Trash Confused With Treasure

Ever watch that reality TV program, Hoarders? There are people who really love their trash! They cannot throw anything away and over time they turn a beautiful home into a garbage dump. Years ago, my folks took Bev and I to look at a house they were considering for purchase. When we stepped through the front door, we saw trails through a maze of broken furniture, old newspapers, and just plain junk! The stuff was piled 6' high everywhere in the house, tons of it cluttering a home that could have been quite lovely. Cats had urinated all over the place and it smelled terrible! The lady who lived there was a hoarder before the syndrome had a name.

I like to clean up, throw away, and keep life lean and clean - except for books! Throwing away a book, even one that I know I'll never read again, is hard for me. Why? I love books. Throwing away yesterday's newspaper brings no angst because I attach no value to it.

What's the state of your heart house?  

Are the rooms in it full of clutter?  

Is the memory room stuffed with yesterday's regrets and old grudges?  
Is the treasure room filled floor to ceiling with dusty trinkets of no real value?  
Are old sins and habits piled high in the living room?

Here's the hard question. Why are you hanging onto those things? Could it be that you still love them, that you are unwilling to part with them because just having those old familiar things around comforts you in some strange way? Get rid of it! We cannot grasp the treasure of God while our hands are full of the trinkets of this transitory world. The stuff we hold onto reveals what we love. If we hold onto old habits that we know offend God, it reveals that we love them. If we admit that and stop offering up excuses, we can break their hold over us with the help of the Spirit.

In Ephesians, we learn that those of us who Christ's disciples need to clean up our lives! It says "...everything-and I do mean everything-connected with that old way of life has to go. It's rotten through and through. Get rid of it!" (4:22, The Message)  

 

On Hoarders we see community groups who offer to come in and clean out the hoarder's home. They can only offer, however. Nothing can be done until the person living in the trash wants a change! God offers a thorough house cleaning to us, but He won't step in and take away the old stuff unless we invite Him to do it. Let's cooperate with Him! The Bible says, "there must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes. You must display a new nature because you are a new person, created in God's likeness-righteous, holy, and true." (Ephesians 4:23-24, NLT) It takes real faith to let go of what we know so we can take hold of what is promised, doesn't it?

Disciple, pray today that the Holy Spirit will show you the real state of your heart house. If He reveals that you have mistaken trash for treasure, let Him remove the those things that would keep Him from moving in. It's important that He does because "wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, he gives freedom. ... And as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like him and reflect his glory even more." (2 Corinthians 3:17-18, NLT) He makes those He inhabits beautiful!

By the way, that old house full of junk that Mom and Dad showed us all those years ago became their home; a nice country home, inviting and comfortable, a place of hospitality that has served the family well for more than 30 years!  

Let God transform your life. Don't confuse trash and treasure. Clean out the junk. Create true beauty.

______________

Are you living in an old man's rubble?

Are you listenin' to the father of lies?

If you are then you're headed for trouble;

If you listen too long, you'll eventually die!

Are you puzzled by the way that you're behavin'?

Do you wonder why you do the things you do?

Are you troubled by your lack of resistance;

do you fell that something's got a hold on you?

Well, deep within' you there's a spiritual battle,

there's a voice of the darkness and a voice of the light.

And just by listening you've made a decision,

'Cause the voice you hear is gonna' win the fight

Are you living in an old man's rubble?

Are you listenin' to the father of lies?

If you are then you're headed for trouble;

If you listen too long, you'll eventually die!

But if you're living as a new creation,

If you're listening to the Father of light:

Then you're living in a mighty fortress

and you're gonna' be clothed in power and might!

Old Man's Rubble - Amy Grant, 1977

Like a chicken with its head cut off

We had fresh chicken on the farm! I introduced my young bride to my Iowa grandma back in 1975 and she had a cultural experience! Early afternoon Grandma Scott selected a fat rooster from the yard. One quick stroke of the hatchet removed his head and then for a moment or two the body ran around, wings flapping, before dropping over dead.  After preparation, (I’ll spare you the details) the chicken was in fryer. My city gal observed it all with wide eyes. Previously she thought that somehow chicken came only in plastic wrapped trays in the supermarket. There’s a point here. A headless chicken may appear alive, but it only leftover nerve impulses causing the movement.

Are you connected to Christ, the Head of the Body, or are you living your Christian life like a chicken with its head cut off? Does He give you purpose and coordination, or do you just run around pointlessly, looking alive but actually still spiritually dead?

The letter to the Colossian church is about living ‘in Christ.’  We find this declaration: "He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything." (Colossians 1:17-18, NLT) That is not just dogma! That is truth by which we can order life. Before things spin out of control, even when we are trying to make sense of what is going on around us, we are wise if we choose to go to the One who Head over all. "So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority." (Colossians 2:10, NLT)

We are prone to subtle conceit that causes us to rebel, though often quietly and unconsciously, against His Headship. Most of the time, our rebellion is not framed in terms of outright rejection of Christ’s authority. Instead, we substitute our own wisdom for His or we just fail to ask for His leadership, assuming we have it all under our control. I told one of my kids to leave his iPod Touch home from school. I know how distracting it can be with all the game apps just begging him to play when he should be studying. He didn’t say “No, I will take it anyway. I don’t care what you think.”  He nodded in agreement. Then I discovered that he was taking it anyway! It was a quiet kind of rebellion, a rejection of my authority. His choice ultimately is much more costly to him than to me. My direction was for his benefit, not mine. The Word warns us of a similar choice and the deadly consequence. "Their sinful minds have made them proud, and they are not connected to Christ, the head of the body. For he holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments, and it grows as God nourishes it." (Colossians 2:18-19, NLT)

Today, renew your commitment to the Headship of Jesus Christ. Look for decisions you are making apart from submission to Him. Look for ways that you may be running around like a headless chicken! Kneel, humbly, and confess – “Jesus Christ, be Lord. Let me know the impulse of your divine direction so that I will live a purposeful, holy life.”

I close by switching the metaphor of connection. It’s not so gruesome as the headless chicken one! It is still about staying connected. Let this word from the Word take hold of you today. Jesus says,  “I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. … Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned." (John 15:1-6, NLT)

Amen

Holy Chaos, God

When I was newly married, after a serious disagreement with my wife, I was complaining to my Dad about how difficult Bev could be. (Yes, I hear some of you laughing for you know me too well to just let that statement go without challenge.) Dad stopped my complaint with one of his homespun lessons. "Son, we know horses, don't we?"  And we did. I grew up training high-spirited purebreds in our stables. He continued, "There are work horses, predictable and plodding. Then, there are high-spirited show horses that are hard to manage. You, son, have married a show horse." I still laugh when I tell that story 30 years after the fact. Dad helped me to understand, in his own way, that Bev's spirit made her much more interesting as a person. If I tried to make her tame, instead of learning to maximize her contribution to our marriage, I would rob myself of many joys. How right he was!

It is quite possible to look for the wrong things in my relationship with God!
God is not tame, nor is His aim to make my life quietly boring. Mark Galli writes that "we've forgotten the God of the Bible - the untamable, unruly, mysterious Spirit who regularly upsets our plans and, yes, sometimes creates havoc in our lives." (Chaos and Grace, Baker Books, 2011)  This is not to suggest that God is just trying to make life difficult for us because He lacks focus! His goal is to draw us to Himself and He uses our life circumstances to cause us to love Him deeply and dependently. From that place we are His partners in His eternal purpose.

We slip easily into prayers for smooth roads, easy circumstances, and a tame predictable religion. He invites us, by shaking up our preconceptions, to an adventure where we can only survive if we have a radical trust built squarely on faith. Left to ourselves, we will find the safe middle, choosing a predictable religion. Even as we hope for Heaven, growing fat and complacent, we miss the adventure of the Kingdom journey we can know now. It is easy to forget that the Alpha and Omega of the Revelation was offended most by a church that had lost her first love, that had cooled to a tepid, nauseating state that Jesus said, "Makes me ready to vomit!" (Rev. 3:14 PJV) Often He must turn us upside down to keep us from settling into a boring life that finds more satisfaction at the dinner table than at His Table. Jesus says, "You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat." (Matthew 5:6, The Message)

The Scripture urges us to "Be very careful, then, how you live-not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord." (Ephesians 5:15-19, NIV) The Holy Spirit wants to liberate us from Self-satisfaction, a sin deadly to spiritual vitality. Will we let Him? Or, will we learn to love the rut of our religiosity, trying to satisfy the longing for meaning and purpose with the stuff that ultimately enslaves us to our appetites and passions?

Pray a different way today.
Instead of seeking relief from difficulty, pray for the ability to discover God's in the chaos. Instead of asking for easy, ask for endurance.
Instead of looking for predictable, invite Him to teach you how to 'walk by faith, not by sight.'  

Then you will sing this word from the Word, a song of joy for the faithful: "We're here! We've come back to you. You're our own true God! All that popular religion was a cheap lie, duped crowds buying up the latest in gods. We're back! Back to our true God, the salvation of Israel." (Jeremiah 3:22-23, The Message)

Single-mindedly selfish, stupendously successful!

He was only 56 years of age when he died. His story is fascinating, an adopted son of working class parents who many rank among the top three business leaders of 20^th century America. Steve Jobs brought us Apple computers, the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Apple was worth around $40 billion (yes, with a “b”) when he died last month. At the age of 12, Jobs rejected the Christianity of his parents and throughout his life practiced a spirituality based on Zen Buddhism. 

Most striking about the man was his single-minded focus which showed itself as “I love me and my ideas more than anything or anyone.” Sometimes his selfishness was silly. He followed strict vegetarian diets which he thought made personal hygiene unimportant. For years, his body odor was bad enough to make others avoid him, yet he refused to acknowledge it! Often his self-centeredness was tragic. He fathered a daughter that he ignored for the first 10 years of her life because, against all evidence, he convinced himself he was not her father. He kept old partners from sharing his amazing wealth for no reason other than he thought they didn’t deserve it. Friends developed a name for Jobs’ thinking – “reality distortion field.”

His self-confidence allowed him to achieve amazing things while using and abusing other people. He had no time for philanthropy, ignored his family most of the time, and treated even long-time partners with disdain. He died admired for his success but largely unloved by the thousands of ordinary people he treated with such contempt over the last 35 years.

As I read Steve Jobs (Simon and Schuster, Isaacson, 2011) this week, I questioned repeatedly how many of us would willingly choose the kind of personal failure he lived if that choice allowed us to enjoy the kind of professional success he created? There is no doubt that Jobs’ narcissism was what caused him to discard friends and relationships to pursue his dreams that brought us the gadgets that billions of us enjoy. Was the result worth the cost? Don’t be too quick to answer.

The words of Christ are familiar to us. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matthew 16:24-26, NIV) We claim that this is our basic value, that this is what we believe. But, what do our daily choices say? Do our intuitive decisions align with our claim to be His disciples? Imagine for a moment that Steve Jobs had held onto the Christian faith of his childhood and become an outstanding, but obscure teacher of poor, urban students? His face would never have graced the cover of Time, his biography would have never been written. Is that kind of life a “success”? Rationally, most Christians would have to say “yes.” At a deeper level, I am quite sure many also feel some level of ambivalence. Our culture deeply admires guys like Steve Jobs and we are not immune to its influence.

Two roads are in front of us today. Let this word from the Word go deep. With your eyes enlightened by the Holy Spirit, ponder your life choices. Which road are you, in fact, choosing in spite of what you claim to believe? “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it." (Matthew 7:13-14, NLT)

Bentleys and Beautiful People

 

West Palm Beach, Florida is a place of extremes. I was there for a wedding. Two blocks from City Place, an area dedicated to materialism on a massive scale, homeless people stood at the side of the road begging. On Saturday night, “MoonFest,” a Halloween party for thousands, convened on Clematis Street just outside the doors of my sons’ gallery and coffee shop. The main draw for the crowds was a river of alcohol and bevies of barely dressed women. You need little imagination to know what that combination produced. Twelve hours later I sat among thousands at a mega-church worshipping in the Spirit. The city is a stark display of the conceit of humanity.

The need to proclaim, “I exist. I matter!” is universal in humans. The same message is shouted in a thousand ways- a young woman with her beauty, an old man with his wealth, a city with her massive buildings, a nation trying to become an empire, even a church saying “We are the people of God.” The Bible recounts a story from the dawn of human history that is rewritten somewhere every day. "As the people migrated to the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there. They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.) Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.” (Genesis 11:2-6, NLT)  Genesis goes on to recount the Lord’s displeasure with their conceit!  He confused their language and drove them apart. Their folly was forever known as the Tower of Babel.

Are you full of longing to matter? That is normal. God made us with dignity and a desire to make a contribution to the world of which we are part. He gave us gifts of creativity and awareness of ourselves. He breathed the breath of life into us so that we are not just mammals seeking another meal and driven to reproduce! We know we live in a window of time that is short, in which we sense eternity. Only one choice allows us to live contentedly: serving God’s purpose! The godly can find great contentment in Him, regardless of their place in this world. We can give ourselves to Christ Jesus and in Him our lives are given meaning beyond any we might find in achievement of recognition by other people.

The conceit of humanity is a game for fools. Solomon played it like a pro. He gained admiration from far and wide, built amazing public works, enjoyed sensual pleasures on scale we cannot even imagine. In the wisdom of advanced years, he looked back. His words, which I hear not as a sigh of resignation, but as a cry of awful regret for a largely wasted life, should point us to a different road. "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time." (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10, NIV) "I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind." (Ecclesiastes 1:14, NIV)  Some read him only as a cynic. But, I read him as a man who came too late to understanding, who wants to spare us the sorrow that comes from the realization of our own conceit too late. He says, “Remember God… remember… "Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." (Ecclesiastes 12:13, NIV)

Conceit or contentment, which is it for you, disciple?  Pray that the Spirit will help you see past the allure of Bentleys and human beauty. We are so easily drawn to our own attempt at building a tower of Babel! The lie that we can make ourselves matter is persistent and powerful. Here is wisdom that sets us right. "Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory." (Colossians 3:1-4, NLT)

___________________

Only in God, is my soul at rest.

In Him comes my salvation.

He only is my Rock,

My strength and my salvation.

Only in God is found safety,

When my enemy pursues me.

Only in God is found glory,

When I am found meek and found lowly.

My stronghold, my Savior,

I shall not be afraid at all.

My stronghold, my Savior,

I shall not be moved.

Only in God, is my soul at rest.

In Him comes my salvation.

Only In God

Talbot, John Michael

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