The Physics of God

We are going to study physics today.
Don't groan.
Physics has the most noble heritage of sciences--it is the system within which God made the world.
And He shows Himself through it.
All the time.
All around us.

Take energy, one of the most basic of physical phenomena.
It is physical expression of what the Bible calls strength, specifically God's strength.

God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble.--Psalm 46:1
Please note the reference to ever-present, then recall what you learned in seventh grade science:
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It is ever-present.
It does, however, change forms.

Take our archer in the picture above.
He is demonstrating potential energy.  Nothing is happening, but he holds back great power in the tension of his bow.
When he releases the arrow, the energy becomes kinetic energy, the energy of motion and work.

God is the same at that archer and arrow.
Sometimes he sits back and waits.  Sometimes He acts.
But His power never changes. 

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart...Psalm 73:26

Think of that power the next time you get ready to throw a ball or prepare to jump.
You are about to demonstrate the physics of God.
Then let it fly.

Closed-circuit Love

God is love.
Yes, most of us have heard this already.
Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love.--John 4:8

So, what does God's love look like?
The Bible provides a whole list:
Love is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not proud, not rude or self-seeking, not easily angered.  --1 Corinthians 13:4-5 paraphrased
There's more, but you get the idea. 
Then, if I am all of those things, I am loving like God does.
Well....no.  Not really.
That's like saying that if I am brown and shaggy, bark and wag my tail, I am a dog.

The problem with looking at love this way is that we are doing so backwards.
Love does not come from anything we do. Nothing.  
We cannot manufacture love.
Love comes from God and only from God.
We contribute nothing other then receiving and exercising it.

I can love my husband and children because God gave me His love.
I can love my friends because God gave me His love.
I can love my enemies for the same reason.
It is all the same thing, from the same place, for the same purpose.

And how do we recognize it?
God's kind of love is completely free of self-interest.
In God's world, self-love doesn't exist.
God's love looks out, not in.
Ever.
It comes from God and goes back to Him, a closed circuit.
And when we love like God, we are with Him.
We are His creation, part of His family.
Because of this, when we love, we enjoy heaven on earth.

Sacrifice: Why Bother?

We can make no sacrifice that is of use to God.

I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills...If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and everything in it.--Psalm 50: 9, 10, 12

He does not need anything we can give Him.
No service.
No prayer.
No fasting.
No giving.
No witnessing.
No singing.
He can do all of it better Himself.

God wants only one thing from us--to acknowledge Him, to affirm that we understand He is God, perpetually greater than we are.

If the performance of sacrifice serves that end, if it brings us to His feet in worship, if it changes our inmost, invisible heart, only then does it have value.
Our sacrifces must change us, make us more God's, or they are wasted exhibitions.

He who sacrifices thank offerings honors Me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.--Psalm 50:23

The Danger of Knowing

God planted two trees in the Garden of Eden.
The Tree of Knowledge, by which men could know both good and evil, and in that way, be like God and
The Tree of Life, by whose fruit man could live forever.

Men would only be allowed to eat from one of them, and God told Adam which He recommended.
Adam and Eve, however, ignored God.
They chose the Tree of Knowledge.

It sounded good, the knowing, but it didn't work out very well.
The problem is this--only in innocence can we live forever with God.
And, once we have known evil, God must cast us out.
And so, He did.

Now, however, that we have taken from the first tree, we still long for the second. We were made, after all, for everlasting communion with God.
But flaming swords block our path, swords that only Jesus Christ, by His triumphal death, could part.
That is the punishment of Eden.

And it is still true.
The wrong knowledge leads me into sin and withholds life.
Do I need to learn, to know?
Yes, but as in so much else, I must be careful of what I learn.
I will have to live with it for the rest of my life.

...but God did say, "You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die."--Genesis 3:3

Blood on our Hands

You bred it.
You birthed it.
You fed it.
And now you are going to have to kill it.
God says so.

When a Hebrew penitent came to the temple under the old sacficicial system, the priest prayed over the lamb he'd brought, but he handed the knife to the penitent. An obedient Hebrew cut the throat of his own animal  himself.

At the moment of the animal's death, two things happened.
First, the Hebrew did the deed.  He was full of blood from it. He knew the stench of it. He expended the effort to raise it, to bring it, and to kill it in the name of God.
Second, he was deprived of it. One of the best of his flock, that animal could have fed his family, but now it would not.

Today, even after Jesus' final blood sacrifice, we do not escape that God requires the same from us.

What we bring to the temple looks quite different, but is often no less messy or painful.
And it still has the same two components.

We bring the sacrifice of doing what we do not want to do.
And we bring the sacrifice of not doing what we desire.
They are not the same thing.
One does not substitute for the other.

The sacrifice of doing.
And the sacrifice of doing without.

When any of you brings an offering to the Lord, bring as your offering an animal from the herd or the flock... He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. He is to slaughter the young bull before the Lord...Leviticus 1:2-5

The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences for acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!--Hebrews 9:13-14

The Howling Dark of Sin and Chris Tomlin's Pale Grace

Got grace?
Well, of course I do, silly.
I am set free by it, washed in the blood of the lamb. I am saved, Saved, SAVED!
And grace is amazing.
John Newton says so.
Chris Tomlin says so.

But John knew something Chris appears to want to forget.
Grace needs sin.
Always.
Always.
The crime. The betrayal.
The howl of deep hurt forcing itself to be heard from torn heart of the person, and of the God, I said I loved, said I would never forsake.
And then did.
And I have to listen to it.
Ragged. Raw. Unrelenting.
And I am responsible. Only me.
I did it on purpose, because I wanted to, because I thought myself more important.

That is why I need grace.

Amazing Grace is not a hymn. John Newton did not sing it.
He wrote and recited it with his congregation as a statement of wretchedness.
The grace he described covered the sin because it could not make it disappear.

The minute we forget the sin, we can forget the grace, too.
We do not need it any more.

If we want to sing about grace, we'd do well to remember the sin that made it necessary.

Look into the horror.
You will need to be bold, but it's worth it, because that is the only place you will find real grace.

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find help in time of need.-Hebrews 4:16

When More is Less

Life is not random.
I'm just coming off two and a half weeks of flu and, whenever something hits that hard, I wonder why.
And that it should come now, at the beginning of a new year, at precisely the time when I'm setting goals and gearing up, well...I wonder doubly.
It is only now, as the illness begins to release its hold, that I start to get a glimpse.

For the first time in long memory, my whole life had to stop.
I was too sick to do anything, go anywhere, even talk to anyone.
I didn't clean, or shop, or cook, or go to the gym.
I didn't write.

I sat. I stared. If I felt halfway decent, I read a book.
And I thought.
Why?

Now, at nearly the end  of it, I think I know.
For the last years, I have told God I wanted more.
More of His intended life, more from my life in the body of Christ, more of Him.
And, to that end, I have picked up and put down goals and activities.
I have read and studied.
I have kept my eyes open and attentive.
I have prayed.

But I missed what was happening.
I didn't see the cage begin to turn, to pick up speed, to whir and rush.
I didn't see that I was in it.

Carried in a flood of sacrificial activity. Lost in the constant whoosh of wind.

Then it stopped. It had to. I had no choice.
I said no. And no again. And again.
Until nothing was left.
And I found it.
I found His hand.
Reaching from the emptied place.
Where He'd always waited.
And it was full of the more.

Thank you, God, for the flu.
For it is: Do ,and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule, a little here, a little there...God will speak to His people, but they would not listen.  Isaiah 28:10-12

Be still and know that I am God.--Psalm 46:10

And I'm not the only one whose new year has brought this lesson.
See Sandra Heska King's How Clutter Makes Us Fat