I heard a really good illustration today at Kairos. Suppose you had a gun pointed at your head. I think that would inspire fear and terror and quite possibly the loss of control over bodily functions (to put it mildly). In other words, if it were me, I’d wet my pants and pass out at the same time.

Ok, now suppose you were shown the gun and the bullets being taken out. Now if the gun were held to your head, it would no longer have the same fearful effect. It would still have the ability to produce loud noises, but it would have lost any ability to do any actual damage (other than some temporary hearing loss).

If I am afraid of the devil and his demons, all I need to do is look at the Cross. The Bible says that there Jesus publically disarmed the enemy and paraded him in front of us to show Who had really won. In other words, Jesus showed us satan’s smoking gun, emptied out all the bullets, and handed it back to him.

Never again do I ever have to fear what anyone else can do to me. The only one I have to fear is the One who can destroy both the body and the soul, and that’s God. The good news is that I don’t have to fear God destroying my soul.

Think about this. The worst that could ever happen to me happened to Jesus. The very worst of hell and sin and death fell on Jesus and He took all those things to the grave and left them there. He came out of the grave unbound, bringing freedom to His children.

There’s nothing that can touch you and me as believers unless God allows it. That’s guaranteed. There’s nothing bad that God can’t turn into good. There’s nothing that will stop Him from finishing what He started in you, making you into a radiant masterpiece replica of His son Jesus.

Those things that you are so afraid of and so worried about? They’re just blanks.

That unknown future? God’s got it figured out.

Your life? It’s in the very best hands possible.

I tell myself that I am a fan of change. I tell myself that I will get bored if things always stay the same. Then change happens. That’s when I discover that the kind of change I like is the kind that is shiny, has dead presidents on it, and conjures up marvelous treasures when deposited into vending machines.

Change is scary. Change is unpredictable. Change is also the only constant in this life, other than maybe death and taxes. You can pretty much count on the fact that when you’ve got everything  figured out and you’re finally in a comfortable routine, something is about to change.

Someone you know dies or loses a loved one. Your favorite TV show gets cancelled. A favorite morning radio show that has gotten you through the morning for several months is abruptly going away. OK, that last one was mine.

The point of this is that changes are inevitable as they are unpredictable and uncontrollable. Unless you have a Ph.D in ESP, you can’t know when changes are coming or how to get ready for them. Well, sometimes you can, but many times you have no fair warning.

There’s a song I like by one of my favorite artists, Julie Miller. The chorus of the song goes like this:

“the only thing that doesn’t change
makes everything else rearrange
is the speed of light, the speed of light
your love for me must be the speed of light”

There is one other constant beside change, death, and taxes. There’s something that doesn’t change. God Himself says that He doesn’t change. He doesn’t lie or change His mind or fall back to plan B because plan A failed. God is always the same yesterday, today, and forever, as a well-quoted verse says.

God’s love doesn’t change either. It truly does make everything else rearrange. You can’t be confronted by the love of God and not be changed in some way. You can walk away and reject that love, but you can’t not choose.

I’d say that the Love of God is worth pursuing, worth whatever it will cost to find. The good news is when you find it, you find that this Love was pursuing you the whole time and that Love has already paid all the cost involved. All that’s left for you is to receive it.

Change can be a very good thing, especially when it’s you being changed and transformed by God’s love. That is the absolute best kind of change, because it’s you who gets to be all shiny and new.

I think tonight I will let a guest blogger take over. You might know him as the apostle Paul, who wrote a few of the letters we have in our Bible. I think he says what I want to say better than I ever could. And if you find yourself not recognizing the text, it’s because I am using The Message version. It’s Romans 8:31-38.

“So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
   They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
   We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.”

Just let that sink in. I hope and pray you spend the rest of the day meditating on these words (and rereading them in the more traditional translations if this one is too wierd for you). Let this be your heartbeat.

Years ago, I read a pamphlet called Tyranny of the Urgent. And for the record, I know only old people start sentences with things like “years ago.” But it was more than a few days ago.

The point of the little pamphlet was that so often we lose track of what’s important over what is most urgent. All those immediate things on that to-do list seem so very important and it feels like the world will end if all those boxes aren’t checked at the end of the day.

What gets left undone is what we never thought to put on the list in the first place. Usually, for me (and for you, I bet) is God that gets left off.

We’ve been conditioned and taught and programmed that if you’re not busy every minute of the day, you’re not living. If you don’t get everything done, you didn’t have a good or successful day.

I wonder sometimes if we really need to be that busy and do all the things we do. I heard a preacher say that the problem with Martha was that she was so distracted and stressed by all her work that she didn’t even realize that it was Jesus sitting in her living room, speaking words of life.

I think it’s okay to leave some things undone. It’s okay to slow down every once in a while and smell roses and watch children play and breathe deeply. It’s even okay every now and then to take a day off and rest and not do a bloomin’ thing.

What’s not okay is to run yourself ragged and to the point of exhaustion because you think you have to. What did Jesus say? Wasn’t it something like “Come to Me all you who are weary and overburdened (or who work yourselves to the point of exhaustion), and I will give you REST. Not a completed checklist. Not more hours in the day. Not extra arms and legs or eyes in the back of your head. REST.

I’ve heard that sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is take a nap. If that’s the case, my cat is a saint. But it’s true. Exhausted people can’t really love God and love others well.

So, take a holiday. Take a nap. Go see a movie. And most of all, let yourself off the hook about all those things left undone. All that really matters is sitting a the feet of Jesus (like Mary). That’s the most important thing. The best thing. The one thing that should always trump everything else. And it’s a good thing.

I was watching a movie where the main character loved to walk in the rain at night on the streets of Paris. I think I would really like that, too. But that wouldn’t be the best thing.

The best thing to me is this: not that I am all hoorah for God, but that God is for me.

It’s not so much that I am all sold-out on fire (fill in your appropriate spiritual cliche here) in love with God, but that He is totally in love with me.

Truly, I am for God and I love God, but my love is not pure. It’s rife with selfishness and ulterior motives and self-love. Mostly, I am for me and my stuff and my needs.

The part that baffles and amazes me is that God’s love is as pure as God Himself is true. At any given point, His love is just as strong and complete and perfect as it will ever be. His emotion of being in love never wavers or falters like mine does.

But the best part, the most remarkable thing, is the fact that GOD is the one who loves me. You know, the King of the Universe, Creator of everything, Omnipotent, Omnipresent Being. That one. He out of all the people He could have chosen to love for all their beauty or intelligence or talents, chose me.

I still scratch my head sometimes trying to figure out why. I may not ever know why. All I have to do, my job here on earth, is just accept it and pass it on. To be a conduit through which His love passes, a clear vessel filled with the brilliance of the glory of God.

I still think I would like to take a late-night walk in the rain through the streets of Paris one day (preferrably though the older parts). I know that wherever I go, I walk showered in the love of my Abba Father, whose love for me is my life and breath and food and drink and everything else.

That’s pretty freakin’ awesome!

Recently, I heard a sermon based on Judges 2:6-15. Apparently, the nation of Israel as a whole was having a bad hair day. Well, they were pretty much having a bad-all-around day. They had forsaken the Lord and gone after the Baals and Ashtaroths. In only one generation, they had forgotten everything they had been taught about God and His way of living.

The result was a return to slavery and defeat. The last part of verse 16 is telling of their situation apart from God: “And they were in terrible distress.”

It’s easy for me to look down on these Israelites and wonder how they could have been so blind. Then I realize that they didn’t have the completed Revelation of God written down in Scriptures like I do. I also realized the many times I have forgotten God and fallen back into my own version of slavery and defeat to temptation and sin.

It only takes one generation to forget. That’s why it is so very important that we pass our heritage of faith to the next generation. We can’t assume they will automatically believe because we believe. Just as we were shown the way to eternal life, we must also be as deliberate in pointing the way to them.

Fathers, the best way to raise godly children is to live a godly life, to love your wife sacrificially, to cherish the Words of God, and to tell your children who they are and Whose they are.

Mothers, the same goes for you. Life a quiet, godly life, love your husband above all others, and love God above your husband, living out your faith in front of your children daily.

I would admonish you to remember, as a pastor said today, that the best legacy is not what you leave to them, but in them.

As for me, I would do best to remember that I am also prone to forget and to wander. I am bent toward idolatry of any and every kind. I need God and the gospel every minute of every day to remind me of who I am and Whose I am, lest I fall back into slavery and defeat.

Thank you, God, that You are always faithful to remind Your Children who they are and Whose they are. Help us to live like we belong to You and You only. Thank you for the mercy of a fresh start each and every day. Thank you that not slavery and defeat, but freedom and victory have the final word.

You are God and I’m not. That’s really good news. That means I can stop trying to do Your job and let You do it. I can just focus on doing my part. That’s also really good news.