A Simple Cure

Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. . . (Psalm 37:3-7)

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. (1 Timothy 6:17)

I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destry; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (Jesus, in John 10:9-10)

I hate when people tell me what's wrong with my life but don't tell me how to fix it. Yesterday I talked about what was wrong. Today I want to suggest a way to fix it. It may not be difficult. Most of our idols, at least as Christians, are not intrisically bad things. They're just good things in the wrong place.

“God gives us, richly, all things to enjoy.” This is a glorious truth we can embrace wholeheartedly. We can embrace His gifts as well. We just have to make sure we don't squeeze too tightly, and, even more importantly, we have to remember where the gifts come from. Repenting from idolatry may be as simple as rearranging our priorities. We need to make sure the gifts come below the Giver in the hierarchy that governs our lives.

Too often, in our lives as broken human beings, the gift slips into the place of the Giver. The means to joy becomes the end instead of just a stepping stone to the real destination. Jesus is the “end” of all true joy—the apex, the final resting place. That's why, when our focus slips down to the gift, we live with the vague uneasiness that something is wrong. It is wrong. It's not the gift that's wrong, it's just that the gift is out of place.

When I spend time on my computer, it needs to be for the right purpose. When Jesus is looking over my shoulder, participating in my activity, it's holy, whether it's writing a blog post, or editing my novel, or playing Spider Solitaire. But when any of those activities becomes the focus, rather than the presence of Jesus in them, they become idols.

Does the presence of Jesus always have to be conscious? I don't think so. But I find when I stray too far from that conscious awareness, I begin to feel antsy. That's when my life seems formless and void. It's then I need to take some time to be still before Him.

It happens at least once a day for me.

Life worshipping the One True God is gloriously exciting. When He fills my vision, I am on top of the world. It doesn't take much to give me that joy, but it also doesn't take much to spoil it.

My prayer is that I will be so sensitive to His presence in my life, and so eager for His blessing, that I can't stray a millimeter away without recognizing the presence of a thief in the sheepfold.

Jeremiah Was Not a Bullfrog

Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, all you clans of the house of Israel. This is what the Lord says: “What fault did your fathers find in me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves. They did not ask, 'Where is the Lord, who brought us up out of Egypt and led us through the barren wilderness. . .' The prophets prophesied by Baal, following worthless idols.” (Jeremiah 2:4-6, 8)

Lately I've been wondering if Jeremiah's prophecy against the children of Israel might also be for me—for us as Christians in North America especially. I don't want to think so. How can it be? We love Jesus; We cry out to Him every day; We want Him to be our only God.

But so did the Israelites. God said, “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert.” (Jeremiah 2:2) This describes me. If this prophecy is still in the Bible, and the Bible describes the human condition, and human beings are still human, maybe I need to consider if this book of Jeremiah has something to say to me today.

I often feel lost, spiritually. I feel like the culture around me has absorbed my spirit, has robbed me of my confidence in God's victory over evil, has immobilized me. So much of the time I don't feel on top of my life, free and full of the joy of the Lord. I wonder if the idolatry Jeremiah speaks of might be my affliction as well?

An idol is anything I trust in other than the Lord. What I worship is the thing that captivates me, that occupies most of my thought and my time. It's what I spend the most money on. It's the screen saver, or the desktop background of my mind. Is that, for me, the One True God, the God of Israel, or is it something else?

I'm not sure. It's so easy for me to trust in my own ability or power or inclinations. So hard to relinquish that control, turn it over to God.

What occupies most of my thought and time? These days, it's the computer, and not always the kind of soul searching I'm doing on it at the moment.

What do I spend the most money on? I use money to buy “things” that will make life more comfortable, more interesting—things to distract me from the vague sense that there might be something missing in my life.

Where does my mind wander when the mental demands of living relax a little bit? Usually to the next thing I should be “doing,” which leads to my “to do” list. It's on my desktop, and it lists everything except the most important thing.

The most important thing is spending time with the One True God. Time reading the Bible, not just a verse snatched here and there but a chapter, or even a book now and then without interruption. Time sitting and meditating on what I read. Time quietly listening, in case there's a specific application the Holy Spirit wants to make to my life. It's important that I pray with a focus on the One who is listening instead of on the tangled messes I'm bringing before Him to unravel. I need to take time to be still.

I don't like Jeremiah. I'd rather read the Psalms. Or the Gospels, though even they are sometimes a little unsettling; Jesus sounded a lot like Jeremiah in some places. I really only want to hear things that make me comfortable. But Jeremiah was not a bullfrog. He was a bull horn. He shouted God's message loud and clear. I think I need to listen, whether I want to or not.

God's Love is Not Soft

We can never overestimate how much God loves us, but we can, and often do, misunderstand how His love operates in our lives.

My grandaughter is nearly three and she runs all the time. Consequently, she falls lots. Every day she gets a new bruise or cut on her shins. And when it happens, you'd think the world was ending.

She screams and holds the affected limb in both arms protectively. No adult is allowed to get near the injury and, to listen to her howl, you'd think there would never be a cure for what ails her. She absolutely refuses to let anyone wash away the dirt, because that will make it hurt worse, and it's all about the pain, after all.

We smile, but we're often like that in our own lives. God, in his love, lets us romp around, knowing full well we're going to get some scrapes and bruises as a result of our wholehearted enthusiasm about whatever we're doing. He loves to see us run. When we fall, He wants to pick us up and treat the injury, but we yell and scream, as if it's the end of the world, and we won't let Him touch it.

In his book, War Child, Emmanuel Jal says that we, in North America, have a romanticized view of children. Though he wishes every child could be free of pain and suffering, he realizes that the circumstances of life sometimes prevent that from happening. He prays and works for peace in the world, but he doesn't waste time lamenting his own pain as a child of war.

We North Americans have a romanticized view of pain in general. Our wealth gives us the means to control the amount of pain that enters our lives, so when something hurtful worms its way into our comfortable world, we are shocked, offended, as if it had no right.

But pain happens as a natural part of a healthy life in this unhealthy world we have created. The pain is part of what God uses to grow us and stretch our spiritual wings. God's love is not soft. It is not sentimental. That doesn't mean He won't happily take us on his lap and hold us when we need it. He does that whenever we let him. But His love doesn't protect us from all pain and suffering.

I've heard people say they could never believe in a God who lets bad things happen to good people. What they're really saying is that they can't believe in a God who would allow people the freedom to live their lives according to their own choices. These people want a God who legislates love.

The real God is above that. The real God allows his creatures to make evil choices, and He will not negate the results of those choices. But he died to give us the freedom to repent of those choices if we choose, and He will redeem the evil as it affects our lives if we let him. Often, however, we are too busy screaming and protecting our wounds to let him.

Knowing the Unknowable

We can never overestimate how much God loves us. His love is boundless.

We can do nothing to make His love for us bigger or smaller. We can receive His love or reject it; we can give Him praise for it or take it for granted; we can use or abuse it. Through everything the love stays the same. He loves us no less or no more when we do all those things.

We are free to walk away from God's love, but when we turn back, it's always there, just behind us, waiting for the turnaround.

Amazing. Incomprehensible.

Paul writes, “...And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17-19, emphasis mine).

There's a kind of “knowing” that leaves us awash with the love of God. That knowing goes beyond mind and words. It's a knowing that takes our breath away, like jumping off a mountaintop wrapped in a paraglider.

The kind of knowing God wants us to experience demands that kind of breathless risk-taking. He dares us to take advantage, to test the limits, to find the love limitless, and to rest against it.

I want to receive that love. I want to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. I want that love to wash out over the whole world.

God. . .Vulnerable?

I had a strange experience the other day. We were sitting in a meeting, quietly waiting on God in prayer. At first, as I was listening for God's voice, I heard nothing. Then one word began impressing itself on me, the word "Father."

I had been thinking recently of my human father, who was killed when I was a child, but this "Father" seemed to refer to God instead. As the repetition of the word became more insistent, I saw a figure that was God, standing at a distance. He began moving closer to me and as He came, I felt our relationship changing, becoming more intimate. He became for me more familiar as He drew nearer, and more vulnerable.

That's the strange thought. That God would be vulnerable.

Is He?

I think so. Love makes a person vulnerable because love involves risk. Love is dangerous to the lover. At least the kind of love God has for us—free and unconditional. He takes a chance that we will not respond to His love. He risks being hurt, deeply. The deeper the love, the deeper the potential hurt, and the greater the risk he takes.

A vulnerable God. An awesome thought.

Is this a model for the way we should love? Are we willing to give our love wholeheartedly, unconditionally to another, aware of the risk, and willing to take it, for the sake of love? For the sake of the loved one?

A Vulnerable God

I had a strange experience the other day. We were sitting in a meeting, quietly waiting on God in prayer. At first, as I was listening for God's voice, I heard nothing. Then one word began impressing itself on me, the word "Father."

I had been thinking recently of my human father, who was killed when I was a child, but this "Father" seemed to refer to God instead. As the repetition of the word became more insistent, I saw a figure that was God, standing at a distance. He began moving closer to me and as He came, I felt our relationship changing, becoming more intimate. He became for me more familiar as He drew nearer, and more vulnerable.

That's the strange thought. That God would be vulnerable.

Is He?

I think so. Love makes a person vulnerable because love involves risk. Love is dangerous to the lover. At least the kind of love God has for us—free and unconditional. He takes a chance that we will not respond to His love. He risks being hurt, deeply. The deeper the love, the deeper the potential hurt, and the greater the risk he takes.

A vulnerable God. An awesome thought.

Is this a model for the way we should love? Are we willing to give our love wholeheartedly, unconditionally to another, aware of the risk, and willing to take it. For the sake of love?

Everything I Need to Know About God I Learned in Sunday School

Jesus love me, this I know.
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong.
They are weak but He is strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus love me.
The Bible tells me so.

Jesus loves me when I'm good.
When I do the things I should.
Jesus loves me when I'm bad.
Though it makes Him very sad.

Jesus loves me, He who died,
Heaven's gates to open wide.
He will wash away my sin.
Let His little child come in.

Yes! Jesus loves me.
Yes! Jesus loves me.
Yes! Jesus loves me.
The Bible tells me so.

Jesus Love Me