I consider myself a city boy provided that you understand “city” in my history is originally Nowhereville,USA. So it’s a choice kinda thing. I enjoy studying cities and I like city life and have been privileged to visit some pretty big ones—the biggest, in fact, which is a true marvel.
Yet I feel more at home in the outdoors. I love nature. Words like rustic, sylvan, and bucolic stir me in ways the words modern, skyscraper, and metro never do.
Being sent outdoors as a kid was not a punishment. Later I would work and participate at several camps and a few jobs that were pretty hands-on. I’ve always admired the manual life, although I am regrettably not the son bitten by that bug. (My mom is a seamstress, so I could’ve been a tailor by now.) I’ve said 101 times that the person who can work with his or her hands will survive much easier should the world go belly-up tomorrow.
Compete to Win
As I’ve grown older, I’ve increasingly desired the physical, outdoorsy life. I envy those who grew up on farms, ranchers, and just the skilled laborer. I’m sure they have much to share to slap me back into my reality, still…
The physical, labor-intensive life is to me a fitting metaphor for the character of the spiritual life. Our faith certainly creates a refined product, but the nature of the tool is duly rugged.
I discover this truth all through Scripture: in the agonized prayer of Hannah crying out to God for a son; in the Psalms’ tightly framed shots of human emotional investment made in worship; in the implications of scripture, like grief as a spiritual act of sowing.
I notice it in Jesus’s bold yet nimble teachings to go the extra mile and love the vilest; to “have faith” in an ardent way; to know that if the kingdom will be had, it will be found; to remember that the way up is down; and to make sure we count the high cost of serving him.
Do you see it? Do you notice how tough and gritty, coarse and earthy this life of faith is? Every Christian will surely taste his own sweat and feel the grain in his mouth.
Works in Progress
Tools for cutting and refinement are necessarily sturdy. Wood isn’t going to carve wood, is it? Clay won’t shape clay. They need a sharper and more durable tool to give them form.
The faith God has given us is definitely durable and sharp enough—in his hands and in our spiritual practice—to whittle away at our knarls, imperfections, and stony hearts until we become works of beauty, transformed by his grace. It turns Jacobs into Israels and makes Peters out of Simons.
BUT… “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). This isn’t for cowards. It takes dexterity and resolve to apprentice this carpenter.
CC BY-NC-SA, Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL)
Picture this: a well-written movie with a strong plot, a hearty dose of conflict, a beloved protagonist, and a cruel villain; at the end of this movie and climax of all suspense, the good guy dies horribly and the villain escapes.
No, you said? The bad guy isn’t supposed to win, right? Instead, he’s supposed to get what’s coming to him. Unexpected endings often make or break a movie in our minds because although evil might reinvent and resurrect itself, good should always win the day. The bad guy must be whacked.
“I Am Not Like You”
We possess a moral urgency to see truth prevail and justice done to all wrongdoing, and it comes alive in us most days just from watching the evening news. That inner urge derives from the image of God in us. It is our inbred ethic and the assumption of God’s moral law alluded to in Romans 1.
God has granted authority to government to prosecute wrongdoing, and Paul refers to government and its officials as the servants of God for good (Rom. 13:1-8). To individuals, however, and believers specifically, Jesus and the New Testament draw clear lines between owning an urgency for truth and justice and personal retribution on others—evildoers, sinners, and neighbors alike. Focus closely on this insightful intro to Luke 13:
Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish” (vs. 1-5).
Jesus Makes His Case
Jesus raises four points. First, bad things that happen to people don’t imply their sinfulness or wrongdoing in any way. We have to be careful of this karmic notion and that we are not wishing evil upon others or rejoicing because “they got what was coming to them.”
Jesus lets us see that God is not hell-bent on retribution, like us. In fact, Psalm 103:10 explains, “He does not treat us as our sins deserve.” But humans are indeed vengeful; we are morally fallen and ethically confused.
Second, we should guard ourselves from the sin we assume in others and remain humble before God. Whether we are sinners or believers, sin’s effects are equally devastating. This was Jesus once again turning the tables to deliver an irrefutable point.
The third and fourth points come by implication. So, third, God is good to all, yet bad things happen to good people. A noted preacher spoke in one of my college chapel services not long after 9/11 and said, “The people who went to work that day didn’t hear God.” I sat there stunned by what I was hearing; my mind seized for the many points to be rebutted. In his mind people, especially Christians, could escape trouble if they were properly “tuned in” to God.
Instead, Jesus speaks of the Father and says, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). We’re better off realizing that we are all held in the grace of God rather than to keep passing the buck of sin. Misfortune, however, isn’t reserved for the evil; it strikes the godly, too.
Finally, vengeance belongs to God (Rom. 12:19). There is a Day approaching when God’s full anger and justice on evil will be realized. I’m always gripped by how God pleads throughout scripture to those in danger of his judgment (Israel, Judah, sinners). He is not unlike David Banner warning, “You won’t like me when I’m angry.” And like the beast into which Banner’s anger metastasizes, God’s wrath is also an intolerable force, yet Hell must be endured eternally.
Stay in Love
Jesus’s point to us is the message of Jude 21—“Keep yourselves in the love of God.” This is God’s ultimate moral requirement for his people. We are not to be superheroes; Christianity is no Justice League. We bear no authority to mete out God’s judgments, nor should we be caught up in getting back at others or secretly wishing for their demise. The parable of the wheat and tares (Matt. 13) testifies to the recklessness that can only result from overstepping our authority.
Do not take this out of context. It doesn’t mean that self-defense and defending our families and property is wrong. It doesn’t imply that all war or capital punishment is wrong, or any other valid ethical argument we could insert here. It just means do not take liberty with justice or go overboard about your rights. Paul’s teaching about taking fellow believers to court, in 1 Cor. 6, is insightful and very relevant to this discussion.
Also, drawing from the subject of Jesus’s conversation, we must let go of useless queries about why 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the great tsunamis, and other disasters occurred. We do not live in a theocratic society like Israel was where the prophets spoke and predicted the counsel of God with singularity. We are too fractured a society and Church to accept this, even debating whether prophecy of that nature still exists.
What matters more is understanding that there is a real difference between desiring truth and justice, instituting and enforcing it, and vindicating ourselves, retaliatory behavior, and even defending God. Haven’t we learned as much from the Spanish Inquisition and Crusades? Retribution will always lure evil motives out of human hearts.
I grew up in the very last days of kids playing outdoors—remember that? My brother and I had terrific fun. We were rambunctious boys. We played throughout the neighborhood, up and down the street, in the front and back yards, and even on top of the house when we could get away with it. Every day we looked forward to getting out of school and playing.
We loved hanging out in a large maple tree in our backyard. We climbed that tree and out on its limbs with the ease of climbing into bed. It amazes me that we were so undaunted and never broke a bone. My grandmother’s home provided just as much fun. Her house sat right beside a shallow creek that ran beneath and perpendicular to her street through a large, dark tunnel.
Since the street was about 20 feet above the creek bed, the steep hillside and grassy adjacent lot added to our fun. Of course, that was never enough for us. We would also play on the incline directly above the tunnel, a fall from which would have landed us on the concrete streambed ten feet below. We were lucky that never happened.
The Trusting Heart of a Child
I’m sure you have similar stories. When I reflect on those times, I think about how risk-taking and trusting of ourselves we were, caution always thrown to the wind, never banking on a mishap, but always certain of the fun.
Our spiritual journey should be similar.
Jesus exhorts us to be like children at heart, although he usually refers to their humility and teachability. But a trusting and adventuresome childlike nature fittingly describes the way we should trust God, too—like a kid bounding through trees and swinging from the vines!
Say, did you unreservedly trust your parents as a child? Even if they sometimes forgot their promise or extenuating circumstances prevented it, you probably considered their word as good as done. Or maybe it was your big brother or sister’s promise that a bully would never harm you. The taunting suddenly became less fearsome.
Take God at His Word
In the army of the Lord, we march now with Christ’s victory spreading it wherever we go. But that present reality is something we will know and experience only by taking God at his word. Otherwise, we’ll live wishing to…play in the trees but too fearful of falling, killing our own joy. Yet his promises abide.
Take God at his word. Trusting him is an adventure.
I’ll end with a funny family story. Years ago we were together at our family home lounging and talking when someone heard the commode running. I asked my little niece to go and shake the toilet. We resumed chatting but then, after some minutes, wondered where she was. I found her down on her knees hugging the toilet bowl. She looked up so innocently and said, “It won’t shake.”
I get a kick out that every time! May we all like children possess trusting hearts and never second-guess God or the journey where he has us, for hesitation causes error. Instead, let us rest in the assurance that despite hard times along the way, this is far more an enjoyable adventure.
I’d like to know your thoughts on this thesis: The fall of Adam and Eve reduced the human race to a cruder form of its original self requiring its education and technological evolution and maturation.
Evil has recently been vanquished and the redeemed now live on New Earth where all is perfect and Jesus is King. Many customs and things still resemble the previous world, although spectacularly enhanced now. Pastime and sports, for example, still exist and so does most other recreation, including a truly virtual telecasting experience.
The biggest draw across the global kingdom now is an ongoing contest called “Open the Universe!” initiating Jesus’s long-awaited expansion of the human race to other planets throughout the cosmos. But who will govern the first new world?
Thus, Jesus has handpicked two teams of the faithful to compete and showcase their glorious skills and abilities. The task: build a city. Each team travels to a designated location on New Earth, constructs, and manages a city of their own, engaging the help and talents of the chosen denizens who will inhabit that domain.
In the end, Jesus will award his first regency to the team that has best organized, designed, erected, and governed its city. There are no losers; the second team will gain regency of the next expansion.
The people of New Earth are riveted by the giftedness of the participants, for each person presents facets of the Sovereign One, as they are called, only that individual can express. In fact, the hosts in Heaven watch with excitement, too.
Captain: Joseph Team: Abraham, Peter, Nehemiah, Josiah, Daniel, Esther, Joshua, Barnabas, Elisha, Luke, Samson, Timothy, Philip the Evangelist, John the Baptist
Cities on New Earth are designed around themes that are strongly incorporated in the built environment. The theme Jesus desires for these new cities is “Human Wonder in Eternal Triumph.” Use of the theme also factors in team selection.
Based on what you know of these people’s lives, particularly their strengths and abilities—projected in a perfect reality—which team do you think would be awarded the first regency? Why?
How do you interpret the city theme?
How might each team incorporate the theme into its design?
Isaiah begins his 40th chapter with prophetic words of comfort detailing the deliverance of God’s people from impending captivity. “The Sovereign Lord is coming in power,” he says; then he transitions into a marvelous exposition on God’s omnipotence.
Starting with nature, he compares the greatness of God and the weakness of humans—“Who has measured off the heavens with his fingers?” (v. 12, NLT). “Has the Lord ever needed anyone’s advice?” (v. 14).
The nations are nothing to God, for he can lift the earth like a grain of sand. His worth is incalculable: “All the wood in Lebanon’s forests and all Lebanon’s animals would not be enough to make a burnt offering worthy of our God” (v. 16).
Idols are laughable and only speak to the foolishness of human hearts—“at least choose wood that won’t decay and a skilled craftsman to carve an image that won’t fall down!” (v. 20).
For the Lord sits atop the earth as upon a throne, the King of every king.
A Sobering Indictment
After this illustrious oration, Isaiah directs a pointed question to God’s people: “O Jacob, how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles? O Israel, how can you say God ignores your rights?”
It is the prophet bringing correction: “You’ve stood in awe of this boundless God, but you have not understood him.”
Do we not act the same way when our cares have us submitted and down for the count? We feel the Lord doesn’t see. In our dark moments we miss God’s intentions with our trials and sometimes forget that he is for us. But he never forgets us.
Strength to Run
What comes next is truly grand:
“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (vs. 28-40, NKJV).
Isn’t this moving?
We get excited about the “they that wait” part. But the really exciting truth is why those who wait renew their strength—ever stop to consider that? Is it merely because they…wait? We find it at the start of the passage: “Did you not hear or know that the Lord doesn’t faint or get weary?” When I finally saw this—WHAM!
Our strength can be renewed because his strength never fails.
I realized how I could wait on God through trials completely confident of his onrushing aid.
The visual is easy: if you and a friend are holding candles and yours goes out, you will relight your candle with the one that still burns. Well God’s fire never goes out! There’s no good or logical comparison for God—match-to-Sun?—but you get the picture.
Perhaps you’re waiting on God right now with every ounce of your strength. You’re fainting or have fallen to a knee; your flame has gone out. I want to assure you that your renewed strength is guaranteed and imminent because the One you trust never loses his strength.
CC BY-NC-ND, U.S. Department of Defense Current Photos, Flickr
We are a church culture that ranks sins. A few get to tell glowing testimonies of how they were freed from their flaws while others know not to breathe a word about their past misdeeds—at least not the whole story—for fear of being scorned by some or investigated about the extent of their freedom.
This is shameful. It demonstrates that some of us have not understood the nature of sin, that we all stand under the same curse and that the mite of sin is as great as the vilest and most flagrant. We have also not understood the holy nature of God, his seamlessly pure moral character, or the extravagant grace that rescues us all from equal depravity.
Keep the Main Thing…
I like the way Paul addresses the fact—and how do we miss the point?
“Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor practicing homosexuals nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11).
So profound! Paul highlights issues that were specific to Corinthian society and his hearers; so we gain a telling picture of Corinth. What I love here is that one’s particular “sin background” is non-essential; instead, believers now stand redeemed by the work of Christ—and that’s all that matters, not the once-but-delivered ailment.
If we’re not careful, we will make a big deal about sin and lose love for sinners and fellow believers who wrestle with internal conflicts. We would do well to remember the words of Hebrews 12:15: “See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God.” Make sure, the writer explains, that no one—sinner or saint—lacks of the Lord’s great kindness.
Assessing Our Approach
Therefore, our churches must be spiritual communities where harbored sin in people’s lives breaks our hearts and where we have mastered a quick prayerful, loving, and restorative response, in the same way a body heals itself.
Compassion is the key. It characterized Jesus’s approach with others. And Paul, in Galatians 6:1, reminds us to compassionately restore those in indiscretion mindful that not only are we too susceptible to sin, but also to their kind of sin.
Sin will (and should) always be an affront to God’s holy nature in us, yet we must stop being surprised and shocked by the personal matters family, friends, and peers share with us. We are all human and err. Amazement only makes one feel bad about divulging their troubles; it also makes them question if God really cares about them.
Sin ain’t pretty. Yours wasn’t. So we dare not offend the Lord by being insensitive to others and impede ministry before it starts.
This isn’t just about sinners bearing all, if you’re still missing the point. Christians trip up and get bound, too. The context for Galatians 6 is the believing community; so Paul continues, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (v. 2, NKJV).
So our churches must be havens where certainly the godly can unpack their burdens and receive guidance and healing prayer. We should think this normal, but it isn’t hardly the case. It is sad that some Christians are scornful, judgmental, untrustworthy, and unloving toward their own—how can the lost ever be saved!
A New Culture
I’m concerned we err because we take our cues from the non-Christian culture around us, not the word of God. But the kingdom of God is our culture, a new and shockingly transformative one, and its implications are monumental. No, we don’t think and act the way the world does; our actions and responses will indeed be revolutionary and countercultural and make non-Christians wonder about our dissimilarity.
And our difference should be most evident in our relationships, the one aspect Jesus seems to deem the very purpose of our lives (cf. Mark 12:28-34). Thus, we take none for granted, neither those with the most need for an assurance of grace nor those who already possess it but need strengthening.
We will best love others and be most real with ourselves when we stop cherry-picking sin and esteem the marvelous grace that rescues us all.
Jacob and Peter seem like spiritual brothers in my mind. Both carried a profound calling in their lives but didn’t quite grasp the process it would require to develop them in order to maximize it. Thus, we read about their lives with fascination and some puzzlement, at least I do.
Jacob, with a godly heritage, is that guy in every church who respects God and spiritual things but resists the calling he knows is on his life; he isn’t quite ready to give up his game. It’s not his M.O. right now—“I’m not ready for all that”—that is, until God has to get in his face.
Is not that encounter at Jabbock one of the most riveting accounts in scripture? All of Jacob’s years of impartation and resistance come to a singular moment of judgment. I believe the fight actually occurred, but it isn’t difficult to allegorize and deem that here was a moment of crisis in which God gripped Jacob’s heart and gave him the psychological and spiritual fight of his life.
Have you ever fought to the death of your will? Has the call of God ever overwhelmed you…pinned you to the wall?
But what grips me about the story is Jacob’s surrender. In a flash he goes from self-reliance and stubbornness to “I won’t let you go until I have all of you!”
Do You Love Me?
Sounds a little like Peter—“Then wash my hands and head, Lord, not just my feet!” This is Simon whom Jesus renames Peter, don’t forget that. (Didn’t that happen at Jabbock, too? Hmm.)
I really cherish Peter in the scriptures. Some people find their own humanness in the Psalms, Paul’s transparency, and elsewhere; but I discover myself in Peter. I’m not sure if there is a more honest biblical character. I read about him and think, I am Peter.
Peter spent a few years as the closest to Jesus of the disciples. Yet he reminds us of a toddler just learning to walk, sometimes standing, even running, other times stumbling and falling. Peter shows us glimpses of enlightenment—“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” and “If it is you, bid me to come”—and equal measures of ineptitude and failure—“Even if everyone else deserts you, I never will!”
Still, Peter may have had one of the deepest loves for Jesus.
I recall him outrunning John to the tomb after the report of Jesus’s body being gone. Then, while he and a few of the disciples fished, John identifies the resurrected Christ by his instruction to them to cast their nets to the other side of the boat: “It is the Lord,” John says.
And at that this rough-hewn fisherman wraps his garment around him, leaps out of the boat, and swims to where Jesus stood. Although Peter was at times unstable and insecure, Jesus had made an indelible impact on him.
God’s Will with Our Pain
Like Jacob and Peter, I’ve discovered that the life of faith is not convenient, especially to the imperfections of my heart that ultimately resist the best God has for me. Sometimes I wonder, however, if God doesn’t allow the disappointments and internal conflicts to surface in us to bring us to a place of surrender.
Hosea says, “Come, and let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up” (6:1). Only if you’ve gone through such hardship yourself or with others can you understand how a person’s insolence and weaknesses may actually accomplish the will of God.
After denying the Lord the third time, John relates that the cock crowed and Jesus turned and looked straight in Peter’s face. That had to be the worst moment in Peter’s entire acquaintance with Jesus—and he runs away and cries his eyes out.
But where we might ridicule and excoriate him, God is getting his way with Peter. In fact, he just might have him…and Jacob…and your brother, daughter, or co-worker exactly where he wants them—broken and in submission. They have wrestled with God long enough and now God will wait no longer to prove his sufficiency for them. God gets the best of us to get the best out of us.
The late Dr. Adrian Rogers used to say, “The will of God is the thing we would want for ourselves if we had the sense to want it!”
Thank God that he’s patient with us and uses even our mistakes and hang-ups, our malice and carnality to break our own hearts and wrestle us into submission, as only he can. Our assurance lies in a grace that rescues us from ourselves.
So we can have hope that our friends and loved ones, perhaps out of control right now, are, by prayer and the mercy of God, being steered into the very heart of the kingdom.
A 'Mike' for Christ 