Living stones

When in Budapest, we visited Freedom Square, a place of large statues and a monument to those who fought Communist rule. While the figures carved from rock were impressive, we wept as we observed the marks of machine gun fire and remembered news reels showing the Hungarian people losing their freedom.
 

Israel was asked to create a different kind of monument. They had been enslaved in Egypt for centuries, then led to freedom across the Red Sea that God parted for safe passage. After failing to enter their promised land out of fear, they finally did cross the Jordon into the land God gave them. He again parted the waters, but before they reached the other side, He told them to take twelve stones and set them up as a reminder of what He had done. He also told them to be ready for questions.

And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.” (Joshua 4:21–24)

When Christians read Old Testament passages like this one, some assume this is merely historical narrative without any application for us. However, there are New Testament passages about stones with symbolic meaning. If the connection is made between the symbols, then our lives are not only informed but enriched. 

First, both Old and New Testaments refer to the Lord as our Rock and as a Living Stone. Jesus is also called the Cornerstone of God’s “building” the church, not a literal building but a spiritual household made up of His people, whom He also says are living stones.

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:4–5)

Just as the stones from the river Jordan were to provoke questions, so am I as a living stone. God wants my life to be significant, to have features that make people wonder “what does this mean?” I am convicted by this idea.

Jesus, as the Cornerstone, is my example. The significance of His life is still debated, argued over, imitated, rejected or followed. In other words, He did not disappear into obscurity, but created a monument of sorts. His life, death and resurrection won my freedom from slavery to sin, a harsh taskmaster. My life should demonstrate reverend fear. I should live in such a way that the people around me know that His hand is mighty. That pile of rocks in the Old Testament becomes the symbol of a high standard for my life.

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Lord, it is easy to focus on the lesser challenges of life, easy to forget that You chose me and set me as a living stone in Your spiritual house. You have also declared me precious and given me the privilege of sacrificial service, even serving as a priest that intercedes for others in ministry to them. This is a lofty calling. I am humbled, yet cannot use “I’m not worthy” as an excuse. You use the image of a stone monument, not to declare that I am like a rock, but to remind me to glorify You. May I so live that others ask questions about the meaning of life because they get a glimpse of Your grace and power.

Glory to God

Yesterday I heard two remarkable testimonies. The first was in our church where a retiring missionary outlined his thirty-five years of experiencing God’s faithfulness as he was moved from place to place and constantly given different hats to wear. He testified of God’s power to enable him no matter the drastic changes in his life or the demands of the work he was doing.

The other one was Bruce Olson at Missions Fest 2009 in our city. I’m suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of inadequacy to write about the things he said and the awesome power of God in his life. When still a teen, he wanted to reach out to a certain people group in South America, a tribe that was resisting anyone that came near them and any change to their way of life. No missionary organization would support him, so he went alone and wandered in the jungle for months until he found them. Actually, they found him, shot him with their long arrows and took him captive.

This tribe was headed toward extinction. They were called cannibals. Their language was so complex that no one could understand them. They killed anyone that threatened them and the odds were overwhelmingly against change. But they did not kill Olson. God began to use this young man and the results are legend. (Some of his stories are at the link above.)

In 1973, he wrote the story, now titled Bruchko. I read it about ten years ago and wept at the amazing things God did in this man’s life and in the lives of the people in that so-called primitive tribe. Yesterday we heard more of God’s amazing work and I’m numb with what was said. We know God can do anything yet rarely experience anything like the experiences of Olson and this small Colombian tribe, now respected worldwide.

This morning, my devotional guide directs me to think about why God answers prayer. He certainly answered the requests of the first missionary, and those of Bruce Olson. He often answers my prayers, even in ways that are astounding. The verses given are part of the why:

And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it. (John 14:13-14)

When Olson was finished speaking, the audience didn’t know what to do. Normally a speaker delivers stories of God’s grace in somewhat of a dramatic manner and the listeners feel like applauding at least their delivery, but this man didn’t make us feel like that. He left no sense of “Wow, what a man” but a total sense of “Wow, what a God!”

Applause seems an inadequate response to the glory of God. What do you do when He puts His servant into the hands of rebel guerrillas who tie him to a tree for months, then decide to bring him into their camp where he teaches them to read and write and leads them to faith in Jesus Christ? What do you do when God sends a mockingbird, noted for mimicking what they hear, to his servant who is deathly ill, and has that bird sing a song of salvation and resurrection in the tonal language of a people group whom he has also taught to read and write and follow Jesus? (Read this story at the above link.)

We applauded God, but I felt like falling on my face. My prayers are often too selfish, and too often I take bits of glory for myself, but yesterday I realized what I want to be when I grow up. I want to trust God much more, and I want to be just a little bit like these two faithful missionaries who both know what it means to glorify Him.

Taking God Seriously

My nephew is a mature, new Christian. It sounds like an oxymoron, but I’ve come up with a new definition for spiritual maturity: spiritual maturity is taking God seriously.

A lot of Christians don’t. They have their fire insurance, and for them, following Christ in their daily lives is an option. If they get in trouble, they pray. If they get enough sleep Saturday night, they go to church. Otherwise, they mostly do their own thing.

Jesus had an experience in the house of a Pharisee who invited him to dinner. A prostitute showed up and began to show her adoration to the Lord. His host criticized Him for allowing this, but Jesus asked him who is the most grateful: the creditor who is forgiven a small debt or the one forgiven a large amount.

The host said that would be the one forgiven a large amount. Jesus told him he answered correctly, then added, “Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”

While ‘good’ people who come to Christ may eventually learn that they are totally ruined by their sinful hearts, it is those who have visible wreckage that appreciate most what Jesus has done and can do for them. These are often adults, like my nephew, whose lives have not gone the way they wanted, yet as they turn to Christ and take Him seriously, amazing things happen.

Yesterday, three ladies in my Sunday class shared “the difference Christ has made in their lives in the past year.” The first was an incredible story of the pull of God on a resisting heart. She told how the Holy Spirit, whom she called a “mysterious force”, urged her to meet some Christians, to bring her daughter to our church building to play a game, then to attend a Bible study, and then to come to worship services and eventually my class. She never thought she would identify herself with Christians, and even though she does not claim to be one of us yet, she knows that Jesus Christ is changing her life. She is taking God seriously.

The second one told how God placed things in her life that didn’t fit with her plans and taught her to trust Him anyway. She shared several stories of how Jesus turned events that didn’t look very promising into great blessing, and how she learned to have faith in Him when she can’t see what He is doing. She is taking God seriously.

The third person took several major leaps of faith, and in her obedience, God gave her great peace and joy and a surprising healing to a broken relationship. She also is taking God seriously.

When I became a Christian, my life was a shambles. I had no other place or person who could help me or understand. I’d been let down, betrayed and disappointed. I didn’t like myself and wanted to change. Jesus Christ revealed Himself to me, and when He did, I could see how much I needed Him.

He moved in, but at the time, I didn’t understand what happened. Later, perhaps through reading 1 Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” I began to grasp the reality of God in my life, that He had become totally committed to me, totally involved in everything I did. He watches what I watch, reads what I read, goes where I go. Just like the psalmist says in Psalm 139, He is “acquainted with all my ways.”

After walking with Him for over thirty years, there are many days that I still feel as if I don’t take God seriously enough. I get on a negative kick, or am grouchy and unthankful, or simply plan things without talking to Him first. Yet He is here, and reminds me that He is.

C. H. Spurgeon wrote, “ . . . there must be a hearty reliance upon God, and a childlike confidence in him. I would recommend you either believe in God up to the hilt, or not at all. Believe this Book of God, every letter of it, or else reject it. There is no logical standing-place between the two. Be satisfied with nothing less than a faith that swims in the deeps of divine revelation; a faith that paddles about the edge of the water is poor faith, and is not good for much. Oh, I pray you, do believe in God, and his omnipotence.”

To that great preacher’s thought, I humbly add a strong exhortation to myself; believe in God and His serious commitment to me, for because of that, I must also be seriously committed to Him.