The Road that Leads Home

 

Monday, August 24, 2020

Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you?  Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?  But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself.  For a day of anger is coming, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.  He will judge everyone according to what they have done.  He will give eternal life to those who keep on doing good, seeking after the glory and honor and immortality that God offers.  But he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness.  Romans 2:4-8

For some people, the word “home” is not a warm and fuzzy safe kind of word; it’s more like a red flag that brings painful images, memories of abuse.  It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but the truth is all too stark to ignore, and the scars won’t let you totally forget. 

My experience is just the opposite.  My parents were not wealthy; I guess you could say we were middle class, somewhere just above the poverty line.  At times we ate a LOT of potatoes because it was easier to feed a family of four that way.  One area of the Brownworth home where wealth flowed generously was in kindness.  For me, the road leading back home was always a welcome road, a place of good memories with a strong pull towards the open door.

When I think back on that I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my mind around why I rebelled against the faith that so graciously helped form that good home and childhood.  I did exactly what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman church…lived for myself, refusing to obey the truth.   

In my case this wasn’t illegal stuff, like being a bank robber or a serial killer.  Rather it was just leaving God out of my life, trying to build a little kingdom of my own.  It was my choices, my happiness, my way that mattered, not God.  I had no drive to be the next king, or president.  I just wanted to be left alone to do what I wanted to do.

What eventually turned me back to the road that leads home is also what Paul wrote, about how patiently God waits for us; it is a loving patience that doesn’t approve of willfulness, but graciously waits like the father of the prodigal son.

My goal, as a pastor, has always been to help the churches with which I’ve served create an atmosphere of gracious waiting.  What I’ve found out about that is you cannot be that unless you’re intentional about it.  It’s not easy to wait.  But, oh, how it’s worth it.  The Apostle Paul overflowed with joy and thanksgiving for the faithfulness of the people to which he’d ministered; their responding to his letters with responsible service to Christ filled Paul’s heart with grateful thanksgiving.

I think there are but two components to waiting as a loving parent:

·       Speaking Truth in Love

Paul never hesitated to tell the truth.  My parents were a study in this.  They were gracious, but never patronizing.  In the end, the road that leads back to a home worthy of wanting to go home, is never false; only truth is a worthy foundation.

·       Readiness to Welcome

Once the Apostle spoke truth, a hard truth, particularly, he was then willing to be a silent waiter – with open arms.  That waiting, hard as it is, is necessary, because, especially in my case, truth takes a while to weed-out what needs to go. 

Sometime back I bought some inferior grass and weed killer.  It made claims of being the best.  You could see some results in a few hours, but two weeks later the weeds were back.  Lesson learned!  When I paid the price of using the good stuff, it took a few days to see the results, but those weeds were evicted; they must’ve gone into witness protection, because nobody’s heard from them in a while.

For You Today

Readiness to welcome back the one who travels the road home (to God) is like using the good stuff of truth and waiting.  You want results right away, but time is required, and God is faithful. 

So, don’t be in a hurry; instead, as you wait, be in prayer.

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

VIDEO

Title image Pixabay.com ∞  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For another post on activating your faith, see The God of Equal Opportunity and

                                      While You’re Waiting for God to Answer Series:  Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4 and Part 5

 

When a Warrior Weeps

 

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Psalm 126:5-6

Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy.  They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest.

Those who care passionately about people weep.  In a previous post I wrote: 

The text indicates that the sower goes forth and bears the seed; but he also weeps over it.  Do you weep over insignificant things, or precious?  I see weeping over lost loved ones, straying prodigals, health reversals and lost fortunes.

So, why the weeping?  The sower knows the seed must die before it can produce anything worthwhile.  Jesus said that plainly:

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.  John 12:24

In that passage Jesus was predicting his death on the cross for our benefit.  It was a short time before the cross, and Jesus understood the cost of saving rebellious humankind from eternal death.  And that is why he wept in Gethsemane; Jesus was so moved with compassion for us he sweat great drops of blood.  These were the tears of his soul, longing for our redemption and squeezing every last ounce of caring for self and safety out of his system…and it was for us.

And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.  Luke 22:44

I think of presidents making unpopular decisions, knowing it might cost their political career, or personal reputation…but doing it anyway because it’s the right thing to do.

I think of a father scooping up his three-year-old from the middle of the street; the child howls with anger because she wanted to play there.  She didn’t understand the danger, so she rares back and declares to her father, I HATE YOU!

I think of a child hearing his parents, late at night, arguing in the living room…again.  And, it turns violent…again.  There is pain and blackened eyes…again; the 7-year-old cannot stay in the bed and listen….again.  So, he runs to the living room and steps between mother and father, knowing he cannot make a difference, but his weeping makes him try.

In each instance the motivation is love.  It is love that causes a president to choose the right thing over a popular thing.  It is love that makes a father act when his child puts herself in danger, and doesn’t understand.  It is love that propels even a small child to stand in protection of a battered mother.  And it was love that compelled Christ to the cross.

So, what about those seeds?  Why plant them?  Love!

There are laws of the harvest. 

          ·       You will always reap more than you sow.

          ·       You will always reap later than you sow.

          ·       You will not reap unless you sow. 

And the greatest, least popular, law is:

          ·       The harvest is greater or lesser in direct proportion to the cost to you of sowing.

Parents of prodigals sow seeds of self-sacrifice, nurture, and forbearing the immaturity of youth because of love.  And the greatest cost is loving, doing the best for the prodigal, when the cost will be the prodigal choosing the pigpen over the homeplace.  That is when a parent becomes a warrior in the prayer room, and that is when a warrior weeps.

Let’s Pray Together:

Father, we understand doing the so-called right thing is really just living the truth of love, doing the best for our neighbor, which includes the whole world, starting in our own houses with our children, parents, and kin.  Give us grace today to faithfully back up doing the right thing with our warrior’s tears.

For You Today

The joyful end of Jesus’ story of the Prodigal is separated by time in the far country’s pigpen.  It’s easy to want to jump to the last chapter; easy, not right.  Give God time and plenty of warrior’s tears to awaken your prodigal to just how bad that pigpen really smells…and how exceptionally foolish was the choice was to live there.

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 126 see World UPSIDE DOWN and Precious Seeds  

Unbroken

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Monday, January 9, 2017

Long ago you spoke in a vision to your faithful people.  You said, “I have raised up a warrior.  I have selected him from the common people to be king.  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 89:19-37^(NLT)

Covenants are sacred promises God makes, and does not break.  On the other side of the coin, unbroken is not the word that immediately comes to mind when I think of promises made by humans to God.  They’re somewhat like our New Year’s Resolutions. 

How are those resolutions going for you, by the way?  OK…sorry I asked; too painful to mention now. 

God made a covenant with Abraham, renewed it to Jacob, and sealed it as a promise to King David that Palestine would be forever the special land of Israel’s possession.  Considering Israel’s history to this day, a casual reader of Scripture would probably take exception with Psalm 89, claiming that God forgot his promise.  That claim would be wrong.

How can we say that?  At times the ongoing political machinations of humans makes it very difficult to view God’s promises being worked-out, but they are there nonetheless.  When the sun hides behind the moon in a solar eclipse, it doesn’t mean the sun has been obliterated – only obscured; something got in the way of the light.

See/hear once again from the Psalmist:

…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.  

Psalm 89:31-33^(NLT)

Punishment, or corrective action may not look like loving, but God’s motive of saving us from our sins makes no mistake.  When God works-out his promise to one person, it does not preclude dealing with the sin of another.  God’s love is as unfailing to the promises he made to David as it ever was.  But the sin of one person always muddies the waters for everyone.  A child that goes Prodigal certainly upsets the whole household. 

And dealing with the unruly child doesn’t mean that their parents love the others less; it’s simply a reality that discipline is part of loving.  The mere fact that a child has been “allowed” to go rogue is proof of what happened in Eden; we have been given free will, and God will engage with us because he loves us too much to watch us go self-destructive.

So, yes, his covenant promises still stand with Israel, and all who bow their knee to JHWH, to all who love His son, and to you and me.  Those are unbroken promises!

For You Today

The ever-present question, born of a common sense view of history, is NOT for us to ask:  why doesn’t God keep his promises; the real question is:  have we lost our minds when we don’t keep our promises to God?

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 Harry Burton (English, 1879–1940) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

No Place Before God - Part 4

[1]

Friday, February 26, 2016

VIDEO

Esau knew that his father, Isaac, had blessed Jacob and sent him to Paddan-aram to find a wife, and that he had warned Jacob, “You must not marry a Canaanite woman.”  He also knew that Jacob had obeyed his parents and gone to Paddan-aram.  It was now very clear to Esau that his father did not like the local Canaanite women.  So Esau visited his uncle Ishmael’s family and married one of Ishmael’s daughters, in addition to the wives he already had.  His new wife’s name was Mahalath.  She was the sister of Nebaioth and the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son.  Genesis 28:6-9^(NLT)

If you’ve been following with us this week, we’ve see how Esau had lots of trouble growing up emotionally and spiritually.  The maturing of Esau's spiritual backbone is first evident in his desire to be obedient.  Seeing his mother's anguish over his marital foolishness, he tries to offset his wrong.  No person can be satisfied with self-gratification as a lifestyle for very long. 

In the story of the Prodigal Son, he eventually awakened in the hog pen and had a longing for home and his father.  Not a single one of the hogs wanted to move out.  While the pigs grunted with only a full belly as their need, the pangs of hell got ahold of the Prodigal and propelled him home. 

But in Esau’s life the transformation of grace is twenty more years in the making.  (That’s a long time in the hog pen!)  We don't get the details, but from the time he makes his first step back home to the Lord by trying to soothe his mother's anguish, to the return of his brother (chapter 33), a metamorphosis happens. 

What caused the change? 

It may have been like the country doctor who had just finished delivering the farm family's tenth baby in ten years.  He was aware that the mother wasn't in good health, and they could hardly afford food on the table.  As he sat in the kitchen, the father came up to him and said, "Doc, we've had so many kids, we've plum run outa names.  I sure don't know what to call this 'un."  "If I were you," said the doctor, "I'd call it QUITS!" 

Perhaps Esau just plain "wised-up".  He began to see that his selfishness and hatred only came back on him, and God had a better way.

You will notice in the story that Esau's whole personality and outlook were changed when he was finally reunited with the brother he had once vowed to kill.  His brother Jacob (now Israel) took one look at the new Esau and exclaimed:

…what a relief to see your friendly smile.  It is like seeing the face of God!   Genesis 33:10^(NLT)

Where once there was hate, now there is love.  Where jealousy and vengeance reigned, now there is the face of God.  What can bring about a change like this? 

In 1852, in North Carolina, the conjoined twins Millie and Christina were born into slavery.  They were joined at the hip; and lived for 60 years as one person.  Their masters exhibited them at various sideshows and circus events.  When the Civil War brought freedom, Millie and Christina legally ceased to be slaves.  This new freedom changed all the legalities.  They were no more slaves.  However they still chose to exhibit themselves in the sideshows.  They had been freed from their old Masters, but they chose to continue some of their pre-freedom practices as a means of making money.

Jesus died that we might be set free.  Many people claim this freedom as a matter of legality, and then live as if nothing has changed at all. 

People like Esau decide against that.  They decide that new life in Christ means NEW LIFE!  Esau was able to run to his brother and kiss him and throw his arms around him to restore his long lost, new found friend. 

That kind of change is available to all who will come to Jesus. 

For You Today

Is that kind of freedom settled with you?

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

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[1] Title Image:  By Bertram of Minden, via Wikimedia Commons