I AM; You ARE

[1] 

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

“I, yes I, am the one who comforts you.  So why are you afraid of mere humans, who wither like the grass and disappear?  Yet you have forgotten the Lord, your Creator, the one who stretched out the sky like a canopy and laid the foundations of the earth.  Will you remain in constant dread of human oppressors?  Will you continue to fear the anger of your enemies?  Where is their fury and anger now?  It is gone!  Soon all you captives will be released!  Imprisonment, starvation, and death will not be your fate!  For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea, causing its waves to roar.  My name is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.  And I have put my words in your mouth and hidden you safely in my hand.  I stretched out the sky like a canopy and laid the foundations of the earth.  I am the one who says to Israel, ‘You are my people!’”  Isaiah 51:12-16

When God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush[2] it was in answer to Moses’ question as to the Lord’s name; God answered, I AM.  A name presupposes and proclaims existential character.  If I say I am carpenter, you already know I build things, and probably have leathery hands from doing battle with wood.  You know my eye will run to the plumb and level of things and I’ll take the time to measure twice and cut once.  In the same way, when you hear I AM, the existential nature of God revealing God sets up a battle of faith.  God’s name declares eternality.  He was before anything (in any sense of linear thought).  He is above all in any sense of moral or ethical consideration.  His sovereignty over the universe and all it holds is not bought, grabbed, or coronated by grant or permission; He simply IS!  And with that simple declaration, the struggle for faith is on; you either believe…or you don’t!

Enter Isaiah, a prophet to a disobedient Jewish nation.  They were a people who declared faith in that I AM God as their God, yet, they kept wandering away from Jehovah.  Their faith was (as Vance Havner used to say) fickle at first and fizzling at the finish.

And yet, God wasn’t done with them.  As the nation languished in the shame and pain of a national thrashing at the hands of enemies who would brutally massacre many thousands and enslave the rest in cruel bondage, God speaks through the prophet words of comfort; The I AM says to them, You ARE.  To a disobedient, sinful people God speaks existential reality of unbroken relationship.  They may have been facing an extinction event politically, but their God would hold true to His promises, that they would never be exterminated; punished, yes…but always held fast in the grip of I AM’s love.

For You Today

Sometimes you might feel like Israel, abandoned to the predators of life.  And, truth be told, you sometimes might BE Israel, having had a crisis of faith, punctuated by wandering in the far country.  But you always ARE; you are His creation and the object of His unfailing love.  The I AM says so!

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

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

[2] Exodus 3

Never-Ending Sins

[i][ii]

Good Friday, April 19, 2019

“This is the new covenant I will make with my people on that day, says the Lord:  I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”  Then he says, “I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.”  And when sins have been forgiven, there is no need to offer any more sacrifices.  Hebrews 10:16-18

Have you ever known people who treat their sins as if they’re in a revolving door of guilt that keeps coming around?  It may have been something said or done in 1935, but it is as fresh as the morning dew, come around to haunt, torture, and generally debilitate the life of Christ in that person.  It’s something of an old, annoying friend that wants to remind you that you’re so less than perfect you may as well give up trying to hear the call of God, you’re too far gone; God would never hear the prayers of someone like you.

One of the more prominent characteristics of revolving door guilt syndrome is that person’s tendency to not only dredge-up their besetting sin, they also treat your sins that way too!  Whether subtle or like a brass band on main street, you are reminded that you also are an awful sinner, and if you make it into heaven, your pinfeathers will smell like smoke!

The writer of Hebrews[iii] is quick to point out that kind of thinking is contrary to God’s ways.  When God forgives, God forgets.  What’s more, having forgiven your sin, and removed them from you as far as the east is from the west[iv] consigning them, with even the memory of it, to the depths of the sea…God has put up a sign that says NO FISHING!  Frankly, if God has declared, in keeping with His holy nature, that forgetting forgiven sins is holy, who are we to drag them up again?  Neither yours, nor anyone else’s!

For You Today

Good Friday is a time to focus on the cross.  Well, let’s do that!  What the cross accomplished is something you can’t…namely getting forgiveness.  And when God responds to a humble prayer of confession, that sin is history.

If you’re going to live-into God’s promise of forgiveness, it’s time to claim that promise every time the revolving door of guilt tries to come ‘round again.  Don’t get on that treadmill.  You’ll only tend to pull others with you; then you’ll have the mess of your own guilt, as well as judging others!

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

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[i] Title Image:   Revolving Door via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

[iii] Many scholars accept the Apostle Paul as author

[iv] Psalm 103:12

The Everlasting Arms

[1]

Friday, July 27, 2018

You need not be afraid of sudden disaster or the destruction that comes upon the wicked, for the Lord is your security.  He will keep your foot from being caught in a trap.  Proverbs 3:25-26^(NLT)

The hymns we sing come back to haunt us sometimes; their theology is sound, but our sometimes weak (and only wishful) application of that theology is shaky at best.  One of those hymns got me a few weeks ago.  The hymn in question is one I have sung often since I first heard it as a child:  Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.  What stung me is the faulty way I have clung to the chorus of that hymn:

Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms;

Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.[2]

“Safe and secure” is a basic human need and desire; we all want to be safe, protected from the boogie man lurking in the closet, or under the bed.  But the fact remains we do not live in a world where that kind of peaceful security is the norm.  Just ask Job.  If anyone could have expected his borders were going to remain secure, it was the rich, respected man from Uz.  But Job’s life fell apart in an afternoon; health, wealth, family, position in the community, and even his clear skin were covered with violence and boils – the man lost everything.  It certainly seems like the destruction that comes from the wicked won out there; where were the everlasting arms that day?

And what about all the times YOU prayed for something – and that something never materialized? 

And what about those fires in California, mudslides in Indonesia, and all the murders?  What about Alzheimer’s, cancer, and the all the creeping-up that old age does on you?  Why do children die in their cribs, and serial killers get to live in prisons we pay for…or, worse…just get away with it?  Why?  Everlasting arms…really?

It becomes abundantly clear how misleading the hymn can be when we apply the thought of God’s care and protection to our lives merely from the point of what WE humans think we need, or worse, what we think we WANT.

Back to a couple of weeks ago when I was pondering this gap in my theological garment, as to why bad things happen if God is really on the job.  My DVR is set to record Dr. David Jeremiah while I’m at church on Sundays, and one day that week Elizabeth and I sat down to watch the recorded message.  The sermon was one in a series from Ecclesiastes, so he was preaching on this enigma of how God can claim He’s looking out for us, and yet, such terrible stuff happens.  And this meddling preacher jumped right into the chink in my thinking.  Here’s what he said:

You will never find security in the things God does, only in WHO God IS.  God is consistent in His nature, but totally unpredictable in what He does.[3]

Now that sounds contradictory; if God is loving, shouldn’t his actions be the same?  If God is patient with us, why not just hold off all the bad stuff till we get our act together?    Why don’t the everlasting arms keep all alarms away?

Well, that’s a good question, for which I still don’t have the answer, but suffice to say, I don’t need the answer yet.  Like Job, who questioned God’s motives about all his problems, and got an answer he wasn’t ready enough, or big enough to handle, God said:  Little man, you can’t see from up here where I see; chill out, I’m on your side.

If you need a Scripture verse to hang that on, here it is:

For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.  Isaiah 55:9^(NLT)

For You Today

The bottom line is always that the everlasting arms are always on the job, and we can trust in God to keep us from harm; it’s just that we can’t see those arms when they’re busy wrapping around us, keeping the real hounds of hell at bay.  Keep your eyes higher than your problems; that’s where the real action is!

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

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, Elisha A. Hoffman & Anthony J. Showalter, 1887

[3] Dr. David Jeremiah, Turning Point Broadcast, July 11, 2018

Light Has No Shadow

[i]

Friday, July 29, 2016

There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.  Proverbs 16:25^(NLT) 

If I have heard it once, I’ve heard it countless times, a theology of who God is, based on some wishy-washy figment of somebody’s imagination.  It goes something like this:  The God I know would never send people to Hell, or Jesus never said anything about smoking marijuana being wrong, or, yada, yada, yada….

Then comes the brilliant analysis which reveals WHY the person feels that way; they are trying to construct a god to fit what they think, so they don’t have to live like Scripture’s true God demands.

It’s that simple!

We want what we want, and we don’t want anyone to interfere with how we live. 

And we tend to convince ourselves we’re right.  Every time a Bible verse contradicts the way we want to live, we are willing to listen to any explanation of that verse which gets us off the hook and lets us do what we want.  And the enemy is quite willing to produce a friend or acquaintance who will suggest that explanation from his vast Biblical knowledge gained in a week at VBS 30 years ago.

Fact:  Biblical ignorance, no matter how eloquently stated, and no matter how culturally acceptable, is still ignorance.

Another fact:  For those who would try to say something about who God is, it would behoove them to actually study Scripture objectively, with ethical integrity. 

This is necessary for two reasons:

1.     It saves you from saying a whole lot of stupid things.

2.     You will meet God when you search for him with your whole heart[ii] and your heart will be changed. 

And you will know the truth about God, and it won’t be from a friend who only thinks he’s right, but in fact is heading down the path of destruction.  You’ll be hearing it ring true within, as the Holy Spirit speaks words of strength and encouragement to your soul.

Jesus told his disciples this very thing:

The Spirit alone gives eternal life.  Human effort accomplishes nothing.  And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.  John 6:63^(NLT)

For You Today

There’s a lot of stuff being kicked around about life and what’s right and wrong.  Make sure your source is dependable; eternal life is not a trifle kind of thing.

In the nature of God there is no shadow, no darkness at all. 

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

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NOTES

[i] Title Image: By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] Jeremiah 29:13

Righteous and True

Friday, January 16, 2015

And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb:  “Great and amazing are your deeds, Lord God the Almighty!  Just and true are your ways, King of the nations!  Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name?  For you alone are holy.  All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed.”   Revelation 15:3-4  (NRSV)

The Revelation of Jesus Christ contains many scenes of worship in heaven.  This one has seven angels poised to deliver the final seven plagues of judgment on earth.  The angels are standing-by as martyred saints praise God for His holiness.  And that holiness is extoled on the basis of the “justness” and “truth” of God’s character.

The holiness of God is framed by these two powerful words, “just” and “true”.  Both of those words are forever on trial among humans.  It’s not just that human beings doubt a truly just God; humans also accuse Him of trickery and sadism, torturing us for sport.  If that were so, it would be the opposite of righteousness and truth.

In the final analysis it matters little what humans hold as an opinion of God, for God is who He is, just and true.  Scripture declares he is just (righteous, always acting within the loving confines of pure motive) and true – always consistent with his loving nature.

An old expression I count true is you have to choose what hill you’re willing to die-on.  There are a few things worth dying for; among them is truth. 

Many years ago a man whom I did not recognize came to me after a worship service and told me he was considering joining the church.  He invited me to visit at his home that week.  We set a time and I went that next day.  Upon entering the home he welcomed me and gave me the grand tour of his “wall of fame”.  On the wall were no less than 50 pictures of himself and important people – government officials, sports figures and well-known preachers.  Next to each picture was a letter of commendation or certificate of completion, accreditation or high praise from music seminars or churches where he had “run” the music program.

Having been duly informed of just what a magnificent person I was privileged to be visiting, the man launched into his agenda for our meeting.  He told me that with all his musical training and awards he was just what I needed.  He knew our music person had left the church and we needed his help.  He told me that he and thirteen other families had just left another church and they liked our church; they would all be willing to join if I guaranteed that I would make him the music director.

I could probably write a book on the feelings and thoughts that raced through my mind at that moment.  But the one thing that stands out vividly after all these years is a picture I had of a smoke-filled back room where booze flows, deals are cut and careers launched.  It is the place where, political agendas are underwritten and power is wielded.  It is the place where deception meets opportunity and the truth is murdered.

I’d like to tell you I told the man to “stick it in his ear” – but all I could think of to say was “I’ll think about it.”  In reality, I think that’s what I said; I just wasn’t at all prepared for what I saw and heard, and all I wanted to do was go home and take a shower.

I did call the man the next day and told him I thought he had the wrong church in mind.  He muttered something about my heritage as he slammed the phone in my ear.  I never heard from him again. 

Needless to say, none of the other thirteen families joined our church either.  And the only bad feeling I had about the whole experience was I was certain that group would join (and probably wreck) some other church. 

It wasn’t hard to come to that decision; some other decisions about truth are harder.

For You Today

You will be faced with a truth-decision today, just like any other day in our deception-filled and fallen world.

Make sure you side with the One who is righteousness and truth!