On God’s Strategies

Joshua 7:2-7 MSG  God said to Gideon, “You have too large an army with you. I can’t turn Midian over to them like this—they’ll take all the credit, saying, ‘I did it all myself,’ and forget about me. Make a public announcement: ‘Anyone afraid, anyone who has any qualms at all, may leave Mount Gilead now and go home.’” Twenty-two companies headed for home. Ten companies were left.

4-5 God said to Gideon: “There are still too many. Take them down to the stream and I’ll make a final cut. When I say, ‘This one goes with you,’ he’ll go. When I say, ‘This one doesn’t go,’ he won’t go.” So Gideon took the troops down to the stream.

5-6 God said to Gideon: “Everyone who laps with his tongue, the way a dog laps, set on one side. And everyone who kneels to drink, drinking with his face to the water, set to the other side.” Three hundred lapped with their tongues from their cupped hands. All the rest knelt to drink.

7 God said to Gideon: “I’ll use the three hundred men who lapped at the stream to save you and give Midian into your hands. All the rest may go home.”

Observation

The enemy’s army was huge – they “were spread out on the plain like a swarm of locusts…like grains of sand on the seashore!” So Gideon gathered as large an army as he could from the tribes of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, but, compared to the army he faced, his army of 32,000 was small and would easily be overwhelmed.   So, to us it would make sense to try to send out a call to battle to all of the tribes of Israel to gather more men, but, God says no.  “As a matter of fact, Gideon, you have too many.  When I give you victory over them, your men will think they did it and not Me.”  God proceeded to reduce the fighting force down to 300, a ridiculously small force to fight the battle IF you are judging from a human perspective.  Again God is crafting a miracle of deliverance for these people who in a generation or so will again forget His love and care for them.  We hear over and over again in Judges how subsequent generations did evil in the sight of God, abandoning Him for false gods and doing what seems right in their own eyes.  Nonetheless, this tiny band of 300 is victorious.

God’s strategy is a mystery to us.  We pray and ask Him for what makes sense to us, what seems good or right or profitable in our eyes, our hearts, our experience.  We try to reason out and take the shortest, wisest, most productive path to our goals – the ones we’ve determined in our hearts will please God.  We look to our own plans, methods, strengths, talents and abilities to serve Him and fight against the enemy. We see Him extend mercy and grace time and time again to those we do not believe deserve it and will not profit or change by receiving it.  His ways just don’t make sense to us, often seeming like the long way around or letting the guilty off easy or giving the enemy a chance to gloat over our defeat.  We just don’t understand but, like Gideon, we are asked to set aside what makes sense to us in order to trust and obey.  That reveals the mark of our faith, the measure of our submission.

Impact on Me

Can’t tell you how many times I have wondered, “God, what are You thinking?  God, have You lost my address?”  Can’t tell you how many times I have felt like Job – “I did nothing wrong.  I don’t deserve to be here in this mess!  Where are You?”  What about, “I have a perfectly good plan here that You should bless.  Why are You not on board?”  I have foolishly limited God by praying for Him to accept my solution rather than asking Him for His.  Or, like Gideon, mustering the support to overcome in my own plan in my own strength rather than seeking God for His strength, His plan.  In these times I forget that He is working all things together for good because I love Him.

The Book of Judges is a warning.  I see this pattern over and over in the Bible.  Someone starts out well but ends up in a mess created by pride, hubris, greed, self-importance, rebellion and so on.  I am commanded to seek first the Kingdom of God and all else will be provided for me.  I need to release the need to know and understand what God is doing this moment and in this circumstance.  God is more interested in building my faith than in explaining why, more interested in developing my character than in making life easy, more interested in molding and shaping a pure heart than in making me momentarily happy.

Devotion

Father God, I bow my knee to You in all of life’s joys, trials and struggles.  I pray that, despite all my questions and concerns, I will be like Gideon with this battle and let God encourage me until I trust in His plan. I pray that, despite all my questions and concerns, I will be like Jesus and trust that, whatever the cost to me, the benefit to the Kingdom is worth it. I pray that, instead of asking, “Why am I here?”, I will ask, “What is it You would have me do here to accomplish Your will and purpose?” Learning to be obedient, content and expendable in God’s hands is not painless, may not make sense, and requires pride to die. I pray that I will allow the Holy Spirit to change and make me that good and faithful servant. In Jesus’ name, I pray.

On Where We Place Our Confidence

2 Tim 1:11-12 JB Phillips  It is this Gospel that I am commissioned to proclaim; it is of this Gospel that I am appointed both messenger and teacher, and it is for this Gospel that I am now suffering these things.  Yet I am not in the least ashamed.  For I know the One in Whom I have placed my confidence, and I am perfectly certain that the work He has committed to me is safe in his hands until that day.

2 Timothy 1:11-12 MSG   This is the Message I’ve been set apart to proclaim as preacher, emissary, and teacher. It’s also the cause of all this trouble I’m in. But I have no regrets. I couldn’t be more sure of my ground—the One I’ve trusted in can take care of what He’s trusted me to do right to the end.

Observation

We see the disarray in the world around us and feel as though things are out of control, are falling through the cracks, are swirling with desperation.  If we get our eyes on the circumstances, we can forget that God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is used to the unchanging nature of the world.  Because we have His Spirit and life working within us, we want to fix things, shake people awake to the loveliness, grace and salvation in Christ.  So, we get busy doing all that is humanly possible to make it so.  Some receive the message and are changed, but, then, when we run into unbelief, ridicule, rejection and persecution for being a faithful “preacher, emissary, and teacher,” we are surprised, discouraged, deterred and can even act ashamed of the Gospel we are sent to share.  Jesus, the greatest, most anointed teacher to ever walk the earth, suffered the same.  Why should we expect our faithfulness to receive a different result?

Paul was a frequent prisoner which degraded his credentials among his peers.  This Gospel he was (and we are) “set apart to proclaim” went against the culture, thought, human nature and, sometimes, laws of his times (and ours).  As Christians, we preach a crucified Savior, a counter cultural warrior with unconventional weapons (forgiveness, surrender, et al.), a King committed to peacemaking rather than power mongering.  When we focus on circumstances (how we are being affected), we can forget that we serve the One True, Almighty, Everlasting God Who created all and is over all.  He has the plan (still His one and only Plan A) that will succeed (no question here!) and has offered to let us partner with Him in the implementation.  Imprisoned Paul never forgot – “I am perfectly certain that the work He has committed to me is safe in his hands until that day.”  When God decides a thing will be done, it will be – regardless of what we can do for or against it.

Impact on Me

I recognize that participation in “the work He has committed to me” may require sacrifice (setting aside my own plans, giving up my own rights, being shamed by the world, or misunderstood and rejected for my stance).  God’s directions may leave me baffled at times because they seem to lead in the wrong direction or along an illogical or serpentine path.  Here, I will be tempted to help Him by creating my own plan, defining the work that needs to be done – showing a lack of confidence in His.  If I do so, He will find someone else who will listen and obey to accomplish His eternal purposes. 

So, in Whom do I place my absolute confidence?  I pray to always be like Jesus – “Not my will, but Yours be done.”  I want to marinate all I do in prayer so the works I do will be in fulfillment of God’s Plan A, saturated with the Holy Spirit and full of God-flavor in every bite.  This takes time, soaking in prayer, patiently waiting, listening for what I am to be doing, allowing for gradual change – in me as well as those I will impact.  I will only be willing to do so if I absolutely trust “the work He has committed to me is safe in his hands until that day.”

Devotion

You are my Almighty, Everlasting, Gracious, Patient, Self-Sacrificing, Loving Father.  How can I ever doubt Your faithfulness, Your wisdom, Your power, Your plan?  I choose to walk away from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to eat from the Tree of Life, to sit under its branches, to rest in Your Presence, to listen to Your Holy Spirit for what You would have me do in this partnership You have so graciously made.  I want to be like Jesus – walking in Your life, light and perfect will.  Make it so, in Jesus’ name.

On Having a Kingdom Perspective

Mathhew 18:2-4 Phillips Jesus called a little child to his side and set him on his feet in the middle of them all. “Believe me,” he said, “unless you change your whole outlook and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. It is the man who can be as humble as this little child who is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.

John 18:36 Phillips “My kingdom is not founded in this world—if it were, my servants would have fought to prevent my being handed over to the Jews. But in fact my kingdom is not founded on all this!…19:10-11  10 But Jesus gave him no reply. So Pilate said to him, “Won’t you speak to me? Don’t you realise that I have the power to set you free, and I have the power to have you crucified?”  11 “You have no power at all against me,” replied Jesus, “except what was given to you from above. And for that reason the one who handed me over to you is even more guilty than you are.”  …19:14-15 Pilate said to the Jews, “Look, here’s your king!”  15a At which they yelled, “Take him away, take him away, crucify him!”  15b Am I to crucify your king? Pilate asked them. “Caesar is our king and no one else,” replied the chief priests.

Observation

Jesus preached a kingdom that was timeless and upside down from a human perspective, a kingdom not familiar to or rooted in this world (“My kingdom is not founded in this world.”).  His kingdom was culturally and politically neutral, based entirely on eternal principles that are not specific to a time, place or culture, and, apparently, not so complicated to enter into as we tend to make it.  “It is the man who can be as humble as this little child who is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.”

Jesus happened to walk this earth living under the influence of two powerful, oppressive and absolute governments (Romans and Sanhedrin).  Resisting either had severe consequences, even death.  Nonetheless, Jesus was not intimidated by the powers of this world – physical, political or spiritual.  His kingdom is eternal, unlimited in power, ultimate in authority and freedom-based; theirs were temporary, subject to the power of the next conqueror, with transient authority and restrictive.

Yet, this eternal, not-of-this-world kingdom was so simple that only children could were humble enough to understand and accept it.  Children are generally open, accepting and content to be cared for, nurtured, and under the protection of others.  As we mature, our pride gets in the way.  We become more independent (rebellious?), take on more responsibility (depend on our own strength?) and tend to base our responses on our training and past experiences (become more reactive and opinionated?).  Becoming more self-sufficient is not necessary a bad thing – unless we become unwise enough to trust in the kingdoms of this world – our own wisdom, physical power, strength and abilities, secular governments, and so on.  We must not forget how to be cared for, under the protection of, and submitted and committed to our God. 

Impact on Me

“You can do anything you set your mind to do.”  I grew up hearing this mantra.  This is not a Jesus Kingdom principle and is not event true outside of His kingdom.  I am to set my mind to be diligent in seeking the Kingdom of Heaven, but the strength, endurance and destination needs to be directed by and resourced in the wisdom, grace and power of the Holy Spirit.   (“Each time he said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 10 That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”. 2 Cor 12:9-10)

So, when Jesus stood silent before Pilate, He was bringing the Kingdom to life through walking the footsteps set before Him – His suffering and death on the Cross.  It is interesting for me to note that the chief priests replied, “Caesar is our king and no one else,” because they had their sights and hope on another kingdom altogether – their own.  How easy it would be for me to fall into the same trap – choosing a kingdom that suited a lust for power, earthly wealth and status, personal fulfillment.  I want to choose appearing weak in earthly eyes if it will make me strong in the Lord.

Devotion

Father God, the Lord of my destiny, the redeemer of my soul, I want my worship to be only of and for You.  Don’t let me become mired in my own lust and greed for earthly rewards, blinded by my own wisdom, strength and planning, choosing to live in the wrong kingdom.  Keep my vision clear and focused on You.  Keep my feet on the path to pursue Your Kingdom alone, led by Your Holy Spirit, resourced and sustained by Your grace, humility, peace, wisdom and power for the journey.  Make it so, in Jesus’ name.

On Being Simple Enough

Matthew 18:1-7 PHILLIPS It was at this time that the disciples came to Jesus with the question, “Who is really greatest in the kingdom of Heaven?”  2-4 Jesus called a little child to his side and set him on his feet in the middle of them all. “Believe me,” he said, “unless you change your whole outlook and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. It is the man who can be as humble as this little child who is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.  5-7 “Anyone who welcomes one child like this for my sake is welcoming me. But if anyone leads astray one of these little children who believe in me he would be better off thrown into the depths of the sea with a mill-stone hung round his neck! Alas for the world with its pitfalls! In the nature of things there must be pitfalls. yet alas for the man who is responsible for them!

Observation

Jesus’ disciples must have been taken aback by this answer.  One only has to read the book of Leviticus to know that Jewish religious practice was complicated and exacting; over the years between Abraham and Jesus, legalistic interpretations of The Law by generations of religious leaders added rules and practices that made it even more difficult for anyone to understand or comply.  This complex religious structure meant to create human rankings in God’s sight based on performance and heritage – essentially:

(1) high ranking – the religious elite (privileged experts) who specialized in the study, practice and enforcement of the myriad rules and practices of the complex religious structure, standing as God’s judges of religious acceptability and performance (such as the Chief Priest and the Sadducees and Pharisees of the Sanhedrin);

(2) lower ranking – those with a heart to honor God, who did their best but who, feeling the heavy burden and impossibility of full compliance with the rules and required practices, relied on the judgment of those higher ranking to determine the appropriate sacrifice for the infraction and appropriate method of offering it to receive forgiveness.  This included sincere ones who did their best to recite all the prayers and follow the rules, however imperfectly, without hope of truly pleasing God; and

(3) lowest ranking – those who gave up trying to comply because it was just too complicated or they believed they were too much of a stench in God’s nostrils (e.g., lepers, prostitutes, etc.). 

With this teaching, Jesus is turning His disciples’ understanding on its head, offering a completely counter cultural and seemingly heretical teaching.   “Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom.”  What Jesus taught required the disciples to abandon the past understanding of the Abrahamic covenant (based on centuries of added religious traditions, rules and teaching).  He shattered the idea of a God too holy to approach and in its place asked then to embrace a new covenant of a Father full of redemptive grace offering a personal relationship with God through Jesus the Messiah. Mind boggling when I think of what courage, conviction, persecution, and personal cost it must have required for them to make this choice …. 

Impact on Me

I am a simple person. This teaching of Jesus resonates with my personal understanding of and experience with the heart of our God to embrace and provide eternal life for whosoever will come.  Certainly, there are tenets of faith that are true, eternal and immutable that guide us in following, loving, and serving God well.  Thankfully, through the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, we have access to repentance which leads to redemption, rescue, and restoration when we either fall into sin or become another’s pitfall in sin.  However, despite wanting to keep my relationship with God simple, just as in the time of Jesus, I can become intimidated by the acceptable rules and practices of my culture or the larger religious community, judging myself as inadequate or guilty in God’s sight because I am not performing up to a standard set by men or my own perfectionism. 

When I do this, I am presuming to set the rules for the limits of God’s grace and my relationship Him, creating my own standards for what is acceptable, denying the completeness of the work of the Cross, and doubting that the love and grace of Father God is sufficient for me – essentially, recreating God into an idol made by my hands in my lesser image, by my expectations, controlling the relationship by what I will allow him to be for me.  Who do I think I am?!  Am I so foolish?!  Why would I ever doubt the sufficiency of the Cross, the love and grace of Father God?!   I find that I fall into this trap when I see myself as the ruler of my own fate (god of my own life?) – adult, experienced, learned, “wise in my own eyes” – and begin to hold my performance up for comparison to another’s.  May I always remember that I do not serve a performance-based God.

Devotion

Father God, full of mercy and love, Redeemer, I worship You.  I want to come as a child to You again, in Christ full of the wonder of You and Your Love, completely submitted to Your care, often sitting at Your feet, a frequent requester of Your wisdom, and willing to trust You to be all I need.   By Your Holy Spirit, search me for every barrier of complication, every standard that does not honor Your grace, love, and sacrifice, every offensive presumption, every sinful way; I come heartbroken to repent of all these and ask that You would forgive me and lead me in becoming more childlike, more dependent, more trusting in my relationship with You.  Because I know You love me past all understanding, I know that You hear me and will work in me to make it so. I commit to seek to please only You. In Jesus’ name, I pray.

On Departing Hollow Pathways

2 Corinthians 5:17-21 Phillips  For, if a man is in Christ, he becomes a new person altogether—the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new. All this is God’s doing, for He has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ; and He has made us agents of the reconciliation. God was in Christ personally reconciling the world to Himself—not counting their sins against them—and has commissioned us with the message of reconciliation. We are now Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were appealing direct to you through us. As His personal representatives we say, “Make your peace with God.” For God caused Christ, who Himself knew nothing of sin, actually to be sin for our sakes, so that in Christ we might be made good with the goodness of God.

“Environment, nurture, wounds, relationships, choices, and experience—all of these leave their mark on us. Over time, our responses become habits, habits become patterns, and patterns begin to feel less like something we do and more like simply who we are. The deeper these “hollow pathways,” the less we even notice we are walking in them. That may be the most dangerous thing about the old self: from the inside, these “hollow pathways” can feel perfectly normal. We need a life other than our own to expose them—a different Spirit, a different standard, a different way of being human. And this is precisely what Christ gives us: not merely a better pattern to imitate, but His own life within us.”  Mark Slomka, my pastor for life, from his Merely Human Blog

Observation

We humans are a messy bunch.  We are imprinted with the experiences of our pasts – good and bad.  Our families can be nurturing or wounding or both.  The struggles – emotional, physical, spiritual – that mark our lives can establish strong character or undermine us.  “Over time, our responses become habits, habits become patterns, and patterns begin to feel less like something we do and more like simply who we are… That may be the most dangerous thing about the old self: from the inside, these “hollow pathways” can feel perfectly normal.” 

This is our legacy from Adam and Eve choosing to make themselves the gods of the knowledge of good and evil.  Humans are much to swayed by pride, inconsistent and wobbly in sense, perspective and understanding, to be any good at it.  In Christ, we have an opportunity to reconcile their mistake.  We can bypass the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and, through reconciliation provided by the Cross and continued submission to the work of the Holy Spirit in us, reestablish and sustain the relationship our God intended at the beginning.  “For, if a man is in Christ, he becomes a new person altogether—the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new. All this is God’s doing, for He has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ…”  What an extraordinary price to pay for relationship with us!

Impact on Me

The quote above is from a very wise pastor that God gifted into my life.  One of the gifts he exercised so well was challenging me to examine and evaluate the “hollow pathways” of my life.  He challenged me to be made new in Christ, to live above the circumstances of my past (temporary and temporal) by pursuing and embracing the eternal and holy.   He was an example to me of a merely human person in active pursuit of the fullness of the relationship Christ died to provide.  I provided a link to his blog above.

“For God caused Christ, who Himself knew nothing of sin, actually to be sin for our sakes, so that in Christ we might be made good with the goodness of God.”  This is my goal.  To allow this mere human (emotionally wobbly and flawed) to be overcome, overwhelmed and overflow with the goodness of God, with the mercy and grace of Christ, with the anointing of His Holy Spirit.  This is what Jesus died for me (and us) to be.  It is up to me to allow Holy Spirit to do the work to make  it happen.

Devotion

Father God, Creator, Redeemer, Lover of My Soul, You are worthy of all worship and praise.  I stand in awe of Your love for us, the value You place upon a relationship with us, the lengths to which You are willing to go to pursue and woo us.  I want to be surrendered to Your Holy Spirit so completely that You can dwell in me and I will be completely at rest in You.  I know that this will require sacrifice – forgiving/letting go of my past wounds, laying down my rights and expectations, being willing to be a fool for Your purposes and so much more.  Help me to remember when the choice comes that this is departing my hollow pathways to journey with You.  Make it so, in Jesus’ name.