Encouraging spiritual food to foster a deeper relationship with God and help sustain you through challenging times...
Saturday, February 10, 2018
Terrified
My sisters and I (plus one adopted sister) were at a timeshare together one year, having a perfectly delightful time. Late at night I became gradually aware of shouting and pleading and other outcries from the stairwell outside our door. Earlier that evening we had met a ‘nice’ couple at a restaurant. It turned out they were staying right across the hall from us. As my fuzzy brain began to discern the wife was being abused right outside my door, terror overcame me. The extent of the evil hovering just outside was palpable. I knew I should rush out and stop this man and protect this woman. Yet I was frozen in fear. I was just glad our door was locked so that evil couldn’t attack me or my sisters.
If you had asked me previous to this experience what I would do if I heard some crying for help outside my house, I would have in no uncertain terms told you I would immediately rush to her aid, if only by calling the police (which might, unfortunately, be too late). However, I did none of these things. I couldn’t even remember the name of the development in which we were staying or its address. I was paralyzed with fear and found myself in total self-preservation mode. One of my sisters also awoke and came down and we sat huddled together in terror that seemed totally disproportionate to the event, as insidious as is all spousal or child abuse. You would have thought Nazi officers were about to break through our door. Even the next morning, as we headed home, there was a heavy spirit hanging over us. We neither laughed nor joked until we finally started praying together and singing praise songs on our journey.
When Jesus fell prostrate to the ground in the garden of Gethsemane and sweat blood through his
forehead, all the powers of evil were trying to keep Him from carrying through with what the Enemy
knew would totally defeat him and save us for all eternity. I can’t even conceive of what that was like. But I had the tiniest, minuscule taste of it and of my own weakness and selfishness in the face of the desperate need of another. That Yeshua persevered through it without turning back, despite unimaginable opposition, fear, sorrow, depression and grief....bearing all our sins for all time and combatting overwhelming evil, makes me fall at His feet in gratefulness and heart-wrenching love. To blithely take His sacrifice for granted with spoken religious platitudes and self-absorbed lifestyles is to cheapen what it took for Him to stand back up in the garden and walk that horrific road for us
I no longer (or at least less frequently) judge those I hear about who haven’t done what they should to help others. I hope and pray for the fortitude and grace from God to act differently next time I face
a similar situation. Even Peter the Rock vowed his own strength would be sufficient and then failed miserably in the test. His three-fold affirmation of love following his three-fold denial of Yeshua was not a new vow but rather a confession of the state of his heart. Humbling yields an awareness of our own inadequacies and at the same time a greater appreciation for how willing ADONAI is not only to forgive, but also to lift us up and give us His own strength for the tests coming our way. He knew Peter would not fulfill His vow, but afterward He lifted him up from his failure and made him head of His Body, because He knew his heart. What hope this should give us after our own broken vows,
most of which we should never have made in the first place. We should vow neither in judgment of others nor in presupposition of our own strength of character. Let our Yes be yes and our No be no,
yet with complete awareness of our own fallability. May we rely on His heart’s desire to carry out His saving action through us in every situation; to make us right, just, and effective in the face of another’s need, knowing that we are all sometimes as Paul confessed: desiring to do one thing yet doing another.
***********************
“Then Peter declared, ‘Though they all are offended and stumble and fall away because of you, I will never do so.’ “ —Matthew 26:33
“Then all the disciples deserted him and, fleeing, escaped.” —Matthew 26:56
“Just let your ‘yes’ be a simple yes and your ‘no’ be a simple no. Anything more than this has its origin in evil.” —Matthew 5:37
“I don’t understand my own behavior: I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do the very thing I hate.” —Romans 7:15
Sunday, February 4, 2018
Lawlessness
You don’t have to watch the News to see the increasing lawlessness in our society. You can witness it firsthand any time you drive your car. I’ve lost track of the number of times drivers have seriously endangered my life or the lives of those driving nearby. It’s now a daily occurrence. At within ‘five-over’ in the right lane, I am regularly tailgated to the point where I can vividly see the driver’s face but not the front of his or her car. Cars zoom across three lanes, squeeze themselves within an inch of my life and squeeze back across two lanes to the far left again. All to end up sitting with me at a red light, unless they run it long after it has turned red.
It used to be the occasional driver who drove like a maniac. Now it’s the regular modus operandi of our populace, including mothers with their children sitting next to them in the front seat. I feel like the tortoise who’s spun around in circles as the rabbit whizzes by him, just because I’m trying to obey the law.
I’ve been told by international travelers that there are a number of countries whose drivers systematically ignore the stoplights, and everyone has to fight to move through the intersection...’survival of the most aggressive and reckless.’ I think I would get an ulcer if I had to do that every day. (When I was in NYC, I felt like that as a pedestrian.)
This morning I was reading in Matthew 24 about what Jesus said it would be like ‘at the end of the age’: “And the love of the great body of people will grow cold because of the multiplied lawlessness and iniquity...but he who endures to the end will be saved.”
When my emotions rise in intense anger on the road of life at the lawlessness around me, God reminds me that I am in a different kingdom than many of those around me. In fact, I have to recite that to myself to still my own resulting feelings of road rage: “I’m in a different kingdom, I’m in a different kingdom, I’m in a different kingdom....ADONAI is my King.” He also reminds me to turn my anger into sincere prayer for the reckless drivers around me (and even for myself for my own occasional reckless actions).
As we all know, it is not just on the road that we see increasing lawlessness. In Portland, there are
groups who have to decide what the day’s protest and disruption will be...rather like today’s special menu item. And there are those elsewhere who have stated they will keep killing police officers until they get what they say they deserve. Hmmm, gives one pause about the answer to that demand, doesn’t it?
But what do we all deserve? Suddenly my anger turns to self-conviction. Are there areas of my own life where I’ve chosen to flout the authority over me? Am I participating in lawlessness in its subtler forms? Because I think I know better, do I ignore instructions from my boss or try to create a quiet rebellion among my coworkers, rather than speaking my concerns forthrightly and respectfully? Am I honest in all my dealings, financial and otherwise? Do I ‘fudge’ on my taxes to get a better return? Lawlessness can take many forms, and we, as Christians, are called to the highest level of integrity by our Boss, whom we honor and obey out of affectionate reverence, respect, and love.
Let’s ask him to show us any areas of our lives where our actions do not reflect His will. He is kind to not overwhelm us, but rather to show us, a little at a time, areas in need of sanctification. And let’s not forget to turn our anger and frustration with others into prayer for their own encounter with and transformation by the Lover of their souls.
*************
“I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart”. —Psalm 40:8
“There is a kind of universal reaction which becomes an acceptable philosophy; that ‘if this is what is wrong with everybody, then. nobody need worry about it’....The Holy Spirit never meant to give anyone a sense of comfort in universal depravity.” —Tozer
It used to be the occasional driver who drove like a maniac. Now it’s the regular modus operandi of our populace, including mothers with their children sitting next to them in the front seat. I feel like the tortoise who’s spun around in circles as the rabbit whizzes by him, just because I’m trying to obey the law.
I’ve been told by international travelers that there are a number of countries whose drivers systematically ignore the stoplights, and everyone has to fight to move through the intersection...’survival of the most aggressive and reckless.’ I think I would get an ulcer if I had to do that every day. (When I was in NYC, I felt like that as a pedestrian.)
This morning I was reading in Matthew 24 about what Jesus said it would be like ‘at the end of the age’: “And the love of the great body of people will grow cold because of the multiplied lawlessness and iniquity...but he who endures to the end will be saved.”
When my emotions rise in intense anger on the road of life at the lawlessness around me, God reminds me that I am in a different kingdom than many of those around me. In fact, I have to recite that to myself to still my own resulting feelings of road rage: “I’m in a different kingdom, I’m in a different kingdom, I’m in a different kingdom....ADONAI is my King.” He also reminds me to turn my anger into sincere prayer for the reckless drivers around me (and even for myself for my own occasional reckless actions).
As we all know, it is not just on the road that we see increasing lawlessness. In Portland, there are
groups who have to decide what the day’s protest and disruption will be...rather like today’s special menu item. And there are those elsewhere who have stated they will keep killing police officers until they get what they say they deserve. Hmmm, gives one pause about the answer to that demand, doesn’t it?
But what do we all deserve? Suddenly my anger turns to self-conviction. Are there areas of my own life where I’ve chosen to flout the authority over me? Am I participating in lawlessness in its subtler forms? Because I think I know better, do I ignore instructions from my boss or try to create a quiet rebellion among my coworkers, rather than speaking my concerns forthrightly and respectfully? Am I honest in all my dealings, financial and otherwise? Do I ‘fudge’ on my taxes to get a better return? Lawlessness can take many forms, and we, as Christians, are called to the highest level of integrity by our Boss, whom we honor and obey out of affectionate reverence, respect, and love.
Let’s ask him to show us any areas of our lives where our actions do not reflect His will. He is kind to not overwhelm us, but rather to show us, a little at a time, areas in need of sanctification. And let’s not forget to turn our anger and frustration with others into prayer for their own encounter with and transformation by the Lover of their souls.
*************
“I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart”. —Psalm 40:8
“There is a kind of universal reaction which becomes an acceptable philosophy; that ‘if this is what is wrong with everybody, then. nobody need worry about it’....The Holy Spirit never meant to give anyone a sense of comfort in universal depravity.” —Tozer
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