Remember

Have you ever wondered why there is the expectation that we should go to church?  Read our Bible?  Even sing and listen to spiritual songs as Colossians 3:16 says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord."  Don't we already know everything we really need to know?  I see this even with my children who sometimes say, "But we already know this story!" when I start to read them a familiar Bible story.  

I'm sure Old Testament believers had this same feeling when God instituted a very complicated system of feasts and festivals each symbolizing some aspect of God's amazing rescue of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt.  In fact, Deuteronomy, Moses's farewell speech before his death, sounds like a list of things to remember and admonishments to indeed REMEMBER!  Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 says, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all  your soul, and with all your strength.  And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."  Wow.  Does that sound a bit like overkill here?  And the Israelites literally did these things.  They wrote Scripture on their doorposts; they had special phylacteries on the side of their heads where they put scripture (and Hasidic Jews still do!).  

It may seem a bit overboard, but let's look at our track record of truly remembering what is important.  We will use the Israelites as an example because of the many spectacular things that God did for them.  Going back a few thousand years, we find the Israelites living as slaves in Egypt with no hope of freedom.  They cried out to God and the Bible says He heard them.  He sends Moses as his ambassador to tell the Pharaoh to release His people. As you can imagine, the Pharaoh doesn't really think letting his entire slave workforce go is really an option.  He says no.  Moses warns him that bad things will happen if he does not release them.  Pharaoh is unmoved.  What unfolds are ten frightening manifestations of power that conclude with the people of Egypt begging the Israelites to leave (and amazingly some of the Egyptians actually joining them).  As they leave, however, the Pharaoh changes his mind and decides to pursue them.  So here are the Israelites (possibly over a million of them), unarmed, without any way of defending themselves.  And then a difficult situation becomes an impossible one when they have reached a place where they could not pass--the Red Sea.  And, lo and behold, they see behind them in the distance the Egyptian army.  Panic sets in for real.  And, God intervenes in a completely miraculous-there's-no-way-it-could-be-anyone-but-God way and saves them by parting the Red Sea so they can pass on dry land.  And not only that, but He definitively gets rid of the Egyptian army by letting these walls of water collapse on the army.  So this group of people has seen God not only humble one of the most powerful nations in the world in order to get them free, but then completely decimates their army.  So, if you were the Israelites, you'd never doubt God again, right?  You wouldn't be scared if you didn't have food or if an enemy came at you or anything!  I mean God parted the Red Sea!!  He proved Himself in a thousand ways that He was powerful and that He was involved!  You'd think so, but no.  They doubt Him every step of the way to the Promised Land, and then refuse to enter it.  The next few hundred years of history doesn't show them getting all that much better.

You see, we humans easily forget the truth.  We learn it; we see it; and, just as quickly, we forget it.  We sit in church and we hear that God loves us, God is powerful, God is near, and we nod in agreement, and then we leave the church and we worry, we fight, we forget.  This is why it's imperative that we make a point to keep on hearing.  This is why we read our Bibles and listen to those Christian songs.  Because we, who are no better than the Israelites, need to remember the truth.  This is why I write this blog, even.  I don't write because I already know it so well.  I write it so I too will remember.  

So next time you are tempted to say, "I already know this"--do it anyway.  So you will always remember, and, hopefully, by remembering, you will believe.  And after believing the truth, then you will begin living in truth.

The Good News

I've got some great news for us all right now. Ready?  Here it goes:  we are not defined by our bodies. I know that seems like a very basic statement, but do we realize how much this rules our lives? Looking at magazine covers it's a litany of: lose weight, retain your beauty, how to be sexy, lose more weight, blah blah blah. The models in these magazines are skinny (and wonderfully photo-shopped--wish I knew that when I was a teenager) and happy and adventurous and NOT REAL.  The magazines for men aren't much better, I assume.  Men appear with hairless rippling chests, regal, chiseled faces crowned with lots of non-grey hair, all wearing confident smiles flanked by adoring ladies (and probably a fancy car or something in the background).  Every commercial we watch, every movie we see reinforces this impossible standard.  And it doesn't stop there.  Are you smart?  Are you creative?  Does your home look immaculate and artistic?  Are you athletic?  Every day our culture tells us we aren't smart enough, creative enough, skinny enough, beautiful enough, strong enough, exciting enough, active enough, and the list goes on.  Ironically it trumpets the very things we really have no control over--nobody picks their DNA.

Growing up as a non-believer, I struggled to understand from where my value came.  Now understand this, I was a skinny, popular girl who was at the top of her class.  And I felt a huge, terrifying fear that one day someone would see through my act and see who I really was.  I lost sleep over it.  You see, in my deepest heart, I was afraid I was nothing.  I was afraid that I couldn't be loved because I had nothing of real value to offer.  Being somewhat pretty and smart wasn't enough.  In college, I read a book about a man who came to know Christ.  He spoke of the beauty of being loved and the feeling of God's presence.  Even though this man was kicked out of his house, he was so in love with Christ that he couldn't, wouldn't give it up.  I remember finishing that book.  I was by myself in my dorm room and it was getting dark; everyone else had gone to dinner.  I knew that this man had what I wanted.  What I needed.  Love. Value.  Purpose.  I was sold out 100%.  If this was the truth--I wanted all of it and I wanted it now.

I admit that for the first couple of years I transferred my idea of value from physical things to spiritual things in a way that God does not intend.  Instead of measuring myself by beauty and intelligence, I measured myself by spiritual discipline and Bible knowledge.  I read, I fasted, I prayed, I evangelized.  I also failed pretty miserably because try as I might, I still wasn't good enough.  I hit my low spot in Papua New Guinea as I told you before when I realized that I didn't really make a good Christian.  And I was amazed when God communicated that this really wasn't what He was looking for anyway.  He wanted me, not some glorified idea of the model Christian.  He would take me as I am and then free me to be who I was really meant to be.  A person with talents in various areas and many weaknesses in others, but still valuable.  Not because I performed.  Not because I produced.  Because I was.  

So that brings us again to the good news.  You are more than your list of attributes or faults.  You have an identity in Christ that cannot be touched.  Ephesians 1:3-14 lists off this identity in beautiful detail, but here are the highlights.
You are

• blessed (God has good plans for you with your best in mind.)
• chosen (You aren't a cast off, but were specifically chosen by Him.  He wants you.)
• adopted (You belong to Him.   You are the Beloveds and He is yours.)
• redeemed (Your sins, your weaknesses, and those bad choices you've made can be turned into something beautiful by His beautiful power.)
• forgiven (You no longer have to carry the burdens of your sin any longer--they are taken care of.)
• heirs (You have a future and it's better than anything this Earth has to offer.)
• sealed (Nothing can take this away from you--it's yours forever, and it's not going to decay or get broken.)

When I covered this topic with my class, we discussed how Ephesians talks in depth about two things:  identity in Christ and spiritual warfare.  What's the connection?  The students realized that the enemy wants God's people infinitely confused on this point because what would happen if we realized how free, how loved, how important, and how safe we are in Christ.  Maybe we'd stop pointing fingers.  Maybe we'd be able to share that love with others.  Maybe we'd give ourselves a break from our crazy, trying-to-prove-something lifestyles.  What do you think?

Powerful Prayers

True Prayer

In John 17:20-21, Jesus prays for His future church: "I do not pray for these alone, but for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one , as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me."

There are a couple things of note here--first, the validity of Jesus's ministry hangs on our unity, and, two, we aren't doing a very good job of that. Does that mean that Jesus's prayer didn't work?  If the Son of God's prayer didn't truly come to pass, what hope do we have?

If we come to prayer as the means by which we get what we want, then, yes, most prayer is a colossal failure. If, however, we see prayer in a more biblical light, we will see that prayer is much more of a partnership.  While teaching a hermeneutics class, I asked my students why they thought God used man to write His Word.  Wouldn't it have been far more effective and less risky to just let His Word in its perfection drop from the sky (preferably in a dramatic manner with lots of witnesses)?  It's not like God needs us to accomplish this. To answer this, we, as a class, considered how God has consistently worked with creation--He enlisted Adam's creativity in naming animals, He gave Him responsibility to look over the garden and all creation, He chose Abraham to be the beginning of a nation, He raised up Moses to be His spokesperson, He sent out the disciples (and us) to be witnesses to the end of the earth, and He encourages us to read and obey His Word. Do you see the pattern?  God wants involvement from us!  He can surely do it all without us, but He requires our participation!  When we finished discussing this, it was easy to see why God used man to write His word.  He was acting consistently from the beginning of time. He wanted us involved! And He still wants us involved--the very works of our faith are dependent upon a partnership with God.  We read God's Word, but His Holy Spirit unlocks it for us.  We share God's truth with others, but it is His power working in people to bring them to salvation.  We bring our needs to God, but it is His actions that change things.

In Ephesians 1:17-19, Paul prays, "that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power."

Paul's prayer is detailed, passionate, and hopeful.  His desire is for believers to really know God and then, as a result of truly knowing Him, to understand the great future and great hope and great power available to us who believe.  Now this is prayer!

When we pray, our goal isn't to give God a list of requests.  It's not to moan about our failures (which is really self-absorption anyway).  It's not to dutifully lift up the needs of others without any real hope or expectation.  When we pray, the very power of God becomes available.  We are, in some amazing way, conduits of God's power on earth.  

When Jesus prayed for unity for His church, He knew that He was releasing the power of God to work among us.  Now that power requires something of us.  As noted before, God is interested in a partnership.  Our prayer is not the end of the story but only the beginning. As we lift something or someone up to God in prayer, we need to make ourselves available to be a part of the answered prayer.  Can you imagine the difference this kind of attitude in prayer would make in the church?  In the world?

As a recap, 

1) True prayer is accompanied by an expectation of God's involvement 

2) True prayer realizes that God is making His power available right now as we pray
3) True prayer ends with believers making themselves available to be a part of the answer to prayer.

Tonight, my children and I got on our knees and prayed for Iraq.  Thinking about these things inspired me to pray with more passion and with hope that God is and will be moving in that country.  I have a responsibility to pray.  The church has a responsibility to pray.  There's a world out there in desperate need of prayer--let's get to it! 

*I've listed in my Books I Love page an awesome resource for prayer which has revolutionized the way I pray for the world.  Please check it out!

Worshiping in Spirit and Truth

Replica of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem

When we read of Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4, there are many ideas that stand out to us in this encounter: the fact that He was speaking to a Samaritan (hated by the Jews for intermarrying after the exile), the fact that He was speaking to a woman (Jewish men typically did not speak to women who were not their wives), and the fact that He was speaking to an immoral person.  The very fact that He spoke to her at all can sometimes negate the power of what He actually spoke to her about.  And what did He talk to her about?  He spoke to her about worship.  

"The woman said to Him, 'Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.  Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.' Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.  You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.  But the hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.  God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."  John 4:19-24

The place of worship that the Samaritan woman refers to can actually be traced back to the beginning of the divided kingdom.  When Solomon's son Rehoboam refused to lighten the tax burden (and foolishly threatened to increase it) the ten northern tribes refused to accept him as a king.  They put their own king Jeroboam on the throne, and their kingdom became known as Israel while the two other tribes who followed Solomon's son were called Judah.  There was a problem, however.  Jerusalem (which was located in Judah) was the center of Jewish worship.  Jeroboam's people would therefore want to travel to Jerusalem to celebrate feasts and festivals as part of their faith.  To counter this, Jeroboam built the high places in Samaria for them to worship God without going to Jerusalem.  As you can imagine, it wasn't long before this one rule change led to others and idolatry soon became a regular part of Israel's "worship".  

This Samaritan woman wanted to know who was right:  the Samaritans for worshiping on this mountain or the Jews worshiping in Jerusalem.  Jesus corrected her by saying that the Jews are right in this situation, but that this isn't the final goal.  The final goal is that worship will no longer be limited by physical walls and borders.  You see, God is completely unlimited by physical boundaries; He is Spirit.  So He doesn't care about buildings and cities and holy places.  His worship has completely different criteria; worship must be in spirit and in truth.  

When God (who is completely spiritual) created the world, He made a beautiful, physical world filled with physical plants and physical animals, and He said it was good.  When He made man, He did things a bit differently.  He made us with both aspects: spiritual and physical.  We are the only creation that combines these two realities.  However, these two realities are often not so easy to reconcile.  You see, our physical reality is very demanding; our five senses bombard us with information constantly, and we are responding to this stimuli all the time.  It is easy to see how we can overlook the spiritual part of our nature.  The spiritual side does not bombard; it does not overwhelm.  The spiritual side is only for those who ask, seek, knock, and desire.  Ironically, the spiritual side is the most real part of us because it is the part that lives forever and the part that isn't burdened with our sinful nature.  The point is that it is easy to focus on the physical because it's so obvious, and it takes determined effort to focus on the spiritual.

So what does it mean to worship God in spirit then? Throughout the ages, the church has vacillated between two erroneous conclusions: one, that all physical is evil and unimportant (thanks to a little influence from Plato), and, second and opposite, that physical is extremely important and we must make a division between sacred and secular places and jobs.  The first mindset is impossible to live in, and  the second mindset kills true worship.  

You may not have thought about this but the early church didn't care about buildings.  They didn't save or revere Jesus's few belongings. They didn't camp out at the places where Jesus revealed Himself.  They knew that to truly worship Him meant not focusing on the physical aspects of His time on earth, but that it meant to worship Him on His terms.  For us, it means that we recognize that He cannot be limited by time and space.  Church buildings are not holy.  We are.  He hasn't chosen a location to reveal Himself.  He's chosen us.  

And that brings us to the second part of worship: worshiping in truth.  Sincerity.  Honesty. Candor. Authenticity.  Validity.  How real are we with God?  Do we feel we must say the things we think He wants to hear?  Do we have to get ourselves in a proper spiritual mindset to approach Him?  Do we realize how ridiculous that is?  God is not shocked or surprised by what is really going on in our minds.  He does, however, still invite us to come to Him.   We come as we are, and we allow Him to be who He is.  We allow Him to be inscrutable, enormous, deep, loving, scary, and quiet.  We allow Him to give us rules, guidelines, help, advice, and discipline.  We trust Him with our hearts, dreams, hopes, and failures.  We are real with Him, and He is real with us.  

This is the heart of worship, folks.  We don't just worship Him in a location, on a certain day, at a certain time.  We worship Him ALL the time because, yeah, He's Spirit and He doesn't esteem one day or place above another.

Then we come as REAL people talking to a REAL person.   And you know what's really cool? Jesus is seeking those type of worshipers.  He's looking for those who want the real deal.  Then we must ask:  are we true worshipers? 

Mountain Moments

One of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen is a sunrise coming up over the mountains of Papua New Guinea.  Many years ago while I was in college, I got to spend the summer in Papua New Guinea with New Tribes Mission learning how to share the good news with people who've never heard anything about God or His Word and who did not even have a written language.  Our main camp was in the Highlands--a beautiful location with mild temperatures and stunning sights.  I woke up early in the morning and brought my Bible to one of the highest spots and had my morning devotions there.  Those were sweet times, but were also one of the most broken times of my life.  

For various reasons having to do with unexpected spiritual difficulties to unfulfilled romantic hopes, I had reached a low point in my life at that time.  I was actually in full-fledged depression.  I had never experienced anything like that before, and, to be honest, I never used to understand why people couldn't just "get over it".  But here I was feeling like a huge weight was on me, a darkness that I couldn't overcome.  I recognized my complete inability to do anything about the state I was in, and it scared me.  When I became a Christian a few years previous to this, I tried to fix myself by sheer force of will.  I was intense, and I was legalistic.  It took God some time to strip me down to the person sitting on the mountains of PNG, but I will come back to that girl in a just a few moments.

Mountains are a powerful symbol in the Bible.  Most of us think of them as places of spiritual growth and refreshment.  Many important events occurred on mountains:  the Law was given on Mt. Sinai, Elijah confronted the priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel, Jesus was transfigured and taught His famous sermon on mountains.  These were locations of direct instruction or interaction with God.  These interactions were amazing, life-changing, and relatively short.  We all long for those mountain moments with God, but usually forget the prerequisite for those awesome moments.  Humility.  And, specifically, humility as a result of suffering and difficulty. 

In the following verses, we see a unique image of Christ.  We see Him being prophesied as a humble root that is exalted by God.  

"Thus says the Lord God: 'I will take also one of the highest branches of the high cedar and set it out.  I will crop off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender ones, and will plant it on a high prominent mountain.  On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it; and it will bring forth boughs, and bear fruit, and be a majestic cedar.  Under it will dwell birds of every sort; in the shadow of its branches they will dwell.  And all the trees of the field shall know that I, the Lord, have brought down the high tree and exalted the low tree, dried up the green tree and made the dry tree flourish; I, the Lord, have spoken and done it.'" Ezekiel 17: 22-24
Read these for other similar prophecies: Isaiah 11:1, Jeremiah 23:5-6, Psalm 2:6, Isaiah 2:2-4, Micah 4:1-5, and Zechariah 2:11.  

The main allusion in this passage (especially in the context of several other passages) is about the Humble Servant who humbles Himself and is exalted.  There's a few important things to note here:
1) God is the one who does the exalting--Jesus never exalted Himself. He let God do it.  If we want to serve God, we must not exalt ourselves, but be humble like Christ.
2) The result of being exalted is not that everyone just thought the tree was great--it was useful, fruitful, and a blessing.
3) Again, God is glorified by the exaltation because He has done the work.

The girl who sat on the mountain those many years ago was humble, but mainly humble from making lots of bad choices and then having to deal with the consequences of those choices.  For the first time, I realized that I was completely helpless, and that's when I had an encounter with God.  I cannot say that the result of this humility was an exalted state, but I definitely felt lifted up by God.  I understood that the pressure for making me what I wanted to be wasn't actually on me--it was on Him.  And like this passage mentions, the work of bringing us to the place of true usefulness is up to Him.  Our job is simple--keep ourselves humble and then let Him use us.  Jesus is truly a model in this because He gave up so much to come to us, and then lived His life in humble service.  He suffered, not because of His bad choices, but because of ours.  

So how do we humble ourselves like He did?
We make reaching people where they are a priority.
We speak the truth in love.
We help people.
We sacrifice for others.
We listen to and obey God.
We are authentic and genuine.  
We are kind, hospitable, and generous.  
We rejoice with those who are rejoicing and weep with those who are weeping.
We bless those who persecute us.
We cling to that which is good.
We forgive.

If we want those mountain moments, we have to first become humble servants, the tender roots that God will lift up and transform!