New Life'n

It's going to be OK today

The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool” – Psalm 110.1

He’s God; you’d think he could do it in a second.  Why does there have to be any of that “until” stuff?  Apparently he likes it that way.

And I love the idea of a Father telling a son, “You just sit here; I’ll take care of this.”  Sometimes he involves you in what he’s doing.  Sometimes he just says, wait, I’ll be right back.

And how defeated do you have to be to bend over on your hands and knees so the winner can sit and rest his feet on your back?

Tenacity

What a great word.  I’ll bet I haven’t used that word ten times in my life.  If I had it, I’d probably use the word more – it’s worth having:

Tenacity is more than endurance, it is endurance combined with the absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to transpire.  Tenacity is more than hanging on, which may be but the weakness of being too afraid to fall off.  Tenacity is the supreme effort of a man refusing to believe that his hero is going to be conquered.

If our hopes are being disappointed just now, it means that they are being purified.  There is nothing noble the human mind has ever hoped for or dreamed of that will not be fulfilled.  One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God.

Oswald Chambers

Chicken and egg

We had lunch with friends yesterday.  The guy’s had cancer, then open heart surgery, then a heart transplant, then cancer again.  There were many adventures within each one of those.  All over the last 17 years.  And he’s younger than me.

He and his wife talked over and over about how good God is.

Later, walking into our bathroom at home to empty the mop bucket, I thought about what it might be like to know you could die soon.  I’m guessing you’d want to hang on, and you’d be saying, hey, I’m not done.  And you’d just be rocked and you’d want to escape the threat but you couldn’t.  Right?  But I’m guessing – you can’t know until it comes.

Both my friend and his wife said they got to a point, on the same day, where they had peace with everything and whatever happened. 

Then last night Odell was sharing about a man he knows whose wife died.  The man had prayed and prayed but she died anyway.  Now he’s had it with God.  He knew Odell’s wife recently died, and his daughter, too, so he asked if Odell had prayed and how he felt about God not answering his prayer.

Odell said he didn’t have time to think, so all he said was, “I just figure the Lord sees the whole picture and knows the whole story and I don’t.”  Not having time to think lets out what you really believe.

Afterward, we prayed that we would not decide who God is based on what happens to us, but that we would know who he is from the Bible and then try to understand what’s happening. 

Everyone does one of those two things.

A whole winter in a day

There’s a point in here somewhere – something about things that are a big deal but end up being very brief – but it hasn’t popped its whole head out yet, so since it’s a week later and 64.3 degrees and I’m giving up on it even though I like the title, please you finish it…

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In the old days we lived where winter lasted a whole winter.  It snowed and got cold and turned icy and crunchy and stayed that way for a few weeks or more.  Then it would melt and snow again.

Now we live where we might go 2-3 years without snow.  Sometimes spring starts in February.  But not this year.

The snow started at 5pm last Friday.  By 7 the car was covered.  By the time I drove one mile and went in and out of the CVS the windows were covered again. 

Two miles later I was sliding in slow motion down an incline, out of control, towards two other cars off in the ditch.  Stopped about ten feet from bumping one.  I had to lay on the horn to get a lady standing behind the car to skedaddle.  Boy did she.  Three guys pushed me out and I floated at 3 mph the next quarter-mile down the hill, fish-tailing left then right.  I hadn’t driven in snow like this in years.  Got home 45 minutes late.

By noon the next day it was almost all gone.  Like it never happened.

It's too hard

Well, at least when you think that, you’re not alone:

Then they despised the pleasant land, having no faith in his promise.  They murmured in their tents, and did not obey the voice of the Lord – Psalm 106.24-25

You may not be alone – there were a million or so of them – but is that the crowd you want to identify with?   

It would have been hard; but not as hard as what they lived with over the next 40 years from being afraid and having no faith.

We have to take the first step as though there were no God.  It is no use to wait for God to help us…but immediately we arise we find He is there.  Whenever God inspires, the initiative is a moral one – Oswald Chambers 2/19

My fault, too

Can you make your spouse sin?  Or your kids or, really, anyone?

Maybe not make, but can you be responsible?  Can you share in the blame?

They angered him at the waters of Meribah, and it went ill with Moses on their account, for they made his spirit bitter, and he spoke rashly with his lips – Psalm 106.32-33

Even Moses had his limit and they pushed him to it.  The responsibility was his and the consequences were his, but it was a team thing.

It’s the wrong-doer’s fault but not all their fault.  They can’t blame you but you’re not innocent, either.  Just like you can inspire someone to do something noble, you also can provoke. 

3 more guys with attitudes

Nebuchadnezzar was the man with a spelling-bee name.  And he brandished staggering power and authority which he thought he deserved.  He had to learn that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men (Daniel 4.17).  He learned it when God took everything away and made him eat grass like an animal.  Authority wasn’t his reward – it was for order, purpose, and example.

Daniel was the opposite of Nebuchadnezzar; a very godly man, the kind you think of when you think of someone deserving authority.  Yet he served under Nebuchadnezzar and in the administrations of several other ungodly leaders.  Daniel never went after the authority position.  He served in submission – first to God, then even to the people who deported him from his home.

Joseph, another godly guy, learned how to be submissive.  He spent years unjustly locked in prison, forgotten by a man who promised to get him out.  When he finally had his day with the king, he didn’t say a word about how unfair it all was.  He just basically went, “How can I serve you?”  His attitude showed he understood and accepted authority, and could be trusted with it.  And he was.

If you’ve got it, it doesn’t mean you deserve it – but you might.  If you don’t have it, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it.  But you might not. 

It’s not the deserving – it’s the choosing by One who has his reasons and seems to delight in not saying what those reasons are.  He also seems to delight in those reasons being accepted even when they’re not understood.

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More of The God Show.  We’re on the authority channel.  The previous post is HERE.  You can find out more HERE.

The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You.  Really, he's all over the place. 

Spitting

Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva – John 9.6

You don’t picture God-in-a-body on his hands and knees on the ground, spitting.  But that’s apparently what he did. 

If you were a CEO or bank president or Senator they’d tell you not to do that, that people wouldn’t respect you.  It doesn’t fit.  You have to act like your position. 

Can’t you find another way to cure this fellow’s blindness?  You’re God after all, you can do it any way you want.

So this must have been the way he wanted. 

Being humble and looking weak and undignified may not be proper for some positions, but for one sent by God for God’s purposes, it’s a perfect fit. 

There was this guy with an attitude...

The trouble all started with him.  He just could not, would not, accept the idea of submission.  Well, for others maybe, but not for him.  He had to be the one with the authority.

He’s the one who originated the idea that if you’re not the one in authority, then something needs to be done, something needs to be fixed.  He started the idea that submission is wrong, that it’s not only inequality but it’s inferiority.  And we can’t have that.  It’s unfair.

The one in authority over him called that what it was – pride.  He knew this guy just wanted credit and glory and honor and that this guy saw authority as the way to get it.  And God threw him out of heaven to earth, where he's been spreading his broken, ungodly thinking ever since. 

He spreads it quietly though; he’s learned drawing attention to himself doesn’t work.  He seems content to be invisibly on display wherever his ideas are accepted.  Shhh.

Say you’re a husband and you have an attitude about the one in authority over you at work, a mentality that says (without ever saying it), “They’re not worthy…they’re wrong…they’re unfair…look how they mess up…they shouldn’t have that job…If I had that job, I’d do a lot better…”

Is that the attitude you want your wife to have with you?

Say you’re a wife and you have that same mindset toward your husband – is that the attitude you want him to have toward the person over him at work?  Is that the attitude you want him to have toward God? 

Is that the mentality you want your kids to have toward you?

And the mentality you have toward employees, or your kids, or toward your wife – is that the attitude you want God to have with you?

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More of The God Show.  We’re on the authority channel.  The previous post is HERE.  You can find out more HERE.

The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You.  Really, he's all over the place. 

Turning points

There are two kind of turning points.  Internal and external.  One of them usually comes first.  

I’m thinking of this last night watching the first round of the Hollywood auditions on American Idol.  Some singers are looking for their moment, to be discovered, to have their life changed.  They’re looking for an external turning point.  But the internal doesn’t measure up.  They’re nervous, self-conscious, sometimes self-deceived.  They seem preoccupied with how they’re coming across.  It’s not so much about what they’re doing as it is about what they hope to get.

But you can tell some singers have reached an internal turning point.  Their whole presence says this is something they’ve been doing and living internally, whether people are watching or not.  The doing is consuming them and at that moment they’re not thinking of any external turning point.  You know they care what people think, but they’re all internal with the performance – they're not looking around trying to figure “how’s it going?”

The internal turning point is when you lock in a focus or commitment or purpose.  David rescued sheep, killing lions and bears when no one was watching.  He didn’t do it for anything external.  The external turning point came when people got to see the internal -- This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of those lions and bears!  He was just going to do what he always did.

The internal turning point usually has to come first, and be developed and strengthened with no external conditions or expectations.  Until then, any external turning point opportunities can be wasted (and maybe embarrassing).  Once the internal turning point has happened, then you’re on the road to being ready for an external one.