Category: Faith

In Times of Trouble

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lightstock_62496_xsmall_user_7997290We have all been there. You have done your best, but your best is not good enough. Maybe you have not done your best, and now your best is not good enough to fix the mess you are in. Maybe your impossible circumstances are totally beyond your control.

The feeling of abject desperation is the same.

In those times, the temptation may be to withdraw, curl up and bury your head. Maybe the temptation is to beat yourself up, hang your head in despair and live in condemnation. Maybe the temptation is to throw up your hands, say it doesn’t matter anyway and drown your woes in alcohol or drugs. The options may seem dismal and dark.

But, this is a critical point! The last place we often want to turn is the first place we should go – down on our knees in prayer to the God who made us and loves us.

There you will find God greeting you, not with judgment, but with open arms. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17)

You may not be able to see your way out of the predicament you are in, but God stands high above your predicament. He is also with you in your circumstances, and He is bigger than your circumstances

When you are trapped in a hopeless situation, or what seems hopeless to you at the time, when you cannot see your way out of the darkness and the world is caving in all around you, cry out to God. He hears you! (Psalm 18:6) The righteous are those who cry out to God in their distress (Psalm 34:17), and God will deliver you from your troubles!

We are not righteous because we are good; we are righteous because we cry out to God!

He may (or may not) deliver you from your circumstances, but He will deliver you from your troubles. That is the promise of God, and “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind.” (Numbers 23:19)

When we go to God, we go to the Maker of the Heavens and the Earth, of all that is seen and unseen. When He makes a promise, He keeps his promise.

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! …. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:4-7)

Rejoice always means to rejoice in every circumstance, good and bad. God is above all of our circumstances! When we are anxious, that is exactly the time for us to go to God in prayer. When we are anxious, we should petition God. With Thanksgiving, we should make our requests known to God. We should appeal to God in all of our troubles…. and the promise of God is peace for our troubled hearts!

In this verse, we are not promised deliverance from our circumstances, but we are promised peace – peace from our troubles!

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1)

Sometimes God allows us to come to the end of ourselves, to a place where we are powerless (or feel powerless) to help ourselves, and in that place is where God does His most significant work in us. We simply need to turn to Him.

We can choose not to turn to God. We can go it alone. That is always our choice, but in turning to God we not only have ready help, peace that passes understanding and a deliverer from our troubles, we have a Savior – One who delivers us not only from our troubles but from ourselves and the sin that leads to death. When we turn to God, we have Life and, we have life more abundantly.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10) The thief, the robber of our souls, is a condemner, an oppressor and a liar. When we feel desperate and hopeless, the thief is at your door.

Turn to God in your time of trouble; cry out to God, and then rejoice in God and His promises; pray to God – He will meet you where you are. That is His promise!

Dreamers and Dreams

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Super r\Ryan“‘Here comes that dreamer!'” Joseph’s brothers said. Joseph, the favorite son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, was handsome and gifted by God. Joseph’s brothers saw it and were jealous. There is a difference between a dreamer and one who has dreams.

You probably know the story of Joseph of Joseph in Genesis. His brothers sold him to a caravan on its way to Egypt. The caravan sold him again as a slave to Potiphar, captain of the palace guard of the Pharaoh. From slave to charge of the captain’s household, from falsely accused and imprisoned to the right hand man of the Pharaoh, Joseph’s life was a roller coaster of highs and lows.

Joseph was not a dreamer. He was gifted by God, and he was aware of God’s gifting. He was not shy about telling his brothers, but they were not a very receptive audience. They plotted to snuff out his gifting. Over many years, from the depths of despairing circumstances he rose to prominence; and through another cycle of desperate circumstances, he rose to greater prominence.

In those circumstances, Joseph was loyal, faithful and trustworthy. He was diligent and dependable. He was gifted, but his success grew out of the character that was forged in the difficult times. He was steady in the good times and the bad.

Joseph’s dreams were no pipedreams. Those dreams were not his fanciful musings; they were given by God. They took root and ripened in his heart, and the fruit became the character that others recognized in him . The character borne in the dreams that came from God, forged in the difficulty of his circumstances, were fulfilled in faithfulness to God.

When Joseph shared the dreams with his brothers, they was no reality, other than the gifting. Though Joseph experienced the dreams, the dreams were not yet evident in his life. Those dreams needed to take root in fertile soil. For Joseph, the dreams went through cycles of death and rebirth, growth and pruning back. From his father’s favor to a captive of the caravan; from captive to charge of the captain’s household; from charge of the captain’s household to imprisonment; from imprisonment to right hand to the Pharaoh.

If Joseph was just a dreamer, he would have not have risen above his circumstances. Those dreams that come from God must take root, be nurtured and grow. They need to be watered and nurtured. In the beginning, they are more real in one’s own heart than in the reality that others see. Others will undoubtedly minimize those dreams that God has given us, but we should treasure them nonetheless – and all the more as they come from God.

We do not know what form those seeds/dreams God has put in our hearts will take. As with the cycle of a seed that falls from a tree, we must go through death to those dreams, growing in character and pruning back. Our faithfulness, diligence and resilience in those times, staying true to the character that God desires to grow in us is the formula for turning dreams into reality. Joseph was tempted along the way, but he stayed true to his God. Staying true to God means not compromising what we know to be right and worthy.

Other people, even those closest to us, may not appreciate what God has placed deep within us. Whether our friends, family or neighbors see those things that God has shown us and placed in us is not at all important. We must not allow others to convince us to abandon the things God has given and placed within us. What God gives us is more real than all the criticisms and smirks of others.

Ultimately, the test of the dreams we have is their staying power. We might be tempted to abandon them, especially when others fail to see them. If we hold on to them and hold onto God, those dreams will bear fruit. The fruit is the character forged in the soil our circumstances. People may not see the dreams we see, but they will see the fruit in our character. Ultimately, the character is what God desires – being conformed to Christ is the goal of the dreams God gives us. The rest is just a natural outgrowth of dream that has grown into reality.

How Can a Loving God….?

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Sunscreen

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In 1 Samuel 15, God told King Saul to wipe out the Amalekites, every last one of them, and leave no survivors. The story is about Saul failing to follow God’s directions while claiming to have done so. He kept King Agab alive and allowed his men to save the best of the sheep and other animals. When Samuel, the prophet, asked, “What is this bleating of sheep I hear?” Saul blamed the men for his failure to obey God, but Saul was the one who did not obey God. That is how the story goes….

But, wait a minute! …. God told Saul to kill them… all of them. That sounds incredibly harsh. It sounds worse than harsh. Is God not supposed to be a loving God?

This is a pretty common question (a rhetorical one) posed by people who oppose Christianity and reject the Bible. “A loving God would not kill people,” they say. Since the Old Testament, in particular, depicts God in this way, the Bible cannot be true, the Christian God is fiction and the whole thing is bunk.

The unspoken sentiment behind that line of thinking is that “we” (humankind) have come a long way since primitive times. We have evolved past the Enlightenment into a modern scientific age in which we have superior moral and intellectual stature. We are the gods of our own world. We have thrown off superstitious belief in a tyrant God that stifles human potential in this post-enlightenment age.

But does history add up that way?

Continue reading “How Can a Loving God….?” →

The Desire to Be Like Others

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In Samuel 1:19-20, the people wanted a king like the other nations. In that desire, they were rejecting God as their king. When Samuel asked God what he should do, God said warn them, but if they still want a king, let them have a king.

The end result was less than what God intended them to have. They substituted a king for God, and God let them do it.

As Christians, we tend to be envious of the world and want what the world has. When we want and seek after what others have, even if what we want is not bad in itself, we reject God. If we do not relent he will give us what we want, but we will not be better off for it.

People everywhere are tempted to want what others have and want to be like people around us, believers included. This is not a matter of following a godly example, but of the desire to be like others, to fit in and to have what they have. God does not favor that desire. He made us for something else. He calls us to Himself, and He wants us to be set apart.

We are warned about the consequences of seeking our own desires, but God will, ultimately, let us have our own way. God will not hold back the dam that holds our desires. He will let us go:

“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts…. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator….” (Romans 1:24-25)

The ultimate fate of the people or person who continually wants something other than God is like the dam that is breached and no longer holds the water back. God gives us over to those desires. We get what we want, but not the good that God wants to give us.

The Eternal Consequence of Now

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Sun by Me~

Every action, every decision we make in our lives has eternal consequence.

Do you believe that is true? Do you live like that is true? Think about it for a moment:

“For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:14)

God will bring every act to judgment.

Even the hidden things, the things that no one but I (you) know about is exposed to God. We cannot go anywhere that God is not present. (Psalm 139)

God knows our thoughts too. (Psalm 139:2) Jesus made it clear that anyone who is angry with his brother is guilty of murder (Matthew 5:21-22); and anyone who lusts after a woman is guilty of adultery (Matthew 5:27-28). Our thoughts are subject to the scrutiny of God as well as our actions.

If we would follow the example of Paul, we need to “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

Every action, every thought, has an eternal consequence. It should be no surprise, therefore, that inaction also has eternal consequence. Indeed, “to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17)

Believers who live by faith are not living under condemnation. “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.” (Romans 8:1) But that is no license to go on sinning. (Romans 6:1) As Paul said, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:2)

We have been set free from sin, but where is the fruit? It is the fruit of this freedom that leads to sanctification and results in eternal life (Romans 6:22); if indeed we are attached to the vine that bears this fruit, we will bear fruit. Jesus sacrificed Himself and rose from the dead precisely so that we may bear fruit for God. (Romans 7:4)

God is looking for fruit from us.

Consider the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30 God does not give the same measure of talents to all of us, but he is looking for us to use what He gave us and not bury it in the ground. What we do with this time God has allotted us has eternal consequences.

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” (Ephesians 5:15-17)

“[W]alk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” (Colossians 1:10)