Writing Your Own Test

Jesus answered them, Do you now believe? -- John 16:31

This is going to be short.  The Disciples were accustomed to the Lord speaking to them in parables and rather obliquely.  During this last Passover meal, with the Cross but hours away, Jesus began to speak more openly to them.  Suddenly it was as though a light were turned on:  His disciples said, “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech!  Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.”  (vv. 29-30)

There was just one problem.  These men whose hearts were flooded with light and understanding would, before they knew what was happening, see Jesus arrested.  The Disciples would be shocked and scattered in dismay and fear.  When, in Gethsemane, the Lord told them to watch and pray, it was less for Him than for them.

Every time the Lord takes us to another plateau in our understanding, He will allow us to be put under pressure about the very point upon which we have this new revelation.  This is what Psalm 105:18-19 describe as happening to Joseph:  His feet were hurt with fetters; his neck was put in a collar of iron; until what he had said came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him.  Oh, I see what God is doing.   I understand now how this is supposed to work.  I’m going to proclaim God’s truth.   By all means, do so, because it is the truth.  Just understand that when you say it, you are going to be asked to live it out.  

To use an academic metaphor, we are, in effect, writing out the questions that are going to comprise the test of our faith.  God is not going to test us on those things which we have not yet grasped, and the test is not about making the grade.  It is another step from the grotesque, earth-bound thing that crawls to the glorious thing that laughs at the boundaries of time and space.    

Factual Christianity

[A]nd my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. -- 1 Corinthians 2:4-5

The claims and doctrines of Christianity are true.  There are people who debate these things and dispute with both believers and non-believers.  Any reasonable person can see for themselves that there is, at the very least, a measure of validity to the historical narrative of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. Apologetics has some value to believers in helping them refute and resist the encroachment of worldly theories and opinions. For the unbeliever, arguing these facts might get someone to change his mind about, well, facts.

Agreement about ethics and lifestyles is not sufficient to make a person a Christian.  Faith resting upon what Paul calls the "wisdom of men" will not hold up.  On the other hand, demonstrations of the Spirit are not parlor tricks or embarrassing displays.  It is internalizing, not facts, but the Truth itself that begins the process of conforming a person to the image of Christ.

What makes the gospel the good news that it is is the hearer's recognition of the fallen state of man in general and of himself in particular.  One who has never been convinced (or allowed himself to be convinced) by the Holy Spirit of "sin and righteousness and judgment" will never be a Christian.  The gospel is meaningless to the earth-bound, to the person comfortable in his own state -- whatever it may be. 

An infidel is not a bad man but quite often virtuous and even religious in so far as it is beneficial to his life in this world of flesh and blood.  He will adhere to the Christian creed if that seems practical and pleasing to those around him.  Such a person is liable to tell that union with Christ is a metaphor, that Christ in us is another way of saying that following the teachings of the New Testament.  They cannot imagine a more literal meaning. 

Those, however, who are touched by the Spirit, indwelt and filled by the Truth, have come to regard this world and all it contains, all it celebrates and covets rather lightly.  The believer has understood the necessity of the Cross and the redemption he is offered.  The old man is flawed beyond repair, and so is this world until man becomes what he is meant to be.

Bury Hurry

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. -- 1 John 4:18

Fear has to do with punishment as regards the Lord.  In our everyday lives, fear rules much of what we do because we fear loss, injury, and harm.  Another way to think of courage is to consider the opposite state in one form of fear – a very common one – panic.  When we panic we lose our presence of mind.  We lose control.  We rush forward.  Forty thousand years ago, out on the Serengeti, if a human heard a lion cough nearby, panic had something of a place.  We might not be descended from the folks who did not feel the need to get elsewhere in a hurry, or who stood still and asked, "Whadaya reckon that was, Floyd?  Floyd?".  Nevertheless, the value of panic is very limited and narrowly applicable only to immediate physical threats.  Even then it can often do more harm than good, as we see in the aftermath of human stampedes in stadiums or on Black Friday at Wal-Mart. 

Acting deliberately requires courage, and, while it might seem paradoxical, being deliberate allows us to be decisive.  Fear, you see, has already made the decision for us.  When we act out of fear, we act without intention.  We are driven by the potential for loss or harm, and, if we are not careful, alarm-driven decisions will become our default mode and our habit. 

Many of us heading out to work in the morning are already in fear mode.  We are grabbing coffee and bags, handing off other bags to the kids who have to get their coats on and get strapped into the car seat.  We fear there might be traffic tie-ups between the house and the daycare, between the daycare and work.  We are in dread of being late to work again.  We do what other people do all day long, following the herd, afraid that we might miss out on some amazing, wonderful thing that we never enjoy because we are living in a hurry.

I believe in saving for the future, saving for a rainy day, investing wisely, working hard, and being prepared for difficulties.  If, however, I lack the ability to control my mind in courage, I will always be trying to save more, gain more, do more.  I will live in constant trepidation that I have made that wrong choice or that some great catastrophe is about to overtake me.  I will hurry through life, grabbing and snatching experiences and things while missing the meaning and significance that is available only to those live deliberately and patiently, breathing deep of the Spirit. 

Some great catastrophe may over take me.  But God is able to work all things together for my good.  Not all things are, of themselves, good.  It doesn’t matter.  My Father loves me, and, if I am willing to trust Him, He will take crippling, devastating setbacks and turn them into good in my life.  Perfect love casts out fear.     

As Paul puts it in 2 Timothy 1:7, God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.  We are free to act with good, sound judgment, wisely, cooly, intentionally.  Our Shepherd is with us.  We are not a flock that may be stampeded over a cliff by the sound of the storm or by long shadows of the lion, the wolf, or the bear. 

 

I've Read Your Book

Put no trust in a neighbor; have no confidence in a friend; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms; for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house. – Micah 7:5-6

Most of us are more familiar with this passage from Matthew chapter 10 as quoted in part by Jesus after He said that He had “not come to bring peace, but a sword” (v. 34).  Those early Christians were often seen as troublemakers and people who upset the right order of things, as described in the book of Acts.  For example, Acts 17:6 says, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also …” -- that is what the truth does.  It puts the world on its head, uprooting and thus restoring the divine order.

It isn’t just the outside world that finds this disturbing.  In dreams the house usually represents the dreamer’s life.  When the Lord is at work in our hearts, we may find ourselves in disarray, at odds with those close to us while at the same time dealing with internal conflicts.  The house is divided against itself, and a choice has to be made.  Are we going to sink back into our normal state of complacency and try to restore peace with all the elements of our old life by either partially or completely rejecting God?  To do so is to die.  As the man said, only the dead have seen the end of war.  It seems a hard way to obtain a false peace.

The alternative is to embrace God’s truth, to allow our world to be stood on its head.  The battle will move out a circle, and we will find our internal turmoil soothed and quiet.  We may be still in the midst of storm and war, but our hearts will be as still as a deep and sheltered pool.

There is one other thing that I have believed for a long time and stated on occasion, though I was never able to give a good reason or a Scripture reference as to why I believed it.  It may be that I picked it up from verse 5 above.  Sometimes we have to be careful of whom we ask prayer.  Not all people have my best interests at heart, but beyond that, not even all of those who love me (few enough in my case as it is) are willing to accept what God wants to do for me.  Many of us are confounded by this.  Pride, envy, and jealousy are powerful.  I’ve known fathers who were troubled by their sons’ successes for fear that it might overshadow their own achievements, forgetting, perhaps, that the sons’ accomplishments redound to the glory of the fathers.  How much more likely that the prayers of other family members or of some friend might be chilled by an envious frost?    

Are there not mothers who fear that God’s will done in a child’s life might loosen her own influence?  Some of those close to us may draw a slightly perverse pleasure from our dependence on them.  I have to watch that tendency in myself with regard to family and friends.  It’s a dangerous thing to play god, though it can be thrilling.  We should beware of polluting our good intentions toward others and likewise of their best intentions toward us being less than perfectly pure.  

We don't even have to mean to do harm.  Suppose a friend of modest means comes to me and asks that I pray with him for a car to replace his broken-down, unreliable vehicle.  I should pray that God will bless him with the perfect car for him -- not the one he wants or the one he'll settle for or the one I think would be good enough for him.  For all I know, the Lord may have a Lexus convertible for him while I'm envisioning a solid, low-mileage Toyota pickup.  Would I feel bad if he got a better rig than I have? 

Sadly, to know my enemies, I may not need to do as Patton did with Rommel and read his book.  I may need look only to my own heart, my own impulses and inclinations.  

There is One we may always fully trust and to whom we may make known our deepest desires without fear.  But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. (Micah 7:7)

When Good Things Happen to Bad People

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. -- Luke 6:35

This is the verse that precedes some of what I quoted yesterday, and continues the theme of the importance of how we live, act, and even how we think. 

Jesus is speaking, and we note that He, somewhat casually, blows apart a concept that most of us accept without too much thought.  God is not good to good people only.  God is good because He is Good.  He is kind – some translations say, gracious, to the ungrateful and to the evil.  To many of us, that does not seem quite the way it ought to be.  It’s not fair.  Good people should be rewarded. and bad people should be punished. 

Of course, they will be.  Both righteousness and evil carry with them their own appropriate rewards, for, as the Lord goes on to say, the seed we plant determines, inevitably, the harvest we receive.  None of us, though, can blame God  – as I must ashamedly confess I have done – for what our thoughts, our attitudes, and our behavior have yielded.  At the same time, we are all in need of God’s grace.  In light of the perfection of God, the utmost efforts of the best of us are hardly worthy of notice, as, next to Mount Everest, all anthills are approximately the same height.     

That part of it and the idea of salvation by grace, most Christians are able to grasp.  We are all condemned apart from the mercy and longsuffering of the Almighty.  Nevertheless, the natural part of us still may stumble over God’s love for those who are wicked.  We may lose patience with His patience and gentleness.  Yet for God to be other than perfect in His love for each individual would turn out all the lights in the universe.  We would be left alone and hopeless in the dark. 

The Lord offers us this truth as He calls upon us to live by the reality of it.  We must put the same graciousness and kindness to work in our own lives – forgiving, loving, doing good, helping with no expectation of any sort of repayment or of those who benefit being kind or grateful in return.  Very often, people may not even remember that we have done them a good turn.  In this way, we transcend the conventions of doing good and begin to be good. 

It can be a hard thing.  When someone forgets all that you or I have done for them or fails to respond appropriately to the grace of God flowing through us, we may feel hurt and wronged.  Instead of dwelling on it and opening a wound or keeping a wound open, we should think of the forgotten good as something done in secret, to the Lord alone.

Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.  But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  (Matthew 6:2-4)

On Sowing and Reaping

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.  Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. – Proverbs 4:23-24

The heart includes what we generally call imagination, the visions, desire, inclinations, and plans – the things we wish for, hope for, and dream about. 

We all know that Jesus said, in Luke 6:38, “Give and it shall be given to you.”  It is a favored quote before the passing of the offering plate in church.  I do not dispute the truth of it.  It is a law of the cosmos as certain as the motion of the planets.  It’s just not limited to money.  The Lord says, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.   Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.  For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Whatever measure – thimble or five-gallon bucket – I use in dealing with the world, God will use in repaying me.  And whatever it is I put in the bucket, God will return to me according the law of the harvest  … some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.  That is great if I sowed corn, not so great if I sowed lies and deceit.

The old saying is that you can’t cheat an honest man.  That’s not a one hundred percent guarantee, but it is a good general rule.  An honest man neither expects nor desires something for nothing, which is most usually the basis of a con.  It is thus much harder to cheat an honest person, and the cheat never really gets away with it while the honest won't suffer too much.  After all, the truthful are sowing the seeds of truthfulness.    

Avoiding the slough into which so much of the world seems to have sunk begins with garrisoning the heart and imagination with truth and righteousness.  The world is big on “authenticity”, but we need not embrace and celebrate the corruption of the old nature.  We should rather seek alignment with the new man, since … you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:1-3)

If I am too worldly perhaps it is because I have set my mind too much on the things of the world.  Are my thoughts like old hens that go out and pick through the barnyards dropping all day then come back to the roost to drop their own at night?  If I am constantly confronted by misunderstanding, misinterpretation, mistrust, rejection, loathing, anger, deception, or fear, is it possible that I am sowing those things? 

Of course, this world is not a bad place except for the people.  They are all sowing stuff, too.  I can’t do a thing about them.  This is where the St. Francis quote applies -- instead of worrying about changing the world, I am free to change worlds.  My family may be a bunch of conniving, twisted control freaks.  The people at work may be ungrateful, greedy, demanding jerks.  But I don’t have to work for them.  Everything I do, I may choose to do as “unto the Lord”.  It is the Lord for whom I work; it is the Lord from whom I receive.  Let others sow as they will.   Only I can prevent my harvest of righteousness.