Trust? NOW? Are you crazy?

I trust in you, O Lord;
    I say, “You are my God.”
My times are in your hand;
    rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!

Psalm 31: 14, 15

The walls were closing in. David could feel the hot and abrasive breath of the hounds of destruction that were relentlessly pursuing him. Enemies on the one side and back stabbing friends on the other. Life was grim, and death’s approach was surely imminent. 

It is not possible to live for very long and to not find oneself in situations and circumstances that cause uncertainty, fear, anguish, and even terror to surround our days. This world provides a harsh environment in which we dwell. Death is a certainty; so, we hope that it won’t come too soon and that its pain isn’t beyond manageable. Yet, God wants to reassure us of certain fundamental truths, and He uses the experiences and the words of His chief poet to share them with us.

There is strength and comfort to be found in the simple comprehension of faith, 

“I trust in you, O Lord”. 

On this day and in my current situation, I can lean back, place the full weight of my burden upon You, and trust in Your loving and gracious nature to enfold me in a firm and unwavering embrace. You’ve got me, and You’ve got it in hand.

I know this truth;

“You are my God.”

The Lord of the universe rules my life. I am not subject to any of the gods of this world. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, and well-intentioned friends do not provide me with ultimate truth and eternal wisdom, for You, O Lord, are my great and enduring counselor and the lover of my soul.

Today was good or today was hard; yet, the clock that governs all is expressed thus;

“My times are in your hand.” 

Time can be a relentless foe when there are challenges to face and decisions to be made. Yet, it is amazing how much more of it there seems to be when I turn my anxiety over to the Lord and allow His calm counsel space to influence my frazzled heart and mind. Then, when the day is done and I settle into reflection on the course that my life has taken, I see that each of my days has been set out by God for His purposes and that all of the days that are to come are granted as His blessed gift to me.

So, my final plea, in light of God’s loving care and provision;

“Rescue me!”

This is the ultimate expression of faith, trust, and hope. I can stop striving and seeking after the perfect answer to all that is confronting me. My racing heart is made calm, and my worried mind is granted rest. This does not mean that I stop engaging with the problems before me, but it does mean that I can do so in the sure knowledge that there are answers and that the burden for their provision rests in the hands and upon the shoulders of my loving Almighty Lord.  

 

Comfort In Conflict

Tension. Discomfort. Unease. These are words that describe feelings that typically involve some form of conflict and that are generally avoided by most people. We don’t like to be in a state where we are uncomfortable, for that condition also implies a lack of control over one’s personal environment. No one likes to be out of control, especially when it comes to those few inches of air that closely surround us so that we can call it our own. 

Avoidance is what happens, for the most part, when we are made sufficiently uncomfortable. We diffuse, disassociate, or deny that there is any real need for engagement in the subjects or the relationships that form the point of irritation. Push back and deferral are tactics that are used to gain time and space away from the potential confrontation, and these are frequently employed in the hopes that the issue or concern will either self-resolve or that it will become buried beneath other more current urgencies. This is all too human a set of behaviors, and it almost always leads to a worsening of the situation at hand through damage done to relationships and by stagnation of even regression in the state of being in the life of families, friendship groups, and entities corporate.

The most significant challenge that is to be faced when confronted with high tension situations is found in overcoming the resistance to attempts at direct resolution that will be encountered from people that are also participants in the objective events and, perhaps most troubling, from people that one might look to for objective advise and wisdom. Simply stated, people do not like to engage in hard conversations, and they also do not like to witness others doing so. All of this makes entering into a proactive or planned process of such engagement very difficult to accomplish. 

If the relationship between the participants is intimate and personal, there are special challenges and concerns at work in the engagement. Yet, these are the sorts of situations where natural need and proximal pressures may work to force engagement even if they cannot require resolution. When the concern surrounds the relationships among larger and more corporate groups, deferral and denial of need are most easily practiced. In these situations, there is often a hierarchy of authority that can either choose to embrace the process of resolution or it can decide to quash subordinate’s drive for it. Leadership courage is the characteristic that most profoundly influences this choice. 

That is not to say that deferral is a cowardly choice in all circumstances. In fact, it can be the boldest thing that can be done in some situations; yet, when deferral is selected, it requires a very special form and intensity of leadership so that all of the parties are made fully aware of the fact that whatever was causal for the tension is still to be faced into and to be dealt with by all of the parties involved. Additionally, a time line and a preliminary plan for this process need to be communicated, agreed upon, and follow through must be actively managed. On the other hand, denial is never an appropriate reaction. If people are feeling relational or topical tension, discomfort, or unease, those feelings must be treated as real as they are addressed. Should denial be the response that is received, it needs to be challenged and rejected as an invalid response. If denial is one’s own initial response, it should be set aside in favor of a more open and engaged approach to the concerns at hand.

More often than not it is important and appropriate to begin the process of engagement as soon as the conflict has been identified. The first step in all of this is usually a simple recognition of the fact that there are issues to be faced into. From there the parties involved can establish and identify the concerns and the topics that are to be engaged during the process to follow. When this is happening with a larger or a more corporate group, leadership will be challenged to remain open to the stated and the unspoken concerns that others may hold. It is easy to exercise leadership authority in a manner that frames decisions as wisdom when they are, in fact, primarily driven by the need for control that leads to a pre-contrived desired outcome or that attempts to conclude the matter with everyone feeling good yet not accomplishing anything substantive by way of growth or transition.

Times of conflict are a part of the way that God has designed His people to engage with our world with its brokenness. In our world today we struggle to relate in a healthy and a loving manner as we disagree on many subjects and about the ways that we live out our understanding of God’s desire for the conduct of our lives. Yet, we are not designed by our Creator to settle into and remain in this state of tension and relational discord. Instead, God desires that we would work toward using the existence of  these differences as opportunities for gaining in understanding of others and for strengthening the bonds of our love in Christ as we set aside dogmatic adherence to personal ideas, thoughts, and opinions for the sake of reaching a place of mutual respect.

This leads us back to the concept of leadership courage. Truly bold leadership is also humble in its openness and its willingness to be found lacking or misguided in some of what it has held as true or best. These leaders are risk takers in the realm of relationships. They are able to trust that God has their back when it comes to stepping out into the unknown in order to resolve conflict and to release tension so that their people can grow and thrive in their service to the Kingdom. Relational tensions, whether caused by personal actions, by cultural concerns, or by other issues, are among the most significant causes of affliction and suffering in our world and in the church today. God has promised to bring us His comfort in these situations. We must trust Him to be true to His word in these matters; so, we need to face into these challenges as they come before us and engage in the honest and open dialogue that is the Lord’s path to transformative resolution and to the more abundant life that follows.

For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.      

2 Corinthians 1: 5   

 

The Blood of Peace

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Ephesians 2: 13 (ESV)

Blood is messy. Having blood drawn can be a bit painful, and it is almost always emotionally uncomfortable. People are designed so that we don’t readily surrender our blood, for it is utterly essential for our bodies to survive. Blood is also one of the greatest gifts that any of us can give to others; so, donating blood is something to seriously consider doing. For us, this sort of thing is a choice to be made, and the ramifications of doing it last for only a very short time. This was not how it was for Jesus. The blood that He gave was eternally precious, and giving it had an effect upon Him that was momentarily devastating. Jesus shed that blood a very long time ago; yet, the impact of its being spilled is very much with us today, and the stain from its taking is apparent in our world still. People have tried to remove it or to cover it over with any number of weak endeavors and beliefs, but Jesus remains present and relevant despite all that we might do.

The amount of blood that Jesus shed, the drops and rivulets of it as it might have pooled near the foot of His cross, is of little consequence. What truly matters is the sacrifice that He made out of obedience to the Father and also of His own free will, for that sacrifice changed forever the way that people can gain access to our Creator and God. The life that Jesus surrendered and the blood that flowed from His wounds was the sufficient sacrifice that paid for all of the sinful disobedience that has separated every person on this earth form God. That painfully extracted blood brought about peace between the Divine Creator and His Creation. This is a peace that infuses our souls with new life, and this peaceful status provides each of us, in Christ, with a purpose for living in the fullest expression of that life.

This world is still filled with agony and strife. The peace that Jesus purchased with the shedding of His blood and sealed with His resurrection from earthly death is suffering through its birth pains. Evil with the brokenness of its chaotic rampage through the world is very real and is present in almost all places and in many forms. Yet, it will not prevail, and its death-giving promises of human power and prosperity are nothing more than a bait and switch artist’s feeble attempts to close a fast sale. Christ’s blood seals His people for a higher purpose. We are here to work diligently for the redemption of our world, and we are to do this by living out our new identity as people who have been set free to love others without reservation and to care for the needs of the people that we encounter with sacrificial generosity. Even in these days of new found fears and trials, Christ’s blood is more than powerful against it all, and He calls to us to draw near to Him and to reach out as He does with love, grace, and mercy to all in our world who are hungry, weary, and fearful. 

 

Restoration and Health

Behold, I will bring to it health and healing, and I will heal them and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security.

Jeremiah 33: 6

The Lord, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, is making a promise to the nations of Judah and Israel and to their people. Their long and harsh days of living in exile will end, and the devastation that has fallen upon their homelands and their cities will be undone. In this case, these promises were brought to literal fruition. The people did return, and Jerusalem, as the main city and the capitol of the combined nations, was rebuilt to an even greater scale and grander splendor than before. From God’s point of view the real intent in all of this and His heart’s desire was for repentance and for restoration of relationship. The Lord’s heart yearns for His people to draw near to Him. He wanted the Israelites to love and to follow Him and to live within the guidance of His will during all of their days and in every aspect of their lives. Things are not different today, for this is what God desires of us as well.

We are living through the days of a form of exile. The normal patterns of life have been interrupted, and we have been forced to set aside the usual rhythm of living in order to deal with this season of coronavirus. We are all growing weary of the separation from others, the sense of isolation that it brings, and of the concerns over health and safety that are a part of these new daily routines. All of us have been forced to suffer through significant changes in our lives, and many of us are undergoing real and profound stresses and struggles as a result of those changes. In these days, I find encouragement in the knowledge that the Lord has always been faithful to bring about restoration and to seek after His people in order to bring to them healing, security, and peace. God consistently works to accomplish His purposes; however, I find that it is not always so easy to trust in them and to rest easily in the Lord’s promises.

Yet, these days when many of the things that would normally occupy our time and fill our days are on hold may provide some rich opportunities for contemplation and for consideration of what restoration might truly mean for each of us. A question to consider could be, “How does God want me to live when all of this is behind us?” There are aspects of most of our daily routines that are less than productive for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Most of us possess thought patterns and ways that we use our time and our resources that might be best left behind in the rubble heap as we engage in rebuilding life during the days of restoration that are to come soon. These are the sorts of things that can be taken to the Lord in prayer today. They are the sorts of things that scripture reading will shed light upon, and they are worthy of reflection during times of contemplation. I believe that the Lord will bring about healing and restoration out of these hard days, but I also think that He desires for me to participate with Him in seeking His healing and renewed focus and direction for my own heart and for our land.

 

This is Eternal Life

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

John 17: 3

Although Jesus is in the presence of the disciples and some of His other close friends and followers, He is talking only to the Father at this time. These words are uttered during a time of deep and reflective prayer. There is little time left on Jesus’ earthly clock; so, the terrible, marvelous events of His final days of dwelling among us are already starting to unfold. During these hours Jesus is acutely aware of the fact that there is much more to life than just what people experience on our own. Life extends beyond the bounds of a fleshly existence on earth, and even that portion of our time can be greatly expanded in its depth, value, and scope by virtue of the presence of a relationship with God. 

It might seem that Jesus is being very narrow in His approach to the subject of knowing God, but He is speaking from a position of knowledge and of authority. This is the point in which our faith comes into play, for without faith in the truth of what Jesus said and belief in who He is, He is nothing more than a wise person or philosopher and He might be a serious nutcase with His claims about being from God and being, in fact, God. Yet, faith dictates that Jesus was God from before the inception of time, that He was God walking upon this earth and breathing the same air as each of us takes in, and that He continues beyond a human death as He dwells again in that heavenly realm as Lord, and Sovereign King ruling with the Father over all of creation. This is the reality that Jesus was describing in His prayer.

This is also the reality that Jesus invites each of us to join. We are asked to give up the half-formed lives that we were given at birth and join with Him as He grants to us the gift of full knowledge of the one true God and Father of all. It is at this time that life actually begins. As we leave behind the broken and partially realized priorities and allegiances that we have held onto as our anchors for daily functioning and surrender all to Christ, we are reborn into the presence of the love, grace, mercy, and truth that flesh out a full image of who and of what God is and of how He works in our lives. In turning toward God we are also granted understanding of His will and purpose for our lives. In so doing, the Lord provides each of us with the wisdom, understanding, and strength that we will need to enter into that calling and to live it out for the balance of the earthly days that we will be allotted. So, Jesus, in those final earthly hours, was actually praying for me and for you as He calls upon us to leave this world behind and join with Him in the eternal living that is at the center of a relationship with God. 

 

Shepherd and King

“And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

   are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for from you shall come a ruler

   who will shepherd my people Israel.”

Matthew 2: 6

To the best of my understanding, Jesus was never formally tended sheep; yet, he shepherds a flock that numbers in the millions. As Matthew refers to the prophet Micah’s comment about the birthplace of the coming Messiah, he also mentions a distinctive that stood out in the first century and that remains remarkable today. In Jesus we have a king, a person with great authority and holding the power to exercise that authority to its fullest extent. However, this king chooses to tend to the needs of His people and to guide them to the safety of righteousness. He could have made things much easier if He had simply taken control of this world and utilized His remarkable might and control over all of the forces of nature and of humanity to accomplish His wishes. Instead, Jesus lived a humble existence and experienced the death of a criminal so that people for all time hence would have direct and immediate access to God.

Jesus leads us into the presence of all that is holy, righteous, and loving as He operates as the shepherd of the human flock. There are many of us sheep that choose to follow Jesus as our ruler and king, but there are also many more that reject Him. Despite the rejection of so many, Jesus continues to seek after each and every person on this earth. He is that shepherd who never stops searching and seeking after all that are lost. His heart breaks at the thought of not sharing this life and the eternity to follow with each of the people that walk upon the earth. Frankly, this love and devotion is impossible for me to fully grasp or to understand. I do not care for or about people to this degree. Yet, God does, and He determined to do something about our rebellion and rejection. Thus, Jesus was sent into this world, lived as He did, and was crucified as the perfect sacrifice for all of our sinfulness. In His death we have the payment for our forgiveness, and in His resurrection we have rebirth into true and everlasting life.

This is the life that Jesus shepherds us into. He provides us with the wisdom and the understanding that is required to live well and to love greatly. Christ grants gifts of the Spirit to each of His people, and He guides us into using those gifts in a place and a manner that demonstrate the presence of God to others and that bring honor and glory to Christ’s name. Jesus is a shepherd for our hearts, minds, and souls, and His care and provision are with us through all of the journeys that we take in life. There is no valley too deep or mountain too steep for Christ to travel there with us. We will encounter nothing in this life that is beyond Christ’s capability or capacity to overcome. The victory may not look like what we would design or describe it to be from our perspective; yet, it will be the one that accomplishes God’s objectives and that fits into His plan for eternity. We can truly rest in the comfort of our shepherd’s care as we also seek to live with bold confidence by proclaiming Christ as our Lord, King, and Good Shepherd.  

 

Hopeful Boldness

Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech.

2 Corinthians 3: 12

My relationship with God that is formed in and through my acceptance of Jesus has changed the way that I can view the entire world. Now I am able to see beyond the moment to the much bigger reality of God’s loving grace, His desire for total communion with me, and the miraculous way that Christ’s Spirit continually works to move me ever closer to the transformation that is realized in becoming the total image-of-Christ being that is my eternal promise.

There is both comfort and challenge in this realization. The comfort comes from the sure knowledge that Christ is alive in my life, for me in every aspect of living, and throughout all of my days. The comfort also comes from God’s promise that He will continue to reveal more and more of Himself to me as I walk through life with Him. Additionally, the more I open my heart and mind to Him, the more He shows me the image of myself as viewed through the Lord’s eyes, and God’s view of me is like a picture of a beloved child that a committed father keeps on his desk. That picture frame holds the likeness of the Son, Jesus. The challenge comes from the continual realization that I am not there. I fall far short of living in the grace filled, love inspired, and truth imparting manner that is Christ’s calling to me; so, I am always being called upon by the Spirit to look deeply into God’s Word and to seek Him more of the time. 

One of the ways that I can seek God is through the nature of my speech, for there is a powerful connection between our language and our hearts. The Lord wants me to be bold, fearless and confident, in the way that I talk about Him with everyone that I encounter. This includes family, friend, neighbor, coworker, and total stranger. He wants me to talk as if Christ truly is my identity. Thus, as I speak of God, I am speaking from my own heart and mind. God also is telling me that I can always speak to Him with complete openness and honesty. He will never dismiss my thoughts as unimportant or lame, He is never too busy or preoccupied to hear me, and God always understands the true needs that are beneath the surface of my words. Also, God tells me to be honest and real with myself; yet, He reminds me that a truthful perspective of who and what I am needs to be formed from His vantage point. Being bold with myself means that I stay focused on my new identity and image that comes from Christ.   

 

The Beginning of Advent

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1: 1-5

As we have just entered into the season of Advent, this time of waiting and of anticipation, I want to look at its inception. I admit that when I have considered this idea in the past that I have usually started the thread of this part of the story with the coming of the angel to Mary. This is then traced backward in time to Old Testament prophecies of the coming Messiah which are founded in God’s words about the crushing of the serpent’s head in Genesis 3. All of this would seem to ground the narrative of God’s plan and design for our salvation and restoration into the earliest days of humanity’s earthly existence. Yet, it occurs to me that there is a quality to this that is somewhat like crisis management. By the third chapter of Genesis our ancestors have already defied God and are being set out on their long and wandering journey through life.

Although God is the ever-present and only true answer to all of the crisis that come in life, the God that I know is not surprised or caught short by anything that we do or by what happens in the world. He knows and sees and is prepared to respond to all of it. Even in His power, knowledge, and absolute capacity and capability the Lord God is always the Father. Everything in His dealings with people is framed and motivated by His unending desire for us to have a deeply intimate relationship with Him. God yearns for the time when each of us will surrender our stubborn, isolationist ways and turn to Christ in humility and submission to His righteousness. God knew from a time when the concept that we consider as time had not been created that there would be a fatal break in our relationship with Him. Yet, He proceeded with the creation of humanity, but God did so with our restoration to a relationship with Him in full view.

This point in absolute pre-history would seem to be the true inception of Advent. God always knew that He would come to dwell among humanity. He was actively preparing for that time from before the moment that he first touched the soil of the new born earth in order to form the man whose descendant we all are. God imparted the life that came from His breath, that is His Spirit, into us, and He determined that we would be brought back to life from the self-imposed grave that we entered through disobedience. In our time, God has already come. Christ entered into our world, and the way to salvation and the means to transformation is present with us. Now we wait in anticipation of even more. The advent to come is the one in which all that is broken and diseased in all of Creation will be destroyed and heaven and the new earth will become one. Today we can live in the hope of the light that is Christ in us and the promise of His glory which truly overcomes all that is darkness in our world. 

 

A Genealogy

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Matthew 1: 1

The details of history that Matthew records mattered greatly to his primarily Jewish intended audience. They also matter to the rest of us. Matthew shows that Jesus has a direct relationship to both the foundational prophet for their people in Abraham, and He is also a blood relative of the anointed king, David. Thus, Jesus is the rightful heir to the one and only God-ordained role as ruler over all of God’s people on earth. Although Matthew places Jesus within a Jewish context, God has never been so limiting when He considers the extent of who are inclusive as His own people. The separation of humanity into races, tribes, and separate people groups is something that came about as a result of our departure from God’s righteous path for living. None of them are outside of God’s grace, and no one is excluded from God’s desire and intent to save and to redeem. So, from the beginning of time, the Father planned and prepared to send the Son into our world in order to effect and perfect their plan for setting forth that heavenly redemptive work.

Matthew sets out a part of the careful detail that God included in His plan for the coming of the Savior. There were no accidental twists and turns in this long history of human relationships, for it all led to that point in history when the time was right and the setting was established for God to step into the earthly narrative in a tangible and personal way. Jesus was born in improbability into a family of little to no means and raised in that obscurity; yet, He was filled with all wisdom and understanding in a manner that made His elders wonder when He was still a youth. Then, in or about His thirtieth year Jesus moved out into the public sector and did the Father’s ordained work until the established power structure became concerned about Him so that He was considered too dangerous to be allowed to continue on. As Jesus was not to be intimidated or bought off, His societally legal murder was orchestrated by those same religious and political leaders. However, death was not permanent, and silence was not secured by the cross.

Instead, the cross and the grave that followed it were just the first steps in the Father’s plan for the perfection of His eternal design for the redemption of creation. The initial aspects of this plan are demonstrated by the recitation of many of the names of the people that came before Jesus and that form into His human family tree. The existence of the plan is stated by numerous prophetic citations in God’s Word so that when Mary gave birth to her miraculous son she was in Bethlehem as had been prophesied, and that child had the right by reason of lineage to the designation of Anointed One, which had been proclaimed by God to David through Samuel. God’s heart is made glad when people respond to His call to come to Jesus in order to be reconciled with the Father. When this happens, God’s intricate planning and perfect execution of His means for redemption is fulfilled as we are restored to our place as God’s beloved children.        

 

Powerless Traps

Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

1 John 5: 5 

There are forces all around us in this life that not only can harm us but that are actively seeking to overcome us. I am not thinking about situations and circumstances that are overwhelmingly difficult; although, they are quite real, I mean that there are spirits and powers that have evil as their core intent. They are set on a coarse of assault, entrapment, and disablement that is placed into every one’s daily path of travel. 

However, everything that is in opposition to God has already been defeated by Jesus; so, every human failing, each flawed thought, and all of our unloved and unloving images have become traps with their springs removed by the power of Christ’s love for each of us. We need to accept this reality and believe from the center of our hearts that it is true and that it is my own, personal and absolute truth. 

Jesus is the victor in my life and over all that seeks to harm me and to lessen my ability to demonstrate the life changing and transformational love of God in a lost world. Belief leads to faith, which takes us to a place of trust; then, trust allows us to walk with bold confidence through the mine field that is this world while knowing that we are safe in every way that matters. Since I believe in Christ, who has given me the promise of His victory, I can face all of the situations, people, and decisions that will come to me today with the strength and the boldness of the knowledge that the Lord will use it all for His glory.