Why do we falter?

O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
(Psalm 139:1-18 ESV)

God knows us. Scary as that is it should also be the most comforting statement ever made!

Scary that God knows us because He knows what we will say and do before you do it. And He loves us enough to let us make those stupid mistakes. Have you ever done that as a parent, told your kid not to do something and then stand back and watch as they did the thing you just advised them not to… They learned a lesson didn’t they. Well sometime we get it and sometimes we don’t, but He allows us the freedom to be who we are and He still loves us.

And God’s knows us is a comforting statement because He knows what is going to happen and has our life in view. He knows what He needs for us to do and works in and through our lives and the loves of those around us to will His plan for the world. There is nothing that happens that He does not know about. It is like the song from Casting Crowns Already There. One day we will stand with God and look back over the dvr version or Tivo of our life. But God has already seen it, because He is already at the end of our lives waiting on us to get there with Him.

SO why is it that we are so hung up on making sure the decision is right before we move and do what we feel God is calling us to do? Why do we want the road map laid out in front of us. We need to know every bump and turn so we can be prepared.

Well you know what?

We do not need to be prepared because God already is. He has the plan, we need to trust and have faith. We need to trust that the God who created us, who knows everything we will say and do before it happens, but loves us anyway, will be there to guide us on our paths.

Below is a song from David Wilcox called Hold it up to the Light. It is one of my all time favorite songs, and I listen to it when I have a big decision to make. I prefer the live version off of his album Live Songs and Stories. There David interjects the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. Two roads diverge in the woods and sorry I couldn’t travel both, but the choice is not between 2 it is actually 4 different things that we could choose. We can go left, or right, or turn around and go back where we came from, or stay right where we are. But no matter what choice we make, we have to make a choice, and our life will be what it is because of that choice, and whether it is the right choice for the plan that God had is something we might see when we rewatch our life, or it may just flow like a wonderfully orchestrated mess. No matter where we are and if you have a major decision or a minor one, step out in faith, knowing that God is there with you, and He will never let you fall.

Why are the easy things so hard?

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the LORD had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman went in and told his lord, “Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel.” And the king of Syria said, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.”
So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” And when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider, and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me.”
But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king, saying, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha’s house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage. But his servants came near and said to him, “My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. (2 Kings 5:1-14 ESV)

Did someone ever tell you to do something easy to take care of a problem you had? You thought to yourself, that is just to simple, that will never work. Or that is silly, I could do this or this because that makes a lot more sense.

We are easy to jump in and do the hard thing, but when it is the easy thing that is before us we get upset and wonder why it has to be this way.

Or we do not like that we have to deal with the secretary, or the physicians assistant. Doesn’t the doctor know who I am? She should be coming out here and greeting me personally and offering me a drink while I wait. We think we are all that and a cupcake… We build ourselves up and expect everyone else to bow down to us. But that is not how it works, and sometimes the easy thing, or the thing we don’t want to do is the thing that has to be done.

How much quicker would Naaman had done what he was told to do if it was harder than washing in the river? And how much sooner would he have been washing if it had been a river from his own land? But the prophet gave him instructions and he bulked. He, like us, did not expect the easy answer and thought that will never work. But the thing we forget is where the message comes from…

The prophet does not speak for them self, they speak for God. So the easy answer comes from God. So who are we really to question God. He created all of this in the first place, so if it is that easy, it is that easy…

So go and do the easy thing, trusting in God who loves you and wants the best for you.

self centered…

Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded (James 3:13-4:8 ESV)

Why do you do the things you do?

The Gospel text for this Sunday was from Mark 9:30-37 and in it the disciples are arguing along the way about who is the greatest. We get hung up on who is the best, the coolest. Who does the best ministry or has the biggest congregation. But the real test of a ministry is the disciples being created, and the lives being touched with the message of the gospel. Yes numbers may show you have the most people, but are they being touched by the message and in relationship with Jesus? If not, then the numbers don’t matter.

Our personal gain is not what any of this is about. God builds up ministries that are seeking out His mission and ministry. He builds up communities that are discipling each other and those who don’t belong in relationships with Jesus.

So why do you do the ministry you do, for personal gain? To feed your self centered ways?

True ministry is done out of selfless love, for the needs of the other to learn more about Jesus…

What will happen because of your idol…

And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. And the people of Israel did secretly against the LORD their God things that were not right. They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree, and there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the LORD carried away before them. And they did wicked things, provoking the LORD to anger, and they served idols, of which the LORD had said to them, “You shall not do this.” Yet the LORD warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the Law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets.”
But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the LORD their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they should not do like them. And they abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves; and they made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger. Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only. (2 Kings 17:7-18 ESV)

American Idol is all the rage, right? OK maybe i’m a few years behind, but that is the way it goes, always late on uptake and just now got a really nice pair of bell bottoms! (kidding…)

But we look for those we can idolize. Our kids look up to musicians, and sports stars, and really when you look at who they are modeling their lives after is there anything there to be modeled that is worthy of modeling?

You see in our reading for today, the Israelites are exiled because of their idolatry. Well that was them and I don’t have any idols…

Well I disagree. We all have idols. Some of us idolize our cars, or our houses, or our families. Yes it is possible for your family to be an idol that draws you from God. God has to be the first thing in your life. He demands your  attention. He is very jealous and wants us to love Him before all other things. “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the Law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets.” He has given us a way to love Him and shown us how to do this through the prophets.

So seek out your idol, and don’t get rid of it, just make sure that it is in it’s proper place. God is first, then all other things will fall into place. But make sure your life is based on the idol that should be your idol – God.