatically as we insist and their conscience is not the least bit troubled by what they do.    Divorce is reasonable if they are no longer in love, pornography is enjoyable and maybe even helpful, what we call sexual immorality is moral to them and greed honored.  The itch is meant to be scratched every time it surfaces and the audacity of demanding something approaching limits to freedom is irrational to them.  We are not, and never have been offering something so enticing it cannot be rejected.  Jesus did not say He came to bring peace but a sword.  Most people do not see Christianity as a better life; a less tolerable one perhaps, a constricted one probably.  Even many Christians are a tad bitter about what they find Christianity to be.   The deceit of Satan is thorough and penetrating.  The lie that being in Christ is a meager and impoverished existence is believed almost universally, even many times within the church.  Why would those infatuated with death want to cross over to life?  The Gospel is not seen as good news but a bitter pill to swallow.  What can we do about this?  The Lord has given us two directives.  Pray for the hearts of our family, friends and neighbors and say the Gospel clearly.  Rather than being confounded by a  wasteland of wrecked souls, grab the hope Jesus Himself had when He happily proclaimed His mission...The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.  (John 10:10 NIV)  Not everyone will realize their lives are bankrupt without Jesus but some will.  Not everyone will want to hear what you have to say but some will.    We must not be dismayed by the prevailing blindness.  The Lord is present shedding light in the darkness so not every soul is trapped in the shadows.   The Gospel is even now unlocking rusted padlocks binding hearts and you have that same key in your hand.  Don't worry yourself with strategies for trying to convince people to come to Christ.  Let the Holy Spirit do that work.  Give  the Gospel  away though as if it were the  hope of all mankind; don’t hold back when your time has come to be the great angel of grace, God's personal messenger.  Someone is waiting for you.  God has prepared the way!

Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."   Luke 9:60 NIV

When There Is Nothing You Can Do

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

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

Unperturbed

What seems to frustrate us most, at least for those who live actually, acknowledging  tragedy and wreckage are  the normal parts of life, is that we can't ever swing free of our troubles.  We may hide from them for a while or even make light of them as if we are indifferent to their bite but in the end troubles square us up and make full contact.  The soldier on the battlefield as well as the mother nursing her sickly child is matched up with troubles and they make a mockery of the misty dream-state concocted by teachers of Biblical positivism.  You would think, if you believed some, that the disciples never died, Mary Magdalene never got sick and John found Patmos a paradise.  It is there before us though.  We do get tired of our husband's mood swings, limp with arthritis and wake up to unemployment.  The bank does foreclose on our house and our daughter slams the door on us.  This stuff of life is here and we must recognize the root of it as it is.  We are a fool if we think Jesus never stubbed His toe, woke up with a migraine or failed to sway the crowd.  He, whose own brothers and sisters thought Him a fool and whose mother convinced herself He had lost His mind, lived out fully the farthest reach of sin and taking it within Himself buried that sin in the Cross.  Our sin has been crucified with Christ but its stench remains at every crack and mound.  Its damage remains like scars that seem to get worse with age.  What Jesus Christ has done for us though in taking our sin from us is make it possible for His life to live within ours, for Him to actually transform us that He and us become one new being.  This means that the same strength Christ had as He worked His way to Jerusalem is ours and the faith He had that made Him fearless as the storm threatened to swamp the boat where He slept is the faith we hold too.  We have no monstrosity to fear, no rejection to dread.  With Christ working His way through each part of us, we can be happy as sorrow strikes but not with the happiness of a lunatic but with the joy of the redeemed,  the joy flowing out of the One who has been baptized by death and come up again alive to the brim.  You can, in Christ, face your day not in some drunken stupor brought on by the old wine  you drank before but in the life you have now with the Lord Himself welling up as a fountain of Living water within you.  Drink deeply from that spring and face what comes to you with the strength God provides.  Nothing is too terrible to bear if Christ's very own blood flows through your veins.  It is not God who incites you to worry, not Christ who pushes dread upon you.  The word of God is always "fear not" just as surely as you breathe.  Don't dread the coming storm...be glad God has given you the opportunity to find out just how strong you now are and how unperturbed you can be.

"Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."   John 7:38 NIV

The Good Life

Jesus told us not to rejoice that the demons fear us but that our names are written in heaven.  Christianity has become to a large degree a results oriented club rather than what God intends, the opening in which we all build our lives in Christ.    We can feed our lusts by doing this or that, all good and noble activities perhaps, but the Lord isn't interested in those things.  He wants to form Himself in us that what is found as we are uncovered in the light of human scrutiny is Christ there.  The crucible is not the great place, the thrilling spot, the electrifying moment but it is at the sink where the dishes we wash are for God's glory and we do not just tolerate the task but thank the Lord that He might shine there.  As we make the presentation or help an ungrateful child with his homework we have the form of Christ jutting out from the task and it is up to us if we are going to let Him be seen.  We can complain about our classmate or gossip about our co-worker and all the while entertain someone with our craftiness but is that what we want our lives to be?  Are we satisfied with the same personality as Adam and Cain or do we most want to be joined to Christ?  Sodom was not destroyed because it was the center of homosexuality; it was wrecked because God could not do anything with the people who lived there. They resisted to the end the love and mercy of God and if we can't let Christ seep out of us when the work gets tedious and our efforts go unnoticed, then what good are?  It is just when Jerusalem hated Christ most that He did His greatest work.  Can it be said of you too that the love of Christ and His mastery of your soul takes the stage when you future looks grim and your fruit is blighted?  Do you have the look of God as you come to your own Cross?  The imitation of Christ is not some sort of faking it, the play acting of a movie script; it is the deliverance of the human heart from sin by the blood of Jesus Christ resulting in His life working His way through ours in real moments of common actions.

Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.  3 John 11-12 NIV

Uncommon Peace

Are we disturbed by our circumstance, unsettled by our place?  Have we grown weary of the dreary, of the humdrum common existence we share with so much of the world?  Are we tired of doing the same things over and over again,  of having to make do with what we have and of living with so little excitement?  Do we dread the boredom and despise the tedium?  Nothing smacks of the Devil's temptation more than the resistance to God's placement of us.  Lust, coveting and gossip are the symptoms of a misshapen view of what living in God is.  Solomon proved exquisitely the hopelessness of trying to get every itch scratched.  The more his craven mind searched for another syrupy substitute for the joy of God's salvation, the more insatiable his thirst.  We are not made for such wanton wandering.  We are made for righteousness, peace and satisfaction.  The last place the world searches for happiness is at the Cross of Christ.  The blood and guts of Satan's fury resulted in the one hope this world has.  Jesus Christ crucified calms the storm that rages in the human heart and satisfies the thirsty soul.  You will continue washing dishes, putting up with selfish people and unfair circumstances but you can have joy if you look to Christ for your satisfaction.  One moment of closeted prayer, a single cry for help to the God of your salvation and you can find yourself peace in front of the pile of laundry or the critical evaluation.  You are not alone in your weariness but the one who is with you will not let you remain in your self-pity.  He will lift you up from your clouded grind and give you joy if you let Him have a place with you.  Take your Bible and don't try to find something in it, some promise or bit of direction.  Simply go to it so you can be with Christ and let the Holy Spirit wash over you as you read the Words prepared for you this very day.  Let God meet you here...here where your drudgery catches up with His climb to Gethsemane and beyond to Calvary and all self-pity will be consumed by the fire of His raging love for you.  Nothing, not even the tedium of your day, can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.  Find a way to rest in Him wherever the Lord's hand may bring you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.  John 14:27 NIV

Indwelling Love

The closer we look at the true morality of our heart, the less confident we become of ever having a family resemblance to Jesus.  Our actual affections should sicken us if we care much about being holy.  If we have come to the conclusion that we are spineless and lack integrity between what we confess about Christianity and what we are, then something supernatural can begin within us.  God is not waiting breathlessly to see if we can make something good of ourselves; the opposite is actually the case.  He is watching for our tipping point when we become available for Him to rework.  At the point of our hopelessness, we may open ourselves to the intervention of Holy Spirit and His marvelous transforming power.  Jesus Christ did not tell us that we were to love our neighbors as ourselves because He thought we could ever do it.  We can barely love our children in some approximation of it, love our best friends as best friends, but our love of the neighbor who takes our legs out from under us somehow is not going to be adored with the affection God wants for him.  We can only hope that Jesus Christ will do our loving for us; that He will assert His will and power in our actions.  The cross dangling from our mirror or hidden within our heart is not a reminder of distant God keeping an eye on us.  It is the statement that Christ in us is the hope of glory and that He is violently at times working His way out of us and into our world.  Let us not try to love through Him but rather let Him love through us.  The purity we seek is not some gilded try on our part but rather bloody holiness brought in by the presence of the Lord Jesus Himself.  True loving of your neighbor as yourself happens only if you give Christ room to do that loving, if you make yourself available to Him to bless those who hate you and cherish the enemies God died to save.  Nothing is more sure than the ability Christ has to make you full of love;  your faith in Him will do the trick. 

...grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.   Ephesians 3:18-19 NIV

The Expanding of Christ

One of the absurdities of our modern Christian era is the belief that God is after our success...or our health...or some form of self-realization...reaching our potential.    When Peter had to man up and face the Christ He had abandoned, the Lord had nothing to say about Peter's bright future.  He asked Peter if the disciple loved Him.  When Peter made his affirmation, Jesus told him to "feed my sheep".  The inner core Jesus was wanting was love for Him.  The outer stretch was for Peter to be Jesus for the world He faced.  There was nothing in this of "being all you can be" or getting God's blessing.    Being born again is the most devastating of blows to self-realization.  The moment the grace of God works its way in us, Jesus Christ joins us and we are transformed into someone totally new; Christ/us.  We forget to our harm that Jesus never went about figuring out how to make His life better; He sought only the will of the Father.  If that meant sleeping out in the open with His disciples or biting His tongue as the priests questioned Him, He did it.  When the Father told Him to throw His life down just as the adoring crowds began to look to Him as Messiah, He did not hesitate.  This character, this absolute loyalty to the Father is what we acquire when we are born again.  If the Father wants us rich and successful, then so be it but we must beware of thinking this is of course God's will for us. If it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven, then we can be certain very few of the wealthy and  accomplished will find themselves on the narrow way.  Not only that, one of the great temptations for anyone wanting to be holy is riches and the achievement of personal goals.  People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.  1 Timothy 6:9-10 NIV  The great will of God is that Christ be the central part of us.  He must increase is our constant push….and that may not mean we get healthier or more successful in the process.  It is when we are weak that He is made strong…or to put it another way, that He expands His influence in us.   Nine of the healed lepers ran off and completely forgot about Jesus.   It was only the one out of the ten who when He got what He wanted returned to Christ.  Those are not great odds and it certainly flies in the face of modern convention that those who are "blessed" or the ones mostly likely to be loyal to God.  The opposite seems to be the case both in Scripture as well as in the casual observations we make.  God's glory is most often exhibited brightest in the poor and downtrodden parts of the world.   The priority of the Lord for you is that you first seek the Kingdom of God both in your praying and in your wishing and longing...then all these other things we care about will be addressed and attended.

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?  Luke 9:25-26 NIV

Hidden But Never Far From You

The last time we saw an age of "no morality" and "no religion" we witnessed the bloody French revolution.  Rationalism brought with it the loss of religious faith and the era of amorality but there was no freedom in it.  There never is such a species of man who lives outside law; the morals of the whorehouse are just as binding as those of the monastery and the debased sorority is far more dictatorial than any fundamentalist.  Jesus said that out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.(Matthew 15:19 NIV) This is not modern; it is ancient morality that began in Adam.  We all have this mush of values roiling about below the surface of our consciousness and it is our moral baseline.  The myth of our time is that we can live above ourselves somehow, beyond  the values of our grandparents but it is a lie.  The morality of this age is just as rigid as that of the Canaanites and Philistines.  The drug dealer's moral code is more fundamental than a Baptist's and of much greater risk to cross.  Stalin had the morality of Cain etched upon his soul; millions would have wished it were instead the morality of Christ.  One's conscience is nothing more than the biggest values he holds and a conscience is of no use if the morals it knows are of no higher standard than those of Picasso or Jack London.  We do not need a conscience, we need a Savior and it is the Cross of Christ that dips down below our consciousness and raises us up to a new morality, one of love and patience and faith.  The blood of Christ does not make us more aware of right and wrong; it buys us back and transforms us that we can begin to be holy, not out of fear of a rampaging angel but out of a redeemed heart that has been changed with the heart of God implanted within it.  Your thoughts, if you are honest have never been as warm and cool as a teddy bear; you are more like  a snake in your deepest points.  Only Jesus Christ can make your thoughts pure and clean and vibrant with love as you let Him have His way with you.  The Lord is not your polish to bring out your shine, He is the furnace out of which all things are made new.  Never put faith in yourself; but always trust God to make you right.

Trust in God.  Trust also in me. John 14: 1b

The Daily Dilemma

When we reach the conclusion of a day, do we give much thought to how it went from God's perspective?   There seem to be two non-Biblical takes on a day.  The first is that God really doesn't care much how it went.  It seems laughable to many that anyone would even attempt to ascertain God's view of experiences and reactions.  Commentators mock the fools who claim God gave them victory in sporting events or brought them success at what they did.  The other view is that everything always goes just as God wants it to go and so each decision made and every circumstance is divinely determined and thus "His will".  And yet the Scripture seems to be in neither of these two camps.  God is presented as angry at how some things go and pleased as punch on other occasions.  The details of the day seem to matter to the Lord; they aren't just meaningless minutia or orchestrated point by point as God determines.  We can really decide to turn left or right and in the examples of life lived out in actualities we find in Scripture, God cares which way the people go.  It genuinely seems to sadden and anger God that Israelites bend into paganism and He appears really happy when a single sinner repents and turns to Him for help.  It may appear clownish for a young wife to pray her husband like the meal she prepares or for a basketball player to pray he win his game but even if such praying is immature, it isn't for the reasons often voiced.  We are told to pray for God to intervene in our circumstances; no parameters are set for us.  And if things cannot and do not turn ever on our praying, then what an absurdity it is for the Lord to tell us to pray for our daily bread and the "whatsoevers" of our day.  It is meaningless noise if everything is set in stone by the will of God or not even noticed by Him.  As a young scholar stretches his vocabulary by reading great works and an athlete builds her strength by pushing her muscles to the limit, so we build intimacy with God and develop holiness by turning to Him for the breadiness of our minutes and hours.  Each day is filled with a multitude of "daily bread" moments that God wants us to bring before Him and admit our need for His help.   Why does an old man go to a doctor for medication if not because in his maturity he recognizes his limitations and admits his poverty?  Have we so little faith and are we so childish that we do not have it in us to persist in knocking and seeking and asking?  Are we so calloused by our troubles and failures that we no longer have space in our day to go to God and expect Him to have at least as much concern for what we face as us?  Is God not god enough to care for you and want to wrap you in His arms in a tender embrace ?  Do you not think He celebrates with you your victories and weeps over your defeats?  Aren't you aware of how much He cares about your reaction to the temptation you face, what you decide about your long-standing grudges and how you respond to your critic?  It is odd, just based on what is clearly evident in Scripture, that any believer would dismiss the possibility that God has something to say about His day.  And it seems to be an absurdity that He would do nothing to try to ascertain what His thoughts might be!

Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?" He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.     Mark 4:38-39 NIV

Careless Giving

Are we conflicted over doing something nice for someone who doesn't deserve it?  Have we tried to avoid the ungrateful and contemptible?  Are we shying away from all those who want more of us than we are willing to give?  The oddness of Mary pouring her perfume on the feet of Jesus was not lost on the disciples.  It was an extravagant waste and even Jesus noted the irrationality of it.  It is deeply human to concern oneself with the nickels and pennies and avoid wasteful expenditures on others.  We can talk ourselves out of the slightest hint of irrational loving if we are careful and purposeful.  What is strange though about the mind of God is that He often wastes His resources on foolish extravagance.  Take a look at the tiny paramecium under  a microscope and you become dumbfounded by its elegant structure.  Yet there are billions of those lovely creatures that go unseen and unnoticed.  The bluebells hidden away in mountain meadows that fade and drop from their stem before a single human notices them and the sparkle of light refracting into hundreds of little rainbows as droplets spray out from a cascading stream no one is watching remind us of the way God thinks.  He wastes His kindness on ungrateful nitwits who don't have the least concern for what He has done for them.  He restores the health of a drunk who goes out in his new found fitness and gets into a bar fight.  He gives us glowing red and pink and yellow sunsets that are ignored as we traipse about with our cell phones glued to our ears and our eyes fixed on the traffic.  Wasteful love and extravagant gifts are the stuff of God and we have excused away our life in Him by refusing to make such lavish expenditures on anyone but those we like.  We might buy a sandwich for a homeless vagrant who begs us for money and feel like we have really made the loving gesture but are we willing to do the extravagant thing, the irrational thing that we could not cogently justify only because it is so much like God to do such as that?  The tree across the way is full of so many loquats that not even the crows and sparrows can make a dent in the harvest and the tree is too tall for the people in the neighborhood to pick its fruit.   God is irrational.  Mary was irrational.  The disciple who preached in the far reaches of the world only to lose their lives for it were irrational.  Zacchaeus was irrational to give half of what He had to the poor.  The one who walks with God and truly loves Jesus will do irrational things because that is the nature He possesses.  Beware of being judicious and careful with what you have and the time you possess.  It may not be the Spirit of Christ ruling you there.   A crazy giver is far more beloved in heaven than the reasonable spendthrift.

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Luke 6:38 NIV

The Shore of Your Choosing

We are prone at every turn to look for something new, something hidden, something interesting to entertain us.  Somehow we think we are better for our curiosity and wiser for our breadth of gathered experiences.  Since Adam, we have an insatiable interest in the side corners of our world and do our best to get at them.  Adam, unlike Eve, was not fooled by Satan's ploy; he embraced the rebellion within it.  Hidden knowledge became a lust for him and he grabbed at it hungrily.  Before the fall, knowledge and insight came directly from God; the fall provided a new way of seeing, of searching out things.  The actualization of self became the idol of Adam and it is ours too if we are not careful.  We are not made to search things out on our own but to see everything through the eyes of God.  The only way we can do this is if we obey Him at each turn.  Faith brings us to recognize our need for God.  Obedience gives us His eyes.  I cannot know love if I am not obeying God nor do I know what to do with it if I am not letting Him be King of my actions.  Lust has been thrust upon us as love; it is the unwillingness to wait for God to show us the way through each holy desire we possess.  Once we turn from Him, we grovel in lust and make no headway whatsoever in seeing and understanding.  Romans 1 is the clear way we head when we let lust take hold of our Godly longings.  Matthew 5-7 is the way we look when we obey God in our longings and let Christ live through us.  The distance between Romans 1 and Matthew 5-7 is a great divide that can only be crossed through the cross of Jesus Christ who has made the way for us to love and hope and faith in the grind of daily living.  There is nothing fascinating or captivating in the moment a man or woman of God gives a cheek to a bad man.  It is an absurdity, a clownish act for all those who have taken the way of Romans 1.  And yet, for the one walking in Christ, doing as He directs, it is the pearl of great price, the stuff of heaven and that has a fascination for him.  You can tell who directs your boat by which shore grabs your attention.  Have you found Romans 1 your harbor or do you lean out after Matthew 5-7.  No law can turn you one way or another.  You must in the end choose who you will serve…

See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.  Romans 9: 33