While You Are Waiting

 

Yesterday I did some planning for some time off in Colorado in late June. I chose some places to visit and secured my flights. Between now and then, I will occasionally take a break from whatever I am doing to anticipate my enjoyment of the Rocky Mountain vistas! But, the experience will have to wait until the actual time for departure. So much of life is like that. We make plans, God gives dreams, then we wait in hope.  

Where are you living in anticipation?

Are you pressing forward or have you settled, content to drift?

All of us live in that place between anticipation and realization. We have dreams, even God-given visions, that are still beyond the horizon for which we hope.  If we desire to please God, to fulfill His call, faith is required! It bridges the gap that exists between start and finish,  between God's promises and obstacles that block fulfillment. 

Paul describes the necessary attitude of those who would ultimately own God’s reward.  He admits that there are still dreams unrealized - "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, (complete)” … so how does he live?   “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12-14, NIV)  He borrows the image of a runner approaching the finish line of the race who pours on the last bit of his strength to lean forward for the win.

Consider some examples of those who were given a vision to possess.

Jesus invited some Galilean fishermen to "Come, follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men." He didn't say, "If you follow me, in a few years your lives will become incredibly difficult, full of sorrows, and you will die an early death as a martyr!" He let them glimpse the goal, set a vision in their hearts, and then walked with them in through the process of realizing the dream.

God spoke to Abram, “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home for a land that I will show you. I’ll make you a great nation and bless you. I’ll make you famous; you’ll be a blessing. I’ll bless those who bless you; those who curse you I’ll curse. All the families of the Earth will be blessed through you.” So Abram left just as God said, and Lot left with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran." (Genesis 12:1-4, The Message) What God left unsaid, for the time, was that Abram would be a pilgrim, a wanderer, for much his life; that he would live only hoping for the promised son for decades.

Are you presently living in a 'between' time of life?
Did you hear the call, receive the promise, and now you're on the journey?  “Press on!”

Often we catch God’s vision while we are enjoying a spiritual high, standing, as it were, on the mountain. Then, we must to get back to where we live, descending from the heights down into the valley where we encounter the challenges. Just plain determination will not be enough to finish well. Grit and duty cannot keep us in the race.  We must make time to be renewed in prayer, fed by the Word, encouraged by the Spirit. Isaiah reminds us that "Even youths will become exhausted, and young men will give up. But those who wait on the Lord will find new strength. They will fly high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint." (Isaiah 40:30-31, NLT)

Lean forward, press on. The One who promises is faithful.

Here is a word from the Word. Spend some time letting the truth soak into your mind, your heart. "So don’t throw it all away now. You were sure of yourselves then. It’s still a sure thing! But you need to stick it out, staying with God’s plan so you’ll be there for the promised completion. It won’t be long now, he’s on the way; he’ll show up most any minute. But anyone who is right with me thrives on loyal trust; if he cuts and runs, I won’t be very happy. But we’re not quitters who lose out. Oh, no! We’ll stay with it and survive, trusting all the way." (Hebrews 10:35-39, The Message)

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Let us then be true and faithful-
Trusting, serving every day.
Just one glimpse of Him in glory
Will the toils of life repay.

Onward to the prize before us,
Soon His beauty we will behold.
Soon the pearly gates will open,
We will tread the streets of gold.

Eliza Edmunds Stites Hewitt

Public Domain

What Angers God?

 

Angry preaching that is filled with fire and brimstone isn’t my favorite thing. Turning loose that kind of passion in a pulpit can be dangerous if the preacher’s frustration with life gets stirred into the message. A sermon can become a rant that does little good for anyone but the one who gets to vent his anger at the world! And yet … God’s message is not all sweetness and light. A courageous preacher will be moved by the Spirit to strip away the illusions of his audience, to challenge their assumptions about Who God is. Grace is a wonderful part of the message of the Gospel, but so is repentance.

The ancient prophets, whose words are recorded in that largely neglected chunk of the Old Testament that follows the Psalms, were bold preachers that stood up to the prevailing attitudes of their day. What may surprise us is the subject matter that mostly filled their sermons.  For the most part they spoke of injustice and idolatry!  Amos, who we only know as a ‘shepherd from Tekoa,’ felt the passion of the Spirit of God move on him and he preached thunderously about the horrific injustices that he saw in his world.

For his own people, God moved him to this Word.  "This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath. They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name. They lie down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge. In the house of their god they drink wine taken as fines. “I destroyed the Amorite before them, though he was tall as the cedars and strong as the oaks. I destroyed his fruit above and his roots below. “I brought you up out of Egypt, and I led you forty years in the desert to give you the land of the Amorites. I also raised up prophets from among your sons and Nazirites from among your young men. Is this not true, people of Israel?” declares the LORD." (Amos 2:6-11, NIV)

That language may put us off a bit, the meaning hard to grasp. Basically, the cry is for justice for all! The poor were treated like dirt. The oppressed had no voice. The law was used by those in power to seize the property of the people in the name of the gods. Poor temple prostitutes were treated like property, used by father and son without a thought.

• Can we hear Amos’ sermon today in our land?
• Will our “Bible preachers” go beyond railing on the sexual sins of our nations to see a larger picture of responsibility to assure that every man and woman is treated as bearing the image of God?
• Will we expand our ‘pro-life’ message beyond abortion so that it takes in the love of war that grips our Capitol?
• Will we extend our ‘pro-marriage’ message beyond our fixation with same-sex relationships to encourage husbands and wives to love one another with a covenant love that lasts ‘until death do us part?’   
• Will we come to understand that ‘idolatry’ begins with worship of our things and take on the materialism that owns so many of us?

As Amos reveals, we can easily slip into a deception that says, “Since we are the people of God, everything we do must be the will and purpose of God.”  Few things have the power to wreak injustice in the world than more acting ‘in the name of God.’  Far too many American Christians have been blinded by this lie. Somehow we convince ourselves that everything we do and everything we are; our nationalism, our place at the top of the nations, our use of power to hang onto our privilege is sanctioned by God who winks at the injustice used to maintain that favored status.  Amos thunders a message of repentance - "Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph." (Amos 5:14-15, NIV)

Yes, America has sunk to lows of immorality.  There is no arguing that given the headlines we read daily. But, we make a terrible mistake in thinking that our only sins are in the area of promiscuity, abortion on demand, or same sex marriage. What of our willingness to wage war to maintain our power? What of our willingness to ignore the plight of billions who cannot escape poverty? What of the refusal to hold our leaders accountable for policies that protect the privileged at the expense of the poor?  No, friend, this not at all about politics or party, this is about thinking hard about what it means to be the people of the Lord, what it means to love our neighbor - the one across the street, at our southern border, or on the other side of the globe.

In our complex world, we need to be having hard conversations, wrestling with our attitude about who we are as a Church, as a Christian. We need a large dose of humility that learns to listen without a defensive response, that prays to know the heartbeat of God.

Consider this word from the Word, the cry of the Lord that Amos heard in his day. Is it not for our time, too?  “I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want." (Amos 5:21-24, The Message) 

Oh God, let us hear Your Word, humbly repent,
and experience Your grace.
Help us to get serious about the whole Gospel,
for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Becoming a gem?

It’s not really hard to be loving, to laugh you are sailing on smooth seas, under sunny skies, is it? But, without pressure, you will never become the best version of YOU. Heroes are made when from the crowded ranks of the ordinary who run from the danger, she takes the lead and rallies others to the cause, changing the situation by her courage and vision. Ordinary carbon atoms - and carbon is one of the most abundant elements on earth - are transformed by extreme heat and pressure into diamonds which are valuable both for industry and as gemstones.

Paul, who is first known in the Acts as Saul, lived in the mainstream of his community, a young man of promise in the Sanhedrin, the group of Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. A crisis overtook him, starting at Stephen’s martyrdom, culminating with his encounter with Jesus in a vision on the road to Damascus. After he gave himself to the Lord, he took up the challenge to take the message about Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord, to the Empire. He never lived with difficulty from that day. It got so tough, Paul thought it was 'game over.' He reflected on that experience in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians: "We were crushed and completely overwhelmed, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we learned not to rely on ourselves, but on God who can raise the dead." - 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 (NLT)

He was repeatedly arrested, tossed out of cities, even beaten. He was often criticized by people in the very churches he formed. He was attacked spiritually and just the rigors of travel brought on exhaustion. In an understatement he admits, "We were under great pressure," and that pressure produced a diamond, useful and beautiful, in the life of the former Pharisee. I just love his wry commentary - "we were forced to trust God totally—not a bad idea since he’s the God who raises the dead!" (The Message) In that phrase we learn to key that makes the difference in what problems can do to us. They can make us bitterly cynical, unwilling to love and trust anyone;  OR they can make us beautiful, tender, patient, steady, deep in faith.  “We trust God totally!”

How we respond to hardship results from a combination of factors; personality, training, past experience, and spiritual depth. Only one is beyond our control- personality. We can prepare to emerge from life's pressures as a gem for Christ; if we will allow ourselves to be schooled and patterned by the disciplines of the Spirit, if we will use the experiences of life to grow, and if we will let God develop real spiritual character and depth in us.

Are you choosing to live safely, avoiding any situations that is hard, avoiding taking on any responsibility that can bring on pressure, refusing to engage in deep relationships that could cause you pain? Are you ignoring God’s invitation to grow in faith, refusing to develop His spiritual gifts?   “Jerry, if I step up, I’ll be held to account; by God and by others.”  Yes, you will.  He equips us and expects our best, no question about it. Becoming a mature Christian will require hard choices of self-denial and will  bring envy, criticism, even persecution, sometimes from your own family of faith. We need to take the example of Joseph, who served well in Egypt. "He chose to share the oppression of God’s people instead of enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin. He thought it was better to suffer for the sake of the Messiah than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the great reward that God would give him." (Hebrews 11:25-26, NLT)

Are you courageously embracing God's callings, taking the opportunities He presents?
Have you, as result, come under pressure, been criticized?

Do find yourself pushed past what you thought were your limits of endurance?

Trust God!

Do what people who become heroes do.

Prepare for challenge with discipline. Don't whine!

Build a team that gives support. God doesn't build His work on Lone Rangers.

Know when to take a strategic retreat for restoration. Even Jesus allowed for 'down time.'

Focus on the goal.

God is making diamonds out of us!

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Diamonds

(an anthem of joyful hope!)

Here and now I'm in the fire in above my head

Being held under the pressure

Don't know what will be left

But it’s here in the ashes

I'm finding treasure

He's making diamonds diamonds

He's making diamonds out of dust

He is refining and in His timing

He's making diamonds out of us

I'll surrender to the power of being crushed by love

'Til the beauty that was hidden isn't covered up

Oh it's not what I hoped for

It's something much better

Oh the joy of the Lord

It will be my strength

When the pressure is on

He's making (diamonds)

He's making diamonds diamonds

Making us rise up from the dust

He is refining and in His timing

He's making diamonds out of dust

Making diamonds out of us

I won't be afraid to shine

I won't be afraid to shine

I won't be afraid to shine

'Cuz He's making diamonds out of dust

Making diamonds out of us

Jason Ingram | Jonathan Steingard | Matt Bronleewe

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