Shades of Eden.

This matter of finding the path or paths to God sounds a bit like Adam and Eve’s challenge, doesn’t it?

It seems that, in a sense, the Garden of Eden is replayed in each of our lives… God says, “Here is a variety of things to enjoy, food to eat, places to go, materials to work with. Go and experience the results of My creative mind and handiwork. Invent. Enjoy. Explore the vast universe.

“But in the matter of relationship to Me… in the search for a path to Me… know that there is One Way. And you must choose Him, My Son Jesus, or you will die in your sins."

Ah, but there is a crafty serpent in each of our gardens, is there not? “Did God really say ‘There is no other way? Surely this is what He meant…” And he opens our eyes to many paths, appealing to our broadmindedness and sentimentality. “Choices are good!” he hisses.

Or are they?…

Sylvia Fox, missionary to Central Africa, came home on furlough after years of service, and stayed awhile with her mother. Sylvia described a part of the cultural adjustment this way: “I begged my mother not to send me to the supermarket. The vast array on the shelves was just staggering. Especially the cereal aisle. There were just too many choices.”

I think most of us deal with the multitude of choices by filtering them. There are whole aisles I ignore in grocery stores, because I don’t need anything there. And I’ll often reach automatically for the brand I prefer, without considering the similar options surrounding it.

Sometimes, oddly enough, this seems helpful to others. I stood at the Giant Eagle deli a few months ago, waiting while the lady shaved the roast beef I buy nearly every week. She piled it onto the machine to weigh and price it, then sealed it and handed it to me. The next customer in line stood watching. As I walked away I heard the man say to the deli clerk, “I’ll have some of what she had.”

When we make a decisive choice to follow Jesus, there will be people watching. When we affirm that He is the only way, there will be people listening. Some will ridicule and some will be enraged. But for the sake of the one who is standing nearby still making up his or her mind, we must not waver. Our clear choice may, by the power of the Spirit, move them to step up and say, “I’ll choose what they chose. It’s exactly what I need.”

So especially for that reason I re-affirm today with 19th century poet Christine Rosetti:

None other Lamb, none other Name,
None other hope in Heav’n or earth or sea,
None other hiding place from guilt and shame,
None beside Thee!

My faith burns low, my hope burns low;
Only my heart’s desire cries out in me
By the deep thunder of its want and woe,
Cries out to Thee.

Lord, Thou art Life, though I be dead;
Love’s fire Thou art, however cold I be:
Nor Heav’n have I, nor place to lay my head,
Nor home, but Thee.

Ancient Words

I like books. Okay, I love books. Ask my husband. It’s not that I have a tremendous number of them, but the ones I have are good, very good. Their authors (even the ones that lived centuries ago) are friends of mine. We just haven’t met… yet.

I’ve gotten a lot of help from those books. Hours of entertainment, yes, but far more. Insights when befuddled, encouragement when down, motivation when stalled. Enlightenment from commentators, inspiration from biographers, practical wisdom from experts in various aspects of the art of living.

But I’ve got to agree with Pastor Ben, who Sunday affirmed something God impressed on me a long time ago. Get into God’s Word first.

Are you like me? How easy to come up against a parenting problem and reach for a book by Dobson. How easy to delve into a book of the Bible by purchasing a Bible study guide. How easy to hit a challenging comment of Jesus’ or a difficult teaching of Paul’s, and head straight for the ole commentary. Somebody else has thought this through. Somebody who knows more than I do, has degrees to back up his or her interpretation, has put in the research time, and has authoritatively stated the results in black and white.

Dr. Phil recently interviewed a woman who pampered her Chihuahua to the extent of chewing the dog biscuits and spitting them into the dog’s mouth. He observed her general obsession with her “child,” (she had no immediate family), her cheerful contentment with the situation, and her opposition to changing, and finally concluded that it worked for her. “Keep on chewing those biscuits,” he conceded at show’s end.

However distasteful it sounds, I think that God sometimes has to make those concessions to us, too. He sees that we’re just not gonna put in the time and effort to feed ourselves, or, rather, let Him feed us directly. So He lets us be nourished (ugh!) indirectly from writers and scholars and counselors who have, hopefully, done the hard and rewarding work of mining the Word of God.

Like Pastor Ben, I’m extremely grateful for those people. God speaks to us through them, and we need to read what they have to say. But I don’t want to miss what God first wants to give directly to me, tailor-made for my situation. I don’t want Him to have to route His messages through a third party because I won’t sit with His ancient words and listen for the voice of His Spirit. Sometimes I need reminded of this, as I was this past Sunday.

And I don’t think I’m the only one who resolves afresh, Give me the ancient words first.

Responding to Inconvenient Truth

There’s a curious exchange on truth that takes place in the book of John…

Jesus, standing before Pilate, is asked, “Are you a king?” “Yes,” Jesus replies, “and I have come into this world to bear witness of the truth. Everyone who is a friend of truth hears My voice.” In response to this inconvenient reply, Pilate asks his famous question, “What is truth?”

Two things stand out about Pilate’s reaction:

1. According to Vincent’s Word Studies in the N.T., the construction of the Greek shows that Jesus and Pilate were talking about two different kinds of truth. Jesus was talking about THE truth – absolute truth. Truth that is real, non-negotiable, not dependent on anything else. But Pilate was talking about “truth” as defined by situations. Relative truth. His response shows that he wasn’t an ardent seeker of truth; Godet calls Pilate a man of “frivolous skepticism.”
2. Pilate doesn’t stick around to hear any reply from Jesus – “and when he had said this he went out to the crowd…”

Assuming that none of us want to identify with Pilate during the upcoming sermon series entitled “An Inconvenient Truth,” I would challenge each of us to be very un-Pilate-like in our response. That means no hiding behind nonsensical questions when we get uncomfortable. No splitting hairs and wheedling around the promptings of the Holy Spirit. No, it’s not like that any of us will storm out of the sanctuary when things get uncomfortable. But we may be inclined to inwardly turn on our heel and go out to poll the opinion of the crowd, as Pilate did. To evade and rationalize rather than stick around to face the hard truth and adjust accordingly.

When you think about it, no one was more inconvenienced by the truth than Jesus Christ was. The reality of God’s love and purpose meant the incarnation and the cross and the grave. It meant becoming man and becoming sin and becoming (even after the ascension) Intercessor for us, the transgressors. If He could face and embrace the truth in the face of those kinds of consequences, by God’s grace so can we.

Besides, there’s something wonderful about sincerely welcoming truth and then sticking around to cooperate with the Holy Spirit as He works it into your life. I think it has something to do with Jesus’ statement: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32 NIV).

May freedom come to many of us over the next weeks at FAC.

In Stride with God

If you attended FAC this past week, you heard “I’ll Walk With God” sung magnificently by Andrew Gross. What a great song to introduce the New Year… but not just anybody can sing it, and I don’t mean because it takes an exceptional singing voice, either.

In order to really be able to sing “I’ll Walk With God,” here are a few considerations, taken from A.W.Tozer’s Tozer Speaks to Students and based on Amos 3:3: Can two walk together unless they be agreed?

For two people to walk together, they need to agree on a few major points:

1. They will have to agree whether they want to walk together.
2. They must be agreed on the direction.
3. They must be agreed on their destination.
4. They must agree on what path they want to take.
5. They must agree on the rate of speed.

I like Tozer’s practical criteria. At the start of a new year, it’s worth spending a few quiet moments considering those five statements, asking, Do God and I have enough in common to walk together these next twelve months? Do we share the same ultimate goal, or am I more shortsighted than my Companion? Who determines the daily path? And how am I at keeping in step with Him? Am I sensitive to His pace, or must I play catch-up (or slow-down) every Sunday morning?

Oswald Chambers wrote, “In learning to walk with God there is the difficulty of getting into His stride… When I start walking with God, I have not taken three strides before I find He has outstripped me; He has different ways of doing things and I have to be trained and disciplined into His ways…The stride of God is never anything less than union with Himself."

Perhaps the biggest challenge any of us will face in the coming year is to walk with God, matching His stride. To agree with Him daily – even moment by moment – on our intentions and direction and destination and path and speed. It’s a challenge that will call for our best, and will test and refine us in sometimes painful ways… but I have a feeling that we will go places and see things we have never dreamed of, if we match God stride for stride in 2008.

That’s God!

“Did you ever think, That’s God eating my soup?” Max Lucado asks Mary in his book God Came Near.

It’s an awesome question… and not for Mary alone. Although we tend to think of Mary’s experience as unique (she rubbed shoulders with the Creator, the Almighty, the I AM!), it’s our experience, too, as certainly as it was hers. It’s just that He is within as Spirit, and therefore less obvious. He’s easy to overlook, easy to neglect, even easy to conveniently forget…

Yet Jesus told His disciples, just before He left them,“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 NIV). And I can say,

That’s God living under my roof.

That’s God watching my television.

That’s God riding in my car.

What’s more, Jesus says to each of us, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20 NIV). In a spiritual sense, then:

That’s God sitting at my heart-table.

That’s God breaking the Word of Life to me.

That’s God feasting with me

Talking with me

Laughing with me.

To be honest, I don’t think I’d want to trade places with Mary. She had Jesus at her table; I have Him in my heart. She fed Him; He feeds me. She watched Him walk off toward Jerusalem; He has come to me to stay. But I do want to share her response to the Christ - to treasure up all these things and ponder them in my heart,

until I begin to see as clearly as if the Christ-child played in my doorway…

That’s God eating my soup.

How Far?

“The journey from heaven to earth is the longest journey anyone has ever taken,” Pastor Rick said in his sermon on Sunday. Have you ever tried to grasp just how far Jesus had to come?

How many miles is it, after all, from the throneroom of heaven to a cave in Bethlehem? From total sovereignty to absolute dependence? From incredible glory to almost complete obscurity? From intimate fellowship with the Father and the Son to the peculiar barriers of flesh - an infant mind that cannot even comprehend its surroundings, eyes that cannot focus, lips that cannot yet form words?

How long is the journey from unending perfection to the decay of this sordid earth? From dazzling light and splendor to a globe that spends half its time in darkness? From complete wholeness and sufficiency to poverty and hunger? From omnipotent power to weakness and weariness? From myriads of angels in instant attendance to a mom and dad trying their imperfect best to understand the incoherent expressions of their infant Son?

How far, how really, really far, is it from superintending the creation of the universe to taking the form of the created being? From infinite knowledge to the barely conscious mind of an infant? From answering to the Father to taking orders from a carpenter and his wife?

How far did Jesus come, when He allowed Himself to be contracted from the infinite corners of His existence, into a microscopic embryo inside of Mary… utterly oblivious to existence, completely dependent on His Father and those entrusted with His care?

How far He came… for me and you! Truly He “made Himself nothing” for our sakes, joining us here so that we can someday join Him in all that He left. Standing beside the manger this Christmas season, we can only shake our heads in amazement, and whisper the words of the psalmist David,

Surely, You stooped down to make us great.* And we are eternally grateful.

*Psalm 18:35b NIV

A Smile for Eeyore

I hung up my favorite Christmas decoration last week. I’d forgotten about him, so I smiled when I pulled back the tissue paper and there lay Eeyore, hand-stitched onto a cheerful Christmas stocking made by my mom last year.

Are you familiar with Eeyore , the old grey donkey and pal of Winnie-the-Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood? If you are, you might wonder why I said the stocking was cheerful. Poor gloomy Eeyore is stuck on looking on the dark side of things, often mourning what’s been lost (his tail), or forgotten (his birthday). Unlike the irrepressible Tigger, Eeyore’s most exuberant display of excitement is a flat, almost cynical “Hooray. How wonderful.”

Maybe you’re a bouncy free spirit like Tigger, or a fearful soul like Piglet… but of all of A.A. Milne’s characters, I’ve resonated most with Eeyore. By nature – the old, not the new - what an unnecessary weight I carried around. What a sad old heart beat inside. Like him, I often celebrated my blessings while waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But this stocking is cheerful, genuinely cheerful. Eeyore’s ears are droopy as ever, but there’s a festive hat on his head and a genuine smile on his face. And if you follow his gaze, you see the reason for that smile – a little tree topped with a large, bright yellow Christmas star.

Eeyore and I have both found that by looking at the reason for Christmas, and for life, we don’t have to operate by the old nature anymore. We don’t have to exude gloom or cynicism or despair or negativity. The secret lies in what we’re looking at.

If Eeyore ever becomes distracted and decides to trot off my Christmas stocking, he’ll likely trot right back to his old gloomy point of view. The same goes for me, too. So I’d best hold my position, with my eyes fixed on Jesus, convinced that no matter what else is happening in my Hundred Acre Woods, Christmas is to be celebrated… Life is to be celebrated… because of Jesus.

Hooray!

How really, really wonderful!



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