Category Archives: The Good News of Jesus

Daddy (Dad, Part II)

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God is our Father. Jesus said so.  He taught us to address Him in prayer as “Our Father.”  He modeled that relationship, almost always calling God His Father.  Except once.  One time, as it is recorded in the Gospels, Jesus called God by a different Name.  He called Him “Daddy” (literally, the Aramaic, “Abba”).  The one time He switched from “Father” to “Daddy” was in His time of deepest struggle and need, in Gethsemane, on the night before His arrest and crucifixion.  

 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”  –  (Mark 14:36)
There is a lesson here.  In our own times of deep distress, even in those times when you feel God would not be inclined to draw near and listen, remember Who He is.  Not only your Father but also your Daddy. Let your lowest moments of struggle become your deepest moments of childlike intimacy.  Imitate Jesus in how He honestly cried out to “Daddy,” saying, in effect, “I really don’t want to do this; isn’t there some other way?”  And also, “I know you are my Daddy and would not assign anything to me that was not the best.”

Who’s your Daddy?

The Humility of Genuine Expertise

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A few years before Kittyhawk, Lord Kelvin, highly respected scientist and President of the Royal Society of England, proclaimed, “Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.” Some experts come across with a smug, self-satisfied, got-it-all-figured-out arrogance. Others continue to explore their field with childlike wonder, eagerly seeking new insight and information.  These are delighted to be surprised and frequently humbled by what they have discovered.  Avoid the first type and pay attention to the latter.  It’s much more joyful and interesting, and you will discover they are closer to the truth.

From early days, Saul of Tarsus was schooled in biblical studies by one of the most knowlegable men in the field.  He became a  Pharisee, devoting his life to following all of the laws in the Bible, in careful detail.  Later on, he was personally sought out and converted by the risen Jesus, assigned to carry the good news of salvation far and wide.  His writings to early churches form a large chunk of the New Testament.  His letter to the Romans is considered a masterful explanation of the gospel of grace.  You might expect Saul, then known as the Apostle Paul, to act as though he had it all figured out.

But no.  His expertise made him humble, frequently swept away by the enormity and mystery of the majesty of God.  Like this:

 

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”  “Who has ever given to God, that God should  repay him?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”  (Romans 11:33–36 – NIV84)

Family Matters

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Professional door to door salesmen have a certain air about them when the front door opens.  Kind of a mixture of formality with friendliness, practiced patter in smooth tones, dosed with expectation and anxiety.  If they want success at this house, they need to perform.  On the other hand, the kids in that household come to the front door, yank it open and go blasting through, shoelaces untied, jacket half off, enroute to the kitchen for a snack.  Big difference.  When you are a part of the family, you don’t need to perform to be accepted or even loved.  You just belong, simply because of who you are.

This is especially true for those in God’s family.  Who are they?  Consider these verses:

12 Yet to all who received him, [Jesus] to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.  –  (John 1:12–13  –  NIV84)

26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.  (Galatians 3:26–29  –  NIV84)

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1a  –  NIV84)

By trusting Jesus, we are welcomed into God’s family, not by adoption, as nice as that would be, but through birth, the birth of God’s Spirit in our souls.  That’s better.  As His children there is no pecking order; race, former religion, social status – none of that matters.  We are treated alike, and have full rights as heirs.  God arranges for this through a generous act of lavish love.  Welcome home!

The New Way of Freedom

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I used to steer clear of Jesus because I didn’t want to be confined by all those uptight rules.  Ironic, when in truth, following Jesus allows one to cast off the rules (more fully explained in the previous post, “The New Way“).  It’s not that the rules were bad, but that you don’t need them if you are listening to the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit.  Moreover, rules don’t work because they arouse our human urge to break them. There is something about a sign that says, “Don’t Touch” that makes us want to do it. Rules try to stop us from heading in a negative direction, toward sin and death.  The Spirit leads us in a positive direction, into the joy of living gracefully.  The Spirit leads us toward rich, satisfying life.

 

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.  And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.

Tyndale House Publishers. (2013). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (Ro 8:1–4). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.

The New Way

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When Scottish aristocracy can no longer afford the expense of maintaining a castle and the palatial grounds, sometimes they donate the property to the State.  They continue to live in a portion of the castle while the rest of it is opened for public tours.  When you tour such a place, you are carefully watched by guards and restricted by theater style barricades as you file by rooms filled with suits of armor, swords and ornate furnishings.  It’s quite amazing, well worth the trip, but don’t step out of line.  They are ready for you…

Imagine, if you got to know the son of the Laird, the heir.  What if he invited you for a visit at the castle and said, “Come on, let me show you around.”  Now you wouldn’t need to stay in line, wouldn’t need to stay behind the barricades.  You could simply follow the son through the place, going where he went and doing what he did.  You could even go hang out with the family in their special quarters.  Doing so, you would break some of the rules established to keep the general public from trampling the place, but you would still be well within the confines of what the family desired.

A similar transformation occurs when one gets to know the Son of God and follows Him through His place.  Where once we were beholden to “the Law,” all the rules and regs in the Bible, now we have been released from that and simply follow the Son.  As Paul said,

“… we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”  (Romans 7:6b)

Notice, in following Christ, it’s not “anything goes;” we still “serve.”  However our obedience is no longer accomplished by banging into barricades and watching out for the armed guards.  Instead, it is marked by the fluidity and gracefulness of paying attention to His Spirit and going where He leads.

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Once upon a time there was a warehouse filled with cell phones that thought they were calculators.  Their manufacturer had designed them to be phones, but their SIM cards had been damaged.  They were dead but did not realize it.  They had battery power and several working apps so they thought they were “alive.”  One day the manufacturer sent someone to bring them to life.  He came with copies of his own perfect SIM card, offering to replace their damaged cards with his own. Most of the phones thought he was crazy and rejected the offer. But those who allowed him to make the exchange were astonished to discover all the new ways they could operate once they could receive a cell signal.  It was as though they came to life for the first time.

Once upon a time there was a planet filled with dead people who thought they were alive. Because their bodies worked and they could think, they assumed they were experiencing all that life had to offer.  One day, their Creator sent Someone to fix them and bring them to full and abundant life.  Here is what they wrote about Him:

In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.  (John 1:4-5)

Jesus offered to connect them for the first time with the “Life” and “Light” of God’s Holy Spirit, bringing them to full and abundant life in a whole new way.  He would exchange what was damaged in them with His perfection, personally accepting the cost of their damage and allowing them to operate as their Manufacturer intended.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.  (John 1:9–13)

 

Your Maker

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Have you seen the T-shirt that says, “There is a God” on the front?  On the back it reads, “You’re not Him!”  Good reminder.  But the Apostle John would give Jesus a T-shirt that read, “There is a God and I Am Him.”  Imagine how awkward it was for John to tell people he knew a guy who actually was Almighty God.  If you were accosted in the airport by someone telling you that, you’d immediately take your leave. Running.

But John was dead serious.  Jesus, he said, is God!”  The God.  Think of the implications.  One, in John’s words, is this:

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.  (John 1:3 (NASB95))

Where I live, 14,000 foot mountains dominate the western horizon.  They pulsate with dawn’s first luminescence, sparkle with ice and snow throughout the day and, at dusk, are silhouetted by astonishingly beautiful sunsets.  If John was right, Jesus designed all that beauty.  Look down at your hand: Consider the intricate workings of each of your fingers.  Jesus did that.  Think about your what makes you unique, your likes and dislikes, the sound of your voice and your special skills.  Ponder the fact that you can hear and see.  “Nothing came into being apart from Him.”  That means He made you.  Jesus.

I know adoptees who yearn to one day meet their natural parents.  What if you could actually meet the One Who designed you and created you; would that interest you?

You can, you know…

The Right Word

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The reason things seem so divisive these days, and it seems to be so difficult to accomplish common understanding, has to do with words.  if a Democrat talks about “helping the middle class” it usually means something very different from what a Republican means by those same words.  It is very difficult to draw people together from very different ways of seeing the world when the words used are “heard” in such different ways.

That’s what makes the first line of the Gospel of John so masterful.  John wrote:

 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1 (NIV84))

John was setting out to tell two very different kinds of people, with distinctly different views of the world, about Jesus.  So he called Him “the Word.”

  • When the Jewish people read that word (the Greek word, logos), they immediately associated it with God.  Jews believed it was sacrilegious to pronounce or write the Name of God.  In those days, sometimes they substituted the word, Logos, or Word.  The first line of their scripture read, “In the beginning, G-d….”   So when they read John’s opening phrase they naturally thought, “God.”
  • The people in the Greek culture who read John’s letter, however, interpreted logos in a very different way.  Following the ideas of some of their famous philosophers, they used logos, or word, to refer to the divine active principle that governed all of reality.  Kind of like how the “operating system” in a computer controls how all the programs work, people in the Greek culture thought of the logos as the overarching “operating system” for the universe.  In short, the mind of God.

So, with one word, logos, John drew those two, very different, groups together in understanding the identity of Jesus.  Next, he used a strong word to say Jesus was “with” God, not just nearby, but in close, intimate association and correspondence with God.  Lest anyone miss the point, John followed up with, “He was God.”  Jesus existed as God “in the beginning,” before time and space were created.

Today, when someone says, “Jesus,” he might be expressing disgust or frustration.  Someone else might be talking about a “good man” or a “prophet.”  But John?  He was talking about a Man he knew as a friend, Who had revealed Himself to be Almighty God.

Hearing is not Believing

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It puzzles me when people play adventure video games by looking up the answers and cheats online, instead of figuring them out.  If someone tells them the answer, they can’t enjoy the experience of discovering it.

Bear that concept in mind and consider this: At His trial, Jesus’ accusers said,

“If you are the Christ, tell us.” But he said to them, “If I tell you, you will not believe, (Luke 22:67)

When Jesus said “If I tell you you will not believe,” perhaps He was not accusing them but helping them. Coming to faith in Jesus is not simply hearing about Him from someone telling us. Believing is something we do. Believing is more than merely knowing the right answers. It cannot be done to us or for us; it is a personal adjustment. And without that personal change, the life-giving relationship with Jesus is impossible. Perhaps ,Jesus could have told them the answer but did not, in order to give them the opportunity to come to a personal belief in that answer.

He said to Peter, “You are blessed because you didn’t hear this from someone else but received it from the Holy Spirit.” The process of leading people to faith must leave room for them to discover the truth in a personal way and believe without being spoon-fed all the answers.

Hand in Hand

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Have you ever felt resentful or a sense of reluctant obligation when they pass the offering plate?  Yeah, me too.  But that’s because us knuckle-headed humans don’t understand how an offering works.  First read this:

 And He [Jesus] looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. And He saw a poor widow putting in two small copper coins. And He said, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all of them; for they all out of their surplus put into the offering; but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.”  (Luke 21:1-4)

How could her meager offering be worth “more?”  Apparently, the value of an offering is not measured in dollars and cents.  Makes sense (no pun intended) when you remember that God doesn’t need money.  Offerings are not about raising money for God.  So what is the reason for an offering?  The widow’s offering was “more” because her trust was greater.  With her copper coins, she was saying, “Father, this is all I have but I love you and trust You to provide.”

Offerings were set up by God as a tangible way to experience a relationship with Him based on thankfulness and trust.  That is why the offerings were to come from the first part of each harvest.  Thankfulness and trust.  See that? 

A friend of mine is an expert builder of houses.  One day, as I was trying, unsuccessfully, to tear out a soffit to remodel my kitchen, he happened to stop by.  He watched in silent amusement as I continued to get my butt kicked.  Then he asked, “Would you give me your hammer and let me work with you?”  I knew he was good and I was ready for help.  I gave him (offered him) the hammer and watched in amazement as, with a few expert strokes, he made real progress.

Offerings are like that.  God holds out His hand, not as a beggar or a bill collector, but with a smile on His face, asking, “Hey, you want to work together with me?  Got a hammer I could use?” 

Offerings are opportunities to strengthen our relationship with our loving Father, the relationship based on thankfulness and trust.  And it is a real thrill to join Him in what He is doing, working hand in hand.