Commanded Joy (10/12/24)

It seems this is one of those passages where you could readily preach a sermon on any one clause.  It may be that I shall wind up doing just that, even if the audience consists of myself alone, as it generally does.  What is particularly intriguing to me, though, is that this is more or less the sum total of the instructional section of this letter.  Here in four verses we are met with three commands and a promise, and the first command is repeated, just in case we mistake it for something else.  “Rejoice in the Lord always.  Let me say it again:  REJOICE!”

I was taken aback, just a bit, when I ran across one translation that rendered this as “Farewell in the Lord, and again I say, farewell.”  My immediate reaction was to wonder where that was coming from.  But it also waved a warning flag:  Got to look this one up.  Well, it turns out that, particularly in the imperative as we have it here, this call to rejoice can become a matter of salutation.  It can be akin to saying, “Be well.”  Or, as I am wont to say, “Take care.”  But that’s got a whole different vibe to it, doesn’t it?  One recognizes blessing, the other suggests perhaps a need for caution.  And any such need for caution would seem to be put by the wayside in this passage.  But that’s getting far ahead of myself.

To my thinking, the “in the Lord always” clause renders it unlikely that this was intended as salutation, particularly, as the instruction continues.  The letter is not as yet come to a close, so whence the final greeting?  No, that has its place, but it is at the end.  This is command.  This is a call to specific character, even as the next command we encounter immediately following.  What is commanded?  Are we called to be jumping up and down in gleeful excitement all the time?  That would be interesting, I suppose, but unlikely to be perceived in a good light.  More likely, one acting in such a fashion would be thought a loon, perhaps off their meds, and probably in need of the care of guardianship.  No.  To be constantly giggling over nothing might, I suppose, lend some sort of comfort to the soul, but as a character trait, as a demonstration of being a child of God, it really doesn’t work.  Nor is it what is called for.

I find, every time I look at this word, that I so much appreciate the definition that Strong supplies.  This is calm delight, and let me stress the calm part.  This isn’t giddiness.  This isn’t hysteria, nor is it likely to be mistaken for such.  This is being calmly happy, let us say untroubled.  It is not an act of defiance against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  Honestly, it is reflective of a character fully settled in that peace of God which closes out our passage.  This isn’t, then, something to work up in yourself, as it were.  It’s not a face to put on for public consumption.  It is, even as the next command given, a matter of commanded character.  Be.  This is who you are, now be it.  In all circumstances remain one who is calmly happy, not put out by stresses, not overburdened by schedules, things not working right, children not seeming to ever arrive at responsible adulthood, neighbors who insist on displaying their fallen nature before you, or whatever those trials you face day by day.

It’s a popular passage to have in memory, and I think it applies here.  “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not approach you.  You will only look on and see the recompense of the wicked” (Ps 91:7-8).  Does that mean we live trouble-free?  Far from it.  You have Jesus’ word on that.  “In the world you have tribulation” (Jn 16:33), or as Paul encouraged the churches, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom” (Ac 14:22).  But back to Jesus.  “Take courage!  I have overcome the world!”  Be cheerful.  Be calm.  All is well.  I AM is with you.

There is the basis of the command.  Be calmly happy in the Lord.  Show this calm delight that comes of knowing you are indeed in the Lord.  That being said, the translation provided by Phillips has its own value.  “Delight yourselves in God, yes, find your joy in him at all times.”  There is value in taking this as our instruction.  But I’m not sure it properly suits the context.  To be sure, God is, or ought to be, our true and sole delight.  To the degree that we take pleasure in nature, or in creative activities, or in family and friends, there ought to be this underlying factor of finding God at work in these things, of seeing Him through these things.  But honestly, I suspect for most of us, that’s a hard mindset to maintain, and when we come across someone who strives to maintain that perspective, it may even come off as being a bit over the top, perhaps even off-putting.  It’s hard to accept that somebody might actually have that as their mindset, though I think in the case of that one who comes to mind, it might just be real.  At the very least, there is a strong desire for it to be real.

So, I’m going to end with a continuation of that thought.  Is it right to make such attempt, to seek that our outward demeanor would appear more like our ideal?  At some level, I suppose the answer must be yes.  How else shall we arrive at our ideal except we make the attempt to reach it?  But, here’s the thing.  We have that third command, to be anxious for nothing.  That, I think, especially given the strength of emphasis on nothing, must encompass even this commanded joy.  If I am struggling and striving to put on a happy face in the midst of whatever my trials may be, am I not being anxious for something?  I’m anxious to look right, even when everything feels wrong.  And generally speaking, that only makes it worse, doesn’t it?  Sheesh.  I can’t even get this bit.

What am I arriving at here?  Well, I suppose I’m still glancing ahead to the next heading in this study, “Commanded Character.”  But commanded character is just that, character.  Character is that in us which really doesn’t require effort anymore.  Character is who we are.  In the case of God, we speak of it as essence.  When we say that God is Love, we are saying that Love is Who He Is in essence.  We might say it is who He is by nature, except then we would feel the need to correct ourselves.  God doesn’t have a nature.  He is outside nature, beyond nature.  But it’s a reasonable phrasing of the matter nonetheless.  What is essential is what is by nature.  God is love because that is who He is.  He doesn’t struggle to love.  It’s His natural state.  God is True.  Again, He doesn’t have to check Himself constantly to make sure He’s remaining truthful.  It’s who He is.  And we can take any one of His attributes and arrive at the same point.  This is His character.

The same applies for us, albeit with limitations.  His character is perfect, in need of no change, no adjustment.  Ours, on the other hand, has been damaged by the Fall.  Sin has spread its corruption in our character and as we undergo the lifelong process of purification, a large part of that is excising the corrupt bits and establishing in their place the sort of character that befits a child of God.  Is there work involved?  Well sure.  I think of my wife and the cyst that developed a year or so back.  Excise that thing, and there’s a big, empty hole where there should be flesh.  It’s going to take time, and it’s going to take work, if only the work of care and hygiene and maybe diet, to see that flesh restored.  The body, at the very least, shall have to do a bit of material supply, right?  But is it something that can be sped up by doing more?  Not really.  Is it something we can achieve by main strength?  No.  One must undergo the process, take the time, allow the thing to happen.  And that last, it seems to me, as just about the extent of our involvement and ability when it comes to this changing of character.

You have been reborn.  This is the first, most fundamental fact of redemption.  Come that moment when you perceived the call of Christ and responded, rebirth had transpired.  You are not who you were any longer.  You are a new creation.  Old things have passed away.  New things have come (2Co 5:17).  But those old things don’t let go so easily.  They may be dead, but they’re hanging on.  We can’t shake them.  No.  We can’t.  But God!  God is reshaping, scraping away the dross of the old man, and exposing the real you, the new you, polished and presentable.  I don’t think this steady state of calm delight in God can be worked up, not in any real sense.  We can’t produce it in ourselves.  But we might just surprise ourselves to discover that it has happened more or less without us.  This is the work of God, not the work of the flesh.  It is not, then, a thing to be anxious about, but rather, itself a cause for delight.  Look what God has been doing, and I hardly noticed at the time!  But now, here it is.

Now, be forewarned just a bit.  There will be times.  I honestly don’t care how long you’ve been walking the Way of Christ.  There will be times.  There will be times when all you can feel is troubled, when frustration and exhaustion get you down, when the old habits slip through yet again.  And those times can lead to a bit of kicking yourself for your having failed yet again.  But kicking yourself gains you nothing.  Repent.  Apologize where you need to, make right what you can, but repent.  Repent first and foremost to God, for having thus distorted the representation of His character that you are.  Repent for having shown Him in so poor a light.  And then, receive His forgiveness, which is your inheritance in Him already.  Receive it with the assurance you should.  Accept that it is so.  Be forgiven and move on.  This is, I think, a fundamental of that calm delight.  You see, the whole of this passage ties together.  The pieces are of one whole.  The parts are working together, each supplying power to the other.  Rejoicing is upheld by that peace we have with God, and that peace is reinforced by prayer, and prayer comes of knowing we have a hearing God Who answers, a Father who loves us.  We know Him, Who He Is.  And knowing Him, we seek to be like Him.  Knowing He is at work in us to make it so, we labor without anxiousness, resting in His finished work, looking to see it show in our present condition.  Rejoice!  God’s got this.  God’s got you.

Commanded Character (10/13/24)

In verse 5 we have a second command in regard to our character, and interestingly, it concerns how we are seen by others.  Let your character show.  That’s more or less the gist of it.  But if it were left at that, what shows might not be particularly positive.  There are plenty of people out there who proudly let their character show, and make sure everybody around them sees what they are like.  But it doesn’t necessarily leave a very positive impression, does it?  I suspect for many of us, there’s a bit of concern lest we were found showing our true colors.  What was I reading the other night, quoting one of our Puritan forebears?  Which is the real me?  The one that people see, or the one I feel within?  I don’t recall reading that there was an answer given to that question, only the pondering.  But my sense of it would be that both are real.  We are, after all, at war within ourselves, the old sinful nature yet battling against the gains of the new man.

Let this bear on how we hear this command.  Let your character be known.  It is in the passive voice in that they cannot know what you won’t show.  But for you, it truly is an active voice consideration.  How will they know if you keep it hidden?  How will they know if you slacken your defenses and allow the old man out?  Yes, he is still you, but he is the you that is dying, fading into insignificance as you grow in Christ.  And that is our impetus here.  You are growing.  You are reborn of the Spirit, indwelt by the Spirit, being renewed day by day in the image of God which is your proper character.  And with that, perhaps we can come to what defines this character God would have us to show so clearly.

The NASB speaks of it as a forbearing spirit.  We have also ideas of a gentle spirit, reasonableness, moderation, unselfishness.  Translations are all over the place here, to be honest.  But if you take them all together, perhaps you begin to see the sense of it.  To epieikes.  It is given the place of prominence, of emphasis in this sentence.  And the first thing we notice is that there is nothing about spirit here.  The fittingness, the seemliness, the fairness, tolerance.  The Exegetical Dictionary quickly arrives as a rather significant detail of this, that these ideas of gentleness and forbearance are aspects of God’s character, matters of His benevolence towards us.  And as His children, it makes perfect sense that we ought to have like character.  That article, considering our present passage, ties this forbearing character of ours both backward to the joy we have in the Lord, and forward to notice of His nearness.

So, let us attempt to frame this character trait a bit, if we can.  The NLT offers us the idea of it reasonably well, I think.  “Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do.”  That works pretty well, doesn’t it?  God, most assuredly, is perfectly reasonable in all that He does.  He is also considerate.  He knows us, that we are like grass.  But, “A battered reed He will not break off.  A smoldering wick He will not put out.  He leads justice to victory, and in His name the Gentiles will hope” (Mt 12:20).  He is considerate.  He knows our weakness all too well.  He knows that for all of us, our story is that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak (Mt 26:41).  Thus it has been even for those three who formed His inner circle, even as He faced His greatest trial of obedience, knowing what lay ahead for Him.  But did He rebuke or reject?  No.  He simply called them back to the effort of prayer.  Indeed, you could ask, in that context, whether it was of them or Himself that He made that observation about willingness and weakness.  Perhaps both.  He was after all fully human.  And yes, even with the indwelling presence of God, the flesh is weak when it comes to obedience.  Its strength shows more in enticement to sin.  And so, the flesh must be tamed, held under control.

And that, I think, answers somewhat the necessity of this command, along with the means of its accomplishment.  We are children of a perfectly equitable, perfectly fair God.  He is not one to play favorites, He does not show partiality (Ac 10:34), nor is He unjust.  Indeed, He is Justice.  This, too, is of His essential being, a character trait apart from which He would cease to be.  And that, perhaps, begins to shed some light on the strength of this effort to have such character in ourselves.  This is what we are becoming, a people for whom godly character is so innate a matter that were it taken from us, or allowed to be overwritten by some alternate set of character traits, we would not just cease to be recognizably Christian, we would cease to be, period.

Here is, at one and the same time, the wonder of rebirth and the security of it.  Christianity comes to mankind with the promise that yes, you actually can change.  The character you have developed to date can in fact be renewed, refashioned after the image of God which is your true birthright.  The damage can be undone.  Redemption is possible.  Look around you!  All of these isms that plague the world today are heavy on pointing out sins, but offer no hope of pardon, no possibility of being made whole again.  It doesn’t matter, for this line of thought, what supposed crimes are posited, or whether they are in any way legitimate.  It’s accusation without hope.  It’s a life sentence without parole.  You are offered nothing but to remain in your ostensible sins.  This is not so with Christ.  No!  He comes with promise.  “Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow” (Isa 1:18). I AM will wash you clean.  There is a condition, it is true.  “If I do not wash you, you have no part in Me” (Jn 13:8).  But for the elect, this is not a condition in doubt, it is a condition accomplished.  You were like them, “but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God” (1Co 6:11).  New life has come into you, new character begun forming.  Old ways are gone, and now?  Now, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1Co 6:19).  Now, there is a new spirit within, a new character of godliness.

As I have been saying, that character may be stymied at times, as the old man rears up and seeks his way.  But the old man no longer has the power to shape our character.  We remain embattled within as we are embattled without, but we know this.  “If I am doing what I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me” (Ro 7:20).  There is your answer, Mr. Puritan.  The real you is that one which those around you perceive in you.  The real you is that you which Christ is forming in you, which Paul urges you to make evident and consistently so.  Here is your calling.  Here is how you best represent the God you serve.  Live such that all men know you to be fair, even-handed, reasonable.

Know that there will be times when you fail at this, and fail miserably, perhaps even spectacularly.  We know the things that weaken our resolve.  In times of hunger or exhaustion, the old man finds something he can exploit to have his day.  The article I read last night on my way to bed points to another agent of our weakening:  When we let our prayer life slide.  This, I must confess, remains a weak spot for me.  And it’s one that needs to change.  Yet, it needs to change not as an anxious work of my flesh, but rather as a restful submission to my Lord and King.  But prayer is hard.  It feels too much like just talking to yourself, or perhaps something spoken out for the benefit of being heard by others.  It feels like show, rather than conversation.  I like to think that these times spent in God’s word are, in their own way, a sort of prayer.  But I suspect that by and large, I am merely accommodating my own preferences with that idea.

So, yes, let us pray.  Lord, I have to confess I have felt a bit distant.  I look back across my day yesterday, and though so much of it was spent in matters of the kingdom, how much was done with a right spirit in me?  Very little, I should think.  It was more a spirit of resignation, perhaps a touch of bother that here was another day so fully occupied with busyness.  Forgive me.  It truly is a signal honor to me that You have thought to have me along on this trek to Africa, and though it causes me some little anxiousness and concern, yet, I know I wouldn’t give it up for anything apart from You Yourself.  It is work, to be sure, and it will have plenty to it of stress and challenge, but oh!  The Joy!  So, I pray that You might address my attitude, my weariness.  I pray that I might learn to better lay hold of Your strength, in order that I might pursue Your work with Your power, Your patience, Your gentleness displayed in my own.  I pray, too, that You would guard my heart, particularly through this season, that you would help me to be a sound shepherd to my lovely wife, even though our ways seem so distinctly different anymore.  I know as well as I can know anything that her love for You is real, and that Your love for her is just as real.  If, then, You are pleased with her course, may I somehow come to know that in my own thinking, and if there are areas where that course needs correcting, areas to which I should be attending, grant me the gentleness of spirit to bring that correction with Your love and mine in full evidence.  To be sure, there is much more I could be praying in this moment.  And I probably should.  But I can’t help but see the time, and know that other needs of the day are calling.  May I, then, find moments to rejoin this conversation through the day.  For, as this verse reminds, You are near.  You are always near.  You are with me even to the end of the age.  Thank You for that!  Thank You for the assurance that You walk by my side, even when I am at my most negligent.  I love You, Lord, and I shall wait upon Your answer, looking gladly, with anticipation to see how You address this in me.

The Nearness of Christ (10/14/24)

At the end of verse 5 we read, “The Lord is near.”  In most translations, this comes as a standalone sentence, not directly connected either to what was just said or to what is said in the next verse.  As such, it seems more an interjection, a random thought thrown into the midst of things.  But while it may seem that way, I find it quite unlikely that this was the intent.  Paul is not really given to simply tossing out a jumble of thoughts.  Nor is the Holy Spirit inclined to such things.  If we were looking at some form of wisdom literature, I might find this more likely, but even there I would expect to find at least some parallel presentation of the thought.  Alternately, were Paul shifting from presenting us with this sort of exhortatory encouragement to godliness to discussion of eschatology, it would make sense to have this declaration set before us.  But he’s not shifting course.  He’s midstream, the same general point and purpose both preceding and proceeding the statement.

This leads to questions, then, the foremost being, why?  Why is this statement here?  It is not to no purpose, certainly.  Neither, I think, ought we to see it as it is presented in translation, a separate, isolated thought in its own sentence.  It connects to what is being said, but how?  That how might answer our why.  And I would observe, by way of permission to consider our answers well, that punctuation was not part of the original manuscript.  Certainly, verse numbers were not.  The fact that we find it in verse 5 does not require that we see it connecting back to the command to let character show.  It could as readily be motivation for the command which follows, to be anxious for nothing.  Had Paul included a ‘for’ somewhere, that would clear things up nicely.  We would have a chain of cause and effect, as it were.  But he did not.  And I have to think that he quite intentionally did not.  For is no bigger a word in Greek than in English.  It doesn’t cost a lot in terms of materials or space.  And had he intended one specific connection, I feel confident that he would have inserted that linkage for us.  But he does not, and as he does not, I am left to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the intent is to connect in both directions.

In support of seeing this as a statement of cause, with obedience to the command as effect, let me present to you what is, in fact, a bit of wisdom literature, in the form of the letter of James.  In his writings, James has this advice for us.  “You be patient too.  Strengthen your heart for the coming of the Lord is at hand” (Jas 5:8).  And, as is typical with wisdom literature, there follows something of a parallel thought.  “Don’t complain against one another, lest you be judged.  Look!  The Judge is even now at the door” (Jas 5:9).  The nearness of our Lord is here presented as a very definite cause or motive for compliance.  But to what does patience and even-handedness compare in our present passage?  If I take this as direct reflection of our letter, then it would push me towards both ends, I think.  The idea of patience connects me to that lack of anxiousness which we have addressed in the next verse.  And there, quite clearly, a sense of the Lord’s nearness is compelling.  If I know Him near, I am far more inclined to patient waiting, to calm assurance in the midst of life’s trials, whereas if I count Him as far off, and His day still at some remote distance, I may chafe rather more under the trials of the present, incline toward the Psalmists’ lament, “How long, Lord?  How long?”  I was going to offer a verse reference for that, but they are many, and they cut both ways.  There are both those heart cries of longing from man, and the righteous complaint of God against His children.  “How long will my honor become a reproach O, man?  How long will you love what is worthless?  How long will you pursue deception?” (Ps 4:2).  But for the righteous, stuck amidst the tents of Kedar, as it were, there is that longing.  “Lord, how long will You look on?  Rescue my soul!” (Ps 35:17).  Or, more longingly, “Do return, O Lord.  How long?” (Ps 90:13).  And to be sure, we can feel that at times.  But the Lord is near.  His time does not delay.  It proceeds precisely on schedule, and the schedule, dear ones, is perfect.

On the other hand, that matter of not lodging complaints against one another, not getting all judgmental, would bring us right back to the beginning of this verse, with its call for an even-handed, forbearing character.  And here, as I have probably noted in yesterday’s comments, we are but reflecting the character God has displayed towards us.  We are simply showing ourselves to be true sons of our true Father.  Given that connectivity, this sense of nearness varies for me.  That is, really, a second question one might have in regard to this declaration of His nearness.  Are we in fact being asked to contemplate His return, or are we rather being reminded of His promise?  I grant that the phrase is most often found in connection with that forward-looking anticipation of the day of the Lord.  But if that is my motivation for compliance, does it not risk becoming works righteousness yet again.  Oh, no!  He is coming soon, I’d best get my act together.  As to effect, it would be hard to find fault with such a mindset, and there is plentiful support in Scripture to advise just such a careful attention to our duty.  But when that slides into thinking that we have to do this lest we be rejected after all, I think we have a problem.  It is well and good to find encouragement to greater attentiveness in this work of sanctification, but it is not so well when we look to it as cause rather than effect.

Okay.  Let me try and draw this all together if I can.  We have this command to be demonstrably even-handed in our dealings with all men.  Be known for a cool head that doesn’t play favorites, but treats all both equally and as equals.  Why?  Because the Lord is near.  Now, stop there, and you likely start to feel concern rising up.  Oh, yeh.  He is near, and I am nowhere near ready.  I need to clean up my act, and do it now!  What if He comes, and I’m still displaying so much of the old me?  Yeesh!  I wouldn’t accept me in that state.  Why should He?  And suddenly, we’ve got anxiousness rising up.  And so, Paul immediately proceeds to quell that anxious thought.  “Be anxious for nothing!”  Why?  Because the Lord is near.

Now, it is entirely possible, perhaps even probable, that I am attempting to make far too much of the ambiguity here, both as to the placing of this thought, and the intended understanding of His nearness.  But what if I’m right?  We then have the nearness of His return as both a cause for attentiveness, and for contentedness, which is, after all, the great theme of this letter.  But we have also the nearness of His presence, the reality of, “Lo!  I am with you always” (Mt 28:20).  That is the beautiful closing remark to Matthew’s gospel, and while we might take that as a particular promise made to the Apostles, I don’t think we need thus restrict it.  This is our story, too.  Our Lord, our Jesus, is with us always, “even to the end of the age.”  If He is coming soon, He is also here.  It’s a both/and situation.  His nearness is, or ought to be, can be, our daily, present experience.  He has made His abode in us, even as He has granted us to abide in Him.  Here is the strength to forbear.  Here is the comforting peace with which to combat our innate anxiousness.  He is not merely near, He is here!  And, to rejoice always?  Here, too, His nearness supports and gives cause.  These trials of life must soon pass.  His return is near, could be today, might not be.  It doesn’t matter.  On the scale of eternity, this period of trials is but the briefest of moments.  As is so often the case, it feels longer than it is.  The times of trial always seem to drag on, and the times of celebration to pass by on winged feet, as it were.  But were we to measure it on the dial of time, we would discover that the reality is not as the impression made.  This will, in due course, be our story.  When He comes, when all is finally, once for all set to rights, and the trials of the present order brought to an end, eternity shall stretch out ahead of us.  The glory of that eternal fellowship and joy will so vastly outweigh any pain and sorrow of this life as to render it all but forgotten.  Indeed, if we take our instruction manual literally, it will be forgotten, never to be brought to mind again.  The flooding joy of the eternal present will sweep all recollection of former trials from our thoughts, leave them no place for contemplation.

So, yes, the Lord is near.  He is near to hand, walking with you through every trial and victory, strengthening you in the midst, mourning with you in the loss, and carrying you through.  He is near enough to help.  Just call on His name, and He will assuredly answer.  To borrow another thought from James, “You have not because you ask not” (Jas 4:2).  Take John’s assurance.  “If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.  This is the confidence we have before Him” (1Jn 5:14).  Take care to heed the caveat.  He is not some genie that we can cajole into granting our every wish.  No!  Too many chase after this false idol, and call it Jesus.  But the child of God, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and desirous of true fellowship with his Father, seeks what the Father wills, and solely what the Father wills.  Far be it from us to try and somehow trick or convince our Father to bless our lustful desires, to grant us such things as will only wind up drawing us away from Him.  Far be it from us to be dissatisfied with His providential will, to hear His will and say, “No, Lord, but please, let it be done my way.”  Oh, child!  Beware!  Look to the examples of those before you who prayed in such fashion and received their answer.  And then, be careful what you ask for.  As the age-old adage goes, you just might get it.

Rather, set your mind on this:  The Lord is near.  He is your strength, and He is here with you.  He is your God, and He is ever mindful of you.  This ought to stiffen our resistance to temptation.  When I am inclined to give in, how much less likely will it be the case if I recall to mind that my God is right there with me, watching me?  How willing am I to mindfully cause Him such sorrow as to have to witness my insistent failure yet again?  No!  Take heed, O, my soul!  Take courage.  The Lord is near!  He is here with you.  He is ever here with you.  You need not fall, for He is your strength to stand.  His hand is held out to you.  Take it!  With the temptation, He supplies the means of passing through, of walking free.  Resist!  Resist in the strength of your Lord, your Brother, your God, for that power is set at your disposal.  You have only to accept it.  And then, let His character be seen in you, not only in that resistance to the tug of the world, but in the compassionate love you maintain for even the unloveliest, and in the humility of recognizing that you may very well be yourself among the unloveliest, were it not for His image being formed in you.

In the nearness of the Lord, then, we have encouragement to progress.  In the nearness of the Lord, we have strength to continue.  In the nearness of the Lord, we have cause to rejoice.  When things get difficult, even deadly, He is here with us.  When things are going swimmingly, and the stuff of life threatens to gain too great a hold on us with its pleasant circumstance, He is here with us.  In victory or in stumbling, He is here with us.  He will not give up on us, and He won’t let go of us.  The price He paid to make us His own should suffice to assure us of that.  How readily would you relinquish so costly a purchase?  We hold fast to things we account precious, and our accounting is orders of magnitude below our purchase price.

Lord, I pray this morning that I might begin to develop just such a mindset, by Your grace.  I am too swift to shift gears, to change modes, as I come away from these times with You.  And You do not call me to so bifurcated an existence.  You call me to consistency.  I am far from it, I know.  I am too readily shifted from loving, faithful believer to stringent, driven worker, or to lazy, indolent slacker.  And all of these, it seems, are the real me.  They are but facets of my character.  Yet, You are a master jeweler, and You know which facet You desire to shine, and which need to be cut away.  I’m probably phrasing that inaccurately, but then, I’m not a jeweler.  As best I may, though, I invite You to the work You must do in me.  Cut away what needs excising.  And grant that I might work alongside You gladly, willingly in the process.  Polish what needs polishing, that I might reflect You more fully in who I am.  I am Yours.  Of this I have no doubt.  I often wonder why, or how it is that You put up with me as I am.  But I know, too, that You are in fact making me who I was intended to be.  And oftentimes, in that work, that patient, tender work, I find myself asking, “How long, Lord?  How long will I remain this defective, incomplete thing that I am?”  Yet, I must confess there are plenty of other times where my inclination is more to seek a break, to allow this thing or that to continue awhile longer.  Just let me enjoy this for awhile, and maybe later we could have You deal with it, okay?  But that’s wrong.  No.  You know the schedule of works.  You know the right stroke and the right time.  Let it be so, and please, God, find me willing, receptive, able to receive the stroke to good and lasting effect.

I would offer You thanks, this morning, for the shift in perspective that You have been working in me when it comes to the workplace, and I pray that progress there might continue as it has the last week or so.  There, let my forbearing spirit be known.  And I must add, given the situation of my working from home, let that same forbearing spirit be in full exercise with my lovely wife.  She too often winds up fielding the stresses that have built up in my in the face of difficulties at work, and as she so often observes, she doesn’t deserve that.   No, she does not, and I feel a right ogre for dealing with her so.  And yet, You know as well the stressors there.  Work with me on that, I pray.  Let there be harmonious unity here, in this closest of relationships, above all things.  But let it be harmonious in unity with You, from love for You, and according to Your design and desire, not some false and gauzy illusion of unity.  Your peace You have left with us.  Let us both abide in it, support one another in it, accept one another in it, and rejoice always.

No Fear (10/15/24)

Let’s move into verse 6.  “Be anxious for nothing.”  Nothing whatsoever, no matter who, no matter what, don’t allow it to give rise to worry.  It’s of note, I think, that the emphasis is placed on the matter of nothing.  Nothing!  Not anything at all is reason for anxiousness for you.  Don’t, then, be troubled by cares.  Don’t get caught up in protecting or promoting your interests.  Oh, there’s a place for defense, to be sure.  As happened to come up in Table Talk this morning, Paul, facing a flogging in Jerusalem, was not simply going to take it.  He appealed to his citizenship and his rights, which included the right not to be flogged.  This was not done, however, from a place of anxious concern for his rights.  No.  It was done, if I read his motives aright, because to accept the flogging would be akin to an admission of guilt for a crime that had not been committed, and as that would tarnish the work of God, he wasn’t having it.  In other words, he wasn’t promoting his own interests here, but rather serving the gospel.

I rather like how the CEV presents the thought here.  “Don't worry about anything, but pray about everything.”  This may seem counter-intuitive, but I think it true. You can’t pray effectively from a place of anxiety.  Anxiousness opposes faith.  To pray from worry is to make an appeal with little expectation of result.  Notice the contrast in the two clauses of this passage.  On the one hand, you have anxiousness, fear, and deep concern over whatever trouble is at hand.  On the other hand, you have prayers offered with thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving would certainly be appropriate as a response to answers already received.  But here, it is a forward-looking thanksgiving, isn’t it?  “With thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”  That reflects faith in God to whom you make request, that He will answer, and answer in His goodness.

Beloved, faith cannot function from fear.  To some degree, that formulation describes the practice of the Pharisee, or of the Christian legalist.  Theirs is a faith in fear of failing.  It’s not so much a faith, as a determination to earn a place in heaven by diligent attentiveness to every detail.  But behind that is the old pagan perspective that gods are beings that must be appeased lest they destroy you.  And while there is some truth to that, God ought to be recognized as the One able to destroy not only body, but soul as well (Mt 10:28).  But this isn’t some act of warding off a powerful enemy.  No!  You are His child.  He is your Father.  He is a loving Father, who has only your best interests at heart.  Yes, He pursues His own purpose, not your whims.  But His purpose incorporates you, His child.  He is looking out for you.  He has care of your true interests.  And so, as we pray to our loving Father we are making appeal from a position of trust.  A child, even in adulthood, who comes to her parents with some need or other, may not be absolutely assured of receiving the answer she desires, or the help she would prefer to have.  But she knows she shall receive what her parents find best for her well-being.  Parents know how to say no, and when to do so.  And they know, with some experience, how and when to say yes.  God has infinite experience, and perfect judgment.  Who better, then, to have in charge of us?  Who could be a more reliable help in time of need?

Listen!  See the connection that proceeds through this verse and into the next.  Prayer cannot be effective while fear remains.  Prayer may very well be necessary to pull us out of our fears, as we remind ourselves that we belong to God Almighty, Who has called us by name and declared us His own.  Oh!  Feel that in your bones.  You come to the One Who has claimed you in His love, wrapped you in His arms, and taken the brunt of your sins upon Himself.  And why?  So that you might know peace.  The battle is over.  He won.  His love won out over your rebellion.  How many fathers long for just such a turning point in their children?  And He has done it.  The rebellion is over with.  There is no animosity, certainly not on His part.  Love has won, and peace has been restored between you and Him.  And there, my friends, is your antidote for anxiousness.

This is not, as the song went, a case of, “Don’t worry, be happy.”  I mean, that is the end result, I do believe.  We started there, didn’t we, with Paul’s repeated instruction to rejoice?  Always.  In each and every one of those things that could be cause for anxiousness, rejoice instead.  Take it to prayer, knowing your Father in heaven hears you, sees your situation, and has the very best answer to your troubles.  It may not be the one you want, but it will assuredly be the one you need.  Don’t fear, trust.  Pray.  Pray until the Spirit has ministered to your spirit such that peace is restored to your soul.  Pray, then, for the will of God to be worked out through these circumstances you face.  It is ever and always appropriate, I do believe, to pray, “Not my will, but Yours, Lord.”  So often, prayer has more to do with reforming our thinking than with altering what’s happening.

Anxiousness, I will further observe, makes it all but impossible to be the agent of peace you are called to be.  How can you minister God’s peace when you don’t currently abide in it?  I think we discussed this somewhat in the previous study.  But you can’t have real peace with others if you are not at peace with God.  You can’t even have real peace with your own self in that condition.  Something’s wrong, and that will trouble you on some level.  You may strive to suppress the feeling, and I suppose, with a sufficiently deadened heart and mind, you might even succeed at it.  But the trouble hasn’t gone away, only been ignored as best one may.

But we are not so perverse, so hardened.  We are reborn in the Spirit.  Our stony hearts have been restored to responsiveness.  Our soul stirs to the pulse of the Spirit.  We are on an open channel to heaven, and God is speaking.  All the time, He is speaking.  All the time, He is listening.  Nothing has escaped His attention, nor anything disturbed His well-ordered plans, not for you, not for any aspect of Creation, from the least to the grandest.  So, don’t be anxious.  Be in God’s peace, and found in God’s peace, be the agent of peace which you are called to be.

Again, as I’m sure I touched on this yesterday, and do so with fair regularity.  We know the things which weaken our resolve, which contribute to an anxious, troubled state of mind, short-tempered and lacking utterly in patience.  Hunger and exhaustion are high on the list.  But if we just accept that this is the case, mumble our excuses, and continue on, we have failed the test.  This is not an excuse to be in that state.  It’s a call to pray, and also to undertake those steps needful to counteract the trend.  These are matters of concern to me, for I know they are two of my greatest weaknesses.  Hangry is a thing.  My wife knows it far better than she should.  And she knows to navigate me towards food as quickly and as gently as she can, such that this mood might pass swiftly.  But I really shouldn’t be so stubborn in that condition, should I?  I should be turning to prayer as swiftly as to food.  Lord, tame this wild beast in me.  Supply me with the grace I need to remain at peace in spite of the hunger, that I may continue to represent well, while we look to address this situation.

Likewise exhaustion, which seems to be a growing issue for me.  These early mornings have their cost, particularly towards the end of the day.  And it is terribly unfair, I know, that my poor wife bears the worst of it.  After all, in the prime of the day, I am either here in these times of study and meditation, or at work.  Granted, being at work, for me, consists of which screen I’m looking at, and maybe, which side of my office door I am on.  Home is always right there, and there is something both of blessing and of curse in that immediacy.  I can step from one world to the other and back with ease.  But mentally, the shift is often much more difficult to achieve.  And my lovely wife is rarely keen to meet my work mindset.  Too focused, too intense.  But by the time dinner’s done, dishes cleared, and we go to the couch to sit, read Scripture, and maybe talk a bit, there’s little left in the energy banks.  Face it.  You get up at 3, and by 7, there’s just not going to be much left to give.  So, there’s a rebalancing needed here, or something.  I honestly don’t have the answer.  This body, anymore, just wakes up, and that’s it.  You can lay the blame on coffee, though I don’t think that’s it.  You can lay the blame on computers, but I don’t think that’s it either.  I suspect it might be an unexpected result of living without an alarm clock.  The body knows it’s on its own, and so, it sets its own alarms, and they will not be ignored.  Or, maybe it’s simply a factor of aging.  I don’t know.  It frustrates, and it weakens.

And here’s the core problem, I expect.  I don’t really take it to God.  I just try to man my way through, survive long enough to get to bed, and then maybe pray I get sufficient sleep to meet the next day.  And yet, here I am again, up at 3, awake more or less since about 2:30.  Lord, give me strength.  More, give me grace, for I am in short supply under these conditions.  If there are things that need to change to address this ongoing challenge, let me see them clearly, and let me find in You the will to change what needs changing.  If it means stepping away from work and taking a nap, as impossible as that seems, so be it.  If there are other changes that need to be made, again, prod me until I get it.  I can be so stubborn at times.  But I know this:  You can out-stubborn me.  I pray You do so.

The Power of Prayer (10/16/24)

Knowing our Lord is near gives impetus to our prayers.  We pray as those knowing reason to expect answer.  He is near to us, walking with us.  He is in us.  He is experiencing our trials right alongside us.  And this should suffice to have us praying with thanksgiving.  It’s not that we refrain from making our needs known.  No!  Pray for everything!  This is given as a direct contrast to the first part of the verse.  In nothing anxious, in everything praying.  The two are mutually exclusive, and if we will pursue the latter course, in everything praying, then I dare say we shall find the first course well abandoned.  If I have prayed and my Lord is attentive to my prayers, then all cause for anxiousness has gone.  If I understand this reality going in, then my prayers, even if conveying concerns and requests, are offered with thanksgiving not as an added afterthought, but as the mindset in which I express those concerns and requests.

Look closely here.  “With thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”  Now, the theologian in me rises up and says, wait a minute.  God knows everything.  In what way, then, am I making anything known to Him?  Well, technically speaking, you are not.  But you are expressing your knowledge of Him in bringing these things to Him.  You are giving expression to self-awareness, that these things are beyond you, that your need for Him is, as ever, great.  And you are giving expression to reliance on Him who loves you.  This is what leads me to sense that that matter of, “the Lord is near,” applies throughout this passage.  Pray knowing that the Lord is near.  Pray confident that He hears and answers.  Pray recognizing that His answer may not exactly coincide with expectation.  Pray with thanksgiving, knowing that He who is near answers as is best, answers perfectly.

I incline to think that prayer has more to do with God getting our thinking straight than with us telling Him anything.  If we know God as He is, then we must surely recognize that nothing in our prayers is news to Him.  Jesus said as much.  “God knows what you need before you even ask” (Mt 6:8).  Yet, Jesus prayed, didn’t He?  Was it different for Him?  Did He, somehow have the capacity to inform the Father of things as yet unknown?  No, of course not.  God is all-knowing, and that all encompasses all time in all creation on all scales.  Nothing has escaped His knowing.  Nothing in all eternity has, or ever will arise to require that He alter His plans.  Even with Jesus, Who had set aside His prerogatives as God, though He could never set aside His godhead – God cannot cease to be God, being never-changing, needed to pray.  And even for Him, I would maintain, it was far more to do with God strengthening and comforting Him, than with Him making things known to God.

Pray knowing this.  Knowing that God already knows what you’re going through, knew it before you ever started going through it, gives a different understanding to your prayers.  Make your requests known, sure.  Why wouldn’t you?  He is your most trusted confidant.  And You know by now that His love for you is truly unconditional, more so even than the love of your earthly parents.  Can you offend Him?  No doubt.  But He loves you.  He will weather the offense, bring correction, and love you enough to get you on course again.  He wants this relationship healthy.  And He knows that at root, you do, too.  Your just broken right now.  There’s work remains to be done.

But so much is said of late about this faith being more about relationship with God than knowledge of Him.  I would maintain that real relationship cannot be had apart from such knowledge, but the point must be taken that knowledge alone is insufficient.  To gather together all the facts, even to arrive at perfect understanding of everything written in this, God’s Word, achieves nothing in and of itself.  James would insist that it is not the hearer, but the doer who shall be blessed of God (Jas 1:25).  Pastor, in his sermon of this last Sunday, observed that demons are far better theologians than the best of Christians.  They know full well Who God is, and what He requires.  They know His purposes more clearly than do we.  And, as James also observes, they tremble (Jas 2:19).  Many an unbeliever is in the same position.  It’s not so much that they don’t believe.  It’s that they would prefer it were these things not true, and so, they will insistently live as if they were not.  But truth has this nasty habit of overruling our disregard.

Back to the matter of prayer.  If prayer only happens when you’re in it, then you have been short-changing yourself.  You have been cutting yourself off from your own supply lines.  And you wonder why the weakness, why the troubled nights?  Here is the answer to the Psalmists concern.  “Why so downcast, O, my soul?”  Why so disturbed?  Hope in God.  I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence (Ps 42:5).  What to do, for the disturbance is there?  The Psalmist demonstrates the answer.  “O my God!  My soul is in despair, so I bring to mind Who You are.  Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls.  Waves have rolled over me, but the LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime.  His song will be with me in the night, a prayer to the God of my life” (Ps 42:6-8).  What is troubling you?  Bring it to God, but in so doing, bring recognition of God, remembrance of His lovingkindness, to yourself.  Your Rock has not forgotten you.  He is here with you.  He has not abandoned you, but you have, perhaps wandered a bit from Him.  He’s right there.  Go to Him.  Take once more your stand upon the Rock, Christ Jesus.  Talk to Him!  Talk to Him of your troubles.  Talk to Him of your desires.  Talk to Him of the petty noise of your day.  And then, be mindful that prayer is a two-way communications device.  Listen!  Listen for His answer.  He speaks softly.  You will have to concentrate perhaps, still your anxious thoughts a bit, and the clamor of the day ahead which tries to hurry you along before you have heard.  And then, keep listening through the day, through the trial.

Remember.  He knows what you need before you even think to ask.  And He has supplied all you need.  Everything needful for life and godliness is set at your disposal.  If this is not your present experience this morning, perhaps, as James says, you have not because you ask not (Jas 4:2).  That’s no promise to satisfy your every craving.  Continue with his thought there.  “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives” (Jas 4:3).  This isn’t a magic lamp, an ATM card with no limits.  It’s a promise, though, that as you are pursuing God’s course for your life, or seeking to get back to that course, He is sure to answer.  The right prayer of a faithful man achieves much (Jas 5:16).  He calls it the effective prayer, but the effective prayer is effective because it is right.  It is seeking God’s ends, not personal pleasures or personal preferences.

Come back to our letter here.  With thanksgiving let your requests be made known.  Don’t come with doubtful heart.  Or, if you do, let that be the first request.  Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.  Sometimes we need that.  Probably more often than we like.  But pray with confidence that God hears, God answers, and God knows exactly what is needed, and He will do it.

Thank You, Lord!  Oh!  Let this be my confidence.  Bring me to that place, Lord, that I am more inclined to converse with You, even over the minutia of the day.  I become to proud, not wishing to bother you with my petty business.  No, I don’t suppose I need to come to You seeking guidance on every last decision of the day.  You have granted wisdom.  What is the point of it if I am not to exercise it?  But that doesn’t preclude fellowship throughout the day.  That doesn’t preclude stopping now and again to say hi.  Lord, this is my desire, that I might know a richer prayer life, one not so bound up in, “Oh, God, fix my mess,” one more like brotherly conversation, or the fellowship of friends.  I’m not asking for permission to disregard Your high office.  Not in the least.  But I would pray that in my soul and in my practice, I might better recognize the fullness of this fellowship to which You have introduced me.  Let me count You as my dearest friend, my most trusted counselor and confidant, for so You are.  Let my love for You grow stronger, my kinship to You grow clearer, and my loyalty to You grow truer.  Thank You.  I know this is Your desire, and it is mine as well.  So, let it be.  So it shall be.  For I am Yours.  This I know.  And You are ever looking out for my best interests.  Thank You.

Ruled by Peace (10/17/24-10/18/24)

We are still dealing with whatever it was that had caused contention between Euodia and Syntyche, still concerned with living harmoniously together as the body of Christ.  While I break these texts into smaller pieces, I don’t want to lose sight of the setting.  Live in harmony, work together.  Rejoice!  Be fair with all, anxious for nothing, praying for everything.  Live in the nearness of Christ, and keep Him near in thought as He is near in person.  All of this has its natural result in the experience of peace, but not just that peace we might attain to by going along to get along.  No, this is peace as Christ gives peace.

As it happens, this morning’s study began by reading the Amplified Version with its tendency to turn to Thayer for definition, and so, that sense of Messiah’s peace, of a soul assured of salvation ion Christ, fearing nothing from God, and content with the providences of the present are fresh before me, as well as in my notes for this section.  Know who you are in Christ!  This may be even more in view with that interjection that the Lord is near.  He is with you!  He has saved you.  Already.  He has saved all of you.  Even when these sorts of disagreements arise, that hasn’t changed.  You are His.  As the old hymn goes, He walks with you and He talks with you and He tells you that you are His own.  Yes, I’m paraphrasing to bring it over to the second person.

Remember Whose you are and Who He Is.  In times of difficulty, draw upon your knowledge of Him, that He works all things for good to those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.  These troubles don’t disprove Him, and they don’t disprove your calling.  They are being worked for your good.  These brothers and sisters that are maybe a bit harder to get along with are here together with you for your mutual good.  They have something to offer besides annoyance.  You have something to offer besides annoyance.  You both work for Christ, and He is at work in both of you, so deal.  Do more than deal.  Rejoice!  Be fair, both in regard to yourself and in regard to them.  Be fair to all, whether of the body or not yet so or even unlikely ever to be so.  What do you know, after all?  And for all that, what does it matter so far as your own character is concerned?  Are you to be just only to the just?  No.  You are a son of your Father, Who is just towards all, and far more patient with them than we are inclined to be.  He has been just as patient with you.

Consider yourself, who you have been, who you are still.  No, you are not as you were.  But neither are you as you shall be, as you should be.  If we’re measuring worth, let’s use the right standard.  And then, we must yet again come up against the hard cold truth that there is none righteous, and we are not the exception that proves the rule.  But we know Him Who is.  You have been saved by Christ.  If this isn’t settled in your soul, firmly implanted in your conscience and your sense of self, pray that it might be so.  It has often enough been said that if you find you are concerned about your standing, perhaps experiencing a bit of anxiousness as to whether maybe you’ve just been playing games here, and not really come to faith, that’s a sure sign that faith has come to you.  If your sins bother you, that’s good.  They should.  Had the Holy Spirit not come to make His abode in you, they almost certainly wouldn’t matter to you in the least.  You’d be like so many today, proudly displaying your sins and insisting that all around you applaud you for them.

But you’re not like that.  Yes, you have your issues.  Yes, your sin is ever before you.  Good.  If it’s before you, you can see it.  And if you can see it, then you can do something about it.  You can pray with thanksgiving to God who loves you, to God who is your strength.  He has brought this to your attention for a reason, so that you might repent of it, seek Him as to how it might be changed, how you might be changed, and trust Him to work and to supply the work in you in order that you might be more fully in Him.  Pray with thanksgiving!  Pray with the confidence of a son approaching his father for that which he knows his father would approve.  It may cause you a bit of embarrassment, a bit of discomfort, to admit your faults.  But then, He’s already fully aware of them, anyway.  How is it, do you suppose, that they are suddenly present at the forefront of your thoughts?  What?  You thought it was just your own thinking?  No, I tell you, but He has brought awareness precisely in order that He might bring about change.  The clay needed a bit of preparing before it could be fashioned aright, a bit of softening, perhaps, before it would take to its molding.  Hey, be glad you’re not that runnier sort of clay my aunt used to work with, that required pouring into a confining mold, and then baking at high heat.

So, yes, your answer is to pray, and as He answers, to come alongside Him in the doing.  I watch my wife’s approach to matters of repentance, and I must find cause to wonder.  For her, everything is a great struggle, a monumental work to strive towards the goal of change.  But while I certainly see Scripture’s call to set ourselves to the work of sanctification, even in this very letter, yet I am keenly aware of the sense of reliance on God, of resting in God, of trusting Him for the answer rather than my weak flesh that pervades the gospels.  We read last week of Peter’s failure there at the trial of Jesus before the high priest.  He had made the promise of his fidelity.  I will never leave You, not even if it means my death!  And yet, here at the first challenge, he failed, and failed miserably.  His flesh not only failed to uphold his promise, it proved more sinful, so much so that he fled the scene in tears for miserable condition.  That is, I think, ever the way of it when we seek God’s righteousness by main strength.  But when we remember that we already have peace with God, such peace as surpasses all comprehension, as Paul says here, especially when we regard how undeserved it is that we should know it is our present state, it must surely put is in mind that flesh and blood did not bring us to this state, nor is it likely to bring us the rest of the way home.

Pray with thanksgiving because you know this is your story!  I don’t mean that you’ve got the theology down, though I think it well that you do.  I mean, though, that this is your experience of that truth.  You know it because you’ve seen it before, you’ve felt it before, you’ve lived it before.  How often do you find the Scriptures recounting God’s deeds in past times.  Why?  Because He’s still the same.  He still does as He did.  He is still moving mountains, calming seas, bringing life from death.  He did it in you, and He’s not likely to have done so just so He could slap you down harder at some later date.  That’s not Who He Is, and you know it!  He is your Father, not some mad tyrant god such as the heathens devise.  We’re not dealing with the god proposed by Mohammad who might accept you, might destroy you, depends how he’s feeling that day.  He’s not one or the other of those Hindu gods, nor some creature of Norse legend.  He is God.  There is no other.

My wife and I have been reading in the latter part of Isaiah of late, and that message comes over and over again.  Who would you propose to compare Me with, asks God?  Who else do you have that can explain how all that is has come to be as it is?  Who else is able to tell you how things are going to fall out?  I AM has told you.  I AM has set all that is in its place, spun the planets together and set them in their orbits.  He has woven together a universe that still today keeps our greatest scientists and theorists perplexed as to how it functions, let alone why.  He is God.  There is no other.  There are plenty of self-proclaimed gods.  Arguably, in this day and age, there are as many such as there are people alive, for the vast majority, certainly in the West, suppose themselves little gods, reigning unchallenged over their little fiefdoms of self.  Nobody tells me what to do has become the key doctrine for most.  And God sits on high and laughs.  Really?  Who do you think establishes the nations?  Who do you suppose determines their rise and their fall?  Who knit you together in your mother’s womb?  Who decided the day of your birth, and Who has already marked down on His calendar the day of your demise?  Over and over He invites these proud rebels to make their case.  Show your stuff!  I’ve shown Mine.  Come on!  You’re so hot, show Me!

He does not speak from arrogance, nor from wounded pride.  He speaks because it is true, and we have too strong a propensity for chasing after lies and fantasies.  We want our way.  We have just about as long as there has been mankind.  Adam and Eve, it seems, barely lasted the week before they fell, though we really don’t know the scope of time covered in those first few chapters of Genesis.  Certainly, it didn’t take terribly long before they decided they should self-rule.  They didn’t need God, and God couldn’t tell them what to do.  But then, He came for a visit.  Oops.  We messed up, didn’t we?  And we’ve been messing up ever since.  We want God, but we want Him on our terms.  That is at the root of every idol ever devised, and the number of idols we alone have devised is enormous.  But the peace of God surpasses our corruption.

Pray, then, that you might more fully surrender to the Truth.  Pray that you might more completely come to reflect the character of your Father.  Pray for those things that trouble you.  They trouble you for that very purpose, that you might draw nearer to Him who is near.  And we come to the result:  The peace of God, that all-surpassing peace of knowing ourselves safely in His hands, having nothing to fear from Him, only His love, full and unchanging, ever active on our behalf; this shall do what?  It shall guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

Isn’t that a wonderful thing?  God mounts a defense around you.  He sets His peace as a sentry around your thinking, around your feelings.  Are you angry?  Frustrated?  Overdrawn?  Pray!  Pray that He might supply your lack.  Pray that He might set you on the course that brings anger to an end in you.  That may or may not concern altering circumstances.  There’s no promise of that.  But sometimes, most times, it’s not the circumstances that need changing, it’s perspective.  Don’t walk into that circumstance with self-concern to the fore.  Walk into it as God’s representative.  That doesn’t mean arrogant demands of respect.  That doesn’t mean presuming upon privilege.  It might mean acting the peacemaker.  It certainly means, as our passage has said, that we need to show character, and such character as reflects our Father’s work in us.  Rejoice even if they revile.  Be fair to all, even if they are not fair to you.  Be patient amidst the impatience all around you.  Set yourself to be servant to all, as your Lord set Himself to serve all.  He is, after all, our example.

God has set His defenses around your heart and mind.  Isn’t that something?  Isn’t that everything?  Take away heart and mind, and what is left of you?  A bunch of slowly dying flesh.  Everything of self is encompassed there.  You have the heart, the seat of emotion, but also, in Jewish thinking, the seat of reason.  So, understanding, wisdom, desire, it’s all here.  But we have mind as well, which is perhaps best seen as the will in this case.  It reflects, to follow Thayer yet again, what one thinks, and the purposes that result from that thinking.  How does one take every thought and every emotion captive to the will of Christ?  Not by main force, I tell you!  Not by appeal to one’s strength of will.  No!  We take it captive by taking it to Christ.  We take it to Christ by taking it to prayer.  And doing so, “Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”  That’s from the Message, which I will say can be a bit saccharine at times.  But here, my heart responds positively.  Yes!  It is wonderful what happens then.  Yes, prayer does bring us to a greater sense of God’s wholeness, and of our wholeness in Him.

Prayer, rather of necessity, brings us to rest.  I mean, sure, you can toss off a prayer as you’re walking, driving, doing whatever it is you have to do.  But, for my part at least, I find it impossible to pray while working.  My mind and my energies are too fully engaged in the tasks before me.  To pray, to really pray, requires stopping, setting aside the busyness, pushing away thoughts of what needs doing next, or what comes after.  It requires stopping, focusing on this one thing, focusing on this God with Whom we have fellowship.  If we will bring that part of the picture into focus, will it not move us to enter more fully into the fellowship we have?  Does it not all but force us into an awareness of His nearness, His presence with us?  And knowing Him present, knowing the enormity of this privilege we have of just coming by to chat with Him whenever, and knowing that He is attentive to us whenever we do so, does it not encourage in us a corresponding desire to be attentive to Him?

How strongly I feel that surpassing wonder of being not only at peace with God, but enveloped in that peace.  Think about it!  He has done this for me – for me!  He has brought about my salvation, and that, as my experience most thoroughly confirms, when I was not at all looking for rescue.  I was blind to my need, confident in my own inherent goodness, or at least good enough-ness.  I was still intent on my own way.  I wonder, sometimes, if that isn’t still the case.  But He has done it!  He has made peace where there was no ground for peace.  I’m not sure I even recognized myself as being at war, but I was surely resistant, rebelling against the very idea that some invisible sky-dweller had some sort of power over me, some say over my actions or thoughts.  It should probably give me a greater sympathy for those I hear spouting similar views today.

Be that as it may, by God’s choice and in God’s power this has changed, and changed quite thoroughly.  Does that mean this sense of His peace is a constant in my life?  No.  There are times I need reminding.  If this were not the case with us, there would be no need for the repeated command.  If this were not the case with us, these two sisters whom Paul has urged to reconcile would never have had need to do so.  But we have the commands of this passage.  Rejoice!  Be reasonable with all.  Fear nothing.  Pray about everything.  And then, the assurance:  God’s peace, the settled reality that you are in fact welcomed by Him, adopted by Him, family rather than foe, as well as that which flows from knowing this peace – the confidence of His love and His care for you.  These are your condition.  Circumstances may sometimes seem to say otherwise, but the reality has not changed, and circumstances will.  You have peace with God!  You are not objects of His wrath, but of His love!  In spite of who you were, in spite of who you are, God has chosen you, has paid your debt, has made you a child of His own household, and a child in good standing.  That should assuredly produce a sense of peace in us which strikes us with a sense of the unbelievable.  It’s impossible, and yet it is so!  God Almighty has chosen to love me, to take me as I am.  That’s not to say He’s thrilled with my current state of development, but He takes me as I am.  And He is refashioning me, gently, lovingly, skillfully, into what I was supposed to have been all along.

Know this peace is yours!  Get that settled in yourself.  This gives expression in that thankfulness with which we are called to pray.  We aren’t come as beggars when we pray, seeking to cajole a cruel master into some bit of benignity towards us.  We come to our Father who loves us, and well do we know His love.  We may come with a clear sense of our unworthiness, like the prodigal son.  But we don’t come with that same limited hope that he did.  Gee, maybe Dad will at least let be serve as a slave.  No!  We’ve known our Father better than that.  We know His love for us.  And so, bedraggled as we are, humiliated and ashamed as we are, we come knowing that His love is truly unconditional, His welcome as assured in our worst failures as in our greatest victories.  His arms are open, and He waits for us to come to Him.  How patient He is!  How foolish we are to hang back.  Come!  He has established peace, and what He establishes stands.  He has declared His care of you, and what He cares for shall surely be preserved.  So, yes, Let the peace of God rule your hearts (Col 3:15).  This moves us beyond just having experience of His peace.  It’s a call to operate in His peace, to be agents of peace.  As Paul continues in that verse, you were called to this peace as one body!  And, beloved, if the peace of God rules your heart, this must surely result:  Be thankful!  It is the evidence of a heart ruled by His peace.

If you still find yourself challenged to lay hold of this realization of His incomprehensible peace, perhaps hearing from Peter might help.  He writes to remind us that, “You are protected by the power of God for a salvation already prepared, which shall be revealed in the last time” (1Pe 1:5).  Listen up!  He has done it!  You are not here as one seeking to earn your way in.  You are here as one already possessed of that assured outcome.  He has already established His peace with you, and having done so, He is already expending His power to protect you, the apple of His eye.  Take another dose of assurance.  “If God is for us, who can be against us?  He didn’t spare His own Son!  He delivered His own Son over to death for us – for us!  How will He not also freely give us all things with Him?  Who’s going to take us to court before Him?  God Himself justifies us!  Who can condemn?  Christ Jesus, who died, is raised and at the right hand of God, interceding for us.  Who’s going to separate us from His love?”  (Ro 8:31-35).  The passage goes on in its crescendo of assurance.  Remind yourself often. He has done it!  And let these truths, the assurance of His love, the abiding reality of His peace, the exertion of His power on your behalf, settle you, settle every anxious thought, and move you back to thankfulness as you abide in the goodness of His provision.

Guard your hearts and minds in prayerful thanksgiving and communion with the One Who so thoroughly loves you.  Let His responsiveness even as you pray comfort your troubled mind.  Let your eyes be open to the answers that follow after.  Look for His response.  It is there.  It may require setting aside your preconceived notions of His answer, but answer there shall be.  And it shall be most assuredly for your good.  It shall be for your good even if it proves uncomfortable, even in the extreme.  Just consider the course that has led Paul to be where he is as he writes this epistle.  Nothing about that journey has looked good and pleasant, has it?  There have been years of delay, spent imprisoned and deprived of the liberty to be out and about in the work of the Lord.  There have been perils beyond the experience of most, near-death experiences one after another.  And now?  He lives in the future uncertain, confident in God, to be sure, but without hard assurance as to what shall come of this trial that has brought him to Rome.  His one assurance, as I was reminded yet again in this morning’s Table Talk, was that God intended for him to declare the gospel in Rome, and here he is, doing just that.  It wasn’t how he’d imagined it would be.  It wasn’t the course to getting there that he would have chosen.  But then, his chosen course would have been unlikely to gain him audience in the very household of the emperor, would it?  God had better plans, however challenging they were to endure.  And it is clear from this epistle that indeed, what Paul commands of the Colossians is but his own abiding state.  He is one ruled by the peace of God.  Let us be likewise.

Checkup (10/18/24)

Okay.  I have charged up with some glorious contemplations, particularly of this peace which is mine in God.  And yet, I am also keenly aware of just how fragile my recognition of that peace, my abiding in that peace can be.  How readily I can be provoked into agitated determination.  How easily I can shift into feeling like I’m hanging on by my teeth against the gravitational pull of a thousand earths.  I look at those with dispositions such as these Philippians appear to have in wonder.  Think about it.  What do you know of them?  Apart from whatever minor disturbance had caused some grief between these two sisters, pretty much all we know of these believers is a clear sense of their joyful commitment.  And a very ready commitment it was, too.  Think of that first encounter.  Paul meets a few of the womenfolk out by the river praying, and Lydia is immediately so filled with the peace that comes of salvation that she invites the whole team to take up residence at her place.

I can think of many places today where such an act would be scandalous in the extreme.  She did what?  With how many men?  And all of them strangers to her?  What sort of woman could she be, who would do such a thing?  Well, the answer is that she was a gracious, thankful, newfound sister, and these she welcomed were no longer strangers, but kin.  Amazing, isn’t it?  And then, with Paul beaten and left for dead, recovered and off to the next town along with his team, what do they do?  Do they simply get on with life?  Even a life now changed by grace?  No!  They’re keeping tabs on his progress, staying in contact, learning of his situation, and then – wonder of wonders – they’re undertaking to do everything they can to cover his needs.  Even as he now sits imprisoned in Rome, this hasn’t changed.  Well, for one thing, Paul’s commitment to the furtherance of the gospel hasn’t changed.  He may be housebound, but he isn’t bound from declaring the truth of God.  Even if it’s only to his guards, still he can make the goodness of God known, and he does.  And still, these good people are doing all that’s in their power to further his cause, to see to his need so that he can see to his preaching.

And in all this, there is no sense of grumbling acceptance of the necessity of their actions.  It’s not as it might be for some of us when the church makes known yet another thing for which they seek our funding.  What?  Another trip to foreign places?  Why can’t we spend that money on local needs?  We have plenty around us who need to hear the gospel, who need help in their situations.  Quite true.  And we are acting on those fronts, too, aren’t we?  Indeed, you can go to them, help them.  As you observe, they are close at hand, and there is little enough expense involved other than time.  So good!  You see the need, perhaps you are perceiving as well a call to your own actions.  But I digress, don’t I?   When the call comes to give, whether it be of time, of money, of effort, of comfort, how do we respond?  Do we have this same joyful participation that we see in the Philippians?  Are we just thrilled to be a part of what God is doing?  We should be.

You know, as I type that question, I can’t help but envision a dog, perhaps a lab, perhaps pastor’s happy boy German Shepherd, Isco (or however it’s spelled).  Honestly, I have difficulty recalling the name, unless I hear it as East Coast, and then just drop a few letters.  He shall always, I suspect, be East Coast to me, as he came to abide with us awhile as pastor and his family made their way to the East Coast.  But to my point.  Here was a dog who was just happy to be part of whatever you happened to be doing, wanted very much to be part of whatever you were doing.  And honestly, if what you happened to be doing did not involve him in some way, he would seek to get you to do something else which he could be part of.  Come on!  Let’s do something together!  There is such a simplicity to that, such an expression of love.  Now, I’m sure there will be somebody to point out that dogs don’t really love, that we are anthropomorphizing them to suppose such a thing.  It’s just that you are the leader, and they the minion.  But then, I’ve known many a dog in this neighborhood alone who have no reason to account me their leader, nor even, really part of their pack.  I’m an occasional feature, and nothing more.  Yet, there is that same longing for shared experience evident.

All of that to come back to our self-check.  Have I got that same sense of eagerness to be together with God in what He is doing, to welcome His scritch on the nape of my neck, as it were?  Am I just glad to be with Him, whatever it is we’re up to?  Am I ready to just jump in, whatever He says to do?  And look at these commands yet again!  Rejoice!  Be thankful!  Be at peace.  Show My character to all.  Well, then, how do I measure up?  To take my old friend’s favorite response to most every question that ever arose in our work together, “It depends.”

There are times, to be sure, when I know that sense of rejoicing, though I would have to say that with me, it is far more often that sense of calm delight that Strong gives as definition for the term than the happy, happy, joy, joy aspect that I sometimes see in others.  Am I right to remain so calm in my delights?  I don’t know.  I’m quiet by nature, though it wasn’t always so.  Call it the intensity of participation, a propensity to be so caught up in listening at concerts as to remain still and quiet, not unappreciative by any means, but still, intent.  Or, call it the side-effect of years spent bootlegging those shows, and not wanting to spoil my tape by noisy participation.  Or, call it a carefully crafted and maintained coolness.  But it is who I am, and likely who I shall be until and unless God sees fit to crash me over to a new course.

Am I fair with all?  I try.  I’m not sure I could pass a test of my internal thought life in that regard, but I seek to be considerate, thoughtful, helpful to those I deal with.  My wife probably gets the worst of that, because she tends to get me in my exhaustion rather than at my best, and that galls me.  It is not as it should be by any stretch.  But I try, and perhaps at times I try too hard, resulting in my own sense of being put upon rather than a sense of joyful commitment.  God, I would cherish Your help in this.  Grant the grace in me to love as I should.  You’ve been working that change in me at work, I know.  I have felt the shift, and I hope it continues.  But I need it here in the house as well, perhaps even more so.  You know, after all, how various practices can rub me the wrong way.  But then, it’s not about me, is it?  It’s about You, and if You are pleased by these things, though I can’t see it, so be it.  For all that, if You are displeased by my own approaches and practices, then let me be receptive to Your correction that I might indeed be more like You, and more pleasing to You.

What of anxiousness?  I need only think back to that time I dropped my glasses up on the top of a mountain.  You want anxious?  Oh!  I was shattered.  All is lost!  How shall I even make it down the trail?  Aah!  Thank God I had a prayerful wife by my side.  You’d think I might learn.  But no.  I can still be anxious about things, and more so the nearer they come to my own experience.  I mean, there’s a level of concern, certainly, as I watch hurricane season unfold and know my daughter is right there in the alley, living in the fragile accommodations of a drydocked boat.  But there’s a whole different level of anxiousness when things get personal, when it’s a matter of my own situation.  It’s bound to be.  I see where my wife is at healthwise, and I know all too well her stubborn reticence when it comes to dealing with doctors.  And I know that this long trip to Africa is on the horizon.  What’s going to happen with her?  And what would I do should harm befall her?  Oy.  Who’s going to plow the driveway should snows fall?  Who’s going to deal with getting somebody to handle the leaves if they don’t fall soon enough?  How are we going to manage moving all the luggage and whatnot that are necessary for this trip, and how to navigate the various boundary crossings?  So many worries.  So much to be anxious about.  Well, we have the answer, yes?

Lord, know my anxious thoughts.  I mean, You already do.  Even if I hadn’t just typed some of them out, You would know.  And I know that You have all of these things well in hand.  And yet, they occupy too much of my thinking, cause too much of anxiousness.  And I could add concerns as to what business I have even being part of this trip.  Who am I to be telling these folks anything?  Most of them likely have a faith far surpassing my own.  But I know You have given me something to share, and something for which I have somewhat of a passion.  And I know, for You have done it before, that You will indeed give me to speak as I should speak, to have the right lesson for the right time and place.  You are amazing.  How often do I stop in wonder at how You have arranged even the simple things like these intersecting bits of study and reading?  How often have I seen You working around me, in me, through me?  It may have been a quiet season of late, but that could be down to most anything, whether my tendency for procrastination, or sleeplessness, or maybe Your own intention that I rest just a bit.  I don’t know.  But You do.  You know my every thought, my every desire, my every need.  And You are already on it, already there providing the means, the power, the words.  Thank You!  Thank You that in all these areas where I see need to improve, You are the power to do so.  I come to the prayer I had at the start.  May it be that this passage describes me better every day, and I know it may be, for You are here.  You are here, and my heart is overjoyed to know it.  Thank You.