Meditations

Psalm 27:1-29:11

Two-Faced People

“Do not take me away with the wicked, and with workers of iniquity,
Who speak peace to their neighbors, but evil is in their hearts.”
Psalm 28:3

Go Deep: There is a whole category of people whose behavior, by and large, we excuse. However, God doesn’t.  He doesn’t find them acceptable; they and the unseen attitude of their hearts he finds deplorable.  They are the kind of people who will say one thing to your face, but quite another thing behind your back.  Even worse in God’s eye than what they say about you behind your back is what they think about you in their heart.  The psalmist says they speak peace when they are in front of you, but even before the conversation ends, their mind is already flooded with ill will toward you.

We might say they are two-faced.  The Bible calls them hypocrites.  And though we pretty much excuse their behavior and accept their ways in our culture, there is One who doesn’t! God’s righteous gaze cuts right through the syrupy surface of their lives with utter moral clarity and labels the wickedness of their hypocritical hearts, calling them what they truly are:  Workers of iniquity.

Now I realize that at this point in your reading you might be thinking this is anything but an encouraging little devotional thought for the day.  You are right: This is not a happy little uplifter, this is a deadly serious exhortation.  And the exhortation I have for you is twofold:

One, it is most likely that you will rub shoulders today with the kind of people David describes in this psalm.  Be careful of them.  Discern their hypocritical hearts and don’t be tainted by their iniquitous ways.  If you allow them into your inner circle, they will ensnare you.  So be careful.

And two, don’t be one of them.  It is so easy to fall into this kind of two-faced living.  The word “hypocrite” comes from ancient Greece, where it referred to stage actors who wore a mask, representing a character that they were not in real life.  (Interestingly, the word for “politician” comes from the same Greek word—so you can do the math on that one!) Now you might think that acting is a difficult art form to master, you’re wrong.  Sorry to be so blunt, but it is about the easiest thing in life to be—one who acts one way in a certain situation but an entirely different way in another.  And easier still is to perform one way publically but to have thoughts running in the unseen world of your mind that betrays your public front.

So ask God today, and every day for that matter, to keep you from hypocrisy.  Don’t fall into the trap of saying one thing but thinking another in your heart.  Ask God for integrity of word and thought.  Integrity means “whole”; the congruence of thought and speech, heart and behavior, beliefs and actions.

That’s what David prayed:  Keep me from them, and keep me from being one of them.  Hope you will pray that too!

Just Saying… Joseph Hall said, “Next to hypocrisy in religion, there is nothing worse than hypocrisy in friendship.”

Ruth 1:1-4:22

Industrial Strength Friendship

But Ruth replied, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go;
wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will
be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.
May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything
but death to separate us!”
Ruth 1:16-17 (NLT)

Go Deep: A popular genre of literature when I was in high school and college was the short story.  I’m not too sure if it is used much in this day when 500 page novels dominate the market.  But one of my favorite short stories was written by Stephen King…yes, he of horror story fame.  But King wrote a non-horror short story called, The Body.  It was later made into a movie with a new title, Stand By Me—a memorable story about a group of four or five twelve-year old boys, and their outstanding friendship.  The story revolved around their shared experiences, loyalty to one another, mutual protection from outside threats and the growth of their friendship through adversity.

That’s the book of Ruth!  It is one of the greatest short stories in the history of literature, and perhaps the greatest story ever about what I would call, industrial-strength friendship.  When Benjamin Franklin was U. S. Ambassador to France, he occasionally attended the Infidels Club—a group that spent most of its time searching for and reading literary masterpieces.  On one occasion Franklin read the book of Ruth to the club, but changed the names in it so it would not be recognized as a book of the Bible.  When he finished, their praise was unanimous.  They said it was one of the most beautiful short stories they’d ever heard, and demanded that he tell where he had run across such a remarkable literary masterpiece.  It was his great delight to tell them that it was from the Bible, which they regarded with scorn and derision, and in which they felt there was nothing good.

The book of Ruth is certainly a literary masterpiece. It is a cameo story of love, devotion and redemption set in the bleak context of the days of the Judges. Relationally, this story shows how its three main characters, Ruth, Naomi and Boaz, all from different background, social levels and ages blend their lives together to give us an relational example that is sorely needed today in an age that worships individualism and is characterized by self-centeredness, intolerance and exclusivity. From Ruth’s story I would say there are three essential strengths of a prevailing friendship:

First, it is a relationship where the greatest common denominator is faith in God.  Notice the phrase in those verses:  “Your God will be my God.”  Faith concerns ultimate and eternal matters, and any friendship will be strongest when it has this ultimate concern at the core of its existence.

Second, it is a relationship built on sacrifice:  Notice the words, “Your people will be my people.”  In other words, I’ll give up what I want to take on your concerns.  I’ll put your interests ahead of my own.   What can I do to make you better?  I’ll give up in order to give to you. Not “I” but “you” makes for a far better “we”.

And third, it is a relationship that exhibits unbreakable mutual commitment.  Did you catch the words, “Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.  May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, in anything but death separates us.”  What a powerful and covenantal bond.  When a relationship is based on a non-negotiable like that, it will not be a fair weather friendship.

Faith, sacrifice and mutual commitment.  May the Lord give us friends, and make us a friend like that!

Do you need a friend like that?  Then ask God for one. I hear he answers prayers, so give it a shot!

Do you already have a friend like that?  Maybe you need to tell God how grateful you are for them… and then specifically express how grateful you are to that friend.  Benjamin Franklin said “we should be slow in choosing a friend, even slower in changing.”

But perhaps the most important question is: Do you need to be a friend like that?  Someone once asked this profound question:  “If you were another person, would you like to be a friend of yours?”  Which of the three qualities we’ve looked at in Ruth’s story do you need to cultivate?  What do you need to do to become a better friend?

According to the little magazine, Bits and Pieces, a British publication once offered a prize for the best definition of a friend.  Among the thousands of answers received were the following: “One who multiplies joys, divides grief, and whose  honesty is inviolable.”  “One who understands our silence.  A volume of sympathy bound in cloth.”  “A watch that beats true for all time and never runs down.”

But the winning definition simply read:  “A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out.”  I like that, don’t you?  That’s what I want to be.

Just Saying… Speaking of friendships, George Eliot expressed it this way:  “Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts, nor measure words, but to pour them all out just as they are, chaff and grain together knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.”

Matthew 23:1-25:46

Holy Risk Takers

“The kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called
his own servants and delivered his goods to them.  To one he gave five
talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according
to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey
… But he who had received one went and dug in
the ground, and hid his lord’s money.”
Matthew 25:14-15,18

Go Deep: You probably know this Parable of the Talents well. Each of the servants was given talents (a sum of money) according to his ability, with the expectation that they would use endowment to produce something of benefit for the master.

The first two did—and were rewarded handsomely; the third didn’t—and was rebuked harshly. In fact, the talent was taken from the latter and given to the first servant, since he had proven to the master that he could increase exponentially whatever was placed in his care.

Now I have no way to prove this theologically, but I have a strong suspicion about this third servant. I don’t think he would have experienced the master’s rebuke had trying at least preceded his failure. I think it was because he didn’t try that the master’s anger was unleashed on him. He played it safe. He feared failure, so he didn’t risk anything. This one-talent servant simply took what he had been given, protected it, and turned it back over to the master in the same condition in which he had received it. And the master blew a gasket!

This gracious but just master had entrusted something special to the servant and the servant did nothing to expand it. Now here is a crucial part of this story: The master had given his servant the talent according to his ability (verse 15). In other words, the master knew, even though it was small, there was production potential in this servant. But the servant wasted it! He let a golden opportunity slip by, and paid a heavy price for it. He didn’t damage the talent; he didn’t lose it; he preserved it—thinking he was doing the master a favor. However, the master found that kind of fear-based, lazy-hearted stewardship odious.

You, too, have been given a talent—probably more: talents in the literal sense of the word, and talents in the sense of kingdom potential and kingdom opportunity. You have been given them according to your ability—not anyone else’s. You won’t be judged against either another’s potential or their production. Your only benchmark is your own faithfulness. As Charles Robinson pointed out, “The reward of being ‘faithful over a few things’ is just the same as being ‘faithful over many things’; for the emphasis falls upon the same word; it is the ‘faithful’ who will enter ‘into the joy of their Lord.’”

It matters not if you have five, three or one talent potential.  What matters is what you do with what you have been given.  You have been given your talents with the expectation that you will leverage your abilities to increase those talents and enlarge the kingdom for the real Master—for Jesus’ sake.

The whole point of the story is this: Don’t waste your opportunities. Don’t let the possibility of failure paralyze you; don’t let inaction define you. If there is any regret at the end of your faith journey, may that be that you tried and failed, not that you didn’t try.

Risk a little. Even if you fall flat on your face, the fact that your heart was pure and your motive was to increase your Master’s kingdom will bring you to the joyful place of hearing him say to you on that glorious day,

“Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over
a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.
Enter into the joy of your lord.”
Matthew 25:23)

Just Saying… John Chrysostom, a church father and bishop of Constantinople in the fourth century, said, “Do you seek any further reward beyond that of having pleased God? In truth, you know not how great a good it is to please Him.”

Genesis 36:1-39:23

Staying Pure On A Sexually Polluted Planet

Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, and after a while his master’s wife
took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he refused!
Genesis 39:6-8

Go Deep: A while back a Newsweek article began with this attention-grabber:  “In the [near future] you’re going to have better sex than you’ve ever had before…[not] a single sexual fantasy…will go unfulfilled.”  Now that really grabbed my attention—not so much for my sake, but I knew you’d be interested!

All kidding aside, you and I would both agree that we live in a sex-obsessed culture.  We are constantly bombarded with messages, images, and opportunities that urge us to gratify every sexual desire.  On prime time TV in a given year, you’ll watch 20,000 sexually suggestive scenes—20,000!

As a result of this relentless sexual bombardment and a cultural philosophy of boundary-less sexual gratification, we now have more abortions (around fifty million since Roe v. Wade in 1973), illegitimate births, cohabitation of couples without marriage, adulterous affairs, addiction to pornography, sexually transmitted disease, sexual predators and sexual exploitation than ever before.  Nine million Americans carry a venereal disease—that’s even more than those who battle alcoholism.  It’s predicted that 100 million will die from HIV/AIDS in Africa alone in the next 20 years—100 million!  At best, the world’s sexual philosophy doesn’t work—obviously!  At worst, our so-called enlightened age, rather than giving us that sexual freedom it promised, has instead unleashed a tsunami of sexual degradation and destruction.

God has a better way—a higher sexual ethic to which he calls his children.  I Thessalonians 4:3-4 says, “God wants you to be pure and to keep clear of all sexual sin.  For God hasn’t called us to be dirty-minded and full of lust but to be holy and clean.”

Now God’s people haven’t always got this right, but there was one man who did—Joseph. Under the most intense pressure and rationale to compromise sexually, he didn’t.  He remained pure in a polluted environment.  Notice the rich theology in Joseph’s response:

“With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:8-9)

When you look at Joseph’s response to Potiphar’s wife, it is obvious that he had thought this through ahead of the temptation and had resolved long before the seduction to stay sexually pure.  Here’s the thing: If you wait until the moment of intense passion to decide what your values and boundaries are going to be, you’ve waited too long.  Authors Young and Adams write:

“Nothing interferes with logic and common sense more than the sex drive.  For years we referred to this as the ‘brain relocation phenomenon,’ which occurs when you are passionate about someone and you start to get intimate.  Here’s how it works. Once the hormones kick in, the brain dislodges from the skull and slowly moves down the body through the neck, shoulders, chest, stomach, and finally, below the waist. This process takes 10 to 20 minutes for women and about 3 seconds for men.”

And once that happens, you are thinking with your hormones, not your head!  The truth is, you are a moral agent, created by God with a will.  And you must resolve ahead of time to honor God with your sexuality, including not only sexual intercourse, but all the behaviors that contribute and lead to the point of no return.  How can you do that?

First, resolve to make God’s standards your standards!  Psalm 119:9 says, “How can one keep his way pure?  By living according to your Word.”

Second, resolve to manage your mind, especially your media intake!  Proverbs 15:14 says, “The fool feeds on trash.” What you feed your mind is just as important as what you feed your body.  Every temptation starts in the mind.  Proverbs 4:23 says “Be careful how you think, your life is shaped by your thoughts.” The battle for purity is won or lost in your brain.

Third, resolve to magnify the consequences of sin!  Do a cost-benefit analysis of sexual sin! Proverbs 6:26 says, “Immorality may cost your life.”  Proverbs 6:32 says, “Anyone who commits adultery doesn’t have any sense.  He’s destroying himself.”  Even if you don’t want to take God’s word for it, just look at the steady stream of recent studies on the results of the so-called sexual revolution. For instance, one study noted that when couples live together before marriage, there is an 80% higher likelihood of divorce than couples who don’t. Women in these relationships are twice as likely to be physically abused and four times more likely to experience depression than married women.  And that is just one of many studies similarly confirming the unintended consequence of boundary-less sex.  When you put the world’s sexual philosophy under the magnifying glass, who in their right mind would want that?

Perhaps by now you are saying, “Enough already, I’m convinced.  God’s got a better way.  But what do you do when you’ve already blown it sexually?”  Well, here is what you need to know: There is grace and forgiveness and mercy and love to cover any sexual sin you have experienced.  Have you ever noticed that some of the people most attracted to Jesus were those who had failed miserably in the sexual department: The woman who’d been married to five different husbands, and was currently living with a guy…a woman caught in adultery…prostitutes who’d sold their bodies for money.

And how would Jesus respond to them?  He would look them right in the eye and just love them.  And he will gladly forgive you where you have messed up and heal you where you have been damaged and give you strength where you want to resolve to live a new kind of life.  That is just what Jesus does!

Just Saying… Francis Schaeffer said, “The Bible does not minimize sexual sin, but neither does it make it different from any other sin.”  If you have messed up sexually, God has a great gift for you: Forgiveness.

Psalm 24:1-26:12

When Criticism Leaves A Mark

Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have led a blameless life;
I have trusted in the LORD without wavering.
Test me, O LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind;
for your love is ever before me,
and I walk continually in your truth.
Psalm 26:1-3

Go Deep: Have you ever been savagely and unfairly criticized?  Sure you have!  It really hurts, doesn’t it? Nothing leaves a mark quite like taking a punch from the critic.

No one is immune to the critic’s blows, by the way. To be human means to be born in criticism season with a big ol’ bull’s eye on your back.  And the greater your visibility in life, the higher in leadership you climb, the more you accomplish or even attempt to accomplish, the uglier and more devastating criticism becomes.  Even worse, criticism is usually unjustified, indefensible, and often it is anonymous.  Being the target of a critic just comes with the territory.

Apparently King David was facing some tough criticism, and understandably, it was bothering him a great deal.  But there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it, except take it to God—which, you know, is always the best thing to do with criticism.  David went before the Lord and there lifted his innocence and integrity before the only Critic who really counts.

You will notice in this psalm that David doesn’t claim perfection as he pours out his heart before God.  He was far from perfect, so inviting Divine scrutiny (“test me…try me…examine me…” Psalm 26:2) would have been the worst thing David could have done at that moment if he thought his perfection would impress God. No, it was not a perfect life, it was a blameless life and an innocent heart that he placed before the Lord.

Blameless…innocent…David? Are we talking about the same guy?  Yes, this deeply flawed man could point to the integrity of his ways (his whole-heartedness before God), and that was what allowed him to request God’s vindication before his human critics.

Here’s the deal: To be anything and do anything in life is to invite criticism. It is just one of the harsh and unpleasant realities of life, so expect folks to criticize you.  But like David, so live your life in innocence and integrity that even though you are far from perfect, nobody will give your critic much credence—especially God.

And the next time the critic is getting the best of you, just remember that you answer to the One who knows your heart.  If you can lift a life of innocence and integrity before him, then feel free to call out to him for his vindication.

Divine vindication is always the sweetest revenge you can dish out to your critic!

Just Saying… C.S. Lewis said, “God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.”

Judges 17:1-21:25

No Controlling Moral Authority
Judges 21:25

Go Deep: That line pretty well sums up the sad story of the book of Judges.  Several times in the last few chapters the author gives us several variations of this statement: “In those days, Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” (Judges 17:6, 18:1, 19:21 and 21:25)  Even though the Lord raised up godly judges during this period to rescue Israel, overall, there was no controlling moral authority in the land.  The result: personal piety tanked and social chaos became the status quo.

“Everybody did what was right in their own eyes.”  Sound familiar?  That’s one of the popular mantras in our culture right now, albeit in a variety of different expressions: “If it doesn’t hurt anyone, then what’s to stop you?”  “That may be true for you, but not for me.”  “Keep your laws off my body!”  But these types of “enlightened” cultural declarations have led to the legalization of abortion, marijuana, and pornography, the normalization of homosexuality, increased sexual promiscuity and marital unfaithfulness, the widespread acceptance of divorce, the tolerance of filth over the airwaves, and a whole host of other “rights” that are rotting the moral foundation of our society.

“All the people did whatever seemed right in their own.” The problem with that kind of personal and societal philosophy is that it never results in a good outcome.  It might sound like it’s a fair and enlightened way to do life—as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else—but it always hurts somebody else.  Whenever there is no “king in Israel”—no controlling moral authority—personal piety will decline and social chaos will rise, which is exactly what we’re witnessing in our society today.

It would be easy for me at this point to rant and rave against any number of cultural forces that are presently at work in America, and insist that we get back to the Bible as the standard by which our society must be governed.  And of course, I would be right…and you would agree.   But perhaps the best cure for the social chaos and loss of piety in America would be for you and me to make sure that God’s Word is king in our lives on a personal basis.

What if Christian by Christian we truly made the Scriptures our controlling moral authority?  I am not talking about just giving lip service to the authority of Scripture; I’m talking about it being what we mediate on day and night (Psalm 1:2), what we are careful to obey in exacting detail (Joshua 1:8), and teach and model to our children and our children’s children (Deuteronomy 4:9).

Can you imagine what would happen in America if everyone who called themselves a believer would live under the authority of the King’s Word?  I think the supply line for most of the impiety and chaos in our culture would get choked off, and America would become a Christian nation once again.

Have you read, absorbed and determined to obey God’s Word yet this today? What are you waiting for, brother?  Crack open that Bible and get after it!

Just Saying… A.W. Tozer offers these challenging words to us, “The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. And we must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.”  And nothing less than a wholehearted commitment to the whole Bible can make a Christian nation wholly Christian again!

Genesis 32:1-35:29

Who Was That Masked Man?

Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have
struggled with God and with men and have overcome.
Genesis 32:28

Go Deep: There was a day when entertainment didn’t come through the television set; it came through the radio.  Believe it or not, I can remember those days—at least the tail end of them.  But in the good old days of radio, before my time, the folks were entertained with shows like “The Adventures of Sam Spade”, “Fibber McGee and Molly”, “The Shadow” (“the Shadow knows—bwahaha), and of course, “The Lone Ranger.”  The Lone Ranger, who was known as “The Masked Man”, was the greatest! He would ride into town, save the day, then ride off into the sunset with a “Hi-ho, Silver, away!” to the tune of the William Tell Overture.  And invariably an awestruck bystander would ask the question, “Who was that Masked Man anyway?”

“Who was that masked man anyway?” may be your response to the mysterious wrestling match that took place between Jacob and the unknown assailant here in Genesis 32:22-32.  Of course, if you’ve grown up around the Bible, you’ve been instructed that Jacob’s opponent was God.  But when you read the text, that’s not so clear.  From Jacob’s perspective, his opponent was nothing more than a man (Genesis 32:24)—perhaps a shadowy assassin from Laban’s clan or a hitman from Esau’s tribe—both men whom Jacob had cheated and had sufficient reason to “rub out” the cheater!

But as the death match (“wrestling” would be far too tame a term if you were in Jacob shoes) continued through the night, and Jacob held his own against this stranger, it began to dawn on him that this was no mere human he was fighting.  As you get to the end of the story and the two opponents finally speak, the stranger is identified—as least vaguely—when Jacob exclaims, “I have seen God face to face.” (Genesis 32:30)

We get a little more insight into the stranger’s identity all the way over in Hosea 12:4, when the prophet writes that it was none other than the Angel of the Lord who was duking it out with Jacob.  The Angel of the Lord is identified as God himself throughout Scripture (for instance, Acts 7:30), and has even come to be known in Christian theology as a pre-incarnate revelation of Jesus Christ.  So who was that masked man anyway?  I think it is safe to say that Jacob was wrestling with none other than Jesus.

Now all that information may be nothing more than relatively useless Bible trivia to you, but there is something in this story with which you and I can identify: Wrestling with God.  Jacob wrestled with God, and the essence of the wrestling match was over who was going to run Jacob’s life, and how.  It had been clear to Jacob throughout his life that God wanted to bless him, but Jacob, whose name meant “deceiver”, had tried to manipulate and coerce those blessings into reality.  Jacob wanted it done his way.

I’ll bet you can relate to that; I sure can. You know that God has promised to bless you, but perhaps you are trying to force his favor according to your timing and to your liking.  But it won’t work that way—it never does.  God can’t be God of your life if you’re trying to be God of your life, too.  There is room for only one throne in your personal world, and guess what, God gets it.  When you resist, the wrestling begins.

Learn from Jacob, my friend.  The only way to go with God is by way of surrender.  Jacob learned that the hard way—and he was left with a lifelong limp—but at the end of the day, Jacob’s fundamental approach to life changed from deceptive striving to faithful obedience.  It is the surrender to a life of faithful obedience and ruthless trust that, as Andrew Murray wrote, must become “the essential characteristic of our lives.”

Are you wrestling with God?  The sooner you cry “uncle” the better off you’ll be!

Just Saying… What C.S. Lewis said is true: “The full acting out of the self’s surrender to God therefore demands pain: this action, to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey, in the absence, or in the teeth, of inclination.”

Matthew 20:1-22:46

The All-Inclusive, Exclusive God

“Many are called, but few are chosen.”
Matthew 22:14

Go Deep: I am always amazed at people’s reaction to the tragic and untimely death of a pop culture icon like Michael Jackson, or a venerable political figure like Ted Kennedy.  Adoring fans, devotees and sycophants assume that no matter what kind of life the famous led and what kind of dysfunctional behavior might have contributed to their death, they get a free and easy pass to heaven.

How often have you heard a heartbroken fan trying to find some comfort in their favorite celebrity’s death say something like this: “I’ll sure miss ’so and so’, but I know they’re in a much better place. I’ll bet they’re smiling down on us right now.”

Of course, death is tragic, whether it is a celebrity or not. And of course, God loves famous people just as he loves not so famous people. God love all people so much that he has made room for everyone in his eternal kingdom. But no one gets a free and easy pass to heaven—unless, that is, they go through Jesus. He is the only free and easy way to the Father. (John 14:6)

“Many are called, but few are chosen.” Those sobering words appear at the very end of the Parable of the Banquet, and if you read that entire parable (Matthew 22:1-14), you find that Jesus is not painting the picture of a narrow, exclusive God. Quite the opposite—he invites pretty much everybody to the party. The problem is, most reject the invitation. They want to come to it when they are good and ready. They don’t want to change into proper banquet attire. In the words of that famous theologian Frank Sinatra, the vast majority of people want to do it “my way.” But it doesn’t work that way. Only a few get chosen, not because of the exclusivity of God, but because of the resistance of those who demand entrance into the banquet on their terms.

Let’s be very clear about this: God is not willing that any should perish; He desires that all should come to repentance. (II Peter 3:9) But we don’t get to tell God how we are going to get into his heaven. We can only get there on his terms.

And his terms are very clear: Complete and total surrender to Jesus Christ as Savior AND Lord. We must receive him as the only one who can save us from our sins, and we must crown him as the Lord and Ruler of our lives—which means every dimension of our being. It is on those terms that we are given the free and easy pass to heaven.

Many get invited, but only the few who come on God’s terms will get in on the party that will never end.

Just Saying… The great Bible commentary Matthew Henry wrote, “None shall be saved by Christ but those only who work out their own salvation while God is working in them by His truth and His Holy Spirit. We cannot do without God; and God will not do without us.”

Psalm 21:1-23:6

So You’re Having A Really Rotten Day

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Psalm 22:1

Go Deep: David had some really rotten days during his journey on earth—hiding from Saul in a cave, fleeing from his own son’s murderous plot, betrayed by people he had trusted—yet I have a feeling that the depth of despair you read in this psalm was a bit exaggerated.

We do that, too, sometimes. When we’re going through a painful experience, we often use hyperbolic language to describe our emotions: “I just want to die…I’ll never get over this…this pain is too great to bear…I am all alone.” It is a universally accepted practice to communicate the depth of our feelings by this sort of exaggeration.

But think about this: David was not just speaking on a personal level about having a really rotten day, he was also speaking prophetically of a time when Jesus, the Son of David would have a really rotten day hanging on a cross bearing the punishment for our sins.

Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us, bearing the wrath of God on that old rugged cross. We will never in a billion years be able to understand the pain—not just the physical pain—but the spiritual pain of the sinless One taking on sin, and having the Father turn his back on the Son because his holy eyes could not gaze upon the sin his Son had become in that moment. That’s why Jesus fulfilled David’s prophetic utterance in Matthew 27:46 when he, too, cried out,

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I am so grateful that my Lord endured that really bad day so I wouldn’t have to. So the next time you are having a really awful day, take a moment to rejoice that even though your day is not so great, you will never really know a really rotten eternity, thanks to Jesus.

Try doing that, and see if your really rotten day isn’t so bad after all.

Just Saying… Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who was martyred by the Nazis right before the end of World War II.  Among the many wonderful truths that live on from Bonhoeffer’s writings, here is one that is certainly profound, particular in light of the really rotten stuff he endured:  “Much that worries us beforehand can, quite unexpectedly, have a happy and simple solution … Things really are in a better hand than ours.”

Judges 12:1-16:31

Flawed Leaders

When her son was born, she named him Samson. And the Lord blessed him
as he grew up. And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him.
Judges 13:24-25 (NLT)

Go Deep: Samson’s story in Judges 13-16 is a real head-scratcher. Obviously he was an amazingly talented but incredibly flawed leader.  He was as strong as an ox but highly impulsive. He had been set apart for God’s purpose yet throughout his life continued to be firmly attached to fleshly desires. And most obvious of all, Samson had a weakness for women—not the first (or last, unfortunately) spiritual leader to have that particular weakness. Definitely this leader had feet of clay.

How can God choose to use such flawed leaders?  Why does God seem to bless men and women who are not only not perfect, they are glaringly weak?  Doesn’t he realize that when he promotes people to such visible positions of influence who are bound to fail, they give the rest of us, and our cause, a bad name before a watching world when they fall?

Well I hate to disappoint you here, but I can’t really answer those questions.  God has his reasons, and sometimes he doesn’t share his insights with us.  I do know this: If God chose only perfect people for leadership positions, we’d have no leaders.  All leaders are flawed to some degree.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not excusing weaknesses, only explaining them. I get frustrated by flawed leaders who have failed , too, but what I have learned over the years by watching many great but flawed leaders is simply this: I must not confuse the gift with the package.

God places his incredible gifts within deeply flawed packages—that has always been and always will be. And in regard to your spiritual leader, it is likely that they are an extremely talented and charismatic person who has the call of God on their life.  But don’t forget, like you, they are flawed.

So celebrate the gift, but don’t worship the package.  Pray for them, build accountability systems around them, do what you can to help them to stay dedicated to God’s purpose for their life and leadership role, and pray for them.

Did I mention pray for them?

Just Saying… John Stott wrote, “The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.”  So true!