Holy Living

Temporarily Rich

“God gives us things to share; God doesn’t give us things to hold.” – Mother Teresa

When the people of Israel were freed from Egypt, they were told to ask their Egyptian neighbors for money, jewelry, and other forms of wealth. The Egyptians were so happy to see them go, they gave them what they asked for. When the Israelites left Egypt, they were very rich!

They walked to Mt. Sinai where God gave instructions for building a place where his presence could be known among his people. He told Moses to ask for donations of gold, silver, thread, dyes, and jewelry for this purpose. Through their Egyptian neighbors, he had given them everything needed for building the tabernacle, and now, he invited them to give it to him for their blessing and his glory. They realized that what they had so briefly owned was meant to be put to use according to God’s plan. But only if they wanted to. God loves cheerful giving, so did not coerce them to give more than they were willing to part with.

Don’t you think he still does that today? He gives us money or goods and then asks us to give back what we are willing to share. And he promises to bless us when we do. He gives us wealth and resources, not to be held onto, but to use – to meet our own needs, to bless others, and to support the work of his kingdom.

Maybe God has put something in my pocket or yours today that he wants us to give back to him or his people. We are temporarily rich. Our money and goods are just passing through our hands.

“Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” – Hebrews 13:16

Hallowed be Thy Name

“Love means doing all we can, at whatever cost to ourselves, to help people be enthralled with the glory of God. When they are, they are satisfied and God is glorified. Therefore loving people and glorifying God are one.” – John Piper

We all know people who don’t even want to talk about Jesus because they have been hurt or disappointed by Christians. I don’t want to be one of those who say they follow Jesus, but live unlovingly or angrily.

One of the best known of the Ten Commandments is “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Many think that means we shouldn’t speak God’s name in the wrong way. Biblically, there’s a lot more to it than that.

The word for vain has the same root as the word for vanity in the book of Ecclesiastes. It means something is without meaning, value, or substance. So, taking God’s name in vain is taking up his name without giving it meaning or value by the way we live. It means living in ways that make people think less of God, not more.

The same thing applies to taking Jesus’s name lightly – saying we follow Jesus and not acting like it. Paul cautions about that when he says, “. . . we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” If we are Christians, people should see we are not carrying his name lightly. We’ll make mistakes, for sure, but over time we should be getting more and more like the person whose name we claim. Let’s make sure the way we live makes people want to know our Jesus.

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” – John 8:12b

Say “yes”.

“There is no one who is insignificant in the purpose of God.”– Alistair Begg

We are so bombarded with sales-pitches today, that we have conditioned ourselves to say “no”. There are times, though, when our conditioning might block us from doing what is really best for us. Our predetermined “no” may keep us from doing something God himself is putting in front of us. Let’s not always be skeptical!

God met Moses at the burning bush and told him he had been chosen to lead God’s people out of slavery in Egypt and into the land God had promised to their ancestors.

Moses’s response: Not me, Lord. I’m not the right guy for this job. I have no influence. The people won’t accept me as their leader. And, I’m not even a good speech maker. You need to find someone else.

As we know, God gave Moses some supportive tools, including miracles he could perform to show God had sent him and including his own brother Aaron to give the speeches. Somehow I think God might have been happier if Moses had just said “yes”.

God says,

“Love me with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”

“Be holy as I am holy.”

“Love each other as I have loved you.”

“Go into all the world and tell them about me.”

He wants us to say “yes” to all those things.

Here are some other things to add to our “yes” list:

Discomfort

Uncertainty

Humble service

Change

Living by faith

Caring – a lot

Teaching others

Giving back to him everything he’s given to us

Showing compassion

If we say “yes” to these things, we also are saying “yes” to supernatural and unexplainable peace, hope, purpose, and joy. Let’s practice saying “yes” to God!

“For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” – 2 Corinthians 1:20 .

The Me I Want to Be

“The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.” – Philip Yancey

Recently a Christian leader sent an angry tweet and, then, another post apologetic about the first and saying, “That isn’t really who I am.”

If we’ve used social media for any period of time, we most likely have had regrets about something we posted. Aren’t we all glad for the edit option?

In Mark 7, Jesus taught his disciples this truth: The words that come from our mouths (or, in today’s world, our phones or computers) reflect what we’re like on the inside. Our words reveal exactly who we are. Maybe, as one tweeter said, we shouldn’t say, “That isn’t really who I am,” and instead say, “That’s not the person I want to be.”

How, then, do I become that person – the one I want to be? The one who is good, kind, gentle, generous, wise, self-controlled, faithful, loving, patient, and forgiving, but still discerning and bold? Whether we need fine tuning or a total overhaul, the method is the same: We go to the Father, confess our failings, and ask him to grow us into the person he’s designed us to be. Then, believe that he’s doing it. As we go through our lives day-by-day, we will be given opportunities to choose our responses, to initiate conversations, to help someone in need, and all the while, we are changing – becoming more and more like the person we want to be.

It all starts with turning to the Father.

” . . . walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,” – Ephesians 4:1b-2

Save your heart for me.

“Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure; where your treasure is, there is your heart; where your heart is, there is your happiness.” – Augustine of Hippo

These old song lyrics come to mind occasionally: “. . . just remember I’m in love with you and save your heart for me.”* I think God sings that song to us sometimes. The spiritual life is all about who has our heart, and he wants yours and mine to belong only to him.

God wants us to have human relationships, to engage in business, to be educated, to own things, to develop personal interests. But he doesn’t want any of these things to compromise our overriding commitment to him. That doesn’t mean we have to be perfect. David, who made notable mistakes and sinned scandalously, was described by God as “a man after my own heart.”

What did that mean? I think it meant that David wanted to please God more than anything. So, when he realized he had failed at doing that, he turned back to God for forgiveness and restoration. His heart belonged to God, so it was never at rest when something interfered with that deep inward commitment.

We can be like David: Desiring more than anything else to have our hearts devoted to God, knowing we will never reach that goal perfectly in this life. But knowing, as well, that when we are intentionally committed to God, we’ll turn to him even in our failure, and he will forgive our unfaithfulness and restore our joy.

So, let’s go out and live passionately, generously, gracefully as long as we save our hearts for him!

“Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” – Psalm 51:12

*Gary Lewis and the Playboys

Grace: Not Just a Little, but a Lot

“A man may have too much money, or too much honour, but he cannot have too much grace . . . Thou needest much; seek much, and have much.” – C. H. Spurgeon

God is overflowingly generous. In fact, in The Message, John 1:16 reads this way, “We all live off his generous abundance, gift after gift after gift.” We cannot count the number of gifts God gives us – and they keep coming.

John tells us “He gives the Spirit without measure” (John 3:34). He doesn’t parcel out a little bit of the Spirit. He gives all of him to all of us who ask (Luke 11:13).

All of this is about grace. Grace is God showing his favor toward us – just because he wants to and can, not because we are worthy of it. In fact, he shows more grace when we are less worthy: Paul found God’s grace was perfected when he was weakest (2 Corinthians 12:9). James tells us God gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). When we can’t do something, God can. When we recognize our need, he intervenes with grace.

And not just a little grace. We read about the early Christians meeting together daily, taking care of each other’s needs, and telling others about the resurrection. Then we read, ” . . . and great grace was upon them all.” Not just grace, but great grace.

Do we need it? Yes! Do we recognize it when it comes? Sometimes. Let’s be on the lookout for God’s generous grace in our lives today. He loves it when we notice.

“But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you.” – 1 Peter 5:10

Holy Bewilderment

“It is not that the Annunciation leads Mary out of doubt and into faith; it is that her encounter with the angel leads her out of certainty and into holy bewilderment. Out of familiar spiritual territory and into a lifetime of pondering, wondering, questioning, and wrestling.” —Debie Thomas

We like to think of faith is an assured confidence – and often it is. There are other times, though, when stepping out in faith leads to what Debie Thomas called “holy bewilderment”.

Mary was chosen to be part of the turning point of history – the time when God would enter this world as a baby and grow up to be the God-man who would sacrifice himself for the sins of the world. I’m sure Mary had expectations when she learned she would bear God’s son, but confusion set in as the story unfolded. She didn’t anticipate so much suffering, rejection, pain, and uncertainty. But all of that was part of the journey she set out on when she said “yes” to God.

In this Christmas season are you finding yourself “pondering, wondering, questioning, and wrestling”? Don’t despair. This is part of living a life of faith. If we could see how our story ends or could understand what to make of our quandaries, it wouldn’t be faith.

What did Mary do with her bewilderment? She went to see her older cousin Elizabeth. Maybe we, too, can find someone a little further down the road than we are in the life of faith and get some good counsel. We, too, can develop a life of prayer as Mary doubtless had already. We, too, can do the next right thing day-by-day until we begin to understand God’s plan. That’s what faith means – trusting God even when we’re full of questions.

“For we live by faith, not by sight.” – 2 Corinthians 5:7

I did it my way.

“There will be no peace in any soul until it is willing to obey the voice of God.” D.L. Moody

If you’re one who prides yourself in doing things your way, beware. There are examples in the Bible where the “my way” approach didn’t work out so well. Here’s one:

In Israel’s early history, the Ark of the Covenant was captured by an enemy. When David became king, he was determined to get the Ark back. So he sent people to bring it home. God had given specific instructions about this Ark – how to carry it and who could get near it. I imagine David saw this as a one-of-a-kind situation – an exception – and chose efficiency over obedience. By doing it his way instead of God’s, a good man died while trying to steady the Ark so it didn’t fall off the cart. The problem was that it never should have been on a cart in the first place, and God was not pleased with the “my way” approach.

Obedience to God can be hard because what he asks may not always make sense to us, but we realize he sees things we cannot see, and he has standards of right and wrong that only he has a right to define. If we are wise, we humbly accept his way as the way we will follow – even if it means we have to give up something we really want to have or do.

We have ideas for living our lives that seem reasonable to us, but if our way includes things that are not part of God’s way, we’re asking for trouble. His way is always right – no compromises, no “just this once”. Our way is never better than God’s way.

“Be careful to observe my commandments. I am the Lord.” – Leviticus 22:31

It’s infectious.

“He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life he has—by what I call ‘good infection’.” – C. S. Lewis

I recently read the story of a woman now known as “Typhoid Mary”. She lived in the early 1900’s and was blamed for several typhoid outbreaks in New York City over a few years’ time. Medical professionals determined she was a carrier of typhoid though she never showed symptoms and never came down with the disease herself.

In some way we are all infecting people with something. Some people enter a room and, suddenly the atmosphere becomes brighter, lighter, more interesting. That’s a good kind of contagious. Others come like Eeyore, and they spread an infection of gloom. Which would you rather be?

The writer of Psalm 139 asks God to “. . . see if there be any grievous way in me . . .” I’m told that a “grievous way” is any aspect of character that can lead to grief. This psalmist knew there could be something deep in his heart that would cause pain, and he might not even be aware of it. We don’t always know what is hiding inside us. “Typhoid Mary” certainly didn’t!

While we live, we’re going to be infecting people around us. Maybe we, too, should invite God to search us and make us aware of anything we’re carrying that could cause grief to ourselves or someone we love. By God’s grace, we pray that, since we’re contagious, it will be with what C. S. Lewis calls a “good infection.”

“Be it ours today . . . to be ruled and governed by Thy divine authority, so that nothing false or sinful may reign in our hearts, lest it extend its malignant influence to our daily walk among men.” – Charles Spurgeon

The Happiest Being in the Universe

“If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. – C. S. Lewis

Author John Ortberg tells us that “God is the happiest being in the universe.” Our joyful, creative, energetic, and passionate Father wants us to be happy, too.

In fact, joy is part of the Fruit of the Spirit described in Ephesians 5. When God uses agricultural images like fruit, I think he’s reminding us of what farmers already know: Growing anything takes patience. We sometimes want to hurry the process by using earthly pleasures to manufacture joy, but what we get then is a poor substitute for the real thing.

True joy grows over time. I think the Holy Spirit plants the seeds and then, with our cooperation, helps those seeds grow into full, ripe, abundant fruit.

What might our cooperation in growing this fruit look like? Here are three assessment questions that help me when I’ve lost my joy:

Who am I trying to please? If it’s another person or even people in general, we’ll be frustrated. If it’s God alone, we will experience his pleasure. And that makes us happy.

Is my focus on the temporary or the eternal? Having a long view helps us forego an immediate pleasure for a future reward. That brings peaceful confidence.

How close am I to the Happiest Being in the Universe? God’s effusive joy will overflow to us if we consciously engage with him all day long.

If our focus is on knowing and pleasing God more than anything else, joy will come. Guaranteed smiles.

“Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous.” Psalm 33:1