Thursday, March 29, 2012

Luke 9


In my mind this is one of the greatest chapters in the whole Bible:  Jesus feeds the five thousand, Peter confesses Jesus as Christ, Jesus is transfigured into glorious appearance, He teaches that the least shall be the greatest, and twice Jesus foretells His upcoming persecution and death.  The chapter is rich and it has been up next on my devotional list for at least a couple of weeks now but I haven’t got around to it until today – partly because I have been avoiding it.  The Lord in His mercy has also diverted my attention to other Scriptures, but in part I have been avoiding this chapter because I knew what awaited me.  More and more I feel the Lord speaking to me, calling me to be “all in.”  100% for Jesus, as I used to say when I was sixteen years old.  Here are the words I have known have been awaiting me from the Lord.

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me.   For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake , he is the one who will save it.  For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?  For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory….”
 
This is scary but good.  Very good.  I feel His life awakening in me in a way I don’t think I have felt for many years, and with His life in me I am beginning to experience the fruit of His Spirit much more than I have in a long long time:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control.  

Monday, March 26, 2012

That the One Who Reads It May Run

It’s about time for this post.  It has been a long 6 months without running and a whole lot has happened in life in that time.  In the fall after the surgery Wyatt’s cross country season buoyed me for a couple of months, but then November and December were rather bleak as I trudged through physical therapy.  By Christmas time I was cleared by the doc to use the elliptical machine which, as bad as it is, is infinitely better than swimming!  From January 2 until the present I’ve been ramping up my work on the elliptical machine and pushing myself as much as I’ve been able, trying to put myself into a position of the best possible aerobic fitness for the first day of running, March 21. 

In the last three months I’ve been blessed to enjoy Josiah and Cade do very well in their basketball seasons, but professionally life has felt really challenging.  Some of the company leadership seems generally to believe that they know more about running than I do, and it seems I’ve had to argue and debate and defend just about every idea and thought I have uttered.  Then, after my excellent boss announced earlier this month that she is leaving, I decided that capitulation would be the best strategy for continued survival.  With my personality I don’t know if this policy is sustainable in the long run, but why take the personal risk?  At the end of the day, they write me a check to do what they tell me to do.  I think I can accept that, but the whole situation at work has been very stressful on me and on top of all that I have been locked out of running, my most potent stress-relieving drug.  Very significantly, in addition to this yet there has been marital tension and difficulty. 

Above it all, supremely above everything, has been the spiritual struggle to keep the faith.  There is so much to say in this regard, but to boil down the struggle to the key points that I believe Jesus has been trying to teach me I think these are they:

  • Lay down your pride.  Surrender your ego completely.  Bring it to the altar and let it be killed.
  • Trust Me.  If I am for you, who can be against you?
  • This struggle is spiritual, not physical.  It may be that people have hurt you; it may seem that I have been harsh with you, but your real enemies are spiritual forces of wickedness in high places, arrayed against your joy and your faith.  Do you trust Me?  How will you respond?
    • Forgive
    • Forebear
    • Release
    • Pardon
    • Show mercy
    • “Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and in due time He will lift you up.”  “Submit therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you.”
  • You need My Life in you.  More than anything else – more than My power, more than My peace, more than My joy, you need My life in you, coursing through your veins.  I am the Vine, you are the branch.  Apart from Me you can do nothing.
  • Hope!  See, I am doing a new thing, and you will be astonished at how the story will turn out. 
  • Be thankful!  What a rich man you are!

I was scared to death that my first day of running last week would reveal pain in my knee and I was scared to death about what that would mean, but thank God, He was merciful to me.  At 6 a.m. on the first full day of Spring I joined a colleague from work and took my first few tentative steps as a runner reborn, and then as we got underway with a real running stride I noticed that there was no pain in my knee.  Thanks be to Christ, the One who is healing me. 

Two Sundays ago our worship pastor shared some thoughts from the Old Testament book of Habakkuk.  His basic point from the Scripture was that God would indeed accomplish what he was going to do – sometimes we need to be patient and wait for it.  I was intrigued and have been reading the book over for the last several days.  It’s a quirk of translation [NASB] I’m sure, but this is what my eyes have been drawn to these last many days.

“Then the Lord answered me and said, ‘Record the vision and inscribe it on tablets, that the one who reads it may run.  For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.  Though it tarries, wait for it; for it will certainly come, it will not delay.’”

“Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the olive should fail and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.  The Lord God is my strength, and he has made my feet like hinds’ feet, and makes me walk on my high places.”

The core message is that God will do what He will do and I can bank on that, trusting in His sure promise that He causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him.  Habakkuk concluded that God could be trusted and that even in the most discouraging of circumstances he would still praise God and rejoice in Him. This is certain, and this is the core of God’s key message to me.  But what about running like a deer?  In spite of my questionable exegesis I am hopeful, even suspicious, that maybe this is also God’s message to me.  We’ll see how the story now ends, but in life, in love, in faith and in running, I know God wants me to trust that “the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.”

Therefore, in the words of Eric Clapton, “Oh, I have a flame.  Feel it touch my heart, and down at my core is the hottest part.  I can run without fear.”

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Bad Days at the Office


Words from the Lord today.  Lots of them.  Words from the Lord earlier in the week, too.  Pretty deeply hurt about an enormously significant negative career development this past week, but “The LORD is my strength and my shield; My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart exults, And with my song I shall thank Him.”  [Psalm 28:7]

Some day I will need to add more commentary to all of these Scriptures that the Lord has put before me the last three days to explain their significance to me in this situation.  For now, it is enough to say that I will humble myself under God’s mighty hand.  In His time He will lift me up.

I have resolved the question about whether or not to speak up.  I will not:
But HE WHO BOASTS IS TO BOAST IN THE LORD.  For it is not he who commends himself that is approved, but he whom the Lord commends.  [2 Cor 10:17-18]

Paul’s resume was pretty impressive, but he didn’t brag about it.  After all, he perceived that everything he had done was pretty inconsequential compared to the things that are really important:
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.  [Phil 3:7-11]

So blessed to be a free man in God’s Spirit.  No man has any claim on me, and that makes the air taste fresh and clean:
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.  [2 Cor 3:17]

The Bible says elsewhere to be on guard against all forms of greed.  Really, what the Lord has done here for me is a gift and I need to receive it as such.  In my lack of faith I worry about what will become of my career after 45 which appears to be going nowhere and how I will put my kids through college and take care of my wife some day in retirement.  But the Lord knows what I need.  And He knows that what I need most is Him!
Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU,”  [Heb 13:5]

In 5th grade Sunday School this morning we looked at 1 Samuel 26 where David had the opportunity to kill Saul but refused to because he wanted to leave the matter in God’s hands to deal with Saul.  I found this timely also, only because it is critical for me to remember that the Lord will be my defender.  I don’t need to defend myself.  This is not said to minimize the situation.  Saul was chasing David all over the wilderness trying to kill him.  The prudent thing for David to do was to kill Saul when he had the chance, but his faith in God’s ultimate justice was greater than his fear.  God was looking out for David.  David knew that and it was enough.

Ten days out from running.  Thank the Lord.  He is very tender with me.

Friday, March 9, 2012

WHEN a flood occurred.... (not if)

“Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?  Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I will show you whom he is like:  he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.

In the immediate context, what does He mean to do what he says?  

This:   love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, turn the other cheek, give, lend without expectation of repayment, be merciful, do not judge, do not condemn, pardon.


Wow.