What I Saw – December 14, 2019

I don’t typically read a Scripture passage on Sunday, but since I missed Saturday’s reading (due to sleeping late), I decided to go back and pick it up.  That reading was Revelation 14:1-5.

Now I wasn’t really thrilled about reading Revelation.  This is probably more the fault of modern interpretations and presuppositions about Revelation than it is the fault of Revelation itself.  The Revelation (which is the proper title of the book, the title John gives it at the beginning; not Revelations plural, not even Revelation, but THE Revelation, one single message from God) is actually a great book and even refers to itself as a book that ought to be read and treasured.  But so much baggage has been imported onto the book by (bad) theologies in our day that I find it difficult to find a clear word from God in it.

Nonetheless, I asked the Spirit to show me what I needed to see and sat down to read.  At first I didn’t catch anything, but then I noticed that line They (the 144,000) follow the Lamb wherever he goes.  And in that was my word.

There were two things I saw in this line.  The first was what my mentor called “a covenant word”, that is, a word about God.  What I saw about God or Jesus, here portrayed as the Lamb, is that He is on the move.  He is heading for a destination.  The 144,000 follow Him wherever He goes, which indicates that He is indeed going somewhere.  Though it isn’t stated directly in the text, I believe the implication is that He is going to a good place by a good route.  He is God, after all, and if God goes, that’s undoubtedly where and how He does it.  So that was the first word.  It was a very picturesque word full of inviting imagery and poetry.  God is heading somewhere, that somewhere is a good place, and the way He goes to that somewhere is a good way.

The second thing I saw was what my mentor called “a Kingdom word”, that is, a word about me, a word about how I respond to what I have just seen about God.  The Kingdom word I saw here is that I must follow the Lamb wherever He goes.  That is what the 144,000 (which I believe to be a symbolic number representing all believers in Jesus, a number which is not an elimination (as I would have seen it as a teenager) but an invitation) were doing.  That is what all believers in Jesus do.  And that is what I must do.  I must follow Jesus to the place He is going.  I must follow Jesus along the way He is going.  Again, there is a great deal of imagery and poetry here which is perhaps hinted more than directly stated (or perhaps not; if God is doing the hinting then it is no hinting at all), and that imagery/poetry is very enticing to me.  Following the Lamb wherever He goes seems like such a good thing to me.  Following the Lamb wherever He goes seems not just right but wonderful.

As I thought about these words, I realized they should not be such a surprise to me.  We disciples of Jesus are called “followers”, after all.  Not only so, but the logo of the Moravian Church, a logo I see every time I open my Moravian Daily text app, says this:

But this still took me by surprise for some reason.  It still took me by wonderful, beautiful, happy surprise.  The truth that Jesus is going somewhere good in a good way and is inviting me to following Him to that place in that way is a wonderful, beautiful, and happy truth.

And that’s the truth I saw on December 14, 2019.

What I Saw – Thanksgiving Day 2019

First of all, let me say:

I did not expect to write a post on Thanksgiving Day.  I did not want to write a post on Thanksgiving Day (as those of you who know me know, doing anything on Thanksgiving Day is a serious violation in my book; I believe you should do nothing on Thanksgiving Day but eat, watch football, and be thankful).

But despite my unwritten rules about this most precious of days, I still did my daily interactions with God.  Thanksgiving Day doesn’t eliminate the need to do that; it increases it, in fact.  So I did it.  I read the Moravian Daily Text and I listened to Robert Clancy‘s prophetic utterance.

It was during the utterance that something “caught my attention” (which, as you know, is how I believe God most commonly interacts with me; His Spirit makes something in the Scriptures or other Scripture-based media catch my attention).  In this utterance, Clancy quoted Hebrews 11:6.

I am very familiar with this verse.  I’ve had it memorized for around 20 years and I quote it at least once a month when I do my memory work.  But God has a way of bringing a “fresh word” out of His “sure word”; He has a way of making me see things I’ve missed, of applying His truths in ways I need them applied.  That happened today.

What I saw in this verse today is that it is faith and the faith-based seeking of God that God rewards or accepts (cares enough to respond to is The Message translation; I think the idea of accept is certainly a part of that).  This was very important for me; it was certainly encouraging and it was potentially revolutionary.  You see, even though I could quote these words and intellectually believed this truth, I emotionally believed something else.  I emotionally believed that the ones God rewards and accepts are those who do right or don’t do wrong, or maybe even those who just are right and are not wrong.  I’m not sure where I developed this emotional belief.  It could have been from my home church, which was more performance-oriented and less grace-oriented than it should have been.  It could have been my Bible college for the same reason.  But it could also have been my middle school circle of friends who were even worse on these accounts.  In any case, I have it.  In fact, what I realized this morning is that the “cancel culture” that is so prevalent in our society is nothing new to me.  I have been living in a cancel culture all my life (or a “disqualified” culture, which is the term my home church would have used).  I have been living under the understanding that I can be canceled at any time for any sin of commission or omission.  I have been living under the understanding that I can (and will) be cancelled like this by society, friends, church, and God.

What the Lord revealed to me today, though, is that this is not true.  This is at least not true when it comes to Him.  While society, friends, and church may cancel me for my sins, He will not.  He is not a canceler.  He is not a disqualifier.  He is not evaluating me based on my behavior or even myself (though He does encourage me to be holy, a truth I saw in last night’s Moravian Text) but on my pursuit of Him, my desire to be with Him, my valuing of Him and His things (Son, Bible, Church), my faith in Him which continues even though shaken by the legitimate sins I commit/wrongs I do or am and my illegitimate understanding of how I am evaluated by Him based on those things.  He will reward me and accept me because of my faith despite my failures (sins) and flaws (character).  I can be rewarded with Him (which is the only reward I really want) despite my failures and flaws.  I have not been canceled or disqualified.  I am still in the running.  And I will get what I am running after.

This was a great encouragement (and like all grace-based, God-based encouragements, it doesn’t entice me to sin more but makes me want to sin less).  This was a great liberation.  This was “daily bread” (some interactions with God change me forever, like a Thankgsiving meal, while others just sustain me for a short time, like a Happy Meal, but even those latter ones are valuable).  And this is something I am thankful for.  My seeing of this encouraging, liberating truth and the encouraging, liberating truth itself is something to really be thankful for.

That’s what I saw on Thanksgiving Day 2019.

What I Saw – November 21, 2019

I usually slip away sometime in the afternoon to listen to the day’s Pray As You Go entry; that is my afternoon devotion.  Each Pray As You Go entry has a song, a passage of Scripture (read twice), and some questions.  The entry for November 22, 2019 had Luke 19:41-48 as its passage.

My mentor taught me to look for “what catches my attention” when I read or listen to a passage devotionally; the idea is that the Spirit will cause what I need in that moment to catch my attention.  On this occasion, what caught my attention was the phrase “the things that make for peace” in the first verse.  I was already very familiar with this passage; I remember studying it in Bible college and reading it many times since.  I knew Jesus was accusing the people of Jerusalem of rejecting Him.  What I noticed immediately during this reading, though, was that Jesus didn’t say the people had rejected Him.  He does, in a sense; that is what they did and somewhat what He was talking about.  But that’s not how He describes it.  He describes it as them not recognizing the things that make for peace.  He describes them as not appreciating or accepting (or perhaps even being able to accept) the way of peace He demonstrated for them.

That’s what I saw in that passage on that day.  Is saw that Jesus was not only offering these people a doctrinal truth or a salvation or a relationship with God.  He was offering them a way of life that resulting in peace (presumably shalom, the wide-wellbeing of God), and they would not take it/could not see it.  Now I know it could be argued that this translation (and I’m not sure which it is) is not the best translation.  Indeed, other translation seem to translate it slightly different, and I’ve not looked up the Greek so I don’t know for sure.

But even if this isn’t the best translation, the idea is valid.  Jesus did bring truth, including important doctrinal truths such as His being the promised Messiah; He said He did, so I know He did.  He did bring salvation, and praises belong to His great name for that.  He did bring a relationship with God; again, He said He did.  But in addition to all those things He also brought things that make for peace.  He brought a way of thinking and valuing and living that will, if follow, result in peace.  He was the premier disciple and as such He demonstrated premier discipleship.  He was the greatest citizen of the Kingdom and as such revealed Kingdom citizenship.  He “came from Heaven to earth to show the way”, and did show that way quite excellently.

And this was something I truly needed to be brought to my attention.  I need to know that there is a way of peace, that this way of peace was the way established by Jesus, and that this way will turn out well for me and all those in relationship with me.  I need to know that as a husband and father.  I need to know that as a minister on a staff of ministers.  I need to know that as a follower of God.  I needed to be reminded of the truth that this way exists and that the way to bless myself and everyone else I know is to walk it.  I needed to be reminded of that truth, and I was so grateful when the Spirit and the Son of God did so.

And that is what I saw on November 21, 2019.

What I Saw – November 23, 2019

 

As usual, I started my day with biblegateway.com‘s “verse of the day” (hitting up a random verse chosen by someone other than myself is one of my devotional practices; it is how I try to hear from God).  Today, that verse was this one:

This is a verse I’ve heard many times before.  This time, though, I heard it slightly differently.  I always thought the phrases “enter his gates with thanksgiving” and “[enter] his courts with praise” were commands; I always thought they were telling (even ordering) us to do something; I always thought they were saying, “You better give thanks and praise when you enter his gates and courts”.  When I read them this morning, though, I wondered if they could be conditions instead; I wondered if they were actual telling us how to do something; I wondered if they were saying, “You enter his gates and courts via thanksgiving and praise; thanksgiving and praise are the keys to entering his gates and courts”.

This fits with the sermon series Pastor Doyle just finished at The Church Next Door.  That series was called “The Current”, and in it Pastor Doyle repeatedly told us that there is a “current” to the live/walk with God, that there is a way living/walking with God goes.

This idea is absolutely true.  There is a current to the life/walk with God.  There is a “way” to God Himself, a way/direction/flow that God just goes, a way revealed to us by Jesus the Christ.  If you can’t take Pastor Doyle’s word on it, then consider this word from John Eldredge’s book Moving Mountains:

And I believe thanksgiving and praise are a part of that way.  I believe that when I give thanks and praise rather than grumbling, complaining, boasting, etc., I am going in the way of God, flowing with the current of God.  Whether this is actually what Psalm 100 is saying or not (and I imagine that is debatable; I also know I’m not at all interested in debating it), it is nonetheless true that thanksgiving and praise are a how to enter the gates and courts of God if not the how.

This is something I have discovered in my evening prayer.  I used to follow Tim Keller’s five-fold prayer plan during my evening prayers.

But I’ve recently been modifying this a bit.  When I come to the “free prayer” part, I don’t offer petitions for myself anymore.  Instead, I offer thanksgiving.  I do what I call “a deep dive on my day”; I look at the day and consider everything I have to be thankful for.  There is always a lot, always far more than I thought.  I give thanks for those things, and when I do I find that anxiety, anger, grief, and every other negative emotion that haunts my heart is forced out.  I find a great power for drawing nearer to God and representing God to others when I am thankful.

Psalm 100, whether command or condition, reminded me of that source of power today.  It was a beautiful reminder, one that not only fit the season but that encouraged me to keep on this path I, by God’s grace, stumbled upon.

And that’s what I saw on November 23, 2019.

What I Saw – November 6, 2019

I almost didn’t go for an evening walk this Wednesday night.  I’ve been doing nightly walks in the country on the outskirts of Columbus all autumn.  The fact that it has been an unusually warm and bright autumn has been encouraging that.  With the change of the temperature on Halloween, though, I wasn’t sure I could keep up the habit.  Add to that the fact that I forgot my jacket when I left for church Wednesday, and you can understand why I almost went home instead of to the trails that afternoon.

However, as I drove to the fateful intersection where I would have to choose one or the other, I for some reason choose “park”.  I turned instead of going straight and 15 minutes later was at the same remote country park my dad took me to when I was a kid.  I found a trail north of that park, parked my car, and started walking.

As I walked, I listened to some Upper Room songs.

I was hoping to receive a word from God from these songs.  Unfortunately I did not.  I was encouraged by them; they are wonderful songs.  But I didn’t receive the word I thought I would.

Now I’ve learned not to be completely disappointed when I don’t receive a word from God, but as I headed for the car I was nonetheless still somewhat disappointed.  And then, just before I got in the car to drive off, I saw this:

This is a property across the street from the trail, and it took my breath away.  I saw a lot of beauty on that walk that day, a lot of natural, wild beauty.  But this was a cultivated beauty.  As you can see, the grass is manicured, the trees were clearly planted in an organized fashion, and the entire place is surrounded by fence.  So it was a cultivated beauty.  It was a beauty man had touched.  And yet to my eye it was still as beautiful as the natural beauty I had been admiring for the past hour.  As beautiful if not more beautiful.

And that got me thinking.  It got me thinking about beauty in general and about my purpose in beauty in particular.  You see, I’ve always understood that nature is beautiful because God made it so.  I suppose the definitive verse on this idea is Psalm 19:1.

And I have many times heard people describe the beauty of God’s handiwork in untouched, wild, natural places.  For example, I once stood next to a guy at a mountain lookout in West Virginia.  As we stood there, this guy admired the wooded mountains and valleys before us and then asked, “How can people say there is no God?”

From encounters and statements like these, I’ve always assumed that the greatest beauty in God’s economy was His beauty, His natural, untouched-by-man beauty.  But as I looked at this property by the trail, I started to question that assumption.  I started to wonder if the beauty that results from the collaborations of God and man might not be even more beautiful.

A collaboration was indeed what I was seeing on this property; a human artist arranged that property but they did so with God’s materials; the organization and manicuring were man’s contribution, but the light and color and texture came from the Lord.  That’s what this beauty was.

And I began to wonder not only if such collaborations are more beautiful than God’s solo work, but I also began to wonder if these collaborations are not what God always intended.  Again, I think there has been an assumption to my previous thinking, an assumption I no doubt received from my elders: the assumption that God’s solo work is the best of all work.  But as I looked at this property, I began questioning that assumption as well.

And I believe that I began questioning it on good grounds.  Scripture is clear that God is quite adept at doing things on His own.  But it is also clear that God wants to do things with others.  This is apparently why He created the angels (I don’t know much about angels and have no concern for angelology, but it seems that He created these angels to do certain things for Him or in His stead; that is, He created them to assert His will over the world).  This is also apparently at least part of why He created us.  Before He created us, He said:

That is, He said His intention was that we would rule the world.  Certainly we would not be usurping His authority in that ruling, so He must have meant that we were ruling with Him.  We see a similar idea in Psalm 8:

And we see it in 2 Timothy 2:

The fact of the matter is that we humans were made to be rulers, co-rulers with God, under-rulers beneath God.  The fact of the matter is that there is something wonderful about our God that makes Him want to share rule, power, authority, and dominion even with those who, as Psalm 8 says, really aren’t worthy of it.

That being the case, it stands to reason that untouched beauty/solo work isn’t necessarily the best.  It stands to reason that manicured beauty/collaborations might be equal if not better.  And I know that doesn’t apply across the board; I know everything man does is not beautiful; I could do without the phone poles and lines in the above picture.  But I think it does apply in some limited way (everything that involves fallen man will by necessity be limited and have exceptions, but that doesn’t eliminate the general idea).  I think God has called me and all His other children to collaborate with Him, to create beauty with Him.  I think the beauty our collaborations can generate is every bit as worthy as the beauty His solo works have generated.  I think creating beauty with Him is our purpose, and I further think that is a great purpose and a great privilege.

And that’s what I saw on November 6, 2019.

What I Saw – October 31, 2019

Today’s memory work had me in 1 Timothy.  It is a book I learned almost 20 years ago and have been reciting every since.  As I recited it this morning, I stopped at this statement in 1:12:

I suppose the reason this caught my attention is I was still thinking about yesterday’s revelation.  I was still contemplating the fact that ministry inevitably brings rejection, that painful rejection is the cost of doing ministry.  It is a fact I’ve come to terms with (as I described yesterday) but not one I’ve come to enjoy; I can deal with this but I don’t think I can embrace it.

Yet here was Paul saying he thanked Jesus for appointing him into His service.  Here was Paul saying He was grateful God brought him into ministry.  Paul was rejected because of the ministry he did; his authority was questioned and his teaching ability was criticized and his sincerity was challenged by those both inside and outside the church (see Acts 17:18 and 2 Corinthians 10:10 for just two of many examples of this).  Not only so, but Paul was beaten and imprisoned and subjected to all sorts of sufferings because of the ministry he did (see 2 Corinthians 6:4-10 and 11:23-33 for a partial record of Paul’s sufferings).  Paul was ultimately martyred because of his ministry (see 2 Timothy 4:6, or watch the following clip which I was shown as a child and which has always inspired me.)

Paul experienced some of the unpleasant things I have experienced in ministry, albeit to a greatly enhanced degree, and he experienced other, even more unpleasant things in ministry that I hope to never experience.  Yet he was thankful to be involved in that ministry.  I’m not sure he was thankful for the unpleasant things themselves;  I wouldn’t be offended if he wasn’t as not appreciating such things/wanting to avoid such things is normal but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was as he saw life and the Kingdom economy so much better than I did.  But he was thankful for the ministry which included these things.  He was thankful that he had been included in the ministry whose price was these things.

And I can likewise be thankful for being included in that ministry as well.  I am, in fact.  I wasn’t hating ministry as I read these Scriptures this morning.  I’m not sure I’ve ever hated ministry or even seriously considered leaving it.  Nonetheless, I was challenged by Pauls’ good attitude toward ministry, sufferings and all.  I was encouraged to be even more thankful for being included in ministry than I already am and to be more willing to accept the negative costs of doing that ministry in a better spirit.

And that’s what I saw on October 31, 2019.

Worth The Rejection

This Sunday I told our church that I have a “nearly paralyzing fear of rejection” (or something to that extent.  You can hear me say that in this clip below:

This is true.  I am truly afraid of being rejected by people.  I’m not sure where that fear comes from, but I have it.  I even thought our lead pastor had detected that fear.  He came up to me while I was working the other day and asked me to look at this book:

I thought he was showing me this book because he had become aware of my fear of rejection.  It turns out he was just showing it to me because he thought it would be a good small group study.  But in the moment I thought my fear of rejection had been discovered and I immediately feared I would be rejected because it had been discovered (in other words, I was afraid I would be rejected because I am afraid of being rejected).

And this fear of rejection is not only there but it also hinders my work at times.  It at the very least makes my work much harder than it needs to be.  One of the things I do for the church is invite people to our various activities via text.  This was incredibly hard for me to do at first because the majority of these people were strangers to me (I guess I think strangers are more likely to reject me than people who know me; and now that I think about that, I realize it is completely illogical; I realize that people who know me might have even more cause to reject me than strangers do!).  It is still incredibly hard for me to do because a lot of these people are still strangers to me; I have become familiar with many of them and so it has become significantly easier, but there are still some strangers in the mix and it is still hard.

I experienced this just today, in fact.  Today I needed to text invitations to our Next Steps class to 130 or so folks who have come to our services in the past couple of months.  I did not know most of those 130 folks and I did not know how they would respond to my invitation.  I did know that they might respond negatively.  I also knew that they had my text number and would be able to respond negatively to me directly.  There was a risk involved.  It might be a risk that is minuscule to some, but it is major to me, and I was afraid.

Now I have learned to deal with that fear to a good degree in a couple of ways, the primary one being my knowledge that Jesus has promised to be with me as I do the evangelistic work of His Kingdom (Matthew 28:20).

After I had done it, though, I realized there was another way to deal with this fear, another truth to keep in mind as I struggle with the threat of rejection.  That truth is that quite a few of the 130 people responded positively to me.  Quite a few of the 130 strangers I texted told me they planned to come to our Next Steps class.  Quite a few people who possibly, even probably, wouldn’t have been to that class will be there and perhaps will grow in or even enter the Kingdom because I risked the rejection.

And I believe that possibility/probability makes this work worth the risk.  Will I be rejected as I do this work?  Yes.  I already was, in fact.  One person told me to stop texting them.  That was precisely the kind of reaction I feared.  But other people will not just accept me but they will accept Jesus through me; they will be eternally blessed by my work; these valuable souls will be saved.  So the risk is worth taking (in fact, not taking this risk in light of this truth is unthinkable; I can’t stand the thought that someone could accuse me or not sharing God’s truth with them because I was afraid of being rejected by someone else).  This price is worth paying.  This hard thing is worth doing.  It is still hard to some degree, but it is worth doing.   And that encourages me to keep doing this hard thing.

What I Saw – October 6, 2019

Ministry can be depressing at times.  My home church minister told me that when I was a kid.  My home church held a “career day” for the youth group one Sunday night.  Several of the adults stood before the group and told us what their jobs were like.  One of those adults was the minister himself.  When it was his turn to present, the minister said this: “When you’re a minister, your job is to ring the gospel bell, and some Sundays you go home thinking you didn’t ring it very well.

I came home thinking that very thing this Sunday night.  I’m not exactly sure why.  This Sunday was a good Sunday.  It was a very good Sunday.  Lots of great things are happening at our church, things that can only be engineered and empowered by God Himself and things that are thus evidence that God is working among in.  In fact, I’d say I’ve never had a time in my ministry that was as filled with opportunity and optimism as the time I’m in right now.   Yet I still came home depressed.  I still came home feeling like I wasn’t doing my job very well, like I was a failure and was failing and didn’t have much of a future, like I hadn’t rung the bell that well and was going to lose out because I hadn’t rung the bell that well.

Now the way I’ve previously dealt with these “Sunday evening blues” is to “retreat into fantasy” (a phrase I believe I’ve picked up from Pastor Robert Clancy).  I’ve drowned my sorrows in TV or Pepsi or video games or those sorts of things.  But I dealt with them in a much different way this Sunday.  I dealt with them through prayer.  After putting my daughter to bed, I sat down on the floor in front of my back sliding door (my new place of prayer in my new house) and began to pray.  As I usually do during evening prayer time, I followed Tim Keller’s five step prayer plan.  First, I asked God to be with me and speak to me.  I also told Him that I was in great need this time (something I don’t usually do).  Second, I turned to the Scriptures.  I always use the Daily Watchword and Doctrinal Texts of the Moravian Daily Text when I do my evening prayers, and that evening those texts said this:

As soon as I read these Scriptures, my prayer was answered.  I received a word from the Lord via the “living and active” Bible.  God spoke to me as I asked Him to.  The first thing I saw in both these passages is that God is the God of peace, that is, God wants peace and creates peace (which in both these passages is less like “the absence of conflict” and more like “happy ever after”).  The Haggai passage talks about Him giving peace, and the Philippians passage calls Him “the God of peace” explicitly, so this truth about God (what my mentor calls “a Covenant word” and what he trained me to look for first in any Scripture passage) was easy to see.  That was encouraging enough, but what was even more encouraging was the “Kingdom word” (the way God wanted me to respond to the truth I was seeing about Him).  That Kingdom word was as explicit in the Philippians passage as the Covenant word.  It was “keep on doing the things…”.  Now I was familiar with this passage; I’ve had it memorized for years and have recited it many times.  But the version I know (the NIV ’84) has the phrase “keep on doing the things” as “put in practice”, and it has it much later in the verse.  For that reason, it has never resonated with me that much.  When I saw this translation, though (and I still don’t know what translation it is), I was moved tremendously.  I could see God telling me not to give into my depression, telling me 1) not to despair at all and 2) certainly not to give into despair.  I could see God telling me that there was going to a positive result for me, a result that He (not I) would achieve, a result that I would receive if I would simply keep on doing what I was doing no matter how effective those things seemed at the time.  In a very short span of time, I had gone around the “Kairos” circle: I had heard God say something, I had discerned both the Covenant and Kingdom truths of that something, and I had a plan of action.

And with that quick trip around the circle, my Sunday night ministerial blues were dispelled.  I still didn’t think I had rung the bell all that way that day, but I realized it didn’t matter that much.  I realized there was a stronger force at work than how well or poorly I rang the bell, a stronger force guaranteeing peace and asking me to do nothing more than just not quit.

And that’s what I saw on October 6, 2019.

What I Saw – August 18,2019

 

A wave of anxiety hit me early Sunday evening.  I’m not sure why; there didn’t seem to be any concrete trigger for it.  But it did.  Because of that anxiety, I went to my evening prayer earlier than usual.  I also changed my routine for that evening prayer.  I usually end my evening prayer with a hymn from a playlist I’ve compiled on YouTube.  Tonight, though, I decided to start with a hymn.  I felt I needed something to move me through the anxiety before I began praying, and I thought a hymn was just the thing.  As it turned out, I was right.

The hymn I choose to listen to was “Holy, Holy, Holy”, a hymn I’ve been singing since I was 12.  I listened to this version by Audrey Assad.

As I listened, something in these lyrics I have known almost all my life “caught my attention”.  It was the final line in the second verse, the line “perfect in power, in love, and purity”.

As I heard that line, I was reminded of a truth about God I’ve been thinking of recently, the truth of God’s perfection.  By that term perfection, I mean that God is everything He ought to be, everything He needs to be, everything it is good to be.  I think that’s what the author of that hymn meant as well.  And I was thankful that God is perfect like that; I was thankful that my God (the only God, the one true God who has revealed Himself to me and to the world) is perfect.

I also realized, though, that I don’t regard God as perfect.  I don’t consistently regard Him as perfect.  I don’t regard Him as perfect all the time, perfect in every way.  I regard Him as being perfect in power, as the hymn says; I have no problem with that.  I regard Him as being perfect in purity as well; I have no problem with that, either.  But I don’t always regard Him as perfect in love.  I don’t always regard Him as perfect in goodness.  I don’t always regard Him as having the perfect will, that is, of always and only willing and thus accomplishing what is good for me.  Oh, I believe He is perfect that way in my head; if you would ask my if I have a “theology of God’s perfect goodness”, I would say, “Of course!”  But I don’t always believe He is perfect that way in my heart.  My emotions don’t match my intellect here.  In fact, I tend to see God less as one who is perfect in goodness as the YHWH God, the Father of Jesus, is presented in the Bible and more like Odin as he is presented in the movie Eric the Viking (which I saw on cable as a kid).

Yes, though my head knows otherwise, my heart still tends to suspect that God is mostly unconcerned about me, that God has to be convinced to be concerned about me, to be cajoled into doing what is best for me.  That’s why I pray as poorly as I do, why my prayers are mostly me begging God to do what I want Him to do.  That’s also why I get seized by anxieties both triggered and non-triggered.

But this song told me this evening that this suspicion is untrue.  It told me that God is not unconcerned for me as Odin is unconcerned about people, that God’s perfection includes His will and goodness and love.  And just like that, the anxiety went away.  It was dispersed by a confrontation with this truth, the truth of the complete perfection of my God and what that complete perfection means for me.

That’s what I saw on August 18, 2019.

 

What I Saw – June 29th

I sat down in the bay window of my parent’s rural Ohio home to do my evening prayers.

The view from the window

In the evening, I follow Tim Keller’s five-step pattern for prayer: evocation (inviting God to be present), meditation (reading Scripture), word prayer, free prayer, and contemplation.  After the evocation, I turned to the Scripture for the evening, which I took from the Moravian Daily Text’s “watchword” (Old Testament Scripture) and “doctrinal text” (New Testament Scripture).  For June 29th, those passages were these:

I have to admit that this was not what I hoped to receive from the Lord that evening.  I was hoping for a word of encouragement, for something speaking of God’s love for me and His promises to me.  Instead, I got this word about being punished for my sins.  It was not only disappointing but intimidating.  I started wondering what I had done to make God say this to me and what it meant for me.  I started worrying and I wanted to turn away from my prayers.

But I didn’t.  I forged on, meditating on this passage as I have been taught to do.  As I did, I somehow stumbled across the word justice.  I always try to pull a truth about God from the Scripture I read.  In this case, the statement about punishment brought me to the truth that God is just (punishment comes from His justice; He punishes sin because He is just).  When I realized this, I realized that this statement which I found so threatening and disagreeable in the moment, this statement which seemed to be dropping me back into the “God is Zeus who can’t wait to hit you with a lightning bolt for the slightest transgression” territory, was actually a statement about God’s love.  It was a statement about the wideness of God’s love, the universality of God’s love, the fact that God loves everyone.

You see, all sin is a transgression not just of God but of another person.  I have thought long and hard about this.  I have run through the catalog of all the sins I know, and I can’t find one that is not in some way an insult or offense against another of my fellow human beings (my fellow human beings who are created in the image of God just as I am and who are just as valuable in the grand design as me).  Murder is obviously an offense against others, as is theft and lying.  But so is all forms of sexual immorality, even lust; Paul says that sexual sins are “taking advantage” of other people (1 Thessalonians 4:6) and Jesus seems to suggest that even looking at others is using them in an untoward way (Matthew 5:28).  That being the case, what God is saying here in Jeremiah 21:14 when He promises to punish us for our sins is that He is not going to allow us to get away with insulting, offending, taking advantage of, and using others.  That is exactly what would happen if He didn’t punish sin; He would be allowing one person to get away with doing such things to another; He would be favoring one person at the expense of another.  And He doesn’t do that.  He doesn’t operate that way.  He loves all, so He punishes all.  His justice is an expression of His love for all.

Now I don’t know exactly how this will all play out.  Is this punishment in this life or the next?  Is this punishment some sort of physical affliction or is it simply a word of rebuke (much as He verbally rebuked Sarah for laughing but did not physically do anything to her)?  Is this punishment all covered by the sacrificial death of Christ (a strong possibility).  I don’t know.  What I do know is that I saw the strength and immensity of the love of God in this verse.  I saw that God not only loves me but loves everyone to the point that He will punish me for offending anyone and will conversely punish anyone for offending me.  This is not Zeus, who as far as I can tell was cruel and arbitrary in his punishments.  This is the ever-loving Yahweh, the Yahweh who shows His ever-lovingness and fairness and concern for all by punishing in some way all sin, by allowing no sin to go unaddressed.

And that’s what I saw on June 29th.