Rich in Good Deeds

Of all the Bible characters, I think my favorite is Mary of Bethany. I love the way she comes with her jar of costly perfume and pours it on Jesus’ feet, until the whole house is fragranced by her offering.

There are two reactions to Mary’s extravagance. One came from Judas and other disciples: “What a waste of good money… Why, she could have sold it for a fortune and given it to the poor” (Mt. 26:8-9 TLB). The other came from Jesus: “Let her alone… she has done a beautiful thing…”

Pastor Rick has challenged us to be rich in good deeds, and this story of Mary reminds me that as we set about doing so, there will be varying opinions about our choices and methods.

If we prayerfully let the Holy Spirit guide us in our giving and good deeds, He may lead us to do things that, like Mary’s anointing of Christ, aren’t easily explainable. That don’t make sense to the worldly-wise. That sometimes make even our Christian brothers and sisters lift their eyebrows. We may hear them say, “What a waste of good money… What a poor use of time and abilities… They could have made a real impact, that money could have been used in a big way… but look how they’re blowing it.”

Such opinions should drive us to our knees, listening for one Voice, and one alone. Is it a beautiful thing to Christ? Is He pleased? Then we mustn’t let the world squeeze us into its mold. We must do the thing He lays on our heart and be rich in the good deeds that matter to Him, working for His opinion alone.

He may call us to do something so small, so obscure, that we are embarrassed to have our efforts exposed. But nothing is insignificant to Christ. He valued individuals, cups of cold water, and two widow’s coins. He does not “despise the day of small things.”

And, as we were reminded Sunday, nothing is unrewarded. Jesus said that Mary’s kind deed would be told wherever the gospel was preached throughout the world. Yours will be made known in another world, to a larger audience, and with eternal rewards.

Godliness with Contentment

This world has rules to live by, and one of them is:

No Contentment Allowed.

Okay, maybe temporarily. We’re expected to savor the first paycheck, the first couple weeks on the new job, and the first month with the new car… and then we are off, angling toward a promotion, anticipating the accompanying compensation, and salivating over the new SUV’s. The only thing is this world that is allowed to live a contented life is… a cow.

I like cows. I like their great, calm eyes and their ambling gait and their generally non-aggressive personalities. But I think most of us cannot relate to them very well. We resonate better with… squirrels. Nervous, jerky, expending tremendous amounts of energy scuffling about in rotten leaves, taking hair-raising leaps in the treetops, and generally creating quite a flurry wherever they go. The only contented squirrels I’ve seen are the stuffed ones that decorate our house.

And too many of us Christians assume that that’s life. We are destined to race about like crazy amassing all the “acorns” we can (for God’s glory, of course), until one day it’s lights out and we can finally rest in contentment forever.

No, Paul says. Godliness with contentment here and now is great gain (1 Tim. 6:6). The Greek word for contentment means “inner sufficiency.” The Christian who is contented with what God has given him is not lazy, unmotivated, or a disgrace to society. He’s not living below his privileges or possibilities. He’s obeying Scripture, demonstrating faith in God as his Supplier, and standing firm in a powerful crosscurrent of worldly temptation.

Try it tonight when you go to bed. Close your eyes and tell the Lord, “Enough. I’m not asking You for anything right now. I thank you for supplying my needs today; I trust You to supply my needs tomorrow. I am contented in You.”

If there were tears in heaven, I think God might shed a few out of sheer happiness. Somebody acknowledges that He’s the Source. Somebody is satisfied with what He’s doing! Somebody actually gets it!

Somebody wants to be a cow, not a squirrel. That “somebody” will sleep contented tonight.

Standing our Ground

Pick a problem, any problem. In fact, pick the worst one you have right now. The biggest, the nastiest, the one that will not shut up and will not go away, the one that haunts your thoughts and weights your spirits. That one.

Consider its dimensions. Estimate its size. Test its weight. Does it seem a monster big enough to eat you alive? Is it towering over you, breathing out dire consequences? Are you reduced to a mass of quivering jelly by its hot breath?

I have to confess that I have received great spiritual encouragement in this area from an unlikely source… the movie The Grinch that Stole Christmas! Don’t you, too, sometimes feel like little Cindy Lou?

She just wanted to be good, to show some compassion for an unloved creature. So she made her way to the Grinch's mountaintop lair where she encountered a bizarre brand of frightening hostility. What I love most, the picture that sticks in my mind, is her response. As the Grinch circles her threateningly, towering over her, making horrible faces (it isn’t hard), saying horrible things, little Cindy Lou gazes up at him in wide-eyed fearlessness. It baffles the Grinch, even as it astounds the viewer. Why doesn’t she run or at least scream and faint? It isn’t natural to stand up to a Grinch!

Well, I guess the answer to that question is that Dr. Seuss decided Cindy Lou should stand her ground. And no matter how big the monster in the story, the author wins. He’s invisible, but he’s sovereign.

So with the problems – the ones that circle around us breathing out threats and looking scarier by the minute. We feel like dead meat. We pray that we’ll faint and get it over with. Until we recognize that as believers we have an Author behind us Who has promised that we’ll come out okay if we don’t break and run. Who has even stepped (unseen) into that dark cave with us and promised to stay with us til story’s end.

The youth sang a powerful song on Sunday: “Never Underestimate My Jesus.” Never forget Who He is and what He’s capable of and what He’s promised and how near He is and how attentive and compassionate and sovereign and wise…

How spine-stiffening it is to recognize that this Jesus is the Author of our story and He’s decided we should stand our ground. So He’s writing our problem out with a beginning and a climax and (thankfully!) a resolution and an ending. We needn’t bat an eye at its size or its fury today. The Author wins… and that knowledge will help to turn us all into Cindy Lou’s.

The Only Thing I Need

Is there a more widespread fear in America today than the fear of insufficiency?

From the minor to the major, it’s constant. Is there enough milk left in the fridge? Enough gas in the car for the day’s travels? Enough money in the bank for this month’s bills? Enough time to finish the current work project? Enough hands to finish it? (My mother used to lament, “If I just had one more hand…”).

The Apostle Paul addressed such fear in Hebrews 13:5. Here’s the Amplified Version – a bit cumbersome to read but the best for understanding exactly what the Greek was saying:

Let your character or moral disposition be free from love of money [including greed, avarice, lust, and carving for earthly possessions] and be satisfied in your present [circumstances and with what you have]; for He [God] Himself has said, I will not in any way fail you nor give you up nor leave you without support. [I will] not, [I will] not, [I will] not in any degree leave you helpless nor forsake nor let [you] down (relax My hold on you)! [Assuredly not!]

In Word Studies, Bible scholar Kenneth West states that three negatives precede the verb “leave.” God will not, not, not leave me helpless or forsake me. It’s utterly unthinkable!

The question is, Whose agenda am I following – who decides what my needs are? If God is in charge, He might take away something it seems I need. Will I trust Him then? Will I trust Him now?

The Christian group 4Him sings a wonderful song with this line in the chorus: The only thing I need I already have.” (View the song)

“The only thing I need I already have.” Tell the Lord that today – and mean it! Repeat it to yourself when the fear of insufficiency arises. Post it at your workplace. Have it written on your checks! Just having Him is enough to make each of us rich beyond calculation.

Stuck?

When our oldest son was a curious toddler, he occasionally wedged his chubby body into spaces that were a few sizes too small. I can still see him with his upper torso protruding from the opening between the seat and the back of a dining room chair.

“Stuck!” he would call. “Stuck!” There were no flailing limbs. No body contortions. Just a holler or two, and a passive wait for rescue. Freed, he scampered away to play.

Can you identify? Sometimes our spirits become wedged between the past and the future. Life marches on, but we can’t seem to move with it. A loved one dies, a move uproots us, a project ends, change happens, and it’s hard to change with it. Or a bad choice is made, a heart is scarred, a life is derailed. Guilt and regret press in. Discouragement and sadness weigh heavy. We’re going nowhere. Stuck.

As we learned Sunday, we have to let go of the past in order to move toward the future. That means letting go of not only the bad things others have done, but our own bad decisions with their long-term effects on ourselves and those around us. And while stacks of books have been written about the difficulties of dealing with regret and guilt, of letting go, forgiving, forgetting, and all that goes with it, there’s one thing that shortens and sweetens the whole process:

Trust. In God.

Specifically, trust that He is the incurable Redeemer of everything that is put in His hands. That no matter how damaged and worthless our past, He can do something wonderful with it. He is always “making lemonade out of lemons,” and we have only to trust that He is everlastingly at it, with a glad and willing heart.

If we really believe that, we won’t be ashamed to look Him in the face and tell Him how desperately stuck we are and how much we need His help. We’ll quiet down and calm down and wait expectantly for Him to come and release us from the past and set us free to scamper off into the future.

We'll forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead, pressing on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Jesus’ Family Tree

Matthew 1:1. Not a footnote or side note or appendix, but Matthew 1:1.

You’d think that God would be a bit reluctant to publish His Son’s pedigree right there in the opening lines of the New Testament. And that He would at least have dressed it up to make it sound as classy as possible. But He intentionally went out of His way, used extra ink to expose what we wouldn’t think God would be very proud of… more than a few black sheep in the family lineage.

But we are talking about the God Who gets more excited over recovering a wandering sheep than over ninety-nine who give Him no trouble at all. Who spent far more time on the sinful and the lost than on proud Pharisees with noble bloodlines and papers to prove it. Who later inspired Paul to list the flawed but faith-filled patriarchs and proclaim, “Therefore God was not ashamed to be called their God”… (Heb. 11:16 NIV).

Do you sometimes feel like He must be ashamed to be called your God? Perhaps you can’t imagine Him being proud to list your name as one of His own, as a spiritual descendant of Abraham and an heir to all that His Son owns. Your past disqualifies you. I love what W. Tozer has to say:

“Now, on the basis of grace as taught in the Word of God, when God forgives a man, He trusts him as though he had never sinned. God did not have mental reservations about any of us when we became His children by faith. When God forgives a man, He doesn't think, 'I will have to watch this fellow because he has a bad record.' No, He starts with him again as though he had just been created and as if there had been no past at all! That is the basis of our Christian assurance--and God wants us to be happy in it.”

It’s all a part of the “good news of great joy which shall be to all people.” Nobody’s disqualified by their past. Everyone has the opportunity to be made a new creature, to start with a clean record, to find forgiveness for every relapse, to cooperate with the Spirit in forging a faith that makes God proud to be called our God.

The Christmas Story

I have a little book on my shelves, cardboard-bound and covered front and back with fabric. Its content is typed; the art is hand-drawn; the author is my son Greg. The occasion was a grade-school assignment and the title is “If I Were in Charge of the World.”

All I can say is, thank heaven he isn’t! In the space of twenty pages Greg canceled homework, nixed the idea of cleaning one’s room, and eliminated his brothers, cats, and sickness (okay, Ill give him that one). He also pronounced sugar a vegetable and went on to callously obliterate the entire Steelers football team (sorry, Ben). He ended by covering all his bases:

“And a person who forgot to do his homework
and sometimes forgot to clean his room
would still be allowed to be in charge of the world.”

I wonder what he’d have written if the assignment were “If I Were in Charge of the First Christmas”? I wonder what you or I would have written? Pastor Ben mentioned Sunday that “in my story, the glory of God would have lasted all night.” I think we all would tend to minimize the hard parts and the puzzling or painful places, and major on the joy and glory and good news.

Written by us, we’d have a Jesus who enjoyed a life of privilege that few could identify with. Jesus would have been born in a pristine setting in Nazareth, with grandmas and grandpas close at hand. And everyone would have welcomed Him. But part of the glory of the Christmas story is in those hard places. In the long, difficult journey. The separation from kin. The birth in a stable. Being hated and hunted by Herod.

Yet God could be trusted with that story, couldn’t He? He knew what He was doing – fulfilling prophecy, identifying with the poorest and most insignificant, becoming nothing for us.

He can be trusted with your story, and mine, too. It’s foolish to try to grab the pen from His hand and write “If I Were in Charge of My Life.” We’d eliminate the very things that God meant to use for glory. Better to gaze in wonder at the manger scene this Christmas, and reaffirm to our Creator, “Lord, You are in charge of my story. Write what You want. I trust You with all of my heart.”