And Then it was Monday

 

                                            Tuesday, November 30, 2021                          

Lord, through all the generations

    you have been our home!

Before the mountains were born,

    before you gave birth to the earth and the world,

    from beginning to end, you are God.  Psalm 90:1-2

Yesterday was an anniversary of sorts.  November 29^th marked forty years since I knelt in First Baptist Church of Crystal River, Florida, and received the blessing of ordination to the ministry of God’s Gospel.  For those who’ve not experienced that, or thought much of it, it’s a high point for anyone called to serve.  On that Sunday night I felt vastly unworthy to the calling, and yet, somehow, unable to object.  The “calling” is an irresistible bubbling-up from within the soul, and who among us can say “no” to God…at least with a straight face?

My pastor and mentor, Rev. L. B. Thomasson, preached the ordination sermon, and I recall the threefold challenge as if it were just a moment ago.  He looked directly at, or more accurately he looked through me and said:

• Russell, I challenge you to stay close to God;
• Russell, I challenge you to stay close to people;
• Russell, I challenge you to bring the two together.

That was Sunday night, a reception, a newly-inscribed commemorative Bible, lots of hugging, well-wishing, and promises of prayer support.

And then, it was Monday.

And with Monday’s dawn, what was laid on my shoulders with hands that believed to bless, came the fright of reality – the ceremony was over; the living of this promise was before us, and only faith in God could sustain so weak a man.

And now, forty years later, those thoughts of inadequacy, unworthiness, and disquiet over my ability to follow God’s leading, have proved 100% founded.  Russell has never been equal to the task.  Whatever has been accomplished is entirely God’s doing; I have merely had a front row seat to watch His miracle unfold. 

I have been patted on the back (at times it was a size 12 shoe rather lower-placed than a back-patting)!  I’ve been congratulated (what a great sermon, pastor), and, like Paul, sometimes I’ve been shown the door and told get out, stay out! 

One unmistakable thread in this forty-years of sermons, hospital calls, funeral homes, and the highs and lows of human relationships, has been the God of all Mondays…the dwelling place – the One who was there before the mountains, and exists as I AM.  In every attempt to serve God faithfully and sometimes (truth be told), attempts to run away from Him and all the responsibilities of being an under shepherd, I AM has been there. 

From beginning to ending, He is faithful.

For You Today

What do you do when you promised God something on Sunday in prayer, and then Monday shows up?  Do you pass it off as, well, that emotional moment?  

Do you start bargaining with God to get off the hook?

Or do you trust God on Monday to fulfill His promises?

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

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

For another post on this text see A Prayer From the Hourglass and Without Beginning-Without Ending

Hiding From God

 

Thursday, July 15, 2021

I have found my servant David.  I have anointed him with my holy oil.  I will steady him with my hand; with my powerful arm I will make him strong.  His enemies will not defeat him, nor will the wicked overpower him.  I will beat down his adversaries before him and destroy those who hate him.  My faithfulness and unfailing love will be with him, and by my authority he will grow in power.  I will extend his rule over the sea, his dominion over the rivers.  And he will call out to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’  I will make him my firstborn son, the mightiest king on earth.  I will love him and be kind to him forever; my covenant with him will never end.  I will preserve an heir for him; his throne will be as endless as the days of heaven.  But if his descendants forsake my instructions and fail to obey my regulations, if they do not obey my decrees and fail to keep my commands, then I will punish their sin with the rod, and their disobedience with beating.  But I will never stop loving him nor fail to keep my promise to him.  No, I will not break my covenant; I will not take back a single word I said.
 I have sworn an oath to David, and in my holiness I cannot lie: His dynasty will go on forever; his kingdom will endure as the sun.  It will be as eternal as the moon, my faithful witness in the sky!”  Psalm 89:20-37

The one story I heard over and again while in seminary it was, I ran from God.  The most loved (and probably most despised) text for a day’s study was Jonah, the reluctant prophet who ran from God, and was subsequently treated to a submarine ride in the belly of a great fish, right back to where he was called to be in the first place.  It seems hiding from God just won’t do! 

But, what’s a God-called person to do when he’s afraid to answer the call? 

Short answer, read Psalm 89. 

But, read it looking at how God sees the call.  God had chosen David as the next king of Israel to replace the faithless Saul.  The call covers the width, breadth, and depth of how that call would be worked-out by God, with promises for David’s protection, strength, and growing authority, infused with an unending measure of God’s lovingkindness.  Even if the inhabitants of the kingdom were to refuse to cooperate, God gave David an assurance that his reign was going to endure as long as the stars, even as long and as sure as the mighty name of JHWH.

If a person, called by God to serve, is certain of God’s character and promises, there seems to be little to hold one back from responding to the call.  Except there is that one little reality – so many in history resisted the call.  Peter resisted it, telling Jesus to leave him be; Peter was a sinful man and was, in effect, saying, Lord, you don’t want someone like me…you’re holy, and I’m not.[1] 

With Peter it wasn’t a matter of doubting God’s ability; Peter questioned how Peter could ever be up to being God’s man.  And this is the fly-in-the-ointment of any calling.  We may not doubt God’s calling in the generic sense, that God has chosen to use even flawed human beings to accomplish His will.  We doubt God’s specific choice to use me.  Doesn’t the Lord remember this about me…or the time I did that?  Like Jonah, we just can’t see it, and we want to find a little dark place to crawl-in, and hide from God. 

(Isn’t it ironic how God allows that?  Just think of the 3 days Jonah was allowed to hide in a small, dark, and rather smelly fish’s belly to think about his choice!) 

For You Today

So, are you still hiding from God these days? 

Go back and look at the promises God makes to those He calls to serve him.  He may be calling you to serve by preaching, or sharing your faith with a neighbor, but when He calls, remember the promises…put your name at the end of each one.  He’s always been faithful…and that won’t change.

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

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

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[1] See Luke 5:8

Trust

 

Friday, May 8, 2020

Pull me from the trap my enemies set for me, for I find protection in you alone.  I entrust my spirit into your hand.  Rescue me, Lord, for you are a faithful God.  Psalm 31:4-5

If there’s one thing about a word written in sand on a beach, come the next tide, those letters will have given way to a clean slate.  When trust is swept away, the slate is anything but clean.  Whatever relationship is left when trust has been violated and trampled upon, it will be muddy and tenuous at best. 

The uncertainty of whether trust can ever be restored is something that must have eaten the inner fabric of apostle Peter’s stomach lining.  In the early darkness of Friday morning outside Pilate’s house, Peter had denied being Jesus’ friend and follower; to underscore his trust-breaking lie, he even cursed that he’d ever known the man.  When the rooster sounded after Peter’s third denial, reminding the apostle Jesus had known his friend would betray him, Peter disappeared into the darkness weeping bitterly for his unfaithfulness.  He had broken trust with the best friend, best man he’d ever known.[1] 

Knowing our inner nature sometimes makes it hard to trust.  We know what we’re capable of, and project that unfaithfulness on others.  Yet, in today’s Scripture, the Psalmist offered the spirit of his life, all his hopes, dreams, the calendar for today, and his labor for tomorrow, into the hand of this unseen God…and then, perhaps, with the hesitation of a man who knows how fickle men can be, declared God to be faithful, a loving God of forgiveness, faithfully extending his loving care to anyone’s penitent heart, despite the nature of a sinful man who didn’t deserve being forgiven.

Scripture tells us that later, after the resurrection, when Jesus met his disciples on the beach for breakfast, Jesus made certain that Peter understood just how resilient the trust was between them.  Jesus asked Peter three times if Peter really did love him.  It must’ve been agonizing for the fisherman to have to face the memory of his past betrayal while Jesus was on trial.  And, to do so now, with any meaningful declaration of love for Jesus, had to feel like a really disingenuous apology.  But Jesus followed the Q&A with an invitation that was an iron-clad, sealed-with-blood reminder that Jesus would trust Peter; He simply said follow me.[2]

And, history reminds us, Peter did!

For You Today

Whatever trust you may have broken with God, or with any other human being, the same hand of forgiveness that was extended to Peter is willing to accept your heart’s repentance; He forgives. 

It’s that simple; we repent, and the assurance of our heart is He trusts us.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on Psalm 31 see Ambush and My Cliff to Climb

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[1] See Luke 22:54-62

[2] See John 21:15-19

Hard Thoughts

[i]

Thursday, September 29, 2016

The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words.  I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.  Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:  The faithful love of the Lord never ends!  His mercies never cease.  Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”  The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.  So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.  Lamentations 3:19-26^(NLT)

Perhaps the hardest of thoughts is to have hope in the midst of grief. 

Battling grief is a common experience; if you live long enough grief will be more than once your uninvited companion on this journey through life.  Often a first touch with grief is as a child when grandparents die.  That was my lot as a pre-teen.  It was then I learned Jeremiah was right; you never forget the time of loss.  In seminary a wise professor shared with us would-be preachers that one of the last, arguably best gifts people give to their grandchildren is their own death; it is a valuable and needed preparation for learning to grieve while parents are still around to comfort and guide.

It has been a little more than a year since my Dad became part of the church triumphant in heaven.  From our family’s perspective he was the last of his generation.  With him passed away any first-hand memories of our family history.  And with our family’s sketchy knowledge of our ancestry, there is a haze of unknowing rather than links to the past.  For my remaining brother and cousins, we don’t know where we come from, and that speaks much about the emptiness and finality of loss.

So what about hope in the middle of loss and grief?

Jeremiah said he dared to hope because his track record with the LORD is that there is mercy forthcoming every morning, like the dew on the ground.  And hope, itself, is much like faith; it is (as the writer of Hebrews proclaimed) the evidence of things we long to see.

There is no standard, one-size-fits-all way to move through grief.  There is certainly no way to escape it altogether, at least not in a healthy way.  It must be embraced as necessary to the process of accepting God’s new mercies in a rotten time.  It must be endured as the inescapable price of loving. 

The question isn’t will I grieve; the question is always, how shall I grieve; how do I start?

Let me borrow some military advice from Jean-Luc Picard.  He is the fictional captain of the Starship Enterprise. 

Patrick Stewart played the captain for the 1980’s TV series, and every time the Enterprise was about to begin a new adventure traversing the next galaxy, or getting ready to do battle with the evil enemies of The Federation, Captain Picard would look wistfully out the front windows from the command center and issue the order to the helmsman, Warp speed….ENGAGE!

This is how we begin – without fear, without hesitation, but not without God.

For You Today

If your pathway is remembering with hard thoughts today, engage…God is faithfully in the middle of it with you with all the new mercies you need.

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

Go to VIDEO

NOTES

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[i] Title Image: By Jiri Hodan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Overwhelmed!

Lord, don’t hold back your tender mercies from me.  Let your unfailing love and faithfulness always protect me.  For troubles surround me—too many to count!  My sins pile up so high I can’t see my way out.  They outnumber the hairs on my head.  I have lost all courage.  Please, Lord, rescue me!  Come quickly, Lord, and help me.   Psalm 40:11-13 (NLT)

Monday, December 22, 2014

In this Psalm King David is counting on God to show up!  The king acknowledges his sins have piled up so high – they’ve finally overtaken every part of his life.  If God, in His mercy, cannot, or will not rescue David, well, it’s all over!

Desperately overwhelmed the king is asking for the “tender mercies” of God’s forgiveness.  The picture is of how a mother’s womb cradles and cherishes the unborn.

But the very fact that David’s writing survived 3,000 years indicates the community of faith has affirmed just what David counted upon – the king’s sins were no match for the forgiveness of God.

Scottish preacher/pastor Alexander MacLaren said of this Psalm:

So then, there are two series of things which cannot be numbered, God’s mercies, man’s sins.[1]

Anyone who has ever uttered that promise to God, Lord, please forgive me, with the sincerest intention that, if God does actually forgive me I will never do that again…has also experienced the failure of….doing that, again!

David understands his own instability (lack of truth[2]) compared to that of God, who is faithful and true, always.  When he asks, Please, LORD, rescue me, he is using legal language that says, in effect:  Satisfy this sin-debt of mine.  

In this short passage we see the chief question of the New Testament Apostles when Jesus spoke of truth and righteousness, the character needed in one who pleases God; they asked, who then can be saved?  Who can be THAT righteous and holy?

And the trap goes on; our sins forgiven…then we fall again…sins forgiven…fallen…sins forgiven…fallen….and on, and on!  Where does it end?  Like King David caught in this trap we cry out, I can’t see a way out; I’m swamped, overwhelmed, doomed.

Does this describe where you are today? 

For you, today

Let me share with you what I found to be true in my life.  It’s from Alexander MacLaren’s sermon on the Two Innumerable Series:

There is a limit and a number to my sins and to yours, but God’s mercies are properly numberless. They overlap all our sins, they stretch beyond our sins in all dimensions. They go beneath them, they encompass them, and they will thin them away and cause them to disappear. My sins may be many, God’s mercies are more. My sins may be inveterate, God’s mercy is from everlasting. My sins may be strong, God’s mercy is omnipotent. My sins may seem to ‘have laid upon me,’ God can rescue me from their grip. They are a film on the surface of the deep ocean of His love. My sins may be as the sand which is by the seashore, innumerable, the love of God in Jesus Christ is like the great sea which rolls over the sands and buries them. My sins may rise mountains high, but His mercies are a great deep which will cover the mountains to their very summit. Ah! my sin is enormous, God’s mercy is inexhaustible.[3]

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[1] Alexander MacLaren, Two Innumerable Series, Expositons of Holy Scripture: Old Testament, © 2006, Parsons Technology, Inc.

[2] Suggested alternate meaning by Strong’s Concordance

[3] Ibid.