"To Him be glory forever": August 2019

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Changes

Six years ago today was our first full day of living in Dulce. My, how things have changed for us since then! Some of those changes are evident in the two pictures. One, of Kat on her bike, the day after we arrived. The other, of our family this past Sunday. Robin takes a family picture in front of church on the first Sunday of September. She took it a week early this year, because we are going to be on vacation. As you can see, not only has Kat grown in six years, but also our family, as we've added Xander and Junior. Nearly two years ago we took the boys in for foster care and recently we were named their permanent guardians. We expected Kat to grow over time but we never expected our family to grow in Dulce as well.

Life is full of many changes, some of which we can anticipate. We can see things coming down the road and plan for them. Other changes catch us by surprise. Sometimes they are pleasant and sometimes they are most unwelcome, to say the least. Changes can come along that leave us gasping for air, or barely hanging on by the tips of our fingers.

God's word never changes. God tells us that himself in Isaiah 40:8.

"The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever."

And that reminder helps us to trust in God's promises, which being based in his word, also do not change. There are quite a few of them but I'm just going to mention one today that comes to mind, one that I am particularly fond of.

In Romans 8: 38-39 Paul ends a powerful personal testimony with these words:

"For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

I have no ideas the changes that will take place in myself or my family over the next six years, or even the next week. But I do know that whatever they may be, for good or for ill, they will not separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus, my Savior and Lord.

And when you have faith in Jesus, that is your promise too. Don't take my word for it, but trust the word of God as he speaks those words to you. Amen.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Peace, For All Who Want It

When I worked in health care I had a patient who was a member of the Saudi royal family. One day he gave several of us his business card, which had the symbol of the Saudi Arabia on it. It was a palm tree, above a pair of crossed swords. He told us the palm tree symbolized, "Peace, for all who want it." We asked about the swords. The answer was less direct, along the lines of, "The other thing…" The idea, as I recall, was that the nation of Saudi Arabia would live in peace with anyone, but if someone did not want peace with them then they would deal with them directly as their enemy.

That memory came to mind as I was reading Romans 5, where in verse 1 Paul says:

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

According to my patient, peace is the default position of anyone in relation to Saudi Arabia. That is also what we might often assume to be God's default towards people. If, first and foremost, "God is love" then God is a God who is naturally at peace with all peoples of the world. But what Paul points to in that one verse of Romans is that God's "natural" position towards humans is not peace but something quite different.

God certainly is love, but that is not the end of the story. God is many other things as well, such as good, and wise, and strong, and knowledgeable, and just, and merciful, and righteous. All of the characteristics that we might think of to describe God are all present all of the time, and they are all perfect in every way. Which is another way of saying that God is holy.

And the thing that from our side shapes the nature of our relationship with God is our sin. God has given his perfect law, and our default position is to break it continually. As sinners our place before a holy God is not one of peace, but of something far, far different, unless…

Unless we take the path that Paul points his readers towards, the path of peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the one, sent by God, to make right the terrible wrong that happened in the Garden as Adam and Eve committed the first sin. That sin broke the easy fellowship of humans with God, and faith in Jesus and what he accomplished in his death and resurrection is the only path of restoration. That’s what it means to be declared justified. By faith in Jesus our sin has been removed, every bit of it, so that we stand before God cleansed from it. Justification, by faith in Jesus alone, is the path to true and lasting peace with God.

Peace with God is an amazing and wonderful thing. It is a precious treasure, and one of the most wonderful things about it is that we can receive as a free gift of God when we have faith in Jesus as our savior.

May this be the peace that you live in each day, the peace that you can enjoy from now on and forevermore.

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Speed Bump

Have you ever driven on a section of road that had speed bump built into it? If you see a warning sign, or the bump itself ahead of time, then you slow down a bit and hardly take notice of it. But if there is no sign, or you are looking some other direction and don't see the bump, or perhaps just don't care, and you hit the bump at full speed or faster, you are instantly very aware of its presence. The purpose of the bump is to make you moderate your speed. That may or may not happen but you can’t deny that it showed itself to be there in the middle of the road.

All people hit a variety of bumps as they go through life. Big bumps, that perhaps result in serious damage to our lives. Or little bumps that gain our attention for the briefest period of time. And lots of varieties of bumps between those to ranges.

There are no religious exemptions to the bumps of life. People who love and worship Jesus hit bumps. People who bow down to anything else as their god hit bumps. People who deny and/or disbelieve in the existence of God hit bumps. Everyone hits them at times throughout their life. But the difference is in how we respond when they happen.

This afternoon I was reading something written by Wilhelmus 'a Brakel who said this about the bumps of the Hebrews as they traveled from slavery in Egypt to the land that God had promised would be theirs:

"However, the least mishap caused them to distrust the Lord and to murmur."

Set free from slavery by God himself, and witnesses to repeated miracles that God did to save and guide his people. And yet, repeatedly, they murmured against God the moment things took a wrong turn, from their point-of-view. You can read the story yourself as you read through Exodus.

The very next sentence 'a Brakel writes tells of God's attitude toward the Hebrews, in the presence of their murmuring against him:

"Nevertheless, the Lord helped them."

The bump never changed the direction of the road they were traveling on. From God's point-of-view the bump was designed to lead them to trust in God's care, rather than to question it.

One of the great blessings of living on this side of history, after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, is that we see the promises of God to his people with greater clarity. Same God. Same promise to be the God of his people. But the promises being written in such a way that there can be no mistake as to what they mean, like this one from Romans 8:35-39,

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

We all hit bumps in life. Some that are barely noticeable. Some that are bone-jarring, and worse. But the promise of God to hold his children in all things is just that. A promise. Grounded in God's character and received by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. A promise that we never need to doubt.

May the next bump in your life be one that causes you to hang on tightly to the one who is always holding on to you.

Thursday, August 8, 2019

The Foundation of Love

My family and I live in an older house. It was built in 1914 and the exterior walls were built with adobe bricks. It’s a solid house, with level floors. The main reason that it is so solid is not the walls, which are substantial, but the foundation that it was built on. The foundation was built of stone, quarried from who-knows-where, stacked and mortared by who-knows-whom, but done in such a way that over 100 years later the house is just as solid as the day the first pastor's family moved in.

A good foundation is necessary for anything that is intended to last. A building needs a good foundation to last for 100 years. A novel needs the foundation of a strong plot in order for people to want to read it 100 years later. A marriage needs a large measure of love as its foundation if it is to endure through the lifetime of those making promises to each other.

Love isn’t a word that is easy to pin down. It is both a noun, or a thing, as well as being a verb, or something that we do. And there are as many different shades of meaning to the word "love" as there are people in the world. We all have different way to define love, to experience love and to act in, or with, love. The differences can be so great that what one person might call love would be considered to be the opposite of love by another person.

The Bible has its own understating of love, and one place where we can find it is 1 John 4:7-11. John tells us that the origin of human love is in the love of God that is first poured out an humans. Said otherwise, in order for humans to love anyone else with true love they first have to have received love from God.

John goes further, to say that God's love doesn’t just come to people randomly, or willy nilly, but that it is a very specific, intentional gift of his. In verses 9 and 10 John writes:

"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

God's love was made known in the sending of his son, Jesus, who was the propitiation for human sin. Propitiation is a fancy word that means atonement, which is a fancy word that means to "make reparation for a wrong or injury." All of which is to say that there is a problem between God and humans, the sin problem, which God himself makes right by giving his very Son to do the work of removing that sin and restoring wholeness with God.

If you have turned to Jesus, seeking for him to forgive your sin, then you are someone who has truly received God's love. If not, then whatever you may be calling love in your life is just a weak and poor imitation. It may feel powerful but it is not a love that is built on the very firm and unmovable foundation of God.

If you're a regular reader of my blog, then you what comes next…

Either, turn to Jesus for the forgiveness of your sin, so that you can receive and live in the true love of God, or…

…having received God's love through the saving work of Jesus on your behalf, thank God again and ask him to lead you to someone else that you can share the love of Jesus with, and…

…let all of this be to the glory of God, now and forever. Amen.