Selective Listening ...

Over the course of my career, I have discovered a phenomenon thru email I would have never imagined.  I have written a great many notes, with a certain intent, as far as I could determine clear direction, and nearly universally with a positive attitude and pleasant demeanor.  But, the readers of my correspondence had reactions I could have never predicted.  What I failed to recognize, is that while I may have been writing a note in a great mood, using light humor, and just thinking to myself how wonderful the sunshine is – my reader may not be reading my note in that same frame of mind.  For the reader, everything that day that could go wrong has gone wrong.  Problems at home having nothing to do with work.  Problems with the car getting to work.  And now, the aggravation of having to read some note, from some guy who is not getting to the point fast enough.  So my email recipient reads from an angry or frustrated point of view, which may have nothing to do with what I am saying, but having everything to do with how they read it, and often with what they read.  What my reader then takes from the note, is whatever they want to take from it.  Hearing what we want to hear, is what is called selective listening.

Most of us have done this at some point or another.  We are listening to someone talk to us about some subject or another, and we just seem to tune out.  We hear a few things, but rarely everything.  And we decide how we may feel about it, based on a number of factors, most of which have little to do with the content being shared.  Attitude plays a major role.  If you talk to me when I am consumed with anger, very few of your words are likely to get through.  It does not matter that something entirely different has made me mad (nothing to do with you), the problem is, when I am mad, I listen carefully a lot less.  The same holds true for being very excited, pleasantly or not.  What I failed to realize in an office setting is that this same phenomenon holds true whether in person to person talking, or person to person writing.  Of course none of try to do this, but we seem to just wind up there from time to time.  And hearing only some of what gets said, can leave out very important things.  Things that could change the meaning of what was said, or what is needed entirely.

Should you try to read the Bible with this kind of distraction, it can get ugly quick.  If you are like me, I have to read the same text over and over and over again in order to get back to some form of what it was truly trying to say.  I have to get “me” out of the way before scripture starts to make sense again.  And if you really want to have the Bible make sense, try reading it through the lens of Jesus Christ.  Look at how Jesus lived, how Jesus loved, how Jesus did so much for the benefit of others, and nothing for Himself.  And through that lens, entire stories, or commandments, start to look a lot different.  It may be impossible to get those pre-existing distractions completely out of the way before you start reading.  Perhaps the best remedy for that is a prayer, and a request for the Holy Spirit to get all that baggage out of the picture, and allow you to see what was written clearer, to get the message Jesus intends for you to get today.  And no, I do not believe it is selective listening to get a message intended for today from scripture, followed by getting a different one tomorrow, I call that growth, and being led.

But when we are determined to get what we want to get out of a conversation, or letter, we will do exactly that.  Even if others do not share our vision, and when they look objectively at the same conversation or letter as we do, they see things entirely differently, probably more truthfully.  But a preconception colors the outcome.  And when the preconceptions are dipped in evil, evil is the only path we have left open to us.  As an example, if I decide I want to kill my enemy for what I believe they have done to me.  I can read scripture and find texts and stories that will seem to support my desired actions.  Eye for an eye.  Eternal consequences.  Killing for God that is either ordered or seems justified.  If you come at this with a preconceived evil intent.  You will find your preconceptions validated (at least in your own mind).  And no amount of objective logic will ever turn you away.  The leaders of God’s own church fell victim to this.  They fell so hard, they wanted to kill God, rather than listen to Him.  They made a choice not to believe, and so believe they did not.

Luke tells us about a case of selective listening with the worst of evil intentions, in a group of religious leaders who should have been the farthest from that phenomenon that is possible to be.  Perhaps like we should be.  People of faith who should know better.  People with the right Bible who read it all the time who should know better.  People who were physically close to God, in the Temple back then, in His flesh back then, and in His Spirit today.  But despite all this, these religious leaders sought evil, and used evil to justify the killing of God, in order to preserve the name of God.  They would stamp out the life of Christ for the blasphemy they were committing.  It was twisted irony.  And it was this group of people to show Jesus we were not worth saving anyway.  Even the best of us, were so easily twisted to be this evil.  Even the folks with the most learning would do this.

Luke starts our case study in chapter 22 of his letter to his friend about what we believe and why, it picks up at the end of the chapter in verse 66 saying … “And as soon as it was day, the elders of the people and the chief priests and the scribes came together, and led him into their council, saying, [verse 67] Art thou the Christ? tell us …”  The trauma had started Thursday evening.  They found Jesus coming out of the Garden of Gethsemane late Thursday night, bleeding from His sweat, tired, exhausted, as if He had already been through World War 3.  He had.  He wrestled with His humanity, struggling with whether He could go through with it all.  And worst of all completely isolated from His Father while He carried the weight of all our sins.  It was at His weakest that Judas comes up with the betraying kiss, and soldiers grab Him taking Him away in the night.  It is daybreak now.  The soldiers have been mocking Jesus, and smacking Him around as if He were not already down and out.  Jesus is to be taken before a select council, no sympathizers of Jesus would be invited to this shindig.  This is a kangaroo court with a specific outcome already predetermined in the minds of the participants.

The question they ask Him is not about His answer, it is only about using His words to give them the justification they need to put Him to death.  They are listening to condemn Him, not to converse with Him.  Continuing in verse 67 Jesus answers saying … “… And he said unto them, If I tell you, ye will not believe: [verse 68] And if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go.”  Jesus points out they are not really looking to know the answer to their question, for it is not a question, it is an accusation.  And Jesus further points out the ultimate destination of this supposed court will end in no other way than His own death, for it is only for that reason they are all assembled.  No one is looking for true justice.  Everyone there is looking for death, His death.  No argument will do it.  Nothing He can say.  They will not let Jesus go, they want Him dead no matter what.  But through all of this Jesus will not refuse to speak truth to them, even if it is the last thing He may ever say to them.

Jesus continues His response in verse 69 saying … “Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God.”  This answer is a little tricky.  Jesus has prophesied about where the “Son of Man” will be seen or found.  He gives no timeline for it.  Other versions imply these men will see this upcoming event.  But the statement is a statement of fact.  And to associate Jesus as being the Son of Man, you would have to accept that in order to condemn Him for His answer.  But that would mean you believe Jesus is the Son of Man and therefore the Christ.  Jesus has not said that He was the Son of Man in this answer, only that in the future this is where the Son of Man will be found.  Then there is the dangerous part of this sentence of Jesus.  The right hand of the power of God, implies there will be no power that Jesus is restricted from having.  To condemn Him may bring with it, a war against a power, they have no chance at winning.  It may even be a self-death-sentence they are truly passing.  But to see this, or hear this, they would have to be of mind to listen to His words.  They were only listening for one thing.

Luke continues in verse 70 saying … “Then said they all, Art thou then the Son of God? And he said unto them, Ye say that I am. [verse 71] And they said, What need we any further witness? for we ourselves have heard of his own mouth.”  Selective listening.  Jesus says and I am quoting - “you” say that I am.  Talk about poking the bear.  Jesus essentially repeats the idea that they are angry enough to kill Him because deep down they know He really is the Son of God, but they refuse to accept it.  Jesus still did not actually state that He was the Son of God.  As pointed out earlier what good would it have done.  They would not have accepted it or believed it, just because He said it.  So those bent on His death now attempt to use words He said to make that happen.  What difference does it make that He may not have actually given them what they were looking for.  Other versions describe a great deal of frustration during this purported trial as previous witnesses would disagree with each other making it impossible to convict Him.  But Luke does not discuss that.  He zeroes in on how those bent on evil will find a way to do evil, no matter what is said or how it is said.

But I ask once again, are we any different.  We may not have been present at the sham trial to convict our Lord, but do we still read the scriptures with intent, with preconceptions, with a notion to do what we want to do instead of what Jesus would actually ask.  Do we ignore the life and ministry of Jesus, in order to create and promote a judgmentally based religion that makes me feel holy because you are less holy?  That makes me feel better about my sins, because I know your sins are worse?  Do we scorn and avoid forgiveness of each other while still craving the forgiveness of God?  People do sin against us.  It happens.  That is why they need forgiveness, and why we need to offer it.  To choose not to, because we are still mad or hurt about what they did, is to put chains on our own experience instead of embracing the freedom Jesus longs to offer us in the form of forgiveness itself.  What slight, what sin, what hurt, is worth throwing away your own life because of what someone else did to you?  And worse to take up a course of vengeance masquerading as justice, and try to use the Bible to justify what you want to do, is to become a member of that ancient Sanhedrin, a guest of honor at the murder of Jesus.  I would rather instead be uninvited to an event like that, wouldn’t you?  Better to forgive.  Better to read with a mind to be led.  Better to let go any preconception, and allow the Holy Spirit room to show you something new.

 

The Will of God ...

Is your life random, or is it the will of God?  Is your behavior self-determined, or do you follow the will of God?  And what of your circumstances.  Do you find yourself where you are because you follow the will of God; or because you have chosen to follow your own path, what you have believed will make you happy, or what you believed was what you “had” to do.  When most of us hear of someone who claims to know the will of God, we are immediately skeptical, and so we should be.  People who claim to know the will of God, usually do not live or love in such a way they would be easy to believe.  Very often the messages are critical and almost always intended for others (never a look in the mirror).  In addition, most of these same messages are punitive in nature; a sort of “do this or else” presentation.  It lines up with Old Testament thinking, if how you perceive God is a God who loves to punish in the first place.  But just take a second look at all those Old Testament “promises” once again.  Yes, I used the word promises, because they are each one a promise.  They all began with what is possible for those who follow God.  They each one describe the cause and effect of the submission of our own will and ideas to those of God.  The will of God in these cases always begins with a promise of better life.

It is the choice of self-determination that leads us away from the will of God, and inevitably towards the dark side of the cause and effect of each one of those same Old Testament promises.  Our will changes the promises of God into the curse of our own determination.  It is not God who punishes us for straying from His will.  It is we who punish ourselves by the same.  Human leadership turns out to be not one of freedom but one of slavery to self, with the inevitable cause and effect of degradation leading to ever lower standards of misery for ourselves and others.  This is not a threat.  It is a revelation.  It is a revealing of truth.  Our God would not have us ignorant of the differences between His ways, and the ways of self-determination.  He knows where His ways lead.  And painfully, He also knows where the end of our roads would take us to without a change in direction back towards Him.  God does not tell us of the misery we are destined to face without Him, because He is being punitive.  He tells us so that we might be redeemed from what we would otherwise face.  He loves us.  He does not want us to suffer and die.  He knows we can avoid it if we will turn from our own ways, back to his ways.  It nets down to following God leads towards life.  Following our own ideas leads towards death and suffering.  So has God changed between the Old and New Testaments?  Or have we been reading the Old Testament with bad images of who God is, and only reading the New Testaments with Jesus filtered images of who God is?

Luke offers his friend Theophilus a glimpse of this dichotomy in his gospel letter, in the sixth chapter.  Whenever we might ask, what the will of God is for our lives.  Luke presents an answer picking up in verse 12 saying … “And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.”  It is SO EASY, to simply skip over this text and proceed to what comes next, as if what comes next happens by accident, or luck, or happenstance.  It does not.  At least it does not for Jesus.  What happens next can ONLY happen, because Jesus begins here, with a submission of His own will to that of His Father God.  Jesus does not just offer a ten second prayer in a rush to be somewhere else.  Instead Jesus is thoughtful about this.  He waits till nighttime, when most of us humans have already found the need for sleep overwhelming.  Jesus feels that need too.  But Jesus needs one-on-one time with His Father God.  He loves us too much to turn us away for it.  So He waits till we are gone to bed, and He separates Himself away up into a solitary mountain where He will not be disturbed.  There He will have the privacy He needs to pour His heart out to God and seek the will of God in how to move forward.

It takes all night.  Imagine that.  Even for Jesus to sort out the next day’s plan, it takes Him all night with God.  And while Jesus feels the pull of sleep, He feels greater the need to talk with God, and to let God talk to Him.  Jesus is in full submission, as we should be.  Jesus makes this a regular thing, as we should too.  Jesus did NOT follow what He thought was best; He ONLY followed what God told Him to do.  So what happens next is not random.  It is the will of God.  It is expressed by God to Jesus in one of those all night prayer sessions on some lonely mountain.  It is expressed to Jesus when others are sound asleep.  It may sound like sacrifice to us, but to Jesus this kind of communication was oxygen.  Talking with God, spending a long time with God, was a bigger need to Him than anything other than loving us.  It is why you see Jesus doing this at night, on mountains, in the only alone time He gets.  And imagine that.  Communication with God can be even more rewarding and energizing than sleep itself.  We could make this discovery as well, if we ever tested it.  But most of us pray in the down times, when we are alone, in our cars on the way to somewhere.  Or in the bathroom while we are otherwise detained.  We pray in the middle of our lives, when nothing else is clambering for our attention.  This is one of the chief reasons the devil keeps us “so occupied” with distractions.  Our spare time is so little, our focused times so few, and between sleep and prayer, sleep nearly always wins.

Nevertheless, what happens next is not random, it is the expressed will of God.  Let that sink in for a moment.  Luke continues picking up in verse 13 saying … “And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles; [verse 14] Simon, (whom he also named Peter,) and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, [verse 15] Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called Zelotes, [verse 16] And Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor.”  These were imperfect men.  None of them were preachers.  Most of them uneducated.  None too wealthy.  This choice was not random.  These men were not picked randomly.  They were willing.  They followed.  And now God the Father reveals to His Son to gather them all together and make this fellowship more official.  They are to know they have all been called of God to fulfill the will of God.  This is a high honor.  This is not a threat.  This is also a promise.  They will lead better lives, better because what is inside of them will be changed for the better.  They will have the joy of fellowship in service, the joy of pointing other lives to Jesus.  Even though NONE of them are prepared for that honor right now.  And all of them will fail at one point or another as their lives progress.  It is hard to keep human will in submission.

And to show where the mind of God is with respect to punishment or redemption – Judas is chosen by God Himself.  NOT to be the traitor, but for the chance he will abandon that idea and become the zealot for Christ, instead of attempting to force Christ to become the king Judas wants Jesus to become.  Judas is to share in every single opportunity, not out of a sense of fairness, but out of a deep abiding love to save Judas from himself.  The will of God is that Judas be an honored disciple.  The will of Judas made him a traitor to that.  God could not force Judas to abandon his own will, but He could so reveal to Judas what He had in mind for Him.  God made Judas a part of everything.  He loved Judas.  God left no stone unturned where it comes to the redemption of Judas.  He yearns to have Judas be redeemed, and save Judas from the act that will so darken him that he commits suicide rather than face his guilt.  The salvation of Judas is not known.  He may still be your neighbor in heaven.  But the pain of Judas was surely known.  God wanted to spare Judas this.  But the will of Judas to decide what God needed to do, was stronger than Judas’ willingness to put aside his own ideas.  And so the pain Judas would bring upon himself, would still come, undeterred by this honor, and the expressed will of God Himself, the promise Judas would partake of as well with all the others.

What happens next is not random.  What happens next is not happenstance or luck or “intentions”.  What happens next is the expressed will of God.  Luke continues in verse 17 saying … “And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; [verse 18] And they that were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed. [verse 19] And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all.”  A great sermon will be preached.  But it is not started, until the needs of the people are met.  Our God loves us.  The revelation of truth is coming.  But He would not have us sit in misery while we hear it.  He would have us redeemed and restored as much as we want first.  We would do well to alter our ideas of church service in this regard.  What if we changed “going to church” into taking action for our brothers and sisters in need first.  Meet those needs as best we can, BEFORE we begin any kind of formal service where great sermons will be preached.  It is what Jesus did.  For those who claim to “follow” Jesus, do we also claim to have better ideas about the priorities of our days?

They were all healed.  Would that our faith was so great that our congregations looked exactly the same as this one did, and for the same reason.  Luke continues with perhaps the greatest sermon ever preached picking up his highlights in verse 20 saying … “And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. [verse 21] Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. [verse 22] Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. [verse 23] Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.”  Here is the promise of God revealed.  Jesus tells us that while life and the devil may try to bring us pain, through God we can look past the pain into the blessing God yearns to bring.  This is about changing how we think, and how we love.  It is about internal reformation.  It is about internal re-creation by the Creator of the Universe.  When sin slams against us, look past it, to the blessings of God interacting in your life.  It is a promise of hope even in the darkest times, and under the darkest conditions.  And most of these slights listed above would come from church leadership over those who truly follow Jesus Christ instead of what the church leaders would proscribe.

This is not a promise of wealth.  Many of the promises of the Old Testament sound like promises of wealth.  The gifts of God had been misinterpreted as signs of His favor, instead of signs of His love.  It is what goes on inside that matters more than what is happening outside.  Jesus tries to bring the people to this new revelation.  And in this, the New Testament promise looks much different than the Old but not how we would expect.  Luke continues in verse 24 saying … “But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. [verse 25] Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. [verse 26] Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.”  And there is the entire Old Testament brought back into clarity by God.  Wealth was never the goal.  Alignment with the will of God is.  Being rich or poor is not a sign of the favor or displeasure of God.  God love both sets of people.  But being rich is a burden, because most of us who become rich learn to love money and the ease that comes with it, more than we love God who has entirely different priorities.  Being rich offers the illusion of being self-reliant.  Being poor forces the dependence on God all of us should have, whether rich or poor.  It is this false trust in wealth that leads to the destruction of the soul.  And so many in church in good standing believe themselves to be in alignment with God because they are in church in good standing.  That was never the measure, and it never will be.

How many people in church who are “well to do” ever seem to be those who give of themselves to those in need.  They give funds.  But time and personal care are far more rare.  Love rarer still.  And for those outside the church.  The rich man says, I built this, this is mine, I did all this by the sweat of my brow and my hard work.  The rich man resents the poor for being poor, blaming them for being too lazy to pull themselves out of their poverty by their own hard work and invention.  These are signs.  These are signs of the heart.  The heart that does not break for the poor, is more aligned with funds, than with giving.  The heart that sees the suffering and can still refuse to give everything away to try to meet that need – is what we call “normal”.  There is always someone more wealthy than you are.  There is always someone poorer too.  What happens in your heart is what matters, not how many zeros follow the number in your bank account, or credit debt.  The will of God was to reveal this truth to us, through the words of Jesus Himself.

It is the focus on the heart that matters.  Re-creation of your heart happens in direct proportion to your willingness to submit your will to that of Jesus Christ.  As you retain your own ideas, your heart remains callous to the needs of others.  As you let go what you think in favor of how He loves, you have a harder and harder time holding on to what is “yours” and a easier and easier time letting it go to try to help anyone you encounter who is suffering and in need.  Not just sharing; but letting go.  Treasure is what you believe it to be.  Treasure could very well be what is in your bank account.  Or Treasure could very well be the lives of your children, the lives of your family or community, even your own soul.  How you think about that is a function of how much you submit yourself to Christ.

The will of God has always been a promise to you.  The promise was to make your heart so much better than it is today.  Following His will sees this done in action.  Keeping to your own ideas always ends in tragedy.  This is not the fault of God.  But it is the absolute truth of cause and effect.  In a bit of irony, it seems to me that looking back at the Old Testament promises we might like them better.  They have an appeal to our wealth quotient.  This New Testament promise recognizes the pain of sin, and promises only a better heart, not a better wallet.  God has not changed.  But it is ironic we have read those Old Testament promises as threats of disobedience all along.  When we fully ignore the conditions of this New Testament promise because they mirror us too closely.  Is it any wonder our God is so intent to save us from ourselves?  To save us, is indeed the will of God.

 

An Atheist's Anthem ...

 “If I only saw a sign, I would believe.”  This is a familiar chorus I have heard from nearly every non-believer I have encountered.  Sadly, it is also a familiar refrain I have heard from many Christians.  We look for the impossible to validate a faith that does not make any sense.  We ask to see the impossible for ourselves, unwilling to take the words or testimony of others on this account.  It needs to be personal.  It needs to be tangible.  Or else, how could I believe?  And in this we destroy our journey-of-faith and wish for certainty in its place.  But be honest, how could you ever be certain, of the impossible?  Even if you witness a single incident of it, will one witness be enough to believe in all the others, and for the rest of your life?  So if you must witness more than one incident, how many will be enough?  All of them?  Would it really take time travel to finally make us believe that what is recorded in scripture was real?  If you are looking here, you are cheating yourself.  There is another venue, and something a lot more personal for each of us.

To begin, certainty is not the goal.  If I asked you to trust me, how would you go about it?  You might evaluate our interactions, our history together.  You might conclude that if my behavior was always in line with your expectations, that you could extend trust to me, and then see what happens.  But therein lies the catch.  No matter how I have behaved with you in the past, no matter how consistent our history may be, each time you extend trust to me, you take a risk.  If past is prologue, then you may believe the risk to be low.  But that “belief” is still a “belief” you hold about my trustworthiness, based on a myriad of factors, but none the less a “belief” that I will not let you down.  This is how trust works. 

You may trust your mom for example, because your mom has demonstrated that she loves you.  Even if she screws up, she still loves you, though her mistake proves her human.  You may even elect to extend trust to her again after a huge mistake, because there has been only one (or few you know about), and generally she does not make them.  But even with mom (mistakes or no), every time you extend trust, you hold a “belief” that it is worth it, to trust her.  Certainty is impossible.  Because you cannot absolutely predict what anyone else (including God) may do, or why they do it.  In the end, you have ideas about it, guesses about it, even educated guesses about it.  But behavior is a tricky thing to absolutely predict, and so people surprise us sometimes (for better or for worse).  To trust anyone, is to embrace “belief”, at the exclusion of absolute certainty.

But where God is concerned, it is more blame that goes around, than trust.  That has directly to do with our picture of “who or what” God is.  The media, our parents, our church, our friends, our professors, may have all played a role in forming an image in your mind about who God is.  Suffice it to say, it boils down to one of 2 main images.  Most folks think God is a version of Santa Clause.  We go to Him to ask for stuff.  We are happy when we get it.  Mad when we don’t.  But are generally quick to ruthlessly blame God for anything bad that happens, under the logic that Santa should have been watching and been able to prevent the bad stuff before it ever happened.  After all, He has done it for others, why not me?  Way too many Christians have this exact image of God, despite all the scriptures.  Most Atheists just don’t believe in any kind of Santa Clause, or any god, but if there were a God, He would be to blame for everything.

In the Santa Clause picture of God, no trust is required.  Neither is certainty.  If you get the stuff you asked for, hallelujah.  If not, it must not be in God’s time yet.  So Santa has a slot machine sort of response to what you ask for, the odds are low, but you never know.  How could faith ever grow in you, if this is the image of God you believe in, or have the most experience with?  And believe me, Satan is WAY too happy to keep this image of God in your mind.  Perhaps enough to grant you some of those wishes himself, in order for you to never shed this image of the God you pray to.  But our real God, needs us to trust Him.  That trust is a critical component of His ability to save us – from us.  Denying yourself to let some random God you don’t really know remake who you are, is just not likely.  Better to keep the Santa image, and just hope for the best.

So God’s problem is getting you to stop thinking of Him in terms of doling out rewards and punishments, and start thinking of Him for the Being He truly is.  The other image of God (a saving God).  God wants to save you, from you.  He loves you (being the primary and singular motive of His).  God sees sin as the punishment and the addictive disease.  And He has only one way to rid you of it.  But for that to work, you have to trust Him enough to let Him do it, in spite of how it looks.  Trust, in spite of common sense.  Trust, in spite of what everyone else tells you.  Trust, that He is able to do the impossible in you, where history demonstrates, you are clearly unable to do it.  So if that is His mission, and trust is what He needs from you.  Offering you certainty does nothing to accomplish it.  If you witness a 1,000 different acts of the impossible, all you will have learned is that it is possible for God to do the impossible.  You might have already imagined that.  But you will still have no reason to let Him reconstruct who you are.  A thousand elements of certainty do not build trust, they build resentment.  Back to the Santa Clause image – now that I have seen 1,000 impossible things – I intend to open complaints about why I did not benefit from any of them.  A thousand acts of love and impossibility for others, does me not one bit of good.  So now I am mad at Santa, because there was only coal in my stocking, while my neighbor got Barbie’s playhouse.

The first problem with asking for signs, is that it does not bring trust.  The second, is that it will only make you mad they were not for you, or selfish if they were (who does not want more miracles in their own lives).  And lastly they are usually requested as a condition of belief (instead of a result of it) doing nothing to foster trust, so there will never be enough of them, to really make a believer out of you.  You will either find a way to let your skepticism reduce the impossible, to a scientifically explainable trick (or perhaps a random set of circumstances that worked out just right despite the incredible odds, like say the hypothesis of evolution) - or you will find you have an insatiable appetite for more signs, at the cost of what you profess is a belief.  In any case, the mission God has to save you, from you, by remaking you fails because He grants your wishes for signs as a condition of belief.  A change in thinking, on the other hand, will pull back the veil that has blinded your eyes to the impossible.  What you witness after a change in how you perceive life, is going to be mind blowing.  Sounds crazy right now, but that’s the point.  It is crazy.  But it is also real.  And it will be a lot more personal to you than you could possibly imagine now.

Take as a case in point the story of two types of people in the gospel of Matthew the 27^th chapter.  Picking up in verse 38 it reads … “Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.”  You could argue these men might have been believers in the Jewish faith (though obviously not perfect observers of the Law).  It is not known exactly what they believed at least from Matthew’s account.  However we know from other versions of the good news, that one repented before he died, the other did not.  Dieing in the company of known criminals tends to make one look like a criminal even if this is not true.  This death will do nothing to uplift the reputation of Christ.  But Jesus does not care about His reputation.  In His trial all manner of lies were told about Him, and His response was perfect silence.  No condemnation, no calling people out on their sins, only silence.  But Jesus was eager to speak to anyone who seeks salvation.  When the dying theif seeks Jesus, Jesus responds, no matter what kind of physical pain He was in.  When that same theif was hurling insults at Him, Jesus remained silent.

Matthew continues in verse 39 saying … “And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, [verse 40] And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.”  Dying in the company of thieves, and up on a Roman cross, was decidedly NOT the sign the Jewish people were looking for where it comes to proving Jesus was God.  These were believers.  These were those who studied scriptures.  And yet their ideas about what God was supposed to do – that is, to throw off Roman oppression and setup a Kingdom that would last forever – overpowered all the other texts and prophecies that predicted exactly this part of the mission of God to save us.  “Believers” who desired something else of God, and refused to accept what God was actually doing to truly answer their prayers.  When Santa does not behave how we want Him to, what good is Santa right?  And so in this case, the very fact Jesus was actually fulfilling prophecy, was the very fact that disqualified Him as being the Messiah in their minds.  Sound familiar?

How often do we ask God for a thing, and threaten Him that if He does not do it, we will believe no longer?  Save me.  Save my child.  Save my spouse.  From the disease and death that stalk them.  If the results are not what we expect – we become angry and decide there cannot be a God – or else why did He not answer my prayer.  But perhaps He did, just not in the way you expected.  Perhaps from Gods point of view, saving you, your child, your spouse, for eternity is most important to all of you.  Should earthly life end today, and infinite life begin tomorrow, reunited, with infinite love in all of your hearts – is this not the preferred outcome all of you would want, even if it comes at the price of shortening how long you live in this world today?  Let’s say instead of focusing on the eternal, that God allowed you the answer to your prayers, and saved that life in the here and now.  As time passes, you, or your child, or your spouse, begin to change (not for the better).  Perhaps over time, one of you decides there is no God at all, and if there is, He is not worth following.  Sin is more “fun”, instead of the disease it truly is.  If that is how you meet your end in this world, and the eternal world is sacrificed in the process.  Did God really do what was in your best interest all those years ago when He saved you only to meet this new end?  And God knows what you will choose long before it happens.  Santa might let this play out.  But God would rather it didn’t.  God would prefer to cherish you while your free will choice reciprocates that love, rather than let you exist long enough to discard it under the weight of sin’s embrace.

So because God does not do what we want or expect, does not make Him any less trustworthy.  Keep in mind Jesus was doing what ALL of us need for salvation.  Not trying to prove Himself to nay-sayers at the time and place of His death.  Matthew continues in verse 41 saying … “Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, [verse 42] He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.”  And there we have it, the Athiest’s Anthem coming right out of the mouths of the very top leadership of the church at that time.  What image of God do you suppose they had, the one of a saving God who would die in our place, and fulfill prophecy – or the one of Santa who doles out punishment and reward emphasis on punishment.  And had Jesus descended off that cross in front of their eyes, gliding right down in front of them fully healed, what do you suppose their response would have been?  They would have hated Him all the more, because now Roman oppression still abounded, and Jesus would be impossible to kill after all.  Think about it, they already had ALL the previous miracles Jesus did to consider in weighing whether or not He was the Messiah, and NONE of them changed their course of action or belief.  They chose to dismiss every previous sign and still pursue killing Him.

And should Jesus have chosen to assuage His own ego, by proving to these priests He truly did have this power, what kind of God does that truly make Him?  A God of ego?  Who would gladly sacrifice our eternal considerations for those of the moment?  How could we be saved then?  It is often our expectations of what God should do, that could never be met anyway.  Because we come from a place of ego and selfishness, where God comes from a totally opposite perspective.  Jesus believes it is better to die to save all of us, than to do anything shortsighted, and gain nothing.  Jesus never used any of His power to benefit Himself.  Instead He used it unceasingly on us, the objects of His love, restoring us, removing the pain of sin and death from us.  Our restoration tops the mind of a saving God.  Not just getting rid our physical diseases, but getting rid of the way more deadly sinful disease of bad motives driving bad choices we continue to embrace.  Curing us of our desire to sin, is way more important.  Saving us from an eternal perspective way more important than saving us in the moment.

The ridicule continues as Matthew writes picking up in verse 43 saying … “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. [verse 44] The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.”  Matthew hears the mockery of the thieves, but misses the repentance of the one.  Here we have an example of Jesus suffering the same fate as we do from time to time.  Jesus trusted in His Father.  And yet, He was dying, very painfully in this world.  The Father had NO interest in seeing His Son be tortured and die.  But the Father had a GREAT interest in seeing all of humanity be saved and reconciled unto Himself.  The death of His Son was that price.  In order that the need for Justice be satisfied.  So Jesus dies, in extreme pain we inflicted.  And the Father must sit there in silence and watch.  The eternal salvation outweighing the salvation of the moment.  This is how great our God desires to save us in the eternal realm, not just the here and now.  It is a different way of thinking.

So the repentant thief represents one kind of person, the mocking priests another.  For those mocking priests, no sign would ever be enough.  And frankly the next section of texts are going to have some doozies.  For the repentant thief however, for those of us who seek salvation from Jesus, what will happen in us is a change.  You will note that repentant theif was NOT saved from the cross.  He died in this world, but with certainty about his own place in the next one.  And change began to occur even in the worst dying circumstances any of us can imagine.  We too will become different than we are today.  Not because we work for it.  But because we begin to choose to trust Him, and allow Him to remake us however He sees fit.  Then change is surely on its way in us.  We read scripture differently.  We begin to see love as the primary motivation, instead of some wild afterthought.  We begin to reason differently.  And over time, the blinders of bad choices, the blinders of doubt, fall away – and what is revealed is a regular diatribe of the impossible happening all the time.  For example, the changing of hearts.  Not just of others, but of my own.  Learning how to love differently, and more deeply, than you had ever imagined.  No seminar could ever get this done.  But allowing Jesus full access sure does.  Without Jesus, things tend to degenerate.  But with Jesus, things tend to improve, especially in areas where it matters the most.

That sign, that impossibility, is very personal, very tangible, and you will live with its benefit every day of your life.  Does it cure your cancer?  No.  It could.  But it does not have to.  It fixes something more important.  The quality of your days expands exponentially, whether you are beset by physical pain and disease, or whether you are healed from them.  Keep in mind, disease does not exist in heaven.  So whether here or there, you are destined to see disease, pain and death no more.  And what happens to the desire to see a sign now?  You lose the selfishness part of that.  Instead of asking for goodies for yourself, you have no thought of yourself.  But you are swamped with thoughts of others.  You want to BE a sign for someone else, help them, meet their need if you can, no matter how you are feeling at the time.  And where you are powerless to meet their need, you do ask God for the impossible.  Not as a condition of belief, but because you are SURE He can, and will do what is right for that person’s eternal interest.  Where it comes to the removal of sin, 100% guarantee He wants that.  Where it comes to all the other worldly stuff, His gifts must fall in line with our salvation.  Knowing He longs to give them, and knowing He must hold them back, if they would add to our downfall.

Life, instead of existence, is a very tangible, and personal thing.  No one else can define it for you.  No one else can deny the impossible you are witness to in your heart and life.  For you know what is true for you.  You see what God does in your life.  What you suffer from in the eyes of others matters not.  Whether you are burdened with wealth, sickness, persecution – those do not represent the favor or curse of God.  They represent the danger of evil in this world, and are used by Satan to try to get people to believe in a Santa Clause image of God doling out rewards and punishments.  But for the one who truly believes, and chooses to truly trust, the curtain is pulled back – and the impossible is revealed every day no matter what our circumstances or positions may be.  Certainty has never been the goal.  Trust in spite of not knowing has always been it.  That kind of trust prevents the next Satan in the world to come.  And creates a new creature of you in the world we live in today.

 

The Price of Devotion ...

The one thing all of us hold on to with everything we have is our life.  We do not look forward to death and try to postpone that eventuality as long as possible.  It is human nature.  It is the nature of life itself.  Life was meant to be lived.  It was meant to be eternal.  But the embrace of sin introduced pain, and eventually death.  Things God did not intend for us; knowledge we were never supposed to know.  Pain and death were supposed to be mysterious concepts we might discuss in perfection, having no idea what they meant, but trying to guess at them.  Instead, humanity has a first-hand knowledge of both pain and death.  And mortality itself drives us to postpone our eventualities as long as possible.  The irony in all of this, is that when pain or death overtake us, we have the nerve to call these tragedies “the will of God” (that would be the definition of fake news).  It is as if we stole those words of blaming God from the mouth of Satan himself.  It is not God to blame for any of this.  We shoulder that blame.  Nor is it His will that any should suffer or die, it is sin that introduces those eventualities; the diseases that come, the wars that are fought, the acts of violence and accident that take lives and limbs.  None of it, the will of God.  All of it, God must stomach like the rest of us, for sin cannot be driven away through edict, or free-will would be swept away with it.

But when we discuss life and death, we should examine the word “life” as much as we discuss death.  Is it “life” when pain still exists?  Or is that really just existence?  Think of the life of someone who has been abused so horrifically they have lost their mental faculties, and now repeat things without reason, act in ways that are self-destructive, and find themselves lost, homeless, and unable to understand what you are saying to them or trying to do for them.  Add the self poisoning of drugs and chemical destruction to the mix.  Can we still call living in this kind of depraved condition, a real life, or is this just some form of existence?  God does not will this.  God has something else in mind, so great, this poor and afflicted person could not comprehend it even for a moment.  We can hardly imagine it.  How could a mind so degraded begin to understand it?  We would look with extreme pity on such a soul.  We would ask ourselves how we could help, and come away only sharing simple human kindness, and praying for intervention against the sin and Satan of this world.

The poor and depraved, and mentally degraded person I describe, is not some random homeless on the street; it is you, and it is me.  We are homeless as this world the way it is, is NOT our home.  We wander through a wasteland cursed by our own sin.  We have no idea what our real home is going to look like, and why the greatest mansion on earth today is a poo-poo hill, next to what the smallest shack in heaven will look like.  But we don’t know that world, so we begin to value the poo we have, while angels hold their noses and wonder how this is possible.  And we have been abused by the nature of our sinful choices.  We develop habits, repeating things over and over that do not make any sense, and work to our own self harm.  Yet we seem powerless to stop this self-destructive behavior.  We go around muttering things like “we have to look out for number one”, and other slogans of self-empowerment, when the pursuit of happiness only leads us further into misery.  We are diseased.  We are afflicted with genetic degradation that makes us incapable of understanding what perfection and eternity really look like.  It is the core of who we are, our characters, that are so engrained in these diseases, that there is only one cure for them – to die – and to be reborn, or re-created by Jesus Christ.

But as our mortality drives us to postpone physical death; our engrained characters are none too happy to die either.  We may understand that what Jesus will re-create in us might be great; but we are comfortable with who we are now, and unsure, or unwilling to let that go.  So what is the true price of devotion to Christ?  Is it willingness to let who we are go, and to be reborn?  Perhaps this is what it means to die to self.  Peter thought he was ready for it.  He wasn’t.  Matthew tells the story of their shame in chapter 26 of his gospel picking up in verse 31 saying … “Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.”  Yikes.  Each and every one of the disciples, the followers of Christ, the devoted ones – were to be “offended” by Jesus Christ that night.  Shocked by His actions (or rather inaction) in the face of death.  Unable to understand that death must come, in order for rebirth to occur.  Or perhaps like us, unwilling to let our understanding go, in favor of accepting an understanding only He can give us.

But Jesus was not done with His prophesying.  Jesus continues in verse 32 saying … “But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.”  Death was coming.  There was no way to avoid it.  Because of sin, death became an eventuality, even for Jesus – especially for Jesus – in order that life might come for us.  A return to the meaning of life as God intended it.  Not just existence, but life.  A removal of the fog of our diseased thinking, and an instillation of the clarity of His thinking in its place.  Prior to transformation this is very hard to understand.  But our God does give each of us a glimpse through the fog, enough that we are free enough, to make this choice without the burden of our sin weighing down the outcome.  We are given the freedom of mind to choose His love, or to reject it.  But make no mistake, without the intervention of our God to bring us up to parity to choose; sin would rob us of our free-will and make deranged slaves of us all.  It is the outcome many choose in spite of a moment’s clarity to choose Jesus.  The price of our devotion to Christ may lead to our death.  But the price of rejecting His love only buries us in an existence of pain, while doing nothing to avoid the death that will one day take us all.

And as for the death of “who” we are.  This is a death we should long for.  It is the trading of deranged existence for the restoration of what a real life means.  Your diseased mind cannot comprehend it while it remains diseased.  You need the power of His transformation of who you are, to free your thinking, so that you can begin to see the difference between existence and life, between fake happiness, and deep personal joy, that none can take away.  It is as Jesus foretold, He would die, but would NOT stay in the grave.  He would “go before” them into Galilee, only a first of many encounters we would all have with a risen Lord.  It is important to understand Jesus as our creator, because as our creator, He is able to recreate a real life in us.  Once we allow Him to make that change, the path to real understanding begins.  It may not be instantaneous, but it is certain.  It begins with letting go.  Letting go of the “life” we think we have built.  And accepting that His offer gives us “life” we could not have even imagined before.  It is trading the fake wealth of this world, for the poo it really was, and finding the real treasure of this world, in the hearts of others.

But Peter saw none of this.  He had yet to be transformed.  He had yet to allow it.  So he answered in verse 33 saying … “Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.”  Peter said in effect, even if all these other bums are offended, I won’t be, cause I am special.  Here is where pride took over reason.  Pride a symptom of original sin and capable of making us blind to what is truly important.  Only moments before in the last supper Jesus told them one of them was going to betray Him, and ALL of them, including Peter, was forced to ask, “is it me”.  Now having seemed to escape that prophecy we run head long into opposing the words of Christ, for nothing more than our ego.  While at the same time, essentially saying, I am greater than these other guys, even if “they” fall, I WILL NOT.  And how many times have you gotten up from your sin, begging the Lord for forgiveness you do not deserve, and then make the empty promise that “YOU” will not sin anymore.  A promise history will demonstrate YOU have broken, every single time.

It is not His forgiveness that is broken, it is your ability to keep any promise you make.  Stop it.  Quit making the presumption of arrogance that you are able to choose to sin no more.  Instead, in humility accept that only Jesus can take the desire of sin from you in the first place.  It is the victory of Jesus in you, that can remove your sin, NOT what you do or don’t do.  It is what Jesus does.  You need only to get out of the way, and let yourself slip away, let Him decide “who” you are to be.  Let your sinful desires die in the hands of Christ, and let your new desires be reborn or re-created.  Peter has decided here, in error, that Peter will decide what Peter will do in the future.  And Peter will not be offended no matter what the Savior of the world has just said.  Imagine the arrogance of such a statement, in defiance of what Jesus has said.  Instead of this proclamation of false victory Peter was sure to experience.  He might of said, “Lord forgive me”, and take this thing from me.  But alas, reason is blinded by the disease of pride.

Jesus responds in verse 34 saying … “Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.”  Peter thought his devotion to Christ was beyond question.  It was not.  While Peter clung to the ideas of “who” he was, he allowed sin a foothold in him, that led to this unfortunate series of events.  The real price of absolute devotion to Christ, is to put our lives in His hands, no matter what happens to our lives.  But by far, NOT just our physical lives – rather more importantly, the lives we think we have built – the core of who we are – our characters.  Letting our character die in the hands of Christ, letting all sin go, not just some of it, or part of it, but all of it – even if that means I will not recognize who I am anymore.  That is rather the point.  The point is to not recognize who you are anymore, because the new version of you that Jesus creates will be so enormously better.  And the current you cannot understand that, until it is willing to let go, to die, and to be reborn for real.

But Trump and Peter have more in common than we might have first thought.  Matthew continues with Peter’s response in verse 35 saying … “Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples.”  Peter doubled down.  If Trump could only read these passages, how much better might his presidency be.  But alas Peter doubled down, because his pride was now in question, and pride blinds us to reason.  Instead of being humbled by this further pronouncement of Jesus, Peter decides to argue with it again, and this time to raise the stakes.  Peter is now pledging his physical life, long before he has allowed Jesus to remake him fully.  How can you promise to sacrifice your physical life, if you have been unwilling to sacrifice even the life of your character which does not require you to physically die to do it?  You make promises against human nature, despite being aligned with human nature.  Only the transformed heart understands the true nature of “life” and could ever be comfortable with sacrificing it here, to preserve it in the world to come.  The death of “what” we are, is not what our Lord asks, He asks for the death of “who” we are.

And as I imagine what must happen in Trump’s cabinet when he makes a decision, the others follow suit, also proclaiming that they support this very same idea.  The other disciples also pledge upon pain of death, that they too, will not be offended.  None of them broken as yet, but all of them heading towards that end.  For their own pride’s have arisen in them to blind them to humility, and to walk a different road.  What might it have been like if instead of this outrageous mumbling against the Word of the Lord, they might have dropped to the feet of Jesus and begged forgiveness for this thing, begging to have it taken from them as ONLY Jesus could do.  To be wiling to have no pride, to be willing to embrace humility in front of those you love, and those you don’t.  That is the mark of a transformed heart, and the evidence of what true devotion might look like.  But Matthew condemns himself in his own writings, that he too, was unwilling to submit, but rather when it counted the most, stood against our Lord and His counsel.

So many of us modern Christians claim devotion to Christ.  But that devotion is built upon our own ideas of what devotion means.  We are like our disciple forefather before their transformations.  We are devoted when it is convenient.  When we sacrifice for the cause, we see it as sacrifice, not as opportunity to serve.  When asked if we would give our lives for Christ, we say with pride “yes”.  But the life we mean is our physical life, as the life of our character has yet to be put upon His altar.  We have not allowed Jesus to change who we are yet; and despite this, we pledge to give Him what we are.  Some of us have mild experiences with Jesus, perhaps the removal of one sin, or impact in one problem area.  Yet despite the example of how it works, we keep plugging along fighting our sins ourselves, declaring our promises not to do it again.  And finding ourselves on our knees after we fail just one more time.  And then again.  And again.  Until our sins are beyond counting.

It is our promises that need to die.  It is our certainty we should let go.  Instead, we should turn to Jesus and in humility, ask Him to take this thing from us.  And watch what He does, when you get out of the way.  Jesus did not come, so that your personal knowledge of sin, pain, and death, would remain eventualities for you.  He came to change your paradigm.  He came to disrupt who you are.  He came to take from you, the disease that keeps you mired in pathetic existence; and instead offer you life, and life more abundantly.  The price of devotion is no “price” at all, when transformation is what you experience.  You may not see it clearly yet, but you can, you will, you need only go to Jesus in humility and ask, Lord forgive me, take this thing from me, and then sit back, let go, and watch what happens.  Become witness in your own testimony to what Jesus does for you.  Afterwards you will understand, what for now, your mind may not comprehend.  But it can begin here, begin now, and you can finally see what life looks like.