With twenty-eight relocations under my belt, it seems that I’ve spent much of my life filing. Every move requires reorganizing. Yet with my mind set, even the changes of seasons seem to motivate me to change my environment, or reassess what I’m doing. I look at what I have and ask if this or that is necessary or do I give it away?
At times I’ve fallen into ‘change for change’s sake’ or a useless busy work like moving furniture rather than doing something more important. However, most of the changes have been profitable in some way. Sometimes rearranging equals greater convenience. Sometimes decluttering clears my head along with my house.
This morning I’m challenged again to do some assessment. While this comes easily at the end of the year (or the beginning of a new month, or week, or even every morning), this time it is from God’s Word.
Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds. (Proverbs 27:23)
Spurgeon has some good things to say about this verse. He points out that a wise merchant occasionally takes stock. He opens his accounts, examines what is on hand, and determines whether his trade is prosperous or declining. This practice is easily transferred to those who belong to Jesus Christ. Those who are wise will often take stock to make sure that our hearts are right with God. We ask Him to reveal sin and life-patterns that need attention.
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:23–24)
Those who are alert know that every believer struggles against an enemy who introduces false ideas into our heads. He also tries to stir up strife between the people of God, or sow doubt of the love of God into our hearts. He is diligent in trying to keep us from being joyful and fruitful in our Christian lives.
Besides checking for garbage from Satan, stock-taking can also clear out the excess and recorder all that should be in place. While this is seldom an enjoyable task, it is not intended to uproot our security in Christ, but any fleshy security in ourselves. We do it, not to disturb our peace with God, but to clear out any false peace of complacency and the laxness that so easily works its way into daily life.
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Lord, I’ve often seen how the state of my life, whether organized or in total disarray, is a reflection of the state of my soul. These words from Your Word easily motivate me to tidy up my home and computer files. They are more difficult to apply to the way I care for people or my own soul. Both can so easily become messy and without purpose. Help me to know well the condition of everything that You have put under my care. Show me the best way to give attention to anything that is not as it should be. I know that physically moving from one place to another helps to declutter, but obeying You in this does not require that I move to another place. Instead, You ask me to simply get moving.
The only thing certain about life is change. I cannot find the quote, but whoever first said it realized an important truth. Nothing stays the same and for a person who tends to be pessimistic and dwells on the negative, inconsistency can easily ruin my happiness.
For instance, I could be happy that I am healthy, but occasionally my bones ache. I could be happy that my family loves me, but then remember the rough spots. I could be happy that my life is comfortable, but I know that the comforts of life are fleeting. Besides, I remember those days of being very poor and the difficulties that went with them. I could also be happy about my talents, but there are flub-ups and failures too. Also, as I age, those abilities will lose their power.
Pinning my sense of well-being and joy on almost anything brings with it negatives that can creep in or crash in, robbing me of the pleasures those things give. But one thing never changes. In Malachi 3:6, God says, “For I am the Lord, I do not change.”
James 1:17 puts it this way, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”
God does not change. He always was and always is. His nature is constant. He does not grow or diminish, nor does He vacillate. My human mind cannot grasp that kind of consistency, yet by faith I know it is true. Everything else changes, decays, comes and goes, but God is always God.
The Bible also says the same of Jesus Christ. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). This affirms His deity and gives me more reasons to trust Him. He is my permanent and reliable reason to be happy. There are no negatives in Him. He is perfect, a perfect friend who loves me without any hesitation or conditions. There are no flaws or bumps in His care. His grace and strength are perfect, consistent and always available.
Paul wrote, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4) and I can say YES, because the one thing I am certain about Him is that He never changes.
When I think about Jesus Christ, every part of me must smile and nothing about Him that ruins my happiness. That kind of delight is beyond the normal idea of happy and worthy of being called that simple and deeper word — joy, pure joy.
I’ve been reading a serious book by Greg Harris called The Cup and the Glory. It starts out in the gospels where the disciples ask Jesus to give them places of honor when He comes into His glory. Jesus told them that they did not know what they were asking, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”
Harris points out that the disciples didn’t have a clue what it would take to make them ready to receive the request that they asked. He skillfully shows that many of our prayers in general, and even the deepest and truest desires of our hearts to become more spiritual, more like Jesus, are accompanied by a blindness to what God needs to do to answer our prayers.
It isn’t that God is unable to do what we ask. He can in a heartbeat. But we block Him. We ask for patience and He sends tribulation (“tribulation produces patience,” Romans 5:3), then we pray and ask Him to deliver us from the tribulation. We don’t know what we ask.
I have been praying for unsaved family for years. I’ve often felt that God is not doing what only He can do in their lives because I need to change, that I’m not ready for the answer. Either that, or He is using this situation to build faith and patience in me, to test my faithfulness, to help me draw closer to Him.
At the same time, I don’t want to be a hindrance to His blessing in the lives of anyone, never mind those so close to my heart. So this morning, I asked Him to show me what He needs to do in me before He answers those prayers. At least then I can cooperate instead of fighting whatever He sends to change me, to make me ready for what He will do.
I’m sure that this morning’s request will take a long time to answer, but for today, He takes me to Ephesians 4:1-3. It says, “I, therefore, (Paul) the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
At first this seemed an odd answer. Then I remembered the Lego lesson from yesterday and looked for specific directions. I found them in a section of the Bible Knowledge Commentary. It says, “Attitudes of humility, gentleness, and patience foster unity among Christians. Having stated these three virtues, Paul then stated the manner in which they are to be carried out in one’s conduct: bearing with one another in love and making every effort (the Gr. has a participle, ‘making every diligent effort’) to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Christians are not to make unity but to keep or guard what God made in creating the ‘one new man’ (Eph. 2:15-16). They are to keep this unity ‘through the bond’ which consists of ‘peace.’ Concern for peace will mean that Christians will lovingly tolerate each other, even when they have differences.”
My next steps are now clearer. Learn more of humility, gentleness, and patience. These virtues will show up in how I interact with my church family. I’m to be more concerned about unity and peace than I am about our differences, so begin there.
I wonder if these attitudes will spill over into my relationships with our unsaved family? No doubt. However, for right now, I’m to see the face of Christ and ask Him to demonstrate in me His lowliness, kindness and long-suffering. I already know I can’t do this without Him.
At the same time, I think about Harris’ book. It is a joy and a wonder to be like Jesus because He fills me with Himself and shines through me. It is quite a different experience to have the Holy Spirit go to work on me and get rid of all that which is not like Jesus. In this case, it is my pride, my harsh or a hard attitudes, and my impatience.
What will it take? I don’t know, but that is the cup that He asks me to drink.
Yesterday my husband went to an “after your heart attack” session at the hospital. It was about emotions, and he came home with some wisdom for me. He said that spouses might have strong responses too, one of them being grief over the losses that this brings.
I’d not felt much before that. Under stress, I seldom get emotional, usually absent-minded. However, after we talked about it, I was swept with great sorrow. It wasn’t just the heart attack that has produced loss in our lives. Things changed when he was diagnosed with CLL last June. Things changed in August when our granddaughter moved in. Now things change again.
With CLL, the immune system must be guarded. To have a healthy heart, we must follow the Mediterranean food plan, get enough exercise. With another person in the house (who still has a particular set of problems) we must guard other areas of our lives, and hers. Before, the calendar was filled and we were busy. Now the calendar is still full and we must add more things.
No one can add without subtracting, and subtracting means loss, sometimes loss of things held dear, or at least greatly enjoyed. This isn’t for just one month while healing happens; these are changes that have no end, no going back to ‘normal’ — which is only a setting on the dryer anyway! But unlike that setting that we can control, we didn’t ask for these events, nor expect them. While I have done my best to accept what God has ordained, at the same time, there is a huge sense of being grossly inadequate to settle into this new ‘normal.’
This morning Psalm 42 sounds a bit like I feel. The writer is thirsty for God and for what used to be. He is cast down, disquieted, remembering the best of the past. He feels that God has forgotten him and says, “Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; all Your waves and billows have gone over me” (Psalm 42:7).
While this is an expression of drowning in trials, I got a picture in my mind of what God’s waterfall would be like. I’m looking up at a torrent coming over a precipice and think, He is up there letting all this come down on me. Then I thought, If I was up there too, I wouldn’t feel as if I were under this, but above it.
At that, I hear a still, small voice saying, “Come up higher” and suddenly my understanding changes. I’ve been sitting in the back row like the man commended by Jesus in Luke 14:7-11, and God is asking me to move from what I’ve known to a new place, a place closer to Him. Yes, it means leaving the old and comfortable, but how can I fear changing where I am if it means being nearer to Him? Isn’t that what I want anyway?
In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers says, “If in the externals of your life you live up to the highest you know, God will continually say—‘Friend, go up higher.’ The golden rule in temptation is—‘Go higher.’ When you get higher up, you face other temptations and characteristics. Satan uses the strategy of elevation in temptation, and God does the same, but the effect is different. When the devil puts you into an elevated place, he makes you screw your idea of holiness beyond what flesh and blood could ever bear. It is a spiritual acrobatic performance, you are just poised and dare not move; but when God elevates you by His grace into the heavenly places, instead of finding a pinnacle to cling to, you find a great table-land where it is easy to move.” (March 27).
Deep calls to deep. In the calling, I can see beyond this flooded and drowning sensation to a glassy clear and very deep lake, a place to rest and enjoy—before He again calls me to go upstream.
Occasionally when I’m with a group of Christians, I see or hear something that is off kilter, either a false doctrine, or a rebellious attitude, or even something like gossip or critical judgment of others. When that happens, my own heart often reacts in the wrong way. I become condemning and critical too, and want to tell other people about the ‘dreadful thing so-and-so did,’ thereby doing the same thing myself. Or I might bring the thing to prayer meeting as a request, but it really is gossip thinly disguised, or I’m using prayer to make myself look good compared to that terrible sinner.
When Jesus gave instruction about prayer, He included this: “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”
Praying to be seen as pious happens far too often. Planning what I say, making sure my prayers sound right to impress others is hypocrisy. Using prayer to put down someone who falls into sin is hypocrisy too. I’m a sinner just as they, and both of us need forgiveness and mercy.
Jesus’ solution is simply; keep it to myself. When I see someone slip into sin, the first thing I must do is head for my secret place and pray. While some interpret this as a “prayer closet” or a “walk in the woods,” the place is not the issue. Instead, the important thing is being alone and talking to God without anyone else present. It is praying about the things that burden my heart instead of spilling them out in public to make myself look ‘religious’ and ‘holier than thou.’
If I need proof that sin permeates every part of a human life, this might be it. The very fact that I would use prayer, which is supposed to be a humble, needy person reaching out to an omniscient, powerful God, as a means to glorify myself shows the depth of sin.
The very fact that God still invites me to come and talk to Him in private, where He is, shows the depth of His mercy. That He hears my prayers at all is amazing, but even more amazing is His promise concerning those secret prayers. I might rant about what I’ve seen, condemn the sin and even think I am better than that other person, but God says when I bring all that gunk to Him in secret, He will reward me openly.
What about that reward? Is it a change in that other person? Sometimes. More often than not, though, the reward of meeting God in secret is that I see Him there, and in seeing Him, He somehow changes my attitude, gives me a greater compassion and more patience, and changes me to be less like me and more like Jesus.
The popular definition for the grace of God goes something like this: “God’s riches at Christ’s expense,” or “the unmerited favor of God.” Marvelous thoughts; however, the actual meaning of the word ‘grace’ is even more exciting.
My reading today is in John 1, a favorite passage from a favorite book. It is about God’s Word, Jesus Christ, becoming flesh and living among us. Verse 17 says, “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
God revealed to Moses how His people should live through His Law. By these commandments, we realize the holy demands of a holy God and find that God wants a standard of heart and life that is completely beyond our normal. In fact, His Law is so far beyond what we are and how we live that any honest person who tries to obey His commands must soon admit that they cannot.
The truth of the matter is that for anyone to keep God’s Law, we need a big change in how we think and act, because pleasing ourselves is our main motivation, not pleasing God. This where grace comes in.
Grace, fully defined, is “a revelation from God that changes us.” This grace begins with the appearing of Himself in human flesh, an appearing that is so radical and startling that anyone who really sees Jesus Christ for who He is can never be the same. Jesus Himself changes us by grace and grace is the ingredient that makes it possible to please God. This awesome Lawgiver on the throne stepped into time and space and became the perfect Law-keeper. When He revealed Himself to me, He moved into my life and changed it, becoming the Law-keeper in my heart.
The truth is, no person can do what Jesus does. No person is capable of being sinless or perfect. We need a new nature, a new ‘normal’ to live by, and Jesus Christ is that, by grace.
He says, “By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
Even thought the Bible says no one can, if I could keep the Law, I would boast. That would put me above the judgments and pronouncements of God. What a vain thought, one that smacks of the rebellion of the angel who became Satan.
Instead of such vanity, God gave me one incredible revealing of Jesus. In Him I saw the only One who can do it. In Him, I saw, and keep seeing, the impossible and awful truth about myself, and also the answer to that awful and impossible. He is my salvation, my deliverance from the wrath of God, my hope to live as I ought.
And He does it by grace—a revelation that changes me, a revelation that motivates a deep and daily hunger to see more of Him.
A bumper sticker says, “Christians are not different, just forgiven.”
That one bugs me. The theology behind it is far from biblical. Yes, Christians are forgiven, but if there is no change in our lives, we better examine ourselves. We might be fakes.
I learned early that when Christ came into my life, God was going to use all things, His Word, circumstances, trials, blessings, relationships, everything, to transform me into the image of His Son. He began with a notable change in my attitude toward people. I used to be hostile, not caring, and suddenly found myself liking others. How novel!
In the Old Testament, God’s people were in slavery in Egypt. In many ways this depicts how all humanity is in slavery to sin. As the bondage deepened, they cried out to God for deliverance. He sent Moses to lead them out of their bondage to a new place, a land “flowing with milk and honey.”
The task was not an easy one. Despite hating their situation in Egypt, they fought God along the way. They wanted freedom, but didn’t like His terms. However, God was in charge.
Moses trusted that God knew best. He became frustrated with the reluctance of His people and their rebellions. At one point he prayed, “If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.”
God replied, “Behold, I make a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord. For it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.”
They were forgiven and delivered from bondage in a spectacular way, but God was not finished with them. For centuries, He walked with them, continued to work among them, and they (or at least some of them) trusted Him and were noted as God’s chosen people.
Their experience was a shadow, a ‘type’ of the Christian life. Jesus delivers His people from the bondage of sin. We come out of our slavery to it, sometimes kicking and resisting, only to find that God has just begun to work with us and that He uses many things to change us, including His Word. One New Testament verse describes some ways He uses it: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Forgiveness is only the beginning. I am the same because I can relate to everyone else—I have the same weaknesses, same struggles, same problems and hang-ups as they do, but because of Jesus, I have a different Master, a different ‘rule book,’ a different hope, a changed focus, and a radical new world view.
For the thief on the cross beside Jesus, forgiveness was enough to get him into the kingdom, but he too would be radically transformed when he joined Jesus in glory. “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
Yet even that glorious promise has an application for right now. It adds, “AND
everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
Yes, we are forgiven, but because we are—praise God—change is our destiny, and it starts the moment Jesus moves in.
