Peace Today, Peace Tomorrow

Leviticus 26:6 NIV

I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid.

How Good Is Peace?

Years ago when I was a kid, I got a job delivering weekly advertisers to homes.  I had over two-hundred and fifty papers to deliver and it was very hard riding my bike with so many papers hanging from the back of my bike.  I had to roll all the papers myself and put rubber bands around them.  My route brought me far down the road from my house and it took a few hours to finish the route.  At the far end of my route I discovered that at one of the homes lived a set of brothers known for fighting and picking on younger kids. One day as was riding past their home, one of the brothers threatened to pull me off my bike if I came by his house again.  Each week my knuckles turned white and my stomach churned as I made my dreaded pass by their house, hoping I would not see ever see again the brothers as I pitched the paper as quickly as possible toward their porch and sped away down the street.  I dreaded so badly my trips by their house that I quit after a year because I could not take it anymore.

What price would you pay to have peace?  Perhaps you have it most of the time.  You have very few worries and rarely are disturbed by difficulties.  Maybe you never suffer from anxiety and don’t fret when troubles hit you.  Or it might be you are like the vast majority of people who do worry because some things are just too big to handle.  You fret over your children, ruminate about health issues, worry about relationships you have.  Maybe you do pray about these issues you face but after you pray, then what?  What do you do after praying?  Aren’t you supposed to do something, remind someone, give advice, recommend, make a change, work harder, strategize? 

When you read in the Bible that God promises you peace, it seems a bit esoteric, like something normal people don’t ever get.  What sort of peace can you have with God?  Is real peace in you even possible?  Jesus made a sweeping universal promise that must be noted first.  He said, “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)  Several points need to be made here.  First, this is not normal peace God is pledging.   He says it is not “as the world gives.”  The term world in this verse of course does not refer to a collection of people but only the order of life in a sin broken universe and whatever peace that comes “from the world” is just what is grabbed through circumstances and personality traits.  In other words, most of the time, the peace that comes out of the world is determined by how well things are going.  If everything is working out for you, then you feel pretty good but there is no guarantee you will have real peace when things start to fall apart. The world may have peace for you when you get a pay raise or the cancer test comes back negative or your neighbor finds your dog wandering down the next block but what sort of peace can the world give you when your son suffers brain damage in a car wreck or you are really going to lose your house or your retirement fund gets demolished by the recession?

The other day I was merging onto the freeway and just as I was moving into the second lane, suddenly a huge red pickup truck came speeding down in that lane and I had to swerve back into the lane on my right to avoid getting hit.  Of course I had the normal adrenal rush such a close call elicits and with my face flushed with anger, I stared into the side mirror of the driver and he looked back at me.  All of a sudden the driver slowed way down and pulled alongside me and with his window rolled down, gestured wildly with his hands and clearly was yelling at me although my window was rolled up and I could not hear anything he was shouting at me.  I stared back at him as we went side by side down the freeway.  Finally he pulled ahead of me and looked back at me in his side mirror as I looked back at him.  We glared at each other and then he slowed down again and pulled along-side me on my right and once more with his window down gesticulated crazily with his hand at me and loudly screamed at my rolled up window.  I stared back at him and began to size up the wild man.  He looked short and very skinny and probably on meth.  If there was a fight between his giant truck and my tiny Honda, I would lose.  But if the two of us fought, I would probably have taken him.  With my cross dangling from my rear view mirror and my mind being pulled into Christ, I just looked away and slowed down even more so I could move behind the guy and prayed.  He made one more wild motion at me and off he shot.  It was funny how much peace I had as this was happening and I must say, it was not a peace that the world gives. The world’s peace is driving along without a care listening to my favorite music.  There was a different sort of peace I needed though when the driver of the truck started screaming at me…a supernatural peace.

When Jesus says that He leaves us peace, He uses the same Greek word that is often translated “forgive”.  The idea behind forgive is that the sin is cast away, sent off so you don’t carry it with you anymore.  Jesus promises to continually cast off to you peace.  To be certain you get the gist of what He is saying, Jesus reiterates by adding, “I continually give my peace.”  If you are at the store, I give you my peace.  If you are in the dentist’s chair, I give you my peace.  If you have someone breaking into your house, even then, I give you my peace.  Wherever you go, in Iceland or South Africa or in your car driving to work, I give you my peace.  It is important that Jesus identifies for you what sort of peace He promises to continually give you.  It is His peace, the peace Jesus possesses Himself that He puts into you all the time.  The same peace Jesus had when He responded to Pontius Pilate as He in His beaten state faced crucifixion is the very peace Christ gives you today, tonight, tomorrow and tomorrow evening.  This is not a peace you have to develop but the mature peace Christ has even now.  But there is something we must make clear.  To experience God’s peace, you must give it room to operate in you.

So how do you do that?  You must decide at each turn of your life and in every circumstance you face that God is in charge of what is happening and He will make it be good for you.  Of course that is a monumental determination to make but that is the foundation of the peace Christ has.  He always kept His mind on the Father and whether Jesus was in a storm or the Garden of Gethsemane waiting to be arrested, Jesus was certain that the Father was good and in charge of what was happening to Him.  You can easily lose sight of this when something really difficult or even painful is occurring.  The moment you do, the peace of Christ stops operating in you.  The peace of Christ is still there, still available to you;, it is strong and it can carry you but you shut it down when you lose your grip on God being with you and being good to you.

To give you an idea how easy it is to forget that God is in charge of everything happening and He is good to you, consider the account of Saul as a young king of the united nation of Israel.  Almost immediately after being given by God the kingdom, Saul faced a crisis.  The warring nation of Philistia came out to attack Israel.  God told Saul to not do anything until the prophet Samuel came to offer a sacrifice.  He was to wait seven days and then the prophet would come to the front lines to make the sacrifice and call out in prayer for God’s help.  The seventh day came and Saul had no peace.  The Philistine army was ready to attack and as he saw it, Saul had no guarantee the Lord was with him at that point.  His soldiers were scared and he was too.  His rule would be awfully short if he didn’t do something.  On his own, without the prophet Samuel there, Saul offered the sacrifice himself.  As he was finishing, Samuel arrived.  Just as he finished making the offering, Samuel arrived, and Saul went out to greet him.  "What have you done?" asked Samuel.  Saul replied, "When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash, I thought, 'Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the Lord's favor.' So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering."  "You acted foolishly," Samuel said. "You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the Lord's command." (1 Samuel 13:10-14 NIV)

Even after this Saul could have had God’s peace if he would have realized that God was in charge and that with this change God was being good to him.  The peace of God is available day and night in any circumstance we face but when we panic and do not trust God to carry us through, we don’t enjoy His peace, it slips from us.  Yet as soon as we turn back to God and ask for His peace, our Lord is as generous as always and gives us His peace freely.  When Peter told Jesus that it could never be that He would die at the hands of the Jews and Romans, he could not have Christ’s peace and he did not have it.  He fell into a panic when he saw Jesus being arrested and then beaten.  His worry was so great and His peace so shallow that when Peter was confronted three different times by servants and others who said he was one of Jesus’ followers, Peter could not admit to it.  He did not believe this could be God’s plan and so he lost his peace.  It was only later when Jesus rose again and met with His Apostles in the upper room that Peter regained it.  We must be very careful that we do nothing to interrupt the peace Christ has for us.

The universe that Christ has created is built upon the foundation of trusting Him.  Without our trust in Christ we lose one of the most precious gifts that being in Him provides.  Do not trust Christ and His peace slips away from you.  Turn back to Him and His peace is there waiting for you.  The reason the world cannot have Christ’s peace is because the world does not believe Christ is in charge and no longer believes that Christ will make life good for them.  But you can and you do.  You do believe Christ is in charge of everything that happens to you and that He will make everything turn out well for you.  The perfect love of Christ controls and protects you each and every day.  To have His peace poured into you, you must let Him do it.  You are in charge of the peace you gain.  At the end of John 14: 27, as Jesus is promising you His peace, he finishes by commanding you not to let your heart be troubled.  The word translated “troubled” is the same Greek word that describes the stirring up of water in a pot as it is boiling or the raging of the sea during a typhoon.  You are in charge of not letting your heart become a storm.  God won’t do that for you.  You must do it yourself.  If you want your heart to be a boiling pot of turmoil, then you can and God won’t stop you.  But if you want the peace that Jesus has, you must decide Christ is in charge of what is happening and He is being good to you.  Then you will have the determination to ask and receive the peace that Christ has in Himself and you will become calm and serene, as peaceful as Jesus sitting in a boat during a storm.

How Salvation Looks

2 Kings 2: 9 NIV

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?”  “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied. 

Do You Have The Salvation of Jesus?

I have several times been stunned by what people of various ages and backgrounds don’t know.  What seems to me to be common knowledge is not always.  Perhaps you too have been surprised by someone’s lack of familiarity with what you thought everyone understood.   Maybe you spoke with someone who did not know why Christmas is celebrated or where the oil should be put in a car or what a trapezoid is or how many days there are in June.  None of us know everything and you don’t either but sometimes we can be caught by surprise when an intelligent and normal person has never considered what something was that you thought everyone understood.

Salvation is one of the most common terms used in Christian conversations and yet it is not really understood by many of us.  How does salvation look?  What is salvation for you now?  Can salvation be recognized when you see it?  Would someone who spent time with you be able to tell that you have salvation?  What characterizes salvation?

A good place to begin this discussion is by considering someone that Jesus Himself said had salvation.  Zacchaeus may be the most famous tax collector of all time.  He of course climbed a tree to be able to see Jesus over the crowd surrounding the Lord as He passed through Zacchaeus’s town.  Spotting the diminutive Zacchaeus, the Lord warmly called for Zacchaeus to come down from the tree and take him home for lunch.  Some would call Jesus audacious for making such a demand but Zacchaeus was thrilled.  Instantly Zacchaeus announced to Jesus and the crowd standing about that he was giving half his possessions to the poor and to all who claimed Zacchaeus cheated them by charging too much for taxes he promised to pay them back four times the amount he had taken.  Our familiarity with this account drains off much of the electricity it generated when first witnessed by the original onlookers.  Immediately after Zacchaeus made his proclamation of his new way of life, Jesus announced, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.”  (Luke 19: 9 NIV)

In Jesus’ declaration we have the assertion of God that at least in this instance, salvation had a decided look to it. We can see two distinct manifestations of salvation in Zacchaeus.  He threw himself upon God to bring him happiness and contentment.  He did not need all the wealth he had accumulated nor the perks it brought him.  Zacchaeus was happy just having Jesus in his life.  We have in scripture numerous examples of “anti-salvation” too.  Consider the reaction of the elder brother in Jesus’ parable of the Father who welcomed home his young profligate son.  The older brother became furious that his father received his brother back with such enthusiasm and extravagance.  His chief complaint was that for years he had been loyal to his father and never was thrown a party, never given precious gifts.  The father must have been devastated by his older son’s blatant lack of satisfaction with him. Clearly his dad picked up on this part of the son’s complaint when he pleaded with his son to welcome back his brother.  “”My son,” his father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”  (Luke 15: 31)

Salvation, at least for Zacchaeus, made him happy just to be with Jesus.  He stopped caring so much for whatever else he had or didn’t have.  The older brother, on the other hand cared very much what he had or didn’t have and was not too interested in his father at all.  The father had to point out to the older son, “you have me”, as if the older son either did not know that or care.  Jesus did not have to point out to Zacchaeus that Zacchaeus had Him;  having Jesus was all that mattered to him.  Zacchaeus was well aware of his life with Christ and was thrilled to have Jesus regardless of anything else coming or going from his life.  Does your salvation look like that?

There is another aspect to the salvation of Zacchaeus that must be noted.  His salvation could be seen in his response to his past.  Illuminated before him in his mind was the wrong he had done and the ways he had cheated people by exacting unwarranted taxes from them. Zacchaeus; when he really saw Jesus and the salvation He offered knew he was a sinner through and through and had no mind to hide any of it from God or anyone else.  Zacchaeus started his new life with God by despising his sinning and choosing to live a good and honest life.  Does your salvation look like that?

If it were not for the great spiritual insight it offers, the account of Elijah and his effort to leave behind his apprentice Elisha so he wouldn’t be present when the Lord took him is almost comical.   When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, "Stay here; the Lord has sent me to Bethel."  But Elisha said, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So they went down to Bethel…Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here, Elisha; the Lord has sent me to Jericho."   And he replied, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So they went to Jericho… Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here; the Lord has sent me to the Jordan."  And he replied, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So the two of them walked on.  (2 Kings 2:1-6 NIV)  When finally the two arrived at the Jordan River, Elijah took his cloak, struck the water of the Jordan with it and the Jordan River parted, allowing the two to cross on dry ground.  At that point, Elijah asked his apprentice what he could do for him.  When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?"  "Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit," Elisha replied.  "You have asked a difficult thing," Elijah said, "yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours — otherwise not." (2 Kings 2: 9-10 NIV)

What an interesting request!  Elisha wanted a double portion of Elijah’s spirit…whatever that was.  Essentially Elisha wanted lots of what Elijah was inside of himself.    He was asking for the nature and personality of Elijah to be his.  And he got it.  As soon as Elijah was taken by God up to the heavens in a fiery chariot, Elisha left and came to the Jordan River.  Elisha did the same thing he saw his master do before; he took off his cloak, struck the Jordan River with it and voila, the water parted once more and Eisha was able to walk across it on dry ground.  Elisha saw many more miracles take place, even more than we read for Elijah.  He really did receive a “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit!

The Bible tells us that like Elisha, we can have the spirit of another in us…the Spirit of God.  You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.  But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.  And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. (Romans 8: 9-11 NIV)  How was Elisha to know if he was going to possess the spirit of Elijah?  If he witnessed Elijah being taken away by God, then he could know Elijah’s spirit would be his.  How do you know if the Spirit of God is in you?  If you are not controlled by the sinful nature but rather by the Spirit, then He lives in you!  Does your salvation look like that, like the Spirit of God lives in you and controls the way you live?

There is one more report in Scripture that we must consider when it comes to our salvation.  At the end of Luke is recorded a fascinating account of Jesus, after He was crucified and died, returning to life in a new resurrection body.  He suddenly appeared as two of His friends were walking from Jerusalem to the small town of Emmaus.  The disciples didn’t recognize him the entire time they walked but along the way Jesus explained how the Bible in the Old Testament told about everything that happened to Him and why.  Once they got to their home though and Jesus sat down with them to eat, the disciples made an astonishing discovery.  When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.  Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.  They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:30-32 NIV)

Jesus did two things for the disciples.  He opened their eyes so that they could see Him…not as a stranger or just another teacher but as God.  He also opened the Scriptures for them so that they could see Him there too.  How can you tell that salvation has come to you?  First, you realize by experience that Jesus Christ is real and He is Lord of all.  This is no longer a curiosity for you or an intellectual exercise of debate but a surety within; a decided matter.  Secondly, the Scriptures become a driving force for you and a fascination that skeptics and critics cannot shake loose from you.  You read the Bible and have a powerful drive to read the Bible.  You see things in it you did not notice before you had salvation.  The Bible becomes personal for you, the source of strength and wisdom you need and want.

When salvation comes to you, Jesus Christ becomes a part of you and what matters to Him matters to you and the sort of character He has gets worked into you just like it did in the Apostle Paul and Peter and John and James and Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus.   It cannot be missed, your resemblance to Jesus and how He thinks when salvation comes to you.  Salvation is not a place where you go but a person you become.  The new you becomes free of sin and full of Christ living through you.  Every time you obey God, more of Him comes out of you and the world as a result, is a better place.

The Importance of U

Matthew 1: 20 NIV

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

What Makes You Important?

Recently I came to the church office and discovered a woman sleeping on the concrete behind the sanctuary.  She was wrapped in a pure white comforter and had boxes and papers and the remains of her meal scattered around her.  She looked up at me as I went to unlock the kitchen in the back building and she asked me if I remembered her.  It is funny as I get older how often people recognize me but I can’t recall having met them.  After talking a while, I realized that it was not Alzheimer’s that led to my inability to remember her but the fact that we really had never met.  She was young and beautiful, maybe late twenties, early thirties, deeply tanned with bright green eyes and an easy smile.  It was not long though before I began to see what a broken soul she was.  Her past clearly had traumatized her and she was bitter and angry.  Gina kept talking about the demon possessed police who were following her and trying to trap her as well as evil forces that were trying to destroy her.  She was clearly a meth addict, but worse, deranged and emotionally unstable.  I brought her something to eat, gave her access to the bathroom and spent some time listening to her rants and then praying for her to have God’s peace.  After Gina left, I wondered what God wanted to do with her.  Did He have plans for her still?  Was she too wrecked to be reclaimed by God?  As Gina limped away, her damaged leg seemed to offer hope to me that if a doctor could fix her leg, surely God could remake her broken heart.  Perhaps He has plans for her that she can still fulfill?

You too are damaged in many ways, some visible but others hidden even from you.  You care about how your life is going, what it is and what will become of it despite the broken parts of you.  If you didn’t, it would probably be because you are at some level feeling hopeless.  Maybe it matters to you what God wants to do with you.  Perhaps you have thought about His plans for you and how you fit into the bigger scheme of life.  How ready are you for Christ to jump into your conscious thinking and redirect you, shift dramatically the direction you are going?  Do you believe that God has plans for you and that you play a part in what He wants to do?  Are you willing to go where He leads, do what He tells you to do?

Not long ago I spent some time pondering just how immense it was for Joseph, who was engaged to Mary, the mother of Jesus to agree with the Lord’s plan for him.  When Joseph heard from his fiancée that she was pregnant but not with his child, he immediately assumed that she had cheated on him.  Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her (his fiancée, Mary) to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. (Matthew 1:19 NIV)  However, God intervened and sent an angel to Joseph during a dream.  But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1:20 NIV)

You have the benefit of being able to look back on all of this through history, knowing the supernatural circumstances of this pregnancy.  Joseph had none of our tools to process what Mary had just told him.  In addition, the vision of the angel was one embedded in a dream and we all know how convoluted and distorted dreams are.  Dreams are not very trustworthy and you cannot be sure what to do with them. Some most interesting conclusions can be drawn from this short description of how God got across to Joseph His plans for him.  Why don’t you consider each of these point by point?

Joseph was afraid, really afraid of the news that Mary was pregnant.  His plan to divorce her quietly was born out of a desperate situation.  How do you divorce someone quietly when you both are from a small village where everyone knows everyone else and weddings are community events that take in the entire town practically?  He would have had to spend months and more likely years to get to the place where he could even wed Mary.  He would not have on the spur of the moment proposed to her; she was his most important investment in life.  It would have scared Joseph to death to contemplate tossing all of that aside and quietly walk away from this marriage without being able to explain the reason behind his decision.  Worse than that however was staying with Mary and having to wait nine months for her baby to be born, knowing the child might not look like either one of them.  How could he explain what had happened to her?

Second, it really was God who was speaking to Joseph in the dream, despite how hard it would have been for him to believe.  The tension would have been difficult to resolve; how to know for certain He had heard from God and it was not just the wild nature of his imagination that put together his dream.  Perhaps he wanted the Lord so badly to intervene and guide him that he concocted in the depths of his unconsciousness a “God moment”.  Plenty of crazy people think they have heard from God…or Moses…or Adam…  Joseph could have lost his mind in his grief over his fiancée’s pregnancy and the dream may just have been an emotional coping device.  It was an act of great faith for Joseph to decide his dream really had come from God.

Third, it was Joseph that God wanted to act as the father of His child.  No one else was selected.  Joseph alone was chosen for this great task of raising and caring for Jesus.  When Joseph looked at himself and pondered the immensity of what stood before him, he could not hunt about for someone to take his place.  He alone had been given the charge and it was his duty to live up to the Lord’s expectations.  No one could take his place.

Fourth, Joseph was a part of God’s prearranged plan.  There was a history to what He was called to do.  At some point, the Lord picked out Joseph and arranged circumstances so that he would be a perfect fit for what the Lord wanted him to do.  After Joseph accepted his part in God’s plan, there was an entire chain of events that would follow that would be directly connected to Joseph and what he did.   This was not an arbitrary determination on God’s part that Joseph might work out as Jesus’ father.  He thought through it all before He contacted Joseph and was all in on being there for Joseph as he fulfilled the task given him.

Fifth, Joseph was a very ordinary human being.  There are no unique qualities described in the text telling us about him.  We know nothing about his intellect, his talents, his athleticism or even his age or how he looked. We could never have known it was him if Joseph walked up to us on the street because we have nothing in the Biblical record to make us recognize him.  His skill set and talent base are irrelevant to the story.   God picked Joseph out to raise His Son and that is all we can say about why He did so.  It would be nonsensical for us to think God did not have good reasons for choosing Joseph, we just don’t know what they were and Joseph most likely did not know either.

You also fit into what God is doing and you too have been selected by Him for something…most likely an entire list of somethings. Why He has chosen you we cannot say.  What your qualifications are for the challenge is irrelevant to you.  This is not something God just on the spur of the moment considered but from eternity He has been thinking of you for this.  No one else is fit for what He has for you or He would have called that person instead.  But how can you know it is God who has given you the responsibility laid in front of you?  You just must!  At some point you have to resolve the tension between believing that God is directing your life and not believing it.  You might be afraid of what is before you, completely befuddled by what you have to do but at some level that only you and God can access you know it is God pointing the way.  No one else may see what you see or grasp what you know is true but you do know God has something for you to do and it is no one else He has to do it.  What might it be?  None of us here know but you will know and you must not talk yourself out of knowing you know.  The Bible clearly tells us the way God has His people do things, how they are to act when faced with the challenges before them.  It is not a matter of how to do what He wants you to do; it is whether you will do what He is showing you to do in the way He has said to do it.

In some way, you fit perfectly into the plan God has for this world and He is certain you can live up to the challenge.  He knows your capabilities, your strengths and weaknesses and He has thought through what He can do with you and through you if you will just accept His challenge.  You cannot know what value there is to what you do nor can you see all the ramifications of following Him.  All you can know and this is the most certain fact you can ever come to discover.  God will connect you to Himself and together you will form a union that is as binding and full of love and joy as the union the Father has with the Son.  Are you willing to be united with Christ in His plan for you?  Are you willing to let Him work through you that you might be joined to Him in His plan for the world?  What do you say to God when He lifts your head up and points out to you the way that you are to go?

Exploring Love

John 15:12 NIV

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

What Does Love Have To Do With It?

When I was in seminary a group of us used to play a board game called Risk.  It is a military game where each player has an army and tries to conquer the world.  It involves rolling the dice and strategically placing your army pieces in such a way that you can best take the armies of other players.  For a while we were playing once a week and it was quite competitive.  I was the new kid in the group so for a number of weeks I got beat rather soundly but after catching on to it, I did pretty well.  After a while, I got too busy to play and had to give up on it but long after I graduated, I maintained a love for the game; I just didn’t have a group to join me in it.  Several years later our church had a picnic and I brought the game just in case I could find three others to play it.  The game takes about two hours and sometimes longer to finish but I figured that since we were all there to relax and enjoy the day, perhaps I could put a group together who would join me in Risk.  I was able to find three others who liked the game so we sat down on blankets and began to play.  Now, the object is to conquer the world, and although it was done with plastic game pieces and no actual weapons are involved, to win, you have to one by one eliminate the other players until it is just two left and then you try to destroy the other player’s army.  This is just nice friendly fun, in theory.  The problem is you have to publicly wreck one player and knock that person out of the game if you are to have a chance at winning.  That is not fun for the players being conquered.  As I destroyed one player’s army and then another and finally the third, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with what I was doing.  I was after all the pastor and as I watched the forced smiles get thinner and thinner as I took out one church member after another, I found it nearly impossible to enjoy my successes.  No one stuck around to see who won.  Actually, no one wanted to see who lost.  It was too painful.  I went home that evening and wondered if it might have been better to have thrown the game so that I did not risk hurting anyone’s feelings.  It is hard to feel like a loving person when you are destroying someone’s army.  It is really hard for that same person to feel loved.

Perhaps you are like me.  You don’t feel like much of an expert on love.  If you took a bucket and it was a “love bucket”, how full would you say yours is?  I would have to admit that mine is pretty shallow.  Do you love like Jesus?  Is your bucket overflowing with love for others or does it have to be tipped way over to get anything out of it?  Are there only a few people who get to take any love from your bucket or is it available to everyone?  Do your enemies get any love from you?  How about relatives you don’t really like?  Does your love bucket have a lid on it or a narrow spout?  How much love do you have for others?

Perhaps the third most famous verse in the Bible mentioning love is found in 1 John 4: 16.  God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. (NIV)  What does that really mean that God is love?  Love, of all the spiritual qualities we can consider is the one most dependent upon relationship.  Faith, hope, courage, honesty, purity and a dozen other qualities can all be expressed without another single being in existence.  Love however requires others for it to exist.  You can “love yourself” but what does that mean?  It is a fruitless endeavor that erodes into self-absorption and selfishness.  Love to exist must extend out to others or it rots and then dies.  You might ask how it is possible for God to be three persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but then you must in turn be asked, how it is possible for God to be love and not exist eternally as at least more than one person.  He cannot be love eternally if He is forever by Himself.  Jesus Christ has to be eternal God with other persons as God if He is to be love and to love.  The same is so for the Father and for the Holy Spirit.  No one of them can exist alone and still be love.

Love is the most profoundly Christian character trait there is.  It has no rival.  As the Bible says, And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV)  When the Lord was giving some of His last instructions to His disciples before He let Himself be crucified, He told them, My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. (John 15:12 NIV)  Later He underscores His demand of them.  This is my command: Love each other. (John 15:17 NIV)  It is His solitary directive.  He does not tell them to be sure to pray more or to take a bold political stand or sing more worship songs or listen to lots of sermons or give lots of money to good causes or study the Bible diligently during these last moments with them.  He says “Love each other”. 

Of course there are all sorts of good things we can and should do to be faithful to God but it is all to no avail if we do not love each other like Christ has loved us.  The Bible makes a clear declaration of how important it is to God for us to love each other on His list of priorities for us.  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NIV)  Every single ounce of Christian behavior is tied to this one command, “Love each other”.  Listen to this clear affirmation of how Christian people are to live.  For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. (Galatians 5:6 NIV)

Let us be clear about this matter of love.  It is a way of doing things, not a way of feeling about things…at least as it is found in the Bible.  When Jesus clarified what it means to love Him, our Lord said it was behavioral.  Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command. (John 15:13-14 NIV)  Love for God means to do what He tells you to do, not feel good about Him or be attracted to Him.  That may and probably will happen if you love Him but without obedience to Christ, there is no love for Him.  Martyrdom or laying down your life for Christ means that your life becomes God’s to do with as He wishes.  Whatever He commands, you do and that means you love Him and are His friend.  There is nothing abstract about Christian love.  It is practical and concrete.  If you love as a Christian, it means you do something; something for someone else that is a specific act that God would say is loving.

The Bible makes it very clear what sort of behavior is love behavior.  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NIV)  If you wish to fill your love bucket and please God, you need to pick one of these practical ways of being loving.   Perhaps it would be to keep “no record of wrongs.”  How would you do that?  You just don’t bring up any grievance you have against someone and you stop thinking about it or pray for God to bless that person every time your complaint comes to mind.  Maybe you choose to trust someone who has made the same mistake over and over again. This could cost you…you might be frustrated or irritated by being let down again…but consider how many times Christ has entrusted you with something and you have let Him down.  You might do something kind for someone, something that is even extravagant and because Jesus just does kind things for you without expecting anything in return, you too do your kind deed without expecting anything back or even hoping you will get something back.  Perhaps you fight against your tendency to get angry with certain people.  Relax, say a prayer and smile when someone irritates you or inconveniences you.  Let someone get in front of you, pay someone’s bill, give a back rub, provide a warm compliment, take time to listen to someone else’s story, refuse to make a disparaging remark about someone else.

Love is quite simple.  Loving because Christ loves you is even simpler.  Choose something off this list of love bucket behaviors and do at least one of them today.  Ask Christ to fill you with His saving love for all people and make a choice who and how you will love a person you know or don’t know.  Perhaps something as easy as deciding to pray for God to bless an irritating or frustrating person through the day would be what God wants of you.  Instead of having a “good day”, have a “loving day”.

Risen

Galatians 1:3-5 NIV

 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

What’s Bothering You?

During my sophomore year in high school I decided I wanted to become good at basketball.  Day and night I played on any court where I could find someone to challenge.  I lifted weights, did push-ups, ran and used a jump rope with five pound ankle weights to increase my speed and power.  Every day I shot hundreds of jump shots and played against anyone who came to the courts where I was.  I played so often that the insides of my fingers split open and burned with pain.  My basketball became so worn by constant playing that it was smooth as glass.  To play as often as I did, I had to give up something and it was my homework.  It seemed like a good trade-off for me, basketball glory for a few good grades.  My senior year I finally tried out for my high school varsity basketball team.  I played hard, took rebounds away from players stronger than me, made my jump shots and dunked in the practices.  Finally Friday came and the head coach pulled me off to the side to tell me my fate.  He said I didn’t make the team.

Have you ever been surprised by how things turned in your life?  Have you failed when you knew you would succeed?  Have you tried your best and it wasn’t good enough?  Do you know someone whose health suddenly fell apart, someone who lost his job when he was good at what he did?  Are you ever stunned by how badly things go; your planning of no use, your decisions not working out for you?  What do you think of a world that has so much difficulty?  Do you ever complain about the troubles you face?  Do you get upset about the stock market, distressed over your bad knees, frustrated  that a coworker doesn’t show you the respect you deserve, discouraged with how your career is going or how your kids are doing in school?

Jesus has told you how it will go for you.  “In this world you will have trouble.” (John 16:33b NIV)  If you are expecting everything in your life to work out nicely, Jesus said it won’t.  Let’s get this out of the way, that success and good health are promised you.  They aren’t.  You might not face cancer.  You could have a great career.  Your children might do very well.  But in all of that, you will have trouble.  It will find you and most likely you won’t be prepared when it arrives.  Jesus however does not just dump this bad news on us without a promise.  “But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16: 33c NIV)

God does not look at life the same way most people do.  Nearly everyone cares very much about finances, health and relationships.  If something goes wrong, you try to fix it. It weighs on your mind until your trouble goes away.  Our Lord though has a completely different take on matters.  Consider carefully what Christ prioritized during His physical life on earth.  Several things went quite well for Him.  Great crowds came to hear Him speak, mesmerized by His story telling and insightful teaching.  He performed spectacular miracles that brought health and wellness to vast numbers of people.  There was a movement among the Jews to make Him king after He fed a crowd of five thousand with just two small fish and five barley loaves.  He was a brilliant debater and charismatic leader.  Jesus could have had as much wealth as He desired.  He could send His disciples off to pluck coins out of the mouths of fish if He wanted more money.  Our Lord was on the verge of enjoying one of the greatest lives ever and yet he threw it all away.

At the height of Christ’s popularity, when everything in His life was trending upward, our Lord let it all unravel.  He stopped doing miracles.  He quit preaching to crowds.  He no longer debated with His critics.  He let His popularity disappear.  He did not concern Himself with His health.  He chose to let His successful ministry fall apart.  What could lead to such absolute disregard for one’s well-being?

There is something far worse than deadly diseases, worse than school shootings and child abuse, worse than poverty, sexual harassment, sweat shops and human trafficking.  It is worse than pornography, corporate corruption and even the threat of nuclear war.  It is the reason why Christ gave up all the promise His life held.  The great enemy of all of life; of the entire universe was on our Lord’s mind from the moment He could begin thinking about it.  His whole life had one mission and one alone.  He lived to save the world from Sin.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21 NIV)

Sin is the source of every evil in the world, from disease to death; it all springs out of Sin.  Jesus Christ chose for everything to go absolutely wrong for Him, to take every terror sin brings, whether it was pain, hatred, abuse or sorrow and suffer it all for one reason.  By doing so, by letting every bit of sin rip His life apart, He took sin out of us. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24 NIV)

Jesus let His friend Judas betray Him, to even kiss him on the cheek as he did so.  He did not resist as the Jewish guards arrested Him.  Jesus took quietly every slap on the face, every bit of spit that was rained down upon Him.  Jesus let bizarre accusations be hurled at Him without defending Himself.  The blows on the head, the thorns jammed into His scalp, the whips shredding His back and chest and legs and arms, all accepted without protest.  Sin wrecked Him.  And more Sin came and battered Him.  Every sin you committed slugged Him and still He accepted more in His body.  The sins of your neighbors, of your friends, of your relatives long gone, of people you have never met, of enemies that have damaged your heart, of lovers who have adored you and those who turned on you, every sin of every person who has ever been, Jesus let each one come into His body and they all sank into His flesh and pounded it with the pain of ten billion heart attacks, of ten trillion broken bones and concussions.   Each sin of every man, woman and child blasted within Him and exploded with pain and Jesus took them all in without complaint.

The time came, when after so much horror fell upon Jesus and His body became completely filled with all the carnage of Sin, He knew it was finished and came out of His body saturated with all of our sins.  The Bible makes it completely clear that Jesus decided this, that He knew when His work of taking our sin from us was finished.   Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty."   A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips.    When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:28-30 NIV)

How can we ever thank Jesus enough for what He did for us!  Every sin you committed He took into His body and suffered for each and every sin.  The pain and sorrow each sin brought Him careened through His body like the echoes of a train wreck screeching in the night.  And yet the universe waited in hushed horror as Jesus’ body of sin lay crumpled in the tomb.  His spirit was gone but the body still remained and with it was our death, our sorrow, our pain.  Another day came and the body was still there.  Our dying sat with it and the demons with Satan watched and waited.  The body was dead.  Sin remained within it.  But then the morning of the third day the greatest miracle of all time took place.  The magnitude of that early Sunday morning has been lost to nearly all across the generations but the Apostle Paul reminds us what we have forgotten.

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:6-7 NIV)  Carefully go over this one more time.  On that day, that first and greatest of all Easter mornings, on that bright and shining morning we were raised with Christ from the dead and brought into the Heavenlies with Him.  Before you were born, before your parents knew your name, before you ever knew you needed a Savior, Christ and you were raised from the dead and made eternal with God.  We cannot begin to express the wonder of this.  We cannot explain it nor do we understand it.  We just know that on Easter Sunday, you were raised from the dead along with Christ and you became glorious as the sun.  Let this sink into you.  Literally the Greek text reads that “He (God) together raised and together seated (us) in the Heavenlies in Christ Jesus”.  Easter Sunday, when Christ was raised from the dead, we were raised from the dead too and in a world of death and dying, of sin and suffering, that is nearly incomprehensible.  Easter, that first Easter of all history is not just the triumph of Christ, it is yours too.  For that, we celebrate!

The Moment of Discovery

John 20:8 NIV

 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.

What Did You Just See?

When I was young, maybe five years old, I heard on our porch a loud stomping and a male voice calling out, “Ho, Ho, Ho!”  I was in shock.  It was night time and Christmas Eve and the thought that Santa Claus was actually tramping around on our porch was astounding to me.  Was it possible that Santa Claus was out there?  Had he come to my home?  What did this mean?  I stood there dumbfounded in front of the door trying to decide if I would go outside and see if it was him.  I must have looked over at my mom to see what she thought.  Was it safe to go out on the porch?  What should I do?  Finally I opened the door and there before me was a brand new tricycle.  I was astonished.  So it was true!  Santa Claus did exist and he left me the grandest of all presents.  How could I ever have doubted Santa Claus?  Of course I later discovered that it was my dad who made all the noise, left the tricycle on the porch and slipped in the house through the back door but in my childhood, seeing was believing for me!

There is a moment when you stand in the gap between belief and disbelief, when you are not certain of what you just saw or heard.  It could be good news like that you were “lucky caller number ten” or that your cancer is gone.  It could be something dreadfully horrible like that a close friend just died in a car accident or that you have been let go from your job of twenty years.  You cannot anticipate such moments.  They come like a bolt of lightning and shatter whatever comfortable plans you had for the day or the week or your life.  You have seen pictures of people who stand in dumbfounded shock with their eyes blinking wildly as they try to process what just happened.  Maybe you have been like that.  Your boyfriend just asked you to marry him.  Your dad just handed you the keys to a new car.  Your mother just told you she was divorcing your father.  Most of your days are pretty normal but then all of a sudden it isn’t normal.  It is shocking.

The account of Jacob found in the Bible is just that sort of matter.  He was fleeing for his life.  Jacob had just tricked his dad into giving him the blessing intended for his twin brother and now that older brother was plotting his murder back at home.  Exhausted from his panicked flight, Jacob found a boulder and put his head down on it as if it were a cushy pillow and fell asleep.  Jacob could not have predicted what happened that night.

Like all of us each and every night, Jacob had a dream.  Most of our dreams we never remember when we get up out of bed.  Some keep us thinking for a while.  Most are completely forgettable.  Jacob had a dream that made its way into the Bible.  He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  There above it stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." (Genesis 28:12-15 NIV)

Jacob was so convinced that he had just met God in His sleep that he created a monument to honor the Lord and named the place where he was, “House of God”. Jacob even made a vow at the spot to give God a tenth of all he gained if the Lord took care of him and brought him back to his father’s house.  Most of us never give much thought to our dreams and rarely do even the most ardent of Christians think their dreams are sent to them by God.  Dreams are just too chaotic, too bizarre to take seriously.  Yet Jacob believed his dream was a God moment; that the Lord met with Him that night, the actual and real Lord.

If you had the exact same dream, would you have taken it seriously?  Would you have worshiped the Lord as soon as you climbed out of bed?  Would you have been convinced God had spoken directly to you?  Don’t misrepresent what happened with Jacob.  It was in the end just a dream.  It was no less a dream than you might have had, seeing yourself standing in front of a group without any pants or meeting in some restaurant with a long gone relative or having a raccoon talk to you on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  It was a dream but Jacob knew it was not just something that sprang up from his own unconscious; it was from beyond him, it was God coming to him within his heart.

It is hard to believe that God is really real and that He speaks to people like you and me.  Great intellects like Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan insist God does not exist.  You have friends and neighbors that pay no attention to God.  People you respect ignore Him.  The popular movies do not mention Him or include God in the plot lines.  Even “deep and meaningful” song lyrics have no place for God in them.  The anticipation of God making His way into the normal day you have is nearly dead.  Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we have lost our way and don’t know how we can get back to our place of real life with God.

What do you make of this casually mentioned moment in the Apostle Paul’s normal life?  He was on one of his missionary trips and needed to know where he and his companions should go after they left the region of Galatia, just north of Paul’s hometown.  The book of Acts has an interesting comment on this.   Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. (Acts 16:6 NIV)  How did Paul know the Holy Spirit did not want him and his partners in the province of Asia?  We aren’t told!  It is not clear how God got this across to them.  It could have been through a dream or a prophet or a sign of some sort or just an impression they had that God was directing them.  What we do know though is that Paul and the others all were prepared for God to guide them and ready to believe He was.  This is no small matter, believing that God can and does direct your steps.  It is in fact for many an insurmountable barrier.  They do not accept this to be so and live without any thought given to what God wants them to do.

Imagine what it would be like if you took seriously Jesus’ statement in John 15: 5.  "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (NIV)  The “if” of this proclamation indicates that you may or may not remain in Him.  That is completely up to you.  No one including God will force you to remain connected to Christ.  You can cut yourself off from Him like an angry daughter who refuses to talk with her parents.  A famous porn star who has been in the news recently has for twenty years refused to have anything to do with either of her parents.  You can do that, ignoring Christ and making no effort at being connected to Him.  But the consequence of that is that you can do nothing.  You don’t matter, what you do, how you think, what you accomplish does not matter.  You go nowhere, do nothing, make nothing of your life.  That is an option that you can take and many are completely satisfied doing this.  They are thoroughly disconnected from Christ and happy living that way.

To be connected to Christ, you must pay attention to Him.  Look for Him to guide you.  Ask Him to direct you.  Listen for Him to speak to you.  There are a thousand different ways Christ can show you something and make your life matter.  Who can know what it will be next?  Was Moses expecting a burning bush?  Did David expect the high priest of Israel to come to his house?  Could Elijah have anticipated the small still voice?  Was Nathaniel prepared for someone from Nazareth to be the Messiah?  God does not announce His presence with trumpets and does not shake you out of your sleep to get you to notice Him.  He will come to you at any moment with any sort of way of getting through to you that He chooses.  One thing though is clear.  If you do not keep your mind on Christ and set your heart on being directed by Him, nothing you do will matter.  That is certain.

Don’t be embarrassed that you haven’t been paying attention to Christ.  Admit it.  Start over.  Pray and ask the Lord to guide you, to show you what to do next.  Perhaps you are lost and don’t know how to find your way.  Turn to Christ and ask Him what to do.  He will guide you.  Somehow, you will know what to do and it will be the Lord who will make it clear.  Just like the sparrow knows somehow where to look for food, Christ will direct you too.  You must trust Him though to guide you perfectly and as you follow Him, everything you do will matter, whether it is how you make your bed or the way you respond at a board meeting or what you say to your kids at home.  With Christ in you directing your life, you are no ordinary mortal; you have all the glory of God living through you!