It All Matters to God

The woman told her pastor, “I never bother God with the little things.” “Madam,” he replied, “He’s God. To Him, it’s all little.” I chuckle at that, but at the same time, I recognize the truth therein. God is bigger than all man’s problems. No trial or struggle will ever measure up to Him. Overflowing sea in front of you and the Egyptian army at your back? No problem. Massive wall around the city God has given you? No problem. Giant threatening your nation’s army? No problem. A royal edict to wipe out your people? No problem. God’s got it.

But what about the “little” problems? That headache you’ve got from your kids running through the house at top speed and volume all day? The pile of laundry sitting beside the broken-down washing machine? The stack of work on your desk that keeps growing no matter how much you do. The dog next door that barks. All. Night. Long. And what’s that weird clunking sound your car has been making all week? Does God care about those things? Why would He even notice your everyday stuff while He is busy keeping the universe spinning?

The God who took the Israelites through the sea on dry ground (Ex 14:22) and drowned the entire Egyptian army (vv. 26-28), pulled down the walls of Jericho (Jos 6:20), put a small stone in a giant’s head (1 Sam 17:48-50), and rescued the Jews from annihilation (Est 9:5) also gave His thirsty people water from a rock (Ex 17:5-6), provided a poor widow with overflowing oil to buy her sons out of slavery (2 Ki 4:1-7) and gave another an inexhaustible supply of flour and oil to sustain her family through a drought (1 Ki 17:12-16).

That’s why Paul said, “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayer and requests” (Eph 6:18) – of every size and shape.

So I will leave my problems – the big ones and the small ones, and the big ones in a small body – in my Father’s hands. But I’m not going to walk away. I’m going to sit down at His feet and watch what He will do. And maybe crawl into His lap for hug. I encourage you to do the same. Beloved, If He has “numbered the very hairs of your head” (Mat 10:30) you can be sure that He is paying attention to you and everything that concerns your life. Big, little, and everything in between.

Why Did God Come to Earth?

Why did God come to earth? What is so important down here that He would put on human flesh and walk among the wicked and the imperfect? Genesis reports that God regularly came to visit and walk with Adam and Eve in sweet fellowship (Gen 3:8). After the fall God came down to bring judgment and punishment (see Gen 11:5, 18:21). The Israelites built Him a sacred place where He could dwell among His chosen people – though they could not approach His presence (Ex 25:8). In one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the Old Testament, their idolatry became so great that He withdrew His presence and left the Temple (Ezk. 11:22-23).

So why did He come back? When John the Baptist, Jesus’ forerunner and cousin was born his father, after months of silence for his unbelief, declared the answer to our question in a song. He said, “[The Lord] has come . . . to bring salvation . . . to redeem . . . to show mercy . . . to rescue . . . to enable . . . to give us His holiness and righteousness . . . to forgive . . . to shine His light into our darkness . . . and to guide our feet into the path of peace” (Lk 2:67-80). Jesus Himself said that He had come to declare the Good News; “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Mark 1:38, Lk 4:18-21). He came to do the will of His Father, even unto death on a cross (Jn 4:34; Lk 22:42; Phil 2:8).

At the beginning of this devotional, I asked, “What is so important down here that He would put on human flesh and walk among the wicked and the imperfect?” You were. The writer of Hebrews said that Jesus endured the cross and all it entailed “for the Joy set before Him” (Heb 12:2). What was that Joy? You were. It gave Him great delight to know that you would be with Him forever and ever. God came for you Beloved; He came to make you His own child, His treasured possession (Is 43:4). All He did He did for you. You are that important to Him.  

The Royal Priesthood of the Believer

I am in a group of believers who are writing – or “scribing” – our way through the Bible. Because we deal with smaller portions of Scripture and must slow down and pay attention to every word, we’re seeing things we would have normally missed on our fast-paced Bible-in-a-year plans. We’re nearing the end of Exodus this month and the people are building, weaving, hammering, and crafting all the elements of the Tabernacle.

Today’s text – Exodus 39:1-7 – is focused on making garments for Aaron, who served as the Lord’s high priest. These were “sacred garments” designed “to give him dignity and honor” as he went about his priestly duties (Ex 28:2). And they were a work of love and devotion. When the ancient craftsmen made the ephod, the apron-like garment worn over the robe and under the breast piece, the Scripture says, “they hammered out thin sheets of gold and cut strands to be worked into the blue, purple, and scarlet yarn and fine linen.  Can you imagine the amount of dedication and intricate work that required?

But that’s nothing compared to how God is working in you. Everything God does in your life has one aim, to conform you to the likeness of His Son (Rom 8:29). I admit, sometimes that work isn’t pleasant.  Lately, it feels like God is hammering away at me like the craftsmen hammered out that gold. You may feel that He has put you into a crucible for purifying silver over intense, prolonged heat. It might even seem that He has buried you underground like a seed. But the gold adds beauty to the garment, the purified silver reflects the Silversmith and the seed bursts forth from the ground to grow into a fruitful plant.

God has called you and me to be part of His royal priesthood (1 Pet 2:9)– not in the order of Aaron, but in the order of His Son, Jesus Christ. Like Aaron, we must be consecrated, cleansed, and made pure for this holy service. Aaron was washed with water and anointed with the blood of a bull. You and I are washed and anointed with the blood of the Lamb of God which cleanses us from all sin (1 Jn 1:7). Aaron received beautiful garments to wear; Christ gives us His own righteousness (2 Cor 5:21).

In the hammering and the heat and the darkness Beloved, consider this, God is not just weaving threads of His Son into your life, but making He is you into His very image.

God, Taxes, and the Imago Dei

Church and politics are often at odds with one another. Some Christians want to bring godliness to the nation’s rule and some want nothing to do with it at all. God was the one who established municipal order. He taught Moses about civil rule (Ex 18). He set His laws in stone so the people would understand how to live holy lives (Ex 20).  And He decreed offerings and sacrifices to support the community. There were financial civic obligations for every Israelite, just as there are today – AKA taxes. Why am I writing about taxes today? Because Jesus addressed them and so must we. But hang with me because this is about more than a Form 1040.

When Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees about paying taxes to Caesar, He knew that they were trying to trap Him. (Read Matthew 22:15-22.) They – and pretty much all the Jews –resented having to pay taxes to the hated Roman government. And they hated Jesus too. If He were to say paying taxes was right, the Jewish people who loved Him so would change their minds. Jesus called for a denarius coin that was the required tax. He asked, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” (v. 20). They replied, “Caesar’s” (v. 21). To which Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s . . .” In other words, because the coin bore the image of Caesar it should be given to Caesar, it was his rightful due.

But the point of this exchange came next. Jesus then said “. . . and [give] to God what is God’s.” I always thought that this was referring to the “temple tax” – the one-half shekel per year for every Jewish male over 20. But when I slow down and consider the context, I see something different. What bears God’s image? What is God’s that should be given to Him? Man. You and me.

Man was created in God’s image (Gen 1:27) and bears the Imago Dei. The name of our Creator is written in our DNA. We belong to God. We are His “rightful due.” Those who deny this truth will shake their fists at Him and turn away, but some will believe. They will receive the gift of grace through Jesus Christ. And they will honor their Creator.  Beloved, you belong to God. Not just your money or your time, but your life, your heart, your mind, your soul, and your body are all His. Come to the Lord today. You will never fulfill your purpose until you give it all to Him.

Coloring Outside the Lines

At almost four, Joy tends to color all over a picture page. She hasn’t yet learned to stay inside the lines. Our Ladies’ Sunday School class has been working through Genesis and I have been struck with the fact that God doesn’t either. For instance, tradition held that the firstborn son would receive the greater inheritance and blessing from his father. But God placed Isaac over Ishmael (Gen 21:12), Jacob over Esau (25:23), Ephraim over Manasseh (48:19), and Joseph over Reuben (48:22). Warfare requires overpowering armies, but the Lord won the victory against thousands of Midianites with an army of 300 men (Judges 7). He brought down the walls of Jericho with shouts and trumpets (Josh 6) and rescued His people through the knee-knocking courage of a Jewish girl (Esther). Kings are born as royalty but He set a shepherd boy on the throne of Israel (2 Sam 5:3). And while the Jews looked for a mighty warrior to save their nation from Rome, God provided salvation for the whole world through a baby born as a peasant, who died as a criminal among thieves.

So why do I try to tell God how to solve my problems? Why do I think I have to come up with a plan for Him? I have a huge, painful mess in my family and I am powerless to fix it. Every scenario I dream up has gaping flaws. Everything I’ve tried to do to make it better seems to make it worse. And worst of all, God is ignoring every suggestion I offer.

Maybe that’s because He is not limited to what I can envision.  His ways and His power are far beyond the scope of my expectations just as Paul declared, “He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,” (Eph 3:20). Any resolution I can concoct falls short of what He can do. I mean, this is the God who parted a raging sea and walked the Israelites to safety on dry ground (Ex 14:29). This is the God who brought water out of a rock (Ex 17:1-6), made the sun stand still in the sky (Josh 10), and rescued His servants from fire and lions (Daniel) and prison (Acts 12). Surely, He can fight this battle for me. And win.

Perhaps, instead of trying to figure out what God should do on our behalf, you and I should simply keep our eyes fixed on Him and watch what He does. Because His plans are always good, pleasing, and perfect (Rom 12:2, adapted). Beloved, aren’t you glad that God colors outside the lines?

Best Friends

I got another one of those emails from a salesperson who opened the message with a personalized greeting meant to draw me in and make me more favorable to their pitch. But their “personal touch” was a scam. They proved they don’t know anything about me by calling me “Dr. Andrews.” Just because I work at an institute of higher education, doesn’t mean I have a Ph.D. I am, in fact, struggling to finish my master’s. It was not a genuine greeting.

Using someone’s name implies some kind of connection, a level of personal knowledge -whether casual or intimate. One of the first things we do when meeting someone new is to share our name. It is like opening the door to our home. But we don’t let everyone inside. Some people don’t get past the doorway, some step into the front hall, and others are welcomed to the kitchen – the heart of the house. I’m a pretty transparent person. Still some people may know my name but they don’t know me. My closest friends gather around the kitchen table over a cup of coffee (or tea).

When Moses met with God on Mount Sinai, he pleaded with the Lord to accompany him and the Israelites on their journey to the Promised Land. God replied, “I will do the very thing you have asked because I am pleased with you and I know you by name” (Ex 33:17). He wasn’t just talking about the name Moses was given at birth. The original Hebrew means “I know you because you are mine.”  Back up a few verses: “The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend” (v. 11). Do you understand what that means? God claimed Moses as His friend. He knew him.

Not only did He know Moses, but He also revealed Himself to him. Moses asked God to show him His glory. And He did – as much as He could without killing him.  He “came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed His name, the Lord” (Ex. 34:5). Did you catch the last part? “He proclaimed His name, the Lord.” He knew Moses. Now Moses knew Him.

Nobody knows you better than God knows you. And nobody loves you more than God loves you. He said, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine” (Is 43:1). God has claimed you, Beloved. You are His friend. His child. His own.

I AM the Bread of Life

The Lord impressed on my heart today to study the “I AM” statements of Jesus in the gospel of John, and you’re coming along with me. For the next several weeks we’ll have “I AM Fridays.”

In chapter 6, Jesus had just performed miracles: healing the sick and feeding five thousand people from five loaves and two fish. (I’ve cut out at least a thousand construction paper loaves and fishes for kids’ Bible story time.) He was doing His best to withdraw from the crowds, even walking across a stormy lake, but they followed Him, demanding more – more miracles and more bread. The people insisted that Moses “gave them bread from heaven to eat” (Jn 6:31; Ex 16:4), speaking of the manna. But Jesus corrected them; Moses didn’t provide the bread, God did and now God was giving them something better than bread for a day. He said, “The bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (v. 33). All the people heard was “bread for life” and they ran with it. “Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread” (v. 34). (Reminds me of the woman at the well from chapter 4). What they missed was that the bread from God was not a loaf, but a person.

Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry . . .” (v. 35). He reiterated it by saying, “I am the bread that came down from heaven” (v. 41). And if they missed it He said it again, “I am the bread of life” (v. 48). Not the manna. Him. The bread the Israelites ate couldn’t keep them alive for more than a few days. Then He made a statement that shocked the people: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (v. 51). Eat His flesh? Feed on Him? What in the world? And that’s the point. What Jesus offers is not of this world – it is from heaven.

Life, not bread, is the point of this passage. Jesus said, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give you” (v. 27). Beloved do you want to eat for a day or for eternity? Feast on the Bread of Life and you’ll be satisfied forever.

I Want to See You, Lord

I sang with the congregation: “Open the eyes of our heart, Lord; open the eyes of our heart, we want to see You; we want to see You.” In the breath between the first and second stanzas, I sensed God say, “Do you, really? Then why are your eyes closed?”

“Well, I’m offering this to You as my own prayer.”

“Then open your eyes.”

In that brief moment, I was impressed with the thought that the church asks God to give us a vision of Himself, but we close our eyes so that we cannot see.

As I am writing this, God has directed me to Isaiah’s encounter with the Lord. The prophet wrote, “I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple” (Is 6:1). He was surrounded by seraphs, unlike anything man had ever seen. Now that’s a vision!

Isaiah’s response to the awesome vision of God was conviction, repentance, and surrender to the Lord’s call. But there’s another time when God revealed Himself to men. In Exodus 24, after Moses received the Law, God issued an extraordinary invitation: “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel” (Ex 24:1). And they did. “Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel . . . they saw God, and they ate and drank” (v. 9, 11). They. Saw. God. How did it affect them? A few chapters over we have these same elders urging Aaron to make an idol for the people to worship. And he did. In Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu are put to death by God for disobeying Him.

The seraphs in Isaiah’s vision declared, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory” (v. 3). Do you see it? “The whole earth is full of His glory.” John Calvin, the 16^th-century theologian said, “There is not an atom of the universe in which you cannot see some brilliant spark, at least, of His glory.” Now, I’m not preaching a naturalistic theology. We worship the Creator, not the creation. But we can see Him everywhere – if we open our eyes.

Jeremiah 29:13 says “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you . . .” Do you want to see God? Are your eyes open? Are you looking for Him? And when you see Him, Beloved, what will you do?

Good Enough

“I want my wedding day to be perfect.”

“Get this mess cleaned up! Our guests will be here in an hour and this place has to be perfect.”

“I stayed up all night to work on my paper – it has to be perfect if I’m going to get an “A” in this class.” (That would be me.)

Or maybe this one sounds most familiar to you: “Why did I do that/say that/think that?  I’m a Christian – I’m supposed to be perfect!” After all, Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). But while the Bible uses the word “perfect” just forty-two times,  the word “good” appears more than six hundred times.  Like in the creation account when, after completing each day’s creative work, God examined what He had done and “saw that it was good.”  In the original Hebrew, this means that God found His work “pleasing, favorable, and satisfactory.”  Think about it – if God, at the zenith of His creative work, was content with “good” shouldn’t “good” be good enough for us?

There’s more:  He promised a good land to the Israelites when they escaped Egyptian bondage (Exodus 3:8), Jeremiah told the people to “ask where the good way is and walk in it” (6:16).  Jesus said the Father gives “good gifts” (Matthew 7:11), He proclaimed the soil with the greatest harvest good (Luke 8:8) and Paul tells us to “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21) – not perfection.  Even the Gospel that saves us is called “the Good News” (Acts 5:42).  Why then, are we trying so hard to be perfect?

God didn’t saddle us with this obsession for perfection – it was the enemy who planted that impossible seed.  But we have watered and nurtured it until it has become a weed of gigantic proportions and, as weeds so often do, it has choked the life out of us and the “good works” we were created to do (Ephesians 2:10).  It’s the devil’s way of keeping you distracted, dissatisfied, frustrated – and fruitless. 

Only God is perfect and making you perfect is His work alone, through the blood of Jesus and the power of the Spirit.  But you won’t see the perfectly finished product until you stand before Him in heaven.  So hang all your perfectionist tendencies on Him and be free from that burden you were never meant to carry.  Beloved, being good is good enough.

Lord, Rescue Me

I’ve never kept secret the fact that I struggle with depression – I have since I was a kid. I write about it because I know many of you do as well. Sometimes it’s triggered by an event or circumstance but more often than not it comes from a chemical imbalance in my brain. I take medication to keep me on a fairly even plane. Some days are better than others and some days are downright hard. Depression (and medication) doesn’t mean I have lost my faith in God or am a failure as a Christian. In fact, it makes me all the more dependent on God every day.

It also makes me like many of the men and women whom God used – whose stories are scattered all over the Bible and throughout the history of the Church. This morning as I read I recognized myself in David. And I recognized the One who rescued David also rescues me. In his song of praise in 2 Samuel 22 ( also in Psalm 18), David wrote of two places in which I often find myself when depression hits. Drowning in deep waters and sitting in darkness.

Sometimes it washes over me like waves; sometimes it feels like I’ve fallen into brackish water. David said “[The Lord] reached down from on high and took hold of me; He drew me out of deep waters” (v. 17). The thing about depression is I don’t have the energy or even desire to swim. I need a rescuer – God knows and He comes. Why would He do that? Not because I am such a good teacher or writer or because I am some highly important person in His Kingdom. “He rescued me because He delighted in me” (v. 20b). It has nothing to do with me and everything to do with His heart.

Depression often feels like “darkness that can be felt” (Ex. 10:21). It presses in on me, making it hard to breathe and difficult to move. David said, “You are my lamp, O Lord; the Lord turns my darkness into light” (v. 29). Darkness is nothing more than the absence of light. When light – even the tiniest glow – penetrates the shadows, darkness flees. John said that Jesus is “the true light that gives light to every man” (John 1:9) and the darkness cannot overcome His light (v. 5). That’s good news for a lot of us.

Where are you today Beloved? Underwater? In the darkness? The One who rescued David and rescued me can rescue you too. More than that, it delights Him to do so. Take His hand. Look for His light. Your Rescuer is here.