Today: needing Him

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)

Sometimes Christians speak of being born again as if we did it, or at least had something to do with it. But this is a work of God. It is as mysterious as the wind. It is also a surprise. I remember when it happened, but have no idea how, or where it started, perhaps somewhere in the depths of my heart, but certainly in the depths of God’s heart!

Chambers says being born again from above is a perennial, perpetual and eternal beginning. He rightly points out that it brings freshness in thinking, talking, and living and makes the life of God filled with continual surprise, so much so that any staleness indicates my life is out of joint with God.

One sign of staleness is thinking ‘I must do this thing or it will never be done.’ However, I don’t need to rake my mind for something to do because staying fresh with God is not about me, not even about my obedience. It is from the Holy Spirit, light, newness, energy, the will to walk with Jesus and let Him constantly surprise me.

And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. (John 17:11)

Keeping close to God, being obedient, walking in the light and staying fresh are vital and somewhat connected. Jesus prayed the above prayer for my oneness with Him and with His people. His desire is that nothing gets between us, nothing to mar my relationship with Him, nothing to ruin the freshness of new life from the Holy Spirit.

I cannot draw my life, inspiration, even my energy from any other source than God himself. Chambers says that if I am depending upon anything but Him, I will never know when He is gone. That is a horrible thought. These days, it also seems a ridiculous thought. I felt yesterday that I was ‘running on fumes’ but it is not right to talk about the life and energy of the Holy Spirit as mere fumes. He is sustaining me at a time when there is no other source.

I need to eat. I need to sleep. I need to keep from being entangled in non-essentials that press me into ‘stale’ mode. Being born of the Spirit means having vision for the challenges of each moment. It also means being kept fresh for everything by the perennial supply of the life of God.

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Last night Bob thought he would likely die soon. Every breath took too much energy. He called me to bring a book so I could take notes of what needed to be done. By the time I got to the hospital, he was repeating himself, nearly incoherent. He was struggling to breathe. Someone decided to raise the oxygen input. When that happened, he improved, forgot all he wanted me to write down. More tests, more x-rays, and so on, and he was much better by five pm. Still not out of those proverbial woods, but clearer of mind and able to breathe without gasping. God used Psalm 20 to comfort both of us.

May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble! May the name of the God of Jacob protect you! May he send you help from the sanctuary and give you support from Zion! May he remember all your offerings and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices! Selah May he grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans! May we shout for joy over your salvation, and in the name of our God set up our banners! May the Lord fulfill all your petitions! Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with the saving might of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright. O Lord, save the king! May he answer us when we call. (Psalm 20:1–9)

A Fresh Start

Genesis 12–14

God uses the events of life, the choices I make (even the bad ones) to transform my life. This principle shows up in these chapters in Genesis in the story of Abraham’s beginnings.

Abraham is called the father of faith. He believed God. When God told him to go to a land He would show him, he simply gathered up his family and left. He was seventy-five years old at the time!

God promised Abram that He would make of him a great nation. As Abram (later renamed to Abraham) travelled, he came to a place called Shechem. There the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”

Abram believed Him and built an altar to the Lord, then “moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.” (Genesis 12:7–8)

This is the beginning of this man’s walk with God. He heard God speak, did what God told him to do, and worshipped. But this obedience was not consistent. There was a famine in that land and Abram went to Egypt to escape it (instead of to God for guidance). There he got in trouble because he was afraid that Pharaoh would kill him and take his beautiful wife. So he had her say she was his sister (a partial truth; she was his half sister).

However, Pharaoh had more integrity and realized the ruse. He rebuked Abram for his dishonesty. I’m thinking how many times I’ve had to learn similar lessons when I relied on my own judgment and ideas instead of going to the Lord with my fears. How shameful to be rebuked by someone who does not believe in God!

After this, “Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb. Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. And he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord.” (Genesis 13:1–4)

Abram didn’t crumble because of his folly in Egypt. Instead, he returned to where he had begun to worship God and started over again by bowing in worship before Him and calling on His Name.

God is a God of fresh starts. Lamentations 3:22–23 says, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

The mistakes and sins of yesterday are forgiven when I return to the altar of worship in confession and repentance. All of the folly of the past is put under the blood of Christ and forgiven.

“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:8–12)

A new year gives a sense of a fresh start, but only God can transform each day into the reality of being able to begin again each morning with the slate of sin and guilt wiped clean!

Starting over with new motivation

Genesis 1–2, Hebrews 11:3

The first verse of the Bible declares that, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Although I do believe that God created from nothing, the Hebrew word bara˒ does not mean to “make something out of nothing.” It means to begin or originate a sequence of events.

In beginning this sequence, God created some interesting “scientific” rules that have shaped events right up to this day. For instance, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states: any system that is left alone will decay. Yet our earth contains life-forms that are highly organized and complex, even before we humans started meddling with them.

To me, this is a puzzle. How can order exist alongside that Second Law of Thermodynamics without some organizing force to keep the world from falling into chaos? The Bible does little to satisfy my scientific curiosity, perhaps because it is “by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:3).

Genesis also says that God created humans in His image. This unique creative act gave us not only physical life but also personhood — our capacity to think, to feel, to evaluate, to love, to choose, to be self-aware individuals. That is an incredible honor, never mind that He adds a command that we are to rule the earth!

This gives me worth and value as an individual. As an image-bearer, I am too significant to let others degrade me, or allow temptations harm me.

Yet this is not all about me. To be given dominion is not about a “right to use” this world to satisfy my own needs. It is an “obligation to guard and protect” it. This applies to me and to every person. Not a few protesters correctly rally against current abuses such as strip mining and pollution.

Genesis is clear that every person shares the image-likeness of God. This is reason to treat others with respect, even those whose views are not mine. I must remember that for all of us, that image is distorted by sin, hence our polarities exist, never mind all our fears and prejudices.

Genesis also reminds me that God’s love calls for a response. I hear it every day, and suppose that others also hear Him. To answer His call means dropping our tendency to put people in categories, and fitting our view of ourselves and of others into God’s estimation rather than focus on ‘me and mine.’

Before reading and thinking about this, I was considering new beginnings for a new year. I want to “starting over” and abandon old and sinful habits for new habits that please God. However, God knows, just as most people realize, that New Year resolutions seldom last for more than a few weeks. I need a consistent motivation to eat better, exercise more, chatter less, and keep up with whatever other ‘self-improvement’ schemes I can add to my to-do list.

God offers that consistent motivation in Genesis. Instead of working hard to be an acceptable person, by the fact of creation I know that He already loves and accepts me. The rest of Scripture affirms that whether I am over-weight, flabby, or too talkative, I am still loved. And His unconditional love has a powerful effect: it turns my focus off “being a better person so I will be loved” and puts it on “loving other people because I am more loved that I can even imagine.”

Some think that the creation/evolution debate about origins hasn’t much to do with today’s life. We are told to value ourselves for what we look like, achieve, how we fit into this world, the causes we stand for, and so on. That works for a little while, but eventually I fall short of perfection in all areas and easily hate myself for being so inadequate.

However, when my worth is in my origin as a created and unconditionally loved child of God, then I have to feel sorry for those who insist humans merely ‘happened’ and are now only evolved hominids with less hair and shorter arms!