Love Does

 I just finished reading a book by Bob Goff called “Love Does.”  The premise of the book is that God calls us to live with whimsical love. The word whimsy means extravagant, fanciful, or playful.  To love whimsically means that sometimes you have to DO things and not worry about the expense, or whether the thing makes a whole lot of sense.  Goff told story after story of what it has looked like to love whimsically in his life, and I have to admit that I was jealous.  He has lived a life of adventure. As we get older, we get more cautious and conservative.  We worry about things a lot more than we did when we were younger. When I was younger, I didn’t worry about anything, and that’s not good either!  But I never want to get to the point where I don’t DO anything for fear of whether I can afford it, or whether I have time or who will feed my dog, or whether the house will be standing when I get home.

When the prodigal son returned home, his father ran after him and embraced him and kissed him.  He dressed him in the finest clothes, put a ring on his finger and killed the fattened calf so they could celebrate his return. That’s whimsical love.  It’s extravagant, expensive, over the top love. It was so much more than the prodigal could ever have hoped for, especially after the way he insulted his father by asking for his share of the inheritance while his father was still alive. I want to love that way.  

This afternoon at about 3:30 we heard that our nephew Luke will be graduating from US Navy Boot Camp on Friday in Chicago.  He has worked so hard to get to this point. About 5 weeks into the 8 week basic training program, they told him that he was not progressing well enough and they added 3 more weeks to his basic training.  He was devastated.  His graduation date was rescheduled to August 3, but the Navy tells all the families to buy flight insurance if they plan to attend graduation, because any trainee can be held back again at the last minute.  

Molly and I had been talking about going up to Chicago for the graduation but as the days passed with no assurance that Luke would graduate, we gave up on the idea.  But reading “Love Does” has changed my thinking. There’s no reason why we can’t go to Chicago on a moment’s notice to be at his graduation.  Well, actually there are a bunch of reasons why we can’t go, but whimsical love doesn’t worry about the reasons why we can’t go.  Instead, it figures out a way that we can go.  

So here’s the plan. Molly and I will drive through the night tonight to get to Chicago tomorrow morning.  It’s about a 12-13 hour drive.  We are going to go to the Chicago White Sox game at 1 pm.  I’ve never been to the new stadium so I can check another stadium off my list. (I swear that’s not the reason we are going!) Then we will meet up with Luke’s family, that’s Molly’s brother Paul, his wife Lois, and their kids who many of you have met.  They can only get 4 tickets to the graduation, so Molly and I won’t actually get to see the graduation, but we will see Luke after for a while.  I think it will mean a lot to him that we made the effort.  Then we will drive back on Saturday.  

Does that seem crazy? When I was young, I would have done it in a heartbeat.  Now that I am older, I hemmed and hawed.  But love does.  So we are doing it.  We are so proud of Luke and we want to be there to share his moment with him.  When Jesus died on the cross for our sins, that was not convenient.  It was painful, humiliating, shameful and worst of all, He was separated from His Father while He bore His Father’s wrath for the sin of the world.  If He had not done it, none of us could be in heaven with Him someday.  He had to pay the penalty for our sins.  Love Does. That’s how Jesus showed His love for us. In comparison to that, what’s a drive to Chicago and back to show our love for our nephew?  

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!

What a bug bite can teach us about sin

I was out fishing yesterday with friends when I felt something bite me on the wrist.  I looked down and saw an ant there and flicked it off, but it immediately started itching, and I knew I was in trouble.  I’ve told you before that I am allergic to bees.  I found out today that I’m allergic to other kinds of bug bites too.  I know the routine.  Slowly the area around the bite started to swell.  Then the swelling began to creep up my arm.  Within a couple of hours, my hand looked like the Pillsbury dough boy’s.  With a bug bite, it’s easy to diagnose the problem.   The problem was the bug’s venom got into me.  I felt the bite and I saw the progress of the swelling.  The antidote is a steroid shot, a relatively simple solution to the problem. This morning the swelling had receded some and my hand looks more like mine than an advertiser’s cartoon mascot.  All of this got me to thinking about sin and salvation. Let me explain:

Sin gets into us like that bug’s venom got into me.  Sin is at the root of every problem we have in our lives.  Our own sin causes us problems.  We have health problems because we over-eat, or smoke or drink.  We have financial problems because we spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need.  We have relational problems because we are proud and won’t admit when we are wrong. We are addicted to video games, pornography, drugs, or gambling. Sometimes, it’s the sin of others that makes our lives difficult.  The boss is an ego-maniac.  Our children have walked away from the faith.  The mechanic is ripping us off.  Other times, our problems are caused by the fact that we live in a fallen world, which is the result of sin.  When Adam ate the forbidden fruit, sin and death entered the world.  Natural disasters, evil, bug bites, and the tendency of things to decay and deteriorate are the result.  

Unlike a bug bite, sin can be hard to diagnose, especially our own sin.  It creeps into our lives like the swelling crept up my arm, slowly but surely, and if we don’t get the antidote, our sin will kill us and keep us from heaven.  Satan entices us to sin, and he blinds our eyes so that we continue in it, so that we never make the connection between our sin and the hardship we create for ourselves by it. The problem is sin.

The antidote to sin is Jesus Christ.  When Jesus died on the cross, He said, “It is finished.”  That means that the work of paying for our sin is complete.  The debt that we owe for sinning against Holy God is “paid in full.” We will never pay the penalty for our sin if we believe in Jesus for our salvation because God doesn’t demand double payment of the debt.  Jesus already paid it for you once and for all.  That’s wonderful news of course, but how does that help in our battle against sin?  Romans 8:9 says, “But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.”  As believers, we have the Holy Spirit to help us defeat sin.  Romans 8:5-8 says, “⁵ Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶ The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. ⁸ Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”

Believers in Jesus Christ have the power to defeat sin because we have the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, living inside of us.  If we want to defeat the sin in our lives, we have to have our minds set on what the Spirit desires.  The will of God is not hard to discern.  He wants us to live holy lives, lives of integrity and high character.  He wants us not to worry and to trust Him for our needs.  He wants us to share the love of Jesus with others.  As we fill ourselves with the desires of the Spirit, the sin in our lives will decrease correspondingly.  If you have kids, you want them to be busy because you know that busyness keeps them out of trouble.  God wants us to be busy about His work in this world.  We can’t be sinning and doing His work at the same time.  If I had killed that bug or flicked it off of me before it had bitten me, I could have stopped that venom from getting into me.  If we kill sin before it gets into us, we will be spared of so much suffering and hardship that we bring on ourselves. 

Let’s be filled with the Holy Spirit; let get about doing God’s work.  We will still have the problems that come from living in a fallen world, and we will still face persecution for being Christians.  But hopefully, we will have far fewer problems that are caused by our own sin.

The Baker who wouldn't bake

If you are like me, you have been eagerly awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. This is the case of Jack Phillips, the Christian baker and owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, who refused to bake a wedding cake for two gay men on the grounds that doing so would violate his religious beliefs.    

After Phillips refused to bake the cake, the gay couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights commission alleging that Phillips violated a Colorado anti-discrimination law that prohibits business open to the public from discriminating against their customers on the basis of race, religion or sexual orientation. Phillips argued that his cakes were an artistic expression and subject to free speech protection under the first amendment, and that requiring him to bake cakes for gay couples violated his right to free speech and free exercise of religion.  There is much procedural history that can be summarized by saying that Phillips lost at trial and on appeal. The courts ruled that the making of a cake was the expected conduct of Phillips business, and not an expression of free speech or an exercise of religion, and therefore his refusal to bake the cake violated the anti-discrimination law.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jack Phillips yesterday.  This is wonderful news for Phillips and for those who believe that business owners should not be forced to violate their consciences and beliefs by being required to use their creativity to endorse same sex marriage.  But we should look at what the Supreme Court actually said and didn’t say.  The Court ruled in favor of Phillips because it said that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated its obligation to apply “religious neutrality” to its hearings and therefore overturned the ruling by the Commission.  The Supreme Court found that the Commission was unduly biased against Phillips and had shown open hostility toward his religious beliefs.  In other words, Phillips didn’t get a fair hearing before the Commission because the Commission was hostile to Phillips religious beliefs and overturned the ruling on those grounds.  What the Supreme Court did not say was that Phillips or anyone else in a similar situation has a right to deny providing goods or services to a gay couple. The court basically kicked the can down the road, choosing to decide the case on a very narrow issue, rather than dealing with the big issues in the case.

So, even though Phillips won the case, he did not hit a home run.  He won on a much narrower issue than what he was hoping, i.e., that the Court would declare that his rights to freedom of speech and freedom of exercise religion trump the anti-discrimination law. This case establishes no legal precedent and will be of no use to the next Christian business owner accused of violating anti-discrimination laws by refusing to sell goods and services to same sex couples. That issue is not resolved and I doubt it will be very long before another case makes its way up to the Supreme Court. 

In the meantime, let’s not be part of the problem.  God loves people who are practicing homosexuality, although the Bible is clear that homosexuality is an abomination to God.  We need to love them too, yet not be afraid to speak Biblical truth to them IN LOVE.  I emphasize IN LOVE because this issue has been so clouded by hate.  We ALL have sin in our lives.  God hates ALL sin.  Jesus died for ALL sin.  Let’s show practicing homosexuals the same grace, mercy and love in their sin that we want for ourselves and our own sin. Let’s find the proper balance between loving the sinner and not endorsing the sin.  Let’s point them to Christ.  That’s where forgiveness for ALL sin is found.

The Weatherman and the Bible

Most mornings I wake up pretty early and go for a long walk around the golf course near my neighborhood.  The weatherman was calling for a high chance of rain this morning, but I have learned not to trust weathermen in Texas.  The weather is always the same in the summer, and I think that they want to report that there is a chance of rain just to break the monotony of their weather forecasts from June to September.  Typical weather forecast in Texas: Hot and sunny, with a continued chance of hot and sunny for a solid 3 months.  Well, this morning the weatherman guessed right.  As I reached the furthest point from my house, the lightning started and the deluge began.  I was dodging lightning bolts and was thoroughly drenched by the time I got home. 

This got me to thinking about the reliability and trustworthiness of the weatherman and the Bible.  The weatherman is often wrong so I have learned not to trust him.  I don’t live my life around weather forecasts. The Bible is never wrong and so I do live my life according to what the Bible says.  I trust it completely.

As we live our lives trying to witness to people about Jesus Christ, our evidence is the Bible.  The difficult thing about witnessing is not that people don’t know their Bibles, it’s that people don’t believe what the Bible says.  They think it’s just a human book, written by human authors, is not inerrant, infallible or authoritative, and has no bearing on their lives.  How do we cope with that reality?  Here are a few suggestions: 

1. Know what the Bible says about itself:

·     2 Tim. 3:16-17: ¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the servant of Godmay be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

·     1 Peter 1:20-21:²⁰ Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. ²¹ For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

·     Psalm 12:6:“And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times” 

·     Psalm 19:7:“The law of the Lord is perfect”.

·     Proverbs 30:5:“Every word of God is pure”.

Those are just a few of many verses that speak about the Bible’s inerrancy.  But is that enough?  People will say that you can’t use the Bible to argue that the Bible is true.  OK, what if everything else the Bible says is also true?

2. Know some of the many prophesies of the Bible that have already been fulfilled:

Think about all of the prophecies of the Bible that have already come true.  To name but a few: 

·     Isaiah’s prophecy about the death of the Messiah (Is. 53)

·     Isaiah’s prophecy that Messiah would be born of a virgin (Is. 7:14)

·     Jesus’s birthplace (Micah 5:2)

·     Zechariah’s prophecy that they would look on him who they pierced (Zech. 12:10)

·     Not one of Jesus’ bones would be broken (Ps. 34:20)

·     Jesus’ prophecy that He would be killed and rise again (Mark 10:32-34) 

There are so many more that could be cited. What about the secrets that lie in the sands of the Middle East?

3. Know that Archaeology has not disproven anything in the Bible, rather the opposite is true: 

·     The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (858-824 B.C.) shows Jehu, king of Israel, bowing before the Assyrian king, and he is mentioned by name. This is the only known picture of an Israelite king.  It confirms Jehu’s existence.

·     Tablets from the time of Tiglath-Pileser (744-727 B.C.) state that he received tribute from Jehoahaz of Judah. This is the full name of Ahaz (2 Kings 16:7).

·     A detailed limestone relief from Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh shows the siege of Lachish. (2 Chron. 32)

·     The cylinder of Nabonidus (555-539 B.C.). He was the last ruler of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. This stele proves that his son Belshazzar was co-regent with him (Daniel 5; 7:1; 8:1). Belshazzar promised Daniel that he would be third in the kingdom rather than second, because there were two kings!

There are many, many more findings that could be cited.  

I want us all to understand that the Bible is inspired, inerrant, infallible, authoritative and true!  We can depend on it for our salvation.  If the weatherman tells me it’s going to rain tomorrow, I’ll probably go out for my walk again anyway.  His predictions are right about half the time.  The Bible says Jesus Christ died for my sins and rose from the dead so that I can have eternal life.  The Bible promises that He will come again.  The Bible has proven itself to be the Word of God over and over again. It is true 100% of the time and I believe its promises!