Lamentations at Thanksgiving

 We as Christians have done a poor job at describing the whole of Scripture.  In fact, we have tried to make our theology a McDonalds menu of choices where we have the ability to present the love of God without His holiness, the goodness of God without His wrath.  Give me an order of the peace of God, but not the patience.  I will take an order of joy, but hold the trials.  In doing this, our theology has very little place for pain and suffering, for hardship and turmoil.  This is evident in the hymnody of our day and the seeming total absence of suffering in many of our worship songs.  Sure it might mention it in passing, but then it quickly gets to the good stuff.  Our Bible study does the same - talk about Christ who gives me strength and less about the danger and nakedness and peril we will face that cannot separate us from the love of God.  

And so we come to a holiday like Thanksgiving.  And we often do not have much we feel like being thankful for, and so we have tension in us.  

Enter the biblical place of lament - crying out to God because things are not what they ought to be.  

God has made promises to us that we are waiting for Him to fulfill.  Promises like no more crying and no more pain.  And here we are crying and in pain - we can tell Him that we are hurting and it does not make us less faithful.  We can acknowledge our cares while we cast them on Him.  We can give thanks in all circumstances while acknowledging we might want those things to go away.  Jesus did it in Gethsemane.  Paul did it with his thorn.  And we have examples of it in the Psalms and the Prophets.  So let us make use of this category of worship - Lament.  Here are a few tips:

1. Be honest.

2. Be reverent

3. Allow God to be God and acknowledge His character even when you cant see what He is doing!

And while doing those three things - tell God how much pain you are in.  He hears, cares, listens, and already knows.  We do not have to pretend to have it all together and a freedom from suffering is not the mark of spiritual maturity.  In fact, it seems that often spiritual maturity comes as a result of the suffering that we are promised!  

Election Day AKA Psalm 2 Day

 Today in the United States of America is election day.  A day when we all should get out and exercise our civic responsibility to vote and influence the future of our country.  I call it Psalm 2 day.  Why?  Let me share Psalm 2 with you:

"Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing?  The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, ' Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!' He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them.  Then He will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His fury, saying, 'But as for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain.' "  (Psalm 2:1-6, NASB)

It always seems like people panic around election time as if their candidate is the savior of the free world.  Regardless of whom you are voting for, they are not.  God is.  And God laughs when rulers and governments think they can do things apart from the leadership of God Himself. He laughs - He thinks it is funny.  He scoffs at them.  And with a word He can terrify them.  Christians would do well to remember this.  Christians would do well to remember all that God has told us in His word about what is coming and about the return of Christ.  We should be less panicked and much more concerned that Jesus is coming back and our neighbors are dying - even if they have the right political sign in their yard.  Let God handle the rulers put in place.  And remember that if your candidate does not win the vote, God is still on the throne and will be for all eternity.

To God be the glory!

Service and Sacrifice

 "There is a mind-set in the prosperous West that we deserve pain-free, trouble-free existence.  When life deals us the opposite, we have a right not only to blame somebody or some system and to feel sorry for ourselves, but also to devote most of our time to coping so that we have no time or energy left over for serving others.  This mindset gives a trajectory toward life that is almost universal - namely, away from stress and toward comfort and safety and relief."  

John Piper, 21 Servants of Sovereign Joy, Crossway, 2018, p. 256  

The book from which this quote comes is laden with stories of people who gave up comfort and ease to serve their Savior.  In fact, as you look at both biblical accounts and the accounts of men and women who served God throughout history, most all of them had troubles directly related to their faith.  Many lost the lives of ones they loved.  Many of them lost their own lives.  Since Constantine, and even more recently, since our country was founded on the premise of religious freedom, we have enjoyed a freedom from persecution that has become the norm.  We have gotten comfortable.  And with comfort there often comes apathy.  Are apathetic in our faith?  Are you so comfortable that your time is spent during hardship dealing with it rather than serving others?  Perhaps we need to refocus ourselves and understand the role that pain plays in our development!

Grace

I have been reading Jerry Bridges' book called Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God's Unfailing Love.  It is a great read and something I would recommend reading and reminding myself of on a regular basis.  I came across a passage and I wanted to share it.  In his 1991 publication, he writes on page 169 at the bottom of the page:

"This is the amazing story of God's grace.  God saves us by His grace and transforms us more and more into the likeness of His Son by His grace.  In all our trials and afflictions, He sustains and strengthens us by His grace.  He calls us by grace to perform our own unique function within the Body of Christ.  Then again by grace, He gives to each of us spiritual gifts necessary to fulfill our calling. As we serve Him, He makes that service acceptable to Himself by grace, and then rewards us a hundredfold by grace."  

How very true and what a good reminder to myself that not only am I saved by grace, but that I live empowered by grace to do the good works that Christ has enabled me to do.  (Ephesians 2:10)  How very true that grace is never done with me!  How very true that I am ALWAYS in need of grace and to be in touch with the enormous grace of God!

Jesus washed the feet of Judas

 I have always been amazed at how the gospels make it abundantly clear that Jesus knew that someone was going to betray him and that He continued to minister with Judas on his team anyway.  Most of us if we are honest are not willing to look past the knowledge that someone has betrayed us and I think if we could predict it with accuracy we would cut ties with any individual whom we knew was going to bring us harm.  And yet Jesus continued to minister alongside Judas.  He taught and Judas could hear.  He walked and Judas could follow.  And even moments before the betrayal, Jesus washes the feet of the one He knew would betray Him.  What mercy!  

I wonder if we can learn from this submission to the plan of God.  Jesus, knowing what God was accomplishing, understood that the betrayal from one close to Him was a part of what God was doing in His life to accomplish salvation for all.  To avoid or dodge this goal would have been to disallow one part of the bigger plan of God.

That is the secret to finding our way through pain - to acknowledge that in a way we may not be able to understand that the pain is a means by which God will accomplish His purposes in our lives.  If we are to avoid it or dodge it because of our own desires we may miss that which God has allowed for our good.   This is not to say that there does not come a time to part ways with those who are hurting us - Jesus does not hide or deny the truth - He in fact points it out on more than one occasion.  But He still served in love the one he knew would betray Him - for the glory of God.  And we can do the same.

What I Have Been Reading

I make it a goal each year to read at least 20 books.  Compared to some, this is probably a small number and to some it seems unattainable.  I have only failed this once since I have been making the goal (I read 19 books in 2019).  But this is not just about my reading history.  It is about what I have been reading.  I think that reading is important.  And so I keep track of what I read through reading journal. But the more I read, the more I want to read.  I want to read biographies.  I want to read theological books.  I want to read books that are fictional.  I want to read good books.  I want to read.  But the more I read the more I stand amazed at the beauty and glory of the written Word of God.  The more that I appreciate that God spoke to us through Christ and spoke to us through the Bible so that we read and learn from what has been said.  The more I read the more I want to read the Bible.

Think about all of the things we read.  We read a newspaper for news.  We read online articles to learn about what we are interested in.  We read books.  And none of the things we read guarantee themselves to be true.  The newspaper lies all the time.  They have a column dedicated to corrections in most major newspapers.  Online articles are not bound to any standard of truth.  Books can be totally fictional even if they claim to be otherwise.  These mediums are all one sided presentations by the authors or editors.  None of them would be bold enough to claim absolute truth.  And yet God says, "My Word is Truth".  (see John 17).  Only God claims to be He who does not lie.  And so we can trust His Word to be totally true.  

God's Word gives us the promise that it will not return void.  Only His book promises that it will be useful for correction and training in righteousness among other things.  

And so the more I read the more I want to read the Bible. The more that I appreciate the Bible.  So, what are you reading?  What do you want to read?

Going back to school with uncertainty

 This year has been a really odd year.  There is so much uncertainty, and in particular a lot of uncertainty surrounding how schools are going to respond this fall to the presence of a virus.  If we choose as adult to focus on this all it is very unnerving and I cannot even imagine the children adjusting to all of the changes and unknowns of what school will look like this fall.  

This is a great time to talk with your kids about the uncertain nature of the world in which we live and the very certain nature and character of God.  Our God is a God who does not change.  He is the same yesterday, today and forever.  And therefore we can have confidence and hope in Him for all time.  Our world however changes.  Our own lives are described in very temporary terms - we are a vapor, a mist that is here in one moment and gone the next.  And yet our unchanging God cares about what is happening in the midst of our uncertain lives.

Point your kids to God.  Point your grand kids to God.  Point yourself to God and realize that in the midst of all of the change, there is certainty in Him.  Take hold of that certainty and find hope!