Shedding the Weight

"How do I get to heaven?" she asked.

I was proud of myself.  I knew the answer.
"Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved."--Acts 16:31

"So, I just have to believe in God, I'm saved?"

Hmmm...I knew that wasn't quite right.  I went back to the drawing board.

I know that, to get to heaven, God must forgive my sins.  That's the business He transacted on Calvary--forgiveness for all men--all.  
I also know that not everyone goes to heaven. 

Jesus arranged forgiveness, but what happens after that?
How DO we get to heaven? 

I thought of the parables Jesus used to explain heaven: the ten virgins, the farmer sowing seed, the prodigal son.  Then I thought of that woman--the one who embarrassed the Pharisees at their own dinner table by crawling on the floor anointing Jesus' feet and crying.  She was going to heaven.  What was special about her?

Her many sins have been forgiven, for she loved much.  But he who has been forgiven little, loves little.--Luke 7:47

This woman knew without doubt that she was a monster sinner, so she clung to her Savior.  She clung, and cried, and touched Him for the sheer relief and wonder of it.  She loved Him with abandon because, of everyone there, she alone understood.

Then I understood, too.
We are all that woman.
We all bear the same dreadful weight of sin.  But some know it, and some don't.  Those who know it go to heaven. 

We are saved when we know we need to be, really, achingly, desperately.  We are saved when we know that no one but Christ can usher us into heaven, that our own good deeds are dirty rags, that we are lost, literally lost, without Him.

Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities.  Then they cried to the Lord and He saved them from their trouble.  Give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for men.--Psalm 107: 17, 19, 21

Christ lifted the weight of sin from all men on Calvary, but He does it individually for each man only when our eyes at last meet His and we see.

Look In My Eyes

It happened again.  When will I learn?  Just when I trust, just when I relax into a relationship or circumstance, BANG!  The thing goes bad somehow. Thoughtlessness, carelessness, ill will, or just plain bad luck brings it all down in an instant.  I hate this part.  I really do.

Then God reminds me that this all happens because I let it.
Listen to me.  Who are you that fear mortal men? Awake as in days gone by. Do not fear the reproach of men. Clothe yourselves in strength, O arm of the Lord.--from Isaiah 51: 1-16

I am the arm of the Lord.
Not in the sense of administering His punishment or judgement, but in that He provides the strength with which I face my life in this world, whatever that life brings.
I am He who comforts you.  The cowering prisoners will soon be set free.  The ransomed of the Lord will return.--from Isaiah 51:1-16
Is anything too hard for the Lord?--Genesis 18:14


God is already acting on my behalf and I do not see it.
You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways.-Isaiah 64:5
All nations will be blessed because you obeyed me.--Genesis 22:18


When we want our children to listen to us, we gently turn their face to ours and say to them, "Look in my eyes."
What does God say?
Listen to me.--Isaiah 51: 1
Effectively, He says, "Look in my eyes."
Remember what I have already done.
Remember what I have promised.
As I have done, so will I continue to do.

See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up.  Do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the desert.--Isaiah 43:18-19

Life does seem like a desert sometimes, but God has already redeemed it.  Neither man nor circumstance can harm me in any real way if I have believed God.  He has already shown me, and bids me remember.  I must remember how He strengthens my arm.

This strength is what belief looks like.
Hurt, misfortune, intentional harm.
When I look into His eyes, it all fades.

I think, therefore...

Descartes thought he had it all figured out.
"I think, therefore, I am."
If he can think, he deduced, he must exist, and thereby he established an intimate connection between thinking and existence, a correct one as far as it goes.

However, Descartes didn't deduce the depth of the connection between thought and physical reality.  When one considers God, rather than man, thought and reality become essentially the same thing.

And God said, Let there be light.--Genesis 1:3
And God said, Let there be an expanse between the waters.--Genesis 1:6
And God said, Let the land produce...--Genesis  1:11and so on.

Remember, our Creator doesn't have a mouth.  When God said, He thought.  His saying is done as effortlessly as thinking.  He thought the world into existence--the whole heaven, the whole earth.
There is no separation or hesitation between what God thinks and what happens.
There wasn't then; there isn't now.

 Now, with that in mind, consider this:
He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ...--Ephesians 1:4-5

Here as in the very act of creation, no pause exists between God's thought or will and its accomplishment or reality.  If He chooses, it happens at the same moment that the choice is made.

It is different for us, and a good thing, too.
Imagine if everything we thought actually happened--Yikes.
No, to make stuff happen we, as humans, have to DO something.

God has already both purposed and accomplished salvation.  We, however, have to act.  We not only have to know we can be saved, we have to turn the thought into deed:
If you confess with your mouth "Jesus is Lord" and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved--Romans 10:9
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.--Romans 10:13

Descartes got it partly right.  He existed, as do we, not because he thinks, but because God thought.
We know salvation for the same reason.
But our humanity does not wrap around that, so we join with God's will the only way we can--by both belief and the action of consent.
We say, "Yes, Lord."

Seeing Red

I can't get her out of my mind.
I keep thinking about that tender woman in the crowds by the lake at Galilee, bleeding out, slow drop by slow drop.
Weak, pale, outcast.  She crawled through the crowd, propelled by a faith born of desperation.  Desperation.  But it was enough.  She reached out.

Then, unbidden, with the touch of grace and power that He wrapped around Him like a sweet cloak, Jesus stopped her bleeding.
Facing His own passion, His own blood sacrifice, He spared hers.

Daughter, your faith has healed you.  Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.--Mark 5:34

That's the way it works.  Freedom is purchased by the blood of one for the benefit of another.  So it did that day, and so it does for us. Just as for all the blood shed for freedom through long ages of men, as it flowed from one, it stopped for another. 
The woman did contribute something, however.
She contributed faith.

Today, we remember that much blood has flowed for freedom and still does, but as it does, it causes us to yearn for a day when, like for this woman, another exchange for freedom awaits. The Lord of the universe promises an end to the bleeding.  Rather than life's blood, we long to offer faith alone and be freed from suffering.

His blood flowed once for all, but our blood continues to stain the world.
Someday, we will know freedom from that, too.

Be Careful What You Ask For

Poor Solomon.
God asked him what he wanted and Solomon asked for wisdom.  A good thing.  Very good, everyone seemed to think.  And God gave him piles of it, along with piles of everything else--power, wealth, wives.

It started out all right, like the dead baby incident, when wisdom came in pretty handy for figuring stuff out.

With time, however, wisdom brought Solomon a kind of clarity he didn't particularly like, and he wrote about it in Ecclesiastes.

Meaningless! Meaningless!  Everything is meaningless!--Ecclesiastes 1:2

So this is where wisdom leads?  Apparently, it is.

God's gift of wisdom gave Solomon a clear view of man, much clearer than he liked.  And this is what he saw:

Work achieves nothing lasting  (Ecc 2:11)

Men continually mess up  (Ecc 7:20 and 8:14)

Riches and wisdom make little difference in the end (Ecc 10:6)

God showed Solomon that, even though he was a great man, he was still a man.
This only have I found:  God made man upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes.--Ecc 7:29
God showed him that, for all Solomon's wisdom, he was still a sinner.
There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.--Ecc 7:20

Solomon thought his wisdom would help make him a better man.  Instead, it only helped him see mankind's failings more clearly.  In the end, wisdom differed very little from any other possession he'd accumulated.  

God graciously put Solomon in his place, and Solomon left a bit deflated, but finally seeing with a wisdom greater than his own.

In the end, Solomon concluded this:

Live your life, remembering that you sin.

Be happy as you can with what you are given, remembering that it will not last.

Love God.  Obey Him, remembering that only He sees righteousness clearly, and only His perfect wisdom lasts forever.  (Ecc 7:13, 12:13)

Not what Solomon expected, but not so bad after all.

Stop, Already!

God gave us minds to think, but we are so dumb sometimes.  We have always been that way.

The carpenter cuts down cedars...half the wood he burns in the fire...he warms himself and says, "Ah, I am warm;" from the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships.  He prays to it and says, "Save me, you are my god."...No one stops to think.--Isaiah 44:14-19

No one stops to think.
No one stops.

Go, go go.  Round and round.  Motion is work.  Be not a sluggard.  Keep going.  Don't give up doing good.

Good grief.  Stop already.  Think.

We fashion our gods from our own hands.  We fail to see the wooden gods we have made.
He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him.  He cannot save himself or say, "Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?"--Isaiah 44:20

We hold our gods in our right hand, bowing to them, reverencing how they make us feel: useful, effective, efficient.  It doesn't work that way. What do we call them?
Our job.
Our to-do list.
Our church activities.
Our blog.
Our club.
Our vacation.
Our recreation.
Our quiet time.
Anything.  Absolutely anything, even an immovable and inviolable prayer time, can be turned to serve a purpose that is not God's.

God wants only one thing from us:
Remember these things, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel...Return to me, for I have redeemed you.--Isaiah 44:21,22

You are my servant.  Return to me.
How can we ignore Him?
Our idols lie dead in our palm but He lives, vibrant and expectant, waiting to share power and glory.
Stop spinning and look up.  How can we say 'No'?

God's Hand--Why Murder is a Sin

I don't easily obey authority.
Admit it.  Neither do you.

I have trouble with people, who I know are just as broken and sinful as I am, telling me what to do. But God says that, if they are in a position of authority over me, I am to do what I am told as long as it does not contradict His Word.  And I don't like it.

I once saw a visual of this that actually helped a lot, however.  It was lineup of sorts:  I face my authority, but Christ stands behind him, quietly, firmly, with unwavering sinlessness.  I might not want to obey the person, but no matter what, I can obey my God. I may see a flesh and blood person, but God stands behind him bearing authority I cannot, do not even want, to debate. 

Now I correctly understand authority.   It resides, all of it, not with a man or woman, but with God.  I obey not because people are right or just, but because God is.

The same logic, God says, applies to how I deal with my enemies, and this is why:
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.--Ephesians 6:12

Just as I look at my authorities and obey because I see God working through them, I, in the same way, look at my enemies and see not my battle with them, but God's battle with evil. I have to remember that the battle is not mine, but God's. 

Men themselves are not evil.  God made them, every one of them.  They are, however, twisted and used by evil.  Through it all, God is fighting the battle to win them back right in front of our eyes.  

I am to engage in that battle, but not against their flesh. I am to battle the evil that controls their flesh.  Murder only kills the flesh.  It does not defeat the enemy.