love

Got to Have Faith, Faith, Faith

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I think I read that faith means trusting an unknown future to a known God, although sometimes, God seems as unknowable as the future. I understand God as much as He has revealed Himself to me, but there’s so much more to know and even some that will never be known on this side of heaven.

I think faith means trusting what I know of me to what I know about God, giving what I know about my circumstances and my future into His Hands. I almost said understand instead of know, but faith goes beyond understanding. I trust when I do not understand because what I know of God proves His trustworthiness.

I keep thinking about that character in the Bible who said to Jesus, “I believe. Help my unbelief.”

I get that. I relate to that 1000%.

My faith doesn’t have to be complete or perfect. I don’t have to have faith the size of a mountain to move God. All I need is faith the size of a mustard seed for God to move the mountain. Again, it’s not my big faith in God but my faith in a big God who is bigger than my fears, my doubts, and my circumstances.

I confess that sometimes I wonder IF God will show up, despite having seen Him never fail to show up at the right moment. In my best moments, my faith says, “I can’t wait to see how You pull this one off, because I know You will.”

I can’t wait for the day when my faith will be made sight. Until then, I will echo the words, “I believe, help my unbelief.”

And that will always be enough.

A God We Can’t Exaggerate

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“Many Spirit-filled authors have exhausted the thesaurus in order to describe God with the glory He deserves. His perfect holiness, by definition, assures us that our words can’t contain Him. Isn’t it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?” (Francis Chan)

There’s a beautiful old book by J. B. Phillips called Your God Is Too Small. I think that’s the case for anyone who has ever lived who tried to conceive the idea of God. We always fall short. We always make God way too small.

The problem with a lot of deconstruction is that we make ourselves the standard by which God and truth are measured. We are definitely too finite and small to be any kind of measuring stick to which God must conform (thanks to Frances Chan for that one as well). It’s putting ourselves above God, essentially saying that God would never [fill in the blank] because I would never [fill in the blank].

God not only above us, He is so far beyond us that our minds could never have fathomed God at all apart from God revealing Himself to us. That blows my mind. It also humbles me whenever I get to the place where I think I have God figured out.

We can’t possibly exaggerate God. How cool is that? The biggest, grandest, wildest picture we can dream up or draw or sing about or write about falls short of who God is by far. All we can do is sit at the brink and adore the depth, to borrow from Matthew Henry.

God is never too small. Only our conception of Him is. But God made Himself incarnate and came near and became a tiny infant. That’s my favorite part.

It’s Never Too Late

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Anxiety will make you believe that if it doesn’t happen right now, it never will. That goes for whatever you’ve been praying for and dreaming of and wishing for. If you let it, your fears will make you think that you’ve missed it.

But remember God’s ways are not our ways. God’s timing certainly isn’t like ours. If you think you can mess up God’s plan for your life, remember that you are not that powerful. God took into account all of your and my foolish decisions when He set His plan into motion long ago.

Are you praying for that dream job? Keep praying.

Are you praying for marriage? Keep praying.

Are you praying that your wayward children will come to faith in Jesus? Keep praying.

As long as there’s breath in your lungs, it’s never too late. As long as God is on His throne in heaven, it’s never too late.

When anxiety tries to intrude into your thoughts, remember that God has not given us a spirit of fear but of love and power and a sound mind. Remember that peace that passes understanding comes when you make your requests known to God with thanksgiving.

The key is with thanksgiving. You can’t doubt God’s future goodness when you’re focused on all the promises He’s made and kept up until now. Thanksgiving helps you to see God at work in your circumstances.

Give thanks. Keep praying. Don’t give up.

That Love Your Enemy Thing Again

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“Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles” (Proverbs 24:17).

I don’t like it when people post about Donald Trump and how they wish the assassination attempt had been successful. I’m equally not a fan of people making fun of Joe Biden for his apparent dementia. Neither one suits a child of God or a disciple of Jesus.

The current political climate has created an us versus them mentality. We can be tolerant toward the views of our people, but not theirs. We will try to be civil and humane with our people, but when it comes to their people, all bets are off and all sorts of name-calling of them and their families are fair game.

We’ve even decided that the whole made in the image of God thing doesn’t apply to them. They’re evil and not human because they are them, not us. Typically, the view we have of them is the most distorted and exaggerated caricature of the person and not the actual person.

When Jesus said to love your enemies, He didn’t stutter. He said to love them whether you like them or not, whether you agree with them or not, whether they deserve love or not. As I’ve said repeatedly, Jesus chose to love and forgive those who were in the very act of murdering Him.

I don’t think it’s good to celebrate when a political opponent suffers. In fact, if your theology allows you to hate “them,” then it’s not of God and not of the Bible. And disagreeing with choices or lifestyle doesn’t equal hate. In fact, the more you love people, the more concerned you will be when they make unwise choices or behaviors and the more you will want the best, i.e. God’s best, for them.

Perhaps the best way to learn to love your enemy is to pray for them. And not in pray for their destruction or comeuppance. But pray for them as you would for yourself or a loved one. Pray that God can change their heart and give them wisdom — not Democratic or Republican wisdom but Godly wisdom. You can pray for their salvation. You can pray that they will find the same joy and peace that you have found.

What God Gives

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I would love clarity, answers, and above all a road map. Although I’m not quite in Job’s shoes in terms of tragic losses, I sometimes can relate to His questions of God’s silence and hiddenness.

But what I often forget (and what Job eventually learned) was that God doesn’t so much give answers as He gives Himself. In the long run, that’s better. After all, I’m not always the best at asking the right questions or focusing on the right things.

Right answers and clear thinking and even a five-year plan without God’s immediate presence do me no good. I’d screw it up or try to subvert the process to get to the end quicker. And as I’ve learned sin is taking my own shortcut to God’s promises and/or trying to get God’s provisions apart from God.

So much of what God wants from me in this season means slowing down and really seeping in each day instead of wanting to rush on to the next big event or the next holiday. Lately, I’ve been actually hungering for the Word of God instead of reading it as part of my rote routine.

I think God gets us all to a point where we have to lean on Him and learn from Him for as long as it takes to get us weaned from ourselves and our own self-help. He puts us in a season where all our theoretical head knowledge about God becomes lived-out experience and love for God. Basically, we find out what “Jesus loves me, this I know” really means.

Take your time, God. As much as I really would love to have clarity and answers and a detailed plan for my life, what I need right now is You. Just You.

Burdens

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I wonder how many of us are carrying secret burdens because we have this mentality of “I don’t want to be a burden to anyone else” and “I have to bear this alone.”

I do think that’s one of the negative consequences of this kind of Lone Ranger/ pull yourself up by your own bootstraps kind of individualized American Christianity. Not only is it okay to share your burdens, it’s actually commanded both bear one another’s burdens.

That means you occasionally take someone else’s burden. Also, that means that another sometimes takes your burden. It works both ways. Not only are you making your own life harder by bearing unnecessary burdens but you also deprive someone else of the joy of fulfilling God’s command in that way.

That’s the most tangible way we have of showing our love for each other. And oh, by the way, how we love each other is the greatest witness to the saving power of Christ and the gospel that we have. The early Church turned the known world upside down by how they loved each other. Also by how they loved their neighbors but mainly by their sacrificial love for each other.

My prayer is that churches become places where we can unburden and find rest, not a place where more burdens are added. Part of it starts with the Church but part of it starts with you and I being willing to share our burden and let it be known that we’re struggling instead of the pat answer of “I’m fine” whenever anyone asks how we’re doing.

I think when I let you share my burden and you share mine, we learn a little more of what it means when Jesus bore all our burdens to Calvary. We understand more of what it means about His yoke is easy to carry and His burden is light. And the world sees a love that it simply cannot resist.

Tiny Books

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to tiny books. The smaller, the better.

I have a tiny testament that easily fits in the palm of my hand. I also have a small Latin dictionary and an even smaller hymnal. All these tiny books are super old as well as super small.

This one is the smallest prayer book I’ve ever seen. For me, I love the idea of carrying around these precious promises of God in my pocket and having a handy prayer guide for whenever I can’t find words of my own to pray.

I’m reminded sometimes of how small I am in comparison to God. More like infinitesimal and microscopic next to the Creator whom the whole of creation can’t contain.

Yet, the verse says He is mindful of me. He knows the number of hairs on my head and when I stumble or fall. He knows every word on my tongue before I speak it.

That’s comforting when the universe seems so big and dark and void of hope. I need the nearness of an Incarnate God more than I need the majesty of an Infinite Being beyond my comprehension.

Well, I need both. I need a God close enough to know my need and a God big enough to meet it. I need a God who’s near to hear my prayer and a God mighty enough to be worthy of my prayers.

I suppose my next thing to collect will be tiny books. Now I just need a tiny shelf to put them all on. I can stare at all my small books and remember how small I am in the eyes of God, yet He still knows me by name.

Rejoice?

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“Everyone will hate you because of me, but whoever holds out till the end will be preserved from harm.”

Mattityahu (Mat) 10:22 CJB

https://bible.com/bible/1275/mat.10.22.CJB

I heard that in the opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympic games in Paris, France, they made a mockery of Christianity. Apparently, people are all offended.

Maybe I should be as well, but it seems to me that means believers are doing something right. At least according to Jesus, they are.

Jesus said that if they hated Him, they will hate us. Jesus’ message was one that got Him crucified. And His message wasn’t merely love God, love people. That wasn’t enough to get Him killed. He claimed the title of Messiah. He said He was the Son of God, equal to God. He even said, “I AM” claiming the divinity as one of the trinity.

Jesus called people to a new way. He called us to live a new way. He said that people would not understand. Not only that, they would hate us. He said to rejoice when we are persecuted and mocked and belittled because our reward is coming.

I don’t think we get credit for being hated when we are obnoxious or arrogant. I don’t think we should rejoice for being persecuted when we’re seeking to make politics the ultimate goal and getting “our” candidate elected takes precedence over preaching the gospel to every nation, tribe, and tongue.

We are not better than anyone else. We of all people know the depth of our depravity, the full wages of what our sins deserve, and what we would have been apart from the grace of God. We know more than anyone how dependent we are on God for anything in this life and for any hope of a next life in heaven.

If people only say nice things about us as Christians, we’re doing something wrong. Or we’re not doing the right things loud enough like loving our enemies, blessing those who curse us, and being salt and light. Jesus said woe to those when all people speak well of you because they did the same for the false prophets. The world says it will only applaud what we say when we sound just like them, but really then we will have zero reason to exist.

I love how the disciples didn’t get offended when they were persecuted and mocked. Even when they were beaten and thrown in prison for preaching about Jesus, they chose to count it all joy. They rejoiced that they had been counted worthy to suffer for the Name. They knew that ultimately nothing could stand against the message of the Cross and that the power of Jesus would prevail as it had at Golgotha over sin, death, and hell.

May we rejoice when people mock us not for being jerks but for being faithful witnesses. May we count it all joy when people mistreat us not for how we shame those who think differently than us but for how we love those whom Jesus loved.

Homesick

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I was listening to an 80s Truth record I picked up recently. I got to the song Homesick. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I felt I had heard or read the lyrics before very recently. Then I remembered I had seen a post with the very same song lyrics less than a week ago.

The song is the heartbeat of any believer who knows this world isn’t really home. A former pastor of mine once compared this life to a very nice, very clean bus station (or airport terminal, if you will). It’s not supposed to be your forever place to live, but a place to be until you can get to your forever home.

“They say home is where the heart is
And I’m finding out it’s true
‘Cause I long to be in heaven
Since my heart is there with You
Reading over letters
That You’ve written to me
Telling me of all You have in store
Makes me start to dreaming
Of the place I want to be
And I get that lonely feeling
Like so many times before

I get homesick
Longing for my home
And for Your open arms
Of lovе and comfort
Waiting for me there
I gеt homesick
Yearning for my home
And for the day
When all Your family
Gets together forever
Our eternal home sweet home

Lord, You living truth within me
Keeps me safe and warm
All its strength and all its beauty
Rise through every storm
Without its presence in my soul
I could not carry on
To face the many battles I find here
Lord, you keep the promises
I build my life upon
And as time goes by, I know
That I will always keep them near

I get homesick
Longing for my home
And for Your open arms
Of love and comfort
Waiting for me there
I get homesick
Yearning for my home
And for the day
When all Your family
Gets together forever
Our eternal home sweet home” (Larry Bryant, Lesa Bryant & Justin Peters).

It’s interesting to be homesick for a home we’ve never known, but that’s what it is. That’s why nothing here will ever completely satisfy the deep longing of our souls. Only God can do that. And our experience of God here is cloudy and partial. One day it will be clear and complete. We will know as we are fully known. And we will be truly home.

Never the Same

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“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions” (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

You can say the same for the heart. There are certain experiences in life that stretch your heart, like marriage, having a child, death, or a loved one moving away. Once your heart is stretched, it can never go back to what it used to be.

I can honestly say that I have known people in my life that have left imprints in my mind and in my heart. Some are no longer living. Some have moved on to different places or different phases of their lives. I may never see these people again this side of heaven, but I know that I am different and better because of them.

You never know sometimes when it’s the last time you’ll ever see someone. You think there will be more time, more experiences like this one. Sometimes, you get closure and a chance to process the grief of a goodbye, even if it’s not the grieving of death. Other times, you don’t.

One option is to be bitter and to focus on what was that will never be again. Or you could be thankful for what was because it made you who you are now. God never promised that every single person in your life would be there indefinitely. Some are only meant for a season. Some are to teach you a lesson. Some are like angels used by God to minister to you in a particularly difficult passage.

The best way to pay it forward is to be that kind of person to someone else. Just as someone was once God with skin on to you, so you can do your best to be that to someone else. You can’t be Jesus, but you can be the physical manifestation of God ministering to that person as His hands and feet, His voice.

Some of you might be reading these words right now. To you I say, “Thank you. I am more like Jesus because of you.”