The Rough Road Home

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

God says, “Rebuild the road!  Clear away the rocks and stones so my people can return from captivity.”  The high and lofty one who lives in eternity, the Holy One, says this:  “I live in the high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble.  I restore the crushed spirit of the humble and revive the courage of those with repentant hearts.  For I will not fight against you forever; I will not always be angry.  If I were, all people would pass away—all the souls I have made.  I was angry, so I punished these greedy people.                        I withdrew from them, but they kept going on their own stubborn way.  I have seen what they do, but I will heal them anyway!  I will lead them.  I will comfort those who mourn, bringing words of praise to their lips.  May they have abundant peace, both near and far,” says the Lord, who heals them.  “But those who still reject me are like the restless sea, which is never still but continually churns up mud and dirt.  There is no peace for the wicked,” says my God.  Isaiah 57:14-21

The prophet reaches into the psyche of every wanderer; thoughts of home seep into every waking moment of silence.  This part of Isaiah’s comforting word to God’s people, in captivity because they strayed from God’s ways, opens the possibility of return.  It’s a rough road home, but God is the one with peace for the troubled soul at the end of the journey.

Grasping the surreal possibility of being able to come home, after rejecting God, may not be easy to accept.  However, the only other alternative is the way the passage ends…no peace for the wicked!  The Father says you must come home!

Passages in Scripture like this one, and the Prodigal Son, the forgiveness of the thief on the cross next to Jesus, and many others, are so precious, offering hope to those who have strayed from their Creator.  They are precious because they reveal the heart of God, which is love that desires the best for each of us. 

In many lives, that central, loving heart of God’s may take many years to get through the hard exterior life tends to build around our own hearts.  But God’s love is tough, and relentless, and impervious to our foolish ways.  And when the weary, wandering soul finally arrives at nowhere else to go, the rough road of humble repentance only requires one small step.

And that one, contrite step towards God is all that’s required to have the floodgate of peace opened.

For You Today

You may have travelled the highways of life that seemed easier and much more suitable to bring you what you wanted, and been successful, or a dismal failure.  Either way, if you’re reading this far, you’ve also no doubt discovered rejecting God’s way has been emptiness of the soul.  The missing piece is like the dangling carrot in front of the mule pulling the cart….he’s never going to reach it, just like peace will always be just out of reach for you.  Time to rebuild the road home?

Hear one more time what the rebuilt road home looks like in your life:

The high and lofty one who lives in eternity, the Holy One, says this:  “I live in the high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble.  I restore the crushed spirit of the humble and revive the courage of those with repentant hearts.  

Restoration and reviving…it’s worth the trip, no matter how rough the repair job gets on the road back home.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Resting in Peace and Two Billion

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com     Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

God Blindspots

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

During the reign of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, “Have you seen what fickle Israel has done? Like a wife who commits adultery, Israel has worshiped other gods on every hill and under every green tree.  I thought, ‘After she has done all this, she will return to me.’  But she did not return, and her faithless sister Judah saw this.  She saw that I divorced faithless Israel because of her adultery.  But that treacherous sister Judah had no fear, and now she, too, has left me and given herself to prostitution.  Israel treated it all so lightly—she thought nothing of committing adultery by worshiping idols made of wood and stone.  So now the land has been polluted.  But despite all this, her faithless sister Judah has never sincerely returned to me.  She has only pretended to be sorry.  I, the Lord, have spoken!”  Then the Lord said to me, “Even faithless Israel is less guilty than treacherous Judah!  Therefore, go and give this message to Israel.  This is what the Lord says:  “O Israel, my faithless people, come home to me again, for I am merciful.  I will not be angry with you forever.  Only acknowledge your guilt.  Admit that you rebelled against the Lord your God and committed adultery against him by worshiping idols under every green tree.  Confess that you refused to listen to my voice.  I, the Lord, have spoken!  “Return home, you wayward children,” says the Lord, “for I am your master.  I will bring you back to the land of Israel—one from this town and two from that family—from wherever you are scattered.  Jeremiah 3:6-14

Even the most dedicated believer has God-blindspots.  We fail to see how we slip off the narrow pathway of following as a disciple.  Distractions, failure to act on the urging of God’s Spirit, unconfessed sin, idleness, lust, greed…virtually just any of the Seven Deadly Sins can be the culprit that leads to backsliding.  When it comes to being a disciple there are only three possibilities:

1.    you are in a closer relationship, growing by learning and serving, or…

2.    you are farther away, because you choose to walk away, or…

3.    you aren’t aware that no change or growth is happening, and that you are slipping away from fellowship with God.

Now, that can happen with anyone….ANYONE!  Jeremiah said God put the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah (including Jerusalem) in that second category, willfully turning their backs on God, and in danger of the third category, getting further down the path to hell with each passing day.  He added insolent pretentiousness to the charge against Judah, calling them worse sinners for pretending to be sorry for their insult to God’s holiness.  In short, their God-Blindspot had become their focal point, treacherous faithlessness towards their Lord, a comfortable mantra of self-content you hear quite often today.  It sounds like this:  Well, I’m very spiritual…I’m just not religious…organized religion turns me off.  How very deep.  It takes a very special kind of spiritual blindness to subscribe to dismissing everything God’s Word says about faithful worship and service.  To give just the CliffsNotes outline of what Jesus said…we are to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength…and our neighbor in the same way.  To neglect the body of Christ (what He said we would be as we join together for worship and carrying the message and mission to the world) is to move farther away from Jesus.  No amount of claiming “spirituality” comes across as genuine in that feeble excuse.

For You Today

If you are a disciple of Jesus Christ…be just that…every day, all the time.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

The Voice of the Lord and Words Matter

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com     Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Wise Choices

Monday, August 29, 2022

My child, listen to what I say, and treasure my commands.  Tune your ears to wisdom, and concentrate on understanding.  Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding.  Search for them as you would for silver; seek them like hidden treasures.  Then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord, and you will gain knowledge of God.  For the Lord grants wisdom!  From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.  He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest.  He is a shield to those who walk with integrity.  He guards the paths of the just and protects those who are faithful to him.  Then you will understand what is right, just, and fair, and you will find the right way to go.  For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will fill you with joy.  Wise choices will watch over you.  Understanding will keep you safe.  Proverbs 2:1-11

Making wise choices isn’t just a good and smart thing; it’s how we were hard-wired by God.  Kicking against that plan just isn’t smart.  Revered Christian apologist and author, C. S. Lewis wrote:

 “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before.  And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself.  To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power.  To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness.  Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”[1]

Solomon, according to God’s Word, was the wisest man of his generation.  His writings reflect that wisdom, and in this advice to his children, that wisdom instructs them to turn their attention to God’s ways.  They will find their lives will be blessed proportionately to how well they tune their ears to God’s teachings.

If our choices in life rest solely on our feeling, or mood when we got up this morning, the result of our life will be as chaotic as the messy world in which we live.  If our choices are consistent with just what our friends think, we’re as liable to fall into the same kinds of holes as they do, prisoners of our own making.  Absent of the study of God’s Word and ways, we are at the mercy of the coin-flip.  Heads, I go this way; tails, it’s the other way.

If the choices you make create you as a Heavenly or Hellish being at the other end of those choices, leaving the direction your life to the coin-flip is hardly a plan to inspire confidence in the outcome.

For You Today

Take the road less traveled today – follow God’s wisdom, and watch it take you to the throne room of Heaven…it’s there you’ll meet the King of Glory.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these:  Choices and All-In

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com     Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (1960 ed.), Goodreads

A Toast to the End of Half-Heartedness

 

Friday, August 26, 2022

God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts.  Use them well to serve one another.  Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you.  Do you have the gift of helping others?  Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies.  Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ.  All glory and power to him forever and ever!  Amen.  1 Peter 4:10-11

My Dad was fond of the idiom:  Jack-of-all-trades; master-of-none.  The first half of the saying was originally a compliment to indicate multi-tasking, being able to do a basketful of different trades (skills).  Later, some cynical troll added the second part, turning a bright compliment into a dig.  The troll was, according to some, Robert Greene, a late 16^th-century writer, who tweaked the compliment into a snide rebuke of another writer, who had turned from actor to writer of plays; fellow’s name was William Shakespeare.[1]

Apostle Peter, of the historical first-century, had cast his vote over 1,600 years before, encouraging excellence in whatever you do.  And, heading-off the elitist criticism from the beginning, Peter didn’t care what skill or skills you may employ, he says:  whatever you do, don’t do it half-heartedly, give it all you’ve got.

The sole reason for this is that each Christian disciple of Jesus Christ is given spiritual gifts to use in building the Kingdom of God, by building fellow believers.  To use any gift of God in a half-hearted manner is the character of an ingrate, unable, or unwilling to appreciate the holiness of God’s gifts, a slap in God’s face.

John Wesley, Founder of Methodism, wrote that Christian efforts at doing good were to be an unceasing quest for believers, doing all the good we can, by all the means we can, in all the ways and places we can, at all the times we can, and to all the people we can, for as long as ever we can.  This is a plea for the extermination of half-heartedness – a call to arms against mediocrity, and in support of excellent, unselfish service.

The kingdom of God was never advanced by people with a cavalier attitude, acting as if serving others was bothersome, or even optional, or required little personal sacrifice.  Serving God in any way, from the highest to lowest of positions is a holy endeavor, and must receive our best efforts.  As Oswald Chambers wrote, it must be my utmost for His highest!

For You Today

If you’re a preacher, singer, teacher, Sunday School worker, custodian, or keeper of the records…your best efforts belong to God.  He gave you those gifts because He has confidence you’ll use them well. 

A word from the deep well of Apostle Paul’s wisdom to do nothing half-heartedly:

Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.  Colossians 3:23

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these:  Glory and Wise Choices

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com     Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] The Phrase Finder

When the Fire Falls

 

Thursday, August 25, 2022

Again the Lord spoke to me and said, “I have discovered a conspiracy against me among the people of Judah and Jerusalem.  They have returned to the sins of their ancestors.  They have refused to listen to me and are worshiping other gods.  Israel and Judah have both broken the covenant I made with their ancestors.  Therefore, this is what the Lord says: I am going to bring calamity upon them, and they will not escape.  Though they beg for mercy, I will not listen to their cries.  Then the people of Judah and Jerusalem will pray to their idols and burn incense before them.  But the idols will not save them when disaster strikes!  Look now, people of Judah; you have as many gods as you have towns.  You have as many altars of shame—altars for burning incense to your god Baal—as there are streets in Jerusalem.  “Pray no more for these people, Jeremiah.  Do not weep or pray for them, for I will not listen to them when they cry out to me in distress.  “What right do my beloved people have to come to my Temple, when they have done so many immoral things?  Can their vows and sacrifices prevent their destruction?  They actually rejoice in doing evil!  I, the Lord, once called them a thriving olive tree, beautiful to see and full of good fruit.  But now I have sent the fury of their enemies to burn them with fire, leaving them charred and broken.  “I, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, who planted this olive tree, have ordered it destroyed.  For the people of Israel and Judah have done evil, arousing my anger by burning incense to Baal.”  Jeremiah 11:9-17

Fire can be good or bad, depending on how it is used.  In the kitchen it is a wonderful presence, helping to prepare a delicious meal.  In a dry forest it is a death knell for wildlife’s habitat.  The same is true in spiritual matters. 

God’s Holy Spirit is sometimes represented as holy fire, such as at the Day of Pentecost, when the Spirit energized the birth of Jesus’ church[1].  Fire is also a reminder of God’s judgment.  Jesus often taught of God’s love, but the theme of judging those who say no to God’s ways was always close at hand.  When teaching his disciples about His love for them, and how vital it was to stay close to him, enabling God’s mission to bring His love to the world, Jesus whispered the consequences of refusing…the fire would fall.  And, unlike the good fire of God’s presence on Pentecost, it would be the consuming fires of God’s judgment:

Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers.  Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned.  John 15:6

The theme of judgment for sin is laced all the way through Scripture, from Cain’s killing of his brother in Genesis, thru Revelation’s Great White Throne judgment[2].

In Jeremiah’s prophecy it is hard to miss how clearly God said that it was He, Who was responsible for the woes that would fall on His people because they had wantonly broken their covenant vows with God.  God also claimed it was His right to do so, because it was He Who called and blessed them…He had planted the olive tree of Judah’s Jerusalem, and it would be God causing the fire to fall.

For You Today

Among most of the world’s once-Christian churches there is a deadly coldness when it comes to Pentecost’s fire.  They are like ovens without heat, only housing a possibility.  But, as it was with the prophets, it is not too late for the remnant of God’s people to return to faithfullness:

Hate evil and love what is good; turn your courts into true halls of justice. Perhaps even yet the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies will have mercy on the remnant of his people.  Amos 5:15

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these:                                                            

After the Party and A Pathway Through the Darkness

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com     Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] See Acts 2:1-4

[2] See Revelation 8:7 & 16:9

Between Pinnacle & Pit - Part 5

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful!  But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.  Hebrews 12: 10-11

Note:  What follows are excerpts of the first sermon I preached, June 7, 1978

If you’ve worked with gold, or know something about gold, you know it begins as ore, dug right out of the earth – then it has to be washed.  When gold is in ore form, combined with all that dirt and other elements, it’s not useable.  When the gold is washed, separated from the other impurities, it’s still not fit for use; a gold nugget is no good; it’s only mostly pure, but still needing preparation for useability.  The final process is the fire; gold is melted-down to remove any other elements that might hamper its most productive state. 

That’s the way a lot of Christians are, we make a decision for Christ, and we’re only a raw possibility at that point.  We’re washed by the blood of Christ, much like the ore that’s been washed…quite pure, we are washed by the blood, and forgiven, but still not ready for His best use; not unless we yield to the fire.  The prophet Isaiah said:  Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.Isaiah 48:10 ^(KJV) 

Of course Isaiah wasn’t talking about the gold or silver you dig out of the ground.  He was talking about the gold of your life’s possibilities that have been yielded to the fire, refined, and molded into something ready to be used.  

But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.  Job 23:10^(KJV).

Elizabeth and I have been praying for her mother and father.  This morning ⁽¹⁹⁷⁸⁾ my mother-in-law is in a hospital room in Port Richey.  She had two heart attacks this week, not just one.  She had one that put her in the hospital; she wouldn’t give up – she had another; that’s two strikes.  I will tell you something; we have been praying for her for a long time, for her salvation, and her husband’s.

Update to 1983.  Elizabeth’s Mom died this year.  After she was gone, we were going through her belongings and found the answer to our prayers.  It was her Bible, given to her by a visiting pastor.  On the flyleaf was written in her hand, and dated shortly before she died, this inscription:  “Sofie saved”! 

The Holy Spirit tugs at a heart…gently, ever so gently.  The Holy Spirit deals gently with us until we come to a point.  How hard the Holy Spirit tugs at your heart is up to you.  Repentance, turning from sin, is the only thing that interrupts the consequences of our sin from something drastic being done to get our attention.  When you have people praying for you, that you’ll turn to the LORD, but you keep turning away, you’re going to benefit from God’s chastisement.

We know what chastisement is, and we know why…it’s a purging, a cleansing.  Now, how do we benefit from it?  Paul’s letter to the Roman believers tells us:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.  Romans 8:28^(KJV)

Our life is like the gold, dug out of the ground, raw possibility, but still needing the discipline of shaping for God’s good uses.  It needs to be yielded to the fire of God’s’ purifying character, making us fit for His purposes. 

For You Today

Chastisement, the move of God to discipline, teach, correct, and mature his children, comes in many forms:  experiencing problems, sickness, financial difficulties, and a myriad of other roads we walk.  One thing always common to chastisement is the experience gets our attention.  This is God’s blessed way of training his loved ones into a peaceful harvest of right living.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these:                                                            

                                 Seeing and Following the Light… Part 1 and Part 2  and  Part 3        

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com     Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©