As I look back on my life, it occurs to me that God has led me on an unusual journey. For a missionary, I have an odd work history. It’s a history that has taken me many years to appreciate. I was raised on a small dairy farm. I studied music. I have worked in construction, as a prison guard, and for the last 33 years as a missionary—things that, on the surface, have absolutely nothing in common. But it has allowed me to work in a lot of different contexts with many very different people. Over time, I have come to appreciate that this unusual background has allowed me to see some things I may have never noticed had I lived a different life.

One of these observations will be the subject of today’s discussion. Today, I want to think about thankfulness. We were probably all taught to say thank you as children. But thankfulness is more than being polite or pleasant. It changes us, and everyone we meet, and this change is for the better—much better.

It may seem overblown to suggest that something as simple as thankfulness could have so much power. But after many years of experience with people from all over the world, I am more sure of this truth every day. Thankfulness changes everything.

Thankfulness and Joy

Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.

Thankfulness changes our focus. It changes our focus from ourselves to God and others. This in itself is healing because self-focus is the root of discontent, resentment, bitterness, depression, and ultimately - despair. Thankfulness causes us to focus on what we have rather than what we lack. It is a constant reminder that we are wholly dependent on God, every moment, even for our very existence. God is our Creator and sustainer, and He is our hope for the future. Thankfulness releases joy, and joy is healing. Joy is also contagious.

Have you ever met someone and walked away feeling happier and more alive? Have you ever had the exact opposite experience? Think about it: what was different about those experiences? I can almost guarantee that the life-giving experience included thankfulness and the draining experience did not.

I understand that there can be a sort of perverse pleasure in running down everything and everyone. But in the end, you feel empty and alone with a vague(or not so vague) sense of guilt and shame. An unthankful heart is toxic and malignant. Consider Paul’s words in Romans:

For although they knew God,

Thankfulness, on the other hand, leaves you feeling hopeful and alive. Thankfulness revives and strengthens our souls. Thankfulness gives us hope, and hope changes our attitude and actions. Hope gives us strength to help others and look to the future. Thankfulness brings hope, and both are contagious. Imagine a world that hoped in God instead of the futile imaginings of humanity. Imagine a world where people used their words to lift instead of crush. We can do something about this; we can do more than simply imagine it. We can be carriers of hope to this world, and it can start today.

This Week

We can be thankful because there is much to be thankful for. God has forgiven us and adopted us into His family forever. The temporary problems of this world are nothing in comparison. Paul tells us in Romans 8: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Thankfulness reminds us of this eternal perspective: this life is not all there is. Even on our worst days, there is always so much to be thankful for. Thankfulness is not “fake it till you make it;” it is recognizing the reality of what God has done and will do. This week, let’s practice thankfulness. Write down your blessings and rehearse them. Share your thanks and hope with someone else, and you will learn the secret of thankfulness.

I will leave you with some encouragement from scripture.

Why are you cast down, O my soul?

Have you not known? have you not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary?

Have a great week!

Last week, we talked about the soil of our lives and how we should respond to the grace of God by adding certain virtues to our lives, thus bearing fruit for God. This week, I want to return to the topic of our work vs God’s work. Last week, I looked primarily at our response to the grace of God, adding virtue to the grace in thanksgiving. But I want to be clear: as hard as any farmer works, no farmer ever caused a plant to bear fruit. The fruit comes only from God. Farmers prepare and maintain the conditions necessary for God to do His work.

Metaphors are powerful but can easily be misunderstood and even abused. So, I didn’t want to leave this subject without looking again at God’s work in our fruitfulness. In my life, I’m prone to bounce back and forth between complacency and trying to do everything myself. When I’m complacent, I hate myself, and when I’m trying to do what only God can do, I’m frustrated and discouraged.

Today, hopefully, we will all get a little closer to finding that balance between trusting God’s work and our response to His gifts. Let’s begin with a familiar passage from Galatians.

But the fruit of the Spirit is

This passage begins with the word ‘but.’ Which means this is the second half of a thought. The first half of this proposition described the “works of the flesh.” These “works of the flesh” are contrasted in this section by the “fruit of the Spirit.” The contrast between these phrases gives us our first clue to understanding the relationship between our work and God’s.

Works of the flesh have their source in our lower nature. They are products of our sinful and fallen nature, fostered by our insatiable physical desires. If you go back and read the list of these fleshly works, every item will sound very familiar. These works surround us in this fallen world because these desires drive the world.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit has a different source. These things are not the fruit of our efforts or desires. They are the fruit of the Spirit of God working in and through us. When we see these things at work in us, we can know and be encouraged that God’s Spirit is at work and bearing fruit. Let’s read on for some final thoughts.

If we live by the Spirit,

In these last two lines, we see where the work of God and our response to His work come together. As we saw in 2 Peter last week, the Spirit is a gift and does what we could never do on our own. But, we need to keep in step with the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is the product of cooperation between the good soil and the good seed.

We rest in God's grace and trust that He will finish what He began in us, but He will not force us to do anything. Walking the Way is not a passive exercise. God empowers us to do what we could never do without Him, but in the end, we still need to do things to bear fruit. God’s grace has been poured out with an end in mind, and that end is seeing His grace brought to the world. We are His chosen vessels to carry that grace. We are not potted plants. God gave us legs and arms.

This Week

This passage begins with encouragement to “walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” It ends with the encouragement to “keep in step with the Spirit.” When we do, the Spirit will have all that He needs to grow and bear fruit in our lives and in the lives of those He sends us to today.

Paul gives us one last warning in this passage. We are never more vulnerable than when we are doing well. Knowing this, Paul closes this passage with a reminder to avoid conceit, provocation, and envy. The Spirit empowers us to do what we could never do on our own, but it does not prevent us from falling back into our old ways. Fruit is delicious, but any number of things can spoil it.

This week, let’s encourage each other to “love and good works”, allowing the Spirit of God to grow His fruit in us so that we can share His gifts with others through the virtues we discussed last week.

Have a great week!

Jesus once told a parable of a sower. This sower went out to sow and spread his seed on four different types of soil. Only the seed that fell on the good soil bore fruit, and it bore a lot of fruit. Whenever I read that story, I want to be that good soil. But do I have any control over what kind of soil I am? Peter seems quite convinced that our fruitfulness does have something to do with us. In today’s passage, he teaches us how to be fruitful in the grace that God has freely given us.

2Peter 1:3-4

Peter starts by describing the gift of God’s grace in great detail. God has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. And this gift comes to us through the knowledge of him who called us. But we are not just called. We are called to something. We are called to his glory and excellence. Supporting this calling, he has given us precious promises through which we can become partakers of the divine nature and escape the corruption that is in the world.

The implication in all of this is that we now have the resources to do something that, prior to receiving these gifts of God, we could not do. There are many Christian slogans that we need to be careful with. Because, like all slogans, they are very limited in scope and context. They have to be, to be good slogans. For example, “There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more than He already does.” This is true, of course, but incomplete. In the parable of the sower, the sower had a reasonable expectation of the seed growing and bearing fruit. In the parable of the talents, the master expected a return on his investment.

So the question is not, what can I do to make God love me? He already does. Or, what can I do to make myself acceptable to God? Jesus has already done that, too. The question is, “What can I do to thank Him?” What can I return to God for His unspeakably generous gifts to me? Peter gives us some help with this question.

2Peter 1:5-9

Peter tells us that because we have been given such gifts, we must make every effort to build on them. Adding these virtues is the key to being effective and fruitful. This is our thanks - and our worship.

To lack in these virtues means we have forgotten our forgiveness in Christ. We have become blind to the value of the gifts God has provided for us. Paul comes to a similar conclusion in Romans 12:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God,

In light of the grace we have received, what can we do but offer our lives back to God as worship? But this sacrifice is not some mystical experience. Paul immediately gives this advice a very practical spin. We must be transformed in our thinking. And our new thinking must be tested(put into practice) to know God’s will and discern what is good, acceptable, and perfect. The testing Paul is describing is doing things. We are to do things in response to the gifts that we have been given.

So grace was not given to be passively received. It was given to change us, our thoughts, and our behavior. The precious seed of God’s grace has been planted in all of us to bear fruit for God. Our transformed lives are the purest worship.

Paul sums this up again in his letter to the Ephesians.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus

So this week, let’s take Peter’s advice and build on the grace that has been freely given us. Let’s find ways to express our thanksgiving to God in our love for others. And I will leave you with the same encouragement Peter gave in our first passage.

2Peter 1:12[ESV]

We have been given everything we need for life and godliness! We can afford to be generous, bearing fruit for God through our love for others.

Have a great week!

Last week, we looked at how Jesus responded when interrupted on a very important journey. He stopped to heal and affirm a woman with a long-term illness while on his way to heal the dying daughter of a desperate father. This story deeply challenges me because I know how I feel when I am interrupted. Especially when I think I am doing something “important.”

The world we live in often leaves us feeling harassed and anxious. It can leave us feeling desperate to take control of our lives and bring them into order. I feel like this a lot. But sometimes, maybe more often than I am comfortable with, these interruptions have another source. And I think this is especially true when those interruptions are people. Sometimes, these “interruptions” are not interruptions at all. They are brought to us by God himself, just like the desperate woman from last week’s story.

Today, I will look at another story that stopped me short and caused me to reflect a bit on my assumptions about “time management,” “personal priorities,” and “self-care.” It caused me to re-think what “walking the way of Jesus” really looked like for the disciples and what it might look like for me today. And by today, I really do mean today, as in this actual day.

To set up today’s passage, it is important to understand that it begins just after Jesus has been informed that Herod has beheaded his cousin John the Baptist for the most outrageous reason imaginable. Matthew picks up the story from there:

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself.

Jesus understandably wants some time alone with his Father to process the loss of his cousin and contemplate the evil that brought about his insane and gruesome death. His instinct to find a quiet place to pray and process is not only correct but important in a time like this. However, it was not to be.

But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

Despite his feelings and even needs, Jesus had compassion for them and healed them. On what was likely the worst day of Jesus’ life to date, a day when he wanted nothing more than to take some time to process the loss of family, he saw the suffering of others and put their good ahead of his own.

Wait… what?

Everything I have ever been told or taught about grief and suffering is screaming at me right now, saying Jesus did the wrong thing. But is that right? It was a very costly thing for him to do, to be sure, but was he wrong to do it? Here, we have to be careful how we judge. The compassion that Jesus showed the sick that day is the same love he showed us all at the cross. Instead of spending his remaining energy trying to heal his own wounds, he uses it to heal others. That is love.

But this story does not end there. His disciples were with him, and they knew John. They were grieving and hurt and very likely frightened as well by such a vicious attack on a godly man for the most trivial reasons. Imagine you’re with him that day and consider what happens next:

Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”    (Matthew 14:13-16 ESV)

Everyone was tired, the people were tired, the disciples were tired, and I am sure Jesus was beyond all tired after giving of himself all day for this crowd. But he does not send them away as the disciples ask; instead, he asks the disciples to feed them. Imagine yourself as one of the disciples at this moment. You just hear that someone you loved and respected was brutally murdered on a whim, then as you went off to grieve, you were accosted by a huge crowd and, against everything you were feeling at that moment, were asked to serve them all day instead.

Now imagine when this nightmare of a day is finally ending; you are told to do the impossible and feed this crowd without the resources you need to do it. The disciples often failed in the gospels, but this is one time that they did remarkably well. They obeyed, and they served and trusted that somehow or other, Jesus was going to make all this work.

Compassion or Resentment?

We are all interrupted by other people and their needs, just as Jesus and his disciples were. This is just one of many examples in the gospels of Jesus doing miracles and healing while he was actually on his way somewhere else. The question for his disciples and us is always the same. Are we going to choose the welfare of others in these moments - or our own?

When we are busy, it is a short road from interruption to impatience, impatience to annoyance, and annoyance to resentment. But the Holy Spirit in us is asking us to choose another path. It is the path of Jesus. It is the love of Jesus in us calling us to set aside our needs for the needs of others. Remember:

Love is benefiting others at our expense.

This week, instead of assuming all interruptions are the devil, let’s consider if some of them are, in reality, opportunities sent by God to give us a chance to labor along with Jesus, even on our worst days. Do we have the strength to do this? No, but then, neither did the disciples. Jesus more than made up for what they lacked in this story. And he will do the same for us each day as we trust him and keep our eyes open for the interruptions of God.

Have a great week!

Every day, we hear statistics, and we listen to people discussing trends. People are discussed as if entire groups are a single entity. But Jesus was often surrounded by what the gospel writers euphemistically called the “crowd,” yet he somehow never failed to see the individual whose voice was being smothered by the crush and the noise.

The story today is about one such person. A person that no one even wanted to see. She had been ceremonially unclean for 12 years due to illness, making her a social outcast and “untouchable” by those who wished to remain ceremonially clean. She was lost in the crowd following Jesus. The crowd, for its part, was hoping to see something new or amazing. And Jesus was in the middle of it all, trying to help a man whose daughter was desperately ill. Today’s story picks up as Jesus is on his way to heal this man’s daughter.

And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.

You don’t have to think very hard about this story to understand that Jesus was beyond all busy and most likely very tired. I don’t know about you, but these are my two favorite excuses for not helping people, if I am to be honest. But unlike me, Jesus remains keenly aware of the people around him, and despite the current catastrophe, he took the time to restore a woman who had run entirely out of options.

The event that brought this story back into focus for me this week was a recent prayer time I was involved with. We were praying for “language groups” and “villages” that we hope to engage with over the next three years. I suddenly realized that Jesus did not see “language groups” or “villages.” He saw individual people. He loves individual people. We tend to talk in terms of group, using collective language. But Jesus heals one person at a time, ignoring the crowds. The collective impact of his healing is a knock-on effect of his love of individuals.

We are frustrated by “crime” and “unrest.” Meanwhile, Jesus redeems the repentant criminal and gives peace to the one who can find none. We often want collective results without dealing with the individual’s problems. I wonder if what we are really doing is externalizing these problems in order to externalize the solutions as well. Are we taking a “Gee, I hope somebody does something about this” attitude because we imagine(or want to imagine) there is nothing we can do to resolve such enormous problems?

This is a big deal in day-to-day living. If you are like me, the overwhelming nature of this world’s collective problems often paralyzes me and keeps me from affecting the changes I can bring about in the lives of people I interact with every day. Jesus never made this mistake. The next time you read the gospels, take note of how many times the story takes place while Jesus is on his way to doing something else. Or how many times Jesus taught and healed by way of interruption. Jesus never used a daytimer. He didn’t schedule meetings. He obeyed his father and loved all those he met along the way, including his enemies.

Today

I usually end with an application entitled “This Week,” but I think we need to be even more specific to deal with this particular issue. So what are we to do today? We will not bring about world peace by posting a Ukrainian flag on our social media profile. But we can bring a bit of peace to someone we know who is suffering. We can encourage someone with our words instead of rehearsing all the world’s problems. We can build someone’s faith with an encouraging story. And we can pray for someone who is finding it hard to hang on in difficult times.

The classic “Missionary Problem” is that supporters want to hear about nations, people groups, and revivals. But missionary work is done one person at a time. Everyone, including missionaries, loves to hear stories of or, God willing, participate in big events. But this is a crowd thing, not a Jesus thing. Jesus worked one person at a time, and so do we. The crowds got excited, but that was just about their only contribution to the gospels. Remember, those same crowds got excited a bit later and shouted, “Crucify him.”

Join me this week in looking for a few small, simple things I can do for the people God puts in my path instead of worrying about innumerable big things I have no control over. Pray that we see and respond to the person God places right in front of us. And in time, we will make a collective difference together, one person at a time.

Have a great week!

Matt 4:1-11 is the famous story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, where, after being baptized, Jesus walks off into the desert alone. But we quickly learn that he was not really alone. The devil himself soon joined him. This week, we will examine this story to learn how to follow Jesus through temptation.

There is a famous Sunday school joke where the teacher asks little Timmy, “What is the first thing you have to do to be forgiven?” and Timmy answers, “Sin!”.” Well, Timmy, it turns out that sin is not really the first step. Temptation is. We pray, and we strive to avoid temptation, and we should. There is real wisdom in avoiding unnecessary temptation. But in this episode in the life of Jesus, we see that even in solitude, and even if you’re Jesus, there is no escaping the battle with temptation. But there is a path to victory.

Why am I Being Tempted?

I mentioned that it’s wise to avoid temptation, but in this story, it almost seems that Jesus is walking straight into it. But it’s crucial to notice that Jesus was not pursuing his lower human desires into the desert. He was obeying God and following the Spirit into the desert. This observation makes His first response to the devil more understandable.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After he fasted forty days and forty nights he was famished.

His hunger was an honest hunger, not the glutton’s lust for more. It was the hunger generated by 40 days of difficult obedience.

Overcoming Physical Desire

The tempter came and said to him,

The devil, true to form, now attacks Jesus where he perceives Jesus is the weakest, His physical hunger and fatigue. He questions Jesus’ identity as the Son of God, presumably to irritate Him, and then challenges Jesus to do something about His situation. He doesn’t need to be so hungry and weak; make some food and eat it!

But Jesus maintains His focus on God rather than his hunger and refuses to do anything God has not told Him to do.

But he answered,

Overcoming Presumptuous Sins

But the devil was not done yet.

Then the devil took him to the holy city, had him stand on the highest point of the temple, and said to him,

Since Jesus made such a big deal about following every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, the devil thought fine, show me. Once again, he starts with a taunt about his identity as the Son of God, saying in effect, “God would never let His Son come to harm, so prove you are the Son of God.”

But Jesus did not fall for this kind of playground shenanigans, either.

Jesus said to him,

Jesus had nothing to prove to the devil regarding His identity, and neither should we. Jesus was content to let God be God and follow Him wherever He led.

Overcoming the Lure of Success

The devil tried one last thing, and it was both brash and subtle at the same time.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their grandeur.

This was a bold ask, and at first glance, it seems almost absurd. Why would Jesus even be tempted by such an offer? This is the subtle part. Jesus knew He was the Son of God, and He knew how hard His mission was on earth. But He also knew that at the successful completion of His mission, he would be crowned the King of Kings, the ruler of the whole world, seated at the right hand of God’s power. What the devil was offering here was a shortcut. Worship him as god, and he would, in turn, hand the world over to Jesus. No suffering, no hardship; Jesus would simply have to bow to the devil as a god. The offer was, “Worship me, and I will give you everything. There is no need to suffer.” If only the devil knew what God’s plan really was for the future. He had no idea that his opposition to Jesus was all part of the plan.

Now we do speak wisdom among the mature, but not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are perishing.

This Week

So, what are we to take away from this story? After all, we are not Jesus. These specific temptations are never going to happen to us, right? Unfortunately, we are all tempted by physical desire, prideful presumption, and the urge to cheat and take shortcuts.

We may be tempted to think, “Well, sure, Jesus passed the test; He was Jesus!” but never forget that Jesus was every bit as human as He was divine. He felt every temptation as deeply as we do. Jesus passed every test, and accordingly, He was exalted to the highest position in heaven and on earth. But because He was tempted, He knows how it feels to be tempted. He was not alone in the wilderness of temptation, nor are we. He is with us, His Spirit is in us, and His Word guides us.

We are new creations in Christ. Temptation is where this new creation is tested, strengthened, and proved. Christ in us is the hope of Glory! We may not be able to thwart all the devil’s plans, but Jesus already has, and so will we if we trust Jesus. We need to trust God rather than take matters into our own hands, trying to “make bread out of rocks,” so to speak. We have proved our weakness more than enough, but Jesus has proven His strength. In Jesus and His victory, we find ours.

Let’s find someone to encourage through their wilderness this week.

Have a great week!

Theologians and philosophers have discussed the so-called “hiddenness of God” problem for centuries. The question of God’s hiddenness or silence is typically discussed in times of trouble and suffering when our felt need for something more tangible is pressing hard on us. Today, I want to look at hearing God and experiencing God. I want to examine what it means to seek God and how we know we have found him.

Let’s begin with a line from one of my favorite Psalms: Psalm 27.

You have said,

Love seeks. I think that is one of the fundamental attributes of love. Love seeks the object of its affection. David loved God and didn’t need to be coerced to seek Him. When God said, “Seek my face,” David was only too happy to oblige. Too often, I have waited until catastrophe strikes to get serious about seeking God’s face. This kind of seeking is not born of our love for God. It is born of desperation that presumes upon the love of God. Thankfully for all of us, God deeply loves us and, like a good parent, has mercy on us even though we never genuinely deserve it. But like a parent, God does desire our love and thanks. Like any loving parent, God would rather we come to Him for the simple joy of being with Him. The most valuable things in my memory are the hugs I received from my granddaughters for no reason at all.

As Psalm 32 tells us:

Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you

The Best Time to Seek God

This psalm tells us that there is a time when God can be found. That is the perfect time to pray and seek His face. Those who seek God out of love even when they don’t “need” God (which is a terrible phrase when you think about it) have a hiding place when disaster strikes. For that person, disaster is a time to hide and rest in God because they constantly seek Him. They are prepared for disaster because they have sought and found God on the good days. They don’t imagine God to be a panic button under glass that we only break in an emergency. God is not hidden from those who pray and seek Him when He “may be found,” as the psalmist says. To those who love God, He is the constant focus of their attention.

But that is not even the best part of this relationship. Our seeking will always be limited by human frailties. But God’s seeking has no such limitations. God’s love is faithful even though our’s is often fickle.

Paul describes it this way in Romans 8:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

This Week

The Bible tells us in 1st John that we love God because He first loved us.

We love because he first loved us.

As we seek God this week, we will find Him, and the overflow of his completely undeserved love for us will flow through us to others. We love others not to earn God’s love because we already have that in Jesus. We love others as our worship and thanksgiving to God, who loves us even when we are unlovable. Let’s encourage each other in God as we walk in His love with each other this week.

Have a great week!

Today will be a guided meditation through the 24th psalm. I read this last week in my daily reading, and it stuck with me, so I thought I would share it this week with all of you. As I let this psalm soak into my soul, I started to see it as a song in three parts. It is a song of God’s glory first and foremost, but in the middle of the song rests a beautiful promise of blessing to all who respond honestly to God’s grace.

God Over All

Psalm 24 [ESV]

In Genesis, we are told that the earth was given to us to subdue and to fill. We were to take that raw and wild earth and transform the whole of it into the image God gave us in the garden. But the earth does not truly belong to us; it belongs to God. We were to be his image bearers and agents of his glory. This earth, then and now, belongs to God. Why? Because He is the earth’s creator and ours.

God created the earth and everything in it for His glory. But for God, creation is not complete, nor is His glory without us. He is a saving God to those who come to Him for help.

God’s offer of blessing

Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD?

Our clean hands and pure hearts do not earn us a place on God’s holy hill. They are the response of an honest heart that genuinely seeks God. And as they seek God honestly and with a pure heart. They receive God’s blessing and are given what they could never earn: God’s righteousness and salvation.

For years, I read this psalm as if righteousness were a mountain I needed to climb by having the cleanest hands and purest of hearts. But somehow, I managed to miss the line that says righteousness is a blessing that is given to us by God. We don’t earn it, but we need to seek it. God does not force anything on us, but to those who honestly seek Him and Him alone, he gives us the blessing of righteousness and, ultimately, His salvation.

One last thing in this second stanza is worth looking at. Besides seeking God with a pure heart and clean hands, we are told that we must not lift our souls up to that which is false. In the context of ancient Israel, I think this is a snide reference to the false gods and idolatry that were ever-present in their world. But I think this message is a timeless one. Jesus is the truth; following him is not following lies of any kind, no matter who is telling those lies. Sometimes, the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves because those are the ones that are the hardest to shake.

To all those who honestly and wholeheartedly seek God, we not only receive the blessing of righteousness, we receive eternal hope. And that hope is none other than God himself. Our actions and devotion are both the road to God and reflections of the blessing our loving God has given us in Jesus. So we have hope. Not a hope that someday we will finally get our act together, but a hope in a God who created us and the entire world we inhabit.

Our Hope

Lift up your heads, O gates!

This week

The takeaway for me this week is to keep my heart fixed on God and only God. There is no hope in this world apart from its creator and sustainer. And there is no hope for me in anything other than God. There are voices in my head and heart and a host of voices in this world that all have one thing in common: they want my attention and, far worse, my allegiance. So this week, I will seek God and God alone. Join me, and bring a friend. Only when the body of Christ is whole can we live and work in the blessedness described in this song as we all wait for the God of Glory to return with Jesus.

Have a great week!

From the start, I have determined to steer this podcast away from politics. So, I apologize if this title hints at politics; my point for today will not be political. It will be “anti-political” if that is even a term. The question of who is in charge has been eternally answered for Christians. Jesus is the king, now and forever.

However, it is easy to say, “Jesus is Lord” or “Jesus is the King of Kings,” when we are around other Christians. Today, I want to talk about what those statements look like as we live and interact with this world. When we explore the theological part of our brains, we understand phrases like “Jesus is Lord,” but as we live our lives day after day, we often find a long line of other “lords” that want to direct our actions. We are constantly tempted to seek help from the nearest tangible source.

We pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” But what are we asking for as we pray this? There seem to be two perspectives on this, one passive and one active. Are we to wait passively and pray for Jesus to return and end all of this suffering? Or are we to actively bring about this kingdom through direct action? The answer is a qualified “both.”

In Hebrews 11, we are given a list of the faithful through history, and we are told that they had one thing in common: their hope was in a future city, a future country. This country is not a man-made place. It is a place whose designer and builder is God.

For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. Heb 11:10[ESV]

…they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. Heb:11:16[ESV]

After reading this, you might think, “So it is a passive thing; we just hope in God for a better future,” but the ancient faithful did not wait passively. They did things in faith because of their hope for the future that only God can bring. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus tells us that we are to be salt and light in this world as we wait. Salt gives flavor and is a preservative, and light allows the world to see. Last week, we talked about wisdom, a wisdom from above that guides our words and directs our actions.

This week

This week, we need to resist the double temptation of becoming “bunker Christians” and doing nothing or “activist Christians” who think we can, through our efforts alone, bring about the Kingdom of God. Instead, the path of Jesus is to use each opportunity we are given to be salt and light to this world. We need to speak the truth in love and bear witness to the reality of God’s kingdom through our actions. All the while living in the hope of that better country that Jesus will bring and God will build.

There are many voices in this world that would silence us and many desires in our own hearts that would dilute and even negate our testimony of Jesus. Faith and hope in the coming city of God will give us the courage to speak and act in love when everything else argues against it. And wisdom, the wisdom from above, helps us know when, where, and how to act. This week, we need to pray for wisdom and courage so that we may all live as faithful witnesses to the reality of God’s kingdom. I will leave you with an encouragement from Paul in his letter to the Colossians.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. [Col 3:1-4 ESV]

Have a great week!

The author of Hebrews once described the word of God as a double-edged sword that is able to separate down to the soul and spirit, discerning the thoughts and intents of our hearts. Today, we will look at a passage that does exactly that; it will show us what drives our everyday decisions and actions. Once again, we find ourselves in the book of James.

Who among you is wise and understanding?

Forest Gump once said, “Stupid is as stupid does,” here, James explains that wisdom is as wisdom does as well. And what does wisdom do? It does good deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. I love the phrase “gentleness of wisdom,” being smart and being wise are two very different things. But from there, this passage takes a disturbing turn. He begins to describe another kind of wisdom, a wisdom that has a very different source. This is demonic wisdom.

James describes demonic wisdom as having two identifiers: jealousy and selfish ambition. I don’t know about you, but these would not be my top picks for the fruit of demonic wisdom. But as I think about it, I can see his point. Far more evil grows from these two desires than we often realize. From jealousy springs resentment and covetousness, which in turn breeds theft, graft, adultery, and violence. Selfish ambition is even sneakier because it can more easily disguise itself as a virtue. But self-serving ambition grows in the same soil that jealousy does. Lies, greed, covetousness, graft, adultery, and violence are never far from the person motivated by selfish ambition.

To make matters worse, the world often rewards selfish ambition; be successful, and people will line up to hear your “wisdom.” But James tells us this kind of success is a form of self-deception. Disorder and evil will be the final result of this demonic wisdom. Jesus warns us about this sort of ambition in Matthew 6:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,

The Wisdom from Above

Thankfully, James speaks of another wisdom - a wisdom from above. Look at the words he uses to describe this wisdom: Pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy, and good fruits. This is godly wisdom, not the demonic wisdom of the world.

This wisdom is outward-focused and benefits others rather than self-centered and exercised at the expense of others. The definition of love is benefitting others at my expense. The wisdom from above flows from the love of God through us to others. God is love, so it follows that His wisdom flows out from that love. If we remember this, it is not hard to discern the type of wisdom we are hearing. Does it flow from love to life? Or is it focused on selfish gain? Let’s go back a few thousand years and see what the proverbs have to say on the subject.

Blessed is the one who finds wisdom,

This Week

As we begin a new year, and in the US, an election year at that, we are facing a year of loud voices, most of which will be motivated by the self-centered, grasping, and, according to James, demonic wisdom that is the common coin of this world. We must remember that another wisdom is available from above. This wisdom leads us to be those who plant “the seed whose fruit is righteousness [that] is sown in peace by those who make peace.” Let’s be sowers of this seed regardless of the chaos surrounding us this week.

Have a great week!