Thursday, February 26, 2009

Claim the Victory!

Yesterday I mentioned that one has to claim what one has been given by God. Some people would argue that if God wants you to have it, then you are going to get it. Period. There is no discussion. Yesterday, the subject at hand was the Israelites, having been brought out of Egypt, arriving at the promised land, and discovering that there were already people living there. These people were physically bigger, and more numerous than the Israelites. God was willing to give them the victory over the Canaanites, but the people of Israel were frightened, or didn’t have enough faith, or both. So, God led them back out into the wilderness. That, in and of itself, would seem to negate the argument that if God wants you to have something, then you will get it.


The plain and simple truth is that if you want anything in life, you should be prepared to put forth some effort to get it. If you sit back and wait for God to give you everything you want, you will almost certainly be waiting for a long time. You may get a few things, because of the prayers of others in your behalf, but that’s it. Ever hear the expression, anything worth having is worth working for? There’s a lot of truth to that. Some may say, “But I could never earn that…” and that may very well be true, also. There are many things that I have gotten from God that I could never earn. I’m not saying that you have to earn gifts from God, I’m only saying that God helps those who help themselves.


If you were walking along a river bank, and there was a guy handing out $100 bills on the other side of the river, and invited you to swim over and get one, I’m pretty sure that you would be willing to do that. Some people would try to find another way across the river that didn’t involve getting wet, but if swimming were the only way across, then what? Most of us would swim for it. I’m sure that there are some people that would argue the semantics of this “gift” $100 bill. “If I have to do something to get it, then it isn’t a gift; I earned it.” So, what you’re saying is, in order for it to be a true gift, the other guy has to swim to you? Are you saying that swimming across the river is actually worth $100? If you know of a job where I can get paid $100 for spending a few minutes of swimming, I’d sure like to know about it, because I can swim for a long time, and, for that kind of money, I would be willing to spend a lot of days at the pool. Let me ask you something: what would your swimming across the river benefit the guy giving away money? I could see if there were a swim meet with professional athletes and organizers selling tickets to see these people swim, but that isn’t the case here. This is just some philanthropist who wants to give away some money, but he’s not willing to go too far out of his way to do it; we need to come to him.


The Bible talks about people being slothful and lazy, and it doesn’t talk about those people in a nice way. If God doesn’t approve of laziness, then why would He reward it? Why does the New Testament talk so much about things that we should be doing, if it’s okay to refuse to do any of it? Oh, but we’re saved by Grace through faith. Yes we are; absolutely. We could never do enough to earn salvation, but faith without works is dead, and dead faith is useless. If salt, a preservative, loses its savor (its saltiness, the qualities that make it salt, that help it to preserve things), then it is basically just dirt. If our faith is dead, then it can’t preserve us, either, and we aren’t good for anything, either. Remember the man with the one talent? If one has only one talent, then that talent is faith. Remember what happened to him because he didn’t use his talent of faith? It wasn’t because he was out doing things he wasn’t supposed to be doing, but because he didn’t do what he was supposed to do, which was add to his faith.





Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Timing

There’s an old expression, “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” The original expression (“The early bird gets the worm.”) was intended to emphasize that it’s generally better to be early. Of course, if you stop and think about it, even if you’re talking just about birds and worms, the early worm gets eaten, but the worm that sleeps in survives (at least for a while). Realistically though, the right timing is very important, and sometimes being early is just as wrong as being late.


In Numbers, when the children of Israel first reach the promised land, Moses picks one man from each tribe to go in and spy out the land; what is God giving us, and what do we have to do to claim it? (wait, we have to claim what God gives us? Yes, as a matter of fact, we do, but that’s a subject for another day) Ten of the spies came back with stories of how big the Canaanites were, and how well armed they were, but Joshua and Caleb came back with tales of how nice the land was, how big the grapes were, and how big the cities that the Canaanites had built for the Israelites were. Apparently the others were not aware of the curse that had been placed on the Canaanites (Genesis 9:25). Joshua and Caleb tried to convince the people that it didn’t matter how mighty the Canaanites were, God had promised the Israelites this land, and He would be with them to defeat the Canaanites. Unfortunately, the people became discouraged, and God told them to back and wander around in the wilderness. Some of he people realized that they had been wrong, and belatedly tried to talk Israel into invading the land of Canaan anyway. Moses told them that it was too late, that they had missed the will of God, and that they needed to wait. Some of them attempted to invade anyway, and were slaughtered. The timing was wrong, and, really, God had decided that He didn’t want the nay-sayers going into the promised land anyway. So, Israel wandered in the wilderness for forty years until the only adults left from that incident were Joshua and Caleb.


Other times, people were told to wait on God. King Saul once got into trouble because he was supposed to wait for the man of God, Samuel, but he got impatient, or scared that the enemy was going to attack before Samuel’s arrival, and so he “forced himself” to offer a sacrifice to the Lord early. He got in trouble for that. You see, sometimes when it seems like God has abandoned us, He’s just waiting for the right time. Sometimes it’s a test, to see if we will wait on God, or whether we will try to do things on our own. Sometimes even “good” things can get us into trouble, if it’s outside of God’s will, if it isn’t the right time to fit His plan. It’s important that we do things in God’s time, even if it seems that God is taking too long, or that God hasn’t heard us at all.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Communication

They say that when Johnny Cash played a concert, he could step up to the microphone, play one chord, and his band immediately knew what song he wanted to do next. Considering the fact that Mr. Cash knew a lot more songs than he knew chords, I have to believe that, at the very least, there was more to it than the chord. Personally, I suspect that he probably worked out a list of songs before each concert, so that they all knew what they were going to play. Maybe he included a few choices along the way, and he had some secret signal to let the band know about that (and maybe it even was the chord, or perhaps the way he played the chord…).


Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that we know what someone else is thinking, or that everyone else knows what we are thinking. Some people actually have a gift of insight, and they have a better understanding of what people around them are thinking. This still isn’t mind-reading so much as it is being alert to visual cues, such as posture, gestures, and even eye movement. Sometimes picking up on visual, or auditory, cues has to do with another talent. For example, the music department at our church knows quite a number of different songs, and each song has a unique introduction. The people in our music department only need a few notes to know what song is starting. We have a projector and a screen to project lyrics to the songs, so that the congregation can sing along without hymnals. Unfortunately, the guy running the projector is not a musician, and has a hard time identifying a song just by its introduction. The musicians all feel that he should be able to recognize songs as easily as they do, and don’t understand the importance of communicating to him what they are doing. It’s obvious to all of them, so they naturally figure that it’s obvious to everyone else. Not everyone has that kind of musical gift, though.


The Bible says to communicate. Just because something is obvious to you, it doesn’t necessarily follow that everyone else knows about it. We also had a woman at our church get upset that no one came to visit her when she was in the hospital. Pastor was very surprised to learn that she had been in the hospital. “Who did you tell?” he asked her. She was very surprised to find out that she was supposed to tell some one; she seemed to think that everyone else should have known. That’s a pretty extreme example, but, we, as human beings, often get the idea that everyone else knows (or that no one else cares) so there isn’t any need to talk about it.


Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Mike Weaver and Hezekiah

Some of you may be familiar with the group Big Daddy Weave; they have done some music that is well worth listening to. If you’ve ever seen pictures of their lead singer, Mike Weaver, you can understand how the group got its name. Mike Weaver has launched a campaign that he calls “90IN09” (ninety in oh-nine): he is trying to lose 90 pounds before the end of this year. Personally, I’m waiting for next year; my weight-loss campaign will be called “01IN10.” Mike Weaver recently posted a video where he shows, and talks about, a big temptation he faced with regards to his diet.


It occurred to me while watching this video that we, as human beings, have a tendency to treat those kind of temptations differently than we do other types. In general, we know that if we eat something that we shouldn’t, then we are either going to have to work it off, or gain weight. On the other hand, say, for example, imbibing alcohol. We know that we will have to pay in the morning for overindulgence tonight, but we also figure that by tomorrow night, everything will be back to normal. We generally don’t stop to think about possible long-term effects, such as cirrhosis, or DUI charges, or possible even criminal charges stemming from actions taken while intoxicated, or even alcoholism. Those things only happen to other people.


I have known people to make tragic mistakes thinking that, if what they wanted to do was a sin, then they could ask God for forgiveness later, and He would forgive, and He would remove all of the consequences for their actions. Some people think that because they have done some things in the past that they know they shouldn’t have done, and ended up not facing any consequences (yet), that God just works that way. These people think that once you have made your profession of faith, then you just live however you want to live and it’s all covered by the blood. Doesn’t the Bible talk about the sow that was washed returning to the mire? Of course it does, but if you read the rest of that chapter, you may find that it isn’t a good thing. Besides, the Bible also talks about fighting the good fight of faith. God didn’t call us to be plastic bag Christians; plastic bags have no real control over where they wind up, pretty much just wherever the wind blows them, that’s where they are. The Bible tells us not to be blown about by every wind of doctrine. The thing is that we have an immortal soul, but we also have a fleshly body; the spirit longs for Godly things, but the flesh, which cannot go to Heaven anyway, wants to experience all the pleasure that it can in this life. If we walk in the Spirit, though, then we will not do those things that the flesh wants to do, whether it involves Fanny May, or Jack Daniels, or dead presidents.


In the Old Testament, King Hezekiah had some form of terminal illness, but then God healed him. The Prince of Babylon sent envoys to congratulate Hezekiah on his recovery. Hezekiah was so happy to be alive, and so grateful for their (apparent) support, that he gave them a tour, and showed them all of the royal treasures. After they left, God sent the prophet Isaiah to ask Hezekiah why he did such a thing. Hezekiah really didn’t see the problem, but the prophet explained to him that the Babylonians now knew what Israel had, and would eventually attack Israel to take the treasures that they had seen. As it happened, God didn’t allow that to happen until after Hezekiah’s death, but it still happened. The point is, our actions have consequences. Sometimes we don’t see those consequences, but that doesn’t make those consequences any less real. Sometimes we don’t even have to face those consequences during our time on earth, but there is a much longer life to come…


Monday, February 09, 2009

Gideon and the Fleece Test

Yesterday I mentioned briefly about Gideon and the fleece test. Just for the sake, I will go into more detail today.


In Judges 6, an angel appeared to Gideon, and told him that God had chosen him to deliver Israel from the Midianites. Gideon wasn’t all too sure about this, and so he asked the angel for a sign. Then he prepared an offering, a kid and some cakes and some broth. The angel told him to pour out the broth, and to set the meat and the cakes on a rock. The angel reached out with his staff, and touched the offering, and fire came from the rock and consumed the food.


Gideon apparently still wasn’t convinced, because he spent some time in prayer, and, one night before he went to bed, he laid out a sheepskin on the ground (one that still had wool on it), and prayed that, if this really was God’s will, that the dew would form on the fleece, but not on the ground. In the morning, he found that the ground was dry, but the sheepskin was wet. He picked it up to wring it out, and got a whole bowlful of water from this one fleece. He apparently spent all day thinking about this, and, at nightfall, decided that he still wasn’t convinced. He laid out the sheepskin again, and, with a great deal of humility, asked God not to be angry with him, but, basically explained that he wasn’t sure that what had happened the night before wasn’t completely natural, so, tonight, let the dew form on the ground, and not on the fleece, and then he would know. In the morning, the ground was wet, and the sheepskin was dry; so there was no question that what had happened was of God, at least one of the two times, if not both.


After that, Gideon gathered together an army of Israelites, about 32,000 soldiers, and God told him that he had too many men. Gideon was probably thinking to himself, “Too many men? The Midianites have a lot more soldiers than this, and they are well trained. These guys barely know how to hold a sword!” but, he allowed God to winnow down his troops to about three hundred (three hundred Israelites, not three hundred Spartans, mind you). Now Gideon is worried again, so God tells him to sneak up close to the Midianite camp. When he does that, he hears one of the Midianite soldiers tell another one that he had a dream that a cake of barley rolled into their camp, and knocked down the main tent. The other soldier tells him that the barley must represent this Israelite named Gideon, into whose hand God has promised to deliver the Midianites. So, of course, Gideon, using very unconventional methods, puts the Midianites to flight, and frees Israel.


Now my point is this: You read that story, and you’re probably thinking to yourself, “What is with that guy? He saw an angel, he fleece tested God (twice), and he still needs to hear that the enemy is afraid of him before he is willing to go into battle? How much proof did he need?” And yet, this is one of the heroes of the Bible. This is one of the guys that we should emulate. You know, it seems to me that if anybody in the whole Bible only had as much faith as a grain of mustard seed, this is the guy. Here’s the thing, though, most of us will never see an actual angel, or squeeze water out of a sheepskin, or hear someone who is against us confessing that they are terrified of us (not that anyone should be scared of us, they should fear God), but God expects us to act on faith anyway. Unlike Gideon, we have the Spirit of God to lead us and guide us—as long as we will let Him.


When It Absolutely, Positively Has to Be There Overnight

I heard an interesting comment the other night. Mike Kellogg, who hosts a radio program on a local radio station (possibly syndicated on many radio stations, I’m not sure), asked those of us in the listening audience to imagine taking a package to an overnight delivery service, with an address for the package to be delivered to. Now, suppose that after a few days, you found out that the package never got delivered. So, you go back to the delivery service, and find the owner of the service using the item that you paid him to deliver. When you object, his defense is, “If you didn’t want me to have it, then you shouldn’t have given it to me.”


Mike Kellogg went on to make the point that, sometimes God gives us things for us to use, but a lot of times He gives us things for other people. Sometimes we get confused as far as what is for us, and what is for somebody else. I don’t imagine that God takes it too kindly when we keep something that He intended for us to give away. I’m sure that He gives us clear instructions, but sometimes we don’t listen very well, especially when the instructions involve giving away things that we really want for ourselves. It can be tough to part with something that one really wants to keep, so it’s easy to spiritually stick one’s fingers in one’s ears if one is afraid of hearing that one has to give it away.


My pastor is fond of saying that we are supposed to be conduits and not reservoirs. The Bible says that living water should flow from us. Here’s the thing, though, if we get blessed by God, and we spread those blessings to those around us, some of those around us will come to know Christ as we know Him, and God will bless us more, so that we can bless those around us more, so that… You get the idea. If we keep passing along the gifts that God gives us to give to others, He will keep giving us more gifts, and as we give things away, we will get blessed. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean cash. God knows that you have a rent payment, or a mortgage payment, and a light bill, and a gas bill, and you have other bills. Sometimes He will ask you to step out on faith and give, say, your rent money away, without giving you indication as to how you are going to pay your rent. I would strongly recommend a fleece test in such an instance (if you aren’t familiar with the term ‘fleece test,’ read Judges 6:36-40, Gideon wanted to be sure of God’s will, so he instituted a fleece test), if only because so many people have become homeless, or had to declare bankruptcy, because they were just so sure that God wanted them to give away their rent money (it particularly irks me when I hear of people that do that because the preacher on the radio or on TV told them that’s what God wanted them to do, but that’s a whole ‘nother subject), and, really, that wasn’t part of His plan. Sometimes, it’s enough just to spend time with someone who is in mourning (or in celebration), to buy lunch for someone who is hungry, to pray for someone whose health is in jeopardy, or to invite someone to church.


People walk around with needs. God sees their needs, and He wants us to deal with those needs. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, people have a bad tendency to try to hide their needs (pride and embarrassment sets in, and they don’t want people to know that they aren’t self-sufficient—NEWS FLASH: NONE of us are self-sufficient, God didn’t make us that way). If we spend some time in prayer, and allow God to show us the needs of those around us, and allow Him to work through us to meet those needs, then maybe we can reach them.



Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Some time ago, a man named John Wisdom came up with something that he calls a parable. In his parable, Wisdom claims that two people return to a long neglected garden, and find that some of their plants are thriving. One of these men asserts that there a gardener must have been tending the garden; the other man suggests that it just happened. So, the two of them pitch tents and camp out, and observe for a few weeks. During that time, they observe no gardener. The first man suggests that the gardener is invisible. So, they bring in bloodhounds, but after several more weeks, there is still no sign of a gardener. The first man revises his opinion of the gardener and says that he is not only invisible, but has so scent and gives no sound. The second man then asks how an invisible, intangible, and elusive gardener is any different from no gardener at all?


I suppose that is how a lot of people perceive God. He cannot be seen, touched, smelled (at least, by most of us), and yet, His works are manifest. It doesn’t help any that many of His works have been imitated by others. Even some people that believe in God don’t believe that, in this day and age, He actually interacts with humankind any more. These people believe that God has set things in motion and then sat back to watch what will happen. If you stop and think about it, though, He would have already known what would happen, as soon as He started the process, so such an experiment would be mind-numbingly boring.


I mentioned earlier that some of God’s works have been imitated. I don’t think there are many “faith-healers” these days, but there have been some in recent history that made an awful lot of money with precious few (if any) people actually getting healed. In a way, I am grateful to Steve Martin for doing the movie, “Leap of Faith.” In that movie, Steve Martin plays Jonas Nightingale, who tours the country answering questions that people haven’t asked him, “healing” people, preaching fiery sermons, and collecting bucketfuls of money. I think that the movie made plain just how easy it is to convince people that they have seen something miraculous, when they really haven’t. It should make one skeptical of faith-healers, mind-readers, and ghost-whisperers. There’s a lot of flim-flam out there.


But, there is also a real God, who does heal people. I have been present when people that I actually knew got healed. We had a man in our church that had a degenerative disease that attacked his muscles. It was incredible, really, to see this man, 6’4” and strong as an ox, slowly dissolve into a mere shadow of what he had been. On good days, he could walk with crutches, but a lot of days he stayed in a wheelchair. We had an altar call at church one night, and he left his crutches at his chair and walked up to the altar. After service, he challenged his son to a one-on-one basketball game, and he played very well. We had another man that was on the list for a heart transplant. At Sunday service we prayed for him, because Monday morning he was to have an in-depth medical exam to determine his priority on the list. Monday morning they took him off the list entirely, and told him that there was nothing wrong with his heart. These experiences are a little different from going to see a faith-healer and seeing somebody you don’t know, and have never seen before, roll up in a wheelchair, and have the faith-healer pray over them, and touch them, and then see that person get out of the wheelchair.


It is true that there are times when all the prayer in the world doesn’t result in a healing. I suppose that if God healed every person who ever got sick that got prayed for by a faithful Christian, we would probably have a bigger problem with overpopulation than we have now. Ruth Bell Graham (the late wife of Rev. Billy Graham) once said that if God answered every prayer, she’d have married the wrong man three times. I don’t think that she really meant to say that God doesn’t answer every prayer, only that sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes the answer isn’t the answer we expected, and so we don’t recognize it as being an answer at all. There is an old story about a faithful Christian man whose house was in an area that flooded. He prayed about it, and received assurance from God that he would be saved. After a little while, a boat came by, and offered to take him out of the flooded area, but he called out the first-floor window that God was going to save him, so they should try to find someone else that needed saving to put in their boat. Soon, though, the flood waters rose enough that he had to move up to the second floor. Another boat came by, and a similar conversation ensued. The flood waters continued to rise, and he moved up to the roof. The rain eased enough that a helicopter was able to fly by, and they offered to lower a rope, so that he could be pulled on board, and they would fly him out of the flood zone. Once again, he assured then that God was going to save him, and they should look for others less fortunate. The flood waters continued to rise, though, and he soon found himself treading water. Eventually, his legs tired, and he drowned. When he arrived in Heaven, he sought out God, and demanded to know, “What happened? I thought you were going to save me?” to which God replied, “I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more did you want?”











Monday, February 02, 2009

Proper Authority

Twice in two days I have heard someone make reference to the fact that we, as human beings, don’t always go to the right source when we need answers. Sometimes that’s just a question of not knowing who the proper authority is, but sometimes it’s just going to someone that you figure is going to give you the answer that you want to hear.


I am reminded of the story of Sean Marsee. If you aren’t familiar with his story, he was a high school track star who took up dipping snuff because the track coach told his runners that he didn’t want them smoking; smoking can effect lung functions, and this coach wanted his athletes to run their best. He apparently didn’t care if they wanted to chew tobacco or dip snuff, as long as they didn’t smoke. Sean’s mother was a registered nurse, and she told him she didn’t want him dipping snuff because, although it might not hurt his lungs, there were still possible detrimental health effects. Sean chose to trust his coach, rather than his mother. Certainly no one is accusing the coach of deliberately misleading Sean, and ultimately, Sean was responsible for his own decisions, but there was more to tobacco use than what the coach was aware of at the time.


If we, as Christians have a problem, we have a well-established authority to take our problems to. Some of us have a tendency to go to sources that we have learned to trust from past experience: our parents, a trusted friend, or maybe even a supervisor at work. Certainly if you have a problem within your family, then parents are good people to talk to, or if we have a problem with a co-worker, or with tasks that we are being assigned at work, a supervisor is a good person to talk to, but there’s another individual that you should be able to take any problem to, and is better capable of dealing with your problems than your parents, your friends, or your supervisor. Some of you are expecting me to tell you that you should take your problems to your pastor. That’s actually not a bad idea, but that wasn’t where I was going. David once said, “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.”
More recently, someone else said, “Before you go to bed, give your problems to God, because He’s going to be up all night anyway.”