SENSING THE SAVIOR

Habakkuk 1:1-3:19; Revelation 9:1-21; Psalm 137:1-9; Proverbs 30:10

“Must I forever see these evil deeds? Why must I watch all this misery? Wherever I look, I see destruction and violence. I am surrounded by people who love to argue and fight. The law has become paralyzed, and there is no justice in the courts. The wicked far outnumber the righteous, so that justice has become perverted. The Lord replied ‘Look around at the nations; look and be amazed! For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it.’”

“But the people who did not die in these plagues still refused to repent of their evil deeds and turn to God. They continued to worship demons and idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood—idols that can neither see nor hear nor walk! And they did not repent of their murders or their witchcraft or their sexual immorality or their thefts.”

“But how can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a pagan land?”

“Never slander a worker to the employer, or the person will curse you, and you will pay for it.”

Scripture promises that God is not just standing by watching His Creation implode upon itself. He is actively working out His Plan for ultimate glory and the conquest of evil, once and for all. Scripture also predicts our reaction: we don’t believe that particular piece of Good News. We allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the evil and wantonness of our present age, at least to some extent because we forget the Almighty is not subject to the same practical and physical limitations (including lack of eternal and omniscient vision) that we experience. Thus, because we do not see with Christ’s eyes, we are too willing and too quick to give up on our Lord. Our impatience attacks our hope and, long term, perhaps even our faith. Personal vision can actually blind us to reality. When we focus too narrowly or on the wrong things, it is no wonder we lose sight of the big picture.

In working with special needs individuals, I am always fascinated by the perceptiveness of those who have lost their sight, especially those who once knew what it was to see. Those cherished memories give them a powerful tool: an enhanced imagination grounded in reality but also compounded by a much greater sensitivity overall. They know things can be experienced in different ways on different levels. They actively use, rather than disregard, what we may think of as less important senses. The nuances and richness of noises, smells and, most importantly, touch, are never lost on these folks. Things they accurately discern from a tone of voice slip right by the sighted. They never take a sense for granted, either; they have a far deeper gratitude for the abilities they do possess having lost one that makes life so much easier from a physical standpoint.

I wonder if Jesus does not on occasion blind us to His workings just as one way to train us to look for Him with something other than our eyes. What would we come to know if we truly sought out signs of our Creator’s ongoing love for His Creation by using all of our senses? There is little doubt, for example, that the Holy Spirit inside would guide us to a more complete knowledge of Him. Our ears might be better attuned to the Psalms nature writes on a daily basis, both wonderful and terrifying. We might (pun intended) even be more willing to stop and smell the roses, and be more appreciative of the results. Yes, all those things are possible, even probable, but it is no good just to sit idly by and wonder about them. It is time to get more intentional about using all our senses to their fullest potential.

There will always be those who must worship idols because they are incapable of worshipping anything they cannot touch and control. Such individuals are seldom impressed by the supernatural; they pass it off as chance or a dream, for example, and they will never repent of their addiction to the tangible. But true followers of Christ know better. They are wise enough to recognize there is much more to this life than meets the physical eye. The Lord is still busy creating, even as He is busy saving. There is a beautiful mosaic needlepoint in the making. We can only see the relatively unattractive backside from where we stand. Thank goodness we can reach out to touch the threads, for they are the “little hints” in this life that there is a glorious purpose and plan. One day, the Father is going to flip the fabric over to reveal the finished Creation in all its glory. Oh, what a revelation that will be! Beauty beyond comprehension! But we don’t have to be all that surprised. After all, the heavens are singing the glory of the Creator. Stop and look, but don’t forget to touch and listen as well. You may be surprised how encouraging it can be!

PREPARED FOR THE FINAL TRUMPETS

Nahum 1:1-3:19; Revelation 8:1-13; Psalm 136:1-26; Proverbs 30:7-9

“The LORD is slow to anger and great in power; the LORD will not leave the guilty unpunished. His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust of his feet.”

“When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets.”

“He remembered us in our weakness. His love endures forever. He freed us from our enemies. His love endures forever. He gives food to every creature. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.”

“…Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.”

The Lord is not going to wait forever. At some time, the seals will be broken, the trumpets will sound, and the Great Tribulation will begin. It will not be a time for the faint of heart. Nor will it be a time for people who do not know themselves. There will be no more positive self-talk. The time for self-delusion will be past. Judgment will be imminent, but first, there will be a trial by fire. And by locusts. And by all manner of supernatural horrors. Such things will reveal the true natures of those who remain to face them. It will not be a happy time. With any luck, we won’t be here to experience it.

But what if we are? The question bores a hole straight through our self-confidence. That is, it does if we are wise. If we are otherwise, we disregard the warnings of Scripture. We convince ourselves it’s all fiction, the fantasy of a religious zealots and exiled outcasts. Still, the mere possibility of truth in their prophetic words raises goosebumps down our spines. The imagery in John the Revelator’s journal is stunning. If it was imagined, it was rendered with an uncanny depth and breadth and vision. If it is true, then….

We can play the “is it true or is it not” game until the Lord does come again, and it will profit us nothing. There is no point in wasting time. Christ invites us to decide now what we are going to put our faith in: Scripture, or our own sense of pragmatism and realism. We can decide not to prepare for the Second Coming, but if we are wrong, it is likely to be a decision we will regret for eternity. We also have the chance to go ahead and prepare for our Lord’s Return as an act of faith and worship, and if we do not live to see the Rapture, at worst, we will be that much closer to God when we pass from this life to the next. It seems a no brainer. Prepare. Get ready. Then, take heart from the fact that if we’re ready for the Second Coming, we will truly be ready for anything.

Life is full of opportunities missed because those granted them were not prepared to take advantage of the chances they were given. On the other hand, those who work to prepare themselves fully for whatever life may throw at them tend to be the ones who succeed even when the odds are against them. My daughter recently graduated from college and began the ritual of the job hunt… at probably the worst possible time since the 1930s. Even teachers are having a hard time finding jobs. Her college said there’d be no problem. They could not have been more wrong. Initially, my daughter just did the usual things: cover letters, resumes, calls to friends for recommendations and references. Nothing worked. There just weren’t any openings for PE teachers right out of college. She resisted the idea of diversification until there was obviously no other choice. Finally, after one interviewer made a point of encouraging her to broaden her experience and qualifications, she took some additional qualifying tests so she could actually teach a variety of subjects. Within literally a matter of just a day or two after getting her new certifications, my daughter received a call for an interview. Three hours after the interview, she was hired as an English teacher and coach of girl’s volleyball and track. This was no coincidence. It was the gift of the Holy Spirit but also a gift she had prepared herself to receive.

We can deny the reality of the Second Coming and pretend we have nothing to worry about. We may even kid ourselves into thinking that God will protect us from ourselves. But it is not true. At some point, unless we are prepared to follow Christ into His Kingdom, we will find ourselves on the outside looking in. Then, the one thing we can be sure of is that we will be quite a long distance from where we will want to be when the Final Trumpets do begin to blow.

THE POWER OF PRAISE

Micah 5:1-7:20; Revelation 7:1-17; Psalm 135:1-21; Proverbs 30:5-6

“What can we bring to the Lord? What kind of offerings should we give him? Should we bow before God with offerings of yearling calves? Should we offer him thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Should we sacrifice our firstborn children to pay for our sins? No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

“After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands. And they were shouting with a mighty shout, ‘Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the Lamb!’ And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living beings. And they fell before the throne with their faces to the ground and worshiped God. They sang, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength belong to our God forever and ever! Amen.’”

“Praise the Lord! Praise the name of the Lord! Praise him, you who serve the Lord, you who serve in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; celebrate his lovely name with music.”

“Every word of God proves true. He is a shield to all who come to him for protection.”

I have an almost primal distrust of “praise” as the phrase is used in so-called “contemporary” worship. Don’t get me wrong. Our own church has a terrific contemporary service that is bringing literally thousands of folks to the Lord who would like as not never darken the door of a traditional sanctuary. I get that the new generation of Christians has been raised on a steady diet of technology and special effects – not to mention Internet, Twitter, texts and assorted sound bites - until almost nothing longer than fifteen minutes can hold their attention unless it’s on a giant screen awash in colored strobes or moody spotlights and accompanied by music just a few guitar riffs shy of actual rock and roll. They do seem to need new religious practices to call their own. Nothing is wrong with that. But to be blunt, contemporary worship runs a significant risk of becoming more about entertainment than about Christ. Frequently, its practitioners seem more concerned about their own personal pleasure and comfort than real praise. Contemporary worship also treads on other very dangerous ground. In redefining and restructuring what we think of as worship, “contemporary” Christians have to be even more, not less, intentional about making absolutely certain they are not remodeling God in the process. Also, praise must never be allowed to become more about pleasure than motivation. Our heavenly Father will have less than no appreciation for any religious practice that does not move us outside our comfort zone into the sometimes uncomfortable world of self-sacrifice and discipleship.

The contemporary obsession with unconditional love, forgiveness and acceptance to the exclusion of other characteristics of holiness is just so darn comforting, it’s easy to miss that we are only a step or two away from changing our image of God from the Lord of Scripture. Unflinching righteousness, wrath and uncompromising judgment (to name a few divine qualities that don’t get a lot of press in contemporary circles) just don’t mix as well with beautiful modern harmonies and the feeling of (dare I say forced) goodwill which are the staples of most contemporary worship. Yet when we do not give equal weight to all aspects of God’s character, we risk neutering the real Christ of the Bible by turning Him into someone we like to think of as “just like us.” We’ve brought God down off Mount Sinai and into our living rooms, and that may be a good thing. However, we don’t seem to be any closer to the radically different lifestyle Jesus calls us to. We’re just feeling a lot better about ourselves in spite of our failures and shortcomings than we used to.

It’s doubtful that this is the place the Spirit really wants us. The same remodeling of mores is occurring with parents who feel it is more important to be friends with their kids than to be mentors, disciplinarians and examples of a higher, better and more productive lifestyle. But that does not make it right.

If we are going to experience the full power of praise, we have to take a step back from current ideas and cosmetic emotions and refocus on the awesome completeness of the Lord Almighty of history. See Him as He really is in all His Glory, and give honest and fervent praise for every aspect of His divine and perfect character. Only One in all of history has even had the audacity to attempt to balance all the characteristics of holiness. Only One has in fact succeeded. Let us not be guilty of lessening the enormity of His victory by forgetting that He is our Judge as well as our justification. Let us praise Him for all that He is, and let’s do it with more than raised hands and sacred songs. Let’s offer Him our bodies, our minds, our sinfulness and our imaginations so that our praise will be as complete and comprehensive as humans can make it, and not some clichéd emotional high of the moment.

It is a great and glorious thing to see hundreds or thousands of fellow Christians raising their hands to heaven and truly giving the Almighty praise as they find themselves possessed by the Spirit. But it is better to see them working with the poor and downtrodden to lift them up and bring them closer to the Spirit. That is the true power of praise, when it moves us to act in a place we would never have gone in our own strength.

WHY GOD WAITS

Micah 1:1-4:13; Revelation 6:1-17; Psalm 134:1-3; Proverbs 30:1-4

“In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s house will be the highest of all—the most important place on earth. It will be raised above the other hills, and people from all over the world will stream there to worship. People from many nations will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob’s God. There he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths.’ For the Lord’s teaching will go out from Zion; his word will go out from Jerusalem. The Lord will mediate between peoples and will settle disputes between strong nations far away. They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore. Everyone will live in peace and prosperity, enjoying their own grapevines and fig trees, for there will be nothing to fear. The Lord of Heaven’s Armies has made this promise!”

“When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of all who had been martyred for the word of God and for being faithful in their testimony. They shouted to the Lord and said, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you judge the people who belong to this world and avenge our blood for what they have done to us?’ Then a white robe was given to each of them. And they were told to rest a little longer until the full number of their brothers and sisters—their fellow servants of Jesus who were to be martyred—had joined them.”

“Oh, praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, you who serve at night in the house of the Lord. Lift up holy hands in prayer, and praise the Lord.”

“I am weary, O God; I am weary and worn out, O God. I am too stupid to be human, and I lack common sense. I have not mastered human wisdom, nor do I know the Holy One.”

Some things are worth waiting for. Heaven is one of them. But waiting can seem like a war of attrition. We all get tired from time to time. We lose focus. Life attacks our enthusiasm. We can easily find ourselves at risk of slipping back into our old ways. Well, the Lord is waiting for something, but not with the intent that any of His children will fall away in the interim. It is to give all His children the chance to join Him. Thus, a choice faces those who already know Him; we have to decide what to do with ourselves and with others while we wait upon the Lord. We can sit around and mope because the Lord tarries, or we can use the time to promote the Kingdom and do as much good as possible while there is still time.

Probably a better way to say this is that the Lord is graciously allowing each of us the fullest opportunity possible to experience the blessings of discipleship. Discipleship, properly motivated and done, is actually a festival of freedom and joy that gives us a reason for living and rejuvenates our spirits. This is because discipleship, properly done, is motivated and guided by Spirit of Christ, not some misguided sense of duty or guilt. As we see the Lord acting in and through us to reach others, we truly have a reason to celebrate every day, every hour and every minute that we have the chance to breathe and share the Good News.

Enough whining! Enough anxiety! It is time for us to actually get back to living with a positive, upbeat outlook and to being the disciples we were created to be. The season of timid self-preservation is past. We are called to put it all on the line for Christ so He can give us new lives, fearless lives, and vision that sees beyond the temporal to bring us ever closer to the Throne of God. No doubt, there are some who feel Christianity is, at best, just another exercise in the “Power of Positive Thinking.” But nothing could be farther from the Truth. No amount of pep talk or self-help will bring the Spirit into our lives. The Spirit can only be experienced to the extent the Spirit is actually allowed to live and bear fruit in us. That requires both reliance and affirmative action based on His guidance. That’s what we’re still here for. That is why God waits.

Christianity is about life. It is the best way to make it through life. Christian talk may help guide others toward life, but it will never be more than a prologue to the actual life-changing experience Christianity must be if it is ever to be really meaningful. Faith without works really is dead, because it has yet to be experienced and so has not been given the chance to prove itself. This only makes sense. The Truth can never be fully known until it is actually experienced and so established as Truth. It can never be appreciated as long as we regard it as more theory than fact.

God waits to give His children a chance to live the Truth, and to truly know the Truth through discipleship. This turns the concept of delay on its head, and makes patience a whole lot easier. Jesus hasn’t come back yet, because He is graciously giving us additional time to acquaint ourselves with the Truth. Also, He desires that we become ever brighter beacons of Light. He wants our hope to penetrate even the darkest circumstances. He wants us to call our brothers and sisters to a better, brighter and more positive life.

"FISHY" PROPHETS

Jonah 1:1-4:1; Revelation 5:1-14; Psalm 133:1-3; Proverbs 29:26-27

“Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish. He said, ‘I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the land of the dead, and Lord, you heard me!’ .…Then the Lord ordered the fish to spit up Jonah on the beach, and it did.”

“And they sang in a mighty chorus: ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered—to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.’”

““How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!”

“Many seek the ruler’s favor, but justice comes from the Lord.”

What a living contradiction Jonah was! Commissioned by God Himself as a prophet, Jonah ran from the responsibility. Then, recognizing the trouble his disloyalty caused innocent others, in an overwhelming fit of guilt, he convinced those sailing with him to pitch him overboard. The storm immediately calmed, and Jonah was allowed to stew in his own juices (somewhat literally) to think about what he’d done and how he would subsequently respond. Finally, after three long days of indigestion, the fish spit him out on land, whereupon he went to Ninevah as God originally directed to preach repentance, and it worked! I’m not sure any other prophet was ever as successful in turning the hearts and minds of errant people back to the Lord. But was Jonah happy? Not on your life! He pouted because the people of Ninevah had repented, and his gloom and doom prophecies therefore did not come to pass. Instead of celebrating the saving of a city in the power of God, Jonah remained more worried about his own appearance. He felt he looked the fool to those whose destruction he’d predicted. At least, that is what he said. The reality could be he felt ignored, having not apparently been lifted up by the people as a great prophet in the aftermath of their conversion. As far as Scripture takes us, he never changes his mind or feels any joy over the work his prophecy accomplished. How sad. Apparently, “He must increase, and I must decrease” was not a philosophy Jonah shared with John the Baptist.

Oh, Jonah! Talk about a guy who did not deserve the results he got! Why on earth did the Lord choose such a reluctant ingrate to carry His Word to the sinful people of Ninevah? Pardon the pun, but there is something very fishy about this story. There almost has to be more to it than meets the eye. Looks to me like Jonah was pretty much a waste of space as a person, and that does not seem to have changed even after his “religious experience.” He was still the same old moody, “me first” person he’d apparently always been. (It could be argued that, even in the boat, he was too quick to take full credit for the calamity the crew faced, once he finally roused from his depressed slumber. Perhaps, all he really needed to do was pray. It worked in and on the fish, after all….) What is the point of this story, really?

I’m beginning to think the point of this story is… us. We, too, tend to head the other way when God calls. We also duck spiritual responsibility. Then, when things start to go south, we overreact and overcompensate in abject guilt. Until we’re in the true belly of the beast, we tend not to resort to such an “intangible” hope as prayer, either. Even then, when the work is finally done and others benefit without giving us due recognition, we pout. Maybe the point of Jonah’s story is much more contemporary than we suspect. Maybe the question it actually asks is why would God use “fishy prophets” like us to carry His Word and His hope to others.

There are a lot of pat answers to this question, and all of them deflect the fundamental point. “Why” is not the point. The Lord’s ways have never been ours, and that is not likely to change anytime this side of heaven. The point is that. That God does expect us, his “fishy prophets,” to carry His Word to others is a just one more non-negotiable, spiritual truth which will not be denied. That is what Jonah learned, and his attitude about it really turned out to be pretty much irrelevant. That is what we need to accept in our own lives as well.

Christ does not expect perfection in His prophets. He commands obedience. It is what we were designed for, and the longer we deny it, the closer to the fish’s belly we get. It’s a simple message. It raises one final point, though. How much misery could we avoid in our lives if we simply reconciled ourselves to carrying out the Will of our Father?

THE EDEN SYNDROME

Obadiah 1-21; Revelation 4:1-11; Psalm 132:1-18; Proverbs 29:24-25

“You have been deceived by your own pride because you live in a rock fortress and make your home high in the mountains. ‘Who can ever reach us way up here?’ you ask boastfully. ‘But even if you soar as high as eagles and build your nest among the stars, I will bring you crashing down,’ says the Lord. ‘If thieves came at night and robbed you (what a disaster awaits you!), they would not take everything. Those who harvest grapes always leave a few for the poor. But your enemies will wipe you out completely! Every nook and cranny of Edom will be searched and looted. Every treasure will be found and taken. All your allies will turn against you. They will help to chase you from your land. They will promise you peace while plotting to deceive and destroy you. Your trusted friends will set traps for you, and you won’t even know about it. At that time not a single wise person will be left.’”

“Whenever the living beings give glory and honor and thanks to the one sitting on the throne (the one who lives forever and ever), the twenty-four elders fall down and worship the one sitting on the throne (the one who lives forever and ever). And they lay their crowns before the throne and say, ‘You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things, and they exist because you created what you pleased.’”

“Let us go to the sanctuary of the Lord; let us worship at the footstool of his throne.”

“If you assist a thief, you only hurt yourself. You are sworn to tell the truth, but you dare not testify. Fearing people is a dangerous trap, but trusting the Lord means safety.”

The idea that we somehow deserve heaven is a very insidious presumption that not only erodes the majesty and mystery of grace but can result in true alienation of faith. For example, many people – even “good” Christians - actually refuse to accept the idea of Hell because it contrasts with their idea of a loving God. “Oh, surely,” they reason, “God would not allow Bob to go to Hell. Bob’s a great guy. He doesn’t go to church, and he isn’t much for religion, that’s true. But he does a lot for the community, is a wonderful father and husband and almost single-handedly got the new park built. Surely, there’s room in heaven for a nice guy like Bob.” This is an assumption of the worst sort. It lulls Bob, and us, into believing there’s no real need for a relationship with Christ. That assumption could not be more wrong, or more deadly.

The same flaw enters into our reasoning when we assume that God would not condemn practitioners of other religions, for example, “because they never had a chance” to hear of or claim Christ as Savior. What of those who followed Baal? They surely got no breaks. The Bible says Creation itself provides enough of a clue of God’s existence and our need to be reunited with Him. Regardless, the hard truth is that God is not an insurance policy or a probation officer. Divine Holiness just does not, can not, allow for even a single exception that would undermine its foundations. Never has there been any Scriptural suggestion that one who does not follow the Lord as He is and for Who He is will ever see Heaven. We simply deceive ourselves and others when we argue to the contrary.

Let us be absolutely, irrevocably clear on this point, because it is critical. Not a one of us is ever going to get into Heaven because we deserve it. The spiritual status quo is NOT that everyone makes the team. Quite the contrary, in fact: without graceful intervention, we can be sure we are destined for an eternity apart from the Giver of Life. Those who do not even sign on to be considered for the Lord’s team can have no logical expectation of any eternity except Hell. Eternal life is not awarded to those who simply say they’ve signed up, either. Even a lot of people who do try out won’t make the cut or stay on the team. As painful as it may be to realize, Heaven will be denied to a lot of folks who thought they’d made the grade. That’s just the way things are, and wishing them otherwise has absolutely no impact on their reality.

I know I risk alienating some today. This unbending word can be interpreted as dogmatism by those who choose to reject it. So be it. That, too, is mere belief. They are entitled to their opinions, but their opinions have no relevancy to factual truth. Entering into the final days of this journey, I am compelled to plainly state that, in some form or fashion, Jesus Christ is an indispensible, non-negotiable component of every act of salvation. His Grace is offered and will be given to all those who ask and are willing to receive. It also will be denied to all who scoff at the idea, and we must be equally clear about that if we are to be true to Him.

Nevertheless, we must never presume to judge for God. Our attitude as Christians should include equal parts gratitude, compassion and evangelism. We are grateful, radically grateful, to be the beneficiaries of grace. We remain compassionate and tender-hearted toward those who have not come to accept their need for grace, as well as for those who pridefully reject the very concept. We work our tails off to help the Lord bring as many of our fellow human beings into His house as will accept the invitation.

We all want Bob to get into Heaven. We’d like to think he (like we) deserves it. But this idea is just part of the same “Eden Syndrome” that compels us to attempt to remake God in our own image. We don’t enjoy meditating on judgment and wrath, so we focus on His forgiveness and love. Pretty soon, we have reduced His Holiness to our own latter day version of divine tolerance. We neuter grace by refusing to accept that we did not have it coming all along. We reject the idea that any particular faith has a lock on God, and are much more comfortable with the claim that each religion has part of the truth. Must we say it again? Our opinions are completely irrelevant to God, except to the extent they pull or push us farther away from Who He really is. What we believe does not change what is. None of us, absolutely no one, deserves Heaven. There will be a Final Judgment. We cheapen grace when we presume that anything else (and especially, nothing at all) will get us into our Father’s house. On that score, we could not be more wrong.

THINKING ABOUT GOD

Amos 7:1-9:15; Revelation 3:7-22; Psalm 131:1-3; Proverbs 29:23

“’The time will come,’ says the Lord, ‘when the grain and grapes will grow faster than they can be harvested. Then the terraced vineyards on the hills of Israel will drip with sweet wine! I will bring my exiled people of Israel
 back from distant lands, and they will rebuild their ruined cities and live in them again. They will plant vineyards and gardens; they will eat their crops and drink their wine. I will firmly plant them there in their own land. They will never again be uprooted from the land I have given them,’ says the Lord your God.”

“Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends. Those who are victorious will sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat with my Father on his throne. Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.”

“Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”

“Pride ends in humiliation, while humility brings honor.”

If we want to gauge the true state of our spiritual life, we can safely begin and end with what we think about and how we think of it. How we think and of what we think are important indicators of where we actually stand with our Savior. For example, if I truly believe that God owns it all, I will view with gratitude every material blessing as a sign of His love and grace. If even a touch of greed invades my thinking, I immediately become consumed with the care and protection of “my” stuff. I put too much emphasis on it and associate it too closely with my overall security. Or, in response to the success of another, I can choose to joyfully celebrate with them, or be envious of them. The mind, not the eyes, is the window to the soul. What and how we think drives everything from our self-image to our theology. None of this is any real surprise; the surprise comes when, in light of all this, we actually stop to carefully consider how utterly careless we sometimes are with our thoughts. Thoughts really matter. Frequently, thoughts – or the lack of any proper thinking – can be determinative.

One of the main “secrets of life” I think I have stumbled on this year as I have worked through the Bible is that we must be intentionally, unceasingly diligent in paying attention to what we think and how we think. “Guarding our hearts” is a fine thing. However, guarding our minds is an absolute imperative. We may believe Satan attacks us most often in our hearts, in the area of emotion, but it just ain’t so. He must enter first through the intellect, or he will never get past it to the emotions. The reason is simple. As human beings created in the very image of our Creator, we have the ability to reason our way out of emotional funks. We can commit ourselves beyond our emotions. We can do things even though we don’t feel like doing them. People who lose the ability to do this, or will not do it, are for good cause sometimes diagnosed with mental illness.

So it comes to this. What do we think about Christ? How do we think of Him, especially when we find ourselves in a spiritual desert, or in the midst of exile? Jesus Himself says He is always just outside the door of our lives. Going further, He is persistently knocking, waiting for permission to enter. He is calling out to us, asking to be recognized. Always, in every situation and regardless of what we may think of more tangible reality, Christ is available to us and for us. We just have to quiet ourselves enough to hear and respond.

Therein lies the secret of spiritual health. When the world is crashing in, it takes more than discipline to quiet our souls. Sometimes, especially when viewed from a purely logical perspective, it takes outrageous audacity to quietly claim faith in Jesus. When every ounce of our emotion quails before the challenges of life, and we become “faint of heart,” it requires an intellectual dedication to keep listening to, let alone actually hear and act upon, the Spirit’s voice. That kind of commitment will never last if it is based solely on emotion. It will only survive if it becomes a fundamental part of the way we think. In short, if our world view is not premised upon the way God says we should see, interpret and respond to life and its myriad of circumstances, we risk allowing our emotions to subjectively determine our hope… or our lack of it.

Emotions are wonderful things in their place. However, anytime we allow our emotions and/or feelings to finally determine the way we think (rather than the other way around), we open ourselves up to great vulnerability. God is “I AM,” not “the one you think I am.” Upon that Rock is founded all that is worthy of knowing. When we feel ourselves becoming lost, it is a sure sign that something besides the baseline, primary reality of “I AM” is controlling our thoughts. Strictly speaking, this is “natural.” It is the natural result of Original Sin, when we decided how we thought, and what we thought about, was more important than what and how God thinks.

WAKING THE DEAD

Amos 4:1-6:14; Revelation 2:18-3:6; Psalm 130:1-8; Proverbs 29:21-22

“For I know the vast number of your sins and the depth of your rebellions. You oppress good people by taking bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts. So those who are smart keep their mouths shut, for it is an evil time. Do what is good and run from evil so that you may live! Then the Lord Almighty will be your helper, just as you have claimed. Hate evil and love what is good; turn your courts into true halls of justice. Perhaps even yet the Lord Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of his people.”

This is the message from the one who has the sevenfold Spirit of God and the seven stars: ‘I know all the things you do, and that you have a reputation for being alive—but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what little remains, for even what is left is almost dead. I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God. Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.’”

Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive? But you offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear you. I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him. I have put my hope in his word. I long for the Lord more than sentries long for the dawn, yes, more than sentries long for the dawn.”

An angry person starts fights; a hot-tempered person commits all kinds of sin.”

It’s almost always surprising when God shows up. It’s not that I don’t expect Him. In at least a theoretical sense, I accept His omniscience and omnipresence. I believe He visits us when, in His sovereignty, He determines the timing is right. It’s just that His timing almost never bears any relationship to my own. So, I get tired of waiting. I fall asleep. I may even die a little bit in the process. Certainly, the calluses around my heart grow thicker the longer I wait for divine intervention. Instead of acting on and in faith to help promote the Kingdom, I spend too much time judging those outside it. In this, I do not do one thing to help Jesus or ready His fields for His harvest.

For example, I’m quite fond of thinking that, if I had been the Creator of the Universe, I would not have let things get so out of hand before stepping in. There would seldom be such a long interval between sin and punishment. I would discipline quickly when self-delusion threatened viable theology. And maybe that’s why I don’t hold any exalted positions in the Kingdom of Heaven. This line of reasoning is more about death sentences than life-giving.

There is such a thing as being too quick on the trigger. Efficiency for efficiency’s sake may assure a well-oiled machine, but it does little in the way of growing the heart. Efficiency tends not to spend much time on compassion. The more mercenary we become, the less human we act and the less like Christ we look.

On the other hand, there will come a time when the Creator does completely reclaim what has rightfully been His from the beginning, and it will cause turmoil for a season. But He won’t need our help then. The ones who need our help are in the world now. They struggle daily with issues of life and death. They need to know more about life, and if we don’t show them, they may never learn. Already dead in their sins (as we once were), if we do not help awaken them by sharing new life with them, they will be lost. We need to understand and appreciate that our own bodies, hearts and minds may be just the tools God would use to awaken new life in others, as well as in ourselves.

Our problem becomes just how to wake the dead. What is the right technique? Humanity has been asleep at the switch for centuries. The Rapture and Tribulation are undoubtedly closer now than they have ever been. Nevertheless, our complacency remains largely unchanged. Even the shock to the system that our recent economic downturn provided has not appreciably increased our focus on spiritual things. It is as if human beings have started to see God and theology as irrelevant, and that is a very dangerous place to be. In ancient times, people at least tended to turn to some form of diety when they turned away from Jehovah. Now, it seems as though we don’t think we need any God.

Those of us who know better cannot help but mourn the souls of those who lock the Lord out of their lives. He does not want us mourning them, though. He wants us involved with them, touching them, supporting them and leading them back to life. There will come a time when they will need to call on His Name. They must know on Whom they need to call on a first name basis. We need to be sure to make the appropriate introductions.

There really is only one way to actually wake the dead: give them a new relationship, something to live for. It begins, though, with a sharing of ourselves. Provide an example of a life that has a reason for being that motivates and rejuvenates jaded lives and fulfills people. Preaching won’t cut it. We must live with our flocks, being transparent and guiding them through the process of once more learning to allow others – and, especially, the Spirit – to love them. The problem with religion is it has become sterile. For many, it is just empty ceremony when it is not stooping to mere entertainment or blatant emotional manipulation. The Church needs to get back to the bedrock of the relationships that bound Christians together in the first place. We need far few educators and a great many more mentors; more examples and fewer preachers.

Christ came so that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. Period. Thus, anytime our missions or evangelical efforts focus on anything short of life giving, we are selling Jesus short. Now, to be fair, we first have to buy into the process and sell out to the Holy Spirit ourselves. But this can be done. It’s not really even all that tough, once we realize what we are truly to be about as disciples. We have been infected by choice with the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that gives us life. As we share that, we help others find something to live for, and we learn more of what it means to live abundantly, too.

FIRST LOVE

Amos 1:1-3:15; Revelation 2:1-17; Psalm 129:1-8; Proverbs 29:19-20

“Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction? Does a lion ever roar in a thicket without first finding a victim? Does a young lion growl in its den without first catching its prey? Does a bird ever get caught in a trap that has no bait? Does a trap spring shut when there’s nothing to catch? When the ram’s horn blows a warning, shouldn’t the people be alarmed? Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has planned it? Indeed, the Sovereign Lord never does anything until he reveals his plans to his servants the prophets. The lion has roared—so who isn’t frightened? The Sovereign Lord has spoken—so who can refuse to proclaim his message?”

“I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don’t tolerate evil people. You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars. You have patiently suffered for me without quitting. But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches.”

“My back is covered with cuts, as if a farmer had plowed long furrows. But the Lord is good; he has cut me free from the ropes of the ungodly.”

“There is more hope for a fool than for someone who speaks without thinking.”

Most love is inexplicable on some level. First love is almost always inexplicable on every level. It usually occurs long before we even know love’s true meaning. Having nothing else to judge it by, we are all too willing to accept the light-headedness and giddy sense of disorientation as the real thing. This is no problem at age 10 to sixteen. When we persist in defining love by the way we feel when we are in it, though, we are destined to make some member of the opposite sex quite miserable in later life. Love is much more than an emotional attachment. Love is first and foremost an intellectual commitment. It is a relationship that withstands the stresses and tests of time, regardless of whether we want to be where we find ourselves or not. Love endures because it sees no other option than staying the course. Love never forgets, and love never bails out. The Lord’s concern that the Church in Ephesus had forgotten its first love is not what it may look like to some. The Lord had no interest in the puppy love infatuations some think of as spiritual highs. In context, His concern stemmed from whether or not the Church’s members had simply been playing mind games with each other from the start. He wanted them to look honestly at their current motivations, not those of the emotional moment when they first met Christ. They were doing a lot of “good” things. But they were getting to the place where form was becoming more important than substance. Indeed, it could be argued that all the positive things they were doing actually took the place of the love they should have been sharing. They were certainly keeping busy being “religious.” They had no problem with hard work or suffering or even with discerning and condemning false prophets. Still, reading between the lines, their actions masked rapidly cooling hearts and had precious little to do with any consuming passion for the Lord.

Mark it down: when people become more concerned with clinging to the outward appearances of Christianity than maintaining and building on their original enthusiasm for their Savior, trouble’s brewing. No wonder. Anytime we allow hard work and martyrdom to become ends in and of themselves, spiritually speaking, we are destined for disappointment. Without love, none of our actions, however well intended, will get us one step further down the Road to Glory. Actions that matter are primarily those born out of loving commitment. Actions without love necessarily represent an abandonment of the Father’s primary purpose for our lives. The Creator would have us be motivated by love, or not at all.

There is a time when peer pressure can be a very good thing. There’s no arguing it can lead us away from danger and into the safety of numbers. However, peer pressure can also lead us into danger. When our association with any group is more about appearances and doing the right thing than it is about our true feelings, we’re getting pretty far afield. Peer pressure can not only lead us away from the Father but also away from our own sense of self and purpose.

Amos’ point was that there is always a reason. The people would soon wonder at the devastation to be heaped upon them. They would complain about the seeming injustice of it all. They would simply refuse to accept the results of lives lived out of self-gratification and ego. Nevertheless, their loss of focus on love was soon going to cost them their lives. They’d been seduced. The things they’d been seduced by had nothing to do with love. So, they had made themselves the lion’s prey.

Anytime we act without love, we run the risk of being consumed by any number of things. We can lose ourselves in our work. We can turn self-sacrifice into pointless and bitter martyrdom at the drop of a hat. In desperation, we can even attempt to rewrite the Word of God so it better accommodates the people we’ve become. None of this, however, will ever lift our souls out of the holes we have dug for them by not living in love. Love is the only thing that helps us rise above ourselves and our situations. Indeed, the only thing that will get our minds off ourselves is love. God knew us and loved us while we were still in the womb. We do well to stay true to the One who has loved us from the first.

REASONS FOR HOPE - GOD LIBERATED

Joel 1:1-3:21; Revelation 1:1-20; Psalm 128:1-6; Proverbs 29:18

“Then, after doing all those things, I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions. In those days I will pour out my Spirit even on servants—men and women alike. And I will cause wonders in the heavens and on the earth—blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun will become dark, and the moon will turn blood red before that great and terrible day of the Lord arrives. But everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

“Grace and peace to you from the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come; from the sevenfold Spirit before his throne; and from Jesus Christ. He is the faithful witness to these things, the first to rise from the dead, and the ruler of all the kings of the world. All glory to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by shedding his blood for us. He has made us a Kingdom of priests for God his Father. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen. Look! He comes with the clouds of heaven. And everyone will see him—even those who pierced him. And all the nations of the world will mourn for him. Yes! Amen! ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,’ says the Lord God. ‘I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.’”

How joyful are those who fear the Lord—all who follow his ways! You will enjoy the fruit of your labor. How joyful and prosperous you will be! Your wife will be like a fruitful grapevine, flourishing within your home. Your children will be like vigorous young olive trees as they sit around your table. That is the Lord’s blessing for those who fear him.”

“When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild. But whoever obeys the law is joyful.”

As a father whose children are raised and have reached adulthood, I have new hope born of a new, limited detachment. Learning to “lighten up,” I no longer observe the kids with such a critical eye. The compulsion to protect and correct is less because the need is neither a parental imperative nor a parental prerogative at this point. The birds are flying. They’ve been trained in how to journey through life. It’s up to them to choose their destinies. All children, in time, have to be freed to make their own mistakes, and to learn how to recover from them. All parents have to let go and remember their children are not their property. Kids are simply on loan to us from their Creator. Consequently, we have no right to determine their lives for them. Our primary mission is to point them to their Creator; help assure their safe journey to their true Home; and give them hope. In turn, parents ideally get to hope in their kids. Hope is one of the greatest gifts any person can bestow on another. In a very real way, though, hope of any sort is pretty difficult to come by until and unless we are able to look past the sins and shortcomings of others.

I sometimes find myself wondering if the God who knows all can ever really see us the same way, rejoicing at our potential and, if only for a brief moment, just overlooking the sin. Then, finally, it hits me: this is the very reason Christ came to earth and died for us. Jesus is the reason God can and does look past our sin. Christ’s Death and Resurrection is liberating both for us and for our Heavenly Father. Holy, righteous wrath is no longer an issue between us. Jesus’ Blood has put paid to sin’s penalties, freeing our Father to take a step back and let us grow into a greater appreciation of Him as we choose our individual destinies. Christ is Hope, not just for us, but for our Father, too.

For this is the work of Christ: freeing the Father from the harsher compulsions of Holiness; freeing us from the fear of His deserved wrath; and so reuniting us in love. This explains the differences between the Old Testament pictures of God and the portraits of Him sketched in the New Testament. God no longer has to nursemaid His Children (though He is always concerned). They don’t require a lot of rules and regulations, assuming they are truly His, because they have the Spirit doing His Work inside their renovated hearts. Finally, in Christ, we should be mature enough to see and accept our Father’s wisdom, love and sufficiency without feeling threatened by His Judgment. This is what it means to be truly reconciled to God in Christ Jesus.

No doubt, some will be troubled by the notion that God Himself ever needed liberation from anything. However, our sin imprisoned Him, too, in a way. It limited the reach of His Holiness. In Texas vernacular, He was “fenced out” rather than “fenced in,” but the fence was no less limiting and no less real for all that. No longer could the Creator directly fellowship with His Creation. Our sin erected a barrier to which even God had to submit. It was the price He paid immediately for our free will. After thinking about it a few seconds, at least every parent should begin to understand. We all have experienced how merely impressing the demands of “right living” and ethical morality on our kids can create barriers of separation. Imagine what the imposition of absolute Righteousness would do to our relationships. Like the Israelites, our kids soon would give up in frustration.

We need desperately to appreciate what an imposing barricade our sins actually created for God, as well as for us, to overcome. Without that understanding, we will never even begin to truly understand, much less fully appreciate, how graceful Grace really is. For those who claim the Messiah’s sacrifice as their own, in at the Final Judgment, we can be sure God will love and welcome us Home, because He is now free to do exactly that. We have every reason to hope in our future. Because of Christ, we can be sure our Heavenly Father shares our hope.

CHEATING

Hosea 10:1-14:9; Jude 1-25; Psalm 127:1-5; Proverbs 29:15-17

“So now, come back to your God. Act with love and justice, and always depend on him. But no, the people are like crafty merchants selling from dishonest scales—they love to cheat.”

“I am writing to all who have been called by God the Father, who loves you and keeps you safe in the care of Jesus Christ. May God give you more and more mercy, peace, and love. Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people. I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God’s marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have turned against our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

“Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted. Unless the Lord protects a city, guarding it with sentries will do no good. It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat; for God gives rest to his loved ones.”

“Discipline your children, and they will give you peace of mind and will make your heart glad.”

I don’t like to think of myself as a cheater, but if I’m honest, there’s little choice. The fact is, I knowingly allow myself to backslide. I give in to my temper. I allow myself to become spiritually lackadaisical. I affirmatively decide to do what I know will not please God. In the overall eternal perspective, I rationalize that my “little” sin just won’t matter much. Surely, the Lord wouldn’t condemn me for something so inconsequential. That’s dangerously poor reasoning on its own. But sin is not necessarily all about God, either. Sin, however small, also undermines our own character and identity. When we cheat, we do not only cheat Christ. We cheat ourselves. If it continues long enough, we can go from hypocrisy to outright spiritual mutation. By returning to sin, we abandon something beautiful and complete to revert to something twisted and ugly, and that just makes no sense. Thus, it’s critically important to see our backsliding clearly both for what it is and what it can become.

Ambition and pride have always been big issues for me. To begin, assessing things honestly and realizing I deserve none of it, I’ve been incredibly blessed with a good amount of natural talent for what I do. Compounding the temptation, I was raised (appropriately so) to take pride in what I do, and to do it in a worthy way. There’s nothing wrong with, or even all that unusual about, having a passion for excellence. My issue inevitably involves being clear about Who gets the ultimate glory. It is disturbingly easy for me to usurp recognition that rightly belongs to Jesus. Bluntly, I tend to get the big head, and it’s never a pretty sight.

Thankfully (I reluctantly admit God knows best), Christ tends to address my ambitious pride by countering it with a sort of forced humility. Success, as I know it, has a very frustrating habit of frequently ending in some kind of glass ceiling. This most often occurs when someone administratively above me claims privilege and stops me, or worse, takes the opportunity to do something I just know I can do better. GRRRR! Twice this week alone, this very thing has happened, and I’ve been stymied, personally and professionally. Not surprisingly, I suppose, it has occurred on the heels of great success. It feels like quite a slap in the face, but whether I like or agree with it or not, I probably needed it. Indeed, Jehovah’s reply was devastatingly simple. I do not have to like it. I do have to accept it. His plans for me lie elsewhere, and He knows too much success will be a real distraction.

No matter how much I voraciously hunger and thirst for unparalleled achievement and recognition (how unattractive is that!?!), the Lord is wise enough to know that, for me, such is a potential poison best doled out only in small doses. He does not want me to cheat in this area at all, because He knows (better than I know myself) how rapidly I can sink and just get mired in pride and ambition. Thus, He gives me the grace of simply being unable to get there from here. This may be the most “backhanded” blessing in my life, but I recognize it as a blessing nonetheless. My spiritual act of discipline is to reconcile myself to His viewpoint while maintaining a passion for excellence. It takes a lot of discipline, and I am not much good at it. Rudely, my intellect keeps screaming that it’s hard to soar like an eagle when one is surrounded by turkeys. But that is the Devil talking, and tempting.

Oddly, what I have learned in this process is that what I am – my heart, who I was created to be – is not necessarily what I want to be. The Lord has a quick response: so what? I am called to be just who He says I am, His man, and not my own. Life will be a lot easier once I fully reconcile myself to that idea. I suppose that’s what spiritual discipline is all about. Still, like a mustang fighting the bridle, I don’t like it. I do want to cheat. When He says, “No!” I frequently allow myself to backslide into wounded pride, perhaps the ugliest form of self-pity.

Name the sin; it doesn’t matter what the specifics are. When we choose to cheat and relax our spiritual standards, what we really are doing is indulging our most base selves in contradiction of everything our Creator made and intended us to be. That is never healthy, regardless of how good it may feel at the time. We certainly can and should continue to claim forgiveness. But we need to be extraordinarily careful our lapses do not become a lifestyle of “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.” Such reasoning puts us right back on the slippery slope to Hell.

IMAGINE: RESTORED!

Hosea 6:1-9:17; 3 John 1-15; Psalm 126:1-6; Proverbs 29:12-14

“In just a short time he will restore us, so that we may live in his presence. Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring.”

“Dear friend, I hope all is well with you and that you are as healthy in body as you are strong in spirit. Some of the traveling teachers recently returned and made me very happy by telling me about your faithfulness and that you are living according to the truth. I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children are following the truth.”

“Restore our fortunes, Lord, as streams renew the desert. Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest.”

“If a ruler pays attention to liars, all his advisers will be wicked.”

Restored! It is hard to imagine a more hopeful, helpful word in our lexicon. Everything returns to the way it was supposed to be, the way God intended it from the beginning. There is no separation between the Creator and His Creation. The world – and all the people in it – work as designed, connected by the Spirit to each other and to God. It is an awesome thought just to consider. To actually experience it, well, that would be the epitome. I’ve got to confess that, in my mind, it’s also sort of a “reach exceeds your grasp” sort of thing, an aspirational goal not logically capable of ever being achieved in this lifetime, anyway. However, even as I am writing this, Christ reminds me again that my opinions about spiritual facts aren’t worth much. They can certainly be stumbling blocks, and give rise to eroding doubt. However, only the Creator of reality truly understands it in all its complex dimensions, and if He says restoration is possible, then that’s the fact, Jack!

So, the next question follows as naturally as day follows night. What’s keeping me from being fully restored? Well, DUH! Let’s start with doubt. I don’t push the spiritual envelope, don’t really trust the Spirit with my life or my dignity, because my faith is limited. Oh, let’s be really clear: I just don’t believe I will ever have the authority, power or courage to be completely sold out to God. Sadly, what I do believe in my heart of hearts (almost to the point of fooling myself into believing that I actually know) is that if I push too far spiritually, I will fail. What an unfortunate and dangerous place to be! Neither totally hot nor totally cold, my lukewarm belief (far divorced from actual faith) creates a false, alternative “reality.” It has nothing to do with facts but is wholly defined, and so corrupted, by my opinions. Even sadder, because it is consumed by a vision of a future which has not happened yet, it by definition cannot have anything to do with facts. I am stymied by fear of a phantom future I can only imagine. I am defeated by hypotheticals before I really even give Christ a chance. Oh, good grief, what a waste of emotion and imagination, to say nothing of energy and enthusiasm!

Maybe, though, if imagination can so thoroughly mislead us, it can also be harnessed for good. I’ve always marveled at the early martyrs, the Peters, Pauls and Stephens. They obviously did it; they got there. They were recreated in the power of the Holy Spirit from the ground up. I don’t try to emulate them because I think I cannot imagine ever being like them. The Spirit wants to know why, in His Power, I couldn’t be like them. What’s really stopping me? There are no facts which would so limit the Lord’s Power. I’m guessing, then, that it’s about time to change the way I think.

We can – and do - imagine ourselves as great athletes, master professionals, wealthy, handsome and all their counterparts with ease. Heck, some of us can still imagine ourselves as superheroes, for goodness’ sake! There is no just reason we cannot change the way we think or the way we look at ourselves or Jesus. We can be restored! Moreover, we can be heroes of the Kingdom! C. S. Lewis was fond of saying that all humans tend to become what they imagine themselves to be, what they imitate. I say it a little differently, as in “fake it ‘till you make it.” We begin restoration by imagining ourselves to be as Jesus saw us when He died for us. Worth loving. Worth dying for. Whether we feel like it or not. Then, we just let Him in. That’s the ticket. He’ll reveal the rest in His own good time. Except for one thing. Many of us have a serious case of the “don’wannas.” We won’t imagine ourselves as great disciples, because we don’t want to, not because we can’t.

If we’re ever going to get serious about this restoration thing, we have to first confess our hearts to ourselves, as much as to the Lord. We need to be honest about who and what we want to be. Then, we need to begin to harness our imaginations. We can be much better than we are. In the power of Christ, there are no limits.

THE BEST OFFENSE IS NO DEFENSE

Hosea 4:1-5:15; 2 John 1-13; Psalm 125:1-5; Proverbs 29:9-11

“The Lord has brought charges against you, saying: ‘There is no faithfulness, no kindness, no knowledge of God in your land. You make vows and break them; you kill and steal and commit adultery. There is violence everywhere—one murder after another. That is why your land is in mourning, and everyone is wasting away. Even the wild animals, the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea are disappearing. Don’t point your finger at someone else and try to pass the blame!”

“Watch out that you do not lose what we have worked so hard to achieve. Be diligent so that you receive your full reward. Anyone who wanders away from this teaching has no relationship with God. But anyone who remains in the teaching of Christ has a relationship with both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to your meeting and does not teach the truth about Christ, don’t invite that person into your home or give any kind of encouragement. Anyone who encourages such people becomes a partner in their evil work.”

“Those who trust in the Lord are as secure as Mount Zion; they will not be defeated but will endure forever. Just as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, both now and forever.”

“Fools vent their anger, but the wise quietly hold it back.”

Sin is a personal responsibility. It’s no good to blame others, or circumstances. If we are going to call ourselves Christian, then we have to accept individual accountability for our shortcomings. This is not an especially popular position. Most folks are more than willing to encourage others to shoulder their own loads. However, we are exceedingly quick to excuse ourselves or plead extenuating circumstances whenever our own mistakes are on the table. What we miss in the process of playing the blame game is that forgiveness can never be legitimately claimed by anyone who refuses to acknowledge their own sin. Confession is an indispensible component of forgiveness. If we will not accept that we need it, it is neither possible nor logical for us to attempt to claim it.

Living in what might be the epitome of a “CYA” profession, over many years, I almost unwittingly developed a bad habit of deflecting blame. My style was not typically to shift the blame to others. I mainly just worked really hard to rationalize why what others regarded as potential problems or mistakes weren’t all that bad. Where plausible, I even went so far as to try to turn shortcomings into advantages. (As in, when I had been too forceful with an associate, focusing instead on the fact that the brief had gotten done.) Rarely, if ever, did I simply own the issue and apologize. What I did not see until it was almost too late was that my instinctive defensiveness was actually building a wall between my colleagues and me. When I got to my present position, some dubbed me a “maverick” at first; then later, I learned of my reputation as “not a team player.” Fortunately, at the same time, my wise supervisor forced me to bite the bullet. Having seen me try to divert a client’s criticism once too often, he pulled me aside and gave me some of the most valuable advice I’ve ever gotten. “Tom,” he said, “The problem is not your mistake. Everybody makes mistakes. Sophisticated clients not only realize that but accept it. The only thing to be ashamed of is trying to cover it up.” Now, I won’t extrapolate all of that into the eternal realm. Sin matters, covered up or not. Nevertheless, there is a large grain of spiritual truth in his admonition. The most shameful sin is our attempt to cover sin up. It’s futile, petty, motivated by guilt and betrays a weak faith.

Christians have nothing to fear from confession. However uncomfortable it makes us feel, feelings aren’t faith, and they can be poor indicators of truth, too. The Truth is that we can freely come before the Father to confess our sins and ask forgiveness without fear of judgment anytime we have the need, as long as we come cloaked in the Blood of Christ. There is simply no need for a cover up. Besides, in a cover up, the only ones we might be fooling are ourselves.

The next time we consider trying to foist the burdens of our errors onto someone else, we should first ask whether the job’s already been taken, and how much of what remains we can and should handle ourselves. Long ago, Christ claimed the sin and carried it all the way to the Cross. Guilt ought to be over and done with. If we claim His forgiveness through immediate confession, we are likely to find the pragmatic results of our errors can also be addressed a lot more easily, too.

It’s foolish to deny that mistakes have earthly, as well as eternal, consequences. It’s no secret the earthly consequences can seem the most immediate and severe. But problems of any sort are always easier to deal with when they are not complicated by unresolved guilt or defensiveness. Only when we are freed from such emotions is our vision truly clear enough to see other options. In certain sports, it may be true that the best offense is a good defense. If we want to get ahead in life and throughout eternity, though, Christ teaches the best offense is no defense. It just isn’t necessary for those who already know they are forgiven.

A DIFFICULT CONCEPT

Hosea 1:1-3:5; 1 John 5:1-21; Psalm 124:1-8; Proverbs 29:8

“When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, ‘Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.’”

“We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come, and he has given us understanding so that we can know the true God. And now we live in fellowship with the true God because we live in fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the only true God, and he is eternal life. Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.”

“We escaped like a bird from a hunter’s trap. The trap is broken, and we are free! Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

“Mockers can get a whole town agitated, but the wise will calm anger.”

As I approach the conclusion of this journey – only twenty-six more days to go! – one theme that keeps repeating itself in my head is that a life of faith has very little to do with emotion or how we may “feel” about things. It is much more a question of what is. Meaning, faith actually is grounded on objective fact rather than subjective belief. Our problem as humans is that we have difficulty translating or accepting spiritual truth as objective fact. Because God’s Truth encompasses so much more than we can comprehend, we have a hard time believing it. That does not in any way change the objective accuracy of spiritual truth. It should not impact our faith therein, either. What is, is, regardless of how we feel about it or what we believe. However, we too often allow what we believe, or what we are able to conceive, to define the limits of our faith, and that’s just wrong.

Belief is only a synonym for faith when it sets limits upon, and so artificially defines, what we think of as faith. In reality, true faith transcends personal belief. Faith is the recognition and acceptance of facts which are by definition beyond our ability to logically comprehend or believe them. For example, I may have a difficult time believing Grace will really save me at the end of the day. But in faith, I still have the audacity to put my faith in the fact that grace can and will do its thing as advertised, regardless of whether I feel worthy of it or not.

The question for eternity thus is not what we believe; it is in what facts we choose to place our faith. God will not ask us what we think, for that, in eternal terms, is never relevant to the issue of what is. He will ask us what we know to be true. If we make the mistake of answering based only on the physical realities of this world, our spiritual myopia might well undo us.

When it comes down to what is true, there is much more to the answer than what meets the eye. No doubt, Truth is defined – but only in part - by physical realities. It is also described by what the Spirit says is true. Therein lies the heart of our difficulties with faith. Those of us who are not inclined to listen to the Spirit of God will never be able to even hear, much less actually grasp, the vast universe of spiritual truth. Without knowing those facts, we can never hope to understand Truth.

Belief does give us a reason to test the deeper realities of eternity. Once we do that, though, we can never again say we merely believe in spiritual truths. We either know them, or we do not. We either accept spiritual truth as factual reality in which we place faith, or at best, we merely engage in hopeful, but nevertheless wishful, thinking.

This is not a semantic battle. It is literally the difference between life and death. If we are content to live on the basis of what we believe to be true, we become Satan’s easy prey. We can believe actions do not have consequences. We can convince ourselves that sin does not separate. We can also be fatally wrong and condemn ourselves to despair and regret. Knowing Jesus Christ for Who and What He is dispels all possibility of error. If, however, we hold back from total commitment and simply acknowledge our personal belief that Jesus is Lord, the idea that this represents any kind of tangible or life-saving faith is ridiculous. We have no faith because we will not commit to the fact that Jesus IS Lord. Our Savior is not remotely interested in whether or not we believe in Him. What concerns Him is whether we truly know Him or not.

We can believe almost anything. Only knowledge can honestly support faith. Consequently, our living, present relationship with Christ is the only thing that will support saving faith in Him as Messiah. What do you know about Jesus? Forget belief. Belief is cheap; it’s cheaply won and easily forsaken. Faith requires facts. Faith that saves is faith in the knowledge that our Lord is here and now, whether we believe Him to be or not.