Morning Questions

I was out of town this past weekend and haven’t yet listened to Sunday’s sermon on tape, so I’d like to share something else that came across my path this week…

Paul Heil, in his "Gospel Greats Weekly Newsletter," recently noted that John Wesley, co-founder of the Methodist movement, “developed an interesting list of thought-provoking questions, designed as a daily self-evaluation for Christians. Wesley published it in various forms throughout his lifetime”… Below are some of the questions he included. Perhaps they would be useful for challenging us at the start of each day, or as a once-a-week spiritual inventory…

• Do I give the Bible time to speak to me every day?
• Am I enjoying prayer? [I like Wesley’s word, “enjoying.” Doesn’t it make sense that fellowship with God should have an element of enjoyment?]
• Is Christ real to me?
• Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?
• How do I spend my spare time?
• Do I pray about the money I spend?
• Do I laugh at the mistakes of others, reveling in their errors or misfortunes?
• Do I insist on having my own way?
• Do I handle discouragement well or do I have to be coddled?
• Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward or disregard? If so, what am I doing about it?

And let’s add a couple more that might help us establish perspective at the start of a day:

• Have I given God this day as His to do as He pleases in it?
• Have I given Him myself as His servant?
• Is my desire and prayer that He be honored in the eyes of others through all I am and do today?
• Am I willing to be inconvenienced, stretched, demeaned, or tested for His purposes and glory?
• Am I entering this day with a pilgrim mindset, positive and persevering, looking forward to the promise of eternal life with Christ?

One caution – some of us are prone to go easy on ourselves; others of us beat ourselves up needlessly. Ask your questions prayerfully, and let the Holy Spirit answer them. After all, it’s His perspective that matters. Ask for His forgiveness when necessary; receive His commendation when you’ve done well. And then go into the day filled with God-confidence and God-sufficiency, for if God is for you, who can be against you?

It’s Me, O Lord

We teach children to pray with their eyes closed. Parents, Bible School leaders, and Sunday School teachers all do. I guess that’s because children are easily distracted otherwise, and besides, there’s nowhere to direct their attention outwardly because they are praying to a God who is not seen. So we instruct them to bow their heads and fold their hands (probably so they don’t pinch their neighbor) and shut their eyes and grow very quiet in preparation for prayer.

Now I know that they - and we adults - don’t really have to pray with eyes closed, but even if we don’t close them physically, there’s a good case for praying with the eyes of our heart closed tightly. Closed against the cares of our lives that are filling our field of vision. Closed against the distractions and temptations that vie for our time and attention. Closed against the terrifying mirages the enemy throws across our path. Not because we want to pretend everything’s perfect and life’s challenges aren’t real, but because we want – need – for a few moments to see what is more real and more powerful and more important – Jesus. And we need to see those challenges through His eyes.

If only the Pharisee in Sunday’s parable had done that! Instead, he saw himself magnified many times over, and felt compelled to describe what he saw to God and everyone within earshot. He saw the tax collector standing some distance away, and compared himself quite favorably with the unfortunate man. He saw the works he did as his justification before God.

I don’t know if the tax collector had his eyes closed, but I do know he wouldn’t lift them to heaven. He didn’t look God in the eye; he didn’t look at the Pharisee; he ignored the rest of the people in the temple. His inner eyes were closed to all that. It was just him, standing in the need of prayer… and God, who he knew to be gracious and merciful.

Again, it’s not a matter of physically shutting our eyes. It’s a matter of inwardly shutting out every other urgent voice and becoming totally present to God alone.

I wonder how much our prayer times would improve if we narrowed the focus to “God and me.” If we quit talking up what we’re doing for Him and comparing ourselves with others and excusing our shortcomings and failures. If we just bowed our hearts in His presence and received His mercy and grace to cover all our sin and all our need.

I think we might please the Lord, set an example for anyone watching our lives… and go Home justified.

Three Sons

I am a middle child.

I was well into my teens, I guess, when I learned that this is supposed to be a challenging position, that I am supposed to feel like a second class citizen, underloved, undernoticed, and undercelebrated.

On the contrary, I have generally found it to be quite a comfortable spot in the lineup. While the older child is trying everything first and enthusiastically accepting responsibilities (i.e., work), and the youngest is still requiring attention and assistance… the middle child can quite comfortably lay back and watch it all. Or step back and escape it all. I recall long treks in the woods with my dog (while my older sister was likely energetically cleaning the house) and happy hours circling the lawn on the riding mower (while she learned to cook and bake and sew). No mistake, I would be very reluctant to give up middlehood.

Maybe that’s why I envision another character in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. I know the father had only two sons, but in trying to identify with either of them I find that I am somewhere in the middle – and I think a lot of Christians today are with me on this.

We shrink from the elder brother. We respect our Father too much to protest the celebration of any prodigal’s return. We might shrug and mutter a bit – but not to the Father. We wouldn’t want to make a scene or throw cold water on His joy. So we don’t stay out on the porch or begrudge our transformed brother a fatted calf and a few hours of dancing.

But neither do we always rush to hug him and offer him a place beside us at the dinner table and take him to town to proclaim his return. We play the middle child, present in body but not in heart and soul. While we’re genuinely relieved that the Father’s long days of anguish are over, we’re content to step back to watch the festivities. Keep our reservations to ourselves. Maybe make an early exit to take care of duties, or just hide in the hay and contemplate the day’s events.

Middlehood. It might work if the Father didn’t know our hearts, but He does. In His family, there’s no escape. No carefree hours spent circling the issue while neglecting what He wants most of all – a heart like His, eyes that see every brother for what they are – prodigals every one, and ourselves first of all. Lips that welcome the wanderer home, arms that offer a grace-filled embrace, and feet that dance with the angels in heaven.

Now there’s a challenging position... but there’s no more comfortable spot in the lineup!

Counting the Cost

I can relate to the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. Like that servant, I’ve acknowledged my poverty to a holy King and willingly accepted His pardon, but too often my attitude says, Because God made me and loves me so much, He’d do anything to have me back. Redemption is a right I claim. (Sometimes it’s like I’ve done Him a favor and allowed Him to save me.)

I have not grasped what mankind initially owed nor how much was the ransom paid nor what it cost the King. I have so little concept of the debt He cancelled. So is it any wonder if I struggle to forgive my brother or sister?

How much did we owe, anyway? What kind of debt was cancelled?

• The earth – that place of beauty of which the Creator said “It is good” - was trashed. Sin entered. Decay spread. Death reigned.
• Man and Woman – who alone were made in God’s image – were disfigured and shamed and polluted, stripped of their original dignity and glory, and doomed to eternal separation from God.
• The heart of God was so anguished He was sorry He had ever made us.
• The Son of God, the Glorious One of heaven, stepped into the tragedy, disguised in human flesh, and endured our disbelief and abuse and rejection.
• He died under the immeasurable weight of every sin ever committed, as God laid His hand upon the Scapegoat of the human race, and sent Him into the wilderness of death alone, bearing our sin.

Bearing my sin. My debt – mine alone. For such a tremendous price would have been exacted even if I been the only one needing rescued. It would still have meant an earthly life and an ugly death and agonizing separation from the Father. So there’s no sense shifting any of it onto any other sinner in the world. I was enough to cause it all.

So can I forgive the one who has wronged me terribly and repeatedly? In the words of missionary Amy Carmichael, “Count the cost. But when you do, take your figures to the foot of the cross and tally them there.” I must go and sit at the foot of the cross as I ponder the question. I must let the blood of Christ trickle down over my calculations. Let just a tiny fraction of the weight of sin He bore press on my heart. Let the jeers sound faintly in my ear. If I dare, for a nanosecond, I can even try to imagine what it felt like to be utterly rejected by the Father. Then I can compare the cost of forgiving my brother…

To be honest, the foot of the cross gives the matter a whole new perspective. From that vantage point, I feel like looking around my world for somebody, anybody, to forgive, and forgive again and again and again in response to God’s payment of my debt. It would still require His supernatural grace, but He promises to give it.

What better way to show my grasp of His grace and my gratitude for His mercy than to assure my fellow man, “Your debt to me? Paid in full.”

The Time for Faith

“When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

Faith pleases God (Heb. 11:6). But here’s what I’m (slowly) learning. Faith is only needed – and only possible – when I can’t see the outcome. Once I have the answer to my question or the solution to my dilemma or the blessing I was asking for, I have the “cash in hand.” The time for faith has passed.

So in every uncertainty there’s a window of opportunity, a time frame in which we have the opportunity to please God by showing faith. Poet Fay Inchfawn, writing about how the spirit of Jacob revived when he saw his sons returning from Egypt with wagons laden with provision, put it this way:

…Oh, man who walked by sight.
You should have known the darkest hour of night
Is just before the earliest streak of gray.
Your wagons, all the time, were on their way!...

And she turns the lesson on us…

Oh, sorrowful soul! Trust just a little longer.
Who knows, but o’er your bare, brown hill
The wagons may be coming nearer still?
Give faith a chance. For soon, how soon it may
Give place to sight; and then never again
Will you have opportunity to show
That you can trust, albeit you cannot know.

What is testing your faith right now? The wagons are on their way, and when they arrive the opportunity to demonstrate faith in that situation will be passed. Today is your chance to demonstrate faith in God, to please Him with your trust, and to believe that He exists and is the Rewarder of those who earnestly, persistently seek Him.

However feebly, however imperfectly, as much as you are able by His grace... trust now!

Imitating the Master

Is the parable of the vineyard (Mt. 20:1-16) a tale of injustice? Was it justifiable for the Master to pay the 12-hour worker and the one-hour worker the same wage? Depends on who you ask.

If Fox Network’s Sean Hannity assembled the parable’s key players for The Great American Panel this evening, he would be delighted with the lively exchange of opinions. Those who worked from sunup to sundown would be heated in their protest, “Unfair! Unfair!” Those who joined up halfway through would be defending themselves vociferously. And the objects of their scorn, those hired at the eleventh hour, would keep interjecting, “Hey, you got what you were promised! What’s your beef?” Hannity might get his best ratings ever!

But I’m guessing the owner of the vineyard wouldn’t put in an appearance, wouldn’t even be available for comment. He’d had his say, and he did it mostly through his actions. No one was cheated. The only crime was grace. The only logic was love.

I by nature want to live by the Law – an eye for an eye and everything neatly balanced and meted out equally (like little children who check to make sure their siblings weren’t given a bigger piece of candy), but Jesus melted that Law into two commandments, the Laws of Love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

The first commandment I understand – God has a right to our all-consuming love. But to love my neighbor as I love myself? What might that lead to? It might make me care about someone who’s considered worthless. It might distract me from the goals I’ve set, take a chunk out of my savings, lead me to lend or give something away that’s precious to me…

That kind of love might even make me say, “So he came at the eleventh hour. I’m sorry, for his sake. He missed the best part of the day. The sun was bright, the breeze was cool, and we had a great time in the fields. The Master worked right alongside us, and sang us through the hard parts… so hey, give him the denario. It’s what I’d want done if I were in his workboots.”

It might make me act like the Master Himself.

More Beggars!

Behind the house where I grew up, just at the back of our yard, ran train tracks… and those tracks carried more than conductors and cabooses and boxcars heaped with coal. One day a strange man showed up at our door, not the most dapper of fellows. He was a hobo who’d likely come from the train, perhaps dropping out of a boxcar when the conductor slowed for our crossing.

He knocked on the door and asked for a bit of food, which Mom supplied, then sat out on the side porch, downing his meal. When he was finished, without fanfare, he set out for parts unknown. But he was not the last to come. Somehow, others found their way to our door. Tramps had a way of “marking” houses, we children were told. Apparently one beggar had told another beggar where to find bread.

If spiritually I am a beggar (and I am), then I want to be like that first fellow – the kind who knows where the Bread is! Who has stopped there and tasted and found that it was good! Who trusts that the kitchen is big and the cook is gracious and that there will always be enough. I don’t even need to hesitate to call others to come and share the feast; there’s plenty to go around!

But if there’s anything that doesn’t sound important when the plate is empty and the tummy is full, it’s food. We don’t think about our own stomachs for quite awhile, let alone anyone else’s. And when we do… well, we’re camped at a place where we need never go hungry again! Life is great! So we quickly forget the beggars who have not yet found an open door and a kind reception. We forget what hobo-life was like. We forget the gnawing hunger pangs, the trembling weakness, the rising desperation for something, anything to fill the belly.

The Parable of the Great Banquet reminds me that the Father never forgets. That He can’t get enough beggars around His table. “More! Go out and get more!” He still urges His servants. It reminds me that I should be embarrassed to be found sitting here stuffing my spirit with all the good things He’s provided (long after my hunger is appeased), while fellow hobos are starving, and my Father’s heart is breaking for them.

It’s a sobering parable, and not just for the high-muckety-mucks who snubbed the Host. It should challenge some of us beggars who've already "arrived" to look around at all the empty chairs, put down our forks, and heed the urgent calls of the Father…

“More! Bring more!
My house must be full!”