Jul 11, 2022 | Uncategorized
I was driving many months ago and got lost. Shocker! I even had GPS, but…out in the country, signal problems, blah blah. So I went old-school and asked a guy at the sad-looking gas station. He leaned against his rusted old truck, swapped the cigar stub from one side of his mouth to the other and said, “Well, that’s a fine place you’re trying to get to…” He then regaled me with a few tales of how much fun he had there on various trips. After a short window of semi-patient listening to his tales, I finally asked my direction question again.
He laughed, topped of his tank, and hung the handle on the gas pump. “You can’t get there from here, missy,” he said. “You got to go back south to the dam and cross over, or you have to go north until you can skirt the northern edge.” Both of those directions were a good hour out of my way.
“Well, I replied not much satisfied with his answer, “isn’t there a place to cross the lake closer than that?”
“Yep,” he said as he climbed in his truck, slammed the door, and cranked the engine, “but you have to be able to swim…” He raised a hand in farewell and I could swear I heard him laughing as he drove away…
Not surprisingly, we drove the hour. We got to our destination later than we wanted, but we saw some great scenery along the way.
For most of us, our walk with God is like this. We want to be at X (more holy, less sinful, closer to God – or just plain have a better job or better marriage!). We don’t know how we got lost in this place where we are, but we’d like to be found and arrive at X any minute now. Ok. Maybe tomorrow. Patience is a virtue, and all.
None of us want to hear “you can’t get there from here”. None of us want the detour, backtrack, extra time/energy/effort it takes to take the long way around to our destination. And if our destination requires other human beings to participate…? Well! We certainly don’t want to wait on that person to take the long way! They need to shape up now…or tomorrow, because, you know, patience.
While God is hardly a tale-telling, stogy-smoking old man in a beat up truck, it is possible that some of God’s wisdom is held by that man: I can’t get there from here.
God no doubt knows how to get me from here to X (I am skipping whether or not X is “God’s plan” – that is more than I can bite off in this short blog!). God could even waive His mighty will and move me to X in an instant – supernaturally and miraculously transformed! That He does not do so means a couple of things:
~ He has some scenery He wants me to see – things to learn, giggles to have, tears to cry… X is a fine place, but I have to become the person he wants me to become for X to be that “fine place.” Moving me straight to X is probably not going to force me to change or grow. I need to experience some scenery first.
~ He has time in mind. While God exists outside time, you and I do not. He is not unaware of this. Timing is important to God. He knows that we live inside time. So, if it isn’t happening now, then it could be that God is working on the timing. For me, for others, or for some inscrutable reason I will never see.
~ He will let me swim it. I can ditch all the scenery and delay, if I am willing to get wet, muddy and miserable. But God – like my gas-pump friend – is going to laugh ruefully if I opt to take the short cut. I can just about hear Him saying, “OK…but this is not going to work out well for you, sweet one.”
James, in his gospel, tells us that we should count it all joy when we face trials of many kinds, for these trials produce patience, which renders us mature and complete, lacking nothing. I am mindful that James does not promise that God will give us our hearts’ desires. God doesn’t promise me I will have X in this world. He does promise me that He is going to go with me on this round-about journey and that I will become “mature and complete” if I persevere on it.
I can’t get to “mature and complete, lacking nothing” from here. I can only get there when I go the long way around, see some scenery, bide the time, count it all joy.
I know – it isn’t welcome news for those of us who live in instant mashed-potatoes, drive-thru everything, smoke-em-while-you-got-em culture. But then, God is calling us out of that culture, right? We are called into His Kingdom – which is usually going to be polar opposite of this world. If I want to get to God’s Kingdom from here, I am going to have to do it God’s way.
Jul 4, 2022 | Uncategorized
Love is a prevailing theme in humans. It transcends all cultures and all times. If you pod up a few humans, guaranteed at least one of them is thinking about love…
To be fair, they might also have been thinking about food, shelter, politics, power-plays and all the other topics that span the experience of being human. But love? It was there in the beginning with God, and paramount in Jesus’ teachings. It is something we are obsessed with our entire lives from the age we can first move around until the day we are laid in the grave.
Am I loved by you? Do I have someone to love? Am I loveable? Who am I supposed to love? Who do I not love?
If you were astute, you noticed that these pressing questions all have the word “I” in common. This is how humans think of love – always in reference to a central “me”. Frankly, this aligns with modern, western conceptions of love.
We fall into (and out of) love in popular media as if we are dumb animals swept up in something out of our control. Advertising is quick to point out how my breath smells, my clothes are wrong, and I am simply not interesting enough to be loveable – apparently, if I will just change myself (i.e. buy the product), I will also get swept into some magical place where I am treasured by someone (hopefully sexy and smart…rich is a bonus!). Note, however, that this love is never about how I behave towards some other person – it is always about how I feel or am perceived.
This is not how scripture teaches love. We must come to grips with the way God defines and commands “love” once we become Christians. If we are to follow Jesus in His way at all, we must understand what God says is “love”.
First, “love” is not about me – my feelings, my comfort, my sense of being important or valued. Love is about how I behave towards others. Here are just a few examples:
~ There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13 NLT). Love here is self-sacrificing for someone else.
~ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 NIV). Love in this sense means I control myself so that I can strengthen those around me, lift them higher, and make more of them.
~ …Love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8 NLT). Here love says I am to forgive when others hurt me so that we can stay in relationship together.
Had we time and space to scour scripture in this blog, we would see that God consistently teaches that love is always in relation to someone else’s good. Contrary to the normal self-centered bent of humans (where love is about me) – love is about how I treat others. In short, it isn’t about what I am getting, it is about what I am giving away. Biblical love – the kind of love Jesus exhorted us to exhibit — is a full-out commitment to someone else’s good. It is certainly not something you garner for yourself.
Further – and quite shockingly to those of us raised on the world’s view of love — you give it away long past the point of equity or return to you. In fact, scripture goes crazy and says, “love your enemies.” [ Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:27, Proverbs 25:21.] Love your enemies!? The ones that wrong me, betray me, stab me in the back to get something for themselves!? Yep. Those ones. The very ones who do not behave lovingly towards you are the ones God says we are to love.
I think it is easy for humans to be obsessed with love when we think it is something that is for our own comfort and well-being. We are decidedly less obsessed with sacrificing, forgiving 70-times-7 times, being humble and meek, and praying good over our enemies. Yet this is the role Jesus modeled for us – it is the place He calls us to. It is the crucible on which we will know how mature we have grown in our walk of faith. If you dare, ask yourself this hard question: how am I doing on love? Not “love” as a noun that we receive from other people (My fans love me! My children love me! My dogs love me!), but as a verb, something we do unto others.
It is OK to be obsessed with love – so long as your obsession is with God’s definition of love in His Kingdom.
Jun 27, 2022 | Uncategorized
Recently, Time magazine announced, “The future is already here.” That claim was a lead-in to several pages describing the fruit of human beings’ God-given capabilities. (But, I didn’t find any references to God in the feature story.) New devices, scientific breakthroughs, new methods, and new insights in all sorts of human endeavors gave the magazine much to report, even to celebrate. In my reading, I was introduced to a new word,
Transhumanism is the belief that by various means, primarily science and technology, the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations. Those who follow this belief argue that we can eliminate aging, use more of the brain’s capabilities, become “superhumans.”
Maybe that sounds like science fiction to you. Maybe you laugh and shake your head when you hear such ideas taken seriously. But my first thought when I read of the ideas and the work behind the goals of transhumanism was Genesis 11:1-11, the Tower of Babel Story.
Review the story when you have an opportunity. It seems almost harmless. The people who were filling the world all had a common language. As they grew in number and spread across the land, they began to worry about being scattered. So they determined to build a tower “with its top in the heavens” (Gen. 11:4 ESV). God’s intention, though, was for humankind to fill the earth and have dominion over it, not try to scale the heights of heaven. So He intervened, forcing people to scatter, to develop new languages. God was not against people working together, but God had a plan that He was about to put in play—the calling of Abram and his descendants. Literally, the rest is history.
In the Babel story, people were using their God-given capabilities—language, thinking, planning, building—but they were not using the capabilities as God intended. Transhumanism seems to reflect that same human desire for a great leap forward without any knowledge of or concern for God’s will and work.,
Transhumanism is not some boogeyman we need to fear nor some fictional daydreaming that we can ignore. It’s an idea that some folks want to be true. Its growing popularity (under various names) seems to be a result of our thinking that science and the technology it produces will solve humankind’s problems.
Neither the biblical account of the Tower of Babel nor this blog are anti-progress or anti-science. In creating us and giving us a mandate to live in and to care for His creation, God gave humankind great abilities. But those abilities—technical, intellectual, relational, spiritual—were to be developed and used under the gaze of God. God’s mandate was not “Go and do whatever you can do and whatever you want to do.”
Humankind has now the capability to dismantle the atom releasing untold energy, to modify the human genome, to send our sensors to the edge of the universe and beyond, to create and destroy, to use our world for our own purposes. We seem to be in danger of letting our capabilities push us into areas before our sense of right or wrong has even been consulted. Are, then, these capabilities becoming a Tower of Babel, building and doing what we can and what we want without regard for God’s purposes?
Mar 28, 2022 | Uncategorized
I find it is the little things that get me. Tree crashes into the roof? I am calm and get on with coping. Chigger bites in sensitive places? I get grumpy and decidedly put out. The little things get me.
In scripture the little word “all” often trips me up. All?! You’d think the meaning of that would be self-evident, but sometimes…well, not so much.
Take for example Luke 10: 25-28 (NIV). A man asks Jesus what he can do to have eternal life and Jesus turns the table on him asking in return “what is written in The Law”? The man answers:
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’
Jesus agrees with him.
When I read it, I nod. I agree with Jesus – I am a follower of Christ, am I not? I should agree. But if I am honest, the word “all” is like a chigger bite. It bothers me. What is meant by “all?”
A child of 8 has a confession of faith and she brings ‘all’ of her 8 years of life to the table to love Jesus. Is this the same ‘all’ that she brings at 18, now a victim of sexual assault and incest? Or, to be gender fair, is the ‘all’ of a 14 year old boy the same as a 24 year old man who has served in a combat zone and now battles PTSD? I grant those are specific traumas and since many of us live pretty trauma-free lives, it is possible they are not representative of this problem of ‘all.’
I was speaking to a man whose daughter left for college recently and I asked him if he was happy or fearful about this new normal. He shook his head and said, “Both. She is level-headed, and I trust her. But I also want to tell her ‘be careful, be careful!’ The world is not kind. My heart is both proud and filled with fear.” You might argue that he has raised a capable woman – there is no trauma here. And yet…the “all” of his heart and mind today is surely different than the “all” of his heart and mind before he had this child-now-woman-grown. A child changes you – marriage changes you – job shifts change you — death in the family changes you – heck even buying or selling a car/house can change you. Let’s face it, life changes us…trauma or none. Who we are today is not who we were 10 years ago nor who we will be a decade hence. So, what is this “all” with which Jesus agrees?
Worse yet, who is this “Lord Your God”? My understanding of God as a child was only what I could grasp of the concepts of “father,” “protector,” “savior.” When my family disintegrated shortly after my baptism as a child, I prayed that Jesus would come save me and protect me. From the point of view of the child that I was, Jesus did neither of those things. Life went downhill after the divorce into sad and unsavory places. So much so, that I left the faith for many years. I was angry at a God who claimed to be my protector but did not seem to protect me – even though I prayed as earnestly as a little person’s heart could.
Coming back to my faith as an adult, I have had to tear down that understanding of what I mean when I say “the Lord My God.” I have had to grapple with the truth that He is more interested in my eternal soul than my comfort here on earth. He is more interested in His Kingdom than my kingdom. I am His servant, not the master. I have had to reconcile those painful truths with more comforting truths: He is still good. He still loves me. He has never left me…even though I ran a long, fast route away.
You see my understanding of who I am loving with whatever “all” I am bringing has changed. In fact, I am convinced that no human will ever fully understand God. He is infinite. We are finite. We shall only ever understand “in part” this side of glory.
So, were Jesus to ask me that question today (what does scripture say), my answer would be more complex than the man’s actual response. I would have to say this:
Bring all that I am today to love all that I know of the Lord My God today.
Please don’t hear me saying I would change scripture. Far from it! I am simply suggesting that my “all” – all of me today – is different today than it once was, and it will be different a decade hence from where I am today. Further, the same is true for all that I know of the Lord My God. As God teaches me more of who He is, then I may have a different, more nuanced understanding of “Lord My God”.
Of this I am certain: God is not shocked that you and I change…or that our understanding of who He is changes. Moses changed. Gideon changed. Peter changed. Paul changed. We, like them, will become different as we walk life out with God. Further, God is not shocked that our grasp of who He is changes. I would hazard that Moses’ understanding of God at the burning bush is vastly different than the God of whom He wrote in Deuteronomy. Likewise, the God Paul professed before Damascus was different from the Jesus of whom he wrote later in his life. They changed – their depth of knowledge of God changed (not that God changed – we change. God never changes.).
Could you and I be so radically different than these? I think not. The best any of us can do in obeying this command to ‘love the Lord Your God with all our heart and soul and mind’ is to do that to the best of our ability today. Or to put it another way, I bring all that I am today to love all of God that I can know today. For anything else, I rest in God’s assurance that He will finish the good work He began in me; that my security is in Him and Him alone.
Mar 21, 2022 | Uncategorized
What if God knew what would make you happy? And what if He decided to give you what would make you happy? That sounds great, doesn’t it?
Next question, what if God knew what would make you happy—but you didn’t know what would make you happy? Or, what if God knew what would make happy—and you didn’t want it? That sounds far-fetched, doesn’t it? Let’s use a down-to-earth example of what I mean.
Imagine a parent who knows what would make their child happy, really happy. It might be an experience, a vacation, a gift, whatever; but the child doesn’t want it. The child wants to have his or her own way. Assuming the parent knows what can bring real happiness and the child doesn’t, chances are neither the parent nor the child will experience the happiness that might have been.
Could that earthly scenario reflect what happens in our lives when our Heavenly Father knows what will bring us deep, long lasting joy but we want something else? Do we want God to give us what will make us happy (in our estimation) here and now or to give us the “joy of the Lord” we read about in the Bible?
Maybe we need to check our understanding of God. Is God good, truly, completely good? Is God all-wise, knowing everything past, present, and future? Does God know you and me intimately, perfectly? Does He know what will bring joy to you and me? Yes, yes, yes, correct? If God wants to give us the gift that will bring us joy, will we recognize the gift? Will we accept it?
If you have followed me so far, you may be thinking of the things God has already given to you, material, emotional, spiritual blessings—salvation, security, family, peace of soul. These are gifts from God and they can bring happiness. But if we look deeper and take the long look, what brings joy is a deeper, more enduring awareness or appreciation of God’s glory. What do we mean by God’s glory?
Commonly, glory refers to the magnificence or greatness, even the beauty of something. We see or hear or feel that something is glorious. God’s glory, then, is His greatness, His beauty and magnificence. God’s perfections—perfect love, mercy, goodness, justice, wisdom, power, and more—show His greatness. God’s revelation of who and what He is—His nature, character, and purpose are elements of His glory. As we become more aware of God’s glory, we enjoy Him and He enjoys us.
But what if God wants to give us more of himself, but we are unwilling to open ourselves to Him and to receive His gift?
We want happiness and we want it now because we are people of the earth, the here and now. We may read about life beyond this one and sing about it, but eternity (whatever that means) has to wait until we get the things and have the experiences we want. So, this “now” in which we live often becomes a struggle to get what we want not what God wants to give us.
People who have been born again have glimpsed a bit of God’s glory in Jesus Christ. We have seen God’s jealous wrath along with His justice and mercy as Jesus, the Son of God, died for the sins of the world. We have seen God’s power in Jesus’ resurrection. We have experienced the Holy Spirit in our lives. And we are discovering that God knows what will bring us joy. The question is will we accept His gift.
Mar 14, 2022 | Uncategorized
Let’s talk about fear.
Not the sensible fear that cautions us from high-risk activities (like walking down dark alleys alone, base jumping, or putting your head in the lion’s mouth). Nor the fears that arise because there is a chemical imbalance in the limbic system that needs pharmaceutical correction.
What I mean here is the kind of fear that binds us in disobedience. God has told us things we should do (like tithe, pray, serve), things that He calls us to do uniquely, (like preach, witness, forgive), or called us to trust Him alone thru a difficult season. Any of that sound familiar? It should. God is on the move. He is always calling us to a next step of greater trust and obedience. If you are not moving on to a new level of risk and trust with God, then you are probably stuck in disobedience. Usually because a fear has bound you there.
What lies at the root of these fears? Well, that is a great question. We should be asking that of ourselves over and over. And over. What lies at the root of my fear?
I have suffered with a fear of not having enough money all my adult life. I know the source of it – I grew up poor and my parents always seemed to be one mistake away from homelessness. I vowed I would never be like that. I have had to ask that question of myself over and over as an adult believer: what lies at the root of my fear about tithing? About income? About work? About security? I have had to get honest with myself and God about that. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary in my life, I still don’t trust God to show up if life gets hard. Until I was able to own that truth (that I don’t trust God), I wasn’t able to address it with appropriate scriptural balm. I may go to my grave still applying scriptural salve to this soul-wound. But at least now I can do that. At least now God and I can address it together.
Maybe this is not your fear. Maybe you fear public speaking (most people do). It is a chance at public humiliation, after all. Shame. Loser. Big L on the forehead, and all that. But what lies at the root of that fear? I don’t think any believer would say, “Well, God will love me less if I give a bad public speech” or “I will lose my salvation if I don’t witness at least once a week.” Those sound foolish to everyone! No, if we peel back into the pain spot, we see we actually fear loss of face among our peers. Their opinion of us is more important than God’s call to witness, teach, or preach. Our fear has bound us into disobedience.
Maybe neither money nor public speaking is “it” for you. I imagine there are a vast number of fears that stem from ugly boils on the soul. My point here is this: until we root out the real reasons for our fear, we will not be able break the binding that keeps us in disobedience from God’s call.
There are certain scriptures that cause me to pause and wonder if those apply to me. Specifically, when Jesus says “I knew you not” and “my sheep hear my voice” and “if you love me, obey my commands”? I don’t want to be the one to whom He says “I knew you not – you did not obey my commands or hear my voice.” I am confident God is not expecting perfection in my victory here on earth – I am confident He will finish the good work He began in me. But I am also confident that I must participate in this journey or I will allow the roots of my fears to bind me into this place of disobedience.
So today, whenever fear raises its ugly head, I ask myself: what, exactly, am I afraid of?
Peter must have been terrified in the boat when Jesus walked upon the water. They all must have been terrified. But only Peter said, “Lord, bid me come to you and I will.” Only Peter stepped over the gunwale onto the tossing waves when Jesus said, “Come.” As John Ortberg quipped in the title of one of his books: To Walk on Water, You’ve Got To Get Out Of the Boat.”
I want to go home to God a water-walker. Not a boat sitter.
Because of this, I am willing to do the heavy lifting of examining my fears and finding the root of them. I would rather painfully slice every ugly boil in my soul by asking this question over and over than sit in the perceived safety of my boat taking zero risks with God.
I know it is frightening to look at our “stuff”. You may even need the help of a professional counselor or a good friend who can speak honestly and lovingly into your pain places. Or maybe you just need to hold God’s hand and do it together. When our fear rises up, we must make time to sit with it and ask this hard question: why does that frighten me? What lies at the root of this fear?
Do you know what happens when we get to the root of our fears and own them? It looks like this (2 Chron 7:14 NIV):
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land
