“We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry. How can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry?…We take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others. So what is God’s problem? … But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H. Glifford wrote: ‘Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.’… Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference… How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself? Does he just play fast and loose with the facts? ‘Oh, never mind…boys will be boys’. Try telling that to a survivor of the Cambodian ‘killing fields’ or to someone who lost an entire family in the Holocaust. No. To be truly good one has to be outraged by evil and implacably hostile to injustice” (Rebecca Pippert).

I do believe that God is love. I also believe that God gets angry. God gets angry whenever people mistreat and abuse anyone who is made in His image. God gets angry when people try to say that what He says is evil is really good and what He says is good is really evil. God gets angry when sin destroys people’s lives.

God got good and angry at the cross, then He proceeded to pour out all that wrath on Jesus. So yes, God is love. But the Bible puts holiness as the main characteristic of God, which means that God’s love is a holy love, not content to put up with anything less than His best for the beloved.

I believe that Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors and sinners. That’s true. I also believe that when they had been around Jesus long enough, they were no longer prostitutes or tax collectors or sinners. That was not their identity anymore. The holy love of Jesus didn’t merely tolerate their behavior but transformed them into their best selves — into what God had in mind when He created them.

And yes, Jesus got angry. He got angry when He saw the temple misused and the people in the temple putting up barriers to keep others from getting to God. He got angry when Pharisees saw keeping their rules as more important than the man with a withered hand who needed Jesus to heal Him, regardless of what day of the week it was. He grieved over a city that had rejected Him and didn’t recognize their Messiah when He was staring them in the face.

But it was a holy anger just as much as it was a holy love. On the cross, Jesus forgave those who were in the very act of murdering Him, not because what they were doing was okay or that it didn’t matter, but because God turned that act of hate into the means of salvation for anyone who would believe.

In case you haven’t already done so, it’s time to fall back. You get to set your clocks back one hour for that extra hour of being unable to sleep. Unless you live in Arizona or Hawaii, where you can have your insomnia without all the pain of daylight savings.

I’d recommend that you get started. You officially have until 2 am on Sunday morning, but who wants to be padding around and fiddling with clocks at that hour? I think I’d rather be sleeping.

Also, if anyone can figure out how to get rid of daylight savings, that would be great.

It does feel like that sometimes. You never know what to believe. I think they change their minds at least once every five or so years as to what’s good and what’s bad for you. I think the solution is to eat what you like in moderation. And I do think that chocolate is good for you. Since it comes from a bean which comes from a plant, that makes it a salad, and salads are very good for you, right?

“…so this is the thing for today:Instead of focusing on the hurdles ahead of you today,
Focus on Him beside you,
Instead of depending on your plans for the day,
depend on His power for this moment.
Instead of being tempted to give up, or give into fear,
give thanks — this gives Him glory.
Instead of trying to do it all
Simply let Him be your all.
The practice of giving thanks — the daily, intentional *practice* of thanks —
this is the way we practice the presence of God,
this is the way we stay present to His presence.
So maybe let’s exhale together and remember?
If you can breathe and murmur your thanks,
it’s still a mighty good day” (Ann Voskamp). #1000Gifts #ChooseJoy

The more I shift my attention from me to God, the better off I am. My problems don’t seem as big in the light of the grandness of God and my worries seem small in the ever present sufficiency of Christ. I can breathe a little easier and enjoy the moments instead of fretting away the hours. When I fix my gaze on God, it’s always a mighty good day.

“I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears.
Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces.
In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened; he saved me from all my troubles.
For the angel of the Lord is a guard; he surrounds and defends all who fear him.” (Psalm 34:4-7).

I think I’ve mentioned before that I heard a sermon from an African-American preacher where he said that fear stood for False Evidence Appearing Real. That’s the truth right there. Most of what I’ve worried about or been anxious about has simply not come to pass. A lot more of what I was afraid of ended up being not nearly as bad as my fears made it out to be.

Still, I have moments of anxiety and fear. It’s ingrained in me. I know that even the bravest still have fear, but choose to act anyway. Not out of the absence of fear but in spite of it. I often remind myself that God is bigger and stronger and better than anything I will ever be afraid of and Jesus has already overcome on the cross anything that could ever come against me. Nothing slips outside of God’s provenance.

I’m thankful God hears my fearful prayers. I’m eternally grateful that He hears even when I have no words.

“When John Kavanaugh, the noted and famous ethicist, went to Calcutta, he was seeking Mother Teresa … and more. He went for three months to work at ‘the house of the dying’ to find out how best he could spend the rest of his life.

When he met Mother Teresa, he asked her to pray for him. ‘What do you want me to pray for?’ she replied. He then uttered the request he had carried thousands of miles: ‘Clarity. Pray that I have clarity.’

‘No,’ Mother Teresa answered, ‘I will not do that.’ When he asked her why, she said, ‘Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.’ When Kavanaugh said that she always seemed to have clarity, the very kind of clarity he was looking for, Mother Teresa laughed and said: ‘I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.'”

Sometimes, I think it would be so nice to have the entire roadmap of my life laid out before me so that I knew exactly what was coming and what to expect. I could rest a lot easier and have less anxiety knowing the outcome. But that’s not how God works.

God knows I couldn’t handle knowing all of my future. He knows just as well that if I knew everything, I wouldn’t feel my need for God or sense His provision as much. It’s like when I turn on the flashlight app on my phone. It’s not like I can suddenly see everything. I can typically see what’s in front of me where I’m shining my light. I know where to take my next steps. Then I adjust the light and I can see a little more.

That’s how God works. He shows me just enough to take the next step of obedience and faith. What lies beyond may be a mystery to me, but it is not to God. That’s why I trust God and let Him lead one step at a time. I don’t need clarity for my journey, but trust for the next step.

I hope you and yours are having a wonderful Halloween. By that, I hope you get to dress up as Baby Yoda and go knock on complete strangers’ doors for candy. Preferably chocolate.

If you get any Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, please send some or all of them my way. Those are my absolute favorites.

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The waiting is the hardest part, says the old Tom Petty song. How true that is. I mean, it’s easy to wait passively with folded hands and no effort. It’s another thing to wait by trusting God and being obedient with the next step He’s given you. It’s one thing to do nothing and another to keep putting one foot in front of the other when every part of you is wanting to quit.

I think waiting means that instead of wanting a way out of your circumstances, you instead ask, “What are You trying to teach me here? How can this change me for the better instead of me changing my address?”

God is faithful. Waiting is a way of reinforcing your trust and reminding yourself of all the previous times when God has shown up for you.

Wait on the Lord. Take heart. Let a few others into your struggles. Don’t fight alone. Pray for the courage to wait well and not give up.

“I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in ‘the High Countries’. In that sense it will be true for those who have completed the journey (and for no others) to say that good is every- thing and Heaven everywhere. But we, at this end of the road, must not try to anticipate that retrospective vision. If we do, we are likely to embrace the false and disastrous converse and fancy that everything is good and everywhere is Heaven.

But what, you ask, of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself” (C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce).