Wrestling

I know you think I write these devotionals every day for you. You are only partially correct. Some days I write for me and bring you along for the ride.   Writing is how I think and pray and wrestle things out. Today is one of those days. I shared with you earlier that my “word” for the year is “gentle.”  I believe that God is imprinting that word on my heart because I’m in a situation where gentleness is needed for the best outcome.

Gentleness seems so easy, the word even sounds simple as it rolls off my tongue. But it isn’t. Especially when I am tired. And I am tired. Inside and out. When I’m tired the “natural me” comes out. She is petulant and irritable. She wants her way. She grumbles. A lot. She is everything but gentle. And she is awake this morning.

The Lord reminded me of my word through His Word. “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Eph 4:2). Yes Lord, I hear You. Every one of those descriptions is counter to my natural self. I cannot produce them on my own. But they are the very character of Christ whom I claim to follow. One word, in particular, caught my attention: “completely.” That word means “all, each, every.” In every situation, with every person, at all times be humble and gentle and patient and forbearing and loving. Even when I’m tired. Even with people who are unfair and uncooperative. Even when I don’t want to be. Especially when I don’t want to be.

I told you, I’m wrestling this out this morning and so I asked God, “How?” “How do I do this when I’m tired and people are making life hard?” Do you know what He didn’t say? He didn’t say, “I’ll make them more agreeable.” He didn’t say, “I’ll change your situation.” He didn’t say, “I’ll make this easier for you.” The Spirit literally took my eyes across the page of my open Bible to another verse: “For this reason, I kneel before the Father . . .” (3:14). He said, “Humble yourself before  me and ask for my help.” So I will as soon as I sign off. From one wrestler to another, maybe you need to as well Beloved.

The Living Word

I thought I needed a new Keurig. Every morning it would whirr away but the coffee didn’t come out. I always had to shut it off and do all the steps again before it would work.  But the problem wasn’t with the machine it was with me.  I was trying to be quiet in the morning so I wasn’t pushing the lid down hard enough to piece the top and the bottom of the coffee pod. The pod would fill up with water, but it had no exit hole so it stopped pumping. Duh. I just had to give it a full stab to get my morning cup of life-elixir.

A verse has been bumping around in my head since I solved my Keurig problem. “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

Now, I am all for getting into the Bible in every possible way, but I’m concerned that when we settle for a five-minute daily devotional we are not letting the Word of God do its full work in us. This is a “living and active,” power-packed Word and its purpose is not just to encourage us – though it does that well. It is meant to penetrate our soul and spirit – the part of us that responds to God. Do you see the reference to “joints and marrow?” Joints are where bones connect. We must let the Word of God connect the truths of Scripture to our lives. Marrow is the spongy center of major bones and it produces blood cells that keep us alive. The Word of God supports life in the believer. And it also “judges the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts.” It will tell us if what we are thinking is true or a lie. It will chasten us for unChristlike attitudes. It’s a sharp Word that goes right to the heart.

Oh, brothers and sisters, you and I don’t just need a good word for the day, we need to let the living Word of God pierce deeply and let life flow into – and out of us.  We need to give the Bible full access to our minds and hearts. That’s gonna take more than five minutes a day.

Christmas is Real Hope for Real Life

He gave her a hug and pressed some folded bills into her hand. “I know this is a hard time, but God is going to come through for you. He has always come through for me.” The woman thanked the man then sighed, “I hope so. I don’t know how much longer we can go on like this.” Hope is a necessary thing, almost as essential to the spirit as oxygen is to the lungs. When every breath is a struggle the heart strains to keep beating, the mind becomes dull, and the smallest task becomes a huge challenge. It seems easier to just sit life out than to push to keep moving. When hope fades, our spirit is weakened, we become disheartened, our thoughts forlorn. When life is hard, hope seems more of a desperate gesture than a sure belief.

That’s why the Bible presents hope as a confident conviction. Micah saw the gathering storm clouds of hardship on the horizon. Judgment was coming to Jerusalem because of her sin. Hope seemed futile in the face of imminent oppression. But Micah hoped anyway saying, “But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me” (Micah 7:7). He understood the reality of their troubles, but he also knew the faithfulness of God. What was the root of his conviction? His hope was not in an outcome – his hope was in the Lord. And it was not a desperate hope – hope in this sense means to wait in expectation. Because his hope was in God, and because he knew God’s character, he knew with a confident assurance that God would hear and act on his behalf. Even though the situation looked grim, Micah hoped in the Lord and “hope does not disappoint us” (Romans 5:5). Isn’t it interesting that Micah also offered these words: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2). You might recognize this as the prophecy of the coming Messiah. No wonder Micah had such confident hope.

Beloved, if hope is in short supply right now, I want to remind you that Christmas confirms the power of hope because of the faithfulness of God. The promise of God that Micah delivered was fulfilled by the Baby in the manger in Bethlehem. I also want to assure you that God does indeed always come through. I was the woman hanging onto a thread of hope. And my hope was not disappointed. God is faithful. Christmas is proof.

The “Perfect” Christian

“Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

 

Perfectionism is the preferred disease of the twenty-first century and it’s killing us.  Ever said or heard one of these?

“I want my wedding day to be perfect.”

“This proposal has to be perfect – dot every “i” and cross every “t.”

“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!”

I thought you would recognize the last one – I know I’ve heard it in my own head countless times.  And we have the mandate of Jesus in our key verse to back up that relentless voice.  “Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) “Be perfect – be perfect – be perfect.”   Yet we know that only One was perfect – the speaker Himself.  Does that mean He was setting up an unrealistic standard for us?  Not exactly.  When Jesus used the word “perfect” He was not saying be flawless – He was speaking of maturity – the word (in Greek) teleioo and its root telos mean “to reach a goal, to finish or complete.”   Jesus was saying we need to continually strive for maturity as the goal of our faith.

What’s interesting is that while the Bible uses the word “perfect” just forty-two times,  the word “good” appears more than six hundred times.[1]  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.[2]  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 his way of keeping you distracted, dissatisfied, frustrated – and fruitless.  Perfectionism will drive us to the point of exhaustion as we push ourselves to reach for an unreachable standard.  Or, on the flip side, it will leave us in a state of paralysis, fearful of even attempting anything because we know we’ll never measure up.  I’ve been both – and it’s no way to live.  You and I will never pull off perfection this side of heaven.  And that’s okay.

My friend, 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.  Being good is good enough.

Holy Father, You didn’t ask me to measure up to some perfect standard, but it’s what often demand of myself.  Please help me to rest in the knowledge that good is good enough for You.  Amen.

[1] I am using the NIV – New International Version, other translations may have a different word count.

[2] All Scripture emphases were added by me.