A Relationship With God?

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You can know God! You can have a real, vital, living relationship with the eternal God, the creator and Lord the universe.  You can talk to him. You can relate to him as father! Now that is an enticing proposition. We are all eager to have a relationship with God.

But, we too often think that we need to establish and maintain this communion with God just as we do other relationships.  We need to start the relationship. “Clean up my life and give my heart to Jesus.” I need an introduction somehow. I must prove that I am useful to God. I need to offer him something. “I will scratch your back, if you will scratch mine.” Most relationships are a means to another end. Friends are our ticket into the right crowd, or they will open doors for my career.

We think of relating to God in utilitarian terms. If I know God I will receive forgiveness and go to heaven when I die.  So, knowing God is useful, beneficial.  He gives gifts to me – blessings. He is a means to another end.

We think that we maintain our relationship with God with submission and obedience.  If I am good, God will bless me.  If I serve Him, he will have my back. If I make sacrifices for God, he will owe me one.  Too many have a cause and effect agreement with God. Or, so they think.

But truly knowing God turns this all around. It is God that initiates the relationship.  We are not ‘useful’ to God.  That is not why he befriends us. Early in Genesis when all men had descended deeply into sin and “the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5, 8).  And, “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” That word ‘favor’ means grace. God was not responding to Noah’s good works, faith, or sacrifice – he simply showed him grace.  That was the foundation of their relationship.

God asked Noah to respond to his grace, not earn it. The unmerited grace and one-sided favor of God transforms us.  Knowing God in this way we respond with joy and gratitude to his love and kindness but we do not merit it.  And therefore, we cannot lose it.  When God claims you as his friend, no one can take you out of his hand. Grace is forever. That forever commitment from God releases, calms, encourages, stabilizes, and empowers us to live a life of gratitude. It is God who begins and maintains his friendship with us – that is life in God’s Covenant – so that we respond in love, kindness, thanksgiving and praise to God for what He has done for us. 

Do you want to know God? He invites you to respond to his mighty grace.  You have found favor with God.

Work, Rest, and Retirement

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We are made to work, to accomplish, to rule over God’s creation, to exercise dominion.  But, we cannot work forever, unceasingly. God commanded us to rest one day in seven.  God gives his beloved sleep, rest, every night. We are made to work 8 hours a day; 20 if you are a farmer or a mother. But we all need rest. ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ We should not work ourselves to death, but to work ourselves to life!

The purpose of life is not to go on vacation. Retirement does not equal 52 weeks of vacation. The purpose of vacation is to get back to work.  The purpose of retirement is re-tread-ment – you can retool for a different kind of work. Many are terrified of retirement – but what will I do? How will I invest my time? What will be my purpose? We are made to work, to accomplish, to build, to create. We rest, so that we can work without reaching the point of exhaustion.

Even Jesus told his disciples to take a break. In Mark 6:30-32, after he had sent out the 12 apostles and they had just returned,  “The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.”

They were returning from work, from a missions trip and they needed rest and refreshment. Go to a desolate place beyond the reach of the busy, hectic chaos, and the many demands on your time. Don’t take your cell phone or your computer. Bring a book that you don’t have to read, and enjoy. “For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”  Go to a restaurant, leave a big tip, enjoy.  Rest. Be refreshed. 

So, get away from it all. Find a boat and go to a desolate place, alone. You will find God, rest, and refreshment there. And then, back to work!

The Great Commission – Simplified

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When you lose something it is often a good idea to retrace your steps in order to find what you lost.  Fallen man has lost his way.  We don’t know who we are anymore, nor what we are to be doing.  Who are we, and what are we doing here? Natural man has many unsatisfying answers to those questions.  How can we retrace our steps and find where we lost our way?  Well, let’s go back to the beginning, back to the owner’s manual for human life, back to Genesis.

Who are we? “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). We are made like God, and to like God. We are created to know God, walk and talk with him, and reflect his glory. That is who we are – the children of God.

What are we supposed to be doing? “And let them have dominion …over all the earth… Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it (Genesis 1:26, 28).  We are to rule over the earth for the glory of God. How do we do that? By multiplying the image of God and extending the rule of God from Eden to the ends of the earth.

Ok, that is the general principle, but how do we practically do that? Grow in the fear and knowledge of God, keep your garden well, raise your kids to know and love God, extend the gracious rule of God to fill the earth with the image of God that reflects the glory of God.

Let me try that again, updated for our moment of redemptive history. Go to church, raise your family, invest in your extended family, love your neighbors well, work at your job to the best of your ability for the glory of God, support the Great Commission, and walk with God in the garden in the cool of the day. That is what we are to be doing.

The Christian life is both simple and comprehensive. We do all that we do for the glory of God. As you do, know this encouragement from our Lord Jesus Christ, “behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

The Sabbath Keeps You!

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“Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.” Exodus 20:8  Oh, no! Here is comes. A long list of things that I should not be doing on the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s Day. Whatever you enjoy, stop doing right now. God demands it. Wrong! I am here, not to place a burden on your shoulders, but to grant you a blessed relief and to point you to pure joy. I am a hungry beggar showing other hungry beggars where I found bread.  I found bread for my soul and to spare on the Sabbath Day.

In Mark 2:27 we read, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” We do not serve God’s day by keeping a list of rules, God’s day serves us with rest, joy, and peace.  It is designed by God to be a blessed day of rest and worship.  It is the Market Day for the soul.  It is a whole day reserved to walk and talk with God, and to rest in what He has accomplished for us.

God has scattered his blessing throughout the day. He says to us, “I will give you rest.” “I have completed my work, and now you can rest, and look forward to greater rest.”  We are commanded to “Call the Sabbath a delight!” Isaiah 58:13  It is a day of blessing, joy, rest, worship, and delight.

But many people do not find it so. They call it a burden. They see it is a duty and not a delight. Over 150 years ago, J.C. Ryle said, “Our Sundays and how we use them is one of the most sure signs of our spiritual condition.” If it is the Market Day of the soul, and it is, we have too much supply and not enough demand.  We work 5 days a week, run errands on Saturday, but Sunday is finally our day – a day to do whatever we want, to pursue our highest pleasure.

Yes it is! And what is your highest pleasure? Knowing and enjoying God. Pursuing God on the Sabbath day is our delight. We find it a treasure. It conveys the greatest blessings. J. C. Ryle again writes, “The Sabbath is God’s merciful appointment for the common benefit of all mankind…It is not a yoke, but a blessing. It is not a burden, but a mercy…Above all, it is good for souls.”

So, call the Sabbath a delight, for the Sabbath was made for man.

One Path out of the Darkness of Depression

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Because our depression is a deeply personal experience it is better described than defined.“I have felt my mangled heart periodically strangled by the silent thief lurking in the melancholy shadows.” Or, “It is a thickly clouded midnight sky that chokes out distant starlight.”

There are many potential cures for depression but let me give you one. 1 Peter 5:6-7, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

‘Humble yourself,’ really great advice for one who is already depressed! Aren’t they crushed enough already? Hear me out. One cause of depression is a faulty view of ourselves. We can either love ourselves too much, or hate ourselves too much. And one common factor in both tendencies is thinking about ourselves too much.  Our self loathing or self love becomes our all consuming obsession and it produces a deepening darkness. And therefore we need to humble ourselves. We need to shift our focus from self, and our slights, wounds, worries, and distasteful circumstances to God our creator and how he sees us. And the first thing this altered vision produces is humility. 

What do we really deserve anyway?  I remember moving from a 2 bedroom 6-Plex with bad neighbors to a 3 bedroom home in the woods with a finished basement and great neighbors for only $25 more a month.  My wife said, as a good Calvinist, “We don’t deserve this.” I retorted, as a better Calvinist, “We don’t deserve anything.” From that place of humility almost everything can seem a blessing.  The mind shifts from what we deserve, to how ridiculously we are blessed. And that is healthier air to breath. Remember, God is mighty, mightier than our depression, and looking to him will bring exaltation, in His time – eventually but also certainly. So humble yourselves in the presence of God.

Second, cast your cares upon Him. But, we like our cares, concerns, conundrums, and corruptions. Better the devil you know applies to depression. “I would rather live with this misery than risk it growing worse.” We tend to cling to our wounds and worries instead of casting them unto the stronger shoulders of our compassionate Savior.  Transfer the weight of your depression to the other side of the yoke, the side that Jesus bears.  He care for you. That is at times difficult to believe, but it is necessary to stare down the beast of depression. Jesus sees you was the object of his love, the reward of his labors, the apple of his eye, and a friend in need. His opinion of you must take precedence over your own.  That is one method of starring depression down by looking to Jesus.

What is the Purpose of Life?

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What is the purpose of life? “To glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” Presbyterians have that drilled into their heads often, and at an early age. We all know that it is true, but what does it mean? 

How do we glorify God? We think, by obeying him. That is partially true. Go to church, say your prayers, don’t do anything really bad – keep your sins small, hidden, and manageable, all good things.  Go along to get along. We think that glorifying God is a difficult duty, an unpleasant chore, and truly an agonizing bore.  But, we have to do it, so we try to toe the line, stifle our real desires, and do what God says.

Wrong. So painfully wrong.  It make me weep that so many think of the Christian life in this way. What if, what if, we could glorify God by enjoying him?  What if our greatest delight was to know God, adore him, walk with him?  The Christian life should feel like a Saturday at the beach with friends and family celebrating!  Not like Wednesday afternoon at a boring job that we despise. In your walk with God are you punching a clock, or raising your glass for a toast?

Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” If we find God a delight, he will give us the desires of our heart. If we hunger for God, He will satisfy us – satisfy us with more of Himself! As Christians we are pursuing God, the greatest, most interesting personality in the universe, the deepest most satisfying love that can be known. When God calls us to delight in him he is calling us to something higher and better than our current delights. He is calling us to the only thing that will satisfy our heart’s desire.

God is not the cosmic kill-joy that many suppose he is. He is the all satisfying joy of his children. The source of true delight. So, delight yourself in the Lord, glorify him by enjoying him. That is grace and fulfillment – He will satisfy your deepest longings.

Truth or Consequences?

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Do you want to play a game with me? How about Truth or Consequences? You can choose to speak the truth or accept some unpleasant consequences. I don’t like this game; and neither do you. But we play a version of this game all our lives.

When I am asked a question, I answer truthfully. Usually.  When the question is personal I tend to be less than forthcoming.  I qualify and nuance my answers.  I lie a little. I go into protection mode. I do not want to be exposed. I hide behind my wall. There are shades and degrees of truth, aren’t there?  What am I really doing? Why am I so afraid of the truth – the truth about me? I am hiding the truth from you, and even from myself.  I even try to hide the truth about who I am from God. Why? Why do we do that? What are we afraid of? Why does the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth scare us so?  Because we are guilty and ashamed..

I love to escape with Science Fiction. Several futuristic Sci fi shows have as a major theme mankind making machines in their own image that rise up and seek to destroy their makers. Terminator, Battlestar Gallactica, and others. We create in our own image and our image seeks to destroy us. Sound familiar?

What are we afraid of? Ourselves. The evil that remains within us.  We want to be known and loved. But we fear that if we are known we will not be loved. We don’t even love ourselves, why would someone else love us? If they knew, they would hate me – justly. So, we hide. We sew fig leaves to cover ourselves, we blame others for our problems and failures. It terrifies us to be known. But, we still want to be loved. So we lie about ourselves. But midnight is coming, Cinderella.

Adam and Eve hid from the presence of God and blamed someone else when they were confronted. We are truly the children of Adam and Eve.

But the gospel tells us that we can be fully known and truly loved. Our warts, our failures, our sins, can be exposed, and we can still be loved. This love is not earned, it is freely given. Our guilt and shame are known, and dealt with in the blood and righteousness of Jesus. This love transforms us.

So, let’s play Truth or Consequences? Can you accept the truth about your sin and God’s free salvation, or will you continue to hide and suffer the consequences in silence? Come to the light, breathe the fresh air of grace. Be yourself in the presence of a holy God – and be unafraid.

The Sermon Sponge

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Profiting from Sermons

I love a good sponge.  They can soak up insane amount of water, and, it seems, you can alway

s squeeze a little more water from a sponge.  Sermons are like a sponge, and profiting from a sermon is like squeezing a sponge for more water.

A preacher was once asked how long it took to prepare a sermon. He answered, truthfully, but a little tongue in cheek – all my life.  A great deal of study, effort and prayer goes into a sermon. The preacher digs into the text, checks out issues of translation, consults the wisdom of others contained in commentaries, filters it through his own understanding and experiences of our Great God and Savior, and seeks to share the truth about Christ and life from the Biblical text in an accessible and practical manner.  A sermon can soak up a great deal of knowledge and wisdom.

How can you squeeze that knowledge and wisdom from the sermon? 

Prepare – Bring a bucket – read the text, consult a Study Bible or commentary, pray for the p

astor, and for your own understanding.  

Listen – Focus on the message. Drink it all in live and in person.  Take notes. I pro

vide sermon notes for you to follow more closely and to profit more abundantly from the message.  

Meditate – Think on the message. Turn it over in your mind. Ask questions of yourself after the sermon. Squeeze the sponge.  Questions like: 

  1. What did I learn about God and how He works today?
  2. What did I learn about myself, my identity, my purpose?
  3. What did I learn in general? What insights did I gain? 
  4. What will I remember about this message? What sticks with me? An illustration, or a truth that I can write down in a sentence?
  5. How will I respond to the message? What should change in my life?

We are going to help you squeeze the sponge on May 21 at 6pm. We will gather to ask tho

se questions of the sermon and see if we can profit more from the message. Come prepared! Write down you answers to those questions after the sermon. It take a whole life to prepare a single sermon and a single sermon fully received can change a whole life. You too can be a sermon sponge.

Lost and Found: Who are We and Why are we here?

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When you lose something it is often a good idea to retrace your steps in order to find what you lost.  Fallen man has lost his way.  We don’t know who we are anymore, nor what we are to be doing.  Who are we, and what are we doing here? Natural man has many unsatisfying answers to those questions.  How can we retrace our steps and find where we lost our way?  Well, let’s go back to the beginning, back to the owner’s manual for human life, back to Genesis.

Who are we? “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). We are made like God, and to like God. We are created to know God, walk and talk with him, and reflect his glory. That is who we are – the children of God.

What are we supposed to be doing? “And let them have dominion …over all the earth… Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it (Genesis 1:26, 28).  We are to rule over the earth for the glory of God. How do we do that? By multiplying the image of God and extending the rule of God from Eden to the ends of the earth.

Ok, that is the general principle, but how do we practically do that? Grow in the fear and knowledge of God, keep your garden well, raise your kids to know and love God, extend the gracious rule of God to fill the earth with the image of God that reflects the glory of God.

Let me try that again, updated for our moment of redemptive history. Go to church, raise your family, invest in your extended family, love your neighbors well, work at your job to the best of your ability for the glory of God, support the Great Commission, and walk with God in the garden in the cool of the day. That is what we are to be doing.

The Christian life is both simple and comprehensive. We do all that we do for the glory of God. As you do, know this encouragement from our Lord Jesus Christ, “behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

Sailing and Sanctification

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“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” Philippians 2:12-13.

If you are growing in Christ-like sanctification, who does the work, you or God?  Yes.  God works in us and with us, but He will not work without us.  God, by His Holy Spirit, makes us holy.  He gives us a new “want to.” He changes us from the inside out and we begin to desire what God commands.

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” Ephesians 2:10.  We do good works, we respond to the exhortations of the Scriptures, and as we do so, we reveal God’s workmanship – He has prepared us beforehand for such good works.

So, sanctification is God’s work in us, and with us – we cooperate with his work in us.  A sailboat is a good illustration of this.  When you take your boat out on the water and hoist the sails, do the sails propel you through the water? No, the wind does. The wind hits the sails, the sails that have been hoisted!  You will not go anywhere without the sails up and biting into the wind. So, we must lift our sails. We must do the things that God commands in his word, we must act on the exhortations of scripture to be holy, to be perfect, to forgive one another, to love one another – and with those sails reaching for the skies, the Holy Spirit will push us on down the river of sanctification.

So, let’s go sailing. God is our captain so let us hoist our sails.