Getting the BIG Picture

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies, hear my prayer.  Listen, O God of Jacob.   (Interlude)  O God, look with favor upon the king, our shield!  Show favor to the one you have anointed.  A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else!  I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked.  For the Lord God is our sun and our shield.  He gives us grace and glory.  The Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right.  O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, what joy for those who trust in you.  Psalm 84:8-12

The enigmatic nature of God’s “plans” for my life, and your life, and the lives of each person on earth, and all of God’s created universe, have always intrigued me.  The Psalmist declares God withholds nothing “good” from those who do “right”.  That brings to mind two questions….always:

#1.  What does He mean by good?  

#2.  What does He mean by right?

The second question is (for any theologically-minded sort) a no-brainer;  doing right is simply a matter of obedience to God’s leading; we must obey, and not act like a jerk.  Right?  Well…it’s at least somewhat like that.

In the narrow focus of my life, and what I think, good comes down to stuff (a new Mustang, enough cash flow to have someone else do my yard work, and, of course, peanut butter chocolate-chip cookies, surrounded by Rocky Road ice cream); these are good things…I’ll take a second portion, please.

The rub in “goodness” and “rightness” always comes when I begin to define the boundaries in which God can move to supply what I think is good, and how much of the “right” living qualifies me to rake it all in. 

Then, just as certainly as the sun will rise in the morning, as soon as I begin to imagine all the good stuff I’m due, something terrible happens…a bill I hadn’t expected…a sickness that blows my plans out of the water…dreaming about playing third base for the Yankees (and then waking up to the reality that nobody in the eighth-decade of life has ever played in the major-leagues).

All of this is quite understandable, because we’ve all experienced some of it, to some degree.  So, how do we understand what’s good, and what’s right?  Again, as surely as I begin to answer that question, God is likely to highlight my flaws.  However, here’s (at least) a working hypothesis:

Measuring right living is a matter of how much of you that you’re willing to let go, in order to embrace Him.  It’s a matter of control; who controls your life? Measuring good things is a matter of the wider picture, determined by the answer to the first question about right living.  The synergy, or interaction of living right by surrendering to the will of God, and receiving good things, is in viewing all things that come your way as God’s good gifts by faith.  That means treasuring your life, and all the so-called good, bad, or ugly, even if it doesn’t seem so, with the understanding that God will sort it out in the long run according to His good plans for your life.  In short, measuring how right you have to live to receive good things at the hand of God, is a matter of NOT-measuring anything…it’s a matter of letting go, and trusting God.

For You Today

So, the next time that TV preacher tells you you’re gonna get a blessing if you send him $100 and pray a certain prayer with your hand resting on the TV screen, remember what the Psalmist said about bending your will towards God…then trust Him, and walk confidently through whatever the day brings!

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

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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: 

       Lenten Walk - Part 13   and   Cross Perspectives

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

Despite Wickedness

 

Friday, May 6, 2022

“As for you, O people of Israel, this is what the Sovereign Lord says:  Go right ahead and worship your idols, but sooner or later you will obey me and will stop bringing shame on my holy name by worshiping idols.  For on my holy mountain, the great mountain of Israel, says the Sovereign Lord, the people of Israel will someday worship me, and I will accept them.  There I will require that you bring me all your offerings and choice gifts and sacrifices.  When I bring you home from exile, you will be like a pleasing sacrifice to me.  And I will display my holiness through you as all the nations watch.  Then when I have brought you home to the land I promised with a solemn oath to give to your ancestors, you will know that I am the Lord.  You will look back on all the ways you defiled yourselves and will hate yourselves because of the evil you have done.  You will know that I am the Lord, O people of Israel, when I have honored my name by treating you mercifully in spite of your wickedness.  I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!”  Ezekiel 20:39-44

The Sovereign Lord is the Creator of the universe.  Despite the wickedness of His chosen people, Israel, God was not only willing to forgive, He promised it as a matter of prophetic certainty.  In all prophetic utterance, by prophets, apostles, and metaphorical stories[1], there is typically a current application, AND a future expectation.  We often miss that, because we cannot see the future, even 5 minutes ahead.  It’s like two mountains, the closer one (our current day) larger than the one behind it (the future prediction).  We are at ground-level, so to speak.  Our sight is limited.  Prophetic utterance is God, the Creator of time and space, and is therefore not governed by either time, or space.  God is above time and space (as a helicopter hovering above the two mountains), and He can see what we cannot.[2]  When the God above speaks, we who ARE governed by time, space, and the expectations of their Creator, should pay attention.

God reminded Israel of their wickedness, worshipping idols out of a fear of not fitting-in with the surrounding cultures, and dishonoring their calling to be God’s special chosen ones to proclaim God’s love to the world.  But the warning threat of accountability also came with a prophecy that they would get past the regret of despising their own sins, to be forgiven and restored to right relationship with God.

In our 21^st century culture there is enough identifying with ungodly culture going on (even in the church) to be like a second-mountain behind the first (of Ezekiel’s time).  The church of the third millennium is no different than the first two-thousand years…we leave our first-love of Jesus in the dust like the church at Ephesus which apostle John wrote about in Revelation 2:1-5.  There was also a prophetic warning in that message.

For You Today

Prophecy isn’t about sensationalism, or all about God getting even with us for our wickedness.  Prophecy is God’s despite of our wickedness to proclaim the love and providence of our Lord for lost and wayward sheep.  It’s an open invitation to come back to the purpose for which we were created…an intensely intimate relationship with a God who loves us supremely.

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

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

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[1] Some consider, for instance, Adam and Eve, Jonah, and other accounts of miracles and historical events to be “fictional stories” told to make God’s point.  I leave that to the reader’s conscience.  Prophecy is not a metaphor, however; all of God’s word is His promise (and warning).

[2] His thoughts and ways are immeasurably higher – see Isaiah 55:9

Boldly

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Tuesday, October 9, 2018

The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures.  They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus.  But since they could see the man who had been healed standing right there among them, there was nothing the council could say.  So they ordered Peter and John out of the council chamber and conferred among themselves.  “What should we do with these men?” they asked each other.  “We can’t deny that they have performed a miraculous sign, and everybody in Jerusalem knows about it.  But to keep them from spreading their propaganda any further, we must warn them not to speak to anyone in Jesus’ name again.”  So they called the apostles back in and commanded them never again to speak or teach in the name of Jesus.  But Peter and John replied, “Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him?  We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard.”  The council then threatened them further, but they finally let them go because they didn’t know how to punish them without starting a riot.  For everyone was praising God  for this miraculous sign—the healing of a man who had been lame for more than forty years.  As soon as they were freed, Peter and John returned to the other believers and told them what the leading priests and elders had said.  When they heard the report, all the believers lifted their voices together in prayer to God:  “O Sovereign Lord, Creator of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them—you spoke long ago by the Holy Spirit through our ancestor David, your servant, saying, ‘Why were the nations so angry?  Why did they waste their time with futile plans?  The kings of the earth prepared for battle; the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Messiah.’  “In fact, this has happened here in this very city! For Herod Antipas, Pontius Pilate the governor, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel were all united against Jesus, your holy servant, whom you anointed.  But everything they did was determined beforehand according to your will.  And now, O Lord, hear their threats, and give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word.  Stretch out your hand with healing power; may miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”  After this prayer, the meeting place shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Then they preached the word of God with boldness.  Acts 4:13-31(NLT)

In a Scripture passage one thought usually grabs me and says:  HEY; pay attention here!  That attention-grabber in the opening sentence is the boldness of Peter and John to heal a man in the name of Jesus.  And that boldness got them in trouble with the religious leaders.  But, at the end of the passage that boldness spreads to all the disciples, and they began proclaiming Jesus with that same boldness.  That which gets you in trouble with earthly leaders is often that which unleashes heaven’s power.  Boldly – that’s how the early church served God, and that’s how God grew the early church.

From a human perspective the odd thing about the church growing is that God seems to grow churches (and humans) in the most unusual and difficult circumstances.  It’s completely upside-down from what we’d do.  

Consider this little flower (or weed…hey, I’m not a gardener).  It is growing out of the side of a brick wall in the middle of a city.  I was at First United Methodist Church in Gastonia, NC, several years ago for a conference.  It was lunch break, and I was headed to the Fellowship Hall on the lower level, and this little green growth jumped on my eyes like Peter’s boldness before the religious leaders.  My immediate thought was:  The soil in my yard is like clay fired in the kiln…hard as nails, and twice as rusty…but how in the world does a flower grow in a brick wall in the middle of a city?

And it hit me just as hard that God already gave us the answer to that:

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)

Churches, like flowers growing out of the side of a brick wall, may be small or large, city, country, or suburban, formal or free-style, denominationally-connected, or independent, charismatic or the frozen chosen; mostly all of that is culture and choice.  Some may grow, while others die like a weed sprayed with Round-Up™.  Some may be trying valiantly to hold-on, barely keeping the doors open, while others seem to blossom with little effort visible on the surface. 

One thing is certain; the church God uses to accomplish His mission will be found in every one of the categories the experts use to try to explain the movement and ways of God.  But, apart from the Spirit of God, how can you explain anything God does?  And apart from boldness to proclaim the Gospel like Peter and John, and all the other early church disciples, how could you expect to find the Spirit of God in any of those places?

For You Today

Whatever you are trying to do for God, make sure you go about it…. boldly!

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

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[1] Title Image: Photo by Russell Brownworth

Remnant

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Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Concerning the Gentiles, God says in the prophecy of Hosea, “Those who were not my people, I will now call my people.  And I will love those whom I did not love before.”  And, “Then, at the place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”  And concerning Israel, Isaiah the prophet cried out, “Though the people of Israel are as numerous as the sand of the seashore, only a remnant will be saved.  For the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth quickly and with finality.”  And Isaiah said the same thing in another place:  “If the Lord of Heaven’s Armies had not spared a few of our children, we would have been wiped out like Sodom, destroyed like Gomorrah.”  Romans 9:25-29^(NLT)

In teaching the Roman believers (who were non-Jewish) about God’s choice to include them in His Kingdom, Paul quoted Hosea, who went so far as to name one of his kids Not My People.  (Wouldn’t that be a hard answer when your name is called at school?)  This was God’s way of showing everybody that man’s opinions only go so far. 

Israel had a conventional set of nationalistic wisdom which included an arrogant view that JHWH’s plans only included Jews.  Gentiles might become Jews by ritual and obedience…but unless you did it their way your soul was only more fuel for the fires of Hell.  To that God said (to put it theologically) fooey!

And, to boot, God then instructed everyone to look at the vastness of the Jewish population; there were as many Jews as the grains of sand on a beach, but only a remnant…just a small percentage would be saved.

So what’s the point?

I’m glad you asked.  The point is for we, who are not of the chosen nation Israel, late-arrivers in God’s plan, Gentiles, grafted-into God’s vineyard, to not get uppity!   For the last two thousand years the church has proclaimed the Kingdom of God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ; we preach His death and resurrection and coming again as God’s truth and way for all to be saved. 

The church began as a Jewish sect (remember Peter, James and John were not born in Indiana), and over time the rift between Synagogue and Sanctuary grew wider, each clinging to the belief that they held the only way to God.

The reminder here against uppity-ness is that exclusivism is dangerous.  Man may propose, but it is God who disposes[2]!  We may think we have it all right, but the final disposition of what is actually right rests in the hands of Almighty God.

The Jews imagined it was God and them against the world.

The church can fall into that same trap, thinking it is the elect, the sanctified ones of God against all those evil people.

In reality God is for the world!  Hear it from the words of Peter the fisherman, one who knew Christ on a closer personal level than most:

He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.  2 Peter 3:9b^(NLT)

While most of the world scurries around figuring out their theology and their place in the kingdom, on the left or right of God’s throne, and how many others besides them might be in the remnant, God is probably shaking his head at why we can’t love each other enough to concentrate on sharing the Father’s desire for everyone to come home.

For You Today

It would be a good thing to spend this day ignoring the differences between us and the people we meet today…and concentrate on the eternal soul of each person you encounter.  See that person as one for whom Christ died!

Speak accordingly, love unselfishly, and hear God call that person, my people!

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

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy Pixabay.com

[2] The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis

Reaction Time

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Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Teach me your ways, O Lord, that I may live according to your truth!  Grant me purity of heart, so that I may honor you.  Psalm 86:11^(NLT)

Third base is affectionately known as the hot corner.  When a right-handed hitter hits a screamer at the third baseman there isn’t much time to think; you simply react.  You react according to the coaching you’ve received and the training you’ve done.  I know this from some painful and embarrassing experience!  The embarrassing experience came in a high school game against our arch rival.  Their third baseman launched a rocket off his bat that kissed the ground as it skipped right between my feet and into the outfield!  I was frozen in time; hardly saw it!  The painful experience was years later in a church softball game.  One of our board members hit a preacher-seeking missile towards third base.  Unlike the one in high school, this one found its target, my right ankle.  The blood clot that ensued meant three days in the hospital.  Never did find out why that board member didn’t like me!

Much like the action/reaction nature of sports are the moral and ethical dilemmas of this life which come at you broadside, blind-side and all-sides.  David prayed for God to teach him God’s ways so he could make decisions that were according to God’s truth.   He wanted a clean heart, pure enough so he would recognize the blackness of sin when confronted with a choice between righteousness and evil.

That’s a good prayer, but how does that play out in real time?

Several ways:

·       In school – you have a teacher who is loose on security, so you’re tempted to cheat on that chemistry test because you didn’t study.

·       At work – you underestimated the cost of that project, but you could make up the shortfall by getting sub-standard materials that would be buried; nobody would know.

·       Shopping – the clerk didn’t realize she had put a $100 bill in with the $1’s and she gave it to you by mistake with your change.

There are something like twenty-six gazillion other possibilities that can swamp you in a wave of unethical, immoral, and unlawful temptations.  And the worst are those which come silently and quickly, with little time to think. 

That’s why you pray David’s prayer early for God to teach your heart His ways, so when the reaction time calls for an immediate decision, it will be the ways of God’s truth that win the day. 

For You Today

A pure heart stays pure when you let God’s ways handle the hot ones that come from broadside, blind-side, and all sides.

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

NOTES

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[i] Title Image: Pixabay.com