Limping in Triumph

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. – Romans 8:26-27

Prayer is not magic.  God is not jinn.  There is a long tradition in storytelling of the unintended consequences of wishes granted and magical fulfillments going all wrong.  We never have to worry about that when we pray.  The One who searches the heart is the Spirit of God Himself.  He knows our deepest needs, our desires, and what is best for us.

Until I am certain that God is Good, and that, as Jesus told the rich young ruler, there is none good but God, prayer will always be a struggle for me.  Prayer warfare could be described as a battle to surrender -- not to be defeated, but to know to whom we are surrendering.  The most concrete illustration of this in the Bible may be Jacob’s wrestling match at Penuel (Genesis 32:24-31):

He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”  And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”  Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him.  So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

Like Jacob, we wrestle in prayer, not to defeat God or bend Him to our will, but to know His will for us – to find our place in Him, to be fully convinced of His love for us.  In prayer, we find that we are not all-knowing, all-powerful, or unbreakable.  Prayer exposes our weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  God can disable us with a mere touch.  Sometimes He does this simply because we will not surrender otherwise. 

What this story tells me is that I cannot give up until God breaks me.  My job is to hang on doggedly until He says my limit has been reached.  Even when it seems the light is about to break on my darkness, I cannot let go of Him.  The blessing is in the breaking. 

It is in the realization of our brokenness that we come to understand the perfection of His will.  If we surrender, in the sense of giving up, before that point, we will never know the fullness of His beauty and truth.  It is only in being defeated by God that we know victory.

Transformers

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. -- Titus 3:4-7

Normally I ignore a lot of stuff I see on the Fakebook, but recently someone I know posted a picture of a church sign that said, “God prefers kind atheists over hateful Christians.” 

I have no doubt that many atheists are better people than I can ever be.  God certainly doesn’t love me more than those good atheists.  He also doesn’t love me less.  Does He prefer that I be kind rather than cruel?  He does.  That’s why we are about to celebrate the Incarnation, the time in history when God became Man and walked among us all the way to Calvary.  He came to deliver me from my cruelty and my hatred, my lust and my greed – to deliver me from death. 

Do Christians sin?  We certainly do, and when we do, we often call into question the value of our faith.  We cause the world to wonder what difference there is between Christians and non-Christians.  Christ came not to improve our lives but to give us life.  Even the kindest, most generous, most forgiving atheist is still dead in his or her trespasses and sins.  Is that fair?  Yes, it is. 

You see, we have all “sinned and come short” of the glory of God.  We have all missed the mark in life, and the reason for that is that we are all here in a fallen state.  Our sins and errors are not the cause of our fallen state but the result.  So, too, when Christ comes into the heart of a person, the good works that begin to flow out of that individual are not a cause of salvation but the result of it.    

Jesus came to show us who we are and to offer to us – all of us – His righteousness.  The people for whom the gentle and loving Lord Jesus reserved the most ire were the self-righteous, those who thought that they were doing pretty well on their own.  They didn’t lie, steal, cheat, kill, or mistreat in a physical way.  They just looked down on others, demeaned and derided the “publicans and sinners” around them.  They were quick to find fault and to judge.  Now, as it happened, those were “religious” people – mostly Pharisees – to whom Jesus spoke.  He words, though, are applicable to anyone with the same attitude of pride and self-justification.   

The world into which the Son of God was born was a religious world.  We live in a secular world, though one clearly enabled and enlightened by Christianity.  Our modern-day Pharisees are politicians, academics, celebrities, journalists, etc,, who think themselves more “advanced” than the rest of us and feel the need to help us out of our superstitions.  I understand that, and it doesn’t really bother me. 

What bothers me is the person who put up that sign.  It was, as I said, a church sign, no doubt put up by a church member, someone on the staff, perhaps at the pastor’s request.  The idea, I suppose, was to shame the church members into being nicer people.  That is wrong.  It is a perversion of the gospel, a form of the “social gospel” bullshit that crippled 19^th and 20^th century Christianity.  Jesus Christ did not die on a Roman cross for nice people.  He did not rise triumphant over death, hell, and the grave to make us nice. 

He came, He died, He rose again to make us sons and daughters of the Most High God, to deliver us from the delusions of the world, the illusions of temptation and the old, sinful nature, to bear away the penalty and power of our sins, release us from bondage and make us the righteousness of God in Him.  He came not to conform or reform but to transform. 

Caterpillars are not interested in being nice, kind caterpillars.  They are born to be butterflies and to soar.   

Rocky Top

LORD, You are my portion and my cup of blessing; You hold my future. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. – Psalm 16:5,6

On the television show Bonanza, the Cartwrights often traveled to California from their home in Nevada, but their trips were almost always to San Francisco. I do not remember the episode or the context, but Hoss once traveled down to southern California. He remarked on the barrenness of it, and someone asked if he had ever seen California. He replied that he had been to California many times, but he doubted that anyone would ever want to live in such an ugly place as Los Angeles. I remember the first time I left the Spring green hills of the Ozarks driving to LA. My thoughts were much like those Hoss expressed. Yet some people love the high desert or the coasts, the plains or the mountains, or even the cold, frozen north lands. I have heard people call swamp land in central Wisconsin “God’s Country”. I have heard others say the same thing about desolate plains around Midland and Odessa, Texas or places along the Gulf Coast where the mosquitoes could be mistaken for buzzards if they flew a little higher. I think they’re all crazy. Everybody knows God lives just a little northeast of Cedar Gap, Missouri. Even the devil keeps a weekend place over the border in Arkansas.

When it comes to landscapes and vistas, “home” makes up for a lot of deficiencies. In that sense, we can all understand the psalmist when he says, “I have a beautiful inheritance.”

In other realms, we may not be so inclined to think well of the heritage bequeathed to us. Many of us look back on regrettable scenes that closed doors or burned bridges. We may have reason to wish that we could live some pivotal moment again, making a different decision in a second pass. Our boundary lines may seem a little restrictive, and the ground we are left to till may seem rocky and hard.

Still, we are here. Here. And the opportunity to experience joy and peace is ours at this moment precisely because the lines are drawn as they are.

If I have regrets, sitting where I am today, they are not for me, but for the trouble and pain I may have caused someone else. Every hurt and failure that I suffered I now see as a stone of remembrance, a landmark establishing the lines of my inheritance, bringing me to this place which the Lord has given me. There are others, no doubt, with more spacious abodes where the soil is deeper and richer and better watered. Still, I have my little place with its small, but inexhaustible spring of living water, and it will produce all that I need, in abundance.