Month: August 2023

Luke 10: 25-28 MSG ²⁵ Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?”  ²⁶ He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?”  ²⁷ He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”  ²⁸ “Good answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you’ll live.”

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 MSG  If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.  ² If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.  If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Observation & Impact on Me

Some themes are consistent over centuries regardless of how the world changes (societal mores, advances in technology/science, across various cultures/traditions). People and their primary needs and goals are basically the same across the millennia.  We just adjust the “why/what/how” to fit the current times. Love is one of these constant themes and has so many dimensions and definitions, so many expressions.  Jesus emphasized that loving God and others was the right answer to gaining eternal life.  And then He told the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate the kind of love He meant – unselfish, sacrificial love – the kind He Himself was willing to give. 

In the second passage, Paul is talking to the church about how works done for any reason other than love are worthless.  Eloquent loveless words are just noise like the “creaking of a rusty gate”.  Miracles of power and faith worked without love gain nothing.  Great sacrifices, even unto death, without love get you nowhere in God’s kingdom.  How do we ensure that love is the driving force for all we do?  What kind of love are we asked to be the root of all our works in the name of the Lord?

Here is one Bernard of Clairvaux who can speak to us across the centuries. Bernard was monk born in the 11th century. He was Pauline in his intensity (fasting food and sleep until it damaged his health), his apostolic energy (founded 70 monasteries) and his influence (he advised the Pope). He wrote much on love and how true love, the love of 1 Corinthians 13, will humble us so He can be exalted.  He gives us 4 stages of love on the journey of developing a personal relationship with God, living daily in the sense of His presence, making what we do count for the Kingdom, through the kind of love that brings eternal life.

1. The love of oneself for the sake of oneself. Everyone starts here. Our reality without God is self-centered, focused on self-preservation and self-promotion.

2. The love of God for the sake of oneself. This is where we love God because He loves, cares, and does for us. This is where we begin when we first turn to God. We lay our needs before God and begin to learn to trust Him to be our source of provision, our defender, our refuge, our strength. It is a beautiful and necessary place on the journey. However, if our prayers always consist of only asking God to do something for us, to preserve us in blessing, the danger arises that our worship, praise and gratitude will depend upon God’s beneficial response.  Remaining here, we could come to believe that lack of blessing translates to lack of favor with God or even doubting the reality of our redemption and our value in Christ.  We need to travel on.

3. The love of God for the sake of God. This is where we realize that God has worth simply because of Who He is and not because of what He does for us. This is where our worship changes because of the revelation of joy and wonder of His love for us, how He gave us value by creating beauty in the world, by making us in His image, by giving Himself to redeem us. This beautiful place is where we accept that blessing, sacrifice, obedience, lack, loss and persecution may all be part of our faith basic training to make us ready and equipped to serve Him, be an integral part of His plan. Shouldn’t this be the ultimate, the final stage? Bernard says not so.

4. The love of oneself for the sake of God. This is when we accept that God molded, shaped and made us fearfully and wonderfully on purpose for a specific purpose and carefully placed us in the Body of Christ to fulfill His will and eternal plan. This stage is where we submit, saying “yes” regardless of the cost, becoming meek and humble, accepting that we are made by God’s own hand.  This is where we stop comparing ourselves to others, stop envying another’s gifting, stop weighing our physical abilities, characteristics, talents, skills, and resources on the world’s scales of achievement, performance, and possibility, stop questioning God’s wisdom on how He equips and uses us, accepting that the cost to us is worth the benefit to Him, and begin to seek God for how to glorify Him in our uniqueness while supporting and encouraging others in fulfilling their part.  This is the place of Jesus becoming man, Jesus in the Garden, Jesus under the whip, Jesus on the Cross.

Prayer

Lord, You are awesome, marvelous beyond description, gracious, merciful and almighty. You are worthy of all glory, honor and praise. You are love and Your eternal plan is to wield that overpowering, overwhelming love as a weapon until all evil has expended every weapon and effort of its own and been forever and completely defeated.  I pray that my submission and obedience will be complete and consistent, rooted in Your strength and faithfulness, never shaken by the fearsome possibilities of individual battles, never diminished by what may be suffered or lost. Teach me to be meek and humble, like Jesus, so that my service will be rooted in the Jesus kind of love, joyful and freely given and, in the end, judged faithful and good.  Make it so, Lord, in Jesus’ name.

Philippians 4:4-7 NIV  Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:4-7 MSG Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute! Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

Observation

Paul wrote these words as a prisoner, unsure of the outcome (v 2:17).  He considered every place in which he found himself as God’s current assignment and every challenge or circumstance as an opportunity to be a witness for Jesus. The intensity of his focus on serving, sharing and celebrating the Gospel caused the challenges and circumstances of the world to become just the road on which he traveled while walking with and serving the Lord. I am sure there was great temptation to turn his eyes down on the road when things got rocky, steep, or slippery, but he chose to keep his eyes off the road and on his traveling companion instead, celebrating and singing as he looked to Jesus for stability, provision and peace (“a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good”) on the journey.  His soul was so securely rooted in God’s promises that he could withstand and overcome all the world or the Enemy could throw at him.  Joy and peace resided with him wherever he went and in whatever circumstance he found himself.

Impact on Me

Challenges and circumstances are difficult to put in proper perspective while they are buffeting us.  They make themselves so insistent, so visible and so urgent to our senses, triggering our emotions, old wounds and fears.  We may feel surrounded and besieged. At the beginning of my journey, they were much more tangible, louder and larger, than the intangible promises voiced by an invisible God.  My performance-based mind could become over-heated with reviewing scenarios and solutions – what might happen, how can I fix this, what can I do to prevent disaster or loss, why does this have to keep cropping up, how much is this going to hurt, and so on.  How I responded to challenges and circumstances depended on the decisions made by my soul.  As I journeyed with Jesus, through the experience of His presence, my soul  became increasingly less conditioned to respond according to the flesh/world.  I learned to lean on and look to Jesus for direction, protection and strength rather than depending solely on my human abilities and what I deemed possible. 

If our souls are conditioned to respond according to the Word and the Holy Spirit, then, like Paul, we can celebrate each moment, watching for opportunities to bless and encourage others, trusting that Jesus will take care of all we need on the road ahead.  We, too, can have that peace (a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good) regardless of the conditions on the road we travel.  So, the choice is ours.  I have found that when I stop and lift my eyes off the current challenge or circumstance, I always find Jesus reminding me of His love, grace, care and provision, offering me His peace and joy in place of my fear, doubt and failures.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, I pray that You will help me keep my eyes on You and my ears tuned to Your voice alone on this current stretch of rocky road. The way can often be dark, stormy and frightening, but, as long as You go with me, I can rejoice and encourage others to join us on the way, finding that “sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good”. Help me to find those along the road I travel who are lost, frightened, hopeless and weary, full of fear and doubt, and introduce them to You, inviting them to join us and become Your disciples.  May they see the joy and peace I have because of You in and with me so that they will become hungry to know You and find the same. Make it so.  Amen.

2 Kings 7:3-7 NIV Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’—the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.” At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, no one was there, for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us!” So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.

Observation

This is one of my favorite stories in the entire Bible!  It ranks right up there with other miracles like the parting of the Red Sea, David and Goliath and Balaam’s talking donkey, but, additionally, this one speaks to me personally.  

Previously in this story, Ben-Hadad, king of Aram (Syria), has surrounded and besieged the city of Samaria, capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, for an extended length of time until there is a great famine in the city. The situation inside the city is desperate and the famine so great that the people have resorted to cannibalism.  The king of Israel (Joram, son of Ahab and Jezebel) bemoans his fate as all God’s fault.  Joram sends men to murder Elisha, God’s prophet and thorn in Joram’s side, saying, “This trouble is directly from God! And what’s next? I’m fed up with God!” (2 Kings 6:33 MSG). Elisha makes the “impossible” prediction that by tomorrow, at the same time of day, the siege will be ended, the city will be saved and food will be plentiful.  Needless to say, they don’t believe him!

Enter our four starving lepers. Leprosy is a progressive, degenerative disease that presents with white patches on the skin but also impacts the nervous system. If untreated, it results in the loss of body parts (fingers, toes, nose, skin, feet and so on). As with most lepers, these four are isolated from the general population, considered contagious and incurable, better-off-dead; lepers were outcasts and valueless to this society, the lowest of the low.   They are aware that they face death no matter which choice they make – stay put, go into the city, or surrender to the enemy.  As these outcasts say, “Why stay here until we die?” Let’s do something!

So, here is the picture I see. These four sick, starving, scrawny, ragged, pitiable men struggle to their feet, take up their crutches, and hobble, stumble, painstakingly making their way in the gathering dusk toward the enemy camp in the hope of getting one last meal before they die (“If they receive us we’ll live, if they kill us we’ll die. We’ve got nothing to lose.”).   Now, the miracle! 

While I am sure their stumbling, staggering, shuffling progress was not silent, God struck fear in the hearts of the Aramean army by multiplying and magnifying these small noises into the sound of two fierce armies (Hittite and Egyptian) coming to attack Aram’s mighty army!  In a panic, the entire Aramean army “fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.”  Only God could do such a thing!

Impact on Me

So, why is this story so special to me?  Why does it impact me every time I return to 2 Kings 7 as powerfully as it does?  Why do I come here when I need a dose of hope? Why has this story changed the way I face circumstances that seem impossible to overcome?

Here are four people with no qualifications, skills, authority, influence, training, strength – really nothing to offer, considered valueless and discarded – who, in God’s hands were used to save an entire city.  Their vision was very small, very limited, but hope got them up and moving to accomplish it.  They are the most unlikely heroes in the whole of the Bible.

Whenever I am tempted to give up or pass on an opportunity for God to use me, I am reminded of these four. It is not my qualifications, skills, authority, influence, training or strength that God needs to accomplish His will and purpose. If He can save a city with these four, He can take my hope, my trust in Him and my obedience to magnify my small effort to make the enemy flee in terror.  This story always reminds me to step out of my possibility box and into His infinite possibilities.

Prayer

 Lord, You are the Almighty, Holy, All-Powerful, only True God. I ask that You make me an instrument in the Redeemer’s hand, so that my small dose of hope, faith, and obedience can be magnified by You into salvation, redemption, restoration for many and glory for You. Help me to get out of my possibility box and live in Your infinite possibilities. Remind me that You will effectively use whatever I bring to the table, but You need nothing more than my faith, willingness and obedience to accomplish Your will and purpose. I pray this all in the name of Jesus.