Powerful Word

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What’s the big deal with the “F word?”  Used to be that people would use adjectives to help us understand what they meant.  They would talk about a melodious bird or a twisted relic, a cantankerous geezer or a dog-eared book.  Their descriptive words would jumpstart our imaginations.  Now, they say, “F’n geezer,” or “F’n bird” and my imagination shrivels. My interest sags.  My daughter says I’m old fashioned and that I have allowed the “F word” to have too much power over me.  Power?  I think not. It’s not powerful, it’s lazy.

Let me tell you about a Word with astonishing power, so much so, there’s no word in English that completely conveys it’s meaning.  The Greek word, Logos, is translated in English as “Word.”  But, as it is commonly used in the New Testament, it’s much more than a combination of letters.  Logos means the mindset and understanding of God, the way God thinks and interacts with the reality He created.  Logos is the Greek root for the word, “logic.”   The apostle, John, called Jesus “The Word,” the “Logos.”   He meant that Jesus was the full essence of God’s Mind.  By this he equates Jesus, “The Word,” with God:

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

“Logos” is a word with power.  God’s plan to restore humans to their full potential and life, as revealed in both the Old and New Testaments, is to plant His “Logos” in their soul, like a seed that will grow.

““… “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33b)

“And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezekiel 36:27)

When God’s Logos is planted in us it grows and changes us with power.  His law is put into our minds, His Spirit lives in our soul.  This planting of God’s Logos is made possible as we accept God’s gift of forgiveness and cleansing, paid for by Jesus on the cross.  In Jesus’ words,

“…I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” (John 14:16b-17)

Now, there’s a “Word” with real power, living, growing, transforming power.  Compared to “Logos,” the “F word” has all the power of flattened roadkill.

Now, consider this from Jesus’ brother, James:

“Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.” (James 1:21)

Quotes: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Woot, Woot!

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The red and blue twirly lights came on just past Fort Donelson, as we drove down along the Cumberland River in Tennessee.  I eased our 25 year old RV to the curb, rolled down my window and waited.  As the officer approached, I said, “Is this a Colorado marijuana stop?”  “Not yet,” he said with a laugh.  “i clocked you going 40, coming down that hill into town.”  You know what always comes next: you hand over the paperwork and then sit there, drumming your fingers on the steering wheel and wondering what’s coming as this sick feeling begins to grow in your stomach. My guess was 4 points and 150 bucks.  After what seemed like a very long time, he came strolling back from his cruiser, hitching up his pants and adjusting his hat.  Didn’t look good…  “Well sir, I’m going to give you a warning this time.  Please drive more slowly and y’all have a nice day.”  Do you remember what that feels like?  The sudden, unexpected rush of freedom and joy?  Woot, woot!

Be honest: If you owed $150 for every time you drove over the speed limit in your life, how much would you owe?  How about for just last week?  Justice demands that we pay the full amount.  Grace, the kind of grace I received from a cop in Tennessee, treats you as though you had obeyed the law completely.  We all know justice is good.  But grace is better!   What if you had to pay the full and just penalty for everything you ever did that was not good?  Hmmm….

Psalm 32 begins like this:

“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.” (Psalm 32:1-2)

The first phrase is grace.  God will let you off (with a warning!) and treat you as though you had obeyed the law completely.  But notice that the second phrase says our “sins are covered.”  By Whom? This ancient psalm foretells the sacrifice of Jesus!  He will “cover” the cost for our sins.  Having done so, He will also cover over our sins, as though we had never sinned.  Amazing!  And “blessed!”  Woot, woot!

But notice, the last phrase, which talks of the one in “whose spirit is no deceit.”   As you read further in Psalm 32, you discover that David is talking about one who openly confesses his sins to God, with no holding back, no deceit.  The process of surrender to Jesus, by which we are given the full pardon of grace, includes heartfelt, honest acknowledgement to God of our shortcomings and moral failures.  We don’t pretend that we deserve the grace He offers.  We come “without one plea.”  But that confession (which becomes a continual part of our relationship) clears the air.  We have no secrets and live, fully aware of just how much we need grace.

Woot, woot!

Quotes: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Words and Music

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As Albert Einstein lay dying, he gathered a faltering breath and spoke final words. Are you curious to know what he said?  Nobody knows, since his nurse didn’t speak German!  It was probably only a critical correction to his theory of relativity or something.  Famous last words…  Often the last things that a person says come from a very deep place.

When Jesus died on the cross, His final words were a quote from a psalm written by David, roughly 1000 years earlier.  He said,

“Into Your hands I commit my spirit…”   (Luke 23:46; Psalm 31:5)

If you read the rest of that psalm, it is uncanny how perfectly it expresses what Jesus must have been thinking and feeling, a complex mixture of anguish and trust.  Jesus also quoted Psalm 22 on the cross:

“And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34, Psalm 22;1)

Once again, David’s psalm eerily captures both the agony of Jesus,

“Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.” (Psalm 22:16)

and, later in that same psalm, His overriding confidence in God:

“You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.” (Psalm 22:23-24)

Those who write songs frequently say they feel as though the words and music were already there, waiting to be discovered.  It must have been that David was so in tune with the heartbeat, the “words and music” of God, that the words he was inspired to write, were the ones spoken from the lips of the Son of God, moments before His physical death.

I’m not sure there is a lesson there, or any practical application.  But when I ponder that powerful connection between David and Jesus, it casts me into a deep, swirling pool of profound awe.  I hope it might do so for you, too.  I believe it is in such awe that we find ourselves more in tune with God’s “words and music.”

Quotes: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Mutual Yearning

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You know the scene at the end of the chick flick, when the two lovers finally find one another.  It seems like it always happens in slow motion as they run toward one another through a field of flowers.  There is something powerful in that motif of mutual yearning finally fulfilled.

There’s a mutual yearning between us humans and the God Who created us.  We reach up; He has reached down.  Look at these two verses, one from the Old Testament and one from the New:

“One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, …” (Psalm 27:4a)

“Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23)

We long to live with God; He comes to us and offers to make His home with us.  That’s the offer – our deepest mutual yearning perfectly fulfilled.  What’s that part about “obey my teaching”?  It begins with the simple act of trust, with saying yes to Jesus and accepting the offer.

They may not film it in slo-mo.  It might not be in flowers.  But it’s yours if you accept it.

Quotes: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Affair Protection

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Is your marriage vulnerable?  Might one of you have an affair?  There is a very simple and yet powerful way to protect it.  It’s found in just one verse in the Book of James.  If you actually do what this says, you could “affair-proof” your marriage.  This verse is easy to understand but hard to remember to do because it runs contrary to human nature.

Here it is:

” My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,” (James 1:19)

When you are in a conversation that is even slightly adversarial, while your partner is speaking, isn’t it true that you seem to listen, but are really thinking through how you are going to respond?  Coming up with some killer logic, so you can win the argument and emerge the victor?  That is what most people do. It’s human nature.

But if, instead, you put aside your own thoughts and rebuttals and actively try to understand what your partner really means and also how they really feel, you will be amazed at how it changes things.  If, before you respond with your own thoughts, you take a moment to make sure you really have understood your partner, understood him or her to their satisfaction, that one little move will really calm the storm.

But it gets better than that, especially in a marriage.  When people “fall in love” they spend a lot of time listening to one another and really trying to understand one another.  It’s a key ingredient in romance.  Think back to your first dates if you don’t believe me.  When a marriage goes stale, if one partner begins to listen – really listen – in an active and interested way, it’s amazing how quickly that one simple thing can begin to restore the lost romance.  It’s like maple syrup on pancakes.

Listening to really understand your partner is an effective way to “affair-proof” your marriage.  Most affairs do not begin with sex.  They begin with listening.  When someone seems really interested in you.  You know the old line: “My spouse doesn’t understand me…”  And it goes from there…

Marriage counselors charge $100 an hour – maybe more.  Apply James 1:19 and you can save a bunch of money.  Probably save your marriage, too.

Quotes: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Can You Hear Him Singing?

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At just the right moment, when I really needed to hear these words, a good friend texted me with this:

The LORD your God is with you,
He is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
He will quiet you with his love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.”
Zephaniah 3:17 (NIV)

Did you ever sing over your kids? Quiet them with love? When my daughter was an infant I used to sing her to sleep with a song I gradually made up as I held her and danced around. “It’s time for little Muffin, to go to sleep again…” Years later, for my son, I sang an old Merle Haggard tune, “Honky Tonk Moon, shining on my baby and me…” When I sang over my kids, they’d settle down and nod off and I’d experience a peaceful kind of joy. God sings over His kids with joy, quieting them with His love. Wow!

Maybe you think God sings you an Eric Clapton line: “The next time I see you, boy you’d better beware…” But old Zeph says God rejoices over His kids with song; He takes delight in them. If that does not seem possible, consider what he said God has done for His kids:

The LORD has taken away your punishment [on the Cross],
he has turned back your enemy [Satan].
The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you; [through the Holy Spirit]
never again will you fear any harm. [Eternal life]
Zephaniah 3:15 (NIV – with my additions in brackets)

So then, how do you get to be one of God’s kids? John tells us how. Speaking of how Jesus was not “received,” he says:

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—
John 1:12 (NIV)

Receive Jesus, and God will be singing over you.

Becoming Fruit

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By the time anyone noticed, she had been underwater for way too long. They hauled her out and laid her out on the dock, her body a dark purple color, her eyes lifeless. I watched as a med student kneeled over her and began CPR. When she took her first breath, when the color of her body began to chameleon back to its normal hue, when she came back to life, the process seemed miraculous. I’ve been present as each of my two children were born and took their first breath. This was like that, except that in her case, no one expected she would ever breathe again. I’m guessing, if anyone ever asks that young girl about the best gift she ever received, she would say it was the gift of life itself.

We are so used to being alive we actually take life for granted. It is all we’ve ever known. We also take spiritual death as the norm. It is all we have ever known. Spiritual death is the condition of being disconnected from the Spirit of God. Designed and created to be filled with God’s Spirit, we have been cut off since Adam’s Fall. Since we are born in this condition, we initially don’t notice anything wrong. It’s like being born blind and not discovering until later on that we were supposed to be able to see. But eventually we do sense a problem. We sense that something is missing. What’s missing is real, full life, the life of the Spirit in us. We cannot fix it, anymore than anyone could perform CPR on themselves. Spiritually speaking, we are as dead as that girl laid out on the dock.

But check out this amazing good news:

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

James 1:17-18

We gasp for spiritual breath in many ways, often with no real understanding that what we seek is life itself. God, the Giver of every good and perfect gift reaches down through eternity and offers to give us “birth,” birth into eternal, spiritual life. How so? Through His Son, Jesus, the One Who is the “Word of Truth.” Those who accept this gift by faith, become like the first harvest of fruit in the orchard, the first tomatoes on the vine, the first grain in the field. The difference between fruit and the plant on which it grows is that there is continuing life in the fruit. So too with those who have been given the eternal life of God’s Spirit through their faith in Jesus.

Testing, Testing

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When Jeff Bezos said Amazon was testing drones for package delivery, I’m sure he meant that they were putting the drones to the test in various kinds of bad circumstances, to make sure they would respond faithfully to the commands sent to them by Amazon.  No doubt, there are bad guys out there who will also try to influence and control those drones but in a different way.  They are going to try to override the delivery instructions, to tempt them off course, so to speak, in order to steal the goods.  Presumably, there will be two kinds of testing going on for the drones – perhaps even simultaneously.  Amazon’s testing will be designed to make them succeed; the other type of testing will be designed to make them fail.

There are two kinds of trials, two kinds of tests that happen to us humans, too.  God allows us to encounter trials, in order to help us learn to operate responsively to His instructions.  But we also encounter temptations (in Greek – both “trial” and “temptation” are the same word) designed to cause us to go astray or be destroyed.  This kind of test, temptations, come from Satan.  Remember the distinction between those two kinds of testing as you read these words from Jesus’ brother, James:

“When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” (James 1:13-14)

Temptations that drag us down toward evil and destruction never come from God.  His tests are designed to help us “fly right.”  Satan’s temptations usually are experienced as “evil desires.”

“Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:15)

If we respond to the commands from the One Who made us, the end result is life, not death:

“Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” (James 1:16-18)

Quote: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

 

Don’t Touch That Dial…

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Changes are coming – big changes.  Over the last couple of years we have been working on an interactive audio ebook entitled “Who is Jesus?”.  It is almost ready!  Don’t touch that dial.   Over the next few days I’ll try to answer a few questions you may have, questions like, “What’s an ebook?” and “Who is ‘we?'”  Or, “How will I use it?”  and “What’s it going to cost?”  The last one is easy – the book will be free.  But let’s start with a more basic question:  “Who cares?”  “So what?”

The last line in the Gospel of John says this:

“Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21:25)

What’s so great about yet another book – even an “ebook” – about Jesus?   Let me show you a picture I recently found amidst some family junk:Who Dat?

I had no idea who this picture was, until I spotted the names written on it.  It’s a picture of my grandparents!  But they were doing something very uncharacteristic.  In my memory, my Grandma and Grampa Andy were rather reserved and formal.  But here they are, horsing around like young lovers.  As I looked at this picture, it occurred to me that whoever took this picture probably knew some things about my grandfather that never got mentioned at family gatherings.  It would have been fun to sit down with that guy and have him tell me who my grandfather really was, what he was really like.  Friends frequently have a better understanding of someone’s character and personality than teachers, bosses, colleagues or even family members.  Friends know things…

John the Apostle knew Jesus as a friend.  His Gospel account of Jesus reads very differently from the others in the Bible.  I think that was partly because he wrote it as a friend.  If you want to know more about Jesus, you can’t do any better than listen to what John had to say.  And that is what this ebook will be all about: Who does John say Jesus is?

How do you get a copy?  Don’t touch that dial; we’ll get all the details worked out and let you know.

 

 Quotes: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Even the Score

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The gap between rich and poor continues to widen, as does the gap between those who think they know what to do about it!   Some think fixing it is as simple as taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor.  Others say let the rich prosper so they can hire the poor.

The futility behind all of this is that wealth, as measured by money, is an illusion.  If you don’t agree, check out what happens to those who win the lottery.  Many, many of them say it was the worst thing that ever happened to them.  There is an emptiness in our souls that money does not satisfy.  That emptiness comes from a longing to be fully connected to God, as He designed us to be.  What satisfies that emptiness, that hunger, is the gift of God’s Spirit, living inside our souls, a gift given to all who believe and surrender to Jesus.  When you have that life, money becomes secondary.

It is only in the light of that truth that these lines from the Book of James makes sense:

“The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower.” (James 1:9-10)

James is talking about “brothers,” believers.  The poorest believer has been given an eternal, living connection to Almighty God.  We talk about people with connections as though who they know makes them more important and powerful.  You cannot have a better connection than even the poorest believer.  On the other hand, a believer who happens to have a lot of money is no better off, ultimately, than his impoverished brother.  He can buy more stuff, but they both have eternal life.  That evens the score.

Quotes: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.