Yesterday I went hiking with my family to the waterfall here at Snow Mountain Ranch! It was a really nice hike, but on our way up we discovered that the stream was swollen from snowmelt and the trail was muddy. Not far from the trailhead, we actually found a rivulet of water running down the trail. We had to step to the side to avoid it and eventually chose to walk the back portion of the loop in order to keep out of the mud and water. On the way back down, though, we tried the portion of trail we had not yet hiked. What we found surprised me. We knew there were beavers in the area and had seen several old, broken dams down by the trailhead. But on our way back we passed a new dam, one which had been built halfway across the trail. The beavers had choked off the swollen stream and diverted part of it (quite unintentionally) onto the walking trail. This was the rivulet that we'd observed earlier, flowing down much of the length of the trail simply because upstream a ways a beaver had decided to build a dam partway across the path. I was surprised to see how a seemingly insignificant collection of sticks lying halfway across the trail could create a hazard for so much of the rest of the trail.
Later, I was talking with my Dad. Somehow we got onto the topic of time management and parental responsibility came up. He mentioned how, at one point when he was a youth pastor, he'd realized he was spending more time with other people's children than with his own. He knew it was a common problem. Lots of times preacher's kids turn out rotten or leave the faith because their father is always too involved in other people's lives and spiritualities to take care of problems in his own home. Judging from the Bible, this isn't unique to our own times. My namesake, the brother of Moses, was the first High Priest of Israel, but his sons got out of hand and were killed for offering "strange fire" to God. Eli the priest in the beginning of 1 Samuel similarly could not manage his children. Samuel himself was not immune, since when the people demand a king one of their reasons is that Samuel's sons "do not walk in your ways" (1 Samuel 8:5). David and Solomon are two godly fathers whose households were positively famous for their manageability.
It's an easy thing to do. These days, as my Dad pointed out, people live to pursue their own dreams, most often. While he didn't say there was anything wrong with that, certainly a lifestyle choice that puts one's own goals and desires ahead of anything else leaves no room or a spouse or children. "If you're going to live that kind of life, it's unfair to invite anyone else into it: and that's what you do when you marry and have a family," he said.
Even if one puts apparently selfless interests first, the result can be the same. I happened upon the blog of a young Christian leader recently. He's married and just became a father, but the schedule he's posted for his day-to-day life (I don't know why he posted one, but he did) shows he's already a very busy man. He works each day till almost 7 o'clock and spends every weekday evening in church activities, usually discipling other men. Weekends he's similarly busy and reports the only significant chunk of time he has to be at home with his wife (other than morning Bible studies at 8) is on Sunday, when (of course) he has to attend church and afterward help her rush through uncompleted household chores, after which they're both apparently so exhausted all they can do is pop in a movie and veg out on the couch! There's no doubt this man has good intentions. Every moment of his time is dedicated to church, God, and building into the lives of other men. But what about his decision to spend comparatively little time romancing his wife and maintaining their relationship, which is to be a picture of the union between Christ and the Church, in the flesh? In his latest post, his daughter has been born (quite a miraculous gift from God), and while he acknowledges that she is now his God-given responsibility, he's also noted that she's become a disruption to his times of prayer and Bible-reading. "The best way to love her is to keep pursuing Christ and His love for me," he writes. But will that mean that keeping up with his meetings with other men and their families will take priority over raising his daughter to love God and do what's right? Will she suffer great harm for the sake of a little good built into the lives of strangers? Will their marriage suffer? Only time will tell. It seems a little sacrifice now, just a few branches in the path, easily stepped over, but downstream it might have unforeseen consequences, making the whole trail impassible with mud and water.
This is why my father, when he saw he was more involved with other children than his own, took a step back from the ministry (he didn't leave it, but he made sure his priority was at home). Perhaps this is also why the Bible explicitly states that no man should be made an elder unless he manages his household well and has godly children. Otherwise the temptation to think his real job is outside the home might be too great, leaving his children practically fatherless and his wife a lonely married woman (which ought to be a contradiction in terms).
I'm glad my father made the decisions he did. Now, as he was just telling us, his coworkers praise him for his children, so well-behaved and accomplished: all of them college graduates, godly Christians, and intelligent people (I'm a novelist and my sisters are both in physics...am I adopted? Haha!). Much good has come from his decision to step back and re-prioritize. I know intellectually that when I start a family of my own my priorities need to be similar: reflecting that my real job is not my 9 to 5 shift or my fantasy series, but my family. I only hope God helps me make the decision practically as well as intellectually when the time comes, and that in the meantime He'll help me keep my priorities straight as a single man, for I cannot know what fruit they'll bear downstream...
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Testing Job: a Question of Love
And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?"
Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face."
Thus opens the book of Job, a fairly controversial book of the Bible in the eyes of many believers. Job was an extraordinarily faithful and righteous man who was also extraordinarily blessed and wealthy. He lived as a virtual poster-boy for the "prosperity gospel" (in a nutshell: have faith in God and He will bless you materially) until one day when we are told the conversation above took place between Satan and God. Immediately following it, Job loses everything. Literally. His family, his possessions, his wealth, his status, are all wiped out at a stroke in a single day. God never offers an explanation of any kind to Job. Job has done nothing wrong: he argues for the rest of the book that he has done nothing wrong and God's introduction of him in chapter one shows that he's right in that assertion. Still, God has allowed him to lose everything he has, and later allows him to be struck by a crippling and humiliating disease. Satan predicts that Job will curse God. A lot of people in less dire situations do. But Job says instead, "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (Job 1:21).
What the testing of Job reveals about him is that his devotion is really to God Himself, and not to the things God has blessed him with. When those things are lost, he remains faithful. God can give to him, and take from him, and he will still bless His name!
But what about us? This Sunday, our chaplain pointed out that many approach the promises of Matthew 7:7-11 as a magic formula to get whatever they want out of God. "We treat Him like a vending machine," he said. "We only go to Him when we want something out of Him, and if we can't get what we want when we want it, we think He's broken and worthless." But God, he pointed out, is a Person who wants a relationship with us. "How would your spouse feel if you only ever talked to them when you wanted something? How would it effect your relationship if you got mad at them every time they didn't give you whatever you wanted immediately?" Indeed, the Bible ties so many of its promises of answered prayers to exhortations that we obey God's commands (and also states warnings that our prayers will not be answered if we disobey). Christ, and later John, restate these commandments in their most basic and vital form several times for our convenience: love God, love each other. But when we only talk to God when we want Him to give us stuff, what do we really love: God, or the stuff? When we get angry with God when He doesn't give us what we want now, or at all, then who do we really love: God, or the things we asked Him to give us? Is our love of God an end in itself, or a sham designed to wrap Him around our little fingers and trick Him into giving us all the cool material blessings we really crave? If our love of God is thus, it is not really love of Him at all, but love of ourselves: we only love Him to the extent that it gets us whatever we want at the time.
Already, a lot of us fail the test of Job. I know there are plenty of times when I do. There are plenty of times when I, by my peeved attitude toward God when He unsettles my life, reveal that a part of me loves an ordered (by me), controlled (also by me), and peaceful (by my standards) life more than it loves a God who is so wonderfully disruptive, bringing in His own order, putting things in His own control, and inviting me into His peace and life. Even if we can accept loss or unanswered prayers from God, we so often demand an explanation from Him. Job did this later as well, but when God answered him out of the whirlwind, he was forcefully reminded of Who it was he was talking to. God is not a peer we can criticize. Our understanding is not on a level with His, so that we could dissect His reasoning or even (many times) comprehend it. When we think we will make Him explain Himself to us, we are like the pot demanding of the potter "Why did you make me like this?" (Romans 9:20) What does a pot know anyway? How would one explain the purpose of firing to clay?
But jumping to Romans 9 brings us to other questions and other tests. Material blessings, both tangible (a car) and intangible (a pleasant drive) are gifts of God that surely should not eclipse our affections for the Giver. But what about spiritual blessings? Romans 9 isn't talking about questioning God in material matters. It's about questioning God in matters of predestination. Speaking of the lost spiritual state of his fellow Jews, Paul writes, "So then it does not depend on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy....So then, He has mercy on whomever He wills and He hardens whomever He wills." (Romans 9:16 & 18). It is in this context that finding fault with God is said to be like a lump of clay finding fault with a potter, for making it a chamber pot instead of a vase. A poster on Facebook recently expressed a similar attitude, stating explicitly, not that he would not love God if God had not chosen to save him (which his unregenerate heart would not be capable of doing), but that God would be unworthy of his love and worship if he hadn't chosen to save him. When other Christians did not express similar sentiments on the thread, he was incredulous. When it boiled down to it, it seemed that he loved the spiritual blessings God had given him more than God.
Do we do the same? Perhaps thinking of ourselves not being saved is a bit extreme, but there are more subtle forms. If we don't get a spiritual high off of reading, prayer, or church attendance, do we get upset? Do we do these things because we love God in doing so, or do we love them more than the one they worship? If Jesus walked into our worship and praise service and disrupted it by healing a crippled kid in the third row, causing the band to stop and stare and the music to fall silent, what would our reaction be? Would we cheer because it was Jesus--the one we're actually supposedly there for--, or ask Him to leave because He's interrupting the spiritual experience we actually came to achieve? And what about the extremes of salvation itself? If we agree that God chooses those on whom He has grace and does not choose everyone (as the Bible seems to indicate), then what if He had not chosen us? Would we say He'd be at fault, if that were the case? Would we find Him an unworthy God, objectively? If we do, then we believe in our own inherent worth, and any worthiness we find in God is directly related to how much He recognizes and rewards our inherent virtue with spiritual and material blessings. This also is love of self, worship of self, rather than love of God.
But Job, despite his questioning all through the middle of the book, demonstrated a different love, one that proved Satan wrong. He blessed God even when God took away everything he had--proving that he loved God more than he loved the things God had given him. Even when God allowed him to be struck with horrible disease, he did not curse Him. His estimation of God's worth did not rest on how well God recognized his own inherent worth, but instead he recognized God Himself as being inherently worthy of His love, trust, and praise--even if God killed him.
In the end, the test of Job is less about enduring suffering than it is about loving God over the blessings He gives. We don't have to lose everything to undergo this test. We go through it every time we pray (do we just want blessings, or the God who blesses?), we undergo it with every disappointment (do we get angry at God for not doing what we want, or do we trust Him to have a plan?), we face it at the end of every worship service (are we miffed that we didn't get the good feelings we came after, or content that we got to express our love for our God?), and we see it every time we think on the fate of ourselves vs unbelievers (do we pat ourselves on the back for our own virtue, or humbly say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I"?). What do we really love?
What the testing of Job reveals about him is that his devotion is really to God Himself, and not to the things God has blessed him with. When those things are lost, he remains faithful. God can give to him, and take from him, and he will still bless His name!
But what about us? This Sunday, our chaplain pointed out that many approach the promises of Matthew 7:7-11 as a magic formula to get whatever they want out of God. "We treat Him like a vending machine," he said. "We only go to Him when we want something out of Him, and if we can't get what we want when we want it, we think He's broken and worthless." But God, he pointed out, is a Person who wants a relationship with us. "How would your spouse feel if you only ever talked to them when you wanted something? How would it effect your relationship if you got mad at them every time they didn't give you whatever you wanted immediately?" Indeed, the Bible ties so many of its promises of answered prayers to exhortations that we obey God's commands (and also states warnings that our prayers will not be answered if we disobey). Christ, and later John, restate these commandments in their most basic and vital form several times for our convenience: love God, love each other. But when we only talk to God when we want Him to give us stuff, what do we really love: God, or the stuff? When we get angry with God when He doesn't give us what we want now, or at all, then who do we really love: God, or the things we asked Him to give us? Is our love of God an end in itself, or a sham designed to wrap Him around our little fingers and trick Him into giving us all the cool material blessings we really crave? If our love of God is thus, it is not really love of Him at all, but love of ourselves: we only love Him to the extent that it gets us whatever we want at the time.
Already, a lot of us fail the test of Job. I know there are plenty of times when I do. There are plenty of times when I, by my peeved attitude toward God when He unsettles my life, reveal that a part of me loves an ordered (by me), controlled (also by me), and peaceful (by my standards) life more than it loves a God who is so wonderfully disruptive, bringing in His own order, putting things in His own control, and inviting me into His peace and life. Even if we can accept loss or unanswered prayers from God, we so often demand an explanation from Him. Job did this later as well, but when God answered him out of the whirlwind, he was forcefully reminded of Who it was he was talking to. God is not a peer we can criticize. Our understanding is not on a level with His, so that we could dissect His reasoning or even (many times) comprehend it. When we think we will make Him explain Himself to us, we are like the pot demanding of the potter "Why did you make me like this?" (Romans 9:20) What does a pot know anyway? How would one explain the purpose of firing to clay?
But jumping to Romans 9 brings us to other questions and other tests. Material blessings, both tangible (a car) and intangible (a pleasant drive) are gifts of God that surely should not eclipse our affections for the Giver. But what about spiritual blessings? Romans 9 isn't talking about questioning God in material matters. It's about questioning God in matters of predestination. Speaking of the lost spiritual state of his fellow Jews, Paul writes, "So then it does not depend on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy....So then, He has mercy on whomever He wills and He hardens whomever He wills." (Romans 9:16 & 18). It is in this context that finding fault with God is said to be like a lump of clay finding fault with a potter, for making it a chamber pot instead of a vase. A poster on Facebook recently expressed a similar attitude, stating explicitly, not that he would not love God if God had not chosen to save him (which his unregenerate heart would not be capable of doing), but that God would be unworthy of his love and worship if he hadn't chosen to save him. When other Christians did not express similar sentiments on the thread, he was incredulous. When it boiled down to it, it seemed that he loved the spiritual blessings God had given him more than God.
Do we do the same? Perhaps thinking of ourselves not being saved is a bit extreme, but there are more subtle forms. If we don't get a spiritual high off of reading, prayer, or church attendance, do we get upset? Do we do these things because we love God in doing so, or do we love them more than the one they worship? If Jesus walked into our worship and praise service and disrupted it by healing a crippled kid in the third row, causing the band to stop and stare and the music to fall silent, what would our reaction be? Would we cheer because it was Jesus--the one we're actually supposedly there for--, or ask Him to leave because He's interrupting the spiritual experience we actually came to achieve? And what about the extremes of salvation itself? If we agree that God chooses those on whom He has grace and does not choose everyone (as the Bible seems to indicate), then what if He had not chosen us? Would we say He'd be at fault, if that were the case? Would we find Him an unworthy God, objectively? If we do, then we believe in our own inherent worth, and any worthiness we find in God is directly related to how much He recognizes and rewards our inherent virtue with spiritual and material blessings. This also is love of self, worship of self, rather than love of God.
But Job, despite his questioning all through the middle of the book, demonstrated a different love, one that proved Satan wrong. He blessed God even when God took away everything he had--proving that he loved God more than he loved the things God had given him. Even when God allowed him to be struck with horrible disease, he did not curse Him. His estimation of God's worth did not rest on how well God recognized his own inherent worth, but instead he recognized God Himself as being inherently worthy of His love, trust, and praise--even if God killed him.
In the end, the test of Job is less about enduring suffering than it is about loving God over the blessings He gives. We don't have to lose everything to undergo this test. We go through it every time we pray (do we just want blessings, or the God who blesses?), we undergo it with every disappointment (do we get angry at God for not doing what we want, or do we trust Him to have a plan?), we face it at the end of every worship service (are we miffed that we didn't get the good feelings we came after, or content that we got to express our love for our God?), and we see it every time we think on the fate of ourselves vs unbelievers (do we pat ourselves on the back for our own virtue, or humbly say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I"?). What do we really love?
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Reliance
Well, as you may have heard, I recently finished a my first draft of a fantasy novel. I started it in 2008, by my best estimate, worked on it through college and the first year of my post-college life, and now, five years later, I have the complete manuscript. I'm still going to edit it after letting it sit a while and getting some feedback, but now that it's finished I feel like I've cleared the biggest hurdle. More than that, I got a call last night from my first satisfied reader, who loved the book and--as I told him--had a significant role in shaping it with his feedback. I'm very grateful to him and very happy that the book is finished.
But I admit there was another reason I was so happy to finish the book. Coming back up here to the YMCA at Snow Mountain Ranch brought back a lot of good memories for me. In 2010 I came up here with the Navigators (a Christian college ministry) for the summer. I vividly remember tramping and biking around the trails, meeting God in the woods and talking to Him. This was the place where I wrote my first prayer journals. This is the place where conversing with God became natural. This is the place where I fell in love, both deepening my love for God and realizing His love for me. I admit that returning here was not my first choice, but one thing I was looking forward to was new encounters with God, further deepening our relationship in the place that was so important to us three summers back. To put it simply, I wanted a God-date: a time I could be alone with Him for a while and get to know Him better. I prayed about this desire, and He answered, Finish your book, and then we can have our date.
Well, Friday I finished the book. Over the weekend I had two 3AM shifts and I spent Monday recovering and unwinding. Today was my last day off. God left the choice of the date up to me. I thought about it and realized that all the best God-dates I'd had before were adventures, so I asked for one of those. Today, the adventure came, though I'm not sure it was exactly what I thought it would be. I found, at about 3 o'clock that I needed some more money to finish my laundry. I also needed a new swimsuit (the old one doesn't fit--this is what I get for trying to wear things from high school). I knew of only one place where I might get both: Winter Park. I remembered taking a day to ride to Winter Park and back once in 2010, so I knew it was possible. This is your date, God said, so I took my bike and set out.
The first thing that struck me was that whenever anyone sets out on an adventure, they have to count on God to bring them back from it. Really, every single day we live at the risk of dying. You could have a heart attack while you read this. You could develop cancer as you sit comfortably in your home. There is, ultimately, nothing you can do about this: only God is keeping these things and a myriad of others from killing you at any given time. The thing is, when we're surrounded by our familiar homes, friends, and work, the risks and the need to rely on God to sustain us doesn't occur to us. But out on a mountain trail, barreling down a hill at what felt like thirty miles per hour, swerving to follow the trail, the possibility of death or disaster was something I couldn't ignore. At any moment, I could hit a hidden rock and go flying into a tree, startle a sunning snake and get bitten, take a turn to fast and go careening of the trail...the only thing between me and disaster was God. There on the trail, my faith was real, immediate. "My God will sustain me," I told myself.
It was a pleasant enough ride to Winter Park. I completed my errands and started back. Up through Tabernash (about the halfway point). Then, I began to have trouble with hills that shouldn't be giving me that much of a challenge. I realized I had bit off more than I could chew by taking on a ride I could only remember being arduous in 2010 (after I'd been riding frequently at this elevation, and almost daily for two years in Fort Collins). I did not realize it at the time, but what I'd taken on was a roughly thirty mile round trip at 8,000 feet, with about a 300 ft elevation gain on either end, and I hadn't been on my bike in over a year. To get back after dark, I had to complete the entire ride in less than five hours. It quickly became apparent that I was not going to make it. Even normal riding in a low gear caused by legs to ache. Just one stroke on a hill was agony. I would have to walk up the hills (and there were lots of them), and when I went downhill I would have the sun in my eyes, blinding me to potentially dangerous turns. I couldn't do it.
But God urged me to finish the trail. I remembered the verse from Isaiah 40: "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up on wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." I prayed for strength again and again on that trail. As walking uphill became difficult, I told myself, "The God who makes mountain goats and leads them through the wilderness will get me up this hill."
There were plenty of times when I was exhausted and ready to give up, but I made it back in one piece just as the sun was going down. I exhausted my own strength, pushed myself beyond my endurance, but God endured and I got through by relying on Him.
Now, in my room, I think back to my sister's graduation. One of the valedictorians gave a speech there congratulating the graduates on all the hard work they'd done to get this far and emphasizing that it was because of their work that they were seated there that day to receive their degrees. Reliance on self was the big theme I remember from that speech. It's also a huge theme in our culture. Books are filled with it. Even beyond the realm of self-help books that teach you to "look inside" for strength to rely on, there are fiction and fantasy books where the hero manages to save the day by tapping some hidden reserve of his own powers. But I had no power of my own to finish that ride. Lately I've been reading a book called Dangerous Faith which is a collection of non-fiction stories of Christians in harrowing circumstances: a man battling cancer and hunting one of the most dangerous animals in Africa (cape buffalo actually, large herbivores are surprisingly testy and the cape buffalo gores over 200 people a year), a man losing his eye and nearly his life on a Himalayan peak, a group of missionaries surviving an airplane crash in the frigid Bering Sea (where no crash victims had every been rescued alive before), a missionary to an isolated tribe in the jungle being captured and tortured by Colombian rebels, a woman surviving the 9/11 attack on the Pentegon and the man who rescued her...the list goes on. What all of these situations have in common is that these people realized, at a desperate moment, that they did not have the power to make it out of the situation themselves. They had to rely on God.
In the end, who is it safer to rely on: ourselves with our flaws and frailties, or a tireless God who made and knows everything? For me, it is God, and my God will sustain me through whatever adventures lie ahead.
But I admit there was another reason I was so happy to finish the book. Coming back up here to the YMCA at Snow Mountain Ranch brought back a lot of good memories for me. In 2010 I came up here with the Navigators (a Christian college ministry) for the summer. I vividly remember tramping and biking around the trails, meeting God in the woods and talking to Him. This was the place where I wrote my first prayer journals. This is the place where conversing with God became natural. This is the place where I fell in love, both deepening my love for God and realizing His love for me. I admit that returning here was not my first choice, but one thing I was looking forward to was new encounters with God, further deepening our relationship in the place that was so important to us three summers back. To put it simply, I wanted a God-date: a time I could be alone with Him for a while and get to know Him better. I prayed about this desire, and He answered, Finish your book, and then we can have our date.
Well, Friday I finished the book. Over the weekend I had two 3AM shifts and I spent Monday recovering and unwinding. Today was my last day off. God left the choice of the date up to me. I thought about it and realized that all the best God-dates I'd had before were adventures, so I asked for one of those. Today, the adventure came, though I'm not sure it was exactly what I thought it would be. I found, at about 3 o'clock that I needed some more money to finish my laundry. I also needed a new swimsuit (the old one doesn't fit--this is what I get for trying to wear things from high school). I knew of only one place where I might get both: Winter Park. I remembered taking a day to ride to Winter Park and back once in 2010, so I knew it was possible. This is your date, God said, so I took my bike and set out.
The first thing that struck me was that whenever anyone sets out on an adventure, they have to count on God to bring them back from it. Really, every single day we live at the risk of dying. You could have a heart attack while you read this. You could develop cancer as you sit comfortably in your home. There is, ultimately, nothing you can do about this: only God is keeping these things and a myriad of others from killing you at any given time. The thing is, when we're surrounded by our familiar homes, friends, and work, the risks and the need to rely on God to sustain us doesn't occur to us. But out on a mountain trail, barreling down a hill at what felt like thirty miles per hour, swerving to follow the trail, the possibility of death or disaster was something I couldn't ignore. At any moment, I could hit a hidden rock and go flying into a tree, startle a sunning snake and get bitten, take a turn to fast and go careening of the trail...the only thing between me and disaster was God. There on the trail, my faith was real, immediate. "My God will sustain me," I told myself.
It was a pleasant enough ride to Winter Park. I completed my errands and started back. Up through Tabernash (about the halfway point). Then, I began to have trouble with hills that shouldn't be giving me that much of a challenge. I realized I had bit off more than I could chew by taking on a ride I could only remember being arduous in 2010 (after I'd been riding frequently at this elevation, and almost daily for two years in Fort Collins). I did not realize it at the time, but what I'd taken on was a roughly thirty mile round trip at 8,000 feet, with about a 300 ft elevation gain on either end, and I hadn't been on my bike in over a year. To get back after dark, I had to complete the entire ride in less than five hours. It quickly became apparent that I was not going to make it. Even normal riding in a low gear caused by legs to ache. Just one stroke on a hill was agony. I would have to walk up the hills (and there were lots of them), and when I went downhill I would have the sun in my eyes, blinding me to potentially dangerous turns. I couldn't do it.
But God urged me to finish the trail. I remembered the verse from Isaiah 40: "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up on wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." I prayed for strength again and again on that trail. As walking uphill became difficult, I told myself, "The God who makes mountain goats and leads them through the wilderness will get me up this hill."
There were plenty of times when I was exhausted and ready to give up, but I made it back in one piece just as the sun was going down. I exhausted my own strength, pushed myself beyond my endurance, but God endured and I got through by relying on Him.
Now, in my room, I think back to my sister's graduation. One of the valedictorians gave a speech there congratulating the graduates on all the hard work they'd done to get this far and emphasizing that it was because of their work that they were seated there that day to receive their degrees. Reliance on self was the big theme I remember from that speech. It's also a huge theme in our culture. Books are filled with it. Even beyond the realm of self-help books that teach you to "look inside" for strength to rely on, there are fiction and fantasy books where the hero manages to save the day by tapping some hidden reserve of his own powers. But I had no power of my own to finish that ride. Lately I've been reading a book called Dangerous Faith which is a collection of non-fiction stories of Christians in harrowing circumstances: a man battling cancer and hunting one of the most dangerous animals in Africa (cape buffalo actually, large herbivores are surprisingly testy and the cape buffalo gores over 200 people a year), a man losing his eye and nearly his life on a Himalayan peak, a group of missionaries surviving an airplane crash in the frigid Bering Sea (where no crash victims had every been rescued alive before), a missionary to an isolated tribe in the jungle being captured and tortured by Colombian rebels, a woman surviving the 9/11 attack on the Pentegon and the man who rescued her...the list goes on. What all of these situations have in common is that these people realized, at a desperate moment, that they did not have the power to make it out of the situation themselves. They had to rely on God.
In the end, who is it safer to rely on: ourselves with our flaws and frailties, or a tireless God who made and knows everything? For me, it is God, and my God will sustain me through whatever adventures lie ahead.
Divide and Conquer
This Sunday I was fortunate to get to go to church here at the YMCA of the Rockies. Though I was working, my boss let me and my fellow worker clock out for the two hour service. It's good to be working for a Christian employer!
The service was different. It was fairly small and informal. Everyone sat around in a circle and we sang songs, accompanied by the chaplain's guitar. When the passage was read, everyone was invited to pitch in on the interpretation. It was more like a Bible study than a normal church service. In fact, it was a lot like the "house church" gatherings my Team used to do at Summitview (fond memories, *sigh*).
The passage was Luke 11:14-28, but much of the focus of the talk was on verse 17: a famous passage once quoted by Lincoln, but originally by Jesus, "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls."
In the immediate context, Jesus is quoting the passage to show how ridiculous the Pharisee's accusation is, that He is performing exorcisms by the power of demons. "If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?" Christ asks. Since the idea of a civil war among demons is ridiculous and would quickly ruin them, Christ cannot be casting out demons by using demonic power. His power must be coming from God.
But Christ's observation has broader applications than simply proving that exorcisms cannot be performed by demonic power. The chaplain pointed out that "divide and conquer" was originally a Roman maxim, a strategy they used to conquer the then-known world. It is also a strategy not unknown to our Enemy, Satan. Satan certainly is not divided against himself, allowing demonic power to be used to counter his own purposes. God is never divided in His purpose and plans. But we humans, we Christians, are divided into an estimated 41,000 denominations. I wrote earlier that there was a certain wisdom to sects, in that different denominations with their differing focus' and styles allowed the true diversity of the Body of Christ to become apparent. I still hold to that. I still celebrate the fact that there is one church here in the Rockies where I go and sing to guitar music and have an informal Bible study, and another church where ancient hymns are sung to organ music and a formal sermon is delivered. I celebrate the fact that we have Evangelicals who are good at evangelism, Methodists who are known for their social work, Creationists who labor to see God in the disciplines of science, and Charismatics who celebrate the bountiful gifts of the Spirit (and that none of these groups are necessarily mutually exclusive). There is great wisdom in making the body out of many different cells, forming diverse organs--so long as they remember they are one body. Sadly, in Christianity, many of the divisions are very real. There are people in each of the denominations who will tell you that their denomination is the only real Christian church and that everyone else who follows Christ is going to Hell (and they'll say it proudly: after all, they managed to find the real church). Others don't take it so far, but still firmly believe that whatever denomination they belong to is inherently better and more loved of God and more effective for Him than any other. But there is nothing spiritual about this religious bigotry: it stems from pride, from the flesh. When the universal Church is divided into various squabbling branches, it fails to be what God intended it to be, and non-Christians take note and mock. Satan wins, as the chaplain pointed out. When we divide, he is free to conquer.
But Christians don't just divide along denominational lines. At bottom, the unity of the Spirit is something that individuals either practice or break. We fight among ourselves. We argue over stupid things. We call each other names, we accuse each other of wrong--not out of love to correct and build up, but out of anger in order to tear each other down--, we take our problems to others instead of to each other--we gossip, we slander--, we lie to each other, defraud one another, or just plain hide from each other--whether literally by going up into a monastery to get away from one another, or figuratively by keeping our faith and our lives hidden even among other Christians who might benefit from our experiences. Christ prayed for unity before He went to the cross, when He could have prayed for anything. He prayed for us to be united together as one several times...and not once did He mention whatever issues or differences we think important enough to break peace and fellowship over. But we have different priorities: we divide, and Satan celebrates.
But there is more at stake when we divide than simply failing to be what we, as Christians and as the Body of Christ, should be. When Christ said that He actually performed exorcisms by the power of God--the God the Pharisees claimed to serve--He implied that they were trying to divide "God's side" against itself. But He took it further: "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." The Pharisees weren't just brothers on the wrong side of a civil war, they had made themselves enemies of Christ. Is it possible that we do the same when we divide? Christian unity is a huge part of Christ's purpose and plan--the identifying feature of those who know Him, according to some passages. Love between Christians was the last and most repeated command that Christ ever gave. When we work counter to unity, counter to love, we are really working counter to Him. We are not merely failing to defeat His enemies, we are working for them.
May God have mercy on us and unite us as one.
The service was different. It was fairly small and informal. Everyone sat around in a circle and we sang songs, accompanied by the chaplain's guitar. When the passage was read, everyone was invited to pitch in on the interpretation. It was more like a Bible study than a normal church service. In fact, it was a lot like the "house church" gatherings my Team used to do at Summitview (fond memories, *sigh*).
The passage was Luke 11:14-28, but much of the focus of the talk was on verse 17: a famous passage once quoted by Lincoln, but originally by Jesus, "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls."
In the immediate context, Jesus is quoting the passage to show how ridiculous the Pharisee's accusation is, that He is performing exorcisms by the power of demons. "If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?" Christ asks. Since the idea of a civil war among demons is ridiculous and would quickly ruin them, Christ cannot be casting out demons by using demonic power. His power must be coming from God.
But Christ's observation has broader applications than simply proving that exorcisms cannot be performed by demonic power. The chaplain pointed out that "divide and conquer" was originally a Roman maxim, a strategy they used to conquer the then-known world. It is also a strategy not unknown to our Enemy, Satan. Satan certainly is not divided against himself, allowing demonic power to be used to counter his own purposes. God is never divided in His purpose and plans. But we humans, we Christians, are divided into an estimated 41,000 denominations. I wrote earlier that there was a certain wisdom to sects, in that different denominations with their differing focus' and styles allowed the true diversity of the Body of Christ to become apparent. I still hold to that. I still celebrate the fact that there is one church here in the Rockies where I go and sing to guitar music and have an informal Bible study, and another church where ancient hymns are sung to organ music and a formal sermon is delivered. I celebrate the fact that we have Evangelicals who are good at evangelism, Methodists who are known for their social work, Creationists who labor to see God in the disciplines of science, and Charismatics who celebrate the bountiful gifts of the Spirit (and that none of these groups are necessarily mutually exclusive). There is great wisdom in making the body out of many different cells, forming diverse organs--so long as they remember they are one body. Sadly, in Christianity, many of the divisions are very real. There are people in each of the denominations who will tell you that their denomination is the only real Christian church and that everyone else who follows Christ is going to Hell (and they'll say it proudly: after all, they managed to find the real church). Others don't take it so far, but still firmly believe that whatever denomination they belong to is inherently better and more loved of God and more effective for Him than any other. But there is nothing spiritual about this religious bigotry: it stems from pride, from the flesh. When the universal Church is divided into various squabbling branches, it fails to be what God intended it to be, and non-Christians take note and mock. Satan wins, as the chaplain pointed out. When we divide, he is free to conquer.
But Christians don't just divide along denominational lines. At bottom, the unity of the Spirit is something that individuals either practice or break. We fight among ourselves. We argue over stupid things. We call each other names, we accuse each other of wrong--not out of love to correct and build up, but out of anger in order to tear each other down--, we take our problems to others instead of to each other--we gossip, we slander--, we lie to each other, defraud one another, or just plain hide from each other--whether literally by going up into a monastery to get away from one another, or figuratively by keeping our faith and our lives hidden even among other Christians who might benefit from our experiences. Christ prayed for unity before He went to the cross, when He could have prayed for anything. He prayed for us to be united together as one several times...and not once did He mention whatever issues or differences we think important enough to break peace and fellowship over. But we have different priorities: we divide, and Satan celebrates.
But there is more at stake when we divide than simply failing to be what we, as Christians and as the Body of Christ, should be. When Christ said that He actually performed exorcisms by the power of God--the God the Pharisees claimed to serve--He implied that they were trying to divide "God's side" against itself. But He took it further: "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." The Pharisees weren't just brothers on the wrong side of a civil war, they had made themselves enemies of Christ. Is it possible that we do the same when we divide? Christian unity is a huge part of Christ's purpose and plan--the identifying feature of those who know Him, according to some passages. Love between Christians was the last and most repeated command that Christ ever gave. When we work counter to unity, counter to love, we are really working counter to Him. We are not merely failing to defeat His enemies, we are working for them.
May God have mercy on us and unite us as one.
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