god

No More Fear

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ The psalm does not pretend that evil and death do not exist. Terrible things happen, and they happen to good people as well as to bad people. Even the paths of righteousness lead through the valley of the shadow. Death lies ahead for all of us, saints and sinners alike, and for all the ones we love. The psalmist doesn’t try to explain evil. He doesn’t try to minimize evil. He simply says he will not fear evil. For all the power that evil has, it doesn’t have the power to make him afraid” (Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark).

I used to be terrified of the dark. I had to have a night light or some other kind of light so I wouldn’t be completely in the dark, because that’s where the monsters lived. At least that’s what I told myself. More truthfully, it’s the unknown that I was afraid of.

But the older I get and the more I know of God, the less reason I have to be afraid of the dark. I still get the heebie jeebies when I’m in the dark sometimes, but I know there’s no real reason to be afraid. I know that with one click on a flashlight or one tap on my flashlight app, all that darkness goes away without a fight.

The Bible say not to fear the one who can kill the body, but the one who can destroy the soul. I take that to mean that anything other than God is no longer a threat or a reason to be fearful. I know that God is for me and has promised to never leave me nor forsake me, much less destroy my very soul. So I have no reason to fear.

Of course, the default setting for most of us is fear. It’s not like we make the conscious decision to be afraid. It’s our bodies’ reaction to certain stimuli like a perceived threat. Sometimes, especially when we’re tired, it’s easy to let anxiety get a foothold.

But that’s when all those promises of God come in handy. That’s when it’s helpful to have a storehouse of memorized Scripture to draw from when those fearful moments come. That’s when you need people around you to speak life and peace over you.

A good attitude to take when scary things happen is that the worst that can happen to me is that I die and go to be with Jesus. Anything less than that is doable. And nothing can separate me from God’s love or cause Him to stop loving me, so I know God is with me no matter what. And God is with those I love.

That’s when evil and the dark lose their power to make me afraid.

Fix Your Eyes

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Fix your eyes on the rising Morning Star. Don’t be disappointed at anything or over elate, either. Live every day as if the Son of Man were at your door, and gear your thinking to the fleeting moment. Just how can it be redeemed? Walk as if the next step would carry you across the threshold of Heaven. Pray. That saint who advances on his knees never retreats.”

Those were words quoted by Jim Elliott to his 15-year old sister Jane. These words still ring true in this day and age, long after Jim was martyred for his faith by the people he was trying to reach for Christ.

These words seem like a real Christianity as opposed to the emasculated form of niceness that passes for faith these days. If you read the words of the saints of old, you realize just how far the bar has fallen for the American churches.

But ultimately it’s not about us now versus us then. It has always been about fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Morning Star and the Author and Finisher of our faith. That’s always been the true litmus test of faith — following Jesus and obeying His words, no matter what.

May that be true of those of us who claim the name of Christians.

The Incarnation Is Everything

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“… without the incarnation, Christianity isn’t even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. ‘Be nice to one another’ is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me of love beyond brokenness, and break open the dark doors of death with the key of hope. The incarnation is an essential part of Jesus-shaped spirituality” (Michael Spencer).

These days, lots of people seem hell-bent on reinventing Christianity to be more socially acceptable. In the process, you end up losing everything that makes Christianity transformative and life-changing. Instead of being counter-cultural, this new version of faith ends up looking and sounding exactly like the culture it’s trying to influence. It ends up almost polar opposite to what Christianity and the Church looked like in the New Testament, particularly in the book of Acts.

Christianity is Christ. Christ is 100% man and 100% God. As a writer of old once said, Jesus is God spelling Himself out in a language humanity could understand. But when you take away the divinity and the incarnation, what you end up with is someone who meant well and tried very hard, not the Savior of the world.

This Advent season is all about how since we couldn’t get to God through religion or rules or right living, God came to us. God came near in the form of an infant born to a virgin teenager and a peasant carpenter. Jesus is the only one who lived the righteous live God requires that we couldn’t live and died the death that we deserved, taking the punishment our sins have earned upon Himself.

May the incarnation be the true reason for the season this Advent and Christmas season. The incarnation isn’t expendable. It’s essential. It’s everything.

Why Church?

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Church is not about worship. I mean that anybody can worship at anytime in any place. You can worship God by yourself.

What church is about is worshipping corporately. It’s about gathering together in community because we are better together than we are apart. We are stronger together than we are apart. The old saying is true that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I believe that in Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit came upon the early believers, He empowered and indwelled the collective church. That means that where two or more or gathered, Jesus is there and there is power — more power than if we each prayed or worshipped or read the Bible separately.

I also still believe that it’s more about being the church rather than going to church. Church isn’t a place or a time or an event that we participate in but it is us. We together are the church who meet together regularly because we need each other and we need God most of all.

The Bible never gives a reason for any of us to neglect the assembling together of believers. At least, I can’t find any good reason. When we isolate ourselves from the body, we open ourselves to falling into temptation and wrong beliefs. We are more easily prone to wander away from the Church and the truth.

I love the old joke that if you ever find the perfect church, don’t go there because you will mess it up. There are no perfect churches because there are no perfect people. There is only a perfect God who meets us where we are and leads us daily closer to being more like Jesus.

Broken Crayons

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Have you heard the saying that broken crayons still color? It’s true.

It’s also true that God uses broken people to bring out the colors in the world. Those, and not the perfectly whole people, are the ones God favors to work in and to work through.

God uses wounded healers because He is a wounded healer. He still bears the scars from His wounds by which we were healed.

Those marks on His hands and feet are to remind us that we weren’t healed and saved to bask in our deliverance, but to turn around and help others find healing. We have been reconciled through shed blood in order to facilitate a ministry of reconciliation based on the Prince of Peace.

Do Thou for Me

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Do Thou for me, O God the Lord,
Do Thou for me.
I need not toil to find the word
That carefully
Unfolds my prayer and offers it,
My God, to Thee.

It is enough that Thou wilt do,
And wilt not tire,
Wilt lead by cloud, all the night through
By light of fire,
Till Thou has perfected in me
Thy heart’s desire.

For my beloved I will not fear,
Love knows to do
For him, for her, from year to year,
As hitherto.
Whom my heart cherishes are dear
To Thy heart too.

O blessèd be the love that bears
The burden now,
The love that frames our very prayers,
Well knowing how
To coin our gold.  O God the Lord,
Do Thou, Do Thou” (Amy Carmichael).

There are times when we simply don’t know how to pray for a circumstance or a loved one. Try as we may, the words will not come.

I think even then God hears the groans and sighs of our petitions and knows what they mean. He hears the deepest desires of our hearts and knows best how to grant them.

Even when we have words, they aren’t always the best ones. Sometimes, we ask without such a limited point of view. Sometimes we ask selfishly. Sometimes we have too small a view of God and ask too little.

In Jan Karon’s Mitford series, Father Tim Kavanaugh always has his go-to prayer, or “the prayer that never fails,” as he calls it. The prayer goes “Thy will be done.”

You can never go wrong with leaving the matter in God’s hands.

A Drop the Mic Moment

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

If microphones had been invented in the late 1800’s when Spurgeon was in his heydey, I’m sure he would have been at least a little tempted to drop the mic after saying this little nugget of wisdom.

The temptation is real because it’s human nature to focus on hardships over blessings. I think we have very selective memories when it comes to trials versus blessings. When life gets hard, it’s difficult to focus on the joys we’ve experienced. All you and I can see sometimes are the moments of darkness and pain.

But it’s the trials that are temporary like the writing in the sand. It’s the blessing that comes after the momentary affliction passes that will endure.

Jesus is saying to each one of us going through hardship to take heart and remember that He has already overcome the world and conquered whatever it is that causes you grief and pain.

Weeping and trials may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

 

Learning the New Dance Steps

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp” (Anne Lamott).

Man, is that ever true. I’ve known a lot of people lately who are walking through the valley of the shadow of death, grieving the passing of a loved one.

No matter how young or old, how healthy or sick, however near or far they are, you’re never quite ready to say that final earthly goodbye. In the end, you’re always greedy for a little more time.

But you know that in Christ that death is not forever and the grave is not final. Hope has the final say. Jesus will have the final word. Just as He called 4-day old smelly Lazarus, wrapped up like a mummy from head to toe, from the tomb, so will He one day speak the name of that loved one to rise forevermore from the grave. One day, He will call you by your own name.

That won’t be the end. That will be the real and true beginning.

 

Known By Our Love

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Since you are all set apart by God, made holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with a holy way of life: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Put up with one another. Forgive. Pardon any offenses against one another, as the Lord has pardoned you, because you should act in kind. But above all these, put on love! Love is the perfect tie to bind these together. Let your hearts fall under the rule of the Anointed’s peace (the peace you were called to as one body), and be thankful” (Colossians 3:12:15, The Voice).

I was supremely convicted tonight by a question the Bible study teacher asked us: If you say you love God, and don’t love the people He died for, do you really love God?

I think every one of us, if we’re honest, can point to a person or a group that they have trouble loving. But when I read the words of Jesus, He doesn’t give us suggestions or advice about what to do with people who are hard to love. He flat out says, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.”

One of the hallmark characteristics of Abba’s children is that they are known for putting compassion above politics and preferences. They know that Jesus died for every kind of person and people group, so they choose to love them all– gay, bisexual, transgender, straight, Muslim, Hindu, Democrat, Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Black Lives Matter people, white supremacists, socialists, Trump supporters, headbangers, country music fans . . . the list goes on and on.

Jesus died for all of them. God desires for all of them to come to salvation. The best litmus test for the genuineness of our faith isn’t as much perfect doctrine or practices as it is compassion for our enemies and what Jesus called the least of these — those who will never be able to repay our kindnesses and generosity.

It helps me personally to remember that Jesus loved me when I was a least of these. Jesus died for me when I was an enemy. This is the kind of love that God calls us to and in Jesus enables us to live out. This is the kind of love that changes everything.

 

Praying the Unattainable

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I was in a Bible study this evening, sitting at a table with some people that I barely knew or had just met. We were discussing why it is that thanksgiving isn’t more of a part of our lives of faith.

One girl said that when she prays, she starts off by thanking God for those certain attributes of His that she will never have.

That took me by surprise. At first, it sounded like she was copping out, but I figured I’d hear her out so I tuned all the way in to the rest of what she said.

She basically said that she praises God for attributes like His omniscience and omnipotence. That centers the rest of her prayers around the fact that God knows way more than she does and can see from a bigger vantage point than she can.

I wonder how that would change my own prayer life. If I was mindful of God’s ability to know and see things I can’t, it might change my perspective toward what I think God needs to give me. It might shift my focus from what I don’t have to what I do.

I might even choose to ask for less and pray more “Thy will be done,” leaving the choice to God to provide what He knows I need instead of what I think I want (that often times I don’t really want once I get it).

Thanksgiving comes first. It changes my mindset from entitled whiner to grateful praiser. It reminds me that everything I am and have is really only God’s doing, so I have no reason to think I’m all that and a bag of chips. Then I can rightly see myself as God sees me and understand that when God sees Jesus in me, that’s a very good thing.