Trials of Various Kinds

The reason many of us do not ardently believe in the gospel is that we have never given it a rigorous testing, thrown our hard questions at it, faced it with our most prickly doubts.

A good friend of our family has been diagnosed with Melanoma skin cancer. It’s a mole gone bad and now life had radically changed for their family. Things will never be the same no matter what the outcome. As I think of them, my own troubles look small.

I am thankful that Mike and Caryn are people who love Jesus; this time will deepen their relationship with Him. But why can’t that come some other way? Why do we need adversity to do certain works in our hearts?

As hard as times like this are, they give us an opportunity to see how big God is. Grace will come and life will be bearable. How many times people look back and declare that the growth and experience gained were worth the effort.

But the beginning is not that way. My friends will be on my mind and I will pray for them. I will hope for them.

We are nor scavenging in the dark alleys of the world, poking in its garbage cans for a bare subsistence. We are traveling in the light, toward God who is rich in mercy and strong to save. It is Christ, not culture, that defines our lives. It is the help we experience, not the hazards we risk, that shapes our days.

God saw the mole a long time ago. He knows what will happen in the future days. I rejoice that my friends will see God’s glory in their lives as the future unfolds. I pray for peace in the journey.

Philip

The above quotes from: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

Feelings

Thoughts from: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

This is from a section about security:

My feelings are important for many things. They are essential and valuable. They keep me aware of much that is true and real. But they teach me next to nothing about God or my relation to God. My security comes from a God who is, not from how I feel. Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about him or myself or my neighbors.

How true this is but hard to practice sometimes. Feelings can easily overwhelm the right thing that needs to be done. They can lead us in the wrong direction. They can convince us of something contrary to the truth.

I think the antidote is to be filled with God's Word. Then the Holy Spirit can bring truth to mind during the times when feelings are taking us in the wrong direction.

Philip

Reasonable Service

Thoughts from: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

The section I have been reading in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction is about service. It’s looking at Psalm 123. As I read the section I’m going to comment on, I realized it could have been called worship as well. Within the thoughts on Psalm 123 it looks at Romans 12:1.

Here is Romans 12:1 from the KJV: I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

The section that grabbed my attention uses The Message for the Scripture text:

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life – and place it before God as an offering.” (Rom 12:1) The Psalms emphasis on actual physical service (not a spiritual intention, not a desire to be of service) is picked up in the invitation to present our everyday, ordinary life. The motivation for service (not coerced not demanded) is picked up in the phrase “God helping you.” But most significant is the remarkable last phrase logiken latreian, “place it before God as an offering,” which another translation renders “reasonable service.” Service that is, that makes sense. The service we offer to God (in worship) is extended into specific acts that serve others. We learn a relationship – an attitude toward life, a stance – of servitude before God, and then we are available to be of use to others in acts of service.

I think these thoughts can give us a clue to what worship is all about. When we meet together at church we sing, pray, listen to Scripture and preaching. We are encouraged to live in service to God and to others – in tangible ways. That is true worship. Our whole life is caught up in God not just the time we spend at church.

Worship is an all out celebration of God that is manifested in our everyday life. When I go to church, many times I am moved in a very emotional way. I have great feelings, brought about by the words and songs I hear. Those feelings are pleasurable and I think that is good. I don’t just want to know about God I want to have a great time with Him. Now if those feelings were an end in themselves, not much would be accomplished; most of the time they lead to a better everyday life.

Worship is sometimes mysterious but I think I now have a better idea of what it can do.

Philip

God’s Faithfulness

Thoughts from: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

The only serious mistake we can make when illness comes, when anxiety threatens, when conflict disturbs our relationships with others is to conclude that God has gotten bored looking after us and has shifted his attention to a more exciting Christian, or that God has become disgusted with our meandering obedience and decided to let us fend for ourselves for a while, or that God has gotten too busy fulfilling prophecy in the Middle East to take time now to sort out the complicated mess we have gotten ourselves into. That is the only serious mistake we can make. It is the mistake that Psalm 121 prevents: the mistake of supposing that God’s interest in us waxes and wanes in response to our spiritual temperature.

It’s great that God isn’t like us. He loves us, is committed to us and doesn’t give up on us. It’s so easy to judge Him through our eyes. We think He will treat us as we treat others.

He knows I am a sheep. I follow but I also wander. I forget lessons I’ve learned and have to travel the path again. And there He is right beside me – a true friend. He seems to be enjoying the journey. He doesn’t point out that I should have already learned this lesson or should have gotten beyond this behavior a long time ago.

The greatest thing is that He is changing me bit by bit. Someday I will be like Him. Someday He will see Himself in me. But that’s not today.

Philip

Providence

Thoughts from: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

But to deviate from the truth for the sake of some prospect of hope of our own can never be wise, however slight that deviation may be. It is not our judgement of the situation which can show us what is wise, but only the truth of the Word of God. Here alone lies the promise of God's faithfulness and help. It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity.

Dietrich Bonheoffer

It’s hard to add to that. The message to me is complete reliance on God and making sure I know His Word so I can follow it and thereby, Him. That said, I know that knowledge isn’t enough. I have plenty of that yet still have a hard time putting it into practice.

I am amazed how many times well-meaning people (Christians) are pursuing a course of action that they would never take if they understood what God wants them to do. They have a desire to follow God but due to a lack of study of the Word of God, they end up missing it by a mile.

So, sometimes we have knowledge and miss it and sometimes we miss it because we don’t know it. My conclusion is that I need the grace and power of God and I need to be diligent in Bible study.

Most of all, once I know it I need to do it. If I want God’s provision, blessing and help, my life must be lived by the Word of God and the power of God.

Philip

Repentance

Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding that you were wrong in thinking that you had, or could get, the strength, education and training to make it on your own; it is deciding that you have been told a pack of lies about yourself and your neighbors and your world. And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth. Repentance is a realization that what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts. Repentance is a decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace.

From: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

I thought this was a good description of repentance. It’s all about letting go. It’s not my way anymore; it’s time to admit I’m lost. My thoughts are not going to get me anywhere; I need the mind of Christ. I am weak; I need God’s strength. It’s time to let go of the old way and let God show me something that works.

A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Isn’t that how we live our lives so many times? I’m a great person for living in a rut. I want to live differently bit I find myself traveling the same bad path and wonder how I got there again. Thank God for his mercy which is new each day.

Here is something I read today: The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. Psalms 145:14, 16, 18, 19

Thank you Lord for drawing me to yourself, I want all you have for me. Show me that path.

Philip

Discipleship

One aspect of world that I have been able to identify as harmful to Christians is the assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired at once. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Our attention spans have been conditioned by thirty-second commercials. Our sense of reality has been flattened by thirty-page abridgments.

It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest. Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate. Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim. In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.

From: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

Whose Way?

Thoughts motivated by A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

A person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way.

I would add, or keep on. We love our own way. I like to do things my way. Sometimes things have to get really messed up before there is the willingness to change direction. It might not always be stubbornness, sometimes it’s just apathy. It’s easy to travel in a rut.

I see many people who get in trouble or busted for something and show up at church or some other meeting. They are desperate, but not desperate enough. As soon as the crisis passes or the heat is turned down, they get back on the same path. “Things are okay, I’ll be alright.” Sometimes they are but many times not. Maybe they will come back at the next catastrophe or maybe they won’t be able to.

Lord, I pray that you would reveal my heart to me. Let me see how disgusting things really are. Help me to travel the long obedience in the same direction.

Philip