Author: LizG

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.

1 John 1:1-4 ESV  That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

1 John 1:1-4 PHILLIPS  We are writing to you about something which has always existed yet which we ourselves actually saw and heard: something which we had an opportunity to observe closely and even to hold in our hands, and yet, as we know now, was something of the very Word of life himself! For it was life which appeared before us: we saw it, we are eye-witnesses of it, and are now writing to you about it. It was the very life of all ages, the life that has always existed with the Father, which actually became visible in person to us mortal men. We repeat, we really saw and heard what we are now writing to you about. We want you to be with us in this—in this fellowship with the Father, and Jesus Christ his Son. We must write and tell you about it, because the more that fellowship extends the greater the joy it brings to us who are already in it.

Observation

The Bible is a book full of characters and fantastic stories. The temptation is to treat those characters and stories as just another work of fiction.  Our faith wanes:

• when we allow its words to lose their power and anointing,
• when our relationship cools because we distance ourselves from its truth,
• when we allow what we can see/feel to become more real than the power of God available to us,
• when we forget that Jesus is not the figment of an author’s imagination but actually God made manifest in a human body.

The Bible is the actual history of God’s dealings with His creation, His people. The fantastic stories are God’s miraculous intervention into human circumstances, suspending the immutable laws of the universe/nature to demonstrate His power, His grace, His mercy, His intimate knowledge of our needs, His love for us. Jesus, God in the flesh, Redeemer, the very Word of Life, is the walking, breathing evidence of all of these and His commitment to live in and flow His power through us. What an experience it must have been to see Him, touch Him, hear Him! And, yet, then and today, there are those who are touched by His power and anointing but remained unmoved.

Impact on Me

I have imagined myself sitting in the crowd as Jesus taught – seeing Him standing before me, hearing His voice, experiencing His miracles. I wonder how I would have responded. Would I have been touched and changed or thought it was good teaching but not life-changing or, please God no, condemned it as heresy because it did not agree with my religious traditions, my concept of how God deals with people?  Those who actually sat before Him responded in these ways and, as a person of that time, would I have recognized the truth/life in His radical teaching?  He was literally turning religious tradition and practice upside down (or was it rightside up?). 

What about now?  Is Jesus real, present, personal in my life today or has He become merely a Bible character?  Do I have proper reverence and give proper weight to the name of Jesus when I speak it in testimony or prayer?  Do I examine myself and open my life to be touched and changed by the teachings I find challenging or radical, trusting in His power, His presence and His anointing to overcome my fears, failings, insufficiencies and shame?  I don’t know what I would have done then, but I do know how I want to respond now – with surrender and complete submission to His will and purpose for me.

Prayer

Lord, Word of Life, God Incarnate, Lover of my soul, search my heart, try me in all my ways, my thoughts, my motives.  I give You permission without reservation to mold, shape and change me to be useful for Your good and glory. May I live for and walk in Your truth, setting aside what I think is impossible to step into Your possible, setting aside tradition and reputation so You may be glorified. I pray that I will follow well, love well, serve well, journey well and finish well so that I will always give You joy in Your heart. May others come to know You because they meet You in me. Make it so, in the Name of Jesus I pray.

1 John 4:17 (ESV). By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.

1 John 4:17-21 (MSG) God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s.

1 John 17-21 (Phillips) God is love, and the man whose life is lived in love does, in fact, live in God, and God does, in fact, live in him. So our love for Him grows more and more, filling us with complete confidence for the day when He shall judge all men—for we realise that our life in this world is actually His life lived in us.

Observation

I purposely read scriptures in more than one translation because it causes me to engage again with verses that have become so familiar that, for me, they have lost their salt, no longer impacting me with the depth of their grace, love, sacrifice and power.  This is so very human, like tiring of eating the same foods everyday. The food is no less nutritious for me (presuming it is healthy and balanced in the beginning) no matter how many times I eat it, but, just as the Hebrews in the wilderness became tired of the miraculously provided manna, our human nature wants variety, something new and different, regardless of the quality, utility and worth of what we already have.

Our Enemy understands our human nature and uses it against us both to cause discontent (always wanting something new) and complacency (loss of saltiness; devaluing the potential and power of what we have).  When any word of God becomes powerless and bland to us, we are missing it. Reading other translations helps me to see every verse from another perspective, finding flavors I have missed because I was gulping it down, hurrying over the familiar, rather than savoring each bite.

Impact on Me

So, above are 3 different translations of the same passages of Scripture.  I was blessed by all 3 but fully arrested by how the phrase “as he is so also are we in this world” from the ESV was translated into more modern common talk by Reverend Peterson – “our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s” – and Reverend Phillips – “for we realise that our life in this world is actually his life lived in us”.  The content of this “dish” has not changed, but my appreciation of its presentation and flavors has!  Of course, I know that I am in Christ and He is in me, but hearing it stated in different terms, from different perspectives, creating a different picture, makes it all the more real to me.

When God “looks down” on the earth and sees me, He no longer sees Liz the merely human creation but rather sees Liz in Christ and Christ in Liz.  I have the same welcome into His presence that Jesus does.  I have the same life flowing in me that energized Jesus’ life, ministry and resurrection.  This is a truly arresting thought!  What am I doing with all of this privilege, all this life?  Am I praying like I have this life in me, believing and expecting God to hear and the Holy Ghost to move, or am I praying only hoping against hope that He will?  These verses are telling me that, like David, I need to run toward my giants, knowing that God is with me, for me and empowering me to overcome them.

Prayer

Lord God of Hosts, Savior, Teacher, One Who gives me courage, strength and the wisdom to hear You and obey, I ask You to wake me up, shake me to my core, fill me up with the confidence that what You say You will do in and through me.  I want that boldness of David running toward Goliath with only a sling and 5 smooth stones because he knew You were going to fight the battle if he would only obey.  I ask it all in the name of Jesus.  Amen.