My New Dining Room

Molly went away on a mission trip last week and left me home.  Whenever that happens I usually take on some home improvement project to surprise her with when she gets home.  I’m sure she is afraid every time she leaves because I’m not the most handy guy in the world and could easily get in over my head.  This week I took on our dining room.  It started out innocently enough, just paint.  After the painting was done, I looked at the disgusting 18 year-old builder’s grade carpet that my dog has used for things I don’t even want to mention here and thought, “It’s time for this to go.”  I peeled it back from the corner and thought hard about whether I could handle carpet removal and installation of a vinyl floor.  I decided to go for it.  It took me a couple of days, and cost me a little more than I had hoped, but the finished product is really nice.  I’m kind of proud of my work.  

That got me to thinking about the lengths that we will go to cover up things we don’t like not only in our houses but in ourselves.  We wear clothes that will best hide our flaws.  Women (and some men!) wear makeup to cover flaws.  When dating, we try to hide the things about ourselves that might make our date run from us.  When we interview for jobs, we never say the things about ourselves that we know will scare our employers off.  We are careful about the things we post on social media.  (Some of us should perhaps be more careful!)   We go to great lengths to hide our real selves.  We can get away with this to a certain extent because the people were are concealing our true selves from are not omniscient.  They don’t know what we are thinking.  They don’t know everything we’ve ever done.  They don’t know every wicked thought we've ever had.

Incredibly, our God knows all of these things and loves us anyway.  Psalm 139 talks about God’s omniscience and His love for us.  Verse 1: “O Lord you have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You understand my thought from afar.”  Verse 4: “Even before a word is on my tongue, behold Lord, you know it all.”  Verse 16: Your eyes have seen my unformed substance and in your book were all written the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them.”  This psalm instructs us about the dignity of human life from conception to death, but that is not my focus today.  I am focusing on how God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, can love us anyway. Billy Joel sang, “I said I love you and that’s forever, and this I promise from the heart. I couldn’t love you any better. I love you just the way you are.”  How can God love us just the way we are?

I listened to a sermon today by a great friend of mine.  He said something profound.  He was talking about how God has poured all of His love into His Son Jesus.  We can only experience God’s eternal love when we choose to trust Jesus for our salvation.  This was God's idea and His plan.  John 5:21-22 says, “21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes. 22 For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, 23 so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.”  God does not judge.  Jesus judges. Jesus gives life to whom He wishes.  The only way to pass His muster is to receive Him as your Savior.  The only way to receive the eternal love of God is to love the Son.  I know that’s hard.  I’m not saying that God does not love everyone.  He does.  That’s why He sent His Son to die for the sin of everyone in the world.  What I am saying is that only those who accept Jesus as Savior will experience the eternal love of God because the only way to love and honor God is to love Jesus who He sent.  

When I looked at my ugly dining room, I saw it exactly as it was.  When God looks at us, He sees us exactly as we are. No flaw is hidden from His sight.  But when we choose to believe in His Son for the salvation of our souls God chooses to see His perfect Son and not our flawed and sinful selves. What a great God we serve!

PS: Check out my new dining room!

The Armadillo's World and Mine

The other morning I was walking on the golf course like I do most mornings.  As I turned around a little bend, there was an armadillo about 20 yards ahead of me, eating and not noticing me at all.  As I came closer, he heard me.  He turned and looked at me and tried to decide if I was friend or foe. He must have decided not to take any chances.  He slinked closer to the woods and then darted into them.  I wanted to follow him, but they were dense and with my history of bug bites followed by emergency room visits, I decided to leave him alone. 

My world is out in the open, on the golf course that people made, and where people can generally be found. His world is in the woods hidden away from people and other creatures that mean him harm.  When he was out in the open, he was in my world and uncomfortable there.  His sanctuary is the protection of the woods.  Had I crossed the threshold into the woods, I would have left my own sanctuary and entered the world where bugs and snakes bite, and unseen danger lurks all around.  Which got me to thinking…

Why is it so hard for us as Christians to live in our world?  It’s because this world is filled with sin, and opportunity for sin abounds.  Like the armadillo out in the open, or me in the woods, it’s uncomfortable and unnatural for Christians to live in a world that does not fit Christ’s desire for our holiness.  That’s why 1 Peter 2 says that we are “strangers and aliens in this world”, and encourages us to “abstain from fleshly lusts that wage war against our souls.”  Is it hard to do abstain from fleshly lusts?  Of course it is.  Sin is fun for a time.  Fleshly lusts are enticing.  They are not just sexual in nature.  They can be anything that exalt ourselves or give us pleasure at the expense of God’s standard of holiness.  It’s hard to live in this world as Christians because we are bombarded by the opportunity to gratify ourselves with fleshly lusts. 

That’s why Hebrews 13:14 says, “This world is not our permanent home, we are looking for a home yet to come.”  Why is it that though we live here, we feel the tug in our hearts that this world is not all there is, that there is a better place that awaits us?  It’s because somewhere in the depths of our souls, we Christians know that this world is not our ultimate home. We know that Jesus is preparing a place for us so that where He is, we will be also (John 14:2-3). One day, we will inhabit that dwelling place that the Lord has prepared for us.  As Paul said in Phil 3:20, ^“Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

As we live in this world, we will be tempted every day to accept what it offers.  Not a day will pass that we will not have the opportunity to indulge in every manner of sin.  As this world falls further and further into moral decay, we must “walk in a manner worthy of our calling.” (Eph. 4:1), and “not to go on presenting the members of our body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but as instruments of righteousness to God.”  (Rom. 6:12-13).  We CAN do this with the Lord’s help by the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9-12). We CAN resist the temptation to sin (1 Cor. 10:13).  We CAN live in this world and not become part of it. (1 John 2:15-16)

That armadillo could visit my world for a short time.  And I may have been able to follow him into his world for a minute or two.  But we can’t live in each other’s world.  Sooner or later, we’ll get hurt if we try to live in the other’s world.  The same is true of disciples of Christ trying to live in a sinful world.  True disciples of Christ have to avoid the world of sin that tempts us and means to do us harm.  For now, this is Satan’s world, and he means to destroy us with the temptations of this world.  Be careful to avoid his snares.  There’s nothing but trouble ahead when you allow yourself to enter his world.  

Life Without My Mac

In the middle of June, the keys on the right side of the keyboard on my Mac stopped working.  I had to take it in to the Apple Store for service. They said that the problem was that the battery located beneath the keys on the right side of the keyboard had swollen and needed to be replaced.  I was without the computer for a week while they did the repair.  When I got it back, they had replaced the battery and the keyboard but still the keys did not work.  I brought it back.  They replaced the battery and the keyboard again and returned the computer to me 10 days later, but still the keys didn’t work.  I was beyond frustrated. I NEED my computer!  I called Apple support to complain and to get assistance.  They told me that it must be a software problem. After a combined 5 hours on the phone with them, they finally diagnosed the problem and fixed it.  After 3 weeks without my computer, I am now back in business. 

Here are some things that I learned:

1. I need to learn to be more dependent on the Lord than I am on my computer.  Jesus is everything I need.  Psalm 42 says, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul thirsts for you my God.” While without my computer, my soul was thirsting for it more than it was thirsting for God.  I rely on my computer every hour, every day.  It’s physical, tangible, and helps me get my work done.  I almost can’t function without it.  How I need to learn that the same is true of Jesus.  I need Him every day, every hour.  He is my life, my breath, and I can’t function without Him. 

2. My problems are “first world” problems.  There are millions of people in the world who don't have clean water to drink or food to eat, and I was whining like a petulant child because my Mac was in the shop and I had to use a PC.  The horror!! Really?!  Such is the state of most of us.  We are so materially wealthy that sometimes we invent things to complain about. I’m not saying that some of us don’t have real problems, but most of the things we complain about would be laughable to much of the rest of the world.  Complaining about invented problems is nothing new.  In Numbers 11, after God rescued the people from 400 years of bondage in Egypt, they complained about having to eat manna.  I took time today to ask forgiveness for my own selfishness and ignorance of the real problems in the world, and I thanked God that He has provided for my every need.

3. I need to work on my patience.  This is not a new revelation to me.  God keeps giving me opportunities and I can imagine Him smiling and shaking His head at me when I fail yet again.  I am not so eagerly awaiting my next test!  All things are under His control and happen according to His perfect timing. Psalm 33:20 says, “We wait in hope for the Lord; He is our help and our shield.”  I know it and still have a hard time with waiting on the Lord. I’m not just talking about computers, but every prayer I am waiting for the Lord to answer.  Can you relate?  

I hope that you had a little chuckle at my little problem, but I also hope you can see a bit of yourself in it.  Jesus is our Lord and Savior.  By His wounds we have been saved.  When we value anything more than Him,  when we complain that He has not provided, when we are not willing to trust His timing, we do Him a disservice.  May we let God be God and be content with His provision!