Rich In Its Trade

8.11.2010

John 13:34-35 34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” ESV

Love is one of the more maligned words in our vocabularies – we don’t know what it means and practice it poorly. For many, the word love means affection and yes, love is affection but it is so much more. For many love means romance and yes, love is partly romance but it is so much more. For many love is tolerance; and yes, love is tolerance, but it is so, so much more.

How does God love us? With affection, yes, with affection; with romance; yes, with romance; with tolerance; yes, with tolerance – but God loves us because God sees what we can become in Him. God purposed to create a perfect relationship with each of us so that we could have the perfect relationship with each other and thereby relate perfectly with His universe around us – but the lifeblood of it all is love.

Love is treating others the way we wish to be treated – not the façade we put on, but how we deeply, really, want to be treated. Love is always others-focused. Love is devoid of self. Love really is always patient and kind; love does not ever envy or boast; it is not ever arrogant or rude. It does not ever insist on its own way; it is not ever irritable or resentful; it does not ever rejoice at wrongdoing, but always and forever rejoices with the truth. Love magnificently bears all things, continually believes all things, steadfastly hopes all things, patiently endures all things. Love never ever ends (1 Co 13:4-8 ESV with my spin)

Father in Heaven,

You are love and Your children are born into love. Help me God through all of the pain in my life to learn to love and cut others slack as they learn to love as well. The currency of Your Kingdom is love and God I pray that I become rich in its trade – I pray in Jesus’ Name, amen.

What God Thinks

8.9.2010

Jeremiah 3:19 19 I said how I would set you among my sons, and give you a pleasant land, a heritage most beautiful of all nations. And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me.

The God of the Broken Heart mourns the loss of His people. What God did for them, leading them all those years, He did in hope that they would love Him, trust Him, and obey Him. And now centuries later He is faced with the heart-rending task of giving them over. All because He thought they would respond to Him in love and call Him “Father” and follow Him wholeheartedly.

I wonder sometimes what God thinks I’ll do. I wonder if God puts me in situations where He thinks I’ll respond in love and dependency only to see me respond in rebellion. And then I wonder what He thinks. In Jeremiah, God shows Himself through His prophet to be vulnerable like a loving parent hoping the best for his child but having his hand forced to let go because the child refuses to go in the direction he thinks he should have. God’s people rejected His love and wanted to be like the nations around them – be careful what you wish for.

But lest I think God weak, I must remember that He is anything but and will, in love, chasten me for my stupidity. He’s promised to do that. Many think God too loving to send anyone to hell – to that I say, try Him and see; He is too loving to keep us from hell. From God we may not get what we deserve but we may get what we want. This is a perfect picture of a loving God with a broken heart watching the people He loves go after what they want…

Father in Heaven,

You know that I am learning the hard way what to want and what to avoid. Help me to surrender this day to Your will and to remember that You will give me over to what I want, if I persist. May I persist in following hard after You – in Jesus Name, amen.

The Theology of the Outcast

8.7.2010

John 9:31 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. ESV

What do you know? In all of your life experience, what have you picked up along the way of value, of truth; of life? What have you learned to do and to avoid? The theology of the outcast is this: we know that God does not listen to sinners, but is anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, God listens to him.

I find it noteworthy that the outcast says we’re to do two things: (1) worship God, and (2) do His will. The two are inseparable if we’re to have an audience with the Almighty. God doesn’t listen to those who doubt or don’t do. It is not by works that we are saved, it’s by faith; but our faith must be demonstrated by how we live – if we worship God, our lives must be a series of daily expressions of worship in all we do (1 Corinthians 10.31). If that doesn’t guide our behavior, I don’t know what would…sin and the silence of God, I guess.

The question I have to ask myself is does what I know – that God listens to the working worshiper – express itself in my relationships and behaviors? If I am the real deal, it certainly ought to.

Father in Heaven,

You aren’t interested in my opinions – only my obedience. You aren’t interested in what I know, You are watching my every move to see that I am in step with Your Spirit. Help me this day to live what I believe and to behave what I know; that You are God and I am not; and I am to worship You in all I do trusting that as I do, You will listen to me, love me, and help me. Amen.

Ingest and Digest

8.4.2010

John 6:53 “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ESV

Wow! That’s a mouthful! I’ve always been fascinated with Jesus’ words here in John 6. I’ve come to the conclusion that this chapter in John is one of the most pivotal chapters in all of Scripture. And Jesus’ words here make no equivocation – either we accept Him on His terms or we go away – those are the only two choices. The metaphor that the Lord uses of eating His flesh and drinking His blood is graphic but He makes His point – either you ingest Me and I become in you on the molecular level, or you starve to death.

Jesus isn’t advocating cannibalism but He is urging us to take Him into our lives as we would take in food, that as our bodies ingest and digest food, it becomes part of us – in the same way He becomes part of us; His life, presence, and power become us. When we eat something it goes beyond the senses in a way that our senses can only be a precursor. We must ‘eat’ Jesus in order that He becomes more than a texture, a sensation, an odor, sight, or sound.

Even the Lord’s metaphor falls short on us – but it’s no excuse not to take Him in and digest Him in our hearts so that all we are becomes who He is… When Jesus says, “Eat Me” He means it!

Lord God,

This one stretches me because I can’t fully express what I think I see other than to say to You, let me feast on all of who You are and what You’ve done. Let me delight in our moments together and fully digest You in my heart so that I may become all that You’ve created me to be in You; it’s the only way to take You in… amen.

My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less

8.3.2010

John 5.45b Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ESV

A person could take a valuable diamond and glue it to a plastic finger ring – to which we all might ask, ‘Have you lost your mind!?’ To take something valuable and place it on something worthless shows little respect or understanding of the valuable; and misplaced value in the worthless.

Hope is an intangible but valuable thing and all of us hope for something. Our current president ran his campaign on the value of hope. He hopes for a political system to cure all that is wrong in our country – as he sees it. We all hope for something. The Jews hoped that by following the rules they would gain right standing with God. The problem was their rule-keeping oppressed people and God doesn’t care for that at all. Jesus pointed out the error of placing their hope on a faulty setting. That’s when thing began to get interesting.

I have long placed my hope on cultural settings because I was taught to do that. I was taught early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. What I didn’t realize was that not only can my settings be faulty, but so can my hope. Politics don’t bring hope and neither does my culture – unless my culture is godliness.

Lately, in this unstable economy, culture, and turbulent political scene, I am learning this lesson:

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus’ Name.

On Christ the Solid Rock I stand

All other ground is sinking sand

All other ground is sinking sand.*

Father God,

Thank You for true hope based on Christ – priceless and eternal; amen.

* Edward Mote - circa 1834

With Real Scars He Prayed Real Prayers

8.2.2010

2 Chronicles 33:13 13 He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. ESV

Manasseh is a bit of an enigma to me – first he leads his nation astray and then he leads them back to God. First he establishes false religion, then he repents and reinstates true religion. All it took was getting the crap kicked out of him by the king of Assyria and a trip to Babylon. With real scars he prayed real prayers.

Sometimes our choices look so good but in reality they’re so bad. Sometimes we think our ship has come in only to find it’s run aground. Sometimes our own arrogance and pride pave the road to colossal humiliation. Sometimes our colossal humiliation causes us to pray and repent – Wow! What a concept!

I want to hate Manasseh for what he initially did to the nation after the reign of his father Hezekiah. But I love the fact that in his humiliation he didn’t harden, he softened to the things of the Lord. He learned his lesson after all…

A fool is someone who refuses to learn the lesson. The only mistakes I make are when I determine not to learn from my mistakes. My ego and pride can be a curse but they can be a blessing when wounded and scarred they cause me to return again to God. Pain often does one of two things: harden or help.

Father in Heaven,

You loved Manasseh and so You caused him to suffer for his own choices. I know that You love me and I know that You will cause me to see the error of my ways and help me to see the rescue in Yours. Father, I need Your help and I pray that You not stay Your hand in helping me to get it. I offer up my mistakes and with the scars left from the hooks in my flesh, I pray for Your deliverance and for Your correction – in Jesus’ Name, amen.

The Best Thing I Could Ever Receive

8.1.2010

John 3:27 27 John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. ESV

Think about your life and the things in your life – your highs, your lows; your agonies, your ecstasies. If what John says is true then everything that happens in your life is a gift from God or a divine enablement to do His will.

In the context of the discussion (John 3.25-36) John’s disciples were making the point that Jesus was (apparently) gaining in popularity while John’s popularity (apparently) was waning; at least that’s the way they saw it, and they perceived it as a bad thing. But John’s response is crucial because he seems to accept what has been given to him as from heaven and thereby the best he could have…ever.

If what I receive in life, be it popularity or humiliation, is from heaven, then it truly is the best thing I could ever receive as long as I realize and respect where it comes from. I must remember and give glory to Him who controls my every breath because He is infinitely and intimately involved in my entire being that I may accomplish His will for me in my brief span of years. And He relentlessly gives me what I need to succeed – always! For that, all I can say is “Thank You!”

Father in Heaven,

You truly give to each of Your children everything they need to succeed in life; not worldly life, Lord; heaven’s life. Your goal for us is that we be adapted on earth for life in heaven; life there that is dramatically different than what we experience here – O God, help me to get it and to adapt as I ‘watch’ and learn from Your saints in the Scripture and as I learn in Jesus how to receive all the things that are from You – I pray in His Name, amen.