When my house is on fire, I call the fire department. When I experience a burglary, I call the police. When I am having a heart attack, I call an ambulance.
But I only do those things if I believe in them.
I am fortunate to live in a place where those services do exist and are fairly reliable. Unfortunately, there are many places where those services either don’t exist at all, or they are too slow or unreliable in other ways. In those places, I would try to put the fire out myself, or chase the burglar away myself, or maybe drive myself to a hospital. Or I would call on other people I believed in, like my neighbors, family, or friends. If I’m lucky, someone would respond and help me.
Fortunately, we all live in a place where God exists and is available 24/7. He is the most reliable emergency responder.
I may not recognize it, but my house is burning down. Evil is trying to rob my life and joy. Death is at my door.
But God is standing by waiting for my call.
Dear God,
Thank you for your promise to answer me when I call on you. I’m sorry that I don’t always turn to you first. I try to solve all my problems with my own wisdom and power which is so inadequate. Remind me always to call on you and trust you instead.
A few months ago, my dog and I were returning home from a walk when we were attacked by the neighbor’s Saint Bernard. I screamed and screamed as I kicked at the dog from the ground where I had been knocked over, but my neighbor never came out to call off her dog, even though we were right outside her house.
My dog valiantly tried to defend us, but he was dwarfed by the huge attacker. My dog was wearing a leash and a “gentle leader” which limited his mobility while the Saint Bernard was not bound in any way.
Needless to say, I was in a bit of a panic and dumbfounded as to why no one was responding to my screams and cries for help. There were people around. There were some landscapers down the street, and a car drove right by us. No one came to help.
After what seemed like a very long time but was probably only a couple of minutes, the Saint Bernard suddenly stopped attacking and simply trotted away, back into his house. I don’t know why, although I had been praying while I was screaming.
Afterwards, while laying on the ground with my dog, I phoned my neighbor. She came out right away. I asked why she hadn’t come out to help when she heard my screams. Her answer was that she “didn’t know what the screaming was all about.” Not that she didn’t hear. She just didn’t want to get involved in whatever was going on outside, and she had no idea her dog was loose.
It amazes me that this woman could hear prolonged screaming outside her house and not at least look to see what was happening and whether she could help.
Humans are very unreliable. We just cannot be trusted.
God, however, is always reliable. He can be trusted. Always. Every time.
My cries for help are heard by God. When I put my trust in Him, He never ignores me. He may make me wait, because His timing is perfect and perhaps different than what I think I need. But He does not neglect me. He loves me and cares for me and promises to provide what I truly need.
Dear God,
Thank you for your promise to hear me and protect me and provide for me when I put my trust in you. Forgive me for being an unreliable human. I have ignored people in need many times. Show me today how to be more loving and trustworthy like you. And remind me to always turn to you first for help in all situations.
I was at the musical “Avenue Q” when I first learned the word schadenfreude. There is a whole song teaching about it. It’s a funny song, but also rings true deep down in my bones, I’m ashamed to say.
Schadenfreude means taking pleasure in the misfortune of others.
Here are some of the lyrics from the song:
“…When I see how sad you are, It sort of makes me happy…
Sorry Nicky, human nature. Nothing I can do. It’s schadenfreude. Making me feel glad that I’m not you…
Straight A student getting B’s, Exes getting STD’s, Waking doormen from their naps, Watching tourists reading maps, Football players getting tackled, CEO’s getting shackled, Watching actors never reach The ending of their Oscar speech…”
Schadenfreude is human nature, which means it is not God’s nature. And it is something I need the God of Love to help me overcome.
Rooting for evil is the opposite of love. Hoping for bad things to happen to my enemy is not love. Being glad that a lie worked out in my favor or that I got away with cheating is not love.
The more bad, evil, false, wrong, and painful things I inject into the world, the darker and uglier the world becomes.
I don’t want that. And God knows it will not make me happy in the end.
Dear God,
Thank you for your love, and thank you for your wisdom which teaches that love makes my world better for everyone. Forgive my urges toward revenge or spite or schadenfreude. This may feel good for a moment, but I realize any pleasant feeling will sour quickly and harden my heart. Teach me to rejoice in the truth and in righteousness, goodness, and love. Always.
It’s interesting that Jesus compares the church’s relationship with God to a marriage. Marriage is the ultimate test of human relationships. It is asking a lot for two flawed, self-centered people to live together, eat together, sleep together, collaborate in parenting, suffer the aging process in the same space at the same time, share resources, compromise in almost every aspect of life, and be happy about it. Forever.
It’s no wonder so many marriages end in divorce. We are only human.
That’s where God comes in though. God is love. He can fill us with His Spirit of love so we no longer think, act, and react like mere humans. In any relationship.
God teaches us how to love by loving us. He is the perfect spouse for this human church.
When I spend time with God, praising His character, contemplating His blessings, appreciating His forgiveness, listening for His voice, and being filled with His love, suddenly I can love others, including my husband. I can be generous with my time and resources, I can put aside my needs, I can forgive and forget, I can be patient, I can listen, and I can love.
Dear God,
Thank you for my marriage. Thank you for providing your love so that our marriage has a chance. Thank you for all my friendships and other family relationships as well. Please forgive me for the many times when I think, act, and react like the flawed and self-centered human I am. Please fill me with your love today and every day so I can love well in all these relationships instead.
Love is really hard to adequately define, but in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul gives one of the best definitions I’ve ever seen. He accomplishes this masterful definition by describing love the way one might describe a person — not what they are wearing or how tall they are, but what they are like and how they behave.
Paul describes what that person called “Love” would do and what they wouldn’t do.
This works perfectly as a definition because love actually is a person. Love is God, and God is love.
Without God there is no love. A universe without God is also a universe devoid of love.
God created everything from the depths of His love. That love blossomed and bore fruit. It filled the dark and empty void with life and light.
God’s love is still bearing fruit today. It is infinite and always available. The darkness keeps trying but can’t overcome it.
To push back the darkness in my corner of the world, all I need to do is love.
How do I love?
Back to the definition: God is love. To love, I just need to be like God and do what He does. God is patient. God is kind. God does not envy, is not boastful or arrogant…
Dear God,
I am so grateful for your love that created the world and everything in it, including me. Teach me how to be like you, how to love. I’m sorry for falling back on my own selfish desires instead of continuing to reach for your love. Remind me of the basics of love so deftly described here in the Bible as I interact with people today.
Christians around the world should only have a few things in common: belief in God, Jesus, and God’s word.
That’s it. We won’t have anything else in common. We will not all speak the same language. We won’t have the same skin color. We won’t all be rich or poor or anything in between. We won’t have the same voting records, not even close. We won’t like the same books or movies or music or jokes. We won’t worship the same way or pray the same way or dress the same way when we do.
We won’t agree on anything at all, in fact, except that there is One True God who loved all these disagreeable people so much that He breathed His will directly into scripture, and then He sent His only son Jesus to clarify those scriptures for us and save us from death by dying and being raised again.
We Christians won’t even necessarily believe the same things about death or the afterlife or the creation or about God Himself. If it’s not made clear in the Bible, it’s not important to being Christian. We can agree to disagree.
But if it is clear in the Bible, we Christians definitely should agree on it. And live by it. And be united in love by it.
So what is the ultimate purpose of the scriptures?
The purpose is not to judge other people or other Christians. The purpose is not to create legislation or to try to remake our current culture or society. The purpose is not to win debates about esoteric “Christian” ideals or concepts. The purpose is not to win elections or gain power. The purpose is not to exclude, hate, control, or vilify anyone.
The purpose of these God-breathed scriptures is very clearly stated here: to equip me for every goodwork.
Am I using the Bible as a tool to help me do good things in service of loving others well?
Or am I using it as a weapon to manipulate and shame and divide?
Dear God,
Thank you for giving us your word. And thank you that I live in a place where I am free to read it whenever I want. Please forgive me for taking that for granted. I pray that others who do not have free access to the Bible in their native language do find it soon. Remind me, as I read your word, that its purpose is to equip me to do good, not for any other, self-serving purpose.
Ponce de Leon purportedly went on many expensive and dangerous expeditions in search of the mythical Fountain of Youth.
When Westerners first heard of a hidden paradise in the Himalayan mountains, popularized as Shanghai-La by James Hilton in “Lost Horizon”, countless expeditions were launched.
Indiana Jones, Monty Python, and “The Da Vinci Code” all put their spin on the search for the Holy Grail, the mystical cup of Christ with supposed miraculous healing powers.
None of these desperate searches bore fruit. They are myths and legend, born and sustained by wishful thinking.
To many people God seems like an unrealistic wishful-thinking myth as well. But the Bible assures me that He’s not.
In Chronicles, King Asa was a good king ruling people who had turned away from God. King Asa was fighting against the tide to bring His nation back to God. But he was discouraged. Then the prophet Azariah gave him this message from God:
The reward of seeking God is finding God. Unlike, seeking the Fountain of Youth or Shanghai-La or the Holy Grail, God is not a myth. He is real and easily found simply by seeking Him.
Dear God,
Thank you for being so easily found! Open my eyes to see and my heart to seek you today.
Seeing the things that “Christians” in America seem most passionate about, one would think God had told His followers to, “Be afraid! Be very afraid!”
But this is the opposite of what God tells His children. Some people say there are 365 Bible verses telling people not to be afraid. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know there are a lot of scenarios in the Bible where God is, yet again, telling someone to “Fear not!” It’s as if we need constant reassurance. And clearly we do — refer back to my first point.
“Christians” are acting afraid.
Looking at their behavior and the things they ardently fight for:
They seem terrified of gayness. Are gay people going to “turn them or their children gay” somehow? (I don’t understand and am only guessing.)
They seem scared of women. Are women somehow going to steal the power of men and upset the whole balance of nature? (Again, I don’t understand and am only guessing.)
They seem afraid of minorities. Are they worried that they will somehow lose the culture and traditions they are familiar with and suddenly find themselves in the minority, subject to the same discrimination they have inflicted on others? (I don’t know.)
They seem absolutely distraught over immigrants. I really can’t even guess about this. Maybe they are just worried about resources and having to share? Or afraid of anyone speaking a language they don’t understand? Or just afraid of differentness and change?
They are horrified at the idea that gun use should be regulated. This is fear wrapped in fear. If we have gays and women and minorities and immigrants everywhere, we will certainly need our guns, right?
In general, they seem afraid of anyone different from themselves, any changes to the status quo, and anything that could potentially decrease their power.
All of this is so anti-Christian. It is diametrically opposite to everything that Jesus modeled and taught.
If I believe God is who He says He is — the Creator of everything and the ultimate power over everything — I don’t need to be afraid of anything. God can handle it. If someone new comes into my life, my job is to see how I can love them, not how to protect myself from them. If society is changing around me, I don’t need to fear it. The world is constantly changing. My goals and values can remain the same without fear of what others are doing. Again, my goals and values are to love. God will take care of anything else that needs taking care of.
I can fight against evil without fearing it. But I need to use that spirit of “sound judgment” so I know how God defines evil, and the spirit of “love” so I know how God wants me to fight it.
Evil is not anything that is simply different from me. Evil is not just something I don’t understand that makes me uncomfortable. Evil is hate and deceit and selfishness and the absence of goodness and love.
To fight evil, I cannot use more evil. I can only win with love.
Dear God,
Thank you for giving me a spirit of power, love, and sound judgment. Forgive me for letting fear make any of my decisions or dictate any of my actions. Fill me again today with your Spirit so I can cast all my fears away. I know with you, there is never anything to worry about. My job is simple to love.
On the TV show “Ghosts,” the ghosts are able to walk through walls. This is a pretty typical convention when portraying ghosts on TV or in the movies. But on “Ghosts,” they joke about why they don’t also fall through the floor into the basement. Or why they are able to sit on chairs but not pick them up and move them.
And in one episode, a character falls in a well and is stranded there because she can’t climb up the walls. She can only walk through them into the vast nothingness of the dirt in every direction. But if she can walk through the dirt, how is she standing on dirt? Why doesn’t she fall to the center of the earth? Or why couldn’t she walk up dirt, like stairs, to the surface?
Clearly there are a lot of unanswerable questions about these ghosts because someone just made them up. The writers needed them to interact with each other so they stand on the same floors, sit on chairs, and climb stairs.
God is not a ghost like these characters, but He is a Spirit. (See John 4:24)
There is not a lot of information about what a spirit is in the Bible. It is left vague. But we do have a few clues.
As Spirit, God is everywhere, all the time. (See Psalm 139:7-10)
God doesn’t have a human body. God the Son came to earth in human form, but God the Father did not.
God is invisible to us (See Colossians 1:15), unless He chooses to reveal Himself in some way, like the cloud of smoke that led the Israelites through the wilderness or a burning bush for Moses.
Because God is Spirit, He is not limited by the dimensional or temporal restrictions of created things. There is no greater freedom than that.
Because God loves me, I can know God and have a personal relationship with Him. Through that relationship I can have freedom as well. I can have a taste of it now — freedom from my sin and its ultimate price. And I can have freedom to the full when Jesus returns.
Dear God,
Thank you for providing your word as a way to learn about you. Thank you for revealing yourself as much as my puny brain can comprehend. I look forward to the time when I can more fully understand you. In the meantime thank you for giving me what I need to live free now.
Following Jesus is the biggest gamble anyone can make. I’m literally gambling with my life.
If I’m wrong about Jesus, I will have squandered the one and only life I will ever have on things like philanthropy, volunteering, and kindness. Instead of using my limited time and resources to enjoy myself and to ensure comfort, luxury, and pleasure, it will be wasted on reading ancient texts, sitting on hard pews listening to people talk about those old texts, and praying to someone who doesn’t exist.
On the other hand, if what Jesus says is true, my sacrifices will all be worthwhile. This life will just be an uncomfortable and confusing, but relatively brief, blip in an otherwise everlasting and beautiful existence with God.
It’s an enormous risk. It takes complete faith. You can’t hedge your bets. It’s all or nothing with God.
It’s a wonder anyone takes this huge risk by giving their life away. The one life they can see, hear, and feel. In exchange for a life that is a future, glimmering promise…
I know the secret — the answer to the why.
When I started down the road of gambling my life away, I discovered it’s not a completely blind faith. God reveals Himself along the way. Each time I reach out to Him, He reaches back to me with two strong hands. Each time I take one tentative step toward Him, He takes five confident bounds forward with me in His arms.
The time I spend here is leading up to that beautiful new life, preparing the way, teaching me about the God who loves me and wants to spend eternity with me. And every moment I spend close to God now, obeying Him, listening for His voice makes the time here less uncomfortable and less confusing.
And after some time, following Jesus doesn’t feel like a risk at all. In fact, it seems like a very sure bet.
Dear God,
Thank you for revealing yourself to me when I turn toward you, listen for you, look for you, and reach out to you. I need your reassurance so badly. Forgive the doubts that nag at me daily. I am so grateful for your revelations and reminders of your ever-present love. I have joyfully put all my chips on you.
CamDevo 