In 1970, so many years ago now, I graduated from the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Our yearbook was called the Arch, because the main entrance to the inner-city campus was through a brick archway. A tradition had been established years before that each graduating senior would choose a favorite Bible verse as a life goal, and that passage would be printed near their names in the yearbook. I chose 2 Timothy 3:16 for my life verse–‘all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…’ That’s a wonderful verse, wouldn’t you agree? Elevates the Bible to its proper place as the inspired Word of God. But I have a question– why this for my life verse? I wonder now why I chose that verse hoping that it wasn’t just to put something down on paper to get my graduation work over with, and move on to something more pleasant. Another thing off my to-do list. Knowing me.. I more than wonder. Now, don’t get me wrong. 2 Timothy 3:16 is the foundation of my life and ministry…from the time of my conversion to this day, I know that the Bible is where truth with a capital ‘T’ can be found. The ultimate Truth… reliable, available, universal, for all time and times for any who seek Him and His way. I believe that more-and-more–and I’ve been exposed to so many arguments and people who disagree and feel the Bible is just myth or fable or unscientific, outdated, bigoted antiquity. Those in churches who have just cast the Bible aside when it is no longer convenient for them. I know because I was educated at a seminary that decades before had marginalized the Bible, I was ordained in a denomination that to this day keeps inching and inching away from the clear teachings of the Bible, I’ve been to Bible studies with local pastors who would stomp out in anger if any of us just dared, and I dared, to challenge their disbelief in the Bible as the inspired and inerrant Word of God. I’ve been there. I’ve heard it. I can sniff it out from miles away. I’m glad I chose 2 Timothy 3:16 as my life verse. It’s been the anchor in my boat of life that Jesus pilots. The constant in an evermore slippery world. I’ve heard it calling me back when I had drifted far away myself. My only regret is not adding verse 17 to my life verse. Other classmates had chosen more than one verse. Don’t think we had to choose just one. I should have added the next verse. The one about being a man of God, a man thoroughly equipped, a man serving God in His good ways. As I look back on my life I sense a disconnect between knowing and living. Between my head and my heart. And now as a bit more mature believer, it’s very hard to break old habits, to connect those dots,to connect those 2 verses, praying that the Holy Spirit would give me a faith that works…for Him and for others. I can’t change what’s in that 1970 yearbook. You can’t find a time-machine to go back and redo your life and choices. But you can live for Him today. You and I can stand on the Word of God… AND live His way ‘equipped for every good work.’ I’m learning, little by little, to let Him connect the dots. How about you?
Monthly Archives: July 2014
SUCH A VERY STRANGE STORY……..Read 1 Kings 13
Talk about a very strange story. This is it! I really had to pause and think about this chapter from the Bible for quite awhile. I wondered what the lesson was for me, for us, today. What do you think? Any ideas? The more I thought about it, the more I could sense a message from the Lord for today. A very important lesson, critical really. Whose authoritative voice will we listen to in life? Whose word counts? But first the story and what happened. The Lord sends one of His prophets, one whose name is never mentioned. Anonymous and unknown. And He sends him to Jeroboam, King of the rebellious Northern Kingdom of Israel. To keep his people from worshiping in Jerusalem and possibly aligning themselves with the rival king Rehoboam, son of Solomon of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, Jeroboam sets up his own worship centers, chooses his own priests, establishes his own holy days and worst of all creates man-made idols, golden calves, for the people to worship. So, this prophet gives due warning to Jeroboam, a chance to repent and turn back to the Lord. No way, says Jeroboam! So, God allows him a traumatic seizure of his hand, and then the altar at the false temple to just turn to dust. Help, cries Jeroboam! The prophet prays and God responds. A healing occurs. Jeroboam then asks the prophet to stay with him, to be his religious leader. But,no, he couldn’t do that. After all, “For I was commanded by the word of the Lord,’You must not eat bread or drink water or return by the way you came'”(verse 9). The Lord is very direct with His prophet…clear as clear can be. The instructions are not in a foreign language! Here enters another strange character, also unnamed, but identified as ‘a certain old prophet’. And somehow he gets our first prophet to stay with him for a meal and some liquid refreshment in total disobedience to what the Lord has commanded him. Not a good choice. And the results are pretty bad too…he heads down a dead-end street, if you know what I mean! What tipped him over the edge? That cagey, old-goat prophet just lied through his teeth, which were probably as false as his words. Told the other prophet that the Lord had given him a message through an angel to stay with him and have some food and drink. Too bad our first prophet didn’t listen to what he knew was the Word of the Lord. Not just him. How about you and me? Too bad when we hear the voice of society more than the Word of the Lord. Too bad denominations speak and cease hearing from the Word of the Lord. Too bad when pastors tickle ears more than hear and heed the Word of the Lord. Too bad when the tide turns on some moral issue and we just float off to sea drowning in the foam of current opinion, rather than standing on the solid ground of the Word of God, the Bible. Too bad indeed. Think about it for awhile. Who do we listen to? Whose word counts…for you?
HEARTFELT WORDS…..Read Hosea 14
Hosea chapter 14 is one of the most beautiful chapters in all the Bible. Please take a moment now to read all 9 magnificent verses just basking in its exquisiteness. Hosea is included in what’s called the Minor Prophets, but certainly no minor message here. Not at all. This chapter begins with Hosea calling out to God’s people, who have wandered far, far away from Him, calling to them to ‘return, O Israel, to the Lord your God’. He urges them to bring words of confession, of penitence, of sorrow…’take words with you’. Not just any words. But heartfelt ones. From the bottom of their hearts. Mean what you say and say what you mean. When I look at my life, there is so much that I just have to shake my head at…at myself. And I too, like God’s people thousands of years ago, must come to the Lord in honesty, openness, humility and confession. Am I the only one? Asking forgiveness…depending on His grace and mercy, offering to Him not the blood of animals but ‘the fruit of our lips.’ The good fruit that are words of praise and prayer. And look at the promised blessings that come our way from our loving and forgiving Lord…verses 4 through 7. Amazing blessings and gifts from above. Just for uttering heartfelt words; offering the fruit of our lips. Blessings come like healing our sinful ways, turning us around to His way and ways; and loving us with a flood of divine affection that never dries up. Like dew on the ground in a dry land causing flowers to bloom, our roots will keep getting deeper and deeper into our Lord like the roots of the cedars of Lebanon. When I was growing up, my mother had a cedar chest in the attic at home, and when I would open that wooden box did that aroma ever please–that will be us to Him! We’ll be in His shade when life just gets too hot to tolerate on our own. We’ll flourish like grain and blossom like grapes on a vine. The Lord says that ‘I am like a green pine tree…'(verse 8)–two of my aunts had a cabin, a rather primitive one on a lake in rural New Jersey. The whole lake was surrounded by pine trees. Though I never liked that place, yet I’ll never forget that pervasive aroma of pine in the air when visiting them. Not the cabin, not the lake, not the long trip to get there, but the air that was crisp and clear and clean and pleasant. Pine was in the air. The end of verse 8 God reminds us that all of this, all these blessings, all of it come from Him. ‘Your fruitfulness comes from me’. Today, we offer to the Lord our heartfelt thanks for all He’s given us. Heartfelt words. And especially for His only Son Jesus who made our life and makes our life worth living!
SO LITTLE TO ASK OF US……Read Hosea 13:4-6
It’s really so simple. Not complicated or mysterious. Not something puzzling or hidden requiring secret passwords or a locksmith. None of that really. So simple. So upfront. And on top of that, asks so little of us. Have you read those verses in Hosea yet? That Old Testament prophet whose ministry was mainly to the northern Kingdom of Israel right up to the time when Samaria fell to the Assyrians in 722 BC. That prophet with a wayward wife symbolizing God’s wayward people. Hosea means ‘salvation’ in Hebrew, and here in chapter 13 he records the anguished heart of God the Savior. He states unequivocably that He alone is the Lord, Yahweh your God, who liberates them from slavery in Egypt. Since He is God alone, His people are simply to acknowledge Him and no other God. That should be easy since there is no other God but Yahweh, the God of Israel. Get it? No mystery here. No secret, silly codes to decipher. Then He says that He alone saved them, and cared for them in the desert, that steaming hot desert. I remember 2 years ago being in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt where King Tut had his tomb, where the temperature was 120 degrees. You read it correctly! They said it was a dry heat but so is an oven and I’m not getting in there either! Never so hot in all my life–it was oppressive, claustrophobic, clawing at my throat with thirst. The coolest place was down in those ancient tombs! Hosea 13:5 records that there, even there, under those boiling conditions God took care of His people. He goes on to say that He fed them not just a few morsels to shut them up and stop their infernal grumbling and complaining; no, He fed them until they were satisfied, pushing back from their tables just so full and happy without a care in the world. ‘Man, aren’t we lucky!’ But that’s when things took a turn and not a good one. In their satisfaction they started thanking each other, feeling better than others less lucky than them, feeling not just full but puffed up and preening with pride. For all they had accomplished, all the hard work they had done which was now paying off–a proud people but way-down-deep a forgetful one, an unthankful one, a nation of ingrates. They forgot who made it all, who provided it all, who had blessed them through thick-and-thin, who stayed with them when no one else had, who saved them like no one else could. How about you and me? Talk and think more about luck than blessed? Today…thank God all day long. And then let it spill over into tomorrow…and don’t stop there! Never forget Him and all His benefits. ‘Count your many blessings…see what God has done’. He asks so little of us, His children. Nothing difficult in thanking Him and giving credit where credit is due. Do it…begin now! And never stop!
OH, REALLY…Psalm 18:20-29
Oh, the wisdom of youth! If it were only true! How I wish I could take some of what I’ve learned in life, as little as it is, and play it back into decisions I made as a young man and certainly into my middle years. But as they say, no can do! Let me ask you a question. What did you think when you read Psalm 18 today? What was your reaction to what the psalmist David had written as a song of his heart? Some of the phrases just hit me the wrong way: ‘according to my righteousness’, ‘the cleanness of my hands’, ‘I have not turned away from His decrees’, ‘I have been blameless’, ‘I have kept myself from sin’…Oh, really! Like he’s singing off-key here. Now we know lots and lots about David’s life, his successes and then his struggles. Hardly one of the Ten Commandments that he didn’t break at least once and sometimes many times more. Lying, adultery, murder…you name it. So, what’s he talking about–blameless, righteous, clean? Oh, really! Let’s go back a moment and read what’s right before the body of this psalm, underneath where it says ‘Psalm 18’ (at least in most Bible’s today). Called by Bible scholars the ‘superscription’, it is from tradition identifying where a psalm comes from in the life of the author, in this case David. This is a musical psalm, as most are. It calls him ‘the servant of the Lord’, and tells us that the occasion for this psalm is God’s deliverance of David from all of his enemies and especially Israel’s jealous first king, Saul. We don’t know David’s age here, except that he is a young man, early in his life. He’s got a lot of living ahead of him, good times and bad. Good decisions and lots of not so good ones as well. Sound familiar? Certainly is my experience. When I look back I had such good intentions. Then I got in the way; me, I and myself. Am I alone in this? Hope so, but I doubt it! What I do know is that David’s exuberance quickly was deflated by his own sinful nature, and so has mine in so many ways, at so many times in my life. Let people down, said what shouldn’t have been said, done what shouldn’t have been done, selfish and thoughtless. The list is just beginning. And that is why I look to Psalm 143 for a more mature word and song from David; later in his life, looking farther back over the decades of decadence and defeat. Now he says, ‘O Lord…listen to my cry for mercy; in your faithfulness and righteousness come to my relief…Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you…(Psalm 143:1, 8). David sounds a bit different here, doesn’t he? He’s been eating that humble-pie after looking carefully and honestly in the mirror of his long life. That’s why he cries for mercy, for God’s love and forgiveness, exhibiting trust not in himself but in the One who is always righteous, always good, always clean and just. It’s not about me, but about Him. God’s grace is getting what I don’t deserve. His mercy is not receiving what I do deserve. The longer I live the more I depend not on me but on the One whose grace and mercy is new every morning…both now and forever. That’s good news, right? You agree, right?
BLEACHED AS BRIGHT AND WHITE CAN BE! Read Mark 9: 2-13
My great-grandmother’s name was Eliza Jane Gibson. She emigrated from Derry Hale, Portadown, County Antrim, Ireland to the United States in 1888. She was my mother’s favorite relative and my mother always spoke so fondly of her grandmother. Didn’t she have just the loveliest of names, Eliza Jane? In 1891 she married another expatriate Irishman, James Gibson. They had 5 children;however, only 2 lived to adulthood. One died of rheumatic fever at 14 months, another died of smallpox at age 4 and yet another of some kind of tumor at age 15. After celebrating just 10 years of marriage, her husband James also dies of smallpox. Life must have been so full of challenges for Eliza Jane. In a matter of 20 short years she had left forever her family and home country, and then endured a string of unrelenting death of her husband and most of her children. I can hardly imagine the griefs she bore. Her eldest child, the only one I ever knew, was Margaret Gibson, my great-Aunt Margaret, who ironically never married, never had children and lived to a great age, just a few weeks short of her 103rd birthday! When my Aunt Margaret spoke of her mother there was always one thing she proudly mentioned over-and-over about her mother; that she washed clothes for a living, was a house-keeper for wealthy families in Jersey City, New Jersey, and that the sheets and linens she washed and bleached were brighter and whiter than what anyone else could ever do! They were so white you could hardly stand to look at them for more than a moment! I think of Eliza Jane when I read Mark’s Gospel, the 9th chapter. It’s the story of Jesus being transfigured, changed in appearance as He’s talking with Moses and Elijah, and then hearing the voice of God the Father affirming His love for His only Son, this same Jesus. Mark records that Jesus’ ‘clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.’ Brighter and whiter, dazzling with light itself, more than the brightest anything that we have ever seen! Jesus, the light of the world, lights our lives, lights our way, lightens our load of guilt and shame and sin. Some say that angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly. In Jesus, through faith in Him alone, we become light and lighter in this dark and soiled world so in need of cleansing,and washing,and bleaching and direction. ‘You (and I) are the light of the world’, Jesus said (Matthew 5:14). How about that? Time to shine? ‘This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!’ How about you? It’s time…
Reflections out of time 