City of Refuge Fellowship
Building Bridges Through Prayer
Unrejected
In a single moment Jesus turned societal, racial and gender prejudice upside down and revealed the order of the Father, that all mankind was made in the image of God and was equal as God’s creation. A few weeks ago I wrote about how Jesus restored order by His interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob. The restoration of order is something that is important to me. I believe passionately in the righting of wrongs, in the declaration of truth and in the tearing down of strongholds of sin and evil. While this is a noble battle, it is one that can, at times, become more about principles than people; it can become more about the fight than the victims, more about being right than being kind. I am learning, through Jesus’ example, that acts of justice, restoring order must always reveal God’s concern for those harmed; otherwise, all we are doing is using people to make our arguments, making them again the victims of a system that tries to administer justice without understanding and loving mercy. Jesus didn’t just use the Samaritan woman to restore order; He restored order so that He could show her His concern.
After the first few moments of Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman in which she questioned how and why He, as a Jew would ask her for a drink, He then told her that if she understood who He was that she would be asking Him for water. Still not sure of what He was referring to she very innocently asked, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water?” Some of the people in our lives have been bound for so long that freedom is a foreign concept. The Samaritan woman had become used to a difficult life that was filled with struggle, effort and disappointment. One of the details we often miss in this story is that she met Jesus at the well at the “sixth hour of the day”. This means that they met at the well at noon. Traditionally women went to the well to draw water either early in the morning or in the evening, at the cool times of the day. The fact that this woman was there drawing at noon, during the heat of the day shows that she was either trying to avoid the other women or the other women had made her unwelcome at the traditional hours. Not only was her work difficult, it was lonely and a daily reminder of her standing within her culture. Jesus doesn’t ask her why she is there at such an hour; rather, He lays the groundwork for her to be free when He offers her living water to drink that will quench her thirst forever.
Still not fully understanding (how could she), the woman jumps at the opportunity to drink water that will quench her thirst, not only that, but to drink water that will keep her from every having to come to that well by herself, during the heat of the day again. She wanted to be healed, but in her mind healing was simply not having to deal with her situation any longer, she never considered that healing could be a change in her that would restore her to a place she had long since believed was impossible to attain.
Once she asked for the living water Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” Those words must have quenched all of her excitement; those were the words that she dreaded because they were the cause of her shame, the reason for her isolation and the source of her rejection. She answered Jesus very shortly; I can almost sense a terse tone in the words. “I have no husband.” Up until now the interaction has been lively, it has been open and honest, but now she seems as if she is about to shut down. Jesus responds to her short reply with a revelation, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you have spoke truly.” So this is why this woman is at the well, by herself, at noon. This is why she is so eager to find a way to never have to come and draw water again. She is an outcast; she is unwanted and probably unloved. She has been rejected.
Why did Jesus ask her to bring her husband if He was so keenly aware of her marital status and the pain it had caused her? I have read a lot of commentaries and opinions on this question. Most of what I have read sees this question as Jesus’ conviction of her sin; that He was somehow revealing that He knew her sin so that she would be repentant. I’m no scholar, but I just could not disagree more. This woman is not in need of conviction; she is in desperate need of healing. At this time in history, my understanding is that a woman could not be granted a divorce from her husband, only the man could be granted a divorce. This is not a woman that has been frivolous or promiscuous, this is a woman that has been put away, rejected, unwanted and deemed unworthy by five different husbands. She did not need Jesus to show her how low her life was; she needed Jesus to lift her up. So again, why did He ask about her husband? I believe it is because rejection sometimes has to be exposed so that it can finally be healed.
This woman could not meet the Messiah without Him revealing that He was fully aware of her hurt, her past, her reputation and her shame. If she found Jesus with all those things hidden she would have then believed that she had to keep them hidden or that the Messiah would then reject her, like so many others had done in her life. She has to revisit her rejection, with Jesus, so that she can know that she is loved, chosen, accepted and approved. Rejection creates shame, it creates a perception that we need to hide, that something about us is broken, is unworthy, is ugly or is simply bad. Shame always creates fear and fear creates hiding. All the way back to Adam and Eve we see that shame creates fear of rejection (punishment) and fear causes us to hide. Jesus came to “seek and save that which was lost”. I believe that this includes those that are hidden in their shame. Jesus did an amazing thing for her, not just with her. While Jesus used his interaction with this woman to prove the foolishness of prejudice, His concern was not on using her to restore order, it was to restore order so that He could heal her.
So, what does Jesus do next? He reveals Himself to her; He tells her that He is the Messiah. The one woman in town that was not even worthy to draw water with the other women, the woman that five men found unfit to keep as a wife and that a current man found unworthy of becoming his wife is the person that God chooses to reveal the Messiah. In that moment she was unrejected. I know that is not a word, but I think it should be. Acceptance is the opposite of rejection, but Jesus does more than simply accept us, He heals us. He doesn’t just take us in because others have cast us aside, He shows us that we were always loved, always wanted and always chosen. Sometimes acceptance can almost feel vengeful, like it gets back at those that rejected us, but that is not what God does either. He reveals our worth by showing us the value of His love. What is that value? It is the price He paid to love us. God willingly paid His Son’s blood to love me. Jesus freely gave up His place in heaven and became a man, He endured suffering and rejection so that He could heal me and make me unrejected.
The woman at the well know rejection intimately, she probably lived life expecting it, preparing for it, even beating others to it so that she could avoid some of the sting. We live in a world filled with people just like her. They are cast aside, overlooked and unwanted. Restoring order only reveals the truth; it takes concern to apply it. That day at Jacob’s well Jesus was not only trying to reveal prejudice as wrong, He was on a mission to undo the rejection of one woman who would then, in her freedom be used to reveal Jesus’ identity and love to her entire city. Our mission today can’t be to merely declare truth; it has to be to reveal the concern of God so that He can undo rejection in our communities, in the lives of our friends and neighbors, in our cities and in the nations of the earth.
Finally, this message of concern is not only for us to somehow apply to others, it has to be a message we drink of deeply. We all have issues of rejection, all of us. I encourage you today along with myself, let God reveal rejection, don’t fight Him and don’t fear Him, all He wants to do is to show us that He has loved us in the midst of our darkest hours, that He has stayed close when we thought we were cast off and that His plan is not to make us pay for our past but to redeem our pain and use it for His glory and our peace. My prayer today is that we would all live as ministers of this reconciliation, that we would know God as the lover of our souls so that we can share God as the Everlasting Father longing to embrace His sons and daughters. May we all know the power of Jesus’ love so that we can live the lives of those that have been made whole, and invite the world around us to be unrejected.
Restoring Order
Living with and for Jesus makes a major change in our lives, it changes the random to purposed and
coincidence to planned. As we read the gospels we see many interactions in
Jesus’ life that seem as if they don’t fit or don’t make sense or can simply be
shrugged off as unimportant, but then we see the outcome of those interactions
and realize that God had beautifully ordered those steps for incredible eternal
purposes.We find one such interaction in the story of the woman at the well in John 4. Jesus and His
disciples were traveling from Judea to Galilee and the journey took them through
Samaria. They came to a point in the journey in which Jesus was tired and they
were all hungry and so Jesus sat down by a well and the disciples went into the
local city to buy bread. As Jesus sat alone by the well a Samaritan woman came
to fill her water pot. As she drew water from the well Jesus asked her to give
him a drink. At first glance, none of this seems even worth recording, what is
the benefit of knowing the details of this trip or Jesus’ request for water?
The first clue that this is important comes in the woman’s response to Jesus’
request, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan
woman?”John explains further that Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus’
question surprised the woman not because she didn’t expect Him to be thirsty
but because she didn’t expect Him to find her worthy of any interaction. In a
simple request for water Jesus had done something incredibly significant, He
had changed a woman’s expectations and He had disregarded centuries of
prejudice by restoring the order of human equality.Prejudice and division are affronts to our Creator. When He made man and woman He looked upon us and
called us good. Sin has ravaged us, it has changed our hearts, our minds, the
garden we were created to inhabit and the unity we were created to enjoy both
with God and with each other; but sin has not changed the reality that the
Creator called man good when He made us. “We all have sinned and come short of
the glory of God”, but sin has not changed the purpose we were created for, “to
enjoy God and to bring Him glory.” Separations because of race, gender, class,
culture or any other worldly difference reduce humanity from the one part of
creation made in God’s image to our own creation that we have the power to
judge, divide and disown.Jesus had a conversation with a Samaritan woman, He asked her to serve Him a drink, we overlook the
relevance of this interaction, but it was scandalous; just as it was when He
touched the leper, healed on the Sabbath, allowed a “sinful” woman to anoint
His feet and an unclean woman to touch the hem of His garment. When we think of
scandal we envision things done in secret that finally come out, but Jesus
created scandals by doing things in the open that turned the order and ideas of
the day upside down. What Jesus was doing though was simple; He was restoring
the order of His Father. The diseased were never meant to be hidden in shame,
the Sabbath was never meant to keep men from doing what God had created them to
do, sinners were not meant to be separated from God by their guilt and those
created in the image of God were never meant to be separated by bigotry. Jesus
restored the order of heaven by disrupting the order of earth.I believe that it is time for the Body of Christ to walk in the example of Jesus and begin disrupting the
order of earth by restoring the order of heaven. How do we do this? The simple
answer is to be led by the Holy Spirit, but what does that look like? It looks
like Jesus, it is not allowing the comfort of the world to distract us from the
truth of His Word, not allowing the rejection of man to keep us from walking in
the fullness of God and now allowing our own affection for our culture to get
in the way of God’s leading to set our affections on things above. The truth is
that many of us have gotten used to living with things upside down, but we
cannot measure our steps by what we have become used to, we must choose to have
our steps ordered by the restorative, redeeming power of God.What appeared to be a random rest stop on a journey to Galilee was actually an ordered plan of God to
bring salvation to the Samaritans. By the time Jesus and the disciples left
Sychar, many from the city had come to believe that Jesus was “the Christ, the
Savior of the world.” I will write about this more soon, but for today, the
first step to the salvation of a city was Jesus’ willingness to disrupt the
world’s order and restore the order of heaven by tearing down the walls of
prejudice. What if our most random interactions were God’s planned moments of
restoration? What if the person that made you the most uncomfortable was the
one that would bring God the most glory? What if changing your life would
change the world? I don’t know any of the details of your life right now, but I
know this, when that woman made her daily trip to get water she had no idea
that she would be treated well by a Jewish man, meet the Messiah or become the
catalyst for the salvation of her city, but Jesus was fully aware. Today, if we
will allow the Holy Spirit within us to restore His order in and through our
lives, we just might see the beginning of a harvest of salvation!I shall not want?
It seems that no matter
what I am reading, studying or talking about lately I have come back to David’s
famous words in Psalm 23:1, “The LORD is my Shepherd. I shall not want.” I have
gone back and read that verse in several different English translations of
Scripture recently. Most stay with the King James Version but there are a few
that make what appear to be subtle changes. The New International Version says “The
LORD is my Shepherd. I shall not be in want.” Another version says “The LORD is
my Shepherd. I have everything I need.” And still another “The LORD is my
Shepherd. I am never in need.” The more I study and think about this verse the
more I wonder if we have somehow misinterpreted the spirit of David’s words. Was
David writing to others to motivate them to find all their wants and needs met
by following God? Was he making some sort of prosperous claim that would create
a desire for others to follow God or was he speaking to himself? Was this David’s
inner dialogue in which he was reminding himself that God was in control? Was he
slowing anxiety and stopping fear at the point of impact by declaring to
himself that situations and circumstances did not dictate his path of life but
instead it was the Shepherd that was leading, it was the LORD that was guiding
and like a sheep dependent upon the care, love and power of his shepherd David
could put all of his confidence in God and rest assured that even in the most
difficult of moments, he could trust God for comfort and find peace in the
goodness and mercy that were promised to follow him not just for all of his
life, but in every day of his life? Was this a promise that if God is my Shepherd
I will have everything I want or is it David saying “because God is my Shepherd
I choose to believe that I have everything I need”?This is an entire change of
mindset for me. The challenge is not seeing God as a Shepherd; it is seeing myself as a sheep. We have heard so many
different things about sheep, some true, some probably not, but the one thing
that I have seen is that sheep are dependent. Sheep need leadership, they need
protection, they need provision, they need care and they need constant
guidance. That sounds a lot like me. For sheep maturity is not being able to
outgrow the shepherd but instead growing into a place of following the shepherd
more closely. Mature sheep don’t wander off; their maturity has led them to
trust, to rely and to follow the shepherd. In Christendom we tend to believe
that maturity leads us to independence, to being more able than before, to
having so much wisdom that we live out of our maturity and strength. But I believe
the sheep and shepherd metaphor is supposed to continue, the more mature we
become in Christ the more we realize our need for Him, our dependence upon Him
and our opportunity to follow Him.David was not telling us
that following God was the secret to having everything you ever wanted, he was
telling himself “I can be dependent because God is for me. I can yield because God
is able. I can follow because Christ is preeminent. Because the LORD is my
Shepherd I will not worry, I will not argue, I will not rebel, I will not need
all of questions answered and doubts settled before I can follow. Because the
LORD is my Shepherd I will follow Him down any path because at the end lies
green pastures, I can follow through any valley because the destination is beside
still waters and I can even endure any enemy simply because my Shepherd has
promised that He will always be with me.”I am praying that David’s
inner dialogue that became his most famous Psalm could become my own
declarations to myself. I am tired of looking at God as my hope of getting what
I want out of life; I want to surrender to Him as my Shepherd which means I
need to humble myself to be His sheep. There is something powerful about
choosing to become powerless by placing all of our hopes, our hearts, our
dreams, our goals, our plans and our lives into the hands of the One who is
able to fend off the danger, provide for the journey and arrive at the destination.
“The LORD is my Shepherd. I will tell my heart, I shall not want.”Productive?
I’m not your typical blogger. I don’t post often enough and when I do, I post larger amounts of information than are usually found in this format. But today I just want to share a brief thought that I hope will have long-lasting impact. What are the most productive things in your life? Who are the people that bring out the best in you? What are the situations that seem to cause you to function at your optimum level? What are the things that you can point to and be very confident that they have worked for you and possibly through you? Now, if you have taken the time to give those questions some thought and answer them honestly, I have one more to add, what if you are wrong about what, where and who create the most productivity in your life?
In Romans 5:3 Paul wrote, “tribulation produces . . .” Hold on for one moment before going forward, tribulation is productive? The Greek word that has been translated tribulation (suffering, trouble, difficulty in other translations) means “a pressing, pressing together, pressure.” So, Paul writes that the things in your life that cause you pressure, the events and circumstances that squeeze at your mind, your heart, your lifestyle, your faith and your fear, those things are actually serving a very important purpose, they are producing! I usually assume that those things are trying to slow me, attack me, sometimes even kill me, but Paul, who was pressed more than any of us, says that the pressure you are experiencing is actually doing something great within you and is producing something enormous for you.
So, what is your first reaction? Do you believe it? Are we willing to believe and accept and even trust God’s sovereignty to the point in which we can accept that our tribulations are productive? The truth of the matter is what is already written, “tribulation produces.” There is fruit, there is gain, there is outcome from your trials and tribulations, not in spite of them. No matter who causes them or where they come from God’s word has promised that they are purposed to be productive. There are many injustices in this world but there are no accidents. Maybe today we need our faith stretched beyond our understanding and to have our hope built beyond our expectation so that we can see, accept and some day reap the benefit of the goodness that is being produced. God won’t allow our tribulations to be wasted, neither should we, take courage and find joy in Paul’s words today, while you may only see trouble, God sees outcome and even your trouble is being used to finish the work that He has begun.
Convenient Chaos
A few days ago, as I was preparing to leave home I realized that I had run out of my typical morning pick-me-up and decided that it was imperative that I stop and get myself Dr. Pepper so that the day didn’t spiral out of control. I dropped my boys off at school and then contemplated a two mile drive to the grocery store or to just stop at the Walgreens across the street. Convenience won out and I stopped at Walgreens. When I went it I was suddenly faced with the high cost of convenience, the bottle that I would have paid $1 for at Acme was $2.19 at Walgreens. I am ashamed to say it, but I had already committed to the path of convenience and so I paid more than double the price just so I could get what I wanted at that moment. Those of you that know me well are aware that I had already convinced myself that I needed that Dr. Pepper so this was about necessity much more than luxury. As I drove away I was faced with the truth that I had just paid $1 for my soda and $1.19 for the convenience of having it now. I could not help but ask myself how much convenience was costing me in the other areas of my life.
I believe that Jesus confronted this kind of costly convenience during the last week of His life. After the Triumphal Entry Jesus made His way to the temple, when He arrived there He found a scene that He could not live with. The Court of the Gentiles had been transformed from a place where Gentiles could seek God into a marketplace filled with oxen, sheep, doves and money exchange tables. R.C. Sproul writes “The sacred grounds that had been set up for worship had become chaotic.” How did chaos find its way into the temple? Convenience. During the time of Jesus’ life the population of Jerusalem was about 20,000 but at the time of Passover, a pilgrimage feast that required that sacrifice and worship be in Jerusalem, some writers say that the population swelled to nearly one million. Imagine the chaos of that kind of week-long population swell! Part of the Passover worship was that a sacrifice had to be made, at the temple. As we can see from the above numbers that many people traveled to come to Jerusalem and so the realization at some point was that it would be much more convenient if animals for sacrifice and currency for offering were available to be bought, sold and exchanged at the temple so that people did not have to worry about bringing an animal for sacrifice with them. The thought is reasonable from a convenience standpoint but Sproul again points out, “in their efforts to make these procedures easy and convenient for the people, they had impacted the people’s ability to worship.”
I wonder how much thought was given to the Gentiles place of worship when this plan was being put into place. My assumption is that they were considered, but then, again, convenience won out. How many Gentiles actually came to worship in that court? I am not sure, but I know this, it was not nearly a million as was the case with those that needed to sacrifice during Passover. This was one of those times in life when the pressing need took precedence over the created purpose. The temple was never made to be a marketplace, never, not one single part of it. It was created to be a place of worship, a place of beauty and intimacy, a place where God was heard and cherished, thanked and adored. The bigger issue here is not so much the animals and money, it is that at some point in history the giving of sacrifices became a duty rather than an offering, an obligation rather than a gift of love and gratitude. When our lives become filled with obligation and duty we begin to look for ways to make them more convenient, more efficient, faster and easier. Worship goes from a timeless place of lingering to a calculated place of duty. In honesty, it simply stops being worship.
Jesus enters the temple, hears the animals, sees the business and does what Jesus came to do; He goes about restoring the purpose of the temple: worship. He releases the animals and forces all those that were there for business to leave. He turns over the tables of the money exchangers and pours out their money; He drives out the chaos that convenience had created. In Isaiah 61 Jesus’ eternal purpose was prophesied: He came to release prisoners from bondage, to offer beauty for ashes and to restore all that had been broken. This is what He did in the temple that day and it is what He is doing in our lives right now. There are things that are being turned over and driven out of our lives that are not robbery, in fact these are restorations. As a dear friend of mine often preaches, Jesus loves you and I so much that He accepts us as we are right now, but He loves us far too much to allow us to remain as we are right now. I can imagine that the scene of Jesus driving out the business from the temple was intense, but it was completely necessary. I am sure that some thought He was not being understanding of the logistics, some thought that He was being too religious and some probably simply thought He was being used by the enemy, but Jesus was proving, again, that He was willing to go to any length to remove from our lives that which was never meant to be in our lives in the first place.
So I’ve spent some time over the last couple of weeks asking Jesus what I’ve allowed convenience to add to my life. I have found out some things that I am not all that happy about. Sometimes I want to fight for convenience, I want to defend it and even protect it, but I continually find God promising that in every place that I allow Him to remove additions that I have made, He will reveal His eternal purpose. Matthew writes that as soon as the business in the temple ended that the blind and the lame came to Jesus and He healed them all and the children began to sing and dance to Him “Hosanna!” or “Save, Now!” Is it possible that my places of convenience are actually robbing me of gifts of healing, strength, redemption and worship that God has desired and designed for me? I think it is true and I am trying to release everything that is hindering God’s purpose for my life and to choose not to pay for convenience any longer.
Would you consider with me, what part of worship has become about convenience in our lives? How often to I grab my Bible to do my daily reading rather than to hear God’s voice? How often does time affect my willingness to pray or to worship? How much of my love has grown cold by being limited by what I have to do next rather than what God has done for me? How much of my relationship has become duty? I encourage you today; sing a song to God because of what He has done in your life. Open your Bible and ask God to show you His heart because you are love-sick not because you want to fulfill your duty and step out in faith not because you want to be blessed but because you are amazed by the amount of blessing that you have been given. Convenience has a high price, it invited chaos into the house of worship and it limits the beauty of lingering in the presence of Almighty God. Let’s count the cost of convenience and cast out the chaos. We were not created to accomplish a task; we were created to be amazed at God’s accomplishment.
Becoming Unshakable
I have always been intrigued by Jesus’ illustration at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. As He brings the sermon to a close He tells the crowd that anyone who listens and obeys the things that He has taught will be like a man that built his house on a rock foundation, when the storms of life come his house will stand because it was built on a firm foundation. Jesus does not leave it there though, He then says that anyone that does not listen and obey His teaching will be like a man that built a house on a foundation of sand, and when the storms of life come his house will fall because it was built on an unsure or weak foundation. There are many points to be made from Jesus’ closing illustration, but the one constant in His story is the storm. Many of us would like to believe that if we build our lives on a strong foundation then we will never experience storms, but this simply is not true. Near the end of His life on earth Jesus told His apostles, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.” We have never been given the ability or opportunity to live our lives in a way that will avoid storms; we have been called to and given the great opportunity to live our lives in a way that will endure them.
Hebrews 12 says “’Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.’ Now this, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken . . . that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.” We have all experienced shaking in our lives; events that we never saw coming or expected to experience appear and we are instantly faced with a reality different from what we had hoped. The key to life is not being unshaken but rather, being unshakable. Life shakes, we can’t get around that. As I write this I can think of the shaking of many people’s lives that I love and care for: unemployment shakes, illness shakes, loss of relationship shakes, rejection shakes, waiting shakes, disappointment shakes, death shakes, change shakes. Life shakes and honestly, I believe it is supposed to. We are such creatures of habit and have such an inability to hold on, to wait and to believe that many of us simply live today as if this is the way our entire lives will be and even should be lived. There are seasons in which God must shake our lives and allow shaking, not to harm us but to show us that we have gripped tightly to things that were never meant to hold us. Some of us are living in instability simply because we have refused to let go of the shakable things in our lives.
I once heard Ron Luce say that he often will ask a group of people to write down three things that they cannot live without. He then asks them to look closely at the list and determine how many of those things could actually be taken from them at any moment. He goes on to make the point that the things in our lives that we put all of our weight upon cannot be things that are finite because that will lead us to trade the infinite for things that we ultimately have no control over. If I have decided that I cannot live without my job, what happens if I lose it? If I have made my identity about my dreams, what happens if they were not God’s purpose for me? If I have determined my value by how others feel about me, what happens if they change their opinion of me?
If your life is shaking today, it is so that everything that is not given by God, everything that is not eternal, everything that is not worthy of your love can fall off and you can be left with what is secure, what you can depend upon and be sure of. Instability comes from clinging to, holding or standing on shakable things. The shaking creates faith and stability. It hurts to find out that what you hoped for is actually what is causing you to be unstable, but the goodness of God is that He shakes us not to make us fall but to make us stand firm. Let go of the things that are shaking in your life today, whatever they are, and hold tight and fast to the Word that Jesus has spoken to, in and over you. What is most important is not that the shaking stops, it is that the shakable things fall off, leaving you and I with “a kingdom that cannot be shaken.”
Life Changing Answers
I had one of the most wonderful conversations with my oldest son last night. It was after a basketball game, we were talking about the game, school, little brothers and some other things when we arrived at a topic that was highly charged and very emotional. My son’s best friend, who is much more than a friend, he is truly a member of our family that spends at least four afternoons a week at our house, may be moving away soon. These two guys have been together every day in every way since they were five years old; they are such a team that sometimes you can’t see them as individuals. This prospect is difficult for my son; he’s been wrestling with it since he first heard the news a couple of months ago. Last night as we talked, he got very teary because he was forced to consider day to day life being different than it has been for more than half of his life. As we talked about everything that might change I felt the opportunity to direct him toward everything that has happened. Without sharing details, this move will be an answer to years of prayer for Noah’s friend and their family. It will be a miraculous restoration and it is a reason to give thanks. Last night I had the opportunity to teach my son that sometimes, when God answers our requests, it changes our lives.
Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell the story of a rich young man that came to Jesus and asked how he could gain eternal life. The Bible says that Jesus told him to keep the commandments and named some specific ones, the young man responded back that he had kept all of those since he was a boy. Mark then says something interesting, before Jesus speaks again Mark writes, “Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him”. What Mark is trying to convey is that the next things that Jesus is going to say, the response to the man’s request for eternal life is going to be spoken because and out of love.
Many reading this are familiar with Jesus’ response, at least part of it, “Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor”. While this is where we have focused most of our attention, I am not sure that it is the most important part. We fixate on Jesus telling a rich man to sell all of his stuff, not sure why. The first thing Jesus said was “One thing you lack”. He tells the man, “I am going to answer your request for eternal life, but there is something missing in your life.” Jesus was not trying to tell the man that he had too much stuff to have eternal life; Jesus was preparing the man to receive the one thing that he lacked. Jesus’ response was not at all a demand for the man to become poor; it was an invitation for the man to become a follower and a disciple. “Come, take up your cross, and follow Me.” This was not a new thought or teaching just for the rich man, Jesus had told all of His followers these words and many others. In Luke 14 Jesus told everyone listening “whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.” This story is not at all about a man that had too much stuff to have eternal life, it is the story of a rich man that lacked only one thing, an invitation to follow.
I sometimes wonder what the young man had expected to happen as he approached Jesus. Few of us can go into an exchange like that without any expectations. Did he expect to be told he was already in good shape? Did he expect Jesus to tell him to do a few other religious things? Did he ever think that Jesus might tell him that he was excluded somehow? One thing I am sure of though, he never planned on getting an invitation to follow Jesus. Again, in Luke 18, when talking of becoming a disciple, Jesus instructs everyone to “count the cost.” I don’t believe that He was trying to get people to waver in faith or to walk away, but I do believe that He was trying to be crystal clear that you cannot follow Him, as He truly is and continue to live as you lived before you followed Him. Following Jesus has a requirement, I am sure of it, but it is not religious in nature or an act of commission or omission. The requirement to follow Jesus is love. To truly follow Him, to be His disciples, you have to love Him with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength. You have to love Him above everything else. Jesus said “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” I believe that Jesus is saying that we cannot love anything or anyone in a way that would cause division or even question of Him, His calling and His presence. I don’t believe we are being told to actively hate our family or ourselves, I believe we are being told to love Jesus to such a magnitude that nothing and no one else can possibly compare, distract or divide us from Him.
About four years ago my son started to earnestly pray for his friend. He prayed for his family, for his salvation, for his heart, for his behavior, he prayed for him a lot. Over those years we have seen answers to prayer that we did not expect and some that we did not quickly notice. The last year has been filled with unmistakable answers. Over a year ago his friend surrendered his life to Jesus and just this September I had the joy of baptizing him in water. His family is being blessed with healing in body and mind, with restoration of jobs and relationships and ultimately with the joy of unity. Never once while we prayed did Noah or I consider that when God answered our prayers that it would change our lives. We thought of the joy of salvation, the joy of restoration, and the good things for them, but we honestly never considered the cost. Now, as it looks more and more like our buddy will move away the cost is becoming real and tangible. So is this a reason to be sad? Is it a reason to pray for our way? Is it a reason to try to figure out how we can get God to do His will and our will at the same time? Or, is it a time to take up our cross and follow Jesus?
I have often heard it said and said myself that the sadness of the story of the rich young ruler is that he loved his possessions, his riches more than he loved Jesus. I am not sure that is fair. The sadness of the story might be that the young man did not realize that Jesus loved him so much that He was willing to answer his request for eternal life and invite him to follow. The story is not about riches it is about an invitation to follow, it is about the love of Jesus that will always show us the “one thing we lack” and it is about the opportunity to follow the King of Kings.
Noah learned a hard, but beautiful lesson last night, God answers our requests, and those answers change our lives. One of the last questions of our conversation was if it was worth it. Was his friend’s salvation, healing and joy worth the fact that they may not spend every day together? The answer was a tearful but resounding yes! The final words that Mark tells us about the rich young man are “But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” When we stand at these places where we are faced with the love of God that shows us what we lack and invites us to follow we will often face sadness. In those moments we have two choices, we can go away sad or we can follow, even though sadness. If you are in a place in your life today where a requirement is being made of you, where it seems that God is removing and asking you to let go of things that you have enjoyed, trusted in and been comfortable with, please don’t go away! Believe that Jesus looks at you with love, believe that Jesus is answering your prayers and rejoice at being invited to follow the King of Kings. Your sorrow may endure for the night, but the joy of following the Master will overtake you by morning and then that joy will give you strength.
Compelled
Last week I had the wonderful privilege of being a groomsman in the wedding of one of my dear friends. The ceremony was beautiful, full of God’s presence and beauty and the reception was simply one of the most joyful celebrations I have been a part of for quite some time. My wife and I were sitting with a couple that we had only recently found out that they are expecting their first child. Most of our conversation was about parenting, children and pregnancy. I love talking about my wife’s pregnancies; they were times of great joy, of excitement and of interesting cravings, so I could not resist the opportunity to tell some of her stories as well as to hear some from this mother-to-be. When Melissa was pregnant she never craved ice cream or pickles or pickles and ice cream; she craved the open faced turkey dinner from our local diner, we should have put their take out number on the speed dial. While great fun to talk about and remember, there is something amazing about the cravings, the urges and the compulsions of pregnancy. The change in the body, of the hormones creates a desire for things and feelings that have never been present before. While pregnancy might be an exaggerated illustration, we are all compelled by something. We all live with certain cravings, urges and compulsions; there are emotions, experiences, desires, hopes, dreams and beliefs that drive us that cause us to do what we do and to go where we go. What compels you?
In his second letter to the Corinthian church Paul wrote, “the love of Christ compels us”. He was trying to get them to understand that everything that he had done, all that he had taught and written, all of the journeys he had gone on, trouble he endured, risks taken and sacrifices made were done because of the love of Christ. The Greek word translated compels has dual meanings of “to hold together” as well as “to urge, impel”. I believe that Paul is using both meanings here, “the love of Christ holds us together and urges us; Jesus’ great love squeezes me tight while pushing me forward. His love is so strong, so great, so true, and so perfect that it has taken me over!”
I have often asked and wondered what it was that gave Paul strength to endure. What was it that pushed him through beatings, imprisonment, slander, rejection, shipwrecks, hunger, cold, stoning and finally execution? What was it that gave him the willingness to press on? He answers those questions here, “the love of Christ compels us.” Paul did not feel that he owed Jesus something, his obedience was not out of obligation or requirement but instead it was a compulsion that came from being enraptured, overwhelmed by the love that he had been shown. Jesus held nothing back from Paul, Jesus loved him with an unfailing love and that love compelled him to love Jesus with all of his heart, all of his soul, all of his mind and all of his strength.
Like the cravings of pregnancy, others thought Paul’s compulsion was foolish, strange, unnecessary and even offensive but he was not compelled by opinion. He understood and accepted that the cross was foolishness to those not compelled by the love of Christ, but to him and those like him, the cross was the power of God. He understood that to some the love of Christ was as offensive as death but to him and those like him it was the fragrance of victory. He was not compelled to be agreed with or supported, he was compelled by the love of Jesus that had already been spent, already poured out, already tasted and forever craved. This craving was not like those of pregnancy that end, that fades away and become distant happy memories, this compulsion would live forever. Paul was not trying to quench this desire; he had given himself over to it completely and fully. He was not hoping that it would someday be fulfilled so that he could get back to his life prior to Jesus’ grand revelation on the road to Damascus, he had been so incredibly taken by that experience that he had willingly traded life prior to that day to know more and more of the fullness of the love of God.
I have been compelled by many things in my life, some were noble, some were not but each of those compulsions faded away and most left me unsatisfied, sometimes even more so than before I felt compelled. Paul earlier wrote to this same church in Corinth, “Love never fails.” Everything compulsion other than Jesus’ love will fail us, will hurt us and will usually dig us deeper into a place of bondage and hopelessness. Some will create shame, some doubt, some fear, some selfishness and some loneliness, but ultimately they all simply fail. The love of God does not fail us, it is constant, eternal, stronger than death and more mighty than deep waters. The love of God has the power to compel us, to change us, to hold us tightly together and to push us boldly into the direction of His desire and purpose for our lives. I am realizing that I have lived much of my life aware of God’s love for me, but not compelled by His love. I have talked about God’s love but rarely been driven by it. I have preached about God’s love but am not sure I have ever sacrificed because of it.
While preaching in Antioch, Paul said that King David “served God’s purpose in his own generation”. What a grand postscript to a live well lived. The same can be said of Paul, of Peter, of John the Baptist and John the Revelator, of thousands of men and women and children throughout the ages and I pray that it will be true of me. The greatest, possibly even the only way to truly serve God’s purpose in our generation is to be compelled by the love of Christ. I pray today that we would allow Jesus’ love to both embrace and push us, that we would no longer stand still and enjoy the embrace but we would be compelled, pushed, driven to see that same love shed abroad; that because of Christ’s love that we would become ministers of reconciliation, ambassadors of Christ and ministers of the new covenant; that we would be compelled to let love abound and that we would see the fruit of the fulfillment of God’s purpose for each of our lives in our generation.
Patient and Kind?
As the father of two young boys I find myself saying, “Be patient” quite often. Whether it is a desperate need to get shoes tied to go outside, to have a channel changed because the current program is not a “favorite” or to get the next snack on the table before someone passes out from hunger, every request needs to be fulfilled quickly. Over the last month our church has been studying God’s character so that we can more fully embrace our identity, who we have the opportunity to be in our community. As I have searched through Scripture to be sure of God’s character I have found that I Corinthians 13, the famous love chapter, describes God quite thoroughly. Of course, I John 4:8 tells us that “God is love”, so to see His character through the full description of love is understandable.
The great description of love opens with two traits that are often separated but the more I study they seem to require each other to be sustained, “Love suffers long (is patient) and is kind.” Many translations separate them by saying, “Love is patient. Love is kind.” But that does not seem to be the way that it was written. It seems to say that “Love is patient and kind.” As if these two things are not separate but that they rely on each other, they depend upon each other, I am even beginning to believe that one is not possible without the other.
As I have been searching Scripture I have been finding the enormity of God’s longsuffering. You have probably had someone tell you if you have not told others yourself, “don’t pray for patience.” The statement is usually meant jokingly, as if to say that if you ask for patience God is going to put you in positions in which you will need to wait and have your patience tested, and who wants that right? Have you ever wondered why the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write that love was patient before he said anything else about it? Why not, “Love is nice” or “Love is good” or “Love makes you happy”? Because all of those things are what we want love to feel like, God wants you to understand what love requires. God wants us to realize what His love toward us is, that it is not an emotion, although He is emotional; that it is not optional, although it is completely by His choice; that it is not fleeting, although we don’t always see or understand it. Solomon wrote, “love is as strong as death.” God wants us to know that love does not get fallen into or out of, it is a constant, it is eternal and it is stronger than your weakness.
So why start with patience? Because without God’s patience we would have all been doomed to being unloved. Peter wrote, “the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—“; and that God is “longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” In God’s character, patience is not merely the ability to wait without complaining, it is choosing to wait, to delay even to put off what is deserved and earned at His expense so that the ones He loves might come to a place of repentance and salvation so that they might receive what HE desires for them instead. John Reisinger wrote, “Longsuffering is the ability to endure everything that is necessary to reach a desired goal.” God is willing to endure our sinfulness, our foolishness, our brokenness, our selfishness and all that comes with those things so that His desired goal for our lives might be fulfilled, the salvation of our souls and the reception of His great love. Love starts with patience because love is the ultimate setting aside of personal desires and gain for the sake of another. Ultimately Peter says that I am saved because God is patient in my life, thank God that His love is patient and now I am praying that I will have the fruit of the Spirit in the form of patience begin to come to fruition in my life, for God’s will to be done in the lives of those around me.
There is another point to be made by Paul in I Corinthians, love is not simply patient, but it is patient and kind. It seems to me that if they are being tied together then kindness is a key to patience and patience to kindness. Peter says that Jesus’ longsuffering is our salvation and then Paul writes in Romans that it is God’s kindness that leads to repentance. Here they are, tied to one another even in the process of our salvation. Ephesians tells us that God showed His kindness to us through Jesus, meaning that Jesus’ life is an image of kindness even as it was the “image of the invisible God.” Kindness is what Jesus did and everything that Jesus did was kind. Kindness is His leaving heaven’s glory to become a man. Kindness is choosing to endure difficulty, hardship, boundaries and limitations for the sake of those that He would be saving. Kindness is hearing insults, accusations and lies and choosing not to prove Himself but rather waiting, trusting that His Father would be His defense and His vindication. Kindness is bearing the sins of the world because there was no other way for the world to be forgiven. Kindness is overcoming death and the grave, two things that He was greater than and would never affect Him other than keeping the children He created in eternal bondage. Kindness is ascending back to glory and sending “Another Helper” to fill, lead, guide and love His children until He returned to them. Kindness is sitting at the right hand of the throne of God and interceding, praying, pleading, advocating for all of those that still don’t see, don’t understand or even simply don’t want the love and kindness that He has poured out. That is the kindness of God, that is the kindness of love, it truly goes beyond discomfort, beyond expectation, beyond necessity and what is fair and chooses to love, chooses longsuffering, it chooses the possibility of salvation over the frustration of being overlooked. Love is kind simply because Jesus is kind.
There is a wonderful verse that I have only recently taken notice of that encapsulates both God’s and kindness and patience for me. II Samuel 14:14 “For we will surely die and are like water spilled on the ground which cannot be gathered up again yet God does not take away life, but plans ways so that the banished one will not be cast out from Him.” We have all missed the mark, all sinned, all wandered, however you want to put it, we have all been wasted; poured out like water on the ground. The image is one of hopelessness, is there a way to put the water back once it hits the dirt? Sure, you can make the best of it, hope for more or even move on, the image is not about the situation, it is about the water. But before we dwell too much on that image, the write changes the course, even though our lives may seem wasted, even though we may seem, rightly so, as if we are completely lost, “God does not take away life.” He does not give us what we deserve, does not give us what we have earned, does not even give us what others say we need; God makes a plan, He chooses a way that will bring us back, that will keep us from not merely the outcome of our current state, but He creates ways that will free us from the current state. Nothing we will ever do will fix our past or change our situation, stop thinking in those terms, but God, in His infinite kindness, His unbridled patience and everlasting love will make a way to save us. It is by grace that we are saved and that grace is the outcome of God’s great kindness, His great patience that both lead the way to show us His eternal love.
Rejoice today in the kindness of God, rejoice today in God’s patience, rejoice in the truth that together those two things have worked salvation in your life. When the Bible says “let the redeemed of the LORD say so”, I believe that it is a calling to realize what God has done. It is not a time to gather in pride of being chosen but rather a time to melt in being loved, in being the recipients of kindness and the beneficiaries of longsuffering. In turn, I am going to go against the old saying and challenge you, pray for patience, ask God to put in you what He has poured out over you. Our families, our churches, our schools, our coworkers, our communities and our leaders need the longsuffering that is salvation and the kindness that leads to repentance. We have been given a full measure of God’s love now may we become full fountains that pour it out. Patience is not merely a virtue, it is the heart of God, I pray today that it would also become the heart of His people.
He loves us!
I have often tried to imagine the scene of Isaiah 6 when the prophet is thrust into the throne room of God. Isaiah says “I saw the LORD sitting on a throne . . . and the train of His robe filled the temple.” The vision of God was overwhelming, so much so that all Isaiah could do was fall on his face and declare himself “ruined”. As if seeing God were not enough, he also got to see all of the activity that surrounds God. Isaiah wrote that he saw seraphim, six-winged angels that flew around God’s throne. The part that has always captured my mind is that Isaiah said that these seraphim cried out to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” This glimpse into heaven is amazing to me. These powerful created beings that have spent eternity in God’s presence are still so overwhelmed by Him that all they can do is shout to each other of His holiness. They are not shouting it to God, they are not acting out of duty or obligation, this is not their job;, the picture seems to show that they are in the midst of their created purpose but also overwhelmed by not merely what they see in this moment, but what they have seen and known for eternity. God’s holiness has not become the norm for them; it is still overwhelming; He is still overwhelming. The sight of God fills them to the point that they must pour out their awe and reverence and sing a song of amazement, “He is holy!”
For the past year or so I have been overwhelmed each time I have heard the song “How He loves” written by John Mark McMillan. In my mind, the song has great depth, its truth is God-breathed and timeless and it simply strikes a chord in my heart each time I hear it. The chorus is actually very simple:
He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He lovesA few weeks ago a group from our church went to a worship and prayer conference. There was a point during the first session in which the worship leader began to sing “How He loves”. I stood in my place singing and then I stopped, I didn’t sing anymore I just listened and I heard something amazing. For a few moments I thought I was hearing not the song of heaven that the seraphim sing, but the song of earth sung by the redeemed. As I stood and listened it was as if 1,000 children ransomed by Jesus were telling each other, “He loves us! He loves us! He loves us! He loves us!” The song was for God but it felt as if it was being sung to each other and God was pleased with it. I felt undone for a moment, I know that Jesus loves me, Scripture tells me it is true, His Spirit within me tells me it is true, I even tell myself when doubt creeps in; but that night, for that moment we told each other and it was precious.
At this moment in time and outside of time the seraphim are singing around God’s throne to each other, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” They sing of what they see and what they know, their relationship with God is built on His holiness. My prayer today is that we would sing the song of the redeemed, not merely to God but to each other. In all that we endure, in all that we experience, in all that we receive and in all that we wait for; may we sing to each other what we are sure of, what we have tasted and seen. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us.” Love is not coming, it is not going to be proved later; it is settled, it is secure, it is perfect and it is everlasting. May we sing to God, may we sing to ourselves and most of all, may we sing to each other, “He loves us!”
