Author: Proclaiming His Goodness

Thanksgiving is over, and it is time to prepare for the Christmas season; but what if we stopped, held onto the list of blessings we just wrote, and let that prepare our hearts and minds for Christmas? I don’t think Thanksgiving comes right before Christmas by mere chance. We are supposed to have hearts full of gratitude all year long, but how much more important is a spirit of thankfulness as we prepare to celebrate the birth of our Savior. But something that may be even more important than remembering our blessings is remembering where they come from; according to James 1:17, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

In our fast paced society, it is so easy to get caught up in all the stress and fuss that we accept as part of the season; but God didn’t intend it to be this way. When did the birth of His Son become all about a perfectly decorated house with beautifully wrapped presents under the perfect tree? God gave us the Ultimate Gift that first Christmas, and it is our job to share it with those who don’t have it.

Father God, I come to you with a heavy heart on behalf of America. Our nation has turned its back on You; You have been thrown out of the majority of our churches, schools, homes, and hearts. The American public curses You for not intervening in the horrible circumstances that have become everyday life for them, but how can we ask You to bless the places You have been thrown out of? We have given You every reason to completely leave us to our own devices; but even so, Your mercy and grace is so obviously interjected into each of our lives each day. Please open my eyes to this, and take away my bitterness and despair over how badly we have messed things up.

You tell us in Your word that You have appointed our leaders, so I will respect our government officials for that reason; but as our social morality has decreased, the morality in our government has followed suit. In addition to an unbelievable amount of corruption among government officials, there have been laws passed allowing murder and other things that are clearly against God’s laws, and for these reasons, I cannot and I will not ask Your blessing on our nation; I will, however, beg for mercy and plead with You to work in the hearts of the men and women who still serve You. You set us free from sin, and we sit here like we are still in bondage while an entire world is perishing because we won’t get up and tell them how You freed us. Please fan the flame that has died down in each of our hearts and stir in us so intensely that we cannot do anything but get up on our feet and run the race You set before us. Our apathy is beyond pathetic; it is appalling.

Lord, our nation is proud; we boast of what we have done and how far we have come, but our advances are proving to be our undoing. So Jesus, please bring our nation to its knees to repent of our sins. We need callouses on our knees, not on our hearts.

It started about eight months ago with a relationship where I had to sort through a lot of junk; then before the worst of that was over, I had to work through problems of a different kind with somebody else. While all that was going on, so many other things were stretching and pulling me in many uncomfortable directions.In the middle of it all, God whispered in my ear; “Will you let me have it all?”

The thought of giving my problems over to somebody just seems wrong, but this isn’t just anybody; this is the God who created the universe and holds it together day after day. He wants to do big things in our lives, because He loves us and wants to show us how big He is.

So what is holding me back from something better?

Every reason I can think of comes down to this one thing; the lie Satan whispers in my ear that I can handle it all myself. This lie has so infused our culture that this attitude of pride – disguised as strength – is seen as a virtue, but God’s Word tells me differently. Proverbs 16:18 tells us that “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” That’s pretty harsh.This pride is what keeps me from giving everything to Christ and allowing Him to work.

So when I decided to hand my problems over to God, did they disappear? Absolutely not. I couldn’t tell you how many times – much to my regret – I took the problems back into my own hands and made them worse. But God is patient and faithful, especially when I am not, and He never stops working in my heart.

Life has a way of throwing curve balls at us; it is up to us how we handle it. We can either try to handle it on our own and be a stressed-out wreck, or we can hand it to Him and experience the peace that only He can offer.

So many things hold me back from having the kind of relationship with God that He created me for, but it all comes down to one thing; I don’t have a proper respect for God, because I don’t fully understand who He is.

But it gets worse; as I have gotten to know Him more, I am realizing just how much I don’t – and never will – know about Him.

This should drive me to a place of dependence on him, and it should give me the desire to seek Him out even more; but there are times when I allow it to do the opposite. A healthy relationship cannot be one sided. He knows me better than I know myself, and a relationship with Him requires me to put everything I have into getting to know Him. All too often, I give up seeking Him because I get stumped in one little area.

But it’s times like this when I can almost hear Him say, “I’ll be here when you decide to put that aside and let Me show you all these other things about Myself.” There are some things in life that I need to wrestle with, but I just won’t be able to wrap my brain around everything he says. If I am going to thrive in my relationship with Him, I need to accept things to be what he says they are, and move on; because when I stay stuck, I am held back from countless other things He wants to show me.

On the other hand, it is so easy for me to become complacent and say, “Wow God, that’s awesome, thanks for the show; I think I’ll get back to my life now.” That is a cop out – because the only easy thing to do in any relationship is to leave – and it is so wrong. First, my life is not my own; and second, I am forfeiting the kind of relationship He created me to have with Him. All because I have eternity to spend with Him doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be getting to know Him now.

Our God is big, so much bigger than we will ever be able to fathom on this side of Heaven; yet how often do I ask Him to show me more of Himself? How often do I think past the ‘here and now’ to the eternity I am going to spend with Him, and prepare for it?

As I mentioned earlier, my deepening relationship with my Creator and Savior makes me realize how little I really know Him; but it has also become so sweet as I partake in the intimacy I was created to have with Him.

“Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 3:13-14

The apostle Paul compares our lives on this earth to a race – not in the way that we are to rush through and pay no heed to the people stumbling and falling around us, but in the way that we have limited time to tell others about Him, and also in the way that we have a goal to set our eyes on. While I was held in bondage to my sin, Jesus freed me from it and gave me the ability to run.

So what holds me back from running a good race? I could write a list a mile long of the things I stumble over, but the root of the issue really is quite simple; I stop moving forward when I get distracted by the things going on around me and lose sight of my goal.

As long as I have Jesus in my sight, I stay on focus; but when I give in to distraction, my pace slows and I don’t find my rhythm again until my focus is corrected. Like an athlete running a race, focus is one the biggest keys to running well.

The reasons I come up with to drop out of the race are really reasons to keep running, because my failures really should drive me to Christ. His blood is the only thing that can right my wrongs, and I only have access to it when I throw myself at His feet and ask for it. The real reason I give up is because of the lies Satan throws at me; but no lie ever became a truth by being told enough times.

God gave me eyes in the front of my head, not on the sides or the back of my head; maybe that is an indication where my focus should be.  The past should be a reference point, but I don’t live there. I sincerely believe that there is no greater form of dishonor to my Lord than living like I am still in bondage to my sin after He has freed me.

 

 

After I finished writing last week’s blog post (about how humility and nobility are related), I realized that I had only begun to scratch the surface of the subject; so I took some time this past week to dig deeper, and I’d like to share with you what I have found.

The most poignant statement I have ever heard about pride it this; pride is an attitude of independence from God.

Think about that for a minute.

When I am prideful, I am saying, “I can do this; I don’t need help,” or more accurately, “I don’t need God, and I don’t need the people He sends to help me.”

When I have this attitude, I miss out on His best for me. I  lose opportunities to become more like Him, and I lose opportunities to show others who He is.

I sincerely believe that pride is a cancer to the soul. It steals life and sucks joy, because it keeps me from having the kind of relationships with God and the people around me that He intended. It brings stress and leaves behind strife, because I try to manage everything by myself when I really can’t. God will provide for all my needs if I let Him; I starve myself when I refuse it.

If I want God’s best for me, I need to surrender to Him and give Him all of myself, because He can only carry for me what I give over to Him. When I give Him my sin, He forgives it. When I give Him my worries, He gives me peace. When I give Him my hand, He pulls me into His arms. When I give Him my heart, He fixes it and makes it like His.

I believe that humility, in its rawest form, is an attitude of dependence on God. I know this idea is incredibly counter-cultural in the society we live in; but is it how Jesus lived, and He is the ultimate example of humility.

This post is a response to a challenge I received from a friend; to find and write about the similarity between humility and nobility.

In the Merriam- Webster Dictionary, humility is defined as, “The quality or state of not thinking you are better than other people”, and nobility is defined as, “The quality or state of being noble in character or quality”.

One word paints a picture of not being any better than other people, and the other says that we stand apart from other people.

And these two words have something in common?

Yes; I sincerely believe that there is a place where these two ideas, in their most profound definition, are unmistakably present.

The most poignant form of humility is born in a  person’s heart when they are brought to the realization that they need a Savior from sin and death and accept Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives. True humility is dependence on God, and it is a process that will unfold as one’s life is surrendered to Him, one piece at a time. But what might be the biggest miracle that happens at the time of Salvation is that the person who allows God to be the Lord of their life is adopted into His Kingdom as His son or daughter; and as the son or daughter of the King of kings, that person is a prince or a princess. When a person declares independence from the world and dependence on Christ, they become humble and noble at the same time.

Allow me to personalize this.

There is no amount of good I can do to cancel the bad I have done, because it doesn’t work that way. The first sin I committed created a chasm between me and God, and His blood shed on the cross is the only thing that can bridge the gap. But even trusting in that doesn’t make me any better than anybody else, because I could never earn it; it cost Him His life. Apart from God’s grace, I still fall short of His perfect standard. When I allowed God to take His rightful place on the throne of my heart, He adopted me into His family and exchanged my filthy, sin stained rage for clothes worthy of a daughter of the King of kings.

He did it for me, and He can do it for anybody who asks Him, because it is not dependent on us. Grace is a free gift, and it is offered to everybody.

I felt like I was in boot camp this past summer.

I know all of life is a learning process, but the past few months were particularly intense for me. In the middle of each challenge, I could hear God asking me if I would allow Him to grow me. Much to my regret, I didn’t take every opportunity, but in His goodness, God didn’t give up on me. Time and time again, He offered me grace and another chance.

There were more than a few times when I got tired of fighting and wondered, ‘Why bother? What’s on the other side of this besides another challenge?’  Then most of the time, I was able to look at my situation differently as I got over my little pity party.

I cannot be effective for God unless I allow Him to conform me into His image, and that is where growth comes into the picture. God specializes in taking ugly situations, giving us grace and strength to get through them, and growing us in the process.

And I complain about it.

I was bought by His blood and saved by His grace from sin and death, and I do a lot of whining because of a little discomfort. God gave me a message of forgiveness and grace to share with the world, and I sit here whining about an opportunity to become more like Christ.

So I am not going to complain about how hard life is.

I don’t want to pass up another opportunity to worship God because I am too blinded by selfishness to see Him working.

I don’t want to stay stuck in a rut when I can be making use of His power working through me to accomplish great things for His Kingdom.

I don’t want to miss another opportunity to tell somebody about how God has worked in my life, because God is big enough use my stumbling tongue for His glory when I allow Him to.

Instead, I am going to ask Him for an attitude adjustment so I can praise Him for His goodness and His faithfulness.

Because, to borrow the words of the Psalmist, “…the Lord is good, His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.”

 

There are all kinds of relationships, and lately, God has been showing me some ways all relationships are the same, and how my relationships with people need to model His relationship with me if they are going to be any good.

I used to take for granted that good relationships are normal because I was blessed with parents who are committed to Christ, each other, and the people around them; but in a society that says, “Anything goes”, healthy relationships are becoming harder and harder to find. It was not until recently that I began to understand more fully just how important God considers relationships to be, and that was when I realized that the Bible is really about His relationship with the people He created. God is all about relationships, and I can see this clearly all over the pages of Scripture.

We were created to be God’s intimate friends and walk with Him in the cool of the day, like Adam and Eve once did; but after that relationship was severed because of sin, our awesome God didn’t give up. He simply developed a different kind of relationship for us to have with Him, until the time comes when we can have the kind of relationship we were made for.

So often, I get caught up in trying to attain a ‘perfect’ relationship with God, but obviously, that will simply not happen until I get to heaven. Until then, God wants to show me what a good relationship looks like, and He wants me to live out what He shows me.  He wants me to have the kind of relationship with other people that He has with me; full of love rooted in truth. His loving has made me cry out in pain and His loving has dried my tears; that is how He wants me to live. Relationships are important to Him because He created them, and He perfectly models them to us so we can show the world what He looks like. In my everyday relationship struggles, He is there to help me. He is ready and waiting to give me wisdom in every single one of my relationships.

In today’s crumbling society, lies seem to be the foundation of everything. Politics, media, relationships, and more are plagued with this epidemic, and the only cure for it is truth; but in a world of constant change, where can we go for solid truth that never changes?

Jesus answered that when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

But so many other people have made the same claim; what separates Jesus’ words from theirs? In my mind, the separation is that in His Word, God claims to have created the world, be in control of everything that happens, and love the people He created to serve Him even though we run from Him; but so much more important than that, He follows through with all His claims. I know I can trust what He says because of who He is.

Yet all too often, I am guilty of allowing lies to rule in my mind and actions. All the times I either stay stuck in the guilt and shame of my sin or try to fix my problems myself are the times my actions say that God is not who He says He is. He can and He will take care of me when I kneel at the foot of the cross.

The Bible gives us God’s perfect standard that we can never reach; but it also tells the other side of the story, of His mercy and grace that can right my wrongs. Since I claim to believe that the Bible is true, I need to live it. I need to follow His laws, and rely on His grace to catch me when I fall short.

John 8:32 says, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Freedom in Christ comes when I submit to the truth and live it out. I know all this is easier said than done, but God promises that it will all be worth it in the end.