Passions

Hosea 7:6 NIV

Their hearts are like an oven; they approach him with intrigue.  Their passion smolders all night; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

What Is The Source Of Your Passion?

A few weeks ago I was coming out of the church parking lot and traffic on my side of the road was packed.  Two lanes merge into one right at the driveway of the parking lot and no one was moving due to the stop light at the cross street on the next block.  Normally I just inch into the traffic and drivers let me through.  After all, they aren’t going anywhere and I am not trying to get ahead of them.  I just want to cross into the lane going the other way.  As I began to work my way into the traffic, the first car waved for me to come through and so I started but then all of a sudden, the driver in the car in the second lane quickly lurched forward to block my way through her lane.  At first I could not believe what I had just seen.  Why did she do that?  What good did it do her to not let me through?  Was she crazy?  I did not recognize her and when I stared into her head, she would not look my way.  There I sat in my little car, blocking one lane of traffic but unable to let that lane move forward because I was prevented from going on into the other side of the road.  As soon as the traffic light turned green and the woman was able to move forward and clear the way for me, I wondered at my temper.  What had happened to it?  Why didn’t I get mad at the woman for being rude to me?  More importantly, what if I did get angry and try to retaliate.  What would I have done?

Unless you are a robot, you have passion.  It could be blocked or stymied by your will but you have access to passion, a treasure trove of it.  What you do about your passion is up to you.  It can be poisoned by sin and become a source of tremendous turmoil for you or it can be transformed by God into a valuable part of your personality.  Many are afraid of the passion they possess and try to keep it in check by either fighting against it or attempting to dismantle it.  Others are controlled by their passions and like Legion with his many demons, find themselves taken captive by their passions and made a slave of them.  Perhaps you have known people who showed no emotions and although they seem passionless, it is more likely that they live in constant fear of being dominated by passions that scare them.  Shows like Star Trek romanticize the passionless person and yet that is a mistake.  Passion is a critical part of who we are and how we have been made.  To discount or discredit your passion is like rejecting your lungs or hating your blood vessels.  What we need is an approach to our passions that is not only reasonable but even beneficial.  That is what we shall consider today.

Passions can be defined psychologically as the ruling forces within the heart that drive our actions. They are the powerhouse motors we possess that get us going.  They push us into actions that our will alone can’t initiate.  Without passion we live and act mechanically; just going through the motions of daily life without ever leaving our comfort zone.  Biblically, the heart is the center of who we are.  It is the root of our thinking, our will and our passions.  Sometimes in the Old Testament a term which in the Hebrew is translated kidneys or “reins” is used but it is essentially the same as the heart.  When you read the term heart in the Bible, don’t think of it as the pumping muscle in your chest but as the idea of you and who you are internally.  The heart however, which is the source of the passions, is broken by sin.  As we see in Jeremiah 17: 9, The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it? (NIV)

The question of course is rhetorical.  Our hearts are a great mystery to us and nearly unfathomable.  Sin has corrupted them to the core and whether it is the damage brought about by the sins we commit or the sins committed against us, they are a wreck of what God intended them to be.  Each of us is stymied by the heart we have.  We may change a certain behavior or alter some habits, but in the end, there are depths to the heart that make a mess of our “good intentions”.  Paul, in speaking of the heart and its warping of passion said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7: 15 NIV)  This a universal experience.  Whether you are from Asia or Africa or Australia, you have acted in ways that were unfathomable to you and maybe even embarrassing.  Why is that?  It is because your heart is warped and unpredictable.

Jesus has a strong take on how damaged your heart is.  For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. (Matthew 15:19 NIV)   You cannot count on a heart that is so unstable and wrecked.  Any sin imaginable can come out of you and without warning.  Out of this pot come your passions; unpredictable and unreliable.  It is possible though to not be dominated by the passions coming out of your sin damaged and corrupted heart.  The Bible says, So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. (Galatians 5:16 NIV) “Desires” is nothing more than your passions as they flow out of the sin percolating in your heart.  There is nothing laughable about what is possible with a heart such as the one you and I possess.  The worst that humanity has to offer is there in your heart and my heart and the passions can drive them out of us like dynamite.

Before we have been born again with Christ living through us, all we have to rein in our corrupted passions is the conscience.  Depending on how strong or weak our conscience is morally and how developed it is will determine what our passions drive us to do.  Of course, as is hinted in Romans 7, the law also can constrain our passions.  But when we have been transformed by the power of Christ crucified into Christians, there is a new force working in us.  For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. (Galatians 5:17 NIV)  The Holy Spirit wages war with the corruption in the heart and this can have tremendous psychological ramifications.

Some of the most anxious and depressed individuals are often Christians who struggle to accept the changes God wants to make in them.  Anger and stress manifest themselves in believers who don’t want Christ to change everything in the heart.  Galatians 5:19-21 provides an ugly picture of what comes out of the heart that is not converted fully by Christ.  The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. (NIV)  The only curb other than conscience against such behavior is the fear of being caught for doing something bad.  We can hold back some of this ugliness but eventually anything we see in this list of fruit produced by corrupted passions can come out of us without warning.  We find we are angry or bitter or jealous and we say that isn’t us but it is us.  All of this is floating about in the heart unchanged by the work of Christ.  This is the fruit of passion developed in a sin corrupted heart.

We discover in Galatians 5: 22 what God can do with our passions when He remakes them.  They can produce a lifestyle straight out of heaven.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV)  How can our passion begin to develop these qualities?  Romans 5: 5 gives us a hint at the mechanism God utilizes for the transformation of our passions.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (NIV)  How can the passion in your heart be changed into something that generates the goodness of God in you?  It can only happen when God’s own love is poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit. 

Do

There is a critical moment when the Lord speaks to us and we respond to His message.  Either we do what He tells us to do or we don't and our reaction is critical to a wide-ranging spectrum or circumstances rooted in real time.  The Hebrews had an evening to decide what they were going to do about the command to enter the Promised Land and they choose to balk at it.  Paul in a split second, as he stood before Festus the Roman governor, demanded that his case be heard before the court in Rome, knowing already that the Lord wanted him in Rome.  It goes the other way also.  When the Lord demands we stop doing something, our decision there can have dramatic and long lasting ramifications.  Was there not a point when the Lord's word warned David the King to stop gazing at Bathsheba as she was bathing and even later to not send for her, knowing full well she was married?  Did Job's friends never feel a  tinge of guilt as they berated Job for imagined sins when they were sent to him only to comfort him?  There is a parenthesis of time when we can be God's or not.  Imagine what could have been if the great city of Nineveh had maintained its allegiance to God when Jonah proclaimed the coming judgment.  There might have been two centers of outreach to the world through which the Lord's word would have been declared.  You have critical moments when what you do will make all the difference in how God is perceived and received by those about you.  Do not ask God to help you do what He has directed.  He won't.  You must act in the strength He has already given you.  A plant must break through the ground for the stem to be strong enough to survive the forces it will face as it extends itself.  A butterfly will only have wings of sufficient strength if it tears through the cocoon on its own.  You are strong enough to do what the Spirit has told you to do.  For your own sake and for the good of countless others, you must do it.

Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you.  Deuteronomy 6: 3 NIV

Guilt

In the United States and many parts of the world, it is considered prudish to have less than seven sexual partners.  No longer is promiscuity considered morally wrong, at least as it pertains to a standard derived from something less than the Bible.  There are other areas of behavior that are morally repugnant to a large portion of the population that would be odd concerns to any era but our own.  Feelings of guilt have not left us; they simply have become attached to new morality tenets that have surfaced in our time.    Would a couple ever before have felt guilty about having another child yet now many do!  Has there ever been an age where so much angst has been suffered over the military strength of one's own nation?  When did we start feeling guilty about expressing faith in Christ?  It is moral to send naked pictures of oneself by text but immoral to pass those naked pictures along to others.  There is a moral code to our world and it shifts about like seismic fissures.  The natural course is to make morality match one's behavior rather than the other way around.  In a social order that decides it is moral, what need is there for a God who dies for one's sins?  A god who powers success might be interesting or a deity that settles emotional instability could garner a following but a true Savior who wrecks ones inner world by becoming Lord is anathema to  moral self-determinists.  Satan does not want a guilty sinner and does his best to keep the fretting over right and wrong from the soul.  But once a man or woman faces the mirror of God's own justice and gains a fresh insight into what really is right and wrong, the sham is uncovered and the healthy guilt of the Holy Spirit descends.    We try so hard to be done with guilt but guilt is a window through which the light of God shines into the heart and reveals the true need of every soul, the need for Christ to bring salvation to the totality of life.

When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: 

John 16:8 NIV

Unconscious Thought Part 2

Psychological Effect of Redemption

Ephesians 1: 7 NIV

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins…

What Does God Have “in Mind” For You?

For perhaps several hundred years, many involved in creative arts such as painting, sculpting, storytelling and songwriting have been aware of some unseen force within them that affects their ingenuity.  Even mechanics and mathematicians have been intrigued by the surprising insight they mysteriously develop as they try to solve a problem.  The author Tom Clancy has this to say about the effect his subconscious thinking has upon his writing.  “I think about the characters I've created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did.”    We use the expression, “I need to sleep on it” to indicate the need to wait before making a decision but also because we realize that something mysterious happens to how we think about things when we actually do sleep. 

One of the most unattended difficulties we face is our complete ignorance in regard to the effect of our unconscious thinking upon our daily activities.  Does it impact your decisions?  What role does it play on your moods?  Is it influential in the sorts of relationships you develop and maintain?  Is it possible to control and direct your unconscious thoughts to your advantage?  One of the rarely considered aspects to thinking fully through Christ as part of you is the impact that has upon the unconscious world.  Later we shall discuss the supernatural forces working within us but for today we will consider only what role Christ plays in impacting our unconscious thoughts.

Who doesn’t like the potential of a special degree of insight and understanding buried within unconscious thinking if Christ is part of the heart?  It must be reminded however that for every person, unconscious thinking is corrupted by Sin.  Degenerate and volatile forces of evil  work below the surface of our conscious thinking and that has caused us all sorts of problems and even pain.  Paul the Apostle described this perfectly in Romans 7.  I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.  And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.  As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.  I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. (Romans 7:15-20 NIV)

This unseen force, the work of Sin within our unconscious that fights against even our best intentions is so familiar to us that when we read what Paul has to say, it almost feels like he is reporting on our own minds.  But this is universal, the inability to live according to our highest values and principles.  What our conscious thinking attempts, our corrupted unconscious undermines.  There is hope though and it is a real and trustworthy hope.  Redemption, a technical term in the Bible that speaks of the work Christ did for us by being crucified and raised from the dead is how God takes out of us the Sin that corrupts our inner being.  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. (Ephesians 1:7-8 NIV)  To understand just how crucial this is in regard to the unconscious, we must remember that the term here which is translated “forgiveness”  has as its primary meaning, “to put away”.  What Christ did by dying for us is to take away from us the Sin that is within us.  This brings us a real freedom to our unconscious thinking, not just to our conscious decision making.

Before Jesus Christ died for us, Psalm 51: 6 was a far off dream.  Now it is possible for you.  Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Psalm 51:6 NIV)  As we learned earlier, truth is the translation of a Hebrew word that describes firmness, stability.  God is now free to take the chaos out of our unconscious thinking and remove the corruption from it.  How does He straighten out our unconscious inner world?  He puts into it His wisdom, or to use the Psalmist’s expression, teaches “wisdom in the inmost place.”  What once was a combustible combination of bitter memories, warped patterns of thinking and a corrupted manner of perceiving what you are encountering, your heart, for once has the potential of bringing you peace, joy and encouragement in a supernatural form.

Hebrews 4: 12-13 tells insists that God is able to dig into the deepest parts of your soul where no psychologist or mental health worker can explore.  For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.  Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12-13 NIV) With no sinful act or sinful damage able to withstand the cleansing and healing work of Christ in the heart, the Lord searches, processes, evaluates and takes out of darkness everything that wrecks you, all through the Cross.  What is He unable to see in your heart?  What is impossible for Christ to heal in your heart?  What wrecked habit or painful memory can He not make right?  With humanity, it is impossible to clear up all this and make your heart right but as Jesus told the disciples, "What is impossible with men is possible with God." (Luke 18:27 NIV)

The Cross of Christ is the greatest miracle seen in history for through it, we are brought out of the wreck Sin has cost us and by it, God can work His way through the darkest and deepest parts of your heart and fix it all.  The Bible uses the metaphor of light to express what God does in us.  For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6 NIV)  You might question this.  Can Jesus Christ do what some of the greatest psychologists and psychiatrists in history haven’t been able to accomplish?  Well yes He can!  If you let Him have full access to you.    The work of Christ in the heart is quite simple.  He retakes it and remakes it for the glory of God in you.  By His light, Christ eliminates the darkness of your heart.  In other words, He heals all the damage caused by Sin in the inner parts of your life.

It does not take deep insight to realize that something is thoroughly wrong with the created order.  From top to bottom, our world is broken and we are broken too.  For too long we all lived with our brokenness.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:22-25 NIV)  Like the rest of creation, there is inward sighing in you, deep places where there is moaning at how it has been.  The damage caused by Sin is great and for some horrific.  Yet, you don’t have to be broken any longer.  God has a new way of life for you. 

There is a wonderful promise found in the Bible and it must be considered before you move on with what you are doing.  In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. (Romans 8:26-27 NIV)  Outwardly, you may not show any signs of damage or turmoil.  Nothing seems wrong but inwardly there is sighing and groaning.  At those spots, those secret spots, the Holy Spirit works in you.  In the deep places, He knows what hurts, what is traumatized and damaged and there He intercedes for you.  Where surgeons cannot enter and human machines cannot reach, our Lord heals, He calms, He soothes.  Without permission, the Spirit will leave you alone but at your call, He touches the angry, inflamed, lonely, infected, ruined places in your heart and He heals them.  The places of the heart where you have lost your childhood, your innocence, where the dreams you once had were stripped from you, God will heal too.  He will give you a new dream deep in your heart and new love to make your heart whole.  With your permission, the Holy Spirit will heal the damage in your heart.

Each evening, before you go to sleep, invite Christ to heal the parts of your mind you can’t explore.  Ask Him to be in charge of your dreaming and purify it.  Let your last thought before you fall asleep be of your Lord alive in you remaking your inner parts and repairing all the damage caused by the sins of the world.  Remember He won’t just come in and do whatever He wants.  Our Lord “stands at the door” of your heart and it is you who must let Him enter.

Unconscious Thought

Part 1

Jeremiah 17:10 NIV

"I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve."

What Do You Know About Yourself?

The past few weeks I have been aware of long and elaborate dreams that seem to last through the night.  In them are people I can’t ever remember seeing but they impact me in some dramatic way as my dream progresses.  The dreams aren’t frightening but sometimes they are troubling.  I have difficulty in many trying to find my way somewhere or I get confused about what I need to do.  The plotlines within my dreams are complex and the characters speak and act in surprising ways that don’t remind me of any of my recent experiences.  I could not write stories that are as creative and interesting as my dreams and so I wonder how they come about and what the source of them is.  Of course they could be sent to me by God or they may simply be the product of unconscious thinking that is working even while I am asleep.  One thing is certain.  There is much about me that I do not understand, especially what is found deep in my heart.

Perhaps you are like me and find yourself wondering what to make of the hidden parts of your mind.  It seems so complex and strange, like a cave filled with mysterious creatures, indecipherable writings and strange pictures on the walls.  Unpredictable forces are at work within you that push you about like a bully on the playground.  Do you just let them have their way with you, impacting what you feel about things and how you react to situations?  Can you do something about the internal forces that affect your life in hidden ways?  Should you be concerned about them or live as if your unconscious thoughts don’t matter?  What does the Bible have to say about the unconscious world?

Two terms in the Bible, when combined, are what describe the place of our “inner world”.  The first Hebrew term, lev, is generally translated heart and is what modern culture thinks of as the mind.  The second, Kilya is difficult to translate but in older English Bibles is called the “reins” or “kidneys”.  It is the inner place of the self; the deep part of us that includes our thinking, our unconscious world, our passion and our will.  Jeremiah 17: 10 puts both these terms together and reminds us that God has access to all the hidden places of the inner being.  "I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve." (Jeremiah 17:10 NIV)

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You don’t need proof that there are depths to you that you cannot explore with just the mental skills available to you.  You have dreams you can’t explain.  You experience emotions that do not have a recognizable source.  Memories suddenly pop to the surface without warning.  A smell or a taste of something brings back to mind an experience you have long forgotten.  The Bible says that God has made that deep, unseen world.  For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. (Psalm 139:13 NIV)  “Inmost being” is the translation of our Hebrew word, “Kilya” or kidneys, the place where your thoughts are found.  The very next verse proclaims that the way God put together your inmost being is wonderful.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:14 NIV)  What Freud and many in the psychoanalytic field saw as the enemy of happiness, the unconscious world found in each person, the Bible says is a great benefit or even a tremendous treasure.

We do though face a great problem when it comes to our unconscious thought life.  It is corrupted.  Jeremiah 17:9 says this about the heart.  The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?  (Jeremiah 17:9 NIV)  The effect of Sin at every area of our thinking, both conscious as well as unconscious, is devastating.  It impacts us at every turn in life from how we feel about things to the way we make our decisions.  Our heart is wrecked and we cannot trust it to effectively take us through life.  No one, not Freud or Jung or Watson or any of the “thinkers” in the study of psychology understand fully the chaos found in the heart.

There is an interesting term the Bible uses to describe God’s plan for us.  Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Psalm 51:6 NIV)  The word translated “truth” is the Hebrew word “emeth” and means firmness, reliability, faithfulness.  As the heart is now, you cannot count on it.  The thoughts that are generated by the heart are at best unreliable; at worst destructive.  You cannot count on what comes out of your heart and have confidence that what comes out of it will be good.  God’s plan for you is to make your heart trustworthy and the thoughts in it productive and beneficial to your being.  The only way that is possible is if God gets at the root of the problem, the Sin that corrupts the heart.

We are reminded in Jeremiah 17: 10, that only God is the great psychologist because He is capable of seeing into the deepest and most broken parts of the heart and knowing what to do about it.  "I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind…”  The prayer of the Psalmist takes this ability of God into account.  Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. (Psalm 139:23 NIV)  Why is this important?   What does the psalmist really want?  We have no tools for figuring out the effect of our unconscious thinking upon what we do and how we react to things.  God though does and yet He will not simply take over your unconscious like some hypnotist if we don’t want Him there.  He waits for our praying to begin working in us at the unconscious level. 

Consider carefully God’s ability to do something about your unconscious mind.  Psalm 51: 6 insists, you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.  This is not just insight into how to fix a lawn mower.  You and I want much more than that in the inmost place, in the unconscious parts of the heart.  You want the supernatural thinking of God that combats the broken thinking of your unconscious mind.  "Where then does wisdom come from?  Where does understanding dwell? ... God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells, (Job 28:20, 23 NIV)  With your permission, God will reshape and remake your unconscious mind so that His wisdom rises up out of it.

Consider the irony found in Isaiah 44. He (a carpenter) cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak.  He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.  It is man's fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread.  But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it.  Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill.  He also warms himself and says, "Ah! I am warm; I see the fire."  From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships.  He prays to it and says, "Save me; you are my god." (Isaiah 44: 14-17 NIV)  Of course this points out the ridiculous nature of idol construction!  With part of the wood the carpenter carves an idol and from the rest of the very same wood he builds a fire and warms his cold feet.  Your unconscious built within your heart is much like this.  Part of it generates lustful feelings.  “I want this and I want it now!”  It can incite bitter anger as well as deep depression.  Another part of the unconscious produces inspiring thoughts, actions and plans.  You might treat these ideas as if they come from God but they may not be from Him.  They may simply be a product of a corrupted unconscious.    The unconscious is the power behind many of our opinions, actions and creative ideas and tragically, you can treat them as the ruling force of your life, a god.  Some of the most horrifying people of history were ruled by an unconscious they neither understood nor could control.  They thought though that everything they did was good and right.  We too can be fooled by a heart that is not seen or understood.  Our unconscious is both a danger to us and a support.  Next week we shall look at what can be done to have an unconscious that works for us and not against us.

Miracles Today

We think of the healings of the blind, the raising of the dead and the removal of the Assyrians from Jerusalem as first order miracles when in fact they are minor supernatural events compared to the matters of the heart.  Jesus' demands of us are plainly beyond human capabilities and yet He still holds them up to us as how we are to live.  He warns us that anyone who murders is subject to judgment and none of us would argue that point.  But then he goes on to say that if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First be reconciled to your brother before returning with your gift.  Above all else, we are to keep our lives free of conflict with our fellow children of God.  This seems absurd and even unnatural but that is the normal pattern of behavior within God's Kingdom.  How can we manage such expectations?  We can't.  We must operate within the sphere of Christ where inside the human heart, both in its conscious and unconscious parts He breaks apart the barriers between people.  At every turn we are to pray and be guided by the Holy Spirit in how to respond to what we face with our fellow broken human beings.  We may lack the faith needed for reconciliation but God does not excuse our spiritual laziness.  Get back up, pray for Christ to heal the psychological wounds and eventually the relationship will be restored.  There is your part and there is God's part.  Your part is to forgive the offence you hold.  His part is to take out of the hearts of others the weight of your offending actions.  The great miracles are always the ones that put people back together into a love relationship based in forgiveness and reconciliation.  For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:20 NIV

Chaos to Order

Genesis 1:2 NIV

 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

What Do You Do About the Chaos?

Several years ago I was leading a Bible Study in a home and when we finished, I walked out to my van but it wasn’t there.  Up and down the street I wandered, hoping I had just forgotten where I parked but the truth was that it was gone.  Someone had stolen it while I was “doing God’s work”.  Inside it was my laptop, an IPod and my digital camera.  I am not sure what hurt the most, the loss of the van which I often had griped about or the fact that it happened while I was hopefully pleasing God.  The chaos in my head was I am certain easily seen as I struggled to make sense of what had just happened. This was unreasonable and not fair and infuriating.  It did not seem right that God would let this happen to me.  

Chaos comes to all of us some time or another. It is usually unexpected and unnerving.  Some seem to manage chaos well but others of us have a tough time coping with it.  We like order.  We want to know what to expect and have a plan in place when troubles come.  Perhaps you handle chaos well.  You rather like chaos and the adrenalin rush it brings.  But it might be that the unexpected storm rattles you.  Suddenly you crack your tooth or you lose your wallet or you get in a car wreck.  In a world broken by sin and thrown into chaos as a result of the rebellion of humanity, we can never assume everything will go smoothly or all our plans will come to pass as we hope.  It is more than just “drama” that you face; it is without warning out and out madness.

Before God created humanity and the creatures of the earth, the Bible says that the world was literally as the Hebrew words indicate, chaotic and disordered.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (Genesis 1:2 NIV)  It was in this state of disarray that the Lord in six days structured the universe and brought to the earth order.  Water was in its place.  Land was separated from the oceans.  Day and night were structured and species of land, air and sea creatures were separated from each other.  Everything was put in place and love and peace ruled the earth.  But then Adam sinned and the world was again in chaos with animals attacking each other, diseases bringing terror and humanity unstable and tossed about by anger and lust and jealousy.

Into this world entered God.  Jesus Christ was born of a virgin and built His life in an isolated part of the world that was largely ignored by all the great civilizations.  God by coming to us, did so in order to make the world once more rational and in every way good.  Jesus had a single mission; to take out of you and me sin and by doing so remove the chaos of Sin from the world. David perfectly describes the chaos of this world and how difficult it can get for you.  …my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief.  My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak. (Psalm 31:9-10 NIV)

Not every day is like this but enough are to paint a picture of how far chaos can go in this world.  It is frustrating and sometimes overwhelming; the chaos we encounter and like I struggled trying to make sense of the loss of my van, it is normal to wonder why there is so much chaos.  After Jesus sent His disciples off in a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee with Jesus peacefully asleep, chaos erupted.   Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. (Matthew 8: 24 NIV)  It astounded the disciples that Jesus could sleep through all that wild commotion but privately many of them must have wondered why God let such a great storm come upon them when they were doing God’s work. 

While He was teaching some in the crowd mentioned the tragic slaughter of some Galileans by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.  It seems that they wanted Jesus to explain why God let them be killed.  Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.  Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.  Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them — do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?” (Luke 13:1-5 NIV)  Jesus does not welcome at all the hunt for blame when tragedy strikes!  Yes, the world is filled with both sinners and chaos but one person’s sin is not the cause of the chaos we find.  The disciples had a similar question for Jesus when they came upon a man who had been born blind.  His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2 NIV) Jesus’ response was perhaps not what they expected. "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:3 NIV)

When we look at the chaos all about us, we are asking the wrong question if we are trying to draw a straight line cause-and-effect relationship between who we are and what we face.  The assumption or at least the expectation must be in every case that chaos is to be expected but every time chaos occurs, we must look for God to see what He does.  Why the storm?  Why the massacre?  Why the blindness?  We cannot give an explanation for it other than that we live in a wrecked and chaotic world.  But when you see chaos, always look about for God too.

There is an illustration of how you can gradually develop this approach to chaos.  During a different storm on the same lake, Peter, along with the other disciples was in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee when a storm developed and the winds began to blow strongly.  The chaos however went beyond the storm.  During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.  When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear. (Matthew 14:25-26 NIV)  Jesus though reassured them.  But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I.  Don't be afraid." (Matthew 14: 27 NIV)  Famously, Peter, trusting Jesus to take care of him, got out of the boat and started walking on the water just like he saw Jesus doing.  At that moment, Peter recognized the chaos but looked for God in it.  Soon though, the storm was all he saw and he started sinking into the water.  Chaos has that effect on us.  We can let it overwhelm our sensitivity to God.

Peter had another opportunity to look past the chaos and see God in it but he didn’t make use of the opportunity.  When Jesus was arrested by the Jewish leaders, Peter thought all was lost and even though our Lord told him and the others that this was part of God’s plan, Peter panicked when He saw Jesus beaten and humiliated.  Three times he denied to the people watching with him that he even knew Jesus.  It was a lost cause to Peter and he could not see God in what was happening.  In just a couple years though, Peter was not so lost.

What turned everything around for Peter was that Jesus rose from the dead after He was crucified and as for all other true Christians, the Holy Spirit became a part of his personality.  From that point forward, all the mental strength and moral power of God was a part of him and can be a part of you too, Peter could never get completely lost in chaos.  Although it may not seem traumatic like being caught in a storm or watching as Christ was being beaten there was nonetheless a tremendous challenge Peter faced after the Holy Spirit came on him and the others the day of Pentecost.  The disciples started facing persecution.  James the Apostle was executed for his faith in Christ as was the deacon Stephen and Peter was more than once arrested and threatened with death.  Peter had started to make a regular practice of trying to see God in whatever he faced and after having moved away from Jerusalem he stayed with some friends in the Roman dominated town of Caesarea.  While there, some messengers came to him from a Roman centurion, asking Peter to come to the centurion’s home.  There were two problems with the invitation.  One, Peter was Jewish and Jewish people did not go into the homes of those who weren’t Jewish. More importantly though it was a centurion who wanted to see Peter and this was a great challenge for Peter.  It was the Roman soldiers who executed Jesus.  This quite possibly could have been a threat.  What was Peter to do?  Would he trust Christ within the chaos of going to see the Centurion or let his fear rule him and stay home?

The decision Peter finally made enabled Peter to see God in the chaos he faced.  Before that, God was in the storm, He was there to trust too but he did not see it.  After that, God was in the crucifixion of Christ and He was there to trust but Peter didn’t see it then either.  Now, the invitation to go to the centurion’s house, although frightening and risky had God there too just like with the other two chaotic moments.  There is a crisis of faith for you every time you face chaos.  Do you believe God will see you through this?  Will you trust Him to help you and carry you?  Do you believe He loves you and that the chaos you have now will be worked out by Christ and that although it might be hard now and very hard, He will stay with you no matter how rough it gets?  Peter had to go through some rugged and painful experiences before he became convinced that the Lord was good enough to trust within the storm and not just when the warm and gentle breezes were blowing.  God’s peace is not theoretical, it is practical.  It is of no use if you cannot have God’s peace when chaos comes.  Your chaos is your opportunity to test the Lord’s power to see you through it and as you trust Christ in the chaos, He is proven to be good and really good.  When you see Him there, in the middle of your chaos, you will learn and learn completely, that your Lord is bigger, and stronger and kinder than you ever imagined.

Getting it Done

The rise of civilization came through the murderous line of Cain.  It was his descendants who gave themselves to the arts, tool-making and warfare.  Cain was the inspiration behind the first recorded example of honor killing.  Organized ranching and farming was developed by the line of Cain as were the proliferation of cities.  The world order began with one man's determination to do away with his chief rival and create a monopoly for himself.  The line of Seth out of which came Noah and his family, was known for a solitary accomplishment.  One from their number, "walked with God".    If you assess all that has been accomplished since Adam sinned and transformed the course of human history, you must decide how to properly evaluate everything that has taken place.  Does it look more like it came from Cain or Abel?  Are your accomplishments along the lines of Seth or his older brother Cain?  What we decide is "getting things done" may rather be the unraveling of our Lord's agenda.  It is strange to think that the impoverished widow who gave her few pennies to the offering accomplished far more than Herod who led the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem.  What we call civilization may be nothing of the sort.  Whether we consider the construction of Babel or Solomon's great palace, it seems that civilized thinking rarely generates a civilized heart.  Start with your mind on Christ and do whatever you can to keep it on Him throughout your day.  Then, whatever you do,  work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men... (Colossians 3:23 NIV)

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.