Looking Up

Yesterday was difficult, mostly because my mind kept going to the worst case scenario. Pain makes positive thinking almost a mockery. And “what if” questions are not conducive to joy. I could not seem to focus on the goodness of God that motivates His actions in our lives. All I could think of was my husband’s injury and pain and my own struggle with a knee that might hurt one step and not the next. It was a day when I didn’t want to do anything at all, just fasting from life. I got up this morning determined to drop that numbing attitude and let God replace it with His joy.

Today’s devotional is about an OT passage of rebuke to God’s people who were fasting for the wrong reasons. They asked God why He was not noticing their actions and He responded:

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord? “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in. If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 58:3–14)

The reading also rebuked my attitude — which I deserved. It said that God is not pleased with the miseries of self-examination. He calls on me as He did on them, to forget my own problems and to go to work to lessen the miseries of others. Service for others is of infinitely greater value to the Lord than the longest seasons of self-examination and self-abasement. That being true, He certainly does not value self-pity and a lack of hope either.

I’m thinking of the psalms. Even those of lament that begin with “poor me” usually end on high notes. For example:

Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning… For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield. (Psalm 5:1-12)

Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?… O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more. (Psalm 10:1-17;18)

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?… I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me. (Psalm 13:1-6)

My nature is pessimistic, seeing the worst first. Jesus was aware of evil too, but it was not His focus. I need to be more like Him.

PRAY: Lord, use these trials to bring out Your attitude of putting others first, of being merciful even when in pain with grace like, “Father forgive them” on Your lips. I can put my spouse’s needs before my own, yet there are thousands, perhaps millions in far more dire need of prayer and Your goodness than we are. Instead of being numb with anxiety, fill me with concern to do whatever I can for others, praying for Your guidance and wisdom and keeping my mind on your promise to use all things for good in their lives as well as mine.

When faith is attacked…

 

Faith follows facts and emotions are the caboose. If emotions pull the train of my spiritual life, then God often feels so far away that He cannot possibly know or understand my needs and pays no attention to my pleas. I say ‘often’ because His presence and actions and answers to prayer can often be so spectacular that I wonder why I even doubted Him. Of course it is better to let facts pull the train of life.

This is why the illustration of the train says faith fuels the facts. It is not merely the presence of facts, or that I read and know what God says about Himself. This is about believing them, knowing that God exists, hears my cries and is who He says He is. What if faith falters? What do I do when my assurance is attacked? How do I keep faith focused and trusting rather than letting emotions or anything else distract me and start thinking, ‘Is this really true’?

The answer is always Jesus. While some say He never existed, even the most skeptic of historians have ceased to do that and no longer question that He was an historical person. A figment of someone’s imagination does not change lives for thousand of people over thousands of years. A book of fiction claiming to be the true Word of God does not last on the best seller list if the author and central character is a fraud.

Even those who do not agree or commit themselves to Jesus Christ acknowledge that His message and life have power. Someone recently told us of a podcaster who is not a Christian hosted a professing atheist on his podcast. Both agreed that all countries in the world were far better off when their population was mostly Christian. This speaks to the power of the gospel and the reality of the One that died and rose again. Facts pulling faith.

When my feelings waver and God seems to be fiction, I think about Jesus. He said things so contrary to how we humans think and did things that startled, challenged, and changed the religious ideas of even the most religious. His ability to control the weather, illness, even to change water into wine, makes Him unique. He is human yet He is God? There is no other explanation for Jesus.

My emotions cannot turn God into a puppet pulled by the strings of what I think and feel. He is not controlled by me — and if He was, then I would be God. That thought is so absurd, but I’m not laughing. I know who and what I would be like if that were true. The world would look like my desk does most of the time — total chaos. And if that isn’t enough, this generation has largely said NO to God and Jesus Christ and many are doing whatever humans want to do — and we have total chaos. It seems God is saying, “You want to live without facts pulling your train, then this is what happens.”

My emotions and the selfish desires of many are capable of making a mess of things, but that does not negate the existence and sovereignty of God. Only He has the audacity to claim this:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Romans 8:28–29)

All things? Even chaos? He is doing exactly that — using the chaos to draw millions to trust Him, right down to my own life being changed by the stuff that makes me feel helpless. Even the results of trusting myself show me how little I know about being my own god. This God and His facts are worthy to be at the front of my life.

PRAY: Jesus, trusting You and the truth about You is the best way to live, and keeping feelings in their place means that instead of fear, hatred, and other emotions influencing how I live, You give me a deep joy that continually rises to the surface and lovingly pushes faith to follow those facts along with an overwhelming joy that overcomes my selfish ideas and feelings and gives me a deep desire to live as Your facts tell me to live…

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

Seeing the patterns of God . . .

For seventeen years, I wrote a weekly newspaper column. It was called “Parables” because God gave me insight into how much the events of this world point to spiritual truth. Through that, I realized manh things, especially His amazing oneness, His powerful hand in all that happens, both in creation and in the affairs of humanity.

It is easy to say that He designed the world that way, but I’m beginning to understand that this divine ‘dot-connecting’ goes beyond the design of a superior mind. That is, there is a cohesiveness in the created world that parallels the nature and working of God — and it is there simply because God is.

A crass illustration might be the presence of a large elephant in a small room. That huge animal affects everything in that space. If it sneezes, the entire room shakes. If it snoozes, everyone tiptoes.

Because of the working of God, an event happened in the Old Testament that points to a greater event in the years to come, an event that changed the world. This is a short episode, given only a few words, but it happened so God could use it to explain a vital truth. When He delivered His people from slavery in Egypt, they set out for the promised land, but like us, they were a rag tag group, prone to the same sins we are, particularly when life does not go the way we want:

“From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.’ Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” (Numbers 21:4–9)

Their complaining illustrates mine, grumbling when things go contrary to what I want. The fiery serpents illustrate what happens to not only the health but the lives of people who are never happy; it eventually destroys us. Moses illustrates the role of an intercessor — a person who takes pity on those who are continually out of sorts and sinful; he prays for them. And the fiery serpent on the pole illustrates what happened to Jesus.

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” (John 3:14)

I’m not certain how far this illustration goes. Did Jesus take on the pain and affliction of a people who hated the rule of God in their lives? Certainly. What does being ‘fiery’ have to do with it? I don’t know. I just know that this barely mentioned event in the lives of God’s people pointed ahead to the work of Christ on the cross for the salvation of my sin. It also pictures human responsibility — God arranged this saving event so that we who are ‘bitten’ by sin must look at Christ on the Cross that we might live.

^^^^^^^^^^

Jesus, I’m thinking that all the events of life somehow point to You. I am oblivious to most of them, but what You reveal is so lovely, so profound, so grandly filled with Your power and grace. Of course, I don’t want to see things that are not there, but am starting to think that I’ve the opposite problem — I am oblivious to that which is there, not connecting the dots between cause and effect, between Your involvement in the world and how You are using it to say, “Wake up My child — this world is all about the glory of God!”