This God We Love is Courage“ ... Christianity is the only religion that claims our God has the attribute of courage. Why? Because when God became Jesus Christ, he became vulnerable. He became human. When he was in the garden of Gethsemane, when everybody was asleep, and it was dark and there was nobody there and he realized what he was about to face … the garden of Gethsemane is the place where you see the greatest act of courage in the history of the world,. Because by the time he got nailed to the cross, even if he wanted to turn around, it would have been too late. But that night, he could have left. In fact, he even thought about it. He says, “My soul is overwhelmed . . . to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38 NIV). What do you see in Jesus Christ? You see courage. You don’t see him saying, “Bring it on.” The bloody sweat showed he was feeling fear..” -Tim Keller Just for a moment, imagine you’re the casting director of a new Marvel movie and your scrolling through Scripture looking who to cast for the starring role. The bio and picture of Samson catches your eye. His superhuman strength, his bad-boy choices, his long hair, his credulity stretching capacity to be hoodwinked multiple times by deceptive women, no doubt about it, he’s the perfect choice. You’d make sure Samson showed up for the casting call. Samson, a classic loner (except for women), kept his thoughts and exploits to himself. He never got the memo on the advantages of strength in community. He nursed long grudges, was woefully vindictive and died a tragic death taking his enemies with him. Yet, God who knows the end from the beginning, courageously gives Samson who was not the poster child for character, power. Power that proved destructive and caused much death. Saul too, was handsome, kingly looking, tall, and a frequent visitor to the mirror. God courageously gives him the first Kingship of His people Israel. Knowing the end from the beginning, God gives this role to a man who was jealous, most likely bi-polar, and cared way too much for what people thought of him. Carly Simon's song “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you” could have been written for Saul. Solomon asks God for wisdom in a dream of all things, and God honors him with wealth beyond counting, peace on all sides, and long life. Yet, his 4-digit harem of wives and concubines turns his heart away from God. God again knowing the end from the beginning, courageously entrusts Israel to his care. Throughout Scripture we see the bravery and courage of God to entrust His story, His meta-narrative to frail, clueless, broken earthenware. That is after all, a description of all of us. David, Moses, Jehu, Gideon … the list is long and instructive. Jesus spends three years with barely literate men who misunderstand almost all He says. Then He leaves them to establish His Kingdom. Talk about courage! Jesus courageously entrusts His Kingdom on earth to men with fish entrails under their fingernails. The Ultimate Courage Displayed in Jesus in the Garden We see Jesus in the garden his soul overwhelmed, experiencing genuine fear of the cross yet displaying courage and setting His face to carry the agony of all the wounds of the world. Jesus empties Himself of all power, authority, and privilege and becomes sin, so that we may become His righteousness. This kenosis is the epitome of courage. We can barely fathom, that the High King of Heaven, empties Himself of all that He is, so that we can become His sons and daughters. This slump of lymph tissue and bone, this disfigured man who was once a vital Savior* Ken Gire hangs helplessly on a cross for us, courageously entrusting Himself to His Father. It is shattering and incomprehensible. We glibly sing about God’s bloodshed, with nary a thought of the cost or courage involved. We are cavalier and casual, and sing Amazing Grace unmoved by the greatest sacrifice in human history. Welsh revivalist Evan Roberts at the turn of the century, did not want to go to Bible School because he thought his love of Jesus sacrifice would grow cold. He eventually was persuaded to go. One day he walked into a church saw a cross and felt nothing. He began to weep realizing that what he feared had happened. The cross had become familiar and stale. We see God’s courage in giving His son, knowing that for most of us, that sacrifice is old news that no longer moves us. This God we love is courage. He is bold to risk all His love, on us little frail humans who take it all for granted. We can give our all to those who matter to us, and it might not matter to them at all. It Takes Courage to Obey God is courageous and He asks us to draw on His courage. Determine to live a life with Jesus, and courage will be required. God is forever and always asking people to do ridiculous things that take courage. You’re geographically trapped between two mountains and a sea, and the chariots of Pharoah are breathing down your neck. God says “Moses, stretch out your rod and the waters will part.” You’re a big shot enemy general with leprosy, and the prophet tells you to go down to the Jordan river and dip seven times. You’re a wild prophet incensed against the prophets of Baal, and you set us a contest with them, pouring water on your sacrifice and calling fire down from heaven. God winnows your army down to 300 and God says go in the strength that you have and deliver the people from Midian. You win the beauty pageant, become the Kings wife, and risk death to save your people. You get the idea. Paul the Apostle feels intuitively toward the end of his life he is to go to Jerusalem. Twice by the Spirit he is warned not to go. Once by a group of believers in Tyre, and right afterwards in Caesarea, Agabus a prophet from Judah takes Paul’s belt ties his hands and feet and says, “This is what the Holy Spirit says; The Jews in Jerusalem are going to tie up the man who owns this belt just like this and hand him over to godless unbelievers.’ Paul responds “Why all the histrionics? You’re looking at this backwards. The issue in Jerusalem is not what they’ll do to me, if I die, I die.The issue is what will God do with my obedience.” God rarely asks us to do things we could do without costly courage. When we see occasionally outrageously courageous people, they will be the first to say their courage is a gift, not something innate within them. Take the story of a young upper class oboe player named Jackie who came to Jesus in her early twenties. Jackie kept hearing God tell her to “Go!” Naturally she kept asking “Where?” God was as He often is when making sure we’re really willing to follow, was characteristically silent. She asked an Anglican Vicar what to do, and he suggested she take a slow boat going by many countries and get off wherever God told her. That sounded adventurous so she did. She landed in Hong Kong with 10 British pounds to her name, no address of a friend, no hotel booked, no job, no return ticket, nothing. The immigrations officials refused to let her off the boat. At the last second, she remembered her mom was a godmother to a policeman in Hong Kong. On hearing this, her passport was hurriedly stamped, and she was allowed off. She quickly got a teaching job, and then discovered Kowloon Walled City the most densely populated city on earth at the time. At its peak there were 50,000 people living in an area one-hundredth of a square mile. It was called Hak Nam, the “City of Darkness.” No sunlight penetrated the rat-infested dark passageways with open sewers and dangling electrical cables. There were forty opium dens. Gangs called Triads ruled the city running prostitution rings, heroin/opium and gambling dens. “Jenga like makeshift buildings were stacked on top of each other until the maximum 14 stories were enforced to prevent landing planes from scrapping their wings on TV antennas.” Kowloon Walled City Once was the most densely Packed Place on Earth by Dave Roos Dec.7 2021 for How Stuff Works Jackie was moved by the addiction and poverty. She taught in a wealthy school by day and spent nights inside the walled city, learning the stories of the people, and seeking what God might have her do. She opened a youth center for students to play ping pong, she found a novel way for people to overcome addiction pain free. She invited addicts into her home who wanted to come off drugs. While the Walled City was eventually demolished, Jackie is still in Hong Kong, fifty years later, with thousands of people having been transformed through Jesus and her love and courage. Jackie Pullinger, while not considering herself courageous at all, will be the first to tell you, any of the courage you observe in her life is distinctly and completely sourced in God. History is full of hidden people who felt God’s courage commandeering their hearts. Never make the common mistake of thinking that all the courageous people are famous. The majority haven’t had books written about them, or films telling their story. Most of heaven’s heroes are known only to God. Decades ago, Joey and I worked with Olga Robertson who lived in New Bilibid, at the time the world’s largest prison in the Philippines with 29,000 prisoners in a space made for 6,345. Olga was Lebanese. She loved the prisoners as her own sons. While Joey fixed things around her house, I would go preach with her in maximum security, and marvel at how much love poured out of her toward men who had done heinous crimes. Not long before we met prisoners hid in her van trying to escape. She drove to the prison exit, opened her door, and rolled down the sloping road. Immediately the guards realized what was happening and riddled her van with high velocity bullets. One prisoner’s face was blown off. But Olga remained living among the prisoners, still driving her bullet riddled van. Fear would have no place in her God given courageous heart. We are told in Scripture to take courage. It not something simply given but something seized. We intentionally choose the courage to obey. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I immediately responded " I’ll teach people holy dying. I’ll tell them heaven is not the booby prize, I’ll illustrate what it is to live in light of eternity" . I was brimming with opportunistic possibilities from having cancer. All over social media I proclaimed that we could be fearless in facing death because Jesus far surpassed all earthly joys. My friend Carol Taylor gave me a great sentence from her mom, “Cancer is not the big C! The big C is Christ! I boldly said it to all who would listen. Then weeks in, a beloved friend gently asked how I was, and I felt a sob welling up within me. I didn’t cry in that moment, but later driving home I heard God say; “You mistook spiritual bravado for courage.” I realized that much of the past few weeks, I was manufacturing spiritual bravado. It was me with all my might making a vow to not get out the violins and illicit sympathy. I would not be the person who gave organ recitals every time I was asked how I was. I determined I’d be brave no matter the situation. But I forgot God loves our humanity, and feelings are sometimes to be felt not fixed. I had suppressed the inner algorithm of dread running in my head. God does want to give us real courage. Courage to honestly face our fears, courage to articulate our true feelings, and courage to face whatever enemy may be before us. He did not shed His blood for robots preprogramed to be positive. He desires truth in the inward parts. We can come to Him with our fears, our hesitancies, our loathing of not knowing what tomorrow holds. He is big enough to handle our nausea on storm-tossed seas.. He gives us courage to be ourselves before Him, in spite of ourselves. He infuses us with His courage to give an inheritance of goodness to others. Our Courage is for Others “Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land, I swore to their ancestors to give them.” Joshua 1:16 We have two choices. We can stay stalled in our insecurities and fears, or we can take courage and fulfill our destiny. We can trust the God we love who is courage, to be to us all that we need. Our courage will result in many holy generational consequences. People will inherit future destinies, communities, and identity from our current obedience. Every story of God's goodness throughout history involved courage and obedience. We join that long story of never ending goodness. “Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him.” Samuel 10:12 “But you, take courage! Do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded.” 2 Chronicles 15:7 I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27:13–14)
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This God We Love is Humility“Should you ask me: What is the first thing in religion? I should reply: the first, second, and third thing therein is humility.” Augustine
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did no consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death-even death on a cross!” Philippians 2:5-8 NIV Attending a film conference in Los Angeles, I bumped into a friend, who was thrilled to see me, and said to a well-known author standing nearby, “You know Fawn don’t you?” The author replied that she did indeed, and was sorry she hadn’t recognized me earlier. The author’s best friend standing near, said, “Fawn Parish! Why I am one of your greatest fans!” I was delighted that anyone had ever heard of me,, an author of many books with a tiny readership. As I was basking in fame, I felt a dagger pierce my heart. I could feel the rotting effect of the celebrity culture rife in Los Angeles. The conference I was attending was remarkably celebrity focused, and I was inwardly critical, and then in a nano second, I became the thing I despised. I became the posterchild of whatever you despise you ultimately become. I was basking in the spotlight being on me, not delighting in the spotlight staying on Jesus. I grieved as the dagger of pride pierced my soul. I must confess, I still walk on planes and hope to see someone reading one of my books. I still when watching interviews with a library in the background, scan the titles to see if one of the books is mine. Pray for me. Pride has a million subterfuges. Now, it’s perfectly natural to be pleased when someone appreciates your work. But there is a thin line between appreciation, and fandom. In spiritual environments we often cross that divide. It is good to acknowledge when someone’s gift has brought us joy. Strong encouragement especially to creatives emboldens them to create more. But fandom, according to Miriam Webster’s and the Oxford dictionary is marked by excessive enthusiasm, and uncritical devotion. Fandom is one of many reasons millions of people are leaving the institutional church. The celebrity culture promotes excessive enthusiasm, and uncritical devotion to talent over character. We unwittingly feed the very thing that ultimately destroys us. As the curtain is pulled back on leaders private lives increasingly, we join David’s lament as he sings mournfully “How the mighty have fallen!”. 2 Samuel 1:19 My five seconds of fame reminds me of a poem about Ozymandias a clueless, narcissist ignorant of his own impending mortality. The decay described in Shelly's poem happening within him and about him is instructive to us all. I met a traveler from an antique land, Who said— “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read. Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley “Look on my Works ye Mighty and despair!” The winds of erosion did look on his works, laughed and laid the deserts bare. No matter how talented, how powerful, we are all much more vulnerable than we think to the erosion of time, the frailing of our bodies, the slowing of our intellect, and the fleeting nature of fame. In encountering arrogance in leaders, I remember Ozymandias and how no matter how large or powerful someone is, they can be felled by the most infinitesimal germ. Microorganisms often have the last word concerning our ego. The mystery of evil rooted in the tragic history of humanity, the engine of evil in the world’s woes is pride, C. S. Lewis tells us. It is the poisonous root of destroyed relationships, of decimated cultures, of ruined empires, and nations. Forensically, everywhere you see destruction in a human, or human systems, pride has left its fingerprints. “Unchallenged pride leads to ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self, which is the mark of hell.” C. S. Lewis We know nothing of evil disconnected to pride. Find a proud man or woman, and you will see in their wake, a strewn trail of oppression, manipulation, and unravelling of soul. All sin has pride as it’s original source. Satan says, “I will ascend.” Eve says, “I will eat.’ Corrupt Rulers say, “I will oppress with impunity.” Secular man says, “I will do as I please.” In contrast, Jesus says when facing the cross, “Thy will be done.” Jesus, this God we love who is Humility, empties Himself of all but love, and goes willingly to the brutality of the cross. He empties Himself of all the richness of heaven, all the bliss of eternal joy within the trinity. He lays aside all prerogatives, all privileges, and comes to live among us, in our dystopian and dysfunctional world. To understand the full cost He paid, we would have to fully understand (and we don’t), all that He left in heaven. Jesus doesn’t have humility, He is Humility. He is God, surrounded by a host of adoring angels, everything bowing to Him, and yet as someone once said, “He traverses into time, into the hiddenness of Mary’s womb, into the seclusion of 9 months of cellular division, dependent on the nutrients consumed by His host.” Jesus is Humility. His birth, His life, His sacrifice, His resurrection, His history through time and His future all attest to the truth of it. Jesus could be known by any name in heaven, but He chooses to go by “the Lamb of God.” Not the “Lion of the Tribe of Judah.” Not “Ruler of Creation”, no, instead He embodies the wounds of His humility through all eternity. Given this reality of this God we love who is humility how ought we to live? Humility is not simply a behavior you adopt; it is a Person you receive. The way to know Humility Himself is for us to first recognize that we ourselves are impossibly proud, exceptionally conceited. Even our virtue often flows from pride. Jonathan Edwards in a treatise on Virtue distinguishes between virtue that is common and true virtue. Most of us live in common virtue. We avoid certain behaviors because we don’t want to be known as that kind of person. When we do, we fuel our morality with the sin of pride. I don’t do outrageous things because I am proud to be a person who behaves civilly. I don’t berate bad car drivers on the freeway because I don’t want to be known as an angry person full of rage. I don’t cheat on my taxes for fear of being caught, or for the pride of wanting to be thought of as a model person who might run for office. C. S. Lewis says, “Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him, it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all. If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 8, “The Great Sin,” Kindle location 1665 Acknowledging our pride is not a one act play. It is a lifetime of handing to God our hubris. It is being continually honest about our arrogance in front of others. Humility is continually inviting the Holy Spirit to search us and see if there be any wicked way within. Jesus tells us “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5: When we are poor in Spirit, we have no accomplishments to parade, we do not wear our metals from war on our chest. We are keenly aware we have nothing within ourselves apart from God to bring cure. We know we are shipwrecked at the feet of Jesus. To be poor in spirit is to know that we are neediest person on the planet for Jesus. "To be poor in spirit is to have a humble opinion of ourselves; to be sensible that we are sinners, and have no righteousness of our own; to be willing to be saved only by the rich grace and mercy of God; to be willing to be where God places us, to bear what he lays on us, to go where he bids us, and to die when he commands; to be willing to be in his hands, and to feel that we deserve no favor from him. It is opposed to pride, and vanity, and ambition. Such are happy:" Barnes Notes Humility is evident in those who listen deeply, who have nothing to prove by their stories, who prefer others over themselves, who open doors of destiny for others at great cost to themselves, who esteem those of less social standing and class with authentic interest. There are no traces of self-promotion in a person who has fully embraced Humility. No subtle self-congratulations when doing a good deed. True humility does what it does for the beauty of the One loved. As a storyteller with a million true stories, I wrestle when hearing a story, being quick to think of a similar story in my own life, or even a greater story that I’ve experienced. I don’t imagine Jesus was doing this in His head while He listened to others. John Newton says, “I am persuaded that love and humility are the highest attainments in the school of Christ and the brightest evidences that He is indeed our Master.” Humility in Prayer Recently my bias was showing as I led a Zoom international prayer call. We were meditating and praying on a portion of Isaiah, and a friend I respect said “Lead us in some declarations Fawn.” I froze. I played a few chords and came us with a clumsy tune. Later as I was reflecting on it, I realized I am proclamation and declaration adverse. Now there is nothing wrong with declarations especially if you are simply declaring what God has said. But in my experience, I have found many approaches of declaration full of hubris, and assumptions that we know impossible to know outcomes. If you have stage 4 cancer, many of my friends, will immediately declare that you are healed in Jesus name. I on the other hand would encourage you to have all the conversations you need to have, get your house in order, make sure your finances and estate will be given to whom you desire, and ask God if this is your time. Author Bill Bright when he had a terminal disease said I think quite wisely, “I am preparing to die, AND I am believing for healing. I have seen so many families decimated when people die, and they have been believing for healing. Yes, we need the gift of faith for miracles, and yes, we need the humility of Jesus, to never presume we know outcomes. Humility in Spiritual Ambition I was skeptical of Mother Theresa’s “We cannot do great things for God; we can do little things with great love.” until decades of life slowly proved her wisdom. I weaned at the breast of being a world changer, a transformer, a person who believed God for the impossible and attempted the impossible. I love people who change things, who bring cure, who do not accept the status quo. That is my tribe. But there is hubris in thinking we can do great things for God. It’s a horrible burden to carry if you were raised with those expectations from childhood. You live with a perpetual sense of inadequacy and failure. Yes, God can do great thing through us, but that requires humility in allowing Him to dictate what that looks like. Yours might be a life called to something that doesn’t look great to the world. Perhaps you are called to the holiness of hiddenness in intercession, or caring for an aging parent, or a special needs child. You might be someone who serves your community in seemingly non-heroic ways. But God has different eyes than we for the more hidden callings. The high tables in heaven go to the lowly of heart, who faithfully did what was needed, and gave God their yes, even when it wasn’t what they’d dreamed. I have the heart of an activist. I want to be out leading the charge for change, but God has called me mostly to prayer, mostly to loving people one on one, mostly to hiddenness. It creates sometimes a civil war within me, the activist vs. the praying person. I am slowly relenting to the reality, that God’s dream for our lives and our dreams, don’t always coincide. "Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility." -Saint Augustine Humility in Aging I knew a 90 year old grandma who zipped around town in a red convertible with the top down.. My husband’s aged grandmother Mabel, stole her husband out of a skilled nursing facility, stole her own car and went across state lines. She was a pistol. I, on the other hand at 67, walk like a pirate penguin with a wooden leg. I swim 2 miles a week and can barely get myself out of the water when I am done. My bones are fragile, I am overweight. You would laugh to see me heft myself out of the pool. As we learn to age with grace, we must embrace the humility of frailty. We are simply a wisp of fog that will quickly disappear. Our story encompasses much more than our wrinkled skin and easy exhaustion. Aging helps us abandon the idolatry of self-image. We are fragile earthenware. J. Sidlow Baxter a great theologian once looked down at my congregation and said "I feel so sorry for you. You're so young and you have so many more decades of life ahead. I, on the other hand will see Jesus face to face very soon. Age visibly welcomes us into the inexplicable beauty of the One who makes all things new. The One who is Humility. Humility in Theology We don’t know everything there is to know about God. Paul glimpses the beauty and grandeur of this God we love when he says, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” Romans 11:33-34 Isaiah describes this God we love in saying, My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.-Isaiah 55:8-9. It is good to be certain of Jesus. To be certain of His heart-rending sacrifice for us. To be certain that His Word is our treasure. As well as be certain that we are invited constantly into a deep humility in regard to thinking we know everything there is to know of Him. Jesus is Humility. He has no conceit, no guile, no self-promotion. He invites us into Him. This God We Love is PatienceGod's love is full of consideration, patience, and tenderness. It leads people out of their weakness and sin one step at a time.” ― Francois Fenelon I wait in silence as if I’d been summoned for an audience before Number 7, a 277-foot tall Redwood tree at Henry Cowell State Park in Felton. It has taken me years to respond, but here I am, waiting patiently for this many centuries old tree to whisper its wisdom. I am glad for the bench as this tree is in no hurry and I am weary of walking. Number 7 stood before the fall of the Roman Empire, it grew toward heaven through the long tragic wars of Europe, it extended its roots during America’s War of Independence and the Civil War … it shared it’s forest with many indigenous tribes including the Zayante. It stood undiminished in the harrowing of Two World Wars and our present age of rabid recreational outrage. Number 7 is a sentinel of glory standing before God as if it were, outside of time. Not like me, this Redwood. I am nearing the end, frail with bones easily shattered, multiple systems in decline. I can feel my tent folding and the clock ticking. Someday, I will just up and disappear. For everything there is a season, wise Solomon reminds us. We need to cultivate deep compassion regarding each other's seasons not just physically but spiritually. Being in the season of winter in my life requires reckoning and grief. As my friend Dr. Jamie Osborne says "We need to learn the holiness of seasons as part of holy living." I whisper under my breath as I sit before Number 7, “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Ps. 90: 12) I wait in silence, knowing God’s relationship with time is many layered. “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am” (Ps. 39:4). “You return man to dust and say, ‘Return, O children of man!’ . . . You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers... We live in great contrast, Number 7 and I. I am immersed in a culture whose idolatries include ever increasing speed. Efficiency, productivity, profit are our mantras. Sadly, when speed is our metric, we don't grow taller and more wondrous like this tree, we paradoxically end up shrinking our souls and community. Yet as I sit, I feel somehow Number 7 recalibrating my heart, imparting to me visually a fine-tuning perception of time. I was raised with an intense sense of urgency. Jesus was coming most likely in the next 2 seconds, so you better be all you can possibly be, and do all you can possibly do, because time is short. I was groomed for the guillotine; Armageddon was breathing impending doom down my neck.. I hadn’t a second to lose. When you grow up with that false narrative, you don’t plant trees. You don’t create movements designed for generational impact. You don’t invest long term. You don’t think deeply about creating a preferred future of shalom for cities. Tragically, the true believers of my generation even canceled their Social Security. They didn’t think they’d live long enough to claim it. Yet, this God we love is Patience Himself. He is as someone once said, “A 3 mph God.” Look at His long history with Israel. God takes thousands of years to build a narrative history of story, symbols, poetry and metaphor. For centuries He plays the long game, never tiring. Israel receives God’s instructions, rebels, repents, is rescued, and then restarts the whole cycle over and over again, through decades, centuries and millennia, and God is still in no hurry to reveal the fulness of His heart in Jesus. This God we love is patience. We, in contrast are fragile earthenware. Watch His patience as He comes again and again through the prophets. He pantomimes through Ezekiel, He weeps through Jeremiah, He gives outrageous hope through Isaiah. He illustrates His unearthly patience in all our backsliding and cluelessness. He is Hosea, taking us back from our idolatrous whoring. He is the Prodigal Father who in storm and sunshine waits endlessly for his son’s return. When this God we love who is patience is made real to us we have two possible choices. To stand in awe and worship at His love for us, or to traffick in His longsuffering and do as we please. We have seen the tragic end of those who chose the later. They become for us heart rending morality plays. We see in them what not to do with our brief terrestrial apprenticeship. We see in them how quickly we shatter and turn to dust, no matter how rich or powerful. All flesh is grass. All flesh. No exceptions. So how do we live with this God who is Patience? How do we, fleeting ephemeral creatures live in light of His patience? The answer is many layered but first we live with continual gratitude for His patience with us. Years ago, I spoke to sociology classes at Westmont in Montecito, California, and I would always ask the students, “How many of you were different in Middle School than you were in Elementary?” All hands would go up. "Middle School to High School?" All hands. “High School to College?” All hands. I would then plunge into the fact that they would be far different people yet again, in their twenties, thirties and beyond. I am so grateful for God’s immense patience with me. He has never judged me at one season of my life as being the totality of who I am or who I will become. He has never frozen me in time and judge me with finality. No! Rather, He has patiently waited and allowed His Holy Spirit, His Word, wise friends, and the circumstances of my life to mold and shape me. I am ever evolving. Someone once said, “Maturity is coming out of deception into truth about yourself.” That coming out takes time. Lots of time. When I think of places I’ve spoken, I am embarrassed by my shallowness. When I think of doctrines and politics that I once held dear, I am aghast. You and I are the rich beneficiaries of His patient heart. Our hearts should continually overflow with joy and gratitude at His kindness. Secondly, we are invited by Him to be patient with others. While driving to a nearby city, I heard in my imagination a conversation about someone I deeply love. Satan was accusing them before God for all the ways they had transgressed God’s law. Everything Satan said was true. But I heard God reply, “Yes, but ____ will someday be one of my greatest lovers.” Imagine if we thought like God about other people like that? What if our patience with others maturity or seemingly lack of it was one of the ways people realized we walked with God? What if our patience with our perceived enemies was legendary? What if we believed, truly believed Jesus makes all things beautiful in His time? It took many centuries for the tree before me, to achieve its height, It has grown through unleashed furies of storms drought, earthquakes and fire. Number 7 has not had an easy life. But I guarantee if you sit before Number 7, you will be slack jawed at its majesty. It even seems as I sit before it, to impart a sense of holiness. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel observed, time is the first thing God called holy. God calls time holy in the context of Sabbath, of ceasing from our own frantic striving, We can rest from our labor, our false narratives of eschatology and self-importance, our limited views of time, because God, this God we love, has all the time and patience in the world. This God We Love Is Everywhere, Always“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.” ― C.S. Lewis What can a clumsy dishwasher named Lawrence, and a reluctant prophet Jonah, teach us about this God we love? Let me start with Jonah. Jonah cognitively knew that God, the God of Hebrews was everywhere, always. Jonah’s God was King of the Universe. He made the sea, dry land, dragonflies and hummingbirds and the entire cosmos. Where can I flee from God’s presence the Psalmist asks? If I make my bed in hell behold you are there. If I ascend to the highest place behold you are there. Yet with Jonah, like many or us, our theology and our actions are wildly apart. The ancients believed in territorial gods whose power was limited to a certain region. The Ammonites worshipped Molech, the Canaanites bowed to Baal, and the Philistines had a god called Dagon. If two territories battled, whoever won, the result was attributed to the work of the superior god. Jonah in fleeing to Tarshish (Spain), may have mistaken the one true God who is everywhere all at once, to a God of limited location. Perhaps in Jonah’s confused mind, if he could get out of the region of the Hebrew’s God’s jurisdiction, he’d be exempt from fulfilling God’s assignment. Jonah flees down. He goes down to the port Joppa. He goes down into the hold of the ship, down into the sea, down into the fish’s belly, down into depression when God ends up saving Nineveh, thus destroying his prophetic scorecard and credibility. Wherever, and whenever we attempt to flee from this God we love who is everywhere always, our trajectory is down. Most of us are not trying to run away from an ambassadorial commission like Jonah. But we are like Jonah more than we know, in feeling God is distant from us, we think He resides somewhere else than where we are at this moment. We struggle to believe that He is here as I write now, and as you eventually read this book, just as much as when we are in a dedicated space for worship. Meet Brother Lawrence Brother Lawrence, whose letters were compiled in the exceptional book, Practicing the Presence of God, had a head turning revelation. (I’d encourage you to stop reading right now and order it). For Lawrence God was not a territorial deity, a God who was afar off, casually looking in on his creation occasionally at long intervals. No! For Lawrence God was as present while he washed pots and pans as He was in the chapel while the monks said their prayers. Lawrence understood and practiced this God we love as being everywhere, always. He says, “… we need only to recognize God intimately present with us, to address ourselves to Him every moment, that we may beg His assistance for knowing His will in things doubtful, and for rightly performing those which we plainly see He requires of us, offering them to Him before we do them, and giving Him thanks when we’re done.” ― Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God There is No Spot Where God is Not. Perhaps you have experienced the palpable presence of God. There is nothing so wonderful as when He walks into a room, and you feel Him. I have been in environments where God drew so close, I didn’t want to breathe. The atmosphere was radio active with His holiness. But if you like I, were raised in certain streams of Christianity you tend to think of Him only present when you can remarkably feel Him. There is the manifest presence of this God we love, like the Mount of Transfiguration where Jesus had the perigee sun visibly pouring out of Him. Sometimes we think only something wildly supernatural indicates His presence. But He is present everywhere, always, right now as you’re reading this. I once told a very young friend I thought God was present in a meeting because I felt hot all over. My friend, replied, “I told the Holy Spirit that would never do, I couldn’t tell the difference between Him and a fever. I told the Holy Spirit He needed to make me cold.” If we put demands on how this God we love is perceived by us, we will miss Him, even in the midst of His nearness. He is everywhere always everywhere you look. He is in the laughter of a child, in the beauty of creation, in our ecstasy, our internal agony, our existential angst, in our next breath.. So how do we cultivate this awareness? We practice it. We intentionally as many times a day as we can whisper to ourselves, similar to the song my dear friends, Jimmy and Carol Owens penned. He is here, He is here, He is moving among us He is here, He is here, as we gather in His Name He is here, He is here, And He wants to work a wonder He is here, He is here, as we gather in His Name He is Lord He is Lord, Let us worship before Him He is Lord He is Lord, as we gather in His Name He is Lord He is Lord, let us praise and adore Him Yesterday and today and forevermore the same He is Here Everywhere Always in Our Anguish Recently I heard a famous author say cynically “It really would have been nice for God to show up in the Holocaust.” Ravensbruck survivor Corrie Ten Boom might whisper in reply “There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.” Corrie and many others would say God did show up in the unimaginable horrors of the holocaust. Austrian psychiatrist, and author of 39 books, Victor Frankl says when he first came to Auschwitz they stripped him of everything, his clothes, his identity, and the one thing that was most precious to him, apart from his wife and family, which was the book he’d written. He said, “When they took that from me, my life was over.” Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs tells us the story, And of course, after they took their clothes, and they sent them all into a shower, and he was expecting that to be death. But he was one of the lucky ones. It was just a shower. And afterwards they gave him clothes, clothes of people who’d been killed. And he put on these clothes, and he found something in one of the pockets. He took it out and saw that it was a scrap of paper. It had been torn from a Siddur, from a prayer book. And it contained these words, “Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad,” Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One. “Ve’ahavtu et Hashem Elokecha…,” And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And Frankl said, “Those words transfixed me. They were saying to me, ‘Now, you must live every single thing you ever taught and practiced. You must live that here, now, in Auschwitz.'” https://www.rabbisacks.org/videos/where-was-god-during-the-holocaust/ Another Auschwitz survivor, famed historian Otto Dov Kulka tells of a dream he had more than 50 years after the holocaust, when Israel was braced for a chemical attack in the Gulf war. He dreamed then he was inside crematorium number 2, and there was God, also: "At first I felt Him (only) as a kind of mysterious radiation of pain, flowing at me from the dark void in the unlit part of the cremation ovens. A radiation of insupportably intense pain, sharp and dull alike. Afterwards He began to take the shape of a kind of huge embryo, shrunk with pain … He was alive, shrunken, hunched forward with searing pain … a figure on the scale of His creatures, in the form of a human being who came and was there … as a response to 'the question they were forbidden to ask there', but was asked and floated in that dark air .... ? " https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2014/jun/16/god-auschwitz-otto-dov-kulka-religious-belief This God we love is everywhere, always, in our anguish. But He does not leave us there. The Chinese ideogram for crisis is also interpreted as opportunity. In Hebrew, the word for crisis also means the opening of the womb or the birthing stool. Historically every crisis in Hebrew means birth. You can trace every historical agony of the Jewish people to a new birthing. The horrors of the holocaust led directly to the establishment of the State of Israel, Which Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs describes as the most life affirming event in 2000 years of Jewish history. In a speech to Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8LsIB0BtrE He is Here Everywhere Always in Our Joy Life is as Rick Warren observes, a railroad track of twin rails of suffering and joy. The train of life runs consistently and concurrently on both. This God we love is joy. He is not only everywhere always in our agony, He is everywhere always in our joy. No pregnant woman looks forward to the agony of travail. But we know joy is present even in that excruciating moment, present, but not yet manifest. When we look at the hemorrhaging of the world, it is hard to believe God is everywhere, always. Often it seems He moved and left no forwarding address. The book of Romans reminds us that …all of creation is waiting, yearning for the time when the children of God will be revealed. You see, all of creation has collapsed into emptiness, not by its own choosing, but by God’s. Still, He placed within it a deep and abiding hope that creation would one day be liberated from its slavery to corruption and experience the glorious freedom of the children of God. For we know that all creation groans in unison with birthing pains up until now. And there is more; it’s not just creation—all of us are groaning together too. Though we have already tasted the first fruits of the Spirit, we are longing for the total redemption of our bodies that comes when our adoption as children of God is complete--Romans 8:19-23 The Voice All the travail of creation and our own interior groaning will result in the glorious freedom of joy. In God’s presence, the Psalmist tells us is fullness of joy. God in fact gives us to drink of a river of delights. “They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.” (Psalm 36:8) This God we love planted Adam and Eve in a garden named Pleasure. Our future, our lives, are barreling toward unexcelled joys as God wipes away all our tears, and all sorrow and mourning will pass away. For all the seeming in-between times that we do not perceive life as agony or joy, He is here too. Loving us everywhere and always. Breathe deep and savor Him. This God We Love is Generous“The culture of the Trinity is generosity … age to age they give themselves completely to one another and to us.” -Michael Koulianos We live on a mountain with the most generous neighbors. Nancy lets me rob her backyard of wildflowers for special events, Brian lays tomatoes at our door, and God, this God we love brings us everything else. Everything in great abundance. If you ever thought God was a stingy miser like Scrooge recounting his pennies in the dark, think again. You are engulfed, immersed, surrounded by the generosity that is God. Everywhere you look, and even places where you don’t, God generously fills our planet, our skies, and our oceans with wonder and creativity. Some of His most astonishing creativity is in depths where few look. Some set out to sea in ships, traveling across mighty seas in order to trade in foreign lands. They witnessed the powerful acts of the Eternal, marveled at the great wonders He revealed over the deep waters. Psalm 107:23-31 The Voice An abundance of beauty meets us everywhere we turn here on our mountain. We have red tailed hawks soaring above our heads. Pepper, Pine, Jacaranda, Brazilian Oak, and Palms trees swaying a slow dance in the gentle wind. Outside our windows the Santa Monica mountains kiss the sea. The Channel Islands beckon us from our deck. We are one of three places on the earth with topsoil 60 feet deep. Our agriculture produces over 125 different crops that feed the nations. God’s generosity is on display in Ventura County, California everywhere you cast your eye. When I go to exorcise my house of dust, (I tend to dust every two hundred years or so, or when large groups are coming for dinner), I marvel that the thing I am trying to eradicate, is made up of the very extraordinary thing that feeds us. Dust, (rare fact, 90 percent of household dust is skin cells), is a wonder. We live between two canyons with high winds, so dust wings its way into our open windows with a vengeance. Plant anything in dirt and it will transform seeds into food that contains seeds that will perpetually produce life giving beauty for generations. All that you see in vegetation comes from the marriage of seed and dust. It’s a miracle dynamic only God could have imagined into being. I'm growing Jacaranda trees because I want my grandson when he is older to enjoy their purpled splendor. I am amazed at how many seeds are in just one jacaranda pod. God’s generosity writ large in a pod of seeds requiring a well-aimed hammer to liberate. Someone said you can count the seeds in an apple, but no one can count the apples in a seed. God’s generosity overflows with seeds, rain, (it rains on the just and the unjust), sun, (the sun shines on the deserving and undeserving), nutrient rich soil, in a never-ending cycle of creativity and increase. God’s generosity in creation exceeds our wildest imaginations. We will never come to the end of His generosity. A billion years from now we will still be be discovering wonder.. But you might live in an inner-city urban scape that on the surface doesn’t exhibit much of God’s generosity in creation. Perhaps you look out the window and see graffiti markings on walls, and treeless streets, with dirty sidewalks. Instead of green, you have visually unappealing buildings springing up from masses of concrete. There too, though harder to see, is God’s generosity in the gifts of the people who live around you. In all the visual dissonance and grime, there are poets and artists, entrepreneurs, and people of cure, just waiting for someone to notice, and call out the beauty within. They wait for someone to name them. As Lucy Shaw says we cannot name ourselves. We wait for either the devil or God to name us. This God we love’s generosity not only surrounds us in the beauty of nature, but with the rich variety of humans made in His image. Eight billion of them at this writing. Eight billion different expressions of the most fascinating Person in the universe. Eight billion distinct revelations of God’s personality woven into their story. In times past I mistakenly measured the beauty of a city based on how many trees it had, its architecture, and well thought out planning. But years ago, God whispered to me the way He measures the beauty of a city. He loves best His image in the people He made. He loves places not for the pines that line their streets, or the lovely buildings, but the people who inhabit them. God looks at a city and is moved by its people. It’s innocent and guilty, it’s conniving and guileless, it’s greedy and generous people, it’s babies and its elderly, it’s teenagers and it’s middle aged. It’s tatted and tattered. It's battered, it's bruised. God is a generous and indiscriminate lover of people. He generously invites all to become His intimate friends. We see His generosity in surrounding us with billions of people destined for greatness as they choose His kind Lordship. We see His generosity in giving those billions of people free will, that can choose to reject His kindness. This God we love, did not make us to be worker droids mindlessly doing His will throughout millennia. No, He offers us eternal friendship with the Holy Spirit, with His Son who does not call us servants but friends. God is generous with His heart, His throne, His wealth. This God we love is generous with His intimate friendship as we fear Him. The secret [of the wise counsel] of the Lord is for those who fear Him, And He will let them know His covenant and reveal to them [through His word] its [deep, inner] meaning. Psalm 25:14 The Amplified Admittedly the “fear of the Lord” is a foreign concept to Christianity in the last century, It sticks mightily in our craw, yet, it is the key to intimate friendship with this God we love. How shall we understand fearing someone we so love? Imagine a marine biologist. He wakes up and goes to bed at night thinking about the sea and all the riches yet undiscovered beneath its depths. He has spent decades of his life on the sea in research vessels. He loves it with passion, and has dedicated his life to it. He can’t imagine any other occupation giving him so much joy. But does this love also include fear? Absolutely! The more you love and know the sea, the more you can read its currents and waves, the more fear you know of its power … the more you realize you do not trifle with it. You cannot cage or limit it to purely scientific discovery. It is not something you control. You are constantly aware of its raw power, its sweeping totality. Just as C. S. Lewis said about Aslan, the sea is not tame. The more you love the sea, the more you know and fear its capacities. The two, love and fear are inseparable linked as you know and enjoy the sea. The Message translations puts it like this. God-friendship is for God-worshipers; They are the ones he confides in. Psalm 25:14 This God we love, generously confides His secrets We find His secrets whispered to us in His Word. The Word of God is God’s invitation to intimate friendship. You cannot know Him well without knowing His Word. His Word is a map and field guide into His heart. I have seen intimate friends of God as they prayed for Israel, grab Him by the shirt and remind him of 3,000 years of His faithfulness to His people. Only friends of God dare take that posture. Moses was an intimate friend of God, who dared to tell God to wipe his name from the book of life, if God was going to indeed wipe out the Israelites. Abraham was an intimate friend of God who bargained like an expert auctioneer, pleading if there was just five righteous in Sodom, would God relent from His judgement. This God we love whose “fingertips set planets to burning”, as Jim Elliot described, this God lets us finite creatures haggle with Him, bargain and argue. He allows Job to question; He allows Jeremiah to ask “Will you be to me a deceptive stream?” He invites His intimate friends to authentic encounters where emotions run hot, and questions are poignant. This generous God we love, not only offers us intimate friendship, He places us on a planet with billions of people to whom we can be friends with an astonishing future. This massive sea of humans surrounding us are as C.S Lewis reminds us, more than just mere mortals. “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory God as generosity offers us friendship and destiny beyond imagining. We live in a high stake’s world of destinies in which we all play a part. Sit on a subway and everyone you see, will live eternally in a world of joy, or a universe of their own rebellion. We will never look into the eyes of anyone who is will simply die and lay cold in the grave. God Made Us out of Trinity Intimacies for Intimacy with Himself and Those He Made. God as Generosity Himself, freely offers us a seat at His table, a scepter of rulership with Him world without end. Scripture tells us if we overcome, we will rule nations. In His greatest display of generosity, He gives us Himself. Unreservedly Himself. We see most clearly God’s generosity on the cross. For God so loved, He gave His only Son John 3:16 tells us. His love compelled Him to give us His greatest treasure, His Son, who would be bruised and battered beyond recognition all for love’s sake to redeem us to God a kingdom of kings and priests. Who can fathom this great generosity of God to not hold back His only Son? My friend Dr. Rhiannon Lloyd says " .... on the cross, all the sin of the world and its consequences was transferred to Jesus. What happened on the Cross is more amazing than we can ever imagine. The sacrifice of Jesus is enough to deal with all the sin and pain of the world! Not only our personal sin, but every war, every conflict, every massacre, every injustice, every tragedy. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, we are told that Jesus, although perfect without committing a single sin, was ‘made to be sin for us.’ In a way that we will never understand, all the sin of the world was transferred to Him on the Cross and He experienced the full horror of human sinfulness. In the same way, all our pain was transferred to Him too. The whole tragic human condition was there! As Jesus was hanging on the Cross, He carried the sin of the rapist, and at the same time He also carried the pain of the rape victim. The verse above is even stronger suggesting that He became both the rapist and the rape victim! He became both killer and victim; He became the thief and the one who was robbed. He felt it all! Can we look at the cross casually, with a cavalier glance and not be wrecked for the love it signifies? Evan Roberts best known for his role in the Welsh Revival of 1904, was hesitant to go to Bible College as he feared it would dull him to the cross. One day he walked into a church with a cross, and what he feared had come upon him. He was emotionless. As Evan observed his hardness of heart, he began to weep. Calvary had become just another symbol, just another aspect of theology, just another affirmation of faith. The cross was a cognitive dynamic but no longer for Evan an experiential reality. Tears were the only appropriate response to such deadness of heart. We need a new revelation of the cross. The price this God we love paid for us. My friend Phil had a vision of a cross. On every square inch of it were business cards. As Jesus’ blood poured from his limp thrashed flesh, the business cards were dislodged. Men in business suits were distressed that their card no longer featured prominently. Selah. The generosity of this God we love was total. If we lose sight of Calvary, we miss Him entirely. Generous with Joy We were made as my friend Jamie Winship says for “joyful relationships with God, ourselves, and others.” This God we love is generous with His joy. Again, Evan Roberts instructs us. ‘When others prayed, I felt a living force come into my bosom. I held my breath, and my legs shivered…The living force grew, and I was almost bursting…I would have burst if I had not prayed…What burst me was the verse, ‘God commending His love’. I fell on my knees with my arms over the seat in front of me and the tears and perspiration flowed freely. I thought blood was gushing forth. For about two minutes it was fearful. I cried, ‘Bend me! Bend me! After I was bent, a wave of peace came over me.’ That day he became keenly aware of two truths. The first was that God is full of joy. He wrote to his sister: ‘God is a happy God and a joyful God. Therefore, we must be happy and joyful.’ The second is the reality of judgement. Remembering his experience in Blaenanerch, Roberts wrote: ‘As they sang, I thought of the bending at the Judgement Day, and I was filled with compassion for those who would be bent on that day, and I wept.’ This God We Love is Generous with His Tears Jesus wept (in the Greek strong weeping), over His desire to gather Jerusalem under His wing. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus; He wept in Gethsemane. As we come to love Him, we will weep over those things that make Him weep. We will have no calloused indifference to His emotions. His heart is our greatest treasure. This God We Love is Mercy
When through the blood of the everlasting covenant we children of the shadows reach at last our home in the light, we shall have a thousand strings to our harps, but the sweetest may well be the one tuned to sound forth most perfectly the mercy of God. A.W. Tozer Here’s a powerful thought experiment I learned from the late Dr. Rick Ferguson. It’s a quick diagnostic of the heart. Write down these words, Revulsion, Disgust, Anger, Frustration, Apathy, Sympathy, Compassion, Mercy. You’ll need to be gut honest for this to have its maximum effect. No fudging. Now close your eyes, take your time, and imagine in as much detail as possible a homeless man covered in filth, drinking alcohol. Write your immediate emotional response to that person, using the words above. Now close your eyes and picture a stiletto'd young prostitute scantily clad walking the street. Put down your immediate emotion.. Next, picture an elderly person drooling on their chin, in a skilled nursing facility. What do you feel? Imagine a gorgeous wealthy woman flaunting her wealth in front of a poor community. See a drone shot of the Burning Man festival. Imagine a heavily tatted man dressed only in a pick tutu. Record your emotions. Picture a handsome young man driving a Ferrari convertible, cutting off people on the road. What do you feel? How often did you feel mercy if at all? “With the merciful You will show Yourself merciful …” 2 Samuel 22:26. Here’s the paradox, mercy is one of the deepest continuing desires of every human heart, and it is often the rarest emotion we experience or give to others. Yet, the stunning almost inexplicable thing is that this God we love is mercy. When Moses asks to see God’s glory, God responds with a self-introduction, a self-revelation. The first description He gives of Himself is that He is merciful. He gives that revelation after being betrayed by His people who are worshipping a golden calf and having their very own original Burning Man Festival. Moses comes down from the mountain and in rage smashes the two tablets of stone that have God’s own handwriting of commandments. God in anger threatens to wipe out the whole lot saving only Moses. Moses persuades God that the Egyptians will say God wiped out the children of Israel because He couldn’t keep them, thus bringing dishonor to His name. But then a curious thing happens. It’s the very last thing you would expect given the circumstances. God honors Moses request to see His glory and describes Himself first as a God full of mercy. It’s not a soft mushy mercy, it’s not a mercy that ignores consequences. It’s a mercy that is endlessly patient, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. Yet it’s a mercy accompanied by truth, for all of God’s ways are mercy and truth. The truth is that sin has consequence to the third and even the fourth generation. Eternal One: The Eternal God, full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger, and abundant in loyal love and truth, 7 who maintains loyal love to thousands of people, who forgives wrongdoing, rebellion, and sin; yet does not allow sin to go unpunished, extending the consequences of a father’s sin to his children, his grandchildren, and even to the third and fourth generations. Moses quickly bowed down on the ground and worshiped. Exodus 34:6-8 The Voice To keep us fragile earthenware from trafficking in mercy, in doing anything we want knowing God is mercy, He protects us by still allowing the consequences of sin to impact future generations. Those consequences become a morality play warning us of the corrosive effect of sin and its communal erosion of Shalom. Imagine a man who murders another. Perhaps he is given a life sentence. When he repents God freely forgives him. He forgives so thoroughly that it is as if the man had not been a murderer. Yet, his son will grow up practically fatherless and will be greatly tempted into distorted groups that give him identity. The forgiven murder’s wife will live practically as a widow. God in His mercy graciously forgives, yet the consequences of our sin deeply affect others. Would this God we love have forgiven Hitler? Yes, in a heartbeat if Hitler truly repented. But the horrific consequences of his actions would still decimate and shatter all future generations. And yet, God’s mercy is never exhausted. Copious mercy can come again to every generation. No one in any situation or with any generational inheritance of evil, is bereft of God’s mercy. Perhaps you’re wondering, what the difference is between grace and mercy? Grace is receiving an unexpected goodness that you did not deserve, like a stranger in a restaurant paying for your lunch. Mercy is not receiving what you deserve, like when a policeman pulls you over, and gives you a warning rather than a ticket. This inexhaustible God, who is Mercy, comes to us when we least deserve or expect Him. Often mercy comes to us in our final days, when we have reached the end of our ego, and begin to realize what frail, fickle, fragile earthenware we truly are. I friend of mine went through a divorce, and then years later when her ex-husband developed a mango size cancerous tumor on his face that proved fatal, moved back in to nurse him until he died. Sometimes the Merciful God comes to us in our youth when we have done the inexcusable Take the case of Mary Johnson, a Christian woman once filled with hate, who eventually befriends Oshea Israel, the 16-year-old young man who murdered her son at a party in Minneapolis. Mary in her statement to the court ended it by saying she forgave him, because the Bible says to forgive. She says, “But I hadn’t actually forgiven. The root of bitterness ran deep, anger had set in and I hated everyone. I remained like this for years, driving many people away. But then, one day, I read a poem which talked about two mothers – one mother whose child had been murdered and the other mother whose child was the murderer. It was such a healing poem all about the commonality of pain and it showed me my destiny. Suddenly I had this vision of creating an organization to support not only the mothers of murdered children but also the mothers of children who had taken a life. I knew then that I would never be able to deal with these mothers if I hadn’t really forgiven Oshea. So, I put in a request to the Department of Corrections to meet him. We talked for 2 hours, and then I told him I forgave him. He asked for a hug. Then, Mary said, as I got up, I felt something rising from the soles of my feet and leaving me. From that day on I haven’t felt any hatred, animosity, or anger. It was over. Mary went on to found From Death To Life: Two Mothers Coming Together for Healing, a support group for mothers who have lost their children to violence. Mary and Oshea live next door together, and she calls him her spiritual son. When we have experienced mercy, it allows us to be merciful to others. Jesus said those who have been forgiven much love much. A friend of mine was accused of something she didn’t do. The accuser told her privately that she knew she was innocent, but she would never own up to lying about it publicly. My hot-tempered friend was fierce with anger. God whispered to her, “You’ve been forgiven for far more than you’ve ever been accused.” It is true for all of us. Mercy comes at us at odd angles. It happens often when you least expect, through whom you least expect. Jesus enlarges our understanding of mercy by telling this story. A man goes on a journey, is attacked by robbers who strip his clothes and leave him half dead. A priest comes by and pretends not to see his plight, walking around him. Then a religious man walks by but he too, ignores the bleeding man. Then a despised Samaritan comes, sees the man naked, battered and bruised, and is moved with mercy and compassion. He disinfects and bandages his wounds lifts him up on his donkey and takes him to an inn. He leaves the inn his credit card to take care of him. In Jesus’ story the most likely people to give mercy, don’t, and the least likely person does. It is easier to avert our eyes, write a check, advocate for the poor, than to actually lock eyes with those who need mercy, and enter their story. Two men were in Seattle for business and stopped off at Pikes Place Market before catching their flights back home. They were about to take a selfie, when a man who had obviously fallen on hard times came over and asked if they’d like him to take the shot. He fiddled with their phone and took over 20 shots that would have been worthy of a magazine cover. They asked if he’d been a professional photographer. No, he said, just young people who didn’t tip very well, gave him tips on using filters and angles on an iPhone. The men asked him to dinner. They went to a French restaurant where he told them his life story. At the end of an expensive meal, they offered to pay him for the pictures. “No, he said, “I don’t take money from friends, only from strangers.” Their mercy was freighted with dignity, companionship, and listening. Philosopher Simone Weil once said “… attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Jesus in telling the story of the good Samaritan, underscores the value of entering the story, giving mercy in the form of dignity, of attention, and shalom focused intervention. The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of Mercy. Tom Holland in his book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, documents the brutality of the Greeks and Romans who considered pity to be a weakness, and who did not believe every human being has dignity. The ancient world did not believe in the equal worth of humans, or that we had a duty to help the vulnerable. Equality, justice, mercy is unique to the Judeo-Christian ethos. "When atheists and secularists are talking about atrocities committed by Christians-at which the ancient Greeks and Romans would not have batted an eye-they are appealing to a distinctly Judeo-Christian ethic! When progressives demand social justice, racial equality, the rights of women and respect for the marginalized they are drawing on the very Christian heritage they tend to repudiate." Gene Edward Veith, in Is the Tide Turning on Religious Belief. 9/13/2023 in Action Institute Religion and Liberty online. “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; mercy and truth go before Your face.” Psalm 89:14. Mercy is inseparable from truth. This often requires saying hard things. Is it merciful for a doctor to find Stage 4 cancer metastasized throughout your body and say nothing? Is it merciful if someone not wanting to scare you, allows you to fall off a cliff? This God we love as Mercy does not give mercy at the expense of Truth, because He is both mercy and truth. He is not a mushy, sticky sweet, sentimental God. He is who He is in His entirety, absolutely perfect. Sometimes a severe mercy is needed. A friend’s neighbor was having an affair. No one was confronting the person. So, one of their pastors gathered everyone, the wife, the husband, the girlfriend, and they talked. They didn’t accuse, or berate, they just talked. At the end of the meeting, the husband repented, the girlfriend said she didn’t want to break up a marriage, and the wife decided to forgive. They all started on a long road of healing because someone was mercifully willing to confront the situation in love. This God we love overflows with mercy and truth. This is our strong comfort and confidence. “But You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth.” Psalm 86:15. Scriptures for Meditation “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.” Psalm 145:8-9. “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23. “Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” Micah 7:18-19. “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved) …” Ephesians 2:4-5. “Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.” Hebrews 2:17-18. “Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” Luke 6:36. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4. “Let not mercy and truth forsake you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, and so find favor and high esteem in the sight of God and man.” Proverbs 3:3-4. “A righteous man regards the life of his animal, But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Proverbs 12:10. “He who despises his neighbor sins; but he who has mercy on the poor, happy is he.” Proverbs 14:21 . “He who oppresses the poor reproaches his Maker, but he who honors Him has mercy on the needy.” Proverbs 14:31. “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8. “Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Execute true justice, show mercy and compassion everyone to his brother. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. Let none of you plan evil in his heart against his brother.’” Zechariah 7:8-10. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Matthew 5:7. “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.” Colossians 3:12-14. “For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.” James 2:13. “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” James 3:17. This God We Love is Wrath“The wrath of God is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer … which is eating out the insides of the human race.” C. S. Lewis After a particularly daunting medical visit at an unfamiliar hospital, my friend turned unexpectedly on to Southern California’s Highway 1. The ocean shimmered its sparkling loveliness, soothing our eyes. Our tiredness from navigating unfamiliar streets was immediately refreshed. We collectively exhaled relief that we would be home in an hour, safe once again from all the congestion and visual dissonance of that city God deeply loves called Los Angeles. My friend turned to me and referenced a story about my childhood. “Ah”, I said. My childhood was not that bad.” My friend replied, “Are you kidding me? Just the story about your Brownie dress makes me want to grab her and pull her out of her grave and choke her to death!” I was scandalized at her unexpected wrath. She was deadly serious. To understand how unexpected her statement was, you must know my friend is the most selfless person I know. She is so selfless; I wonder if I am truly a Christian when I am around her. I felt protective of my mother, and at the very same time, I felt an unexpected wave of love coming toward me. I am not sure I’d ever felt wrath as a source of love until that moment. A few weeks later, I was telling another friend a story about being given away to a Missionary Home to work when I was 12. Again, the same thing happened. My friend shouted while other people were sleeping, “You do not give your children away! She started sobbing and shaking with anger. Her wrath about my childhood history hit me again, as great love. She was filled with wrath about love that had been perverted by religious idolatry, like sacrificing your children to Moloch. When it’s comes to the wrath of God, we must understand it in the context of love that is protective of the loved one. God’s wrath is not a matter of God having a short fuse. He isn’t going to throw knives across the table in a split second. In fact, God as He reveals Himself to Moses is slow to anger. He is not an explosive God who flies off the handle in rage. Yet, He is not a God to be trifled with. His wrath, unlike human wrath, does not wish the perpetrator harm, but is focused on the evil involved. He is jealous for those He loves. Nothing offends modern sensibility more than to say that God is a God of wrath. Ears close, hearts double lock, and minds shrink back in horror at such a primitive idea. C.S. Lewis writes. “The doctrine of hell is not one I would have chosen, but it is undeniable … there is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this if it lay in my power. “ Talking about God’s wrath in our culture is completely, utterly unacceptable. Yet, it is an aspect of God we ignore at our peril. “Wrath is the holy revulsion of God’s being against that which contradicts his holiness.” R.C. Sproul Scripture is clear. We love a God who is wrath, as well as love, compassion, peace, and forgiveness. We cannot divide Him into various petri dishes for observation. He is indivisible. We cannot say He is love and not wrath. God is uncompromisingly Himself. He is not a marshmallow God who only smiles, a benevolent grandfather who pats on the head, and spoils us. He is not a mere spiritual mascot for our aspirations, a mushy, sentimental, deity. He is a deeply emotional God who is completely committed to the shalom of His creation. As Tim Keller says, “God’s wrath is his personal, vehement opposition to all evil. His wrath is reserved for anything and everything that disintegrates what He loves.” God’s love is the core of God's wrath expressed in anger at two sins idolatry and injustice. John Dawson says, “Boil down all 613 commandments in the Bible, and there are really only 2 possible sins-idolatry, and injustice. Idolatry is sin toward God, and injustice is sin toward man.” God’s wrath burns hot against idolatry which is anything that defines us apart from Himself. God’s wrath is a protective feature of His love. When you see violence against evil in the Lord of the Rings, or the Rings of Power it is seeking to remove at any cost anything and everything that will destroy all God’s love intends. His wrath does not placate. It does not seek detente. It seeks elimination of evil. His wrath is His love expressed for our shalom, our wholeness. God’s wrath protects us from the one who comes to steal, kill and destroy. When God gives the 10 commandments to Moses, He is not just throwing His weight around, directing our behavior like some insecure despot. No! He is instead saying, “Don’t have other God’s beside me, because they will fail you! Don’t covet things because they will fail you! Don’t commit adultery because I will never break my covenant to you! Every commandment has built within it, God’s love and protection from our straying from His goodness, and becoming a plaything in the hands of the Accuser. God’s wrath burns white hot against whatever diminishes, disintegrates and destroys that which He created for His pleasure. We would want no less. We would never calmy allow a little child to play with fire. No, we would snatch the matches from their hands with fury and concern. Because the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. God’s wrath is upon him. But how do we understand His anger? Is His anger and rage different from ours? In Proverbs we have many warnings against human anger. It disintegrates the body, it disintegrates relationships and community, it kills intimacy. Yet, God reveals Himself to Moses not as having no anger, but as being slow to anger. There is a godly anger, a godly rage that is good. We are commanded to “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and no opportunity to the devil. Ephesians 4:26-27 We know that Jesus overturned the racketeering tables in the temple with a whip. What are we to make of this contradiction? Chrysostom (349-407 AD), says “He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.” Homily 11 on the Epistle to the Ephesians, Statues. Here is the distinction. If we take wrath into our own hands, we become the evil we are trying to extinguish. We become an evil that gives the enemies of God a reason to blaspheme. You don't have to look far to find the reality of that in America. It is imperative we understand the wrath of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God. James 1:20 Several days ago a young man shot in cold blood a store owner in Lake Arrowhead for flying a Pride flag. Freidrich Nietzsche said "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you." Our wrath about politics, about ideologies, about traditions, does not produce shalom. God is clear, "Again my loved ones, do not seek revenge; instead, allow God's wrath to make sure justice is served. Turn it over to Him. For the Scriptures say "Revenge is Mine. I will settle all scores." If your enemy is hungry, give him something to eat. If he is thirsty give him something to drink. Do not let evil over come you, instead overpower evil with good." Romans 12: 19-21 Today I drove by a young man completely undone by the demonic. My heart cried out “Father him! Break every mind forged manacle of lies that ensnares him!” He was difficult to look at, wracked with disintegration and destruction. I felt wrath toward the evil that had malformed him. I did not feel wrath toward him individually. I did not pray soft, soothing prayers, but prayers of war against the enemy of his soul. When those we love are undone by evil, we want God’s wrath to come and burn away what has ensnared them. We want His wrath to come and consume all that has ensnared us. God’s wrath in a paradoxical way, is a great comfort to us regarding our future filled with His lovingkindness. God’s wrath creates a surety for our wholeness and for our peace. This God We Love is Justice
“When environments run on obedience and power authorities, predatory behavior is always nigh. It’s just about who gets preyed on. God’s laws are about His character; man’s laws are about control and punishment. Controlling women is easier than shaping/correcting men’s character.” Unknown I held my breath as I watched a series about a large family who had a long running hit reality television show. It was an expose as well about a man who packed large auditoriums teaching a perverted and deviant form of Christianity. I wrestled long into the night about the generational consequences of the deception that had spread like crab grass in many hearts. Satan’s kingdom, (remember he is the original religious spirit), has one prime directive toward humans; to malign God’s character and nature. His first communication in the garden is to question God’s intentions, His truthfulness, His character, His nature. Is God just? We swim in a global sea of the accuser’s accusations about God. America was mesmerized by this shiny, happy, and fascinating family who I am sure were simply trying to please God; but their intent did not prevent the devastating consequences that followed their destructive theology. As I wrestled through the series my aching heart turned toward Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you, except to be just, and to love [and to diligently practice] kindness (compassion), and to walk humbly with your God [setting aside any overblown sense of importance or self-righteousness]? The Amplified This God we love asks us to mirror Him in His multi-faceted personality by living justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with Him. God is just, God is love, God is Humility. We are called to display this many splendored dna of who He truly is to the world by our thoughts, words and actions. Be just. Love kindness and compassion. Walk humbly with this God we love. On the surface it sounds easy. But no sooner have we decided to do it when we realize how complex it all can be. Some of us by nature skew toward justice, others of us skew toward mercy, few of us no matter our propensity, walk humbly. In God, mercy and truth it is said in Psalms 85:10, have met together; righteousness (meaning the right, moral or legal, equity, justice), and peace have kissed. Only in God this blend of seemingly contradictory virtues finds perfection and complete balance. This God We Love is the Only One Who is Perfect Justice. He will bring justice to all who have been wronged. He will not falter or lose heart until justice prevails throughout the earth. Isaiah 42:3-4 He doesn’t just practice or promote justice, He is justice. His justice is wrapped up in all aspects of His nature. The glory of His justice is the integration of all that He is, encompassing how His justice is expressed in the world. We catch a glimmer of His justice in the story of David and Mephibosheth in 2 Samuel 9. Mephibosheth is the grandson of King Saul. He is lame in both feet from being dropped as a child, as his family fled the palace. Saul, and his son Jonathan (Mephibosheth’s faither), have died in battle. David is now king and asks; “Is there anyone of Jonathan’s family remaining to who I can show kindness? (A question we should ask all the time). Mephibosheth is summoned thinking he will be executed, as the tradition is that when a new king comes in, all relatives of the previous king are killed. But David shows the justice and mercy of God, in offering Mephibosheth all his grandfather’s land, to be cared for by Saul’s servants, and a place at the Kings table in perpetuity. We see in this story the graciousness of God’s heart to those whose story is marred by other’s actions. Mephibosheth was dropped, he is lame, his whole family demolished by war, yet David restores to him generational inheritances, dignity, and a place of honor. Justice in this story is literally served at the table of the King. When we are seeking to do justice, we realize like David we cannot heal the lameness, but we can restore dignity and honor, we can give people a place at the table. We can do justice and mercy together. Where did we get the concept of justice? Why is it different in so many cultures? Why do many indigenous cultures consider justice to be restorative, rather than punitive? These are all important questions that have significant ramifications to the shalom, the wholeness of society. We Owe our Concepts of Justice in Western Civilization to the Jews Thomas Cahill in his seminal book the Gifts of the Jews, tells how with the plagues God subverts “all political structures claiming God as their author.” (117). Prior to the Jews the only worldview was that history, nor the future was meaningful as time was circular and simply kept repeating itself. Your fate, your karma was set. You had nothing to say about the wheel of life. With the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt the Jews not only become defined by their history but have a free future. Cahill goes on to say that after the Exodus, Moses receives the ten commandments which shows God gives the dignity of causality to man. That what we do matters. We can decide to live justly. Cahill says most of our best words, new, adventure, surprise, unique, individual, progress, spirit; faith hope, justice are the gifts of the Jews. (241). We are to pursue justice Cahill says, “For without justice, there is no God.” (252) Evil Is Never Ultimate When we see the depth of evil in the world, it comforts us to know evil is never ultimate because this God we love is Justice. We fragile earthlings presume we know how to judge all matters. We assume we know how to determine who deserves justice, and how it should be meted out. We posit that there are only two groups of people-the bad guys and the good guys, we assume we are of course, the good guys.. We e think we are incapable of injustice. As we read Scripture, we rarely put ourselves in the role of the bad guys. We’re for sure the good guys, Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Elijah. We don’t realize that we can equally be Gomer, Ahab, Nebuchadnezzar, and Judas. Someone said, “Read the Bible as if it were all over autobiographical of you.” Excellent counsel. Nietzsche said you can tell the character of a man by his capacity for truth. Are we willing to acknowledge that we all have the capacity to be Judas and Gomer as well as other villains of Scripture? A fresh understanding of the systemic nature and nuance of evil, will prevent us from thinking awry. While reading Pharaohs story, we see as leaders, we could easily take his role. When God thunders to Pharoah “Let my people go!” Pharoah uses his power to not only prohibit the children of Israel from leaving but increases their production quotas. We become like Pharoah any time we restrict people’s freedom for our own benefit and self-interest. When We Realize our Own Capacities for Self-Centeredness, We are Slower to Condemn Others and Demand Justice We think we are law abiding, but are we really? Can we stand in complete innocence when we judge others? I remember my friend Mary taking me to dinner after we both heard a message. She had filled her ipad with questions. Do we judge undocumented people coming over our border fairly? Do we quickly accuse others as being law breakers when we ourselves often break laws? Do we smuggle bibles into countries where they are not allowed? Do we break copywrite law by using worship choruses and not paying the yearly fee due? Do we go over the speed limit? Do we wear a seatbelt the minute we get into the car, or while we’re driving a block down the road? In California do we get permits for putting in new water heaters, or the myriads of permitting required around home improvements? We are easily conflicted about living justly and loving mercy.. I was an alternate juror on a bank robbery case. The prosecuting attorney had the video of the man robbing the bank, he had the handwriting of the robbery note, they had found the cash on the man, it should have been a slam dunk case, but he got off. The defense attorney convinced a bamboozled jury that the bank teller had been robbed at another bank as well, so it was obvious she had planned the robberies! I was so shocked I wrote the judge about the miscarriage of justice. The judge wrote back that yes, that case had been egregious, but she contended the best judicial system in the world. We do not live justly with ease. Coming to Grips with Our Own Need to Live Justly Many decades ago, my friend John Dawson was leading an anti-abortion rally in Los Angeles. He said, “What is one of the root causes of abortion? Is it that we don’t want to be inconvenienced by needing to care for a child? How many of you have prized convenience over commitment?” The crowd went quiet. It is always easier to point a finger at others than to come to grips with our own sin. I remember sadly being repulsed at a relative who had Styrofoam cups of urine all around his coffee table. He had plenty of money to hire someone to care for him but refused. Days later I was very sick with bi-lateral pneumonia and became incontinent when I coughed. I realized my judgement of him not taking care of himself had boomeranged back to me. I too, had not taken care of myself. It was all simply a matter of degree. John Dawson says you can boil down all 613 commands to prohibitions against just two: idolatry and injustice. Idolatry is a sin against God, and injustice is a sin against humanity. When we idolize people, possessions, or power, we are robbing God of worship, and replacing Him with ourselves or whatever is our idol. When we engage in injustice we are sinning against the image of God in humanity and exploiting them for our own personal desires or profit. Our Justice is Generally Punitive I have a lawyer friend who works in several countries at the request of their judiciary to create more just laws. He has found that often the old indigenous ways of justice, are more healing, as the emphasis is on restorative justice, not simply punitive justice. The old tribal ways of justice often seek to repay in a meaningful way the person wronged, and to restore the offender to his/her community. The emphasis is on wholeness both for the victim and the victimizer. If I for instance stole what wasn’t mine, I would need to restore it, but also the community would be invested in restoring me. I was discussing justice with some friends who work in impoverished countries. One of them is a doctor in a very poor country. Often people die at the hospital because of bad medical practices. Say a nurse falls asleep on the job and a patient dies for lack of attention. Our understanding of justice would say the patient’s death is the fault of the nurse. But then you must consider that nurses in that hospital work 12-hour shifts, six days a week. You would also have to consider that often the nurses are not trained well or trained hastily. The abject poverty in the country is why necessary drugs are often sold and not available. The trail of injustice has many causal factors and leaves a trail through generations. So How Do We Live Justly and Love Mercy? We need to think deeper. We need to lay aside simple understandings. We need this God that we love to teach us on a case-by-case basis, because only He is truly justice. Yes, we can codify just laws. Yes, we can work toward the shalom, the flourishing of our communities and nations. Yes, our hearts can hold together both justice and mercy. When a crime is committed is the person committing it responsible? Yes. Do we need consistent enforcement? Yes. Will we always get it right? No. Are there multiple layers of injustice involved preceding the actual crime that should be considered? Do we mete out justice consistently? Consider the story of Le Miserable, where a stolen loaf of bread from hunger, sets a life on a road of ruin. We must acknowledge that sometimes pure evil is at work. The week this is being written; I was driving on the freeway when a car at high speed close to me went past me going the wrong direction. He was going Northbound on a Southbound freeway in Southern California. He was doing U-turns, swerving lanes, and looking like he intentionally was trying to crash into other cars. He may have been attempting suicide. The police eventually did a high risk stop, bringing the man out of the car at gun point. In heart racing moments when our brains can’t process what we are seeing, we need justice to intervene and stop the madness. When a shooter enters a school, we don’t have time to think about the injustice of their challenging childhoods, their toxic environments or their mental health. We have to remove the evil that threatens innocent life. Justice has many facets; we cannot be cavalier about it. True justice is executed on a case-by-case basis. The fact that God Himself is Justice should bring great comfort to our souls when we realize the complexities and often impossibilities of meting out justice in every case. Eugene Cho in his book Ovverated: Are we More in Love with the Idea of Changing the World Than Actually Changing the World, observes. God’s justice is His plan of redemption for a broken world. God’s justice is renewing the world to where He would have intended it to be. Justice is not just a thing that is good. Justice is not merely doing good. Justice is not something that’s moral or right or fair. Justice is not, in itself, a set of ethics. Justice is not just an aggregation of the many justice-themed verses throughout the Scriptures. Justice is not trendy, glamorous, cool, or sexy. Justice isn’t a movement. Justice is so much more, and the understanding of this fullness is central to the work that we do in pursuing justice. Eugene Cho, Overrated: Are We More in Love with the Idea of Changing the World Than Actually Changing the World? Justice is a Person. A person we can know, love and pursue through Scripture and obedience. He is a Person who is willing to give us His wisdom. He alone can teach us how to live justly, love mercy and walk humbly with Him. He alone is the safe tower to which all those who have suffered grave injustice can run. This God We Love is TruthIn war, truth is the first casualty, attributed to Greek writer/poet Aeschylus (525BC - 456BC). In today’s culture truth is being cannibalized by opinion-T. D. Jakes Paradoxically, the day I was almost kidnapped by a cult, I had been tasked by some parents whose daughter was flirting with Buddhism to take her to lunch and talk her back to Jesus. We had a wonderful meal and conversation. She was a talented young lady whom I loved. When we got back to where her car had been parked, there was a bus of a cult parked nearby. They had been circulating through Santa Barbara and were known for wearing dark olive blankets over their shoulders, and rummaging through dumpsters. I said to my friend out of the blue, “If God wants us to talk with them, let’s ask that someone comes off the bus and invites us in.” Immediately someone walked off the bus and invited us in, saying we would have to take off anything leather. My friend had sandals and I had a leather key fob we left behind. We were ushered to the back of the bus that had no seats, just bright blue carpet. We were with the women, two of which were silently sewing some white robes. It didn’t occur to me at that moment those robes might have been for us. The men were at the front of the bus talking excitedly about some movie. Their leader was egotistically pontificating away, relishing the attention. It didn’t take me long, to hear myself asking provocatively,, “By what authority do you lead these people?” The leader reddened up with anger and spurted out. “I am that I am!” I again listened to myself reply, “No, you most certainly are not, and I can prove it!” I hadn’t remotely planned on challenging him. I was in complete observation mode. When I opened my mouth, there was an audible gasp from the women surrounding me who apparently weren’t allowed to talk to the men. I was as shocked as they were to hear myself. “In fact, I'll prove you’re a charlatan and deceiving these people.” I still didn’t know what was coming next.. Not a single word was premeditated. “I am going to ask you to call down the worst punishment you possibly can on me, and nothing whatsoever is going to happen.” The little vein on the side of his temple popped out and started throbbing. He replied, “Get off this bus, I don’t want my people to see your burnt carcass.” I replied, “I’d be happy to get off your bus, but I want everyone here to know what comes next, because you know you are powerless and you are not God and you know nothing is going to happen to me, so you are going to have the bus roar off, so your people don’t see that nothing whatsoever is going to happen, and conclude that you are a deceiver.” I slowly, dramatically walked from the back of the bus to the front exit, hoping my friend was following me. She was. That leader years later was eventually imprisoned for multiple murders, drug running and other charges. I was young and careless and hadn’t considered the bus could have roared off with the two of us. It would have been quite challenging to explain to her parents. Truth encounters are rarely tame. Hopefully someone on that bus realized that day that their leader was a deceiver. Truth is a gift we can give to anyone, at anytime, anywhere, when empowered by the Holy Spirit, because God doesn’t have truth. He is truth. As my friend Joyce Williams says, "Truth is the living, breathing Christ-at work in our lives." God dispossessing us of lies, and us receiving His Person and Word as truth is a lifetime pursuit toward wholeness. I have a dear friend I call Egg-sorter a name my spell checked came up with when I texted exhorter. She is relentless in holding my feet to the fire about truth. I never leave her without being challenged on some level of my thinking. Right now, she is on an earnest campaign for me to live another twenty years, because since I was four, and being a confirmed hedonist, I’ve always wanted to experience the glory of heaven as soon as possible. The gift of listening to my Egg-Sorter, Heat Seeking Missile friend, is that God as truth, peels off me the lies that keep me stuck like Winnie the Poo at Piglets house where I can’t go forward or backwards. I have learned to listen to my friend, because she carries a sharp sword of truth to disentangle me from lies about myself. She is a freedom fighter. Invite, befriend, and listen to freedom fighters God sends you who carry sharp swords of truth. Since we first walked the garden, we have been susceptible to lies. The first lie, “Has God said?” Is the lie that spawns all other lies. Our susceptibility to lies is enhanced with billions of dollars of advertising and political spin. Now with artificial intelligence, our exposure to a whole constellation of lies and our need for discernment is exponentially increased. How do we tell truth from the lie? We Invite Truth Himself Daily to Search Us Search me, God, and know my heart; Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way* in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23,24 *literally “way of pain.” When we invite Truth Himself to come search us, He is not rubbing His hands together with glee, putting on His Sherlock Holmes hat, looking for malignancies. He is intent rather, on freeing us from lies that enslave, oppress, and keep us captivate and far from our destiny. Truth Himself is the ultimate Freedom Fighter. Pause right here and ask the Spirit of Truth, “What lie do I most believe about myself? What is the basic lie of my personal operating system?” I asked that question recently and heard the Spirit of Truth say tongue in cheek, “You mean fat old lady?” Be fearless in asking. Ask daily. Ask not only what the lies are about what you believe to be true of you, but the lies you believe about God. Like maybe the lie He is not all that into you. Or perhaps the lie that you will never be enough for Him. Or that the God Who Counts The Hairs on Our Head, doesn’t really know us. I’d suggest you ask, when you go to bed and first thing when you rise. We are all lie magnets and like taking a shower, just because you did it yesterday doesn’t mean you don’t need to do it today. Keep a journal. You’ll find those pet demon lies recirculate in your head and rarely loose their voice. Don’t just ask the Spirit of Truth what the lie is but ask what is the Truth? What does Truth Himself say about the lie you've embraced as reality? Truth is never a set of abstract prepositions. Truth is a person. Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life.” Jesus doesn’t have a way. He is the way. He doesn’t have a code of truth, He is truth. Jesus doesn’t have a life to give you. He is life. He is all that we desire, all that we need. Truth Himself will always answer an enquiring heart that seeks to understand in order to obey. Ask, ask, ask. God will never tire of you asking. Some lies are buried so deep within us, that only the Holy Spirit can reveal them. Invite the loving searching gaze of Truth to walk through the inner lands of your soul. Recently my Egg-Sorter friend wielded her loving but sharp sword toward my desire not to live to be old. As I took her words to Jesus, I realized I was angry with Him. I had four dear friends, who had massively impacted the world, who had lived to a very old age and had longed to go be with Jesus. As their age increased, and their health declined they became a enormous burden to their families. I did not want that to be my story. As I encountered Truth Himself, I realized their story was between them and God. Like Peter when being told how he would die, asking so what about John? It was none of my business. I ended up settling out of court with God on the issue, although I still have a strong preference for not living to a very old age. We Listen Carefully to Others Who Love Us and Wield Sharp Swords My friend Lynn has been a many decades Freedom Fighter in my life. She listens carefully, rephrases thoughts with compassion, and wields her unique swift sword at the enemy of my soul. Don’t run friend from the Nathans in your life. One of David’s greatest strengths was not shooting Nathan when he confronted David with truth about Bathsheba. Of course, it helps if your Truth speaking friend wraps the truth with metaphor and story. Don’t shoot your Nathans. When people who love you encounter you with truth, embrace it and let it have full voice in your life. Don’t try to protect your carefully curated life. God is after your liberation. He as truth is your greatest hope of wholeness. We Live Lives Immersed in God’s Words God’s Word is true. Learn to cherish it, imbibe it, sing it, esteem it better than your necessary food. Listen to it while you drive, or shower, or do whatever you do in a day. Prize God’s Word so that if someone stuck you with a fork, Scripture would ooze out. Biblical illiteracy is a fertile soil to deception. Most of the Psalms have been put to music. You can find them on YouTube. Find an artist you like and listen as you fall asleep. Often when I am having a hard time sleeping, I’ll put on a 10 hour track of Scripture being read with waves crashing in the background. Give yourself a Truth diet of Scripture put to music like Handel’s Messiah, and listen till it becomes the soundtrack to your life. Then when lies come knocking, Truth Himself will answer the door. This God We Love is FaithfulIt is not in trying to be faithful but resting in the Faithful One. -Hudson Taylor But you, O Lord, your mercy-seat love is limitless, reaching higher than the highest heavens. Your great faithfulness is infinite, stretching over the whole earth. Psalms 36:5 TPT I have a friend who just collapsed and died. I’ve been grieving for his family. I’ve been trying to get God to worry with me about the future of his wife and children. But then I remember, God is faithful. He doesn’t have faithfulness, He is faithful. He is the essence, the solid earth core of all that we can experience about faithfulness. God is not fickle, He is faithful. He is steadfast. He doesn’t change. He cannot be anything but faithful. It is who He is. He is the Shepherd of our days, the faithful, tender Shepherd who leads us through the dark valley of death. He carries us through murky waters of disaster. He spreads tables laden with delicacies and waits on us amid our enemies. He is the keeper and restorer of our souls. We need never fear His abandonment. My grieving heart finds comfort for my friends in knowing the essence, the nature, the DNA of the God who will be there for them in coming days and decades. My heart of love for them and concern for their future rest on God’s faithfulness, His character. All we know of faithfulness is sourced in Him. God because He is faithfulness Himself, is never going to change His mind about you. Read that again and then again until it sinks into your soul. Perhaps you were raised like me, where you could be loved and adored one minute and loathed the next. Being loved a second ago, gave you zero assurance of your present status. It was terrifying, like living every second of your life on a high wire above the Grand Canyon. Your balance a second ago, didn’t protect you from a disastrous bone shattering fall seconds later. So, I like many others, became a performer, constantly trying to impress and deserve love in this present moment. I know you loved me yesterday, but do you like me now? When you see highly competent people in their craft, there is often a wound that propels them into excellence, especially in ministry. This faithful God we love is not going to ever change His mind about you. We see God’s faithfulness written large in His love letter to the world, Israel. Over and over the relational pattern repeats. God reveals Himself, the people initially pledge to follow Him, then they forsake Him, then terrible consequences ensue, they cry out to Him to save and promise to obey. He saves them and then the whole pattern starts over. It’s as predictable as sunrise and sunset. And yet His love remains. I am convinced that Jesus, the Messiah, was sent as a servant to the Jewish people to fulfill the promises God made to our ancestors and to prove God’s faithfulness. Romans 15:8 TPT While this pattern on repeat tells us a lot about our own fragile earthenware, it tells us even more about who God is. If we are faithless, He abides faithful still, the Scriptures tell us, But even if we are faithless, he will still be full of faith, for he never wavers in his faithfulness to us! 2 Timothy 2:13 TPT You may have heard the story of the college president whose wife received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. In 1990, Robertson McQuilkin at the peak of his career, resigned as president of Columbia Bible College to become the full-time caregiver for his wife, Muriel, who had Alzheimer’s. Robertson did this because Muriel was much happier and a peace when she was near him, and was terror stricken when he was not close. The first two years after diagnosis, the school had a companion with her, so Robertson could go to his office. Muriel would walk a mile round trip sometimes up to ten times a day just to be near him. At night preparing her for bed, McQuilkin would occasionally find she had bloody feet. When asked if he was resentful for the interruption he said, “I don’t feel like I’ve given anything up. Our life is not the way we plot it or plan it.... All along I’ve just accepted whatever assignment the Lord gave me. This was his assignment. I know I’m not supposed to have that kind of reaction, but you asked me, and I have to be honest. …It is not like meeting a $10 million budget or designing a program to grasp some emerging global opportunity, to be sure. And it is not as public or exhilarating. But it demands greater resources than I could have imagined, and thus highlights more clearly than ever my own inadequacies, as well as provides constant opportunity to draw on our Lord's vast reservoir of resources.” In his article “Living by Vows” he writes about his care for Muriel: “… When the time came, the decision was firm. It took no great calculation. It was a matter of integrity. Had I not promised, 42 years before, “in sickness and in health . . . till death do us part”? This was no grim duty to which I stoically resigned, however. It was only fair. She had, after all, cared for me for almost four decades with marvelous devotion; now it was my turn. And such a partner she was! If I took care of her for 40 years, I would never be out of her debt.” Reflecting on the attention given to his resignation, Robertson said: “I have been startled by the response to the announcement of my resignation. Husbands and wives renew marriage vows, pastors tell the story to their congregations. It was a mystery to me, until a distinguished oncologist, who lives constantly with dying people, told me, “Almost all women stand by their men; very few men stand by their women.” Perhaps people sensed this contemporary tragedy and somehow were helped by a simple choice I considered the only option.” Robertson McQuilkin will be forever famous in heaven for his faithfulness that wasn’t convenient. This God we love will never discard us in our old age or infirmity, for a more vibrant, shiny, enticing thing. He will never replace us in His heart. Our souls are secured in His love because He is not only Love Himself, He is Faithfulness. In uncertainty about the future, God’s faithfulness steadies our steps. I will never lose sight of your steadfast love for me. Your faithfulness has steadied my steps. Psalms 26:3 In a world of fickle, disordered loves, this God we love offers us the security of Himself and all that He is. He faithfulness is our security come what may. Your perfection and faithfulness are my bodyguards, for you are my hope and I trust in you as my only protection. Psalms 25:21 Faithful One, We throw the weight of our insecurities on you. We don't know the future, we don't know our tomorrows and the joys and calamities that await. We don't know our trajectory of health and thriving. But we know You, the ever faithful One who loves us and gives Himself for us. You will not abandon us to uncertainty. You will never replace us in Your heart. When the mountains fall into the sea, and all around us is chaos, Your faithful love is our secured future |
Fawn Parish
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