Fatherhood

THIS WEEK it's Father's Day, and we're celebrating dads. It's a day that elevates the men above the boys. A day when we remember what it takes to go beyond being the male parent of a child, and be a man who stands tall. Not everybody, especially in America, has a good man for a dad. I've been blessed to have a great one. A great man and dad is one whose life glorifies his Heavenly Father. Nobody else can teach him how to do the job right. A great man reflects the way God is a Father to us. His undying faithfulness to keep His promise, His unchanging love and constant mercy, His firm discipline, His concern for His children's wants and needs. I've been reading about David, whom God called a man after His own heart, who would do all His will. Because he sincerely loved and revered Him, He wanted him to become king in place of Saul, who had repeatedly disobeyed Him. Saul wanted to kill him, and David had more than one chance to take him out. But he didn't, solely out of respect for God. 1 Samuel 24:10 "Behold, this day your eyes have seen how the Lord gave you today into my hand in the cave. And some told me to kill you, but I spared you. I said, 'I will not put out my hand against my lord, for he is the Lord's annointed." David, the anscestor of Jesus, was a great man because he thought it was more important to honor God than to take an opportunity that would give him an advantage. He was brave but respectful. God chose him to be king because he wasn't looking to be a king, but to glorify his King. Not every boy grows up into a man. Many boys grow up into bigger boys, who want to be kings. They run away, or tell lies, or let people down, because nothing is ever quite as important as himself. Men are getting rare. Men know when to be on their faces praying, and when to stand up and turn faith into action. They honor their King above themselves. Any grown-up boy can have a kid, but not every one is man enough to be a father. God is a Father who loves forever and doesn't go away. In John 10:29-30 Jesus says, "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able tosnatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one." And in John 14:18 He promises, "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." God is the model Father, and a great dad like mine tries to be like Him so that when his children see him, they will know what God is like and what it means to honor Him. In faith, love, charity, finances, discipline, every responsibility he has, he strives to be like the Father, and he raises up Christlike children. He puts what we need above what we want, balances fun and discipline, work and home. He puts on a tie and works all day, then homes home and straight away puts on his pajama pants to just be with us. He makes sure we have a good school and a great church. This week he got a tooth pulled, and the very next day he was driving around the city with my Mom helping her with a cake delivery, and today he went shopping for groceries. He does his all of his jobs, and he doesn't let people down. He shows me what God is like, and what kind of man I'll want for myself one day. I'm thankful to the Heavenly Father for giving me a dad like that, who can help me see what He is like.

A Pain in the Neck

THIS WEEK I have a story of praise to tell. God is so good! It's yet another testimony to how faithfully He answers prayer. On Tuesday night after the sermon at my church's college ministry, we prayed for everybody who needed healing of any kind. They lined up in front for the speaker and others to lay hands on them. All kinds of pain and anxiety and injury were healed in Jesus' name. This is what the Body of Christ is supposed to do. Insomniacs walked away freed of their anxiousness. Broken hearts received the healing love of God. Particularly cool to me were the physical healings: improvements for a girl's painful lower back and increased mobility for a man with complications of a broken arm. My favorite was the healing of a girl with a bad knee - and the other wasn't great either - and who was having trouble standing straight. She walked away with zero pain. Praise God! We prayed over these people in Jesus' name. The name of the One who bore our sicknesses and lifted our burdens. We claimed His promise that He will answer, and that we'll have what we ask in His name. It works. When I left the church, I was inspired. I feel like I want the rest of my life to be full of that kind of Spirit action. I just love seeing the movement of the Holy Spirit in response to our faith. My mom had come to pick me up from church. For almost two weeks she had been suffering from intolerable pain in her neck, back, and right shoulder blade. She has a pinched nerve from a car accident she had a long time ago. Her fingers were going numb, although her thumb is usually a little numb to begin with. And this hard working lady just kept about her every day business and did what she had to despite the pain, taking medicine and holding bags of frozen vegetables behind her neck. Amazed by what I'd seen that night, during my personal Bible Study I wrote down my prayer for her. Something dared me to go ahead and write it down. I asked God that when my mom would wake up in the morning, she would be healed. All better. No pain. Everybody had begun to pray for her, because her pain had been going on and on and not getting any better. She was getting worse. My mom and I are very close, and when one of us is in any kind of pain, so is the other. We need each other's happiness. Jesus asks us to trust Him with these things. He demonstrated, many more times than the gospel writers could record, that He is the Healer and that He will move in response to our faith. Isaiah 53:4-5 famously prophesies that Jesus would bear our burdens for our freedom. "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed." Jesus Himself promised that His name is power in our prayers. John 14:12-13 "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in Me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it." So I asked! The next day my mom came home at 11:30. She was supposed to be at her chiropractor appointment, which she'd broken down and set up the day before when she wasn't getting any better. I asked her why she was home, and she said she felt better. I was so amazed and happy that I brought her my journal to show her what I wrote. God answered my prayers and our friends' prayers for her. She was back to normal. She felt how she'd wished every morning she would feel waking up. She said she felt "like a new person." Her thumb's still a little numb like usual, and I'm still praying she won't get worse again. But no bag of frozen vegetables has been on her neck since. God answered my prayer when I asked in Jesus's powerful name. I am so grateful and excited about this, and I hope and pray I'll always be seeing God do things like this.

Mighty Man of Valor

THIS WEEK has been different. No, I'm different. You see, God talked to me in a funny way last week that has given me a lot of joy and peace. I mean, I had joy and peace before, but I feel that "blessed assurance" that we sing about. And on top of it, I read a story that I really connected to. I read the story of Gideon, who was the nobody of nobodies in Israel when it was being harassed by the Midianites. He was a humble, timid guy. But God called him to drive out the Midianites. Judges 6:15-16 "So he said to Him, 'O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house.' And the Lord said to him, 'Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.'" What I notice about Gideon is that with every step to his calling, he acted in obedience but with fear. He was terrified. He made a sacrifice to God when He visited him, and when He revealed His glory he thought he was going to die. God told him to break down the neighborhood idols, and he had to do it in the dead of night for fear of his neighbors. But God knew this about Gideon. Nevertheless His first words to him when He visited were "The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!" I wonder why this statement was not enough to make Gideon see himself as a mighty man of valor. Whatever the reason, God knew that before he went to the hill of Moreh to face the Midianites, he needed something more to encourage him. Gideon had 32,000 men, but God said that was too many. Judges 7:2 "And the Lord said to Gideon, 'The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against Me, saying, 'My own hand has saved me.'" So the number went down to ten thousand. That was still too many, so the number went down again to 300. Plus Gideon. Also, they were going to war each armed with a trumpet, a torch, and a pitcher. God knew His servant was scared. So He told him to grab his servant Purah and go spy on the Midianites: Judges 7:11 "'and you shall hear what they say; and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down agaist their camp.' Then he went down with Purah his servant to the outpost of the armed men who were in the camp." This is the part that I really love. It's where the fearful, self-doubting Gideon becomes the mighty man of valor that God called him from the start. v. 13-15 "And when Gideon had come, there was a man telling a dream to his companion. He said, 'I have a had a dream: to my surprise, a loaf of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian; it cam to a tent and struck it so that it fell and overturned, and the tent collapsed.' "Then his companion answered and said, 'This is nothing else but the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel! Into his hand God has delivered the camp of Midian and the whole camp.' "And so it was, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, that he worshiped. He returned to the camp of Israel, and said, 'Arise, for the Lord has delivered the camp of Midian into your hand.'" Barley bread is a symbol of poverty, because barley was the most affordable grain for the poor to use for bread. He could have sent a bulldozer, but He sent a barley loaf. That's why it took so much to convince Gideon: why wouldn't God send a king? Why would He send an average guy hiding in the winepress from the Midianites? The same reason He sent away most of his men: the victory would be for the glory of God alone. It's amazing what assurance can come from a few revealed words from God. What can make a man braver than hearing that God has revealed him as victorious, even to his enemies? I don't know why it is, but He knows that sometimes we need to hear it from more than one source. That's why I relate to Gideon this week. The blessed assurance I mentioned comes from a few words spoken by my new friends on my mission team. We asked God to give us each a word or a picture that would help encourage each member of the team. God used this occasion to give these people, most of whom I'd never met before that day, words that really touched my heart. All of the words they shared were personally relevant, but especially the phrase "light in a dark place." I needed God to tell me this, because just the night before I'd been confessing that I didn't know whether I was doing any good in leading my friends to Him. My school was the dark place. This told me that even if we cannot see it, God is doing more with His people than we can imagine. It gave me hope that I will indeed "see His goodness in the land of the living." I can begin to understand the assurance Gideon must have felt when he heard how his enemies were already trembling. The next day, the 300 men surrounded the camp and blew their trumpets, and they won. v. 21 "And every man stood in his place all around the camp; and the whole army cried out and fled." Comrades killing each other, fleeing from the valley. Gideon called other Israelites to track them down, and they won. After that moment when God revealed his plan through a stranger, we never see Gideon afraid again. He acted in boldness, as the "mighty man of valor" God called him to be.

Get Your Feet Wet

THIS WEEK I finished the last of the first five books of the Old Testament, Deuteronomy. The end of the old Jewish Law. Spoiler alert: God chose for Moses to die before Israel crossed over the Jordan into the Promised Land, and about the beginning of the next book his successor and the title character, Joshua, led the people through the river. Not around. Not over. They walked through it. This is really neat to me - just as God parted the Red Sea for Israel to escape from Egypt and begin their journey, He parted the Jordan River to end their journey and bring them to the land they would conquer for their settlement. Joshua 3:5 "And Joshua said to the people, 'Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.'" The way God did this tells me something about us today. He told the people to let the priests carrying the ark of the covenant - the symbol of His Presence and His promise to Israel - approach the river first. Everybody stand back. The Lord is going to be the one to retrain the water while they walk through. What God didn't do is draw the water back slowly, as they got closer, so that when they got there it would already be parted for them. He didn't even do it when they stood right on the edge of the river. He said He would part the water for them to cross once the priests had gotten their feet wet. One step into the water, and the water will stop in a "heap," He told them, and flood the banks of the river upstream. v. 14-16 "So it was, when the people stepped out fom their camp to cross over the Jordan, with the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people, and as those who bore the ark came to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests who bore the ark dipped in the edge of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks during the whole time of harvest), that the waters which came down from upstream stood still, and rose in a heap very far away at Adam, the city that is beside Zaretan. So the waters that went down to the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off; and the people crossed over opposite Jericho." It seems that God was telling His people two things: first, that He is able to make the way for them despite any obstacle; and second, that to see Him make a way, sometimes they will have to step out in expectation that He will do as He said He would do. The word says that this was the time of year when the Jordan was overflowing its banks. Can you imagine approaching this river, already deep and wide, insurmountable, at the time when it has deepened and widened to its maximum? Approaching with many thousands of individuals and families behind you, who are waiting for the Promised Land they've waited for? What does a heap of water even look like? I can't picture that. They just had to know that He had done it before to set their fathers free, and He was able to do it again to complete their journey. All He asked of them was to get their feet wet. Get their feet wet, and proclaim that their faith was in the Lord their God, whose Presence went along with the ark they carried. Get their feet wet, and declare that the Lord's power is with the obedient as they look down and watch the water drain out from between their toes. See the river shrink and feel the dry soil and they continued marching with restrained water beside them. Stand in the middle of a live river bed while the Lord holds open the way for thousands of the children of Israel to walk around them to the other side in victory. To see His glory, sometimes God asks us to get our feet wet and see if He won't hold back the river. Sometimes that can be the simple but bold act of asking. It means putting our hope in God and His goodness. Jesus has been impressing on me the impact of simply asking. These words of His kept showing up for me this week: Luke 11:9-10 "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened." If we want to see him move, sometimes He wants us to just have enough faith to ask. Or sometimes He just wants us to go, and let Him supply to place and the people once we have set our hearts to follow his command. Sometimes it will be to speak or to pray or to preach, something that takes a little faith, because He will always honor the one whose faith turns to obedient action, and whose expectation turns to movement. We act on faith, and He moves mountains: isn't that something we see a lot? It's even how our salvation is designed. Have faith in the Son of God, and He will trade His stainless record for our ruined condition. He will make the way for us to come to the Father. He'll hold the water back. The people couldn't cross over until their priests had made that declaration by a single footstep - Your people trust You. The men of Israel took twelve stones with them as they crossed the river and piled them up on the other side, as a memorial to the way God moved for them that day. As a result, all the people on that side of the Jordan were terrified of Israel, because the Lord was with them. The enemy doesn't know what to do when there is a people approaching that lives by faith in the one true God. That's a people who has victory.

Thunder

THIS WEEK thunderstorms emptied themselves over the city for days, and God showed Himself through them. My dog, Sugar, is a little shi tzu who comes up to my knees. She's about ten years old, and as she gets older she is beginning to hate thunder more and more. When it rains, she gets very nervous. When the thunder roars, she begins to tremble uncontrollably. As the storm goes on, she looks for someone she trusts to protect her. You see, there are things my dog doesn't understand about the weather. She doesn't know that thunder does not mean the world is ending. It's the same with fireworks at New Year's Eve and the Fourth of July. For a little dog, it seems like the sky is exploding, or like some monster has come to strip the house away from the earth. She has super doggy ears but she can't understand what she's hearing. So all she can do is run to one of us, her family, who don't seem to be worried about the calamity that is surely iminent. It's gotten so bad lately that we had to get her a bottle of calming pills with camomile to help her relax. But she doesn't want to take them, and even when she will swallow it, it doesn't calm her shivering. All she wants is to be with her family. She's still scared, but when we are near her she has hope that she will see tomorrow. Getting to be the one Sugar runs to showed me something about God. He loves to be there when we need Him, and He loves when He is the One we run to. It's the same thing a shepherd does with his sheep. He makes himself present and takes care of every need for each sheep. God calls us His sheep repeatedly through the Bible, to tells us that we both need Him and have Him. Jesus makes it very clear in John 10:27-28 when He says, "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand." Holding on to little Sugar and trying to make her feel safe made me think of how God takes care of us. It reminded me that while receiving grace is a free gift, it's also a covenant. Jesus' blood made a new covenant for us that's beautiful and eternal: believe grace, receive grace; seek Him first, be provided for; let Him be your treasure, and have no lack. This way God will be glorified, and we will be blessed. This is really what I needed Him to remind me this week. I'm thankful for the storms, even if they did give Sugar a terrible week. And I'm thankful for the night when one of my life verses came up on my phone unexpectedly. It felt like God really wanted to remind me of it, even though I've turned to it a hundred times: Matthew 6:33 "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." If we will seek God faithfully and wholeheartedly, He will provide faithfully too. Sugar doesn't understand the weather or thunder or rain, so she runs to somebody who loves her. I know about thunder, and I understand that she doesn't have any reason to be afraid. I know she's going to be okay. But as long as she is scared, I'll help her. God knows about thunder. He fills the food dish. The lightning doesn't scare Him, and He knows that when it's all over we will still be safe with Him. What He wants is to be the One we run to when the rain starts falling.

Blessed is She Who Believed

THIS WEEK we are celebrating mothers. For most of us a mom represents a special relationship, better than a friendship, that launches us into life and gives us instruction in how to live it. A mom isn't just somebody who has given birth to somebody. That's not an easy thing to do, but the bigger challenge is to raise that person up in Christ by being an example of what it means to live by faith. That's what I got, and keep getting, from my mom. And I think that relationship is one of the greatest things God has put in this world. Earlier this week I read about a couple of moms you've probably heard of - Elizabeth and Mary. My pastor actually talked about them this morning too. They were ordinary people whom God chose to exalt because of their faithfulness to following Him. Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, doesn't get talked about as much as Mary, the mother of Jesus, and for obvious reasons. Mary's Son is more important than Elizabeths, as even Elizabeth could confess. But I like her a lot, and it's been a blessing to me to have her story on my mind this week. She and her husband Zacharias were something like Sarah and Abraham - really old, childless, but serving God faithfully into their old age. Luke 1:6-7 "And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in age." They wanted children. It's to be expected. But they didn't have any, and they didn't have a reason to think they would ever have any at this point. What stands out to me is that Elizabeth had quite clearly done nothing wrong to deserve this problem. This wasn't her fault. Her great achievement, which God honored, was that she and her husband served faithfully even though they weren't getting what they must have hoped and prayed for all their lives. But Elizabeth's heart was receptive to a miracle. God let this happen so that all the world would see His hand in their situation: that the son of their old age would become an important part of His plan, someone to prepare the way of the Lord. He made it a miracle. Do you know what Elizabeth said about that? She said, in Luke 1:25, "Thus the Lord has dealt with me, in the days when He looked on me, to take away my reproach among people." Her reproach was that she'd had no children. It was a flaw. A downfall. But God saw her faithfulness as His servant and as a wife, and He chose to honor the one whom others rejected. We don't get a lot of information about this lady, but we get a clear and timeless message about what it means to be a godly woman. She follows the Lord with all her heart, rain or shine, hurt or fine. She seeks Him relentlessly and glorifies Him with what He has given, and she doesn't give up when she doesn't know whether He hears. He does, and she and everyone around her will see Him honor her for her faithfulness. Her children will look at her and see what means to live by Proverbs 3:5, which says to "trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding." Mary was different from Elizabeth because she was young and engaged, not full of experience and years. She was probably in her early teen years. She probably couldn't read or write. But her heart, like Elizabeth's, was receptive to a miracle. Her great achievement was that even though she didn't fully understand what was going to happen, she knew that God is able to do what He has said He will do. If He decided,so that the world would see His grace and power, that a virgin should bear his Son, she didn't have to understand it to know He was going to do it. God knows that's hard for us to swallow. I can't imagine what it must be like to have an angel come to your house and tell you that you're suddenly going to be pregnant, and your baby is going to be God's Savior for the world. I don't know what that feels like. The look on her face must have been something to see. But God gave Gabriel some words to encourage her. (v. 37) "For with God nothing will be impossible." A godly woman looks at that big statement and owns it. She lives by the belief that God is bigger than our lack of understanding, and the impossible is something fun for Him to step right over like an ant hill. She talks like Mary talks. v. 38 "Now Mary said, 'Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.' And the angel departed from her." It's cool to me to notice what happened when Elizabeth's husband Zacharias heard the news about John, from the same angel. He didn't believe it. He had an angel standing in front of him, and he asked how he could be sure. So he was mute until the child was born, and God made him eat his words. Mary was blessed among women because she took God at His word. When Elizabeth saw Mary when she visited, the Holy Spirit filled her, and she told Mary (v.45) "Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord." My mom, and a lot of the moms in my family and my life, trust God like these ladies did. God isn't looking for perfect people with perfect lives. He wants people whose devotion to Him does not depend on their circumstances or on their ability to understand. I know that's hard for me, but I sure have a good place to look to get better at it.

Crazy

THIS WEEK I've been learning more about the wisdom of God than I did last week. It would seem that His wisdom can be seen, more than anywhere else, in the things that seem absolutely crazy to us. While going through my Bible in a Year program I came across a funny story that I had heard is in the Bible somewhere. It's in Numbers 22. I never thought the book of Numbers would prove itself so interesting! It's a story about a talking donkey, which proves two things: First, that God is furiously protective of His people; and second, that He has a great sense of humor. To stop a man named Balaam from pronouncing a curse over Israel as a favor to his friend Balak, God appeared in his path. Balaam didn't notice Him there, but his loving donkey did. Three times along the road she objected to aproaching where the Angel of the Lord stood with His sword drawn, but Balaam repremanded her. v.28-31 "Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, 'What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?' And Balaam said to the donkey, 'Because you have abused me. I wish there were a sword in my hand, for now I would kill you!' So the donkey said to Balaam, 'Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden, ever since I became yours, to this day? Was I ever disposed to do this to you?' And he said, 'No.' Then the Lord opened Balaam's eyes, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way with His drawn sword in His hand; and he bowed his head and fell flat on his face." God didn't want him to turn back home and forget his friend Balak. He used the talking donkey to make sure that once he got to Balak he would pronounce a blessing instead of a curse. v.35 "Then the Angel of the Lord said to Balaam, 'Go with the men, but only the word that I speak to you, that you shall speak.' So Balaam went with the princes of Balak." If He hadn't spoken through the donkey, Israel would have been cursed and made subject to Balak, and Father God could not let that happen to His children. He had blessed them, so He could not allow them to be cursed. That was the people the Savior would be coming to. So in a funny way, God used a donkey in part of His big, beautiful salvation plan. He also proved, to put it plainly, that people can often be dumber than an ass! For me it also means that God has always been doing this. He often chooses what is not our first choice to show us that He knows best. He chose the make a tiny town, Bethlehem, at a plain place, a stable, as the birthplace of the Savior of the world. He would grow up in the backwoods part of Israel, Galilee, as a carpenter with little education. He doesn't choose to save only the rich and visible. He can make glory grow up out of the cracks in the sidewalk. He will speak through children and fools and donkeys to show us that nothing can hinder Him, and that His wisdom transcends ours completely. 1 Corinthians 3:18-19 "Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, 'He catches the wise in their own craftiness.'" That assurance comes with a challenge to be satisfied in what His wisdom says is good for us. It's assuring and easy to say that God is wise until He asks us to depend on Him alone for life. Will we let His wisdom be an assurance to us when He asks us not to follow our own wisdom? A few chapters before the episode with the donkey, the children of Israel are wandering around the wilderness following God and have begun to complain. In Numbers 11, here they are, actually wishing God had never worked all His wonders and taken them out of their enslavement in Egypt. They aren't satisfied with the food He has given them, and they want Him to give them meat. Their words really amaze me: v.6 "But now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!" Oh, what a shame! To have only perfect bread from heaven, as much as each person needs. They must have been wasting away! That bread was a symbol of what Jesus is for us. The One God the Father sent to give nourishment to our souls, to make us depend on Him alone for life. "Manna" means "What?" because they didn't know what it was but that it was a good thing God had given. Because they were not satisfied with what His wisdom said was good, God gave them meat with a plague. It's frightening to me to think what it must be like to look up from your donkey and see God with His sword drawn against you. What could be more terrifying than getting what I want from the God who already gave me what you need, when I told Him it wasn't enough for me? Believing God is wise involves us trusting His judgement, even though it seems crazy to us. It means following Him by faith, not by understanding, because He is the One with understanding and He won't always explain it to us. He does not call us to wrap our heads around him, but to cast our cares on Him and be satisfied in Him. He will honor our faith with His faithfulness.