Stinkin’ Thinkin’

 Tuesday, after a long meeting, at the end of a particularly challenging day, I blurted out bitter words about how hard life has been for the last 10 years. Garry, a friend who heard me say it, gently reminded me that it has not all been dark. And, he is right. I was only seeing part of the reality.  I was hit hard by the loss of my parents and my wife. Health issues have dogged me. I have had some disappointments in other areas.  But, there are wonderful gifts as well. There is the joy of knowing the hope of Jesus. There are the numerous friends that walk with me. There is a holy calling to serve God’s people in pastoral ministry that is my privilege. That night, my fatigue, the real problems that need a solution, my personal grief, and my sense of loss became a poisonous state of mind, faithless and dark,  that I call stinkin’ thinkin’.

I know a basic principle that is true.
Right thinking always precedes right living.

Jesus said it simply - “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6: 43, 45-46, NIV)  If we want to change our life, we must change our thoughts. 

Transformation does not start with our situation and/or circumstances;  it starts inside of us.

We are prone to create a mythical kind of life in our mind where things are aligned to around what we think will give us the most happiness. “Jerry, what’s wrong with that?  Isn’t that being visionary?”  Not really, it’s called dreaming!  In that dream world, everyone cooperates with our agenda, we have all the money we think we need, our boss is always kind and understanding, our spouse is completely loving all of the time, every day is sunny.  Now you are smiling because you see how unreal that is. But, if we invest time comparing our reality with the myth, the likely outcome is bitterness.

There is a better way. It matches faith in God’s constant love and Presence with our need and waits on Him to reveal His purposes. If we desire to live a godly life, to remain steady, we need to serve the real God, not the imaginary god of our own creation.

Who is He?

He is the Almighty; yes, the Lord of all. Start there. Humbly present yourself to Him, as you are.

He is Love.  It does seem like He is loving sometimes. He can appear cruel to us, but the Word teaches us that He acts from love towards us.

He is Actively Present. Yes, He is at work in you and in the world around you, though sometimes to our eyes that is not apparent.

His purposes will win out for us, and for this world.

Does all that mean we should never have a day like I had on Tuesday, when the losses stacked up, the challenges turned into mountains?  If we believe that God should magically keep us from difficulty, that He should sweep all the tough stuff out of our way, a kind of stinkin’ thinkin’ will take over and destroy our faith.  If we look for Him, wait on Him, trust Him, and love Him – he will change us;  giving us peace, equipping us with wisdom, leading us through the tough stuff.

Today, if you are in a rough place, go to these amazing facts about the goodness of the Lord. If you are a regular reader, you will know them for they are found in my favorite letter in the Bible, Paul’s words in Ephesians. It is a letter that overflows with truth about God, grace, and His love.  Don’t go to these words looking for a ‘quick fix’ in your situation. Rather let them change your mind today. 

“I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." (Ephesians 3:14-21, NIV)

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CoffeeBreak will be back on March 5, the good Lord willing!
I’ll be taking some time for renewal.  Thank you for reading along.

Where Joy and Peace Are Found

Next week, Lord-willing, I will get on an airplane to go to see my children. Why spend the money and make the effort when I can talk with them anytime on the phone? We text message often. We swap pictures on Facebook. So, that should be enough, right? Of course not. I want to be with them, to sit at their tables, to feel their hugs, to do life in their presence for a few days.  Truth is, we are relational beings, created that way by a Relational Being! Unless we are damaged in some awful way, we want to be with other people; connecting, sharing life.

It is not just people we need. Disciple, we need to experience the Presence of God! The Genesis story tells us about the separation brought by the refusal of His will.  We know that sense of alienation, that lostness from the love of the Father, too.  But, in Christ Jesus we are ‘brought near,’ our sins forgiven, a covenant love given us by grace. Even then, though, many of us think of God as existing ‘out there, somewhere.’ We let ourselves believe that we have to go to someplace to know Him,  like I have to travel to see my kids who live a 1000 miles away.  In fact, He is here now!  

Over and over again the stories of the Scripture teach us that He sees, He knows, He loves – you and me. He is not like the picture painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, reaching down out of a far heaven. He is Present. He is as near as the air we breathe. What a transformation comes over us when, by faith, we begin to live in His Presence.

• Moses, who was leading God’s people to their Promised Land, knew they needed to be aware of God's Presence.  While he was on Mt. Sinai, they made an idol, turned from His Presence, to seek another god!  The Lord pronounced the judgment - "Go up ... But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way." (Exodus 33:3 NIV) He withdrew His Presence from them. Moses, ever the intercessor for the people he led, knew they could not survive apart from Him. His prayer is powerful: "If you don’t personally go with us, don’t make us leave this place. How will anyone know that you look favorably on me—on me and on your people—if you don’t go with us? For your presence among us sets your people and me apart from all other people on the earth." (Exodus 33:15-16)

Do you have that same reliance on Him? Does a living friendship with the Father, the Presence of the Holy Spirit in you, working through you, set you apart as a child of God?

• David, when he sinned terribly, cried: "Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me." (Psalm 51:11, NIV) a cry repeated by those who have known the joy of walking near to the heart of God and then terror of being forsaken!
• The most wrenching cry of Jesus from the cross was: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46, NIV) as He carried the sin guilt of all humanity and was separated from His Father.

The sweetest promise Jesus makes to us is "surely I am with you always!" (Matthew 28:20) Disciples no longer need go to some holy place to find God's Presence. The Holy Spirit is with us, living in us. A life lived near to the heart of God, with an awareness of His Presence, is where joy and peace are found.

Do you live in His Presence? We can grieve Him with persistent, willful disobedience. We can ignore Him, so taken up with the daily stuff of living that we forget the treasure of His love.  But, we need not live there. Let’s become newly aware of His Presence, thanking Him for walking with us, knowing us, loving us.

Ponder this passage, our word from the Word, and then, faithfully live in the promise of His Presence. "And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water." (Hebrews 10:19-22, NLT)

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Breathe

(Come into His Presence as you listen at this link)

This is the air I breathe

This is the air I breathe

Your holy presence living in me

This is my daily bread

This is my daily bread

Your very word spoken to me

And I I'm desperate for You

And I I'm lost without You

This is the air I breathe

This is the air I breathe

Marie Barnett

© 1995 Mercy / Vineyard Publishing (Admin. by Vineyard Music USA)

CCLI License # 810055

Blazing fire or grey ashes?

My living room includes a fireplace which I occasionally load with wood so that I can enjoy the flickering flame.  If I keep it going, it warms the house as well as being a nice touch to the room! Keeping the fire going demands attention; adding fuel, stirring the embers. That fireplace allows me to enjoy its benefits, but only as I attend to it. 

Faith is much the same.  When first lit by the touch of the Spirit, faith burns brightly, warming us with hope.  Remember those first weeks or months after you received the gift of faith through Christ Jesus?  With the weight of sin and guilt lifted, with the promise of knowing God became personal, when the hope of eternal life was yours to own; life blazed in vibrant faith. 

Have you tended the flame?

Jesus us that tough times will come. Temptation will increase. Persecution will make life tough. Evil will take over all around us. The sad result for some Christians will be that "the overwhelming spread of evil will do them in—nothing left of their love but a mound of ashes. " (Matthew 24:12, The Message) If we do not tend the flame of faith, it will fade to dying embers and then to ashes.

Having lived on this earth for 6 decades, I have experienced the various temptations that can lead to the cooling of faith. As a young man, it was the passions of life that distracted.  The next decade brought intense, hard work, the drive to achieve often in direct competition with the demands of Christ. That was followed by that time in life when a sense of ‘been there, done that’ settled onto faith, routine tempting me to neglect the pursuit of the Holy.  In these later years, I am tempted to throttle back, to coast on the spiritual discoveries of the past. Each season has its own tests, but the result of neglect, whatever the reason, will be the dying of the flame.

In his final letter, Paul, a man much battered by life, who kept the faith burning brightly, wrote to a younger pastor to encourage him. The words come to us. "Fan into flames the spiritual gift God gave you when I laid my hands on you. For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline." (2 Timothy 1:6-7, NLT)

How do we keep the fires of faith burning brightly? There is no mystery about this.  As Paul told Timothy, God gives us spiritual power, transforms into creatures that love, and calls us to self-discipline.

1. We must use our faith if we want it to consume us.  If we live timidly, retreating from every challenge, choosing only ‘safe’ paths, avoiding every calling that might be costly; faith will cool.
2. We must continue to pursue the Truth. Subtle deception is a constant threat. We open our minds to the Scripture, we challenge our assumptions, and this adds fuel of Truth to our faith.
3. We must commit ourselves to the Body of Christ, engaging in regular, corporate worship.  If a log in my fireplace tumbles off of the pile, the flame on it goes out, and a lump of charcoal is left in the morning. We need to be together, our mutual gifts feeding a passionate faith.
4. We must deal with the sinful nature.  When the Spirit speaks, when our conscience aches, we have a choice:  silence the Voice, deaden ourselves by refusing the call; or making a turn-around, to repentance and confession. These will keep us in Spirit’s Presence, blazing with holy fire.
5. And, finally, we must remember that Glory that draws us on. The fires of faith are fed by keeping the promises of Heaven always in sight!

Here’s a word from the Word. May it strengthen you in the faith! "So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while, “He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.” But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved." (Hebrews 10:35-39, NIV)

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Oh place in my heart

A passion for Jesus

A hunger that seizes

My passion for You

My one desire

My greatest possession

My only confession

My passion for You

Brian Houston © 1999 Thankyou Music (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)