Month: April 2021

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 3:23; 6:23

            I recently watched the live proceedings of the verdicts being handed down in a high-profile murder case. The man had three different accusations against him, and he stood stoically as he listened to the verdicts. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. I’m not sure what I expected to feel as I listened to this, but I didn’t expect what happened. As I heard the judge pronounce these three verdicts, I imagined myself in front of God’s judgement seat as I heard the judgements against me. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Except there would be many more than three verdicts. There would be a verdict for every wrong action I did in my life and every right action I left undone in my life. Not only that, but there would also be a guilty verdict for every wrong thought and every wrong motive. Every one of the verdicts would be the same: guilty.

            We can easily fall into the temptation of thinking that God grades on a curve. Because I’ve never committed murder, I’m better than those who have, right? In the eyes of our criminal justice system, that is correct. And we do need to take the severity of the crime into consideration when meting out justice. But when God is the judge, it’s a different ball game. According to scripture, not one of us is innocent. Every sin we commit, no matter how small, separates us from God. What we earn for each one of those sins is death. Eternal separation from the God who loves us. It will take an eternity to serve all of those death sentences against us! As I watched this man be handcuffed and led away to prison, I thought of those who will go into eternal punishment.

            Praise God we have someone to step in for us! We have a Judge who is righteous and holy. Compared to Him we will always be guilty. But His love for us is so great that He made a way to atone for our sins. We don’t need to experience the punishment our sins deserve. Instead, because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we’ve been given a free gift. I don’t know about you, but I can start to take that gift for granted. Watching this verdict being passed in our court system served to reawaken in me the awesomeness of this gift. It is true that the verdict I deserve and will receive is guilty. But the punishment has already been served by the only One who could have born it. My Savior, Jesus Christ, took all of that on Himself. So instead of being led away in chains to experience eternal punishment, I am looking forward to an eternity spent in the presence of my loving God and Savior.

            If you have never accepted this free gift of forgiveness and life, don’t delay. You’re guilty. We all are. But when the sentence against you has been forgiven, you will experience a freedom that is unequalled by anything else on this earth!

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.” 2 Timothy 2:7

            There seems to be so much to be afraid of these days. Of course, there are the usual fears. Personally, I could envision a very happy world without spiders. I know there’s no good reason to fear them, yet I do. But this verse is talking about a very specific kind of fear. It’s the fear that completely intimidates us, that causes us to cower in fear. Even though I fear spiders, I don’t cower in fear of them. But there are other things that make me cower. I’m guessing we all have those things. If you don’t think you do, I encourage you to think about what angers you. I don’t mean a righteous anger about the injustices of the world. I mean the times when something was said or done and the anger just flared up within you. Now look behind that anger and what do you see? It’s quite possible that the emotion behind the anger is fear.

            While this verse is definitely telling us to not cower in fear, I know that I have not always placed enough emphasis on the rest of the verse. It’s not enough to just tell someone to not be afraid. How in the world do you just stop fearing? I think the answer is by concentrating on the second half of this verse.

            What are you afraid of? Do you fear what may happen that you are powerless to control? We may not be able to control the future or control the decisions of other people. But we are given great power. Through Christ, we have the power to overcome those very difficult circumstances. We have the power to face the unknown future. We even have the power to face the enemy of our souls! There’s no reason to cower when you have power!

            We don’t just have power. We also have love. How awesome would it be if every Christian responded to insults, rebukes, jeers, and even hate – with love? I used that word “awesome” very intentionally. Because if we were to all respond to every other person with love, God’s awesome majesty and glory would be shown every day all over the globe. No more put downs, no more demeaning comments about those who disagree with us. Just love. The world wouldn’t know what hit them! Of course, we’re afraid that if we only show love to others, they’ll use us for a door mat. And maybe they will. But remember that we have power to face those difficult circumstances.

            Which brings us to the next trait. Self-discipline. Maybe you’re afraid of yourself. Afraid that if you think someone is using you, you’ll react in anger. Or you’re afraid of falling back into a sin you’re trying to overcome. You know we’re supposed to show self-discipline but the habit or the emotion just seem too strong. You’ve tried to maintain the discipline needed to kick that habit or that response. In fact, you’ve tried the others, too. You’ve tried to have the strength to carry bravely on and you’ve worked to love the unlovable. Now you’re supposed to control yourself, too? It’s just not possible.

Keep in mind that with all of these: power, love and self-discipline, we’re not relying on ourselves. We are given these things from God. And what He gives us defies all understanding because it’s just not natural. It’s supernatural. That’s the spirit we’ve been given. Let’s live out of that spirit. We may not change the world, but we’ll allow God to change us. And that’s a pretty good start.

“This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.’” Isaiah 30:15

            Rest is a wonderful word, isn’t it? Just to hear the word makes me want to take a deep breath and sort of sink into peacefulness, especially when life is a little crazy. In fact, it would be easy to think that rest is a good thing to strive for, but it just isn’t possible in our lives right now. There’s just too much to do. There’s work and keeping up the home and family and church and friends and on and on. How can we possibly find time to rest? Even if we can find the time, our brains often don’t cooperate. They don’t shut off. They continue to worry about what still needs to be done, or what might happen, or even what’s already happened.

If you think it’s hard for you, think about the original audience! They were actually in the middle of a battle. Their enemies were hot on their heels and they were literally fighting for their lives. And that’s when God tells them to rest. I don’t know about you, but I would have thought that was crazy talk. Rest in the middle of a battle?! That seems like a sure way to get a spear in the back.

You may have noticed that I left out the important word that comes before rest: repentance. We can’t find rest if we don’t acknowledge those areas of our lives where we’re running from God. If we know there’s a part of us that we still haven’t turned over to God, then we won’t find true rest. But if we will take an honest look at ourselves and acknowledge our sins to God and ask His help to turn from those sins, then we’ll know a rest like none other. In fact, God goes on to say that when we rest in Him, that’s when we have true strength. That’s because it won’t be our strength. It will be God’s strength working through us.

Then comes the kicker of this verse. God has offered us an amazing gift of His peace and His strength to meet whatever enemy we’re facing. But we turn Him down cold. We basically tell Him that we’d rather fight the exhausting, losing battle on our own than let Him fight a winning battle for us. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Yet we do that very thing all the time. I’m sure there are many reasons why we do this, but I think a big one is we want to be in control. We think that if we’re doing all the fighting, we’re controlling the situation. In reality, the situation is controlling us. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we’ll be willing to rely on the only One who can handle the situation completely. We laugh at toddlers who refuse help for something they just can’t do on their own. But I’m not sure we ever outgrow that. We continue to struggle and fret and fume while all the time God is just waiting for us to allow Him to handle the situation and at the same time, give us peace and strength. So let’s ask ourselves which we would rather choose. Would you rather continue fighting the losing battle on your own, or do you want to turn it over to God and let Him win for you while you enjoy His rest?

“If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Daniel 3:17-18

            I once saw a magnet with a saying that went something like, “Faith is not believing that God can, but that He will.” There are some situations when that’s true. For example, I know that Christ will return one day. I know that when I die, He will take me to live with Him forever in heaven. I know that He has forgiven my sins and will continue to do so when I earnestly and sincerely repent. I don’t have objective proof of these things, but in these situations, faith is not just believing that God can. It’s believing that He will.

            For most of the situations we face in life on this earth, I have to respectfully disagree with the magnet’s wisdom. In fact, in a majority of cases, the truth is just the opposite. For example, I’ve been praying for a couple of years for a loved one to be healed. That healing hasn’t happened, at least not yet. That leaves me with a choice. I can choose to believe that God isn’t capable of healing. That He’s been trying all kinds of different ways to heal this disease but just hasn’t been able to accomplish it yet. Or I can choose to believe that He just doesn’t care. He could heal, but He just can’t be bothered.

Or I can believe that He is capable of healing. In fact, it would be a snap of the fingers for Him. Not only can He heal, but He’s also caring and loving. He is with my loved one and with every other person who is experiencing any kind of struggle. And that is what I choose to believe through faith, even though I’ve not yet seen evidence of the healing in this situation. And it may never happen this side of heaven.

            This is when I join Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in saying that even if God chooses to not heal my loved one, I will not turn away from Him. I will trust Him with the outcome, knowing that He has only our good in mind. There is a reason beyond what I can comprehend that this person I love so dearly is having to suffer and may be taken from this earth sooner than I would like. In this instance, and many others like it, faith is believing God can, even when He chooses not to. And it’s also believing that His choice to not heal is for a very good reason. Faith is knowing that we may someday understand the why’s. But even if we don’t, we don’t really need to know the why because we know the Who. That Who is the God who loves us so much He gave His Son for us. And that Son suffered more than anyone in history by taking all our sins on Himself. He literally loved us to death. Since He loves us that much, we can trust Him with our struggles. That’s faith.