God's Holiness

     We have all had the experience of learning of some horrific violence against children or equally helpless adults and hearing or even uttering ourselves "Is nothing sacred?" We live in a time when depravity and senseless violence so dominate the news that it is no stretch to believe that there is an element of the world's population for whom quite literally, 'nothing is sacred'. They have no fear of  answering for their actions, be it to man or to God and it is an indication of the extent of their 'lostness' or separation from God and everything that is pure, good, right, and holy. We can and should pray for the lost and we should be broken over their separation. I want to set that aside for now though and consider the implications when believers are soft or unclear in their reverence for God's holiness. What does it mean to serve a Holy God whose name is sacred,
whose essence is truth, whose core is righteousness? What can we do to insure that our perception and respect for God's holiness is as he intends?
     While most of us have little problem acknowledging our sinfulness and the struggle to be 'good ',
we really are unequipped to comprehend or process the holiness of God. The primary meaning of holy is separate or apart from. Being the source of light, truth, purity and love, God is outside of our ability to comprehend or perceive. We know that He is good and we are not but that is not really an adequate understanding of what it means that our God is a holy God. If we search the Old Testament we can find abundant evidence that indicates that respecting God's Holiness is crucially important to our understanding of
who God is and what He desires from us. Individuals, cities, and entire cultures were extinguished by God as justice for their refusal to acknowledge right living or 'righteousness', for being unaware of the consequences of their living in defiance of God's Holiness. The book of Jonah is an exemplary account of a people who knew that they were living 'out of bounds' relative to God's standards and showed contrition and repentence
when the prophet appears and declares the coming judgement.
      As believers, we are challenged daily to keep perspective and focus on our response to the call our God has placed upon our hearts. One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to misunderstand or in some way diminish or subjugate God's holiness and the crucial role it plays in the makeup of His character. The
Lutheran theologian Dieterich Bonhoeffer sounded the alarm on this hazard in the term "cheap grace";
we cheapen 'grace' when we take sin lightly, when we give ourselves a pass on obedience, when we pretend
The Word is not saying what it says. Our enemy works tirelessly to convince us we are 'good', we are acceptable, we have arrived, when in reality nothing could be further from God's truth. If we are honest we acknowledge everyday our unworthiness before God without the atonement for our wretchedness that was purchased through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot approach God in His holiness without being shielded with the intercession that His Son died for; His truth, His justice, His righteousness would
incinerate us. We must continually remind ourselves that God is separate and apart from us. He loves us and He died for us, but His holiness cannot tolerate us until we have been clensed and sanctified by His Son.
As part of the creation, we are broken and defiled and waiting for restoration. As we attempt to grasp the fullness of God's love and surrender to His redemptive healing, we must remain diligent in defending His holilness: from a culture that declares Him to be irrelevant and from our own hearts which are deceptive, weak, and willing to compromise with sin without considering the consequences. It is no small task and we are charged with being faithful and obedient in revering and upholding it, to each other and to the world as well.

Spring Brings

    Gnarled massive trees with hints of leaves are swaying in a gusting west wind.  A lone bird sings an endless song. Together the wind and bird remind me of God and I am overcome with the awareness of His presence.
Like the wind, God cannot be seen, but His power to move things is undeniable. A faint breeze or a roaring gale are both God speaking in His creation, moving climates, shifting moisture, changing seasons. If you have lost something to the wind and chased it, you have danced with God as he playfully pulls it from your grasp each time you are upon it; so it is with putting your finger on just exactly who God is. As soon as we are assurred in our understanding, we realize we have no real grasp of who or what God is.
     The wind carries things miles from their homes. I love fall days when blustery waves shake loose leaves from trees, tossing and tumbling them in swirling ballets. Leaves on the ground are swept aloft for a second chance at gliding back to rest. God often plucks up people from the safety of their 'trees' and sends them on tumultous flights before they are grounded again. In the same way that leaves are carried wildly on the wind, we are carried along by the breathe of God, unseen yet powerful, a faint breeze that belies the potential gale.

A Winter Prayer

 Father,

Thank You for your mercy and grace, for your majesty and glory. Your faithfulness sustains me through the challenges surrounding me. How would I breathe without the knowledge of your love and the promise of life found in your Word. When I am weary of all that breaks man's heart, your heavens soothe my soul and give peace. I see evil and know You have conquered it: I see injustice and know its reign has an end. Give me courage to declare Your victory, to sing your praise, to share the promise of Your son. Forgive me for reducing the cross to cheap grace; for reducing purity and holiness to elements of faith that are negotiable.
Make my heart submissive; surrendered , humbled - hungry for purity....holiness.....righteousness.

Amen

Essence versus Appearance

     The first car I bought was the "Oldo Nova". It was not an attractive muscle car with perfect paint, sleek rake and shiny Cragar mag wheels. This Nova was not a fixer upper or a project car; it was a beater, a wreck, a refugee from the crusher. It was a "fishing car", a euphemism for a car that has so little value it doesn't really matter if it makes it back from the trip. A four door white bomb whose interior was incredibly more abused than the exterior decay could ever hint at. I loved that car. It wasn't my first car and it wasn't my first love. My father had given me his 1967 VW Bug and we rebuilt it together. I learned a lot. The car that I first fell for was a 1969 Buick GS, aquamarine with a white top and the chrome side molding that carved a line from the headlights to the rear tires.Immaculate, polished, perfect. Elusive. I had the Nova. a beater if there ever was one.
     The radio was gone,  the floorboards were rusted out, the seats were ripped and the gas gauge permanently read empty. The windshield wipers were anemic, the exhaust came into the interior if you idled.
It had a crooked sideways list from a bad shock or coil spring. It was a an incredible tribute to Detroit's ability to engineer a 'soul' into a car. It always started and if it didn't, you knew it would soon. It was solid in the places that mattered: strong frame, bulletproof transmission, a straight six motor that soldiered on. I didn't know it at the time but the Oldo Nova was as much a teacher as it was transportation.
     The Nova was the "essence" of solid, well built, sound. It functioned as it was designed and engineered to, in the era before microchips, sensors, and on-board diagnostics. If it wouldn't start, the solution was in one of two systems; electrical or fuel. You could narrow down the issue and be on your way....simple process of elimination....no spark, electrical. Got battery and fire......fuel system, carburetor. 10 hard years had taken a toll on the Nova's looks but its essence was undiminished. Dependable, predictable and tank like, it went where I asked it and always got me back. I am convinced that if you divided the cars sticker price by its weight it was one of the best values of any domestic made product Americans could ever buy, just an opinion mind you.
      Thirty odd years and multiple cars later, I realize that I may have been privileged to own an uncommonly well made Chevrolet Nova that came off the line in 1970. It should not have been as resilient and reliable as it was because of  the neglect and lack of basic maintenance it had been subjected to. It survived some incredibly ill-advised excursions that I shake my head in wonder at today; hauling an apartment load of furniture from the sand hills of North Carolina through the mountains back to Kentucky. It towed a motor less 54 Bel Air to Madison County from Woodford County with a rickety bumper hitch that literally came off with the Bel Air as I attempted to back it into its new home. It made countless late night runs in which we had no idea how much gas was in the tank yet never ran out of gas. The odds are so astronomically against that when  you consider that putting in 5 dollars worth was extravagant and rare in those lean college years.
     A backward glance at the quality of that old car maybe a nostalgic and somewhat selective memory but I believe it represented an object lesson for me in discounting appearance as the sole measure of value or worth; not an easy lesson for young people in our culture of abundance and excess. I'm not naive enough to believe that the Nova cured me of that shallow "looks are everything" attitude that is endemic of college age boys, it did not. What it did do was help me have a more balanced approach to considering the value of reliability, dependability,  and consistency, in making decisions; whether about things or about people. It helped me realize that the best friends or things aren't always shiny and new. It showed me that sometimes reliable and substantial come in beat up boxes and ragged appearance, that good friends are always a call away regardless of the deluge or distance. It helped me make choices about the man I would become, the type of character I would take on as I became a husband and a father. I like to think that my work ethic was in some part forged in the lessons I learned from that car; persistence and perseverance will overcome, determination and integrity will endure.
     I will never forget the mysterious vanishing transmission fluid and how the Nova would defiantly continue to go when the dipstick showed nothing. It would shudder and lurch and I knew it needed 2 or 3 quarts of transmission fluid and it would be good  for another 500 miles. I couldn't find the leak. It would leave small drops on occasion but nothing indicating the amount of fluid I was going through. Finally, I got underneath and traced the line that ran from the transmission to the radiator and was still baffled until I noticed the aluminum line crossing the frame and a solitary red drop poised to fall. The line had rubbed the frame and worn a hole; it sealed when the car was off but opened enough to leak with the vibration of driving. I remember how good it felt to have solved the mystery and also impressed that the transmission was so resilient.  My detective work had taken months.

Hopefully we have learned that the latest and greatest is not always the most desirable, that tried and true will be a reliable and dependable choice for the short and the long term. We have a tremendous heritage as a country with innumerable heroes who have shown us character, steadfastness, heroism and consistency. We are a brand that denotes quality and integrity and we owe it to our previous generations to show our children's children what American made looks like. Be the model you'd love to own.

Our Mysterious Hearts

     In the core of our being, we are driven through life by something that is complex and unknowable; our heart. Sometimes it is called our soul, some refer to it as our essence, but in
the Word it is referenced as our "heart" so let's go with that. The Bible is full of references and instructional wisdom about this essential piece of us: it is our character, it is what defines us, it is who we are. We are told that we cannot trust our heart because 'it is wicked, deceitful, ....who can know it!' Our heart is easily broken and easily hardened, it can be like stone or it can melt like wax. It is capable of empathy, sympathy, and great courage and equally susceptable to blindness, greed, and paralyzing fear. When the apostle Paul spoke to the dichotomy of "doing the things I would not do, and not doing the things I know I should", he is defining the the mystery of our heart's and the struggle we face in answering God's call upon it.
     The heart is intricately partnered with our mind: the portion of ourselves that reasons, remembers, extrapolates, conjectures; the hard drive that navigates us through our day. Our heart is the "feeling" part of us while the mind is the "thinking" part. This is the simple version of "us" as agreed upon by science and culture. We are a biological machine that lurches around with our brains computing what we are seeing and doing, while it trys to deal with the troublesome software application called the "heart" that complicates every decision with concepts like sorrow and kindness, parameters of selflessness and love. The world has no time or patience for the complexity of our constitution, our blend of reason and feeling: it is much easier to call the Heart and Mind two seperate entities and science naturally elevates the brain above the heart.
     Intrinsically, we know the truth of our complexity. God has made us in His image and we realize that we have been "fearfully and wonderfully" made. There is an element of "Him"
alive in us: it is what He calls back to Himself, it is His claim on our hearts and lives. Our  problem with the reponse and with knowing and understanding that call is sin. It has been between our hearts and God and it has made us confused and confounded: sin has corrupted our hearts and minds so that we are subject to the wrestling match that Paul described so eloquently. Even though we are redeemed from sin by Christ, our sanctification is incomplete and we struggle to reconcile our heart's longing to emulate Him with our old nature: painfully aware of our inadequacy but joyous and hopeful that we might succeed.
This mysterious duality seems to intensify with age and wisdom. Having more experience and resources would seem to guarantee some semblance of progress in "knowing the heart"
in the same way a mechanic of 30 years understands machines better than a teenager.
In matters of the heart, the man is wise who professes to know nothing.

Jeremiah 17:9 (Amplified Bible)



9The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly perverse and corrupt and severely, mortally sick! Who can know it [perceive, understand, be acquainted with his own heart and mind]?(A)



 

What are you "believing God For?"

      In the course of pursuing God it is not uncommon to go through periods of reflection on the nature of the relationship we have and where it is leading. The Bible is full of accounts of individuals and cultures struggling to understand the methods and motivations of God. In trying circumstances some people feel separated from Him,while others feel His presence is strongest when life is hard. Sometimes it is in the midst of calm and serene conditions that the heart grows uneasy and begins to query, "What am I believing God for right now?" If you are subject to thoughts and feelings around this subject, you may know what I am trying to convey: a sense of unease that something is being missed or that you are not quite 'getting it'. It doesn't qualify as anxiety or fear and it is certainly not despair but is more fairly described as an annoying wonderment at what exactly do I expect of and from the maker of all things.
     If we are honest, we realize that we cannot grasp the depth and breadth of God and how he operates in His creation. We simply are not equipped to comprehend His magnificence or His complexity; at best we have an infant's perspective. Spurgeon says it well "we have learned the first letters of the alphabet, we cannot read words yet, much less put sentences together." We are attempting to ascertain the infinite with a mind and heart that are woefully insufficient. That doesn't stop us from trying. I believe it speaks more about the heart of God than our hearts, He has written that longing into us, that desire to know and comprehend who He is. It is that missing piece of us that was lost in the beginning that we hunger for: the relationship that defines and completes us.It is unquenchable and we see a world full of lost people who are desperately trying to plug that hole with every conceivable distraction, destruction, dereliction imaginable.
     I have been quietly probing this question for some months now coming from a stormy volatile landscape into a fall season of peace and reflection. It has been like a kernel in the teeth, something you cannot dislodge but something you continue to run your tongue over hoping it has gone away or worked itself loose so you can be rid of it. It has been a casual cycle of asking the question and then wondering about the question, what does it mean that I have the question, what if there is no answer to the question? I have even gotten rather fond of the question because it is consistent and reliable in a day and age when that is generally not true of much of what we experience.  It is really not a question of what do I know about God because His Word explicitly details His character and His consistent behaviors in His relationship with men. It is more a question of what do I understand God to be about in the day to day of life that I am experiencing? What follows is a list of attempts to rephrase the question to better dislodge the kernel

"What part of me is more like Christ now than it was before I surrendered, and is it me changing or has He changed me?"
" Do I believe I am making progress in this journey, or does that really even matter because I am not part of the process?"
"Will I always feel like I should or could be better in following Christ's example, or will I always feel like I am struggling with a standard that is beyond me?"

These are different ways of trying to address the feelings of inadequacy we have when it comes to understanding the mysterious God who has called us to Him. We cannot rest easy in the knowledge we have of grace and mercy because it is foreign to us. We know instinctively that we are not worthy of the sacrifice God endured for us and wince at the thought of accepting Him at His Word and being done with guilt and angst and despair. Our enemy works tirelessly to convince us that we are not worthy of God's love and are undeserving of mercy and grace; he desperately wants us to question God's motivation and methods in remaking us into the image of His Son. That is the real source of the question...."did God really say?"

The Journey

Matthew 7:14
But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Luke 13:24
He said to them, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.


Part of our consternation and difficulty in discovering who God is and what it means to know Him is the length of the journey and the “carry on” restrictions.
We travel heavy as humans and our culture of self, me, now, self, first , me, mine, self only amplifies and magnifies the load. We have elevated self-esteem and self -sufficiency as character traits so much that humility, gratitude, and community have become discarded as hindrances to achieving what is really important: our best possible self. We have all this “weight” of need and want for things and activities that serve as distractions from what we are really longing for;
the answer to who God is. Jesus came to tell us what is necessary, what is essential and what we need to discard.
The journey to knowing God is partially about examining who we are and what we have “picked up” along the way. This is by no means easy or simple because from childhood we have been learning to protect our self , to guard our perception of what we are. We have built an idol of ourselves that we carry around in our minds and hearts to worship our good qualities and admirable traits. God’s word puts us on our heels and we protest the “truth” that there is nothing good or admirable in us, especially our hearts and minds. So, our first obstacle, and the most difficult “carry on” we cling to is our self: our perception of what and who we are, and most of us are dragging it along, with the knowledge that it is too heavy and oversized. We are standing on line ( love the British) with our I-pods on detach, texting irrelevant babble, looking for a Latte and wondering why nothing is really changing in our lives. We would rather do anything except open our self file and examine who we really are in spite of the fact that the signs
all indicate that our “carry on” will not make it through the gate.

So, granted that we realize that we have to lighten up to make “weight” and
we are going to get around to that reformatting of our self (someday), we still have a journey and we are clueless on the starting point, rest areas, exits. If you want to make good time you may want to go ahead and start on the self cleaning thing because the wind resistance is ridiculous and it is like trying to row against a sail in a strong headwind: you are going backwards. Until we have addressed ourselves and have a “word”’ perspective on our worth and value without Jesus Christ as our intercessor, we are not really on the road at all. The weight of self-importance, self-righteousness, self-centeredness is not going to let us get started, its too heavy and burdensome. So remember, we are still working on getting to the dollar menu self and we can no longer be content with our Golden Corral self that we are so fond of and lets proceed.


Our GPS (God Positioning System)

The other part of our journey that gives us problems is that we don’t want to use the map, the owner’s manual, service recommendations, right fuel, etc. WE
are driving and we can find our way. Part of our self- reliance is that we don’t need or want help or instruction; we can do it. Delusions of adequacy.
If our “self” has been a hindrance, our lack of direction or willingness to ask is an even bigger obstacle. God’s word is the source of truth, the atlas for time and space, the version of reality that is real. It is His communication to us about how to find Him and we still will not consult it. It has all the information we need to determine where we are, who we are, what we need, what obstacles to avoid. We still don’t want to use it. “this is all messed up….what’s that verse about not mixing in with the world, being separate or something?” we mutter as something goes badly for us and we are clueless. God tells us to attach the Word to our heads, to know it and our journey will be smoother but we still don’t want to use it. We don’t want to use it. Strange really, don’t you think?
Having God’s word as our map and travel guide is essential to understanding our relationship with Him and with one another. It is also filled with “eye-witness”
accounts of people who experienced great blessing or tremendous sorrow depending on how they received and acted on God’s instruction. Wouldn’t it make sense to know the things that disappoint God by learning where others have failed and by avoiding their mistakes. Faithful study of the Bible will show us how to live a life that pleases God, keep us off the wrong roads and make us servants who can help others who are struggling to figure out life. Just like the GPS in your car, the word will show you where you are in the journey and how to proceed safely and expediently to your destination: an intimate knowledge of who God is and what He wants for your life. Jesus told us, the way is narrow and many will try and enter through the broad gate that leads to destruction. Why risk that result for your life when the word is clear about how to avoid that end. Be honest about who you are and realize you don’t know who God is. Ask Him to show you who you really are and who you could be. Discard the heaviness and falseness of being the center of your own world and look at the heart of the one who made the world. Break out the word and get a hunger to find out who God is calling you to be; the narrow way is not always easy, not always scenic, but it is absolutely the best and only way.