Too Far Down the Road

Jonah 1:11 NIV

 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, "What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?"

Have You Gone Too Far?

Recently I had to take a rental car back after a trip to Los Angeles.  I needed to return it to the San Jose airport which is about a twenty minute drive from my home.  Before that though I discovered from my son that my wife’s car needed to be taken to the mechanic so after dropping it off, I headed to the airport.  No one in my family could drive my car because it is a manual transmission and it was in the church parking lot.  So it was up to my son to bring my wife to the airport to come get me.  For an hour I waited for them to arrive.  Growing frustrated, I called my wife to find out what had happened to them, only to discover that the hood of my son’s car had flown open while they were driving on the freeway and because they could not figure out how to reattach the hood, they were driving slowly back home, praying the hood would not bounce back up onto the windshield again while they were in traffic.  So what was I to do?  It was easy, I would just call one of my friends to come get me but I only had the numbers of three people in my phone who I thought I could ask.  One by one I called each of them and every time, the person I called did not take the call.  So now what was I supposed to do?  The normal answer would be, “Just solve the problem!”

What is your typical response to a difficult problem?  Do you just figure out what to do? Do you make the best of things and not worry about the outcome?  Are you a fretter?  Do you try to find an expert and get advice?  Do you just quit when you aren’t sure what to do?  How do you respond psychologically to the problems in life?  Are you most likely to take charge of the issue at hand or pretend as if nothing is wrong?  It is true that each situation is different and sometimes we react one way and other times another way.  Yet we must admit that we probably have a default setting when it comes to challenging situations; a way of approaching them that is our usual pattern.  What is going to be suggested today is that we can go too far in how we solve matters and when we do so we can be left psychologically exhausted.

What is meant by “psychologically exhausted”?  This is the state when we find it nearly impossible because of the lack of internal resources to cope emotionally in our preferred manner.  For example, rather than feeling relaxed and peaceful, you can’t hold back your anger, depression despair, anxiety and bitterness or even lust or moral limits.  Like someone who is so tired from driving that she cannot keep from falling asleep at the wheel, certain types of situations become too big for you to handle the way you wish you could or would.  You blow up at someone you really do love.  You develop a headache because of anxiety levels you have reached.  You lie or act in ways morally incompatibly with your values or you give in to an addiction you thought you were past or don’t show the sort of integrity you think you should or believe you ought to maintain.  There is a cause of psychological exhaustion that is actually quite simple.  We try to do God’s work and it is too much for us to handle.

Here is a way of illustrating this that you may have experienced personally or at least have known of happening.  A person who is not a skilled swimmer wades out into the ocean and suddenly a wave unexpectedly swells and sweeps that person off his feet and he is caught in the undertow.  Flailing wildly, the person tries desperately to get his head above the water so he can get his breath.  His heart is pounding, his mind is racing in desperation and his eyes are frantically searching for the surface.  If he does survive, he is left exhausted and even traumatized.  Spiritually it is like that for you when you are not careful.  If you take away from God the work He alone is supposed to be doing, you respond psychologically in similar ways to the panting and traumatized swimmer.  We see examples of this mistake often in scripture.

There is a strange detail in the account of Jesus’ crucifixion that although curious, rings true to human nature.  Christ was hung on a cross and on either side of him two criminals were also nailed to crosses.  Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed.  When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals — one on his right, the other on his left…One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!" (Luke 23:32-33, 39 NIV)  Isn’t this odd?  One of the two men suffering the same fate as Jesus, convulsing in terrible agony used that time to curse and mock Jesus.  His psychological pain was also great and the way he managed it was by insulting Jesus.  What had Jesus done to hurt this man?  How had he earned the fellow’s wrath?  Of course our Lord hadn’t done anything to warrant the insults and rage.  This was the case of someone dealing with a circumstance much too big for him to handle.  The terrors of impending death, the grief of a life wasted, the regrets of pain he caused others to suffer was crashing down upon him and he was trying to cope with all this on his own.  Unwilling to turn to God to carry him through his pain, he was left, like a drowning man unable to swim, without the psychological capacity to handle what he was facing and so the psychological reaction was to become angry with someone who actually loved him.

We see something similar in the Old Testament.  Unable to have children but determined to figure out some way to provide a child for her husband, Sarah, without turning to God for help and counsel, convinced her husband to take her servant girl and try to father a child through her.  We know how well this went.  Abraham was successful and the slave Hagar eventually gave birth to his son.  It was not quite as easy as Sarah imagined seeing her servant pregnant with a child her husband fathered.  When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.  Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me."  "Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. (Genesis 16:4-6 NIV)  Clearly Sarah’s jealousy was egged on by Hagar but Sarah’s plan worked perfectly except that she was not equipped psychologically to live with the consequences of her actions.  Rather than turn to God for help regarding her seeming infertility, she figured out things on her own and the result was she became psychologically exhausted trying to do God’s work.

Jeremiah 2 gives us rich insight into the difficulties we face solving all our problems without God.  "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)  The two sins are clearly to God evil and deadly.  The people quit turning to God for help and then developed their own strategies for solving their problems.  We have come to think as they did that getting along on your own is somehow noble and courageous.  But it is just the opposite.  It is foolish and ruinous.  On your own, all you have are the psychological skills you have acquired in life.  Some have quite a few and can manage well for a while without God.  Some have been so damaged by the hardships they have faced that they have almost nothing in them to keep their anger and depression and bitterness and jealousy at bay. Why do we see suicide and drug abuse and violence and crippling depression?  Without God carrying you through the troubles of life, you may or may not have the psychological strength to protect you and keep you at peace so you turn to your own brokenness to see you through.  There is however another option to independent living.

Consider the fascinating case study of Daniel who as a believer in God, prayed three times a day.  When a law was instituted that demanded no one would be allowed to pray to anyone other than the king for the next thirty days, Daniel coolly opened up the shutters covering his windows and quite publically continued praying to the Lord.  When he was caught and brought before the king, even though the king, who was desperate to try and save him from his own law, fretted in despair, Daniel seemingly did not have a care in the world and without comment bravely faced his sentence of being thrown into a pit with ravenous lions.  When the king heard this, he was greatly distressed; he was determined to rescue Daniel and made every effort until sundown to save him.  Then the men went as a group to the king and said to him, "Remember, O king, that according to the law of the Medes and Persians no decree or edict that the king issues can be changed."  So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions' den. The king said to Daniel, "May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!" (Daniel 6:14-16 NIV)  Where did Daniel get his courage and peace to see him through his trials?  He went directly to God.

Jesus’ famous promise to give his people peace is almost universally misunderstood in one important detail.  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27 NIV)  Jesus is not offering to give you a reason to have peace.  He is pledging that the peace He possesses Himself will be inserted into you when you accept it from Him. Regardless of what you have learned or not learned in life, of however many self-help books you have read or not read and however much confidence or despair is in you, God’s peace will take over and put calmness in your heart.  Christ did not die on the cross in order to give you strategies for having peace in your life.   That would leave you with the same failure rates of all other men or women who have tried to work out their problems on their own.  He died so that you might have his own personality working inside you regardless of what you face each and every day.  Stop trying to figure everything out on your own.  Let God work out things in you so that whatever challenges you face can be worked out through you.

Do You Need Help?

Exodus 2:23 NIV

During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God.

If You Needed Help, Would You Ask?

A few weeks ago I went to an office supply store needing to order business cards.  I went to the copy center and a very nice person asked me, “How can I help you?”  Normally I would rather robotically just answer the question the way it was intended to be answered.  But this time something went wrong within my brain and I started thinking about all the various ways I could use help.  “Yes, I have a problem with a skin tag on my eyelid.  Do you have any suggestions?”  “Sure, how can I get my daughter to keep her room clean?”  “Do you know what I should do about the sermon I need to deliver next week?”  “How can I get affordable housing in Fremont?”   “What should I do about my arthritic knees?”  Fortunately for those waiting in line behind me, I only told the clerk about my need for business cards.  Yet it would have been nice if she could have helped me with the other matters too!

If God asked you directly, “How can I help you”, how would you respond?  Would you take the question seriously?  Would you tell Him about your real concerns or just give a few trivial problems to solve?  Do you want help from God or are you pretty satisfied with how everything is going?    Would you consider the Lord your lifeline when nothing else works or are you dependent upon Him to help you with even the smallest of issues?  What part does God play in solving the problems you face?

Nothing is quite as certain as this!  If you are not struggling with something too big for you now, eventually you will.  When you find yourself in such a predicament, you will fall into one of two camps.  You will either ask God for help or you won’t.  It is interesting but considering that the Bible is a religious book mostly about God, you can find in it plenty of accounts of those who show no interest in getting help from God.  The Pharisees were one of the most religious people of their time.  They studied the Old Testament.  They carefully kept as many religious laws as they deemed possible.   They even made up laws just to be careful to keep God happy with them.  But when Jesus Christ, God in flesh appeared, they did not want to have anything to do with Him.  They often tested Jesus to see if they could find flaws in His Bible knowledge.  They never though asked Him for help.  Of all the miracles of Christ, it does not seem that the Pharisees ever found a problem they needed Him to solve.

Imagine if you knew of a man who had been born blind, was blind through childhood and into adulthood and that man had been miraculously healed by someone.  What would have been your reaction?  Would you have thought of things this person could do for you?  Would you bring your needs to Him?  The Pharisees certainly did care about the miracle but they did not seem interested in getting His help with their own problems.  They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind.  Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man's eyes was a Sabbath.  Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. "He put mud on my eyes," the man replied, "and I washed, and now I see."  Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath."  But others asked, "How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?" So they were divided. (John 9:13-16 NIV)

It is striking the total disregard the Pharisees had for the good Jesus could do.  They clearly did not care about finding out how Jesus could help them also!  Yet one of the Pharisees, Nicodemus came at night wanting Jesus to help him with the questions he had.  The priests who ran the Temple were Sadducees, another religious group that was much less interested in what the Bible had to say than the Pharisees and they did not have any confidence in God’s ability to do anything miraculous.  Despite all the miracles happening in Jerusalem and the greatest of all the miracles, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, the priests did not want Jesus’ help either.  In fact when they heard about what happened with Lazarus, they wanted both Lazarus and Jesus dead.  Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.  "What are we accomplishing?" they asked. "Here is this man performing many miraculous signs.  If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation."  Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all!  You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish…. So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well…  (John 11:47-50, 12: 10 NIV)

When the Roman governor of Judea finally met Jesus, having heard the reports of all the good things Jesus had done, he struggled with the insistence of the Jewish priests that Jesus needed to be executed.  Meanwhile Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?"  "Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied.  When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer.  Then Pilate asked him, "Don't you hear the testimony they are bringing against you?"  But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge — to the great amazement of the governor. (Matthew 27:11-14 NIV)  Pilate, who certainly had plenty of needs himself given all we know about the problem Pilate had with his supervisors in Rome as well as the Jewish people he was supposed to govern, did not look for any help from Jesus for anything.  Pilate’s wife ironically did have a need.  She begged her husband to not harm Jesus because “…I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him." (Matthew 27:19 NIV)

One of the strangest of all the accounts of the humiliations and beatings Jesus suffered before He was crucified involved Herod, Jewish king who ruled over the Galilean region.  When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform some miracle. (Luke 23:8-9 NIV)  Herod Antipas had plenty of problems, including an impending war with his former father-in-law yet he saw no need of help from Jesus.  He had heard of Jesus’ great miracles and thought of Christ as a trick pony instead of the one who could make his life right.  Rather than ask Jesus to save him, which is what he needed, he had Jesus beaten and joined with others in the court mocking Christ.  Yet interestingly enough the manager of his household was married and his wife humbly came to Jesus for help. …and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod's household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means. (Luke 8: 2-3 NIV)

Consider carefully what Jesus announced at the Temple during one of the great Jewish feasts.  On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."  By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7:37-39 NIV)  The entrance of the Holy Spirit into a life only happens when someone wants Him.  You must come to Christ on your own if you are to have the Holy Spirit.  God does not force Himself upon you.  He says that if you are thirsty, come to Him.  You must need God and know you need Him before He will do anything of substance with you.  If you want the Holy Spirit flowing in and out of you, clearing up your mind, straightening out the way you think, impacting those around you and giving them through you the taste of Christ, then you must ask Christ for this.

Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3 NIV)  Are you poor in spirit?  Do you want God filling your life more than anything?  Have you become so in need of God that you crave Him like an infant craves her mother’s milk?  Try this little experiment.  Pick out someone you care about and pray for that person thirty days in a row. Ask for Christ to be that person’s blessing.  Put his or her name on your mirror and pray for Christ to bless that soul.  See what God does in you as you pray: how the Holy Spirit joins with you in your praying.  Give your worries about yourself a break and put your concentration on the Holy Spirit praying through you for the one you have been given to bless in prayer.  Out of you will flow streams of living water.  Take the thirty day challenge.  I wonder what might happen when God works through thirty people committed completely to being vessels of God’s goodness and grace for thirty days.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Ecclesiastes 1:3-5 NIV

What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

What Should You Do Next?

At the age of thirty-two, I came to a major crossroads in my life.  I was about to graduate with my degree and because Mary Jo and I lived in school housing, we had to move.  But where?  I loved New Orleans, enjoyed being close to Mary Jo’s family.  Mary Jo had a very good job where she was successful.  I enjoyed my work as a behavioral therapist and took great pleasure in helping rebuild broken families.  There was no reason to leave.  Housing was fairly inexpensive and we could have soon bought a nice home.  We both had a wealth of great friendships and loved our church.  Yet, we both knew we were about to embark on a new journey; the question was “What do we do next?”

Perhaps you too have felt the itch for a change.  You watch the same TV shows over and over again.  Each day you wash dishes, take the kids places, wear the same clothes, drive the same car, arrive at the same home and nothing much is really different.  It could be that you have grown bored with your life.  You take the same route to work, eat the same foods and wake up with the same problems.  As the Bible puts it, “the sun rises and the sun sets” and this just keeps happening day after day, year after year.  You can buy new skirts, go to a different restaurant, see a new movie, try out a new hiking trail but that does not mean you will quit feeling like you are a hamster running on her wheel.  Much of your life is repetitive and common and you may feel tired of the boredom you are experiencing.

Solomon, the famous king of Israel struggled with boredom too.  He read lots of books, studied plants and animals and wrote thousands of proverbs to challenge his mind.  He built gardens and homes, acquired thousands of horses and cattle and sheep.  Solomon switched religions and got married over and over again just to fight the monotony.  The wealthy king had the finest chefs at his disposal and could buy anything he wanted.  Here is a summary of Solomon’s quest for deliverance from the hamster wheel. 

I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards.  I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them.  I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees.  I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house. I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me.  I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired men and women singers, and a harem as well — the delights of the heart of man.  I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me.  I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.  My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor.  Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:4-11 NIV)

So there you have one of the wealthiest people of all time unable to overcome the boredom of life.  The Bible is filled with examples of those who thought a change was needed.  David, perhaps tired of conquering nations decided that at the age of forty or so that he would try conquering another man’s wife.  Moses at around one hundred years old acquired a new wife.  Jacob at sixty quit working for his father-in-law and packed up his family to start his own business a hundred or so miles away.  David certainly made a wreck of matters by committing adultery and having his lover’s husband killed.  Moses certainly did not help his marriage any taking on a second wife and perhaps it worked out for Jacob breaking away from his father-in-law but what we have noticed over the years is that regardless of what changes you make, if you are the same person after the changes, then whatever irked you about life will return, perhaps even worse than ever.  It seems that whatever Solomon did to upgrade his life wound up increasing his levels of misery.

The problem that is rarely addressed is that there is an underlying level of angst among God’s people.  Within the mass of humanity is an unexpressed fear or doubt among many that the Lord is not good enough.  What if it does not go as He promises?  What if Christ cannot fix our problems, is unable to satisfy us, won’t really make us better or our lives better if we follow Him?  The doubt that God doesn’t live up to the hype is prevalent and is not easily overcome.  Many are like the officer in Israel’s army who when he heard that God would provide plenty of food for the people of the city he was helping defend, exclaimed incredulously to the prophet Elisha who gave him the news, "Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?" (2 Kings 7: 2 NIV)  Now we must admit that the soldier had what many would say was good reason to discount the prophet’s words.  The city of Samaria was under siege by a great army and it was so bad and food so scarce that the people had started practicing cannibalism.  The king of Israel was equally skeptical of God helping them.  And [the king] said, "This disaster is from the Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?"  (2 Kings 6:33 NIV)

Few of us have been in such a terrifying spot as the king and his officer but most Christians and non-Christians have at one time felt the same way about the Lord’s willingness or capacity to help.  “Does the Lord really love me?”  “Will He do anything to help me?”  In a world that is wrecked by Sin at every level, it takes courage to trust God when so much is bad and really bad.  People are cruel to each other, calamities occur that are not rational and the natural order is filled with evil and death.  No one can say that everything is sweet and comfortable because it isn’t or if it is it won’t always be.  The natural response to the troubles and hardships in this world is to look for a change that we manufacture.  We move.  We buy something.  We find entertainment that distracts us.  We medicate.  Recently I saw in the news that a fifteen year old girl left her home to join a violent street gang that is known for its corruption and cruelty.  The girl was beaten, tortured and stabbed to death by members of the gang she hoped would make her life better. How can you explain such misery?  It is a broken world and what will a funny movie do to alleviate that?  Can a new pair of sneakers make you feel really good when you are fighting with your husband?

It is true that you may need a change but why not let Christ be at the center of your change. The Gospel of Luke has a beautiful little side note that provides us with insight into our need for change.  After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod's household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.  (Luke 8:1-3 NIV)

What a lovely example for us all.  These women had been broken.  Some, like Mary Magdalene, had suffered from demon possession; others from diseases.  They could have been bitter over all they had suffered in life.  They could have built their lives without God because it might have seemed to them that He had let them down and put them through so much.  Instead, the women gave themselves over fully to Christ because of how He remade them and filled them with goodness and peace.  In addition, they found ways to help finance the ministry of Jesus and the disciples. These women certainly needed a change but the change they made was to devote themselves more fully to Christ and the Kingdom of God.  It was in Christ that they discovered life that was meaningful and filled with purpose.  They no longer were hamsters trapped on a wheel.

Perhaps you too need a change.  Why not make a change that can have a lasting impact on you and others.  Perhaps the change you need is to go on a fast.  Seek God with a clearer mind.  Maybe the change you need is to begin a ministry or join a ministry that brings help to others.  The change you really need might be to begin spending concentrated periods of time in prayer or Bible study.   Maybe you need to make a sacrifice to God that requires faith in Him to take care of you.  Perhaps there is someone or a group of people who need you to concentrate on helping them find Christ through the Gospel.  Why not make a change that might really do you some good?  Perhaps there is a child or a senior adult that God wants you to help.  Maybe it is time for a change; one that might bring you great joy as you experience more fully than ever God and His love flowing into you and out of you in real and specific ways.

What Is Salvation?

 Romans 3:23 NIV

…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…

Why Does Salvation Matter?

One of the more fascinating developments in my lifetime has been the intellectual elimination of sin in our culture. It seems that very few want to acknowledge the category of sin as a real and definable set of behaviors and it rarely is discussed as a topic either in university classes, on daytime TV or in movies.  Yet the behaviors of sin are universally disliked.  If someone steps outside on a chilly Thursday morning and discovers the car he planned to take to work is stolen, he is upset.  If a mom brings her daughter to the emergency room and the child’s surgery is botched because the physician on duty was drunk, she is furious.  A drug dealer who has almost no scruples and seems to be devoid of a conscience will not tolerate for a minute a break-in to his apartment and the theft of his stash of money.  We may find few in our world who believe in sin but nearly everyone has some idea of what is wrong and what behaviors should not be tolerated.  There may not be consensus on what sins are sins but there is near universal acknowledgement that wrong is wrong and really wrong and that our world has lots of wrong in it.  The biggest question facing our world is, “How do you fix the wrong in our world?”

Salvation is equally disregarded and misunderstood in our culture.  Part of the problem is the way the term salvation is used.  Is salvation a winning touchdown or entrance into a prestigious college?  Would you be talking about the affection of a girl you like or getting the winning lotto ticket if you spoke of your “salvation”?  There is nothing like consensus of what salvation is!  You might not even see any reason for being saved if your life is going pretty well.  Salvation is one of the most important terms in Christianity however and even the name “Jesus” has built in it the idea of salvation.  What really is salvation though and why does it matter?

A widely held belief about salvation is that it is all about getting into heaven.  Heaven is popularly viewed as the “big ticket item” when God offers salvation to us.  Yet when the angel spoke with Joseph about Mary becoming pregnant with God’s Son, he was told that the child was to be called “Jesus” because he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21 NIV)  No mention is made of heaven; salvation is all about rescue from sins.  In explaining why they could not stop talking publicly about Jesus, the disciples proclaimed Christ’s mission.  The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead — whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. (Acts 5:30-31 NIV)  The Old Testament makes the same connection between salvation and sins.  Help us, O God our Savior, for the glory of your name; deliver us and forgive our sins for your name's sake. (Psalm 79:9 NIV)  The Savior, or to put it another way, the one who brings salvation, came to deliver humanity from the wreckage of sin because that is the great crisis of every human life.  It was not that we needed heaven that drove God to save us, it was that we needed deliverance from Sin.  Whenever salvation and heaven are linked in Scripture, heaven is not the object of salvation but rather the source of salvation.  But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. (Philippians 3:20-21 NIV)  Salvation comes from the God of Heaven.  Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12 NIV)

The great truth that no one ever discusses is that the most unifying factor within humanity, that which is more important than any other common link between us is the sin we all possess.  The Apostle Paul expresses this plainly.…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…(Romans 3:23 NIV)  Every one of us sins and every one of us is completely corrupted by Sin.  Psalm 38 presents the most complete picture found anywhere in literature of the impact Sin has upon each person.  O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.  For your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me.  Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin.  My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.  My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly.  I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning.  My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body.  I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.  All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you.  My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes.  My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away. (Psalm 38: 1-11 NIV)

Paul states emphatically that the worst result of Sin is that it brings us death.  For the wages of sin is death… (Romans 6: 23 NIV)  Sin in any shape and look, whether it is a “small sin” or a perverse “big sin”, results in death.  When the Bible speaks of death in the sense Paul uses it in Romans, it is ruin of life in every sense imaginable.  The culmination of death is the destruction of the physical body and the absolute absence of God’s presence.  Before that though, death through sin is exactly what Psalm 38 describes.  It is oppression of the heart…depression, anger, bitterness and animosity.  Death by Sin is the oppression of the body…illnesses, injuries, genetic diseases, congenital birth defects.  Death by Sin is the inability to be content, the loss of peace with what one has, the worry and stress over what may come to pass.  Death by Sin is the fractured relationships and loss of love.  Sin brings death and death is more than a corpse in a coffin, it is the debasing of life.   We see death by sin in hospitals, prisons, foster care systems, divorce courts and mental institutions.  Death by Sin is what we all face each and every day.

Humanity has searched in a million different places to mask the effect of death by Sin.  Alcohol and drugs have been used for centuries to cover the mess.  Entertainment can only hide what is there for a limited amount of time.  The rush for success and exchanging of one friendship or partner for another when death by Sin has run its course through relationships have worked for a while but every effort at shaking off death by Sin fails eventually.

It must remembered, and this point cannot be stressed enough if we are to take seriously enough death by Sin, that we are not just talking about the impact of our own sins upon ourselves but also the effect of the sins of others on us too.  The psychological component to death by Sin is illustrated perfectly in the ugly jealousy of Moses’ brother Aaron and sister Miriam.  They were enjoying tremendous prosperity.  Having come from a humble household, they were elevated to leaders in the Hebrew community when God made Moses the director and prophet of the entire nation.  They had escaped Egypt and now were making their way to the land God promised his people.  Moses trusted them and their counsel.  Miriam was the leader of the women of Israel and Aaron the high priest.  Yet something happened to them that made them crave more power.  Sin wrecked the personality of each of them so much that they initiated a rebellion against Moses.

Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite.  "Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?" they asked. "Hasn't he also spoken through us?" And the Lord heard this. (Numbers 12:1-2 NIV)  Aaron and Miriam were probably nice people who you would have liked having as friends.  It was Miriam who helped save her brother Moses when he was a new-born from being murdered by Pharaoh’s soldiers.  Perhaps they both thought they were protecting their country from Moses’ bad policies but God did not consider their rebellion justified.  In fact, He was so angry with their actions that Miriam was immediately struck with leprosy and Aaron could have been next.  What wreckage within could lead to such a colossal act of spite on Aaron’s and Miriam’s part?  We cannot say how their upbringing impacted them or what sorts of pain they suffered as adults but we do know that somewhere they accumulated a tremendous amount of damage to their personalities that they could with such ease turn on their brother who had done so much for them.  I have had people treat me pretty terribly who I have helped and encouraged and you probably have too.  Yet I too have been horrible and hurt those I have loved and I cannot blithely wave off the consequences of my actions.  I don’t look at myself as a troubled or demonic person but I have acted like one at times.  My personality is wrecked by sin too just as yours is and we cannot fix what is wrong with us.

Jesus Christ did not die on the Cross in order to move us from a bad location to a wonderful one.  He died to remake us in every single way.  Our personality is completely ruined by Sin and no amount of effort will make us right.  Being in Heaven cannot fix us and Earth certainly won’t.  We need a Savior to take our Sin from us and make us new; a Savior who was without Sin who could be punished for our Sin and not His own.  There are thousands upon thousands of ways Sin has to be removed from us.  Sin has to be taken out of our habits.  It has to be taken out of our emotions.  It has to be taken out of our memories and out of what makes us happy.  Sin has to be removed from the way we think about things and how we react to what we face.  Sin has to be taken out of our relationships and out of what motivates us.  As long as Sin is part of us, we are condemned to death by Sin.  But with a Savior, all of our Sin gets worked out of us and we are brought into perfection…perfection of how we act and how we think.  There is nothing we need more than our Sin taken out of us and no gift of God is greater than the removal of our Sin and His recreation of us into Sinless people who live forever in complete peace and untainted joy with God within a sin-free creation.

What Is God Doing With Me?

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NIV

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

What is God Doing With You?

I had such a rough time of it a few weeks ago!  I was the substitute teacher for a high school geometry teacher and it did not go well.  Several of the kids refused to put away their cell phones, students refused to do the class work and instead talked loudly with their friends.  Two tried to guess what my other job was and listed several that clearly were intended to insult me.   A number of the kids laughed openly at me for insisting that they become quiet because others were working.   I spoke with a few kids just before class was over and they told me that despite how bad it was, the class was much worse and far noisier when the regular teacher ran the classroom.  Somehow that did not make me feel any better.  It seemed so oppressive, so purposeless, this work of going into classrooms where the students have no interest in learning and did not respect the authority of the teachers. What was the point of that?  Who chooses that kind of life?

I have asked the question and perhaps you have too.  What is God doing with me?  Maybe as you sit at home and reflect back upon your day, you wonder about God’s plan for you.  Is there really something He is doing with you or are you just a number in a huge crowd of wandering souls?   Perhaps you have read books about finding the purpose in your life but still wonder about where God is taking you.  You have had good moments and tough ones and everything seems awfully random and disconnected.  So what is God doing with you?  Can you make sense of what has happened in your life?

Many teachers cite the example of an obscure figure found in the Old Testament as the pattern for how God deals with His favorites.  Tucked away in 1 Chronicles 4 is the much loved account of the ephemeral Jabez.  All we know about him is that the Bible says he was more honorable that his brothers and that his mother gave him the name “Pain” or Jabez because she had a rough delivery giving birth to him.  Famously, Jabez at some point begged God to make him prosperous.  "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain."  (1 Chronicles 4: 10)  Hasn’t nearly every one of us prayed similar prayers?  “Dear Lord, improve the lot of my life and take away all this bad stuff I face!  Make me successful!”   What is so wonderfully delicious about this account is that we are told, God granted his request.  Isn’t that uplifting!  Our Lord made Jabez’s life pleasant and strife free.  He was promised success and prosperity.  That is what we all want.  No wonder so many Christian writers have taken this story as the blueprint for God’s plan for us.  Despite the fact that nowhere in the text does the Lord say this is His universal way of dealing with people who are “good”, it is touted by a number of popular Christian teachers as the expected life plan for those who live decently and follow the Bible.

Not surprising, few promote the central figures in the New Testament as examples of how they want God to work in their lives.  Paul in particular is on almost no one’s top ten list of experiences they want for themselves, not when you take into consideration his own account of what he faced.  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 food; I have been cold and naked. (2 Corinthians 11:24-27 NIV)

Rarely do you find someone who says, “I want to be beaten with rods and whipped nearly to death.”  We would much rather have it like Jabez without health problems and living comfortably.  Yet again, the Bible does not say that Paul is the expected blueprint for each life.  Let us consider Jesus’ actual words of what He plans to do with every one of His people.  "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:20-21 NIV)  There it is; God’s plan for you.

We discover in this prayer of Jesus that there are two parts to where God is taking you.  First, He is going to make you united with God’s people.  Just as close as the Father and the Son are, He plans on making you with every other born again man, woman and child.  Regardless of station in life, national or ethnic background, God is going to develop trust, love and holiness in your relationship with the rest of the Church.  This is a monumental task and will take quite a bit of re-working in us.  He must cleanse us and purify us for this to happen because we are prickly and self-centered but it will be done.  Nothing short of a miracle can make us as close to others as the Father and the Son are to each other but that is of course God’s will and our Savior’s prayer.

The second part of this prayer is a stunning revelation.  God is going to make you as close to Him as the Father and the Son are to each other.  For this to take place, our Lord is not going to build on the strengths you possess.  He is going to completely re-work you so that there is not an inch of rebellion in you, not a gram of disobedience.  That will take some doing because we are doubters who question the Lord at every turn.  We think we are far wiser and more understanding of what we need to be happy and it pains us sometimes to follow Him.  All of that is being worked out of you.  You will grow to trust Him completely and love Him devotedly as God works in you.

The Apostle Paul summarizes perfectly God’s plan for you.  Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NIV)  It is not God’s goal for you to be successful although that might take place.  It is not God’s goal for you to make a great income although that might take place.  It is not God’s goal for you to be healthy although that might take place.  His goal is to do something with you that will last forever; that will purify and perfect you so that you can live with God and other Christians in complete unity.  If that means that you lose all you have, lose your health, lose your friends and live without what the world says is important to be happy, then that will happen.  It happened with Paul.  It happened with Job too.  Every experience you have, every circumstance you face has one goal to it.  God is using it to make you perfectly fit to live with God and His people forever.  Nothing will stop our Lord from accomplishing this with you.

Every evil strand of selfishness and pride must be removed from you if you are to be in perfect unity with God and His people and our Lord will do what it takes to get them out of you.  Greed and arrogance must be taken out of you too as well as complacency and independence.  Christ will move heaven and earth and give you every experience and relationship needed to make you fit for your life with God and His people and each of us is unique and God’s way of working into us His love and peace and faith is dependent upon what He sees must be done to complete His work of salvation in us.  Never fuss over how your life is going.  God knows what He is doing with you and in the end, you will be perfect in every way that matters to the Lord who died to save you.

The Loss of Self-Pity

Genesis 27:38 NIV

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

Do You Ever Feel Sorry For Yourself?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Loss of Self-Reliance

What Makes a Good Christian?

2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.   

How Confident Are You in Yourself?

We had a problem with gophers in the lawn next to our sanctuary and it frustrated me to see the grass being ruined.  I went and got some gopher poison and used the normal strategy of probing the ground with a metal rod to try and find the soft spots which indicated a gopher tunnel was there.  I created a small hole that led down to the tunnel, poured the poison into the tunnel with a tool I had purchased and covered the top of the hole with some sod.  Of course you don’t know right away if you killed the gopher, you have to wait a week or so to see if new mounds of dirt develop.  They did!  I tried again, used the tool to probe for tunnels, thought I found one, poured the poison pellets down the hole I made and waited another week.  Again there was a fresh mound.  This went on for several weeks.  Fresh mound, fresh mound and fresh mound!  Realizing this gopher was much smarter than me, I began to pray for God to help me.  Eventually I quit trying to kill the gopher but after a month or so, it dawned on me that I wasn’t seeing any new mounds of dirt.  Had the poison worked after all, was the gopher back in the empty field?  What happened to my little enemy?  One evening, as I stood outside stretching after a long day of writing, I glanced over where the lawn meets the field and there perched at the edge of the grass was a grey cat with her eyes fixed intently on the ground.  Perhaps, I realized, as I stood and watched the stray cat alertly on guard, I had received unexpected help in my battle with the gopher.

What is your strategy when you are facing a difficult situation?  What do you do when you are injured or sick?  How do you respond to the loss of your job or a problem in your marriage?  Do you have a plan for dealing with your kids when they get into trouble?  What would you suggest to someone having financial problems, about to lose their house or struggling with depression or anxiety?  All of us have had gophers in our lives.  The question is, what to do about them?

Let me give an example of a gopher a rather famous person from the pages of the Bible encountered.  Jesus was in a sticky situation.  He had just fed a crowd of more than five thousand men with only five small loaves of bread and two little fish and although not everyone in the great crowd saw what happened, eventually word circulated about the miracle that had taken place.  As people whispered among themselves and slowly the discussions became louder and increasingly emotional, the connection between what had just happened and how Moses had fed the masses of Hebrews in the desert with Manna was made.  The people were desperate for one like Moses, a leader of supernatural proportions who could take them out of the political and religious oppression they felt living under the rule of the Romans.  It seemed amazing to them that right here on this weedy mountainside at the outskirts of town, the hero they all longed to lead them to freedom had appeared. This was too good to be true!  At first, the people in unorganized groups speculated among themselves what this might mean.  They talked about the ramifications of having such a one as Jesus take charge.  Finally, the scattered discussions became unified in both content and direction.  They had to find some way to get Jesus to be their king.

For most of us, this would not be a gopher; it would be the opportunity of a lifetime.  Who would not want to be a king?  Jesus didn’t.  Not this way and not at this time!  He had come to die for the sins of the people, not to lead them past the Romans and their armies.  Everything our Lord planned on accomplishing would be wrecked if He took this offer.  Yet it was not just a matter of declining.  After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, "Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world."  Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. (John 6:14-15 NIV)  It is strange to think of being made king by force…a contradiction of terms.  How can one be king if forced by the subjects one rules to be that king?  Jesus wanted no part of this!  Yet how could He refuse the demand without putting His disciples at risk and keep Himself from being murdered before His time had come?  It was a gopher of immense proportions.  How did Jesus respond to this?  He went off by Himself to a mountain and the Father took care of the crowd for Him.

A casual reader might say that Jesus ran away from His gopher and this certainly could seem to be the case.  But going to a mountain by Himself we learn generally meant that He left to pray.  Sometimes He took His disciples with Him.  About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. (Luke 9:28 NIV)  We are told that Jesus often went up the Mount of Olives and we assume He did so to pray.  At least that is what He did on the night before He was crucified.  Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him.  On reaching the place, he said to them, "Pray that you will not fall into temptation."   He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed… (Luke 22:39-41 NIV)  Jesus, by leaving the crowd and climbing up the mountain made sure that He was aligned with the Father at every turn because He trusted the Father to see Him through whatever gophers He faced.

Let’s look at one more gopher, a tenacious one encountered by Jacob, the father of the nation of Israel.  After tricking his father Isaac into giving the prophetic blessing to him rather than Esau who was supposed to receive it, Jacob fled for his life.  Esau was so furious with Jacob for stealing the blessing of their father that he made plans to kill him.  More than twenty years later, Jacob decided to return home.  Jacob was rich, had two wives and two concubines, had twelve children with one on the way but he had a giant gopher facing him.  His brother also was rich, had an army of servants and friends and Jacob did not know if Esau still wanted him dead.  That is something that can keep you up at night.  The Bible tells us that when Jacob discovered that Esau with four hundred men was coming to meet him, Jacob feared not only for his life but for that of his entire family.  In great fear and distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups, and the flocks and herds and camels as well.  He thought, "If Esau comes and attacks one group, the group that is left may escape."  (Genesis 32:7-8 NIV)

Jacob’s response to the threat of his gopher was swift.  Then Jacob prayed, "O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who said to me, 'Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,' I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two groups.  Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children.  But you have said, 'I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.'" (Genesis 32:9-12 NIV)  Jacob prayed.  He was carefully and with perhaps a certain amount of hesitancy putting some of his trust in God to take care of him.  We know he did not completely believe he could trust the Lord with his gopher because he figured out a scheme that he hoped would appease his brother’s anger.

…from what he had with him he (Jacob) selected a gift for his brother Esau: two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty female camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls, and twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.  He put them in the care of his servants, each herd by itself, and said to his servants, "Go ahead of me, and keep some space between the herds." (Genesis 32:13-16)  As we shall learn later, this strategy was completely unnecessary and reflected Jacob’s belief that the gopher was bigger than the one to whom he prayed.  That evening, as Jacob remained alone on the side of the Jabbok River opposite to where Esau and his soldiers were coming, a man approached him and the two engaged in a wrestling match.  Jacob believed it was God and we can be certain it was.  For hours they fought, neither gaining the advantage.  Finally at daybreak, the Lord decided to end the match.  When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.  Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."  But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."  The man asked him, "What is your name?"  "Jacob," he answered. Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."  Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."  But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.  So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared." (Genesis 32:25-30 NIV)

There is in this exotic story something we must face and that is our tendency to rely upon ourselves for everything until we are broken by God.  Jacob prayed that the Lord would protect him and his family but he didn’t trust God to do it.  That is why he came up with his plan to pay for his brother’s forgiveness.  What is fascinating is that Esau didn’t even want the flocks, was not certain they were actually for him until after he ran to Jacob and embraced him with great weeping and joy at seeing him again.  But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And they wept.  Then Esau looked up and saw the women and children. "Who are these with you?" he asked.  Jacob answered, "They are the children God has graciously given your servant."  Then the maidservants and their children approached and bowed down.  Next, Leah and her children came and bowed down. Last of all came Joseph and Rachel, and they too bowed down.  Esau asked, "What do you mean by all these droves I met?"  "To find favor in your eyes, my lord," he said.  But Esau said, "I already have plenty, my brother. Keep what you have for yourself." (Genesis 33:4-9 NIV) Only God could work such a miracle in the human heart.  What seemed like certain disaster for Jacob was an overwhelming triumph of grace.

Let us consider the end of Jacob’s wrestling match with God and the Lord’s decision to cripple Jacob.  With all his power Jacob wrestled with the Lord; using his strength to try and gain what God was already willing and happy to give him.  Jacob wanted the Lord’s blessing and like he did with his father, tried to gain it by his own effort.  Do we not fall into the same silly pattern as Jacob, having so little trust in God to take care of us and so much faith in our own ability to take care of the gophers we face?  God took Jacob’s hip out of joint because in order to build Jacob’s life right, it had to be broken.  What seems so simple, to trust God, is perhaps the most difficult challenge we face.  Most of us fight so hard to maintain our independence when it is absolutely ridiculous!

Proverbs 3: 5 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. (NIV)  In the New Testament, the call to trust God is put this way.  May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13 NIV)  Imagine the absurdity of a five year old child telling his father that he doesn’t need to live at home any longer, he will just get a job and rent an apartment.  We are like that child stubbornly refusing to really trust God with our problems and challenges.  Why not pause and like Jesus and go before the Father and ask His help?  Until Jacob realized he could completely trust God with his gophers, he made a mess of nearly everything he touched.  Once he reached out to the Lord, God guided him through all the challenges and hardships he faced.  What about you?  Will it take God to damage your hip or worse your ego before you realize how every breath of yours is dependent upon Him?   Why wouldn’t we trust our Savior with our problems?  We might be amazed at how well God takes care of us if we would go to Him first with every need we have.  Life is too short to waste it on worry or worthless plans.  Go to God first and let Him guide you through to the end!