Hope

The subject of fear, doubt, anxiety, etc hits very close to home, so I want to take some time here and remind myself (and whoever reads this blog) what Jesus/ the bible and some great Christian leaders have to say about fear.  

"God does lead his people on roundabout ways.  He does not move hastily.  He is never in a hurry.  It is one of his most irritating qualities." -John Ortberg.

In Love Beyond Reason, Ortberg continues about "the God who takes his people to the Promised Land by way of the desert."  But why?  If God loves us like sons and daughters, can't He calm the storms in our lives?  Why does God let it be so difficult?  

I like Ortberg's answer: "The desert is where you face the question of perseverance.  The desert is a place where only the patient can go on."  Here God's love lands in a deeper place.  "In the desert all we have to cling to is the promise.  God has not forgotten you."  Here Romans 8:15-17 is life-giving, "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.  And by him we cry 'Abba, Father.'  The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.  Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."

Really take a moment to think of the implications of a statement like, "The Holy Spirit tells our spirit that we are God's children."  That's one part of the trinity saying we're God's children, how about another?  In Matthew 7:9-11, Jesus (The Son) says, "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"  (Just look at my hot girlfriend as evidence of this being true).  That's two members of the trinity considering humans sons and daughters of God.  Psalm 139: 13-16 says, "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.  When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.  All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."  We were created by God.  He made us.  That is why He sees us as His children.  This is profound, to me.   

There is a field in social science that attempts to study resiliency.  Researchers study people who have survived traumatic experiences.  For example, they studied 3,000 POW's who returned from being "brainwashed" in Korea, victims of crippling accidents and children from very difficult backgrounds.  Their answers (the resilient ones, rather) all shared a few themes.

• Resilient people continually seek to reassert some command and control over their destiny rather than seeing themselves as passive victims.
•  Resilient people have a larger than usual capacity for what might be called moral courage--for refusing to betray their values
  
• Resilient people find purpose and meaning in their suffering
  

These qualities are not just the product of a strong character.  Each one of them grows out of a deep dependence on God.  Jairus's daughter being dead didn't phase Jesus.  Surely my enormous student loan debt won't phase Him either.  Whatever you're going through isn't too big (or trivial).  Jesus says, "Don't be afraid; just believe (Mark 5:36)."  In Matthew 21:22 Jesus says to his disciples, "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."  This takes faith.  God, I believe.  Help my unbelief.  Psalm 25:3 says that no one whose hope is in [God] will ever be put to shame. 

Sometimes I doubt that God really cares about me.  I believe that He loves me, because I believe that what Jesus said is true.  But I sometimes doubt that God likes me and therefore, doesn't care if I'm blessed.  Take a guess where this thought comes from.  

From cover to cover, the bible is about God doing everything in His power to be with His people (me and you).  He delights in us, the bible says.  So when times are hard, when we are in a desert, when the storm is tearing everything else apart, remember Paul's words, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; confused, but not in despair."  

"Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows." -Luke 12: 6+7

Who Does God Say I Am?

At some point in the Christian walk, you will encounter what I like to call the "Now what" dilemma. Everyone (every believer, that is) knows this. It is the internal battle that is sparked by committing a sin. The guilt and shame of this sin can be paralyzing.  

One of my personal heroes, John Ortberg writes, "Sometimes we don't have much of a sense of God's presence in our lives, but there's no mystery to it at all. The truth is that our desire for God can be pretty selective. Sometimes we don't want God to be around.

Dallas Willard write about a two-and-a-half-year-old girl in the backyard who one day discovered the secret to making mud (which she called 'warm chocolate'). Her grandmother had been reading and was facing away from the action, but after cleaning up what was to her a mess, she told little Larissa not to make any more chocolate and turned her chair around so as to be facing her granddaughter.  

The little girl soon resumed her 'warm chocolate' routine, with one request posed as sweetly as a two-and-a-half-year-old can make it:

'Don't look at me Nana. Okay?'

Nana (being a little codependent) of course agreed.

Larissa continued to manufacture warm chocolate. Three times she said, as she continued her work, 'Don't look at me Nana. Okay?'

Then Willard writes, 'Thus the tender soul of a little child shows us how necessary it is to us that we be unobserved in our wrong.'

Any time we choose to do wrong or to withhold doing right, we choose hiddenness as well. It may be that out of all the prayers that are ever spoken, the most common one--the quietest one, the one that we least acknowledge making--is simply this: Don't look at me, God.

It was the very first prayer spoken after the Fall. God came to walk in the garden, to be with the man and the woman, and called, 'Where are you?'

'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid,...so I hid.'

Don't look at me, God.

[...] We don't say it out loud of course. We probably don't admit it even to ourselves. But it's the choice our heart makes:

Don't look at me, God."

The apostle Paul said it this way, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me." (Romans 7:15- 17)

That means Paul was not a sinner. And if you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, then neither are YOU. That is, if the Bible is true. "It is no longer I who do it..." We simply aren't sinners. Earlier in Romans Paul says that we have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.  

Doesn't it make sense that Satan would want a statement like, "I'm not a sinner" to come off as heresy? If he can keep the Christian trampled to the floor with guilt and shame, then he wins. But those who are in Christ are new creations. The old has gone (slaves to sin), the new has come (slaves to righteousness). After all, isn't that why Jesus came? Belief in Jesus Christ equals freedom from sin.

I think walking around with the mindset of who we are in God's eyes would greatly influence our behavior. Personally, I live with an intense awareness that I am a sinner. I bounce around from sin to sin, almost expecting it. In weaker moments, I really do tell God not to look at me. I forget who I am. I still walk around thinking I am just another sinner. "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love." That's me (in my eyes). In God's eyes I am white as snow.

A.W. Tozer is becoming one of the most important people in my life. Here are his words from The Pursuit of God, ch.3 Removing the Veil, "The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and God is in us. This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged. This would burn away the impurities from our lives as the bugs and fungi were burned away by the fire that dwelt in the bush."

So regarding that "Now What" dilemma, where I feel like God has left me to my own devices, I will consider who I am. Who I really am. Next time I sin (which is inevitable), I need to confess it right away. Confession of guilt is still necessary and God uses our heavy, hurting hearts to bring true repentance. But a persistent, nagging guilt and attacks of, "You're worthless. You suck. You will never be able to stop doing that. God's done with you, etc." are never from our loving Father. They are from Satan. It is wise to realize that right now. As Bill Hybels says, "God doesn't want you to sit in some penalty box for an indeterminate amount of time."

I'll end my first blog with encouraging words from Jesus in Matthew 18: 22. Peter comes up to him and asks, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"

Jesus replies, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." Not specifically 77 times, but an infinite amount. It is good to remember who Jesus is when you come to this passage. Jesus is God. He thinks like God. This is God's attitude towards us. He will never NOT forgive us. Never.