What I Saw – December 7, 2019

My plan was to do my evening prayer/devotion time (which I erroneously call “compline”; I typically do it a couple hours after the tradition compline hour) during halftime of the Big 10 championship.  I couldn’t do it before the Big 10 championship because I was leading our church’s new members orientation until too close to kickoff.  So I planned to do it at halftime.  And that plan would have worked had my wife not put her legs over me as I sat on the couch and then fell asleep.  I didn’t want to wake her up, but I couldn’t get to the remote to turn off the TV nor get to the patio door where I like to sit and pray.  For a moment I thought I wouldn’t get to do my prayers.  Fortunately, I didn’t give up at the first obstacle.  Deciding I still wanted to see what the evening’s Scriptures were even if I couldn’t pray in silence as I usually did, I opened my Moravian Daily Text app and found this:

At first I didn’t receive anything from this this text.  Maybe it was the background football noise distracting me; maybe some words from God just take longer.  But I decided to give it a few minutes of thought, concentrating (as much as I could; man, I prefer silence!) and asking God what was in this Scripture for me.  And then, just like that, I saw it.  I realized that this was the answer to the question I had been thinking about all day and all week, the question of how to overcome temptation.

I had been struggling with the temptation to do or say or think a few different ungodly things that afternoon (and as my home church preacher would say, what those things were is none of your business!).  It was what I call a “low level” temptation.  It wasn’t enough to make me actually do these things.  It was just enough to make me miserable.  I went for a walk by the river that afternoon to think about this temptation, about why it was and what I could do about it.  I realized that it was because I, like Eve, had listened to the tempter; I had heard him give his (false) pitch in favor of these things and had agreed with him that they were good and desirable.  This was not a new realization.  I have long known that “agreeing with the enemy” is one way temptation gets its power.

What I saw as I read this verse, though, was the way to stop agreeing with the enemy like this.  What God was saying is that His light and truth can reveal the falseness of the tempter’s pitch; they can not only expose it but defuse it.  The image I get is that they can actually wash it away like a rushing river.

And once they are washed away, I can see clearly; once God’s light and truth deliver me from the enemy’s lies and darkness, I can enter His dwelling, coming into His Temple, be comfortably in His presence.

I’m not sure this was new knowledge.  But it certainly was an encouragement.  This was the answer to the question I had asked earlier.  This was the solution to my struggle.  This was the thing not only that I needed to do (I need to seek out and submit to His light and truth) but the thing He is already doing (He is continuing to reveal this light and truth to me).  And with that answer and encouragement, I was able to stay right there, trapped under my sleeping wife’s legs, and watch the rest of the halftime show knowing that my hope of living apart from and above of temptation is becoming a reality.

That’s what I saw December 7, 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.

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 – 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.

Being Willing to Be Insignificant

I was talking with a counselor yesterday.  He was telling me about the needs of significance and security.  He said that men have the greatest need for significance while women have the greatest need for security.

This was not new to me.  I learned this in Bible college.  I think I learned it my first year of Bible college, in fact, and I’ve never forgotten it.  But it caught my attention at that moment in a way it hadn’t caught it before.  It caught my attention because it touches on something I’ve been thinking about lately: how I should understand myself in the Kingdom work of God.

I think it was Oswald Chambers who got me thinking along these lines.  In his June 21st My Utmost for His Highest entry (which I would have read on vacation), Chambers says this:

It’s that blessed are the poor in spirit comment that got me (again, on my vacation!).  That line, of course, comes as part of Jesus’ opening beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount.  I knew that line.  It seems like I’ve always known that line.  But I’ve also disliked that line.  I disliked the idea of being poor, whether in spirit or otherwise.  Poverty (again, material or physical) is for other people, not me.  That’s what I thought, anyway.  What I realized when I read Chamber’s devotion, though, is that it is for me, that I’ve missed a lot by rejected this poorness in spirit, that I am not living in a blessed way.

Several other Scriptural statements came up with supported this notion.  Here are a few of them:

And that’s just three.  I could toss out several more about being nothing, not being conceited, being a servant, and many more phrases/ideas which fit in here.  It’s not just the Sermon on the Mount which calls me to poverty.  It is the entire word of God.

This is similar, I think, to something else I heard in Bible college.  One professor told the class on one occasion that the Jewish rabbis used to teach people to carry two rocks in their pockets.  On one rock would be written the phrase, “For me the world was created” (or something else like that, something which put the person at the center of the universe), and on the other would be written, “I am dust” (or something similarly debasing).  The person should then pull out whichever rock their attitude needed at any particularly time.

For a more detailed account of this teaching, go here.

 I think this idea is true.  Jesus has exalted us in incredible ways; we truly can understand that the world was created for us.  But Jesus has also called us to humility.  Again, I don’t think I’ve had that humility in my life.  Not truly.  I’m willing to pursue it, though.  I’m willing to be poor in spirit (I’ve been praying for it, actually, and God has been answering that prayer, putting me into situations which make me feel so poor).  I’m willing to overcome that inborn and inbred desire for significance to be insignificant.

Speaking Jesus

There’s a phrase that has come to my attention over the past couple of weeks.  More accurately, there’s a prayer that has come to my attention over those weeks.  This phrase is a prayer.  It is one petition in a longer prayer called “St. Patrick’s Breastplate”, a prayer supposedly (but, alas, probably not) written by St. Patrick.  It goes like this:

It is the second phrase there which has really caught my attention (though all, of course, are worthy of consideration).  Christ is the mouth of everyone who speaks of me.  I think I heard that phrase/prayer/petition years ago; I vaguely recall encountering St. Patrick’s Breastplate in my college years (though that might be a false memory, a Mandela effect).  But it has exploded across my radar recently.  Some of this is due to the Celtic Daily Office.  I use this office at least twice a week if not more during my own prayer time.  The morning prayer of this office references this statement, saying:

Not only so, but Ransomed Heart’s Daily Prayer, which I also use two or three times a week, mentions something similar:

Somehow I have combined these two or three sources into my own idea, which I phrase in this way: “Be in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me, and be in my mouth every time I speak.”

It is that second part that really convicts me.  The first part is a blessing I’m asking for myself, actually; I’m hoping that everybody who speaks to me does so as Christ, that is, speaks to me in the kind ways Christ would, doesn’t say anything that hurts me (yes, I know Christ challenged people but He never maliciously hurt anyone).  The second part, though, is a responsibility I need to accept.  It is a fair responsibility.  I firmly believe in “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander”; I think I can make the case that is a biblical concept and that we thus shouldn’t ask something for ourselves which we aren’t willing to extend to others.  It is a good or noble responsibility; I’d be pretty honored if I knew that people felt I talked with them like Christ.

But it is also a difficult responsibility.  It goes contrary to my nature.  I think it does, anyway.  I always have a hard time separating nature from nurture.  But it definitely goes against nurture, goes against the way I was trained.  I was trained that you have to speak harshly.  Forget that, “Speak softly but carry a big stick” stuff.  No, speak heavy from the very beginning and don’t let up.  I was trained to believe that anyone who abridges you in word or deed must be immediately and fully smacked down in every way.  I was trained to believe that anyone who sends the slightest shade your way must be lit up hardcore.

Movies were a big part of this training.  In most (if not every) action movie (my favorites), there is scene early on in which someone braces the hero only for the hero to put them in their place.  I could give dozens of example, but my favorite is from the Chuck Norris movie Sidekicks.  Here is not Chuck but Mako who puts a man who braces him in his place (in case you’re wondering, this clip sticks in my mind because I was studying martial arts at the time; in every martial arts movie, the hero does some slight of hand in a situation similar to this, but this is the one in which my eyes were finally opened and I realized, “We’re martial artists, not magicians.  We can’t do stuff like that!”).

(I was totally surprised to find this clip on my first try.  I was also totally surprised at the racial slurs used.  Please remember this movie comes from a different time and that I don’t mean to offend anyone by using it.)

While I’ve never reached Mako’s level of putting people in their place, I have put them in their place nonetheless.  I have at least tried to.  It usually doesn’t work that well for me.  My mind doesn’t tend to insults (which I take as a good thing), and I usually don’t think of what to say to someone who braces me until much later.  I guess I’m like Marge that way:

(If YouTube removes that video, find it here: https://comb.qNnUSrio/)

But what I’ve discovered after reading and praying this phrase/petition, after seeing this incredibly beautiful idea of “speaking Jesus” to people (which is what I believe this is: not just speaking like Jesus but actually speaking Jesus), I am turning away from this training.  I am trying to, anyway.  I’m not sure what or how long it will take to be successful at this.  But I am sure I want to be successful at this.  Christ will not be in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me; that prayer won’t be answered at the one hundred percent level; people are going to brace me.  But Christ can be in my mouth whenever I speak to anyone.  The love of Christ can be all that is between me and everyone to whom I speak.  And I want it to be.  I’m praying for it to be.

What I Saw – September 5, 2018

I met with several people from church on Wednesday night, September 5, 2018, to hear from God through the Scripture.

Following our traditional pattern, we read the Moravian Text’s New Testament reading for that day, which was Luke 20:39-51.

This was a familiar passage.  Familiar passages can be difficult to use; they become too familiar to us; our familiarity with them keeps us from hearing God in them; we gloss over them or think we already know what they say.  But by reading slowly and looking at an unfamiliar translation (ESV), we were able to hear some interesting things.

Our attention was caught mostly by the fact that Jesus was praying.  We noticed that He was praying passionately even though He already received His answer (i.e., the cup would not be taken from Him).  We believed this was an indication that prayer is more than just asking God for things but is also a way to enter into the will of God.

This led us into the covenant triangle.

We discussed the fact that obedience (which is what Jesus’ “thy will be done” prayer was) comes out of identity, which in turns comes from the Father’s acceptance/adoption of us.  We continued to discuss the fact that such obedience does not earn our identity but is an expression of our identity.  We noted that this obedience often comes through a time of prayer such as Jesus’ and takes a lot of trust.

After that, we asked what God might be calling us to do.  Since this was such a large message, I did not push anyone for a specific answer but allowed them to simply think about it.

Here’s our whiteboard notes. The kids decorated it a little after we were done.

We finally concluded that this was not just a part of the Gospel story we all knew, nor was it even just a lesson God was trying to teach us.  We realized that this was actually Jesus living as a genuine disciple.  Yes, this is an example for us and can (and should) be used as such.  But it is a sincere example; Jesus did this not to teach us something (even though He does teach us in it) but because this is what disciples do; it is what He, as the premier disciple, needed to do at that moment.  Thus, such times of prayer, prayer offering submission to the will of God/a readiness to obey even in difficult circumstances, is what we need to do as well.

I was greatly encouraged by this devotional time.  I can’t wait for our next meeting on October 3rd.  I hope you can make it!

Extreme

A public figure recently called a public official “extreme” for his religious views.  Who the figure and the official are doesn’t matter.  I don’t want to identify those individuals.  I don’t want to dive into the particular pool they belong to.  I don’t even want to dip my toes into the waters of that pool.  As I have told you before:

In fact, they are rather interchangeable.  There was a similar incident more than a decade ago when a different public figure called a different (but similar) group of people “radical” for their religious views.

And my reaction to the “extreme” comment today is the same as it was to the “radical” comment then.  I think that comment is ridiculous.  I think both those comments are ridiculous.  I think those comments are ridiculous not because I think they are incorrect.  I think those comments are ridiculous because those terms are incorrect.  Those terms are flat out inane, in fact.

When it comes to faith (or “religion” for that matter), there is no such thing as extreme or radical, not in the way those public figures were using those terms.  There is only right and wrong.  Either God said something or He didn’t.  Either God told us to do/not do something, or He didn’t.  To think/feel/believe He said/told us to do something He didn’t doesn’t make you extreme, radical, conservative, fundamental, liberal, or any of the other weird terms we use for such things.  It just makes you wrong.

Or it might make you weak.  That is the term Paul used for such a situation (people thinking God said something He didn’t).  Not conservative or liberal, extreme or moderate, etc.  Weak or strong.  He does so in Romans 14.

That, then, is what such a person is: weak.  Failing to correctly understand the will of God (and yet not rejected by God, who is gracious and kind and does not find fault with His children).  And that is how they should be treated: they should be accepted.  Not allowed to dominate.  Not become the tail that wags the dog.  But accepted.

That’s what they are if they are incorrect, anyway.  If they are correct, if they have correctly discerned the will and word of God, then they aren’t weak.  They aren’t even wrong.  You are.

In any case, these terms are inaccurate and unproductive.  They are also completely illogical (if there is a God who interacts with us, why would we not be extreme about Him?).  And they thus ought to be abandoned.  There is no such thing as “extreme” or “radical” in The Faith.  Let’s stop saying there are.