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November 23, 2003
How to Share Your Faith?
How to Share Your Faith?
Psalm 133 / Isaiah 35: 1-10
Acts 8: 26-40
November 23rd, 2003
Last Sunday I proposed why you should share your faith, if you have trusted in Jesus. There are two reasons why to share your faith. First, because this is what a living faith does. Second, because Jesus said to share it. Faith is not selfish. The goal of faith is not just personal peace and eternal salvation. It is not “our side” in the competition for converts in a world of many religions. When you come right down to it, this view of faith makes of it something selfish—to win, or ultimately to secure soul-health in the afterlife. It’s comparable to buying health insurance to protect your health.
Faith is more than this. It is the least selfish instinct. We speak of a personal relationship with God. In a way it is a lonely relationship with God in which we share God’s burden to care for the world. It is an outward-moving impulse. This is how faith saves us. It lures us to lose ourselves. I never know how to respond when I see faith pursued as a means of getting something.
At the end of our Christmas Eve service I light a candle and then take the light to each section of the sanctuary. You light the candle next to you, until everyone in the sanctuary has a lighted candle. This is a beautiful, even sentimental illustration of passing on God’s love for the world.
Supposing at one of these charmed services, when the music and the message has filled your hearts to the brim, that someone refuses to light the candle next to her. She says, “I came here to get my candle lit, to feel the glow of Christmas. I have it now, and I’ll enjoy it.” I wonder if there would be a stir in that part of the church. Someone whispers, “She won’t share her light.” Eyes start to turn in that direction, and the spell of the evening is broken.
Faith is intimately personal but anything but selfish. Jesus said, “You don’t find life by searching for it, but by losing it.” The joy of Christmas Eve comes in sharing your candle’s light, more than in lighting your own. Becoming a Christian is not joining an organization that claims to have everything explained. It is not a matter of believing a complicated theology. It is not signing on to get eternal security. It is the faith of Jesus Christ that matters, and His faith burst in love for the world. Yes, for the world—including the parts of the world you think of as “the enemy.”
It so happens that Christianity is a fashionable institution in America now. You can hitch onto this fashionable institution, while never finding the faith at the heart of it. Faith is a relationship with an unseen but present God, through trust in Jesus. It is buying into the idea of finding life by losing it, of sharing in order to have. I see increasingly that to understand faith we have to look at Jesus Himself more than at what Jesus did. Jesus fulfilled His life by losing it. This still describes faith. Faith has to be shared to be faith at all. This is the first reason why to share your faith.
Second, we should share our faith because Jesus said to do it. Don’t be like Peter in the courtyard while Jesus was at His trial, unwilling to say you know Him. Faith, then has to do with words as well as deeds. You will be my witnesses, Jesus said, wherever you go. A witness is seen and heard. It matters that we not only have Jesus’ ways, but that we be able to speak of Him. This is hard for many of us. I confess I don’t always know what to say that fits the situation.
Today I want to suggest something about how to share your faith. For many of you, this is an uncomfortable, maybe even repulsive idea. Polite people may talk of politics, but certainly they keep their religion to themselves. Indeed, there is a secret, private aspect to faith. The order of things must be to be evident as Jesus’ follower because of the witness of your life. Then, be prepared to say why you love as you do when you’re asked.
Jesus told us to pray in secret. He taught us to do our good deeds so privately that one hand didn’t know the other hand did it. Jesus was pretty strong in scolding those who put their religion on parade.
Perhaps the first idea we must grasp about sharing our faith is that the firelight of our lives must be seen first. Every one of us is turned off by the talk of religion without the walk of faith. If you say you are a Christian but you do shoddy work as a student, or are unethical in your business, are unpleasant to be around, and generally give no evidence that something divine is burning at your center, stop talking about Jesus. You’re hurting the cause of Christ. The first step in sharing your faith is taking stalk of the way you live. Are you a credit or an embarrassment to the Gospel?
Sometimes pastors mess up, and this hurts the Gospel. Sometimes elders do too, and deacons, and Sunday School teachers, and other ordinary Christians. We put apologetic bumper stickers on our cars, as an antidote. “I’m not perfect, just forgiven.” “Please be patient with me; God’s not finished with me yet.” Why are these necessary? Isn’t it a stab at disinfecting our embarrassment?
Maybe you hear me saying that you have to be perfect to say anything about Jesus. I’m not saying that. Then who could say anything at all? I could say nothing. What I am saying is that it really matters how you and I live.
Maybe some of you would say, after candid assessment of yourself, that you are interested in religious questions, but the candle of the faith of Jesus is not burning at the center of your life. You struggle with life’s tests with very little energy inside sustaining you. Your own needs are your biggest interests. You are at the mercy of your moods, your lusts, your materialism, your temper. You need a light lit inside of you, and would love to have it so. You keep coming to church hoping it might happen inside you.
If this is the case, and you know it, you can do what I did as a young man when I realized that faith did not burn in my heart. I asked God to take over my life. I gave my heart to God, and accepted that Jesus died on the cross for my sake. I became a pilgrim. Until I did this, I was only a by-stander. I was only a spectator. I believe there are people in the church who have not passed from spectators to being pilgrims. Have you actually given over your life to God, accepting what Jesus did for you? Get in the pilgrimage. Nobody can do it for you.
But perhaps you are a pilgrim. But you don’t know what to say when someone asks you about Jesus and how to begin the pilgrimage of faith.
The story we just read from the Book of Acts tells of an occasion in the early days of the church when a man shared his faith with someone else. An Ethiopian official was reading from the Prophet Isaiah as he rode back home from Jerusalem in his chariot. He was reading one of the most suggestive parts of the Hebrew Bible.
He saw a hitchhiker. He stopped to pick him up. The hitchhiker asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” “How can I unless someone explains it to me?” Perhaps this passage from Isaiah had been read in synagogue the day before, and he was mulling the rabbi’s sermon on it. Something didn’t quite fit. I think even in this place there may sometimes be folk who aren’t sure if the rabbi interprets things right.
In Isaiah 53, he read, “As a sheep led to the slaughter or a lamb before its shearers is dumb, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken up from the earth.” What did that mean? Who was the ancient prophet describing? How sad to read this. Some good man denied justice and takes it without saying a word. The rabbi said Israel was this suffering servant. But that didn’t’ quite fit. The Jews hardly took their oppression silently. Then, mysteriously, this quiet sufferer is taken up from the earth. There was mystery to this sad tale.
Without knowing anything about his rider he asked him, “Who is the prophet writing about, himself or someone else?” He had come to one of those pivot moments in life—that come to most of us. Philip, the hitchhiker, was in the right place at the right time. He knew what to say when he was asked. The Ethiopian man’s heart was ready, and Philip knew what to say about Jesus. The Ethiopian believed Philip and placed his trust in Jesus. They saw a stream with deep enough water. Philip baptized the Ethiopian as a sign of trusting in Jesus and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit.
I notice the order of things here. First there was a need in the Ethiopian man that made him ask a question. Then Philip answered his question, and faith in Jesus was born in his heart.
There were other situations too. At Pentecost Peter preached in the street, and people listened and believed in Jesus as a result of hearing the Gospel. There is still good effect that comes from public presentations of the Gospel like this. Billy Graham does this to good effect.
In the jail of a Greek city a guard heard Paul and Silas singing. They’d been beaten the afternoon before. They didn’t take advantage of a chance to escape. He asked “Why?”
When in times of distress, we feel God’s strength and don’t respond “normally,” that is, in a panic, others may notice. Paul and Silas’ behavior aroused questions in the guard. He asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Why did he ask that? I don’t know. But he did. They told him. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, and your household too!” How did he know what “saved” meant? Somehow the word “saved” is part of the vocabulary of the heart. What does it mean, that word “saved?” It means “forgiven, healed, restored, accepted by God, offered eternal life, joined to the way of Jesus . . .” It’s hard to quantify this word. But it speaks volumes to the seeking person.
Often Jesus met people who needed help. He helped them, and this opened the door for Him to tell them about the Kingdom of God. When we have Jubilee Christmas, while we must not pounce on people, stuffing religion down the throats of a captive audience, it is important that we speak of Jesus to those who come. It’s not just presents we’re offering, but Jesus as the One motivating us to do this for them. We speak of Him gently, kindly, without a sense of superiority.
Perhaps you are one of those who grew up in a loving home where you learned about Jesus from earliest times and seemed to trust in Jesus the same way you learned to eat. You can’t remember not trusting in Jesus. And your life developed under this spell. You can report this without bragging. Others agree who see you. What should you say when you cannot in any way reproduce your experience for them?
When you are asked, say it simply. “I believe that Jesus died to forgive you and me of our sin.” “What is sin?” your friend asks you. Is sin all the fun stuff the church says we should not do? You know how we’ve blurred the meaning of words like sin and love. You can admit you still do things that are wrong. You can admit there are deeds you should have done that you did not do. They can identify with this. Then say, “I believe Jesus died to forgive me of this, and he makes me want to live a different life as a result.” This is honest.
The one who asks you this has a reason for asking. She has seen something in you that prompts the question. And she has a sense of need inside. Your candle has been burning, and she saw it and wants your light. Give it to her. Pass it on.
It really helps if you know what the Bible says about sharing your faith. If you know by heart “God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life,” you have something wonderful to offer. If you remember what Paul said to the guard at the jail, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household,” you have something to offer. The closer you are to your Bible the more you will know to what say at the moment. The farther you are from the Bible the less you will know to say.
Does this suggest something of the purpose of what we do here beyond this hour of worship? Take part in our Sunday School, life-long learning of the Bible—but more than that. In Sunday School you mix with others who want to know more about the Bible. Iron sharpens iron, and you sharpen one another. Become a part of a group that studies the Bible together during the week. This evening there are two such opportunities. On Tuesday and Wednesday there are others. It matters that you know what to say when someone asks you about your faith. And it matters if you don’t.
In I Peter 3: 15-16 we read, “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence, and keep your conscience clear . . .” Here we find the most common order in which you and I have a chance to share our faith verbally. If you have already shared your faith visibly, that is, your way of life has raised the question, “Why?” then you must be prepared to say “Why.” When someone has asked you, you needn’t worry about foisting your religion on someone else. They have asked you. Now what will you say? Respectfully and gently you tell them. “I believe that God loves me. I believe Jesus was God’s Son, and he died for me because he loved me. He died so I don’t have to suffer for the sins I have done. He makes me want to learn his way of life and to do it.”
Your friend has seen your way of life, and hears the reason why you try to live it. And the chances are she will want this way of life too. If she wants to begin this way of life at that moment, help her.
When I began my life as a follower of Jesus, I said something like this, “O God, I want to accept Jesus’ gift of forgiveness of my sin. I want to follow Him. Help me. Amen.” Pretty uncomplicated.
And then I began to do what I thought I should do. I read my Bible. I read books explaining the way of life of faith. I tried to do the things a Christian does—not giving in to my moods, not giving in to temptations so easily, doing my work honestly. I began every day with my Bible and with prayer. I never missed church, listening to sermons intently. I never missed the chance to take communion. I was on a quest. And I’m still on it. I try to speak of Jesus in my own words to anyone who asked me, rather than in phrases and words borrowed from other people.
And I think this is how we share our faith. We acknowledge our need. We respond to Jesus. We try to live under the control of Jesus. We love other people. When they ask us why, we tell them simply and respectfully. And thus the light of Jesus is passed along. This is how I understand sharing our faith in Jesus.
Now, will you take part in this? It will make you happy to be of such use to someone else. If you will take part in this, you will be fulfilling that part of being a follower of Jesus, which somehow has been missed by very many people. Don’t point a finger at others. Accept the privilege of passing on the light on your candle. Just do it. Let’s pray.
We thank you Lord for loving us, and for sending to us Jesus, the light who enlightens everyone who has come into the world. Help us to be candles with a burning wick, passing on a bright light, that others may trust you love them too. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2003
Why Share Your Faith?
Why Share Your Faith?
Psalm 138 / Isaiah 55: 1-13
Matthew 28: 16-20
November 16th, 2003
This morning I invite you to think with me about something at the heart of the Christian faith that nearly every Christian finds awkward—sharing your faith. In a pluralistic society where there are so many competitors saying, “I’m the real—real religion,” many thoughtful people respond by drawing back modestly from the confusion of marketing religion. But is there a larger view of this that calls for larger thoughts and your participation?
There are two things I want to say today. First, we need to share our faith because this is how God awakens faith in others. Second, we need to share our faith because Jesus said, “Do it.”
Jesus asked a question: “What will it profit to gain the whole world and lose your soul? What can a person give in exchange for his soul?”
What is your soul? Someone said it is a little white-pea in the head, like the pituitary gland, that makes people think about religion. Not so. The soul is your everything, your body, your mind, your feelings. Our society is big into screening people from thinking about their souls. Some people retreat from even thinking about the soul by concentrating on developing their bodies, or by work, or by a sensuous way of life. Sharing your faith penetrates someone’s smokescreen and touches her soul. How wonderful it feels when you recognize someone really cares about you. Sharing your faith is really caring.
Well before there was any competition between religions for converts the Prophet Isaiah went out on a limb and proposed that what God offered to Israel He offered to the whole world. The souls of Israel’s enemies were as important as the soul of any Israeli. Jurgen read this morning of God’s open arms: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat.” Isaiah spoke odd words to Israel, “Nations that do not know you shall run to you.”
These were odd words because in the ancient world nations did not think of their deities as available to other nations. My god is hopefully stronger than your god, each nation hoped. And Israel was no different. Israel’s God defeated Egypt and the Philistines in battle. But Isaiah said that this God, the Creator of heaven and earth, extended His welcome to all nations. “My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
How surprising it must have been to be an Assyrian to think that Israel’s God loved him. Isaiah said these words winsomely. God cares about you. His eyes must have said he believed what he said. In soul to soul talk, body language counts.
Then Jesus came along a few hundred years later. Here was the most personal expression of the love of God. We might say the soul of God appeared before human souls, body, mind, and feelings. Isaiah may have said that God welcomes all people. Jesus made this message more personal than Isaiah ever could. Jesus said it face to face to people God loves you. That is, I love you. He said this to people from whom others turned away their faces.
Mark’s Gospel tells us His message was summarized briefly: “The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God has come. Repent, and believe the good news.”
What time? People must have wondered. Was it the time when the Romans would be ousted from Israel? Well, no, because Jesus was speaking to Romans too.
What Kingdom of God? Later Jesus would explain, “You’ll find the Kingdom of God inside you when you are in it.”
Repent. That’s what John the Baptist was saying. You’ve got to change your ways. “I know it,” All kinds of people acknowledged when they realized that Jesus did not condemn them when He welcomed them to change.
Trust the Good News. It’s true. What good news? Everyone likes good news, especially unexpected good news. Jesus had unexpected good news. The God who created everything loves you like you can’t believe, but believe it; it’s true.
There was nothing sectarian about Jesus’ message. Jesus spoke it freely to all kinds of people.
Jesus said these things after standing in line with all kinds of people waiting for John to baptize them. Roman soldiers, renowned for their capacity of cruelty, stood in line with Pharisees—the most pious of Jews. It didn’t matter who stood front to back in line. Jesus stood in line with them all. In this non-sectarian setting John the Baptist changed the focus from himself to Jesus and said, “Look at Him. I’m not even worthy to take off his sandals.”
All eyes turned to Jesus who stood in line with them. Jesus became one with them and with you and me. Jesus was God sharing His faith, what was deepest in His heart.
Three years passed in which Jesus showed Himself a friend of sinners, of devout Jews and Romans too, a friend of outsiders, of the poor and the rich, of men, women, boys and girls.
Those who were closest to Jesus all watched in amazement when He was killed brutally by the Romans. It was so inappropriate! It stung them to the quick when they realized that this Man, who fulfilled the ideals of the prophet Isaiah, offering living water to an outcast Samaritan woman, and free bread to hungry thousands, was executed cruelly as a common felon. The shock of Jesus’ execution compels our scrutiny.
Many of you have read reviews of Mel Gibson’s movie on “The Passion.” Let me read to you a few words from one review sent to me by two of you:
“’The Passion’ evoked more deep reflection, sorrow and emotional reaction within me than anything since my wedding, my ordination, or the birth of my children. Frankly, I will never be the same. When the film concluded, this ‘invitation only’ gathering of ‘movers and shakers’ in Washington, DC were shaking indeed, but this time from sobbing. I am not sure there was a dry eye in the place. The crowd that had been glad-handing before the film was now eerily silent. No one could speak because words were woefully inadequate. We had experienced a kind of art that is a rarity in life, the kind that makes heaven touch earth.”
Sectarian divisions break down as people watch this movie. More than Christians found wrenched out of them what the Roman centurion said who stood at the foot of the cross: “Surely this man was the Son of God.” I wonder how the texture of your life and mine might change if we had the view of the foot of the cross. But how is it possible to maintain this view through the ups and downs of life? We forget the greatest impressions so soon.
What I have in mind as “sharing your faith” has to do with communicating the sense that I think this movie is communicating. We need to see how massive was God’s love that made Him submit Jesus to such a death for our sake. Time does not dilute the fact of God’s love. Its pertinence is not less at 3 p.m. than at 9 a.m., nor less in 2003 than in AD 30.
Then I step back and realize it was I who put Jesus on the cross. My sin put Him there. We come to think the purpose of Jesus and Church and God is simply to makes us happier and raise our kids to be good citizens. How such a watered down view cheapens it all.
We all know it’s true that the greatest exhibit of love is to lay down your life to save someone else’s life. But when laying down your life means willingly accepting even such barbaric cruelty, it is stunning. When someone accepts this in behalf of people He’s never seen, it can only be an act of a loving God. I believe that if you and I really caught a glimpse of how massive is God’s love for us it would change the texture of our expectations of life. How could we not keep from sharing our faith, our trust if this were its texture?
We sing in the great Communion hymn, “Love so amazing, so Divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” Who does the demanding? I demand it of myself when I realize what God did for me in Jesus. It’s true, Jesus said, “Follow me, and you’ve got to lose your life to find it.” But God does not ask for your life because He wants to strip you of life, but because He’ll keep you from wasting it. He’ll save your life. This is information worth sharing.
Sharing your faith enlists your love with the love of God in helping other people to find life. You pass on the love you know you’ve received.
The term “share your faith” suggests what the Apostle Paul was getting at in Romans 1: 17, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel . . . for in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith.” Through faith, for faith. God needs the conduit of your faith to trigger faith in someone else. You and I carry out a function like Jesus’ soul to soul contact with people.
Faith somehow is awakened in a person’s soul through the touch of another person’s faith. It’s not just the Gospel words, wonderful though they are. The Gospel needs a human conduit to touch the human heart. That conduit is your faith and mine, that is your life and mine.
How many of you would report that you learned to believe in God from the faith of your mother, or some other person who touched your soul? You watched your mother’s kindness, her selfless work in the home. She stayed awake with you during the night when you had a fever long after you were a child. You were a difficult high schooler maybe. She still cared for you tenderly. She loved transparently. And somehow, you realized that the faith that moved your mother was waking up inside you too. The Gospel made its way into your heart through the faith of your mother.
When we talk about “sharing your faith,” we’re talking about this essential touch of your soul on someone else’s depths. The faith of Jesus began the process. You pass it on.
Why should you share your faith? Because this is how God planned to awaken response to His love in people.
Something deadening happens inside you and me if we don’t share this trust in Jesus. How reduced your religion becomes. Sharing your faith is like exhaling when you breathe. Something deadening happens to you and to the Church when you do not exhale. You turn blue. You get cold.
There’s a second reason for sharing your faith. Jesus said to do it. We think of Jesus’ way as a way of receiving grace. But Jesus graciously gave some commands that we obey if we trust Him. Grace is at the heart of the Gospel. But what credit is there in remembering this if we then reject our place in the transmission of God’s grace? Jesus told His disciples at the end, “You are my witnesses now. Preach repentance. In my name preach the forgiveness of sins. Open the scriptures to people. Show that the Christ had to suffer and die on the third day and be raised from the dead.” Jesus said, “Do it.”
They understood a little of what He meant because some faithful Jews were letting non-Jews know about God’s love. Judaism was unique among the ancient religions in that it had a missionary element to it. You remember Jesus said to the Pharisees at one point, “You traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte.” Why? Because they read in the Prophet Isaiah what we read this morning. Jesus was critical of the legalism they introduced, but they did right in telling non-Jews about God.
It was into a world filled with horrid superstitions that Jesus sent His disciples with a simple message. “Repent. Hear and believe the Good News. Receive the sign of baptism. Learn how I told you to live.” How refreshing. How different from anything other people came up with in their religions. Nobody made up the Christian faith. The Christian faith is the way of Jesus in and out of me and you.
I have sometimes facetiously reported that my ancestors in the Scottish highlands were savages who ran around clothed in nothing but blue paint, plundering and hacking other peoples to death with their swords. But they heard this message from St. Colomba in the 6th century after Jesus died. This message taught them hope and gave them a way of life better than the frightening way they lived. Consequently there are St. Colomba churches all over Scotland.
There are questions many of us reasonably have about why Jesus said to share this trust in Him, this message of repentance. We wonder about the scope of God’s salvation and the role of saying “I believe,” that can seem to be said so effortlessly. We wonder what God will do with people who have never heard about Jesus, or who, if they have, heard about Him in such a mean-spirited way that it turned them away from Jesus. We read the doctrines John Calvin taught having to do with God’s choosing some and not others for salvation. Happily, Jesus didn’t say, “First, get everything figured out.” He simply said, “You are my witnesses.”
If you have trusted in Jesus, be open to sharing your faith. Why? Because other people need to be exposed to your simple trust in Jesus for them to learn how to trust in Jesus. Because Jesus said to do it. Despite how futile you may feel when you try to speak of your faith, this is the means God has chosen to spread the Good News that He loves us all.
This past week our furnace stopped working. A young repairman came out to fix it. After he made out the bill and I paid him, he asked if I was a pastor. He’d been told a pastor lived at this address. I confessed that I was a pastor. Apologetically he asked if he could ask me a question. He didn’t want to impose. I welcomed his question. He asked if God punishes people by making hard times come to them. He’d become irregular at church and was doing some things that were probably wrong. Was God punishing him?
I told him in my own words what the Apostle Paul wrote (Romans 2:4) that God uses various means to catch our attention. I went on to share something of how Jesus came to be important to me and how I had given my life back to God and how this really helped me through the ups and downs of life. At that moments my wife was in the hospital recovering from a painful surgery, so my heart was tender. I prayed with him and for him. He thanked me and went on his way.
This was sharing my faith –– my life, my trust in Jesus, with someone who was open and needy. I think this is what Paul had in mind in telling us the gospel moves “from faith to faith.”
Next Sunday I hope I can clarify what is essential to say about Jesus to those who ask. But today I simply want to make clear that if you are a Christian, you are the means God uses to help others find life. And if you are a Christian, when Jesus says you should do something, you should be doing it. Jesus said, “You are my witnesses.” Are you a witness who would say in embarrassment, like Peter on the night of Jesus’ trial, “I don’t know the man?” Or can you say, “I know the Man, and He loves me, and loves you too.” People need to hear you say this. I hope that you believe it is true for you.
Let us pray: O God, we don’t understand the deep mysteries of life. We don’t understand so much. But we understand that you love us, and that you love others too. Help us not only to be glad you love us, but to share your love. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 09, 2003
God’s Plan and Our Destiny
God’s Plan and Our Destiny
Psalm 89: 1-18 / Jeremiah 29: 5-14
Ephesians 1: 7-12
November 9th, 2003
Last Sunday and this we have tried to understand the plan of our Creator for this planet and for us who populate it. Not exactly a simple task. I can feel presumptuous and bold even to try. Some times I think I see more clearly than at others. Jeremiah told us God’s word to Israel, “I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future and a hope.” We cling to this promise too. The psalm we read told of God’s plan for King David’s Family.
The Bible tells us, “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the cosmos that we should be holy and blameless before Him”—who sees it all. Paul tacks on two words at the end that I don’t know how to fit with this sentence—“in love.” It seems to mean that everything God did was in love, out of love, because He loves us, because the entire Divine life emits love.
But having read this we ask, “OK, what does that mean, and how does this work? The world looks pretty out of control, and life can seem catch as catch can. There must be something going on behind the scenes.
Usually we don’t think about what’s going on behind the scenes. We’re busy enough with everyday matters so we don’t think about the big picture. I think a lot of people, even Christians, live as though there isn’t a bigger picture. Work, our friends, family needs, the war in Iraq, local politics, and our favorite sports team’s fortunes are enough for us to think about. We leave to the preachers and philosophers to dither with unseen things. But when we come to the deep moments of life, many of us realize there are deep questions brewing deep inside us all. Beneath all the noise, there are quiet depths in us all.
I had a funeral Friday morning for a family that has endured more than one family’s share of misery. I felt them looking at me for an explanation as I spoke of the love of God. At the moment I was wrestling inside with my wife’s physical problems. Concern for her somehow provided me a funnel, a scope, to see their need better at that moment.
Though I could not fix their lives, I could understand a little. The hymn writer wrote, “Jesus knows our every weakness, take it to the Lord in prayer.” We don’t sing, “Jesus fixes our every problem,” but Jesus “knows our every weakness.” It helps just to think that Jesus knows. What is happening is not going on in utter, lonely, nothingness. I think of people locked in prison cells away from friends, family, away from all who care about them. They feel forgotten and that makes life unspeakably awful. It was this that Jesus lamented from the cross, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Is there something going on behind the scenes that might make sense of all the pain, all the sorrow?
It must have been this vacuum of understanding that the Apostle Paul tried to fill when he wrote the passage we read together just moments ago. He wasn’t writing in an air-conditioned library at a seminary. He was probably in prison in Rome when he wrote this letter.
He must have viewed his own life’s odd course with wonder. Here he was the principal spokesman for an outlook on life and a way of life he once hated passionately. The eleven remaining men who had been Jesus’ companions for three years deferred to him who was probably one of those in Jerusalem telling Pontius Pilate, “Crucify Him.” Why did God wait until he’d made a lot of Christians miserable, and may have presided at the beating and execution of a few, before calling him so dramatically to a right about face? The Holy Spirit whispered to him, “I chose you before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before me. And I don’t view time quite like you do. I created time. Even when you were cursing Christians, I saw a different man—Paul the Christian, not Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of Christians.”
Perhaps Paul could see this on a personal level. Maybe he could recognize that there was logic to his life that only God could devise. But on a global scale, on the scale of history, why weren’t things coming together better? After the Light shined in the darkness, as the prophet Isaiah put Jesus’ coming, why had things become gloomier still? Well, God doesn’t rush things, that’s all. “Hurry” is not in God’s dictionary. Time for God isn’t what time is for you and me. Paul saw a great Plan at work, and God’s idea of a schedule saw time as only a blip on the screen of eternity.
The whole idea of God’s foreknowledge and predestination is an attempt to figure out how God, who created Time itself as well as all material things, presides over what happens. Some of John Calvin’s extreme ideas on God’s micro-management of all creation are a stab at trying to understand how the God who created Time and all things works in time with all things. We simply cannot understand this. What he wrote sometimes seems absurd. We will forever fight the battle of predestination versus free will because we do not understand God’s ways—who created time, cause and effect, and all of that.
And so the Apostle Paul wrote this circular letter for Christians of all time to read. The Holy Spirit carried Paul along, using his cultivated mind and heart to pour out these sublime hints of God’s ways. Here we find God explaining to us something of what is in His mind for this fallen creation.
Along the way in the Bible we come to passages where the glory shines through. When we come to matters like this that are so beyond us we must stop asking questions and listen intently. Listen: “In the economy of the fullness of times, all things are gathered up in Christ, things in heaven and on earth. In Him.” Economy? That means how things work out.
All things? What is included in “all things?” What comes to your mind when you hear the term, “all things?” What comes to the mind of a person in happy circumstances is different from what comes to mind for a person in misery. My young friend from Zambia, Mweemba Mwaanga, writes to me with excitement about learning to cultivate a banana plantation. He asks me to pray. His idea of “all things” that Jesus holds together is developing a banana farm to provide work and income for himself and others. Your idea of “all things” probably doesn’t include banana plantations.
All things—does that include the intricacies of nature? Does it include the deeds of evil people, Attila the Hun, Joseph Stalin, Gary Gilmore? Does it include yesterday’s football games, and tomorrow’s basketball games, and the quadriplegic that’ll never play any kind of ball game, but who is as valuable to God as Peyton Manning? All things gathered up in Christ?
The word for “gathered up,” (Ajnakefalaiwvsasqai) is a word picture. It begins with a small piece of word that can mean “again,” or “above,” or a number of other ideas. The word we translate as “born again” or “born from above,” uses this little piece of a word. The main part of the word derives from the word “head” (kefalhv). It suggests that everything finds its significance under the headship of Jesus. What does that mean?
We sometimes have to remind ourselves that there is a bigger picture in which particular events find their context. It takes a lot of snowflakes to make a snowstorm. One flake does not make a winter season. The moments in our lives are like snowflakes in a blizzard. Everything has a larger context. Jesus Christ is the big context, Paul tells us.
We speak of the “age of Napoleon,” or the “Age of Reason.” One personality or one idea gives its/his name to the whole. The name, “Jesus Christ” presides over time and the universe in a comparable way.
Elsewhere in a letter very much like Ephesians Paul wrote of Jesus, “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible . . . all things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
When things don’t seem to be holding together, God reminds us here that it is not as it seems. God offers us these glimpses of the larger view to comfort us in distress. But there’s more to it than this.
In the short run that appears as particular seasons of our lives we get caught up in fads of living. We who are older look at the passing fads of the younger generations. Tattoos and body piercing today are like the duck-tail haircuts and leather jackets of my teen-age years. Fads are passing fascinations. We compare fad clothing with classic clothing. Bell bottom jeans didn’t last long. Somehow the classic gray flannel suit keeps on showing up though generations come and go. Elvis Presley may be thought of as “classic” to some folk, but he’ll be forgotten while Beethoven’s symphonies are still selling CDs.
Perhaps the least recognizable fad is living as though the one who ends up with the most toys at the end wins the game of life. The consuming fad of every passing generation is that life consists of the abundance of things we possess. It’s as though the great symbol of life, the key to happiness is material. Jesus asked the rich fool “This night your soul is required of you. Then whose will these things be?” He was all caught up in the fad of apparent security and milking life for all money can buy. You and I are lured into this fad too. And Jesus says to us, surrounded by all we have and cling to, “This night your soul is required of you. Then whose will these things be?”
But we’re not stuck in this fad. Paul reminds us of a classic truth, that we live in the Age of Jesus. And in the way of Jesus we can find an alternate way of life. This is part of the hope found in the insight that in Christ all things hold together. Nowadays, folk who were licking their chops with their investment successes, allowed because of insider information they got at a good time, are running scared. What seemed like a windfall now feels like a tornado. But those whose eyes are fixed on Jesus, who look at their work, at their money, at their amusements, at their relationships through the lens of Jesus, are living a life that holds together.
Does your life fit in a framework larger than yourself?
But this is a truth we must hold very carefully. Because there is another fad that grabs at us: it’s the fad of religious triumphalism. Neither Jesus nor Paul ever intended that Christians should walk around with a smirk because they know it all. If we read that “in Christ all things hold together,” and use this confidence to make us feel superior to people who do not see this, we have missed the boat. Paul did not tell us these things to give us a feeling of superiority over other people.
Far from it. As Paul could be concerned that after preaching to others he might be a castaway, so you and I are wise to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling,” trusting that it is God who is at work in us to will and to do His good pleasure. When Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, “God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth,” He gave worship orders that remain in effect for us.
Calvin reminds us in his Institutes of the Christian Religion very often that one principal effect in us of trusting in God’s foreknowledge, is humility. God shows us glimpses of His plan not to make us proud that we have some inkling of what He is up to, but to make us realize how small we are. But humility is so soon forgotten as we are deluded by the fad of smugness in believing we are right and others are wrong.
God does not intend for us to grovel in this sense of smallness, because He tells us other things too—that we were made in His image, that He loved us so much that He gave us His Son to die to atone for our sins. That God should expend such effort and cost on us gives us dignity. But it is a dignity He gives, rather than a dignity we earn. We are a part of God’s plan. Bask in this, but humbly. You didn’t earn a bit of your good fortune.
What benefit is there in knowing there is such a thing as God’s providence and trusting it is true?
A good answer is found in our beloved Heidelberg Catechism, the answer to Question 28: “We may be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and for what is future have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that no creature shall separate us from his love, since all creatures are so in his hand that without his will they can not so much as move.”
I have felt despair in days past, and find myself clinging to what is for sure—even if it is beyond me. In Jesus Christ all things hold together—no matter what is going on right at the moment. So, your life holds together. And my life holds together. And life in Zambia where poverty and AIDS are scourging the population is holding together. And life in Iraq in its present confusion will some day be recognized as a scramble that God is working together for good too.
The benefit of seeing some of these things comes in ordering your life accordingly. God does not command the details of your life explicitly. But He created the context in which you live –– in Jesus Christ who presides over all time, over all geography, and even over all space. And though often we cannot see ho w it is so, Jesus is presiding in love. And unlike your love and mine, nothing at all can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. He gave you a mind to apply trust in His goodness to the details of your own choices. I pray you are choosing well. I pray you’ll accept Jesus’ forgiveness for when you have chosen badly in the past. Commit your ways to the Lord for days to come, and He will surely lead you well.
Because God is leading you according to a plan. And life holds together when, trusting God, we work out the details of His plan.
O God, we thank you for such glimpses as you allow us of Your loving ways, of Your hand at work in what seems the confusion of our world. Help us to trust you, and so to live pleasing to you. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2003
Does God Micro-Manage World History?
Does God Micro-Manage World History?
Psalm 135 / Daniel 7: 13-22
Ephesians 1: 1-6
November 2nd, 2003
In the 135th Psalm we read this morning, “Whatever the Lord pleases he does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” I thought of these words as I mulled over the words from Paul’s letter that we just read. God’s plans stem not from yesterday, but from “before the foundation of the world.” What is the texture of God’s plans? The Lord does what he pleases in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps, and in the lives of people. God’s hand shapes our lives.
Oddly, it is when powerfully destructive outbursts of nature’s power come that we refer to them as “acts of God.” A tornado is an act of God. A destructive flood or a mudslide in California is an act of God. Why do we mostly call harsh outbreaks of nature “acts of God?”
Speaking with one of you this week I learned a little about the amazing digestive process that takes place in a cow. I quoted from William Blake’s admiring poem, “What immortal hand or eye can form thy fearful symmetry.” Blake wrote this of the tiger, but the lines came to me thinking of the extraordinary process that takes place in the four stomachs of every cow grazing in a pasture. Every cow is an act of God. God made the genetic process by which those four stomachs develop in every baby calf in its mother’s womb. When it is very young, its mother’s milk bypasses the three stages hay and grass will pass through later on. Four stomachs never develop in human beings—ever. Though we eat beef, human beings never imbibe the genetics of the cows they eat. God presides over nature. We assume that God micro-manages the details that work in the bodies of all creatures great and small in nature. God keeps all these details sorted out.
The Bible tells us that God rules over nations too.
Paul wrote in Romans, “There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” He wrote this even though he lived during the years when Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero were the emperors of Rome. Caligula was a madman, and Nero became a madman. Paul would be executed by Nero, who also was an “authority . . . instituted by God.”
Our Lord told Pontius Pilate, a minor but ruthless governor in “the Judean Province,” when Tiberius was the emperor, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.” At the time Jesus stood there stripped, bloodied, and apparently helpless. But there was a reason why he was unbowed before Pilate.
God put that worst of the Roman procurators in his place in Judea. From our perspective, seeing that Jesus’ death-sentence by Pilate brought about the atoning death of Jesus, so that we could be saved from the penalty of our sin, we have a hunch how God presided over that period of time. As Joseph said to his brothers in the Old Testament story, Jesus might have said it to Pilate, “You meant it for evil but God meant it for good.” Was God micro-managing, “skillfully” tying together what we see as good and evil, to achieve a purpose for which we are glad?
The rise and fall of nations and empires is part of the “whole world” that God holds in His hands. St. Augustine saw the Roman Empire crumbling before the ruthless hordes of barbarians and thought the end was near. But it was just God moving pieces on his chessboard. It was time for the Roman Empire to give way for the next tool in the hands of the Sovereign Lord of time and eternity.
The 1930s and 1940s saw the rapid rise and then the precipitous fall of the Third Reich in Germany. Hitler thought he would be master of the world, but he died miserably in a Berlin bunker. God tossed this pretender to the side like a rag doll. He had done his worst to stamp out God’s people, the Jews. He did his worst to kill off other kinds of people he despised. But, as Luther wrote of the devil in his great hymn, “We tremble not for him, his rage we can endure, for lo his doom is sure.”
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-*This sermon reflects more than I spoke on Sunday morning, and I include this longer discussion with apologies for its length.
The second psalm speaks of his kind; “The Lord shall have them in derision.” At the time it seemed that God let things get out of control. “Where was God at Auschwitz?” Elie Wiesel asked very reasonably. When I see great evil being done like this, I come to see that no matter how massive the scale of evil, Hitler could only kill bodies. He could not kill the soul of any of those whom he tortured.
I believe there is a distinction between the permissive and the deliberate will of God, notwithstanding Calvin’s argument that God intends specifically all that happens. God allowed the evil of the Third Reich to continue for a time before He intervened and said, “Enough!” Looking back we presume to think we can see that even in that evil time God’s hand was sculpting history. God allowed evil to appear as evil before ending it.
I think of these things when I see how powerful America is now on the world stage. We’d better think better than Rome and Germany did. Though we too are part of the history God is shaping for His ends.
When we look back and know a little of what has taken place in history, we see it from a distance, not feeling the pain of particular moments. Seen from God’s perspective, it can seem that hard times were far away like turmoil that might take place in a molecule, such a minute fraction of the whole. Time and history comprise the “organism” God is shaping. Even “great” movers and shakers like Alexander the Great or the subsequent Roman Empire with its series of emperors were only minute particles in the organism of time over which God reigns.
I think of how bacteria and infections regularly wage war inside our bodies. But God has put in place within our bodies defenses to handle these enemies routinely. God has created in our bodies antibodies and white blood cells that defeat infections and bad bacteria. A fraction of the time what we call malignant cells gang up and hurt us. Sometimes they win. When they do and a loved one dies, it is painful. But far more often God wins the battle in our bodies with the defense mechanisms He has established. Furthermore what takes place in our bodies unfolds part of God’s overall good plan, even though particular moments are painful.
When we look back at the unfolding of history, we see a sculpting Hand. When we look inside our bodies at how things work at the elemental level to keep our outward health good, we see a sculpting Hand.
But when we look at our immediate lives, things can sure seem to happen at random, with no control whatsoever. This morning the news told of the destruction of a Chinook helicopter taking some of our troops to Rest and Recreation in Iraq. I thought of the parents that will receive that dreaded phone call, saying their beloved children were killed. I think of wives with little children who will get the phone call saying, “Your children’s father and your husband was killed.” And they will cry out, “Why God?” After praying for their safety, their loved ones were killed. Why pray at all?
Zacherias Ursinus, back in the 1560s, thought about this kind of question after his young friend drowned in a boating accident. His friend had been drinking, but did he deserve to die for this indiscretion? He wrote in our favorite catechism about God’s purpose: “Whatever evil he sends my way in this troubled life he will turn to my good, for He is able to do it, being Almighty God, and determined to do it, being a faithful Father.” He wrote this for the consolation of his friend’s father, the Elector of the Palatinate, Frederick III. He wrote it for the sake of others who would feel stunning blows to their confidence in the goodness of God.
But it is very hard for us to understand this at the moment we are overwhelmed. We assume that powers beyond us are beyond God too, When “tragedy” engulfs us, we ask where is God?
If Jesus could ask on the cross, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” how much more we, who haven’t his resources, wonder if God has turned His back when we feel ourselves spread out on a cross. If God rules on earth, why is He not ruling more kindly now? What good does it do to look back over time to see a beautiful aggregate picture when the immediate picture is so ugly?
When we see what is taking place in the Middle East today, we wonder where God’s hand is in the terror. If we lived in Baghdad, we might well be asking now, “Why does God let this keep on?” An Iraqi mother looks at the broken body of her child, shredded with bomb fragments, and finds it hard to see the loving hand of God at work.
When we see the famine or the tragic spread of STDs in the third world, where superstitions inhibit relief, we wonder why God doesn’t do something about it. Questions like this loom so large in some people’s minds that they think that either there is no God, or that God is not all-powerful, or that if He exists and is all-powerful, He is not good. They will not do God the honor of worshipping Him if He is not good. They’ll endure their fate at His hands rather than bow to Him.
It is this that Paul had in mind, I believe, in the passage from Ephesians that we read together moments ago. He wrote of God’s plan from before the foundation of the cosmos.
The best evidence is that this book of the New Testament was not a letter written to a single congregation in Ephesus. Instead it was a document Paul wanted every church to read. It was to circulate from one to another so that followers of Jesus could realize that in those very harsh times God had a good plan that was working. Perhaps Ephesus was the last congregation to read this letter before it came to be copied and re-copied, so “Ephesus” got permanently attached to this profound explanation of God’s purposes. God’s purposes extend fundamentally to us whom He “chose before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him.” He did this “in love.” Why doesn’t Paul address the big questions? He does. The big question has to do with what happens in the lives of people God shaped in His own image and likeness. This confusing thing called “time” warps what we see as the big picture. God sees at the more basic level of the individual for whose sake He sent His Son to this planet.
Jesus said to Pilate, who asked if He was king of the Jews, “My kingdom is not of this world.” To His disciples He said, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” Far from being a “pie in the sky by and by” kind of thing, Jesus meant that something right now is happening that is bigger than we know. The Kingdom of God is like the organism, and what takes place at particular moments of history, or in moments in your life and mine, is like the tiny molecules living inside the big organism.
When Paul wrote that God “elected us in Him, that is, in Christ, before the foundation of the cosmos” he was describing the big picture from God’s point of view and how we fit into it. The importance of the big picture is found in the minute individuals that God chose before the foundation of the world—for a purpose—to be holy and blameless like their Creator.
The One who created the dust from which you and I come, Who makes from that same dust the continents on which nations rise and fall on patches of geography, has a master plan. You and I fit into that master plan. How? By virtue of a fact that we underplay, that God does not underplay. What fact? That we exist as living images of the God who made us.
Every one of us is in some sense a replica of God. We are made in His image. Every baby conceived in the womb, no matter how the conception began, is a replica of its Creator. You and I should treat one another with dignity. It is hard for us to understand this. Paul tells us of God’s plan for each of us who is a replica of our Creator: “God chose us in Christ Jesus, before the foundation of the cosmos, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.” That is, we were created to be like God. Who but God is “holy and blameless?”
Paul tacks on to the end of this phrase two words I don’t know how to fit in with the preceding words. “In love.” Maybe Paul is telling us that God who IS love, unfolds this scheme in keeping with His character—which is to love.
Here Paul describes God’s plan for you. Not nations and empires, but you! Before there was a world. Before whatever took place by which Planet Earth found a place in our solar system, God “dreamed” about you.
I think of Michelangelo imagining his statue of David before he had seen the block of marble on which he’d apply his sculptor’s hammer and chisel. Michelangelo could see the finished product of that amazing statue in his mind’s eye while the marble was still in the quarry. And he was a mere mortal.
The immortal God, who created time, chose, to make you and me. It was His plan for you and me that we be holy and blameless. Unwittingly, when we see hints of these characteristics in people, they please us. They please us because they point toward our Creator. Fragments of holiness and blamelessness in people reflect their Creator. He made us like Himself in ways we cannot understand.
Or think of this in another way. Sometimes a masterpiece of art is produced that is so good that even prints of it are of high value. You can buy numbered prints of great paintings. In the corner of the print you’ll see that it is number 16 of 100 prints made of the masterpiece. The print itself will be valuable. In a way you and I are like numbered prints of the heavenly Masterpiece, who is uncreated.
Paul tells us that as numbered prints of the Masterpiece, our purpose is to reflect the Prototype. God is holy and blameless. God chose us before time itself to live before Him, before each other, and indeed, before the world holy and blameless. This was what God had in mind for our first parents. God has not forgotten that plan.
He goes on, “God decided beforehand sonship for us through Jesus Christ.” This tells us that it was not merely simple goodness that God plans for us, but a relationship with Him—sonship. Why sonship and not “childship?” Because Jesus was God’s Son, and God sees us in Him. Why? Simply out of his good pleasure, His will. This is a relationship to our Creator that is so intimate it is hard to speak of it within the range of ideas available to us.
Our ideas of good fortune are usually limited to matters of good health, financial well-being, and political security. We know these are passing pleasures, but these occupy our principle energies. What it might be to have a relationship to God as sons and daughters is beyond us. We’d be happy if God would just preside over tornadoes, sending them where there are no houses, and over infectious diseases, and over the hatred of the human heart, and over the stock market, so that we could live here the way we like to live.
But the plans of God for us and for this world don’t stop where our shortsighted hopes and dreams begin and end. The faith we cling to, taught to us by example and precept by Jesus, leads us to trust God for this bigger purpose that we cannot see. We call it the “Providence of God.” Providence means foresight—what God can see that we cannot see.
Ursinus, still grieving over the loss of his dear friend, described the providence of God. “The almighty and everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were by his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth, with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and draught, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yes, all things, come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.”
If you and I want to live with peace of mind in this troubled life, we have to train ourselves to see that there is more going on than we recognize. When people fly off the handle and do desperate things because of misfortune that comes to them, greater tragedy often follows. It is not only psychologically helpful, but also simply wise to trust that God not only sees the bigger picture, but also has already painted it.
I close with a story that some of you know. But it will not hurt to remind you of it. One of our beloved hymns says, “It is well with my soul.” The man who wrote these words experienced great tragedy just before. Horatio Spafford, a Chicago attorney who happened to be a Presbyterian, had just lost the bulk of his life’s investments in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The year before he’d lost his only son. To ease the pain he planned a trip to Europe with his wife and four daughters. But a business demand that came at the last moment kept him from joining his family on that trip.
So his wife and daughters left for Europe on the S.S. Ville du Havre in early November 1873. On the 22nd the ship was struck by another ship and sank in twelve minutes, claiming the lives of most people on board. His wife was one of the few survivors. She cabled her husband two words, “Saved alone.” Their four daughters drowned. Horatio Spafford caught the next ship for Europe. As he neared the place where the wreck took place that killed his daughters, he watched the high rolling waves and wrote in his journal, “When sorrows like sea billows roll.”
But rather than lingering on that crushing note of sorrow at his loss, he went on to write words that came to be a favorite hymn for many people who experienced the agony of loss,
When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say
It is well with my soul.
Often we have to be somewhat detached from immediate contact with what causes our pain to enjoy this expression of trust in God. What is the soul about which Spafford wrote, “It is well?” The soul is everything about us. The soul is larger than any moment. Tragedy doesn’t have the last word with “the soul.” The significance of your life is larger than anything that happens at one moment of joy or sorrow. We have to get beyond the moment to have any sense of our “soul.”
It is to this “soul” that Jesus speaks when He said, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you.” Jesus offers you peace not by reminding you that you are only a tiny piece in the big puzzle of life, but by letting you know you are far more important to God than you imagine. You are a replica, indeed, a child of God. Even your momentary tragedy is a part of God’s good project with your soul.
The purpose and benefit of our faith is to appropriate this comforting fact, so much larger than any one moment’s significance. You can fortify yourself to meet tragedy by deliberately choosing to live out the truth that you belong to God. By choosing to live a “holy and blameless” life, however many times you may fail at particular moments, you put yourself into the orbit of God’s grace. We have a part to play in God’s purposes by the choices we make. God weaves together the good and the bad, caring for our souls—that is, the real “us,” in the long run. But the days and moments of life, which we think are so important, find us at peace when we accept God’s purpose, and choose to live it out—holy and blameless before Him.
This is God’s loving plan. Who could plan life better? His grace covering our sin in the long run. His plan for life providing a sure guide for our daily life. And as we follow God’s plan of holiness and blamelessness, we become instruments in His hand to execute His good will for others. I pray that you and I may be wise to accept our place in this gracious plan. I don’t presume to understand the mind of God, but these things seem to arise before me as I ponder the words of Scripture this morning, and look at the overall scheme of life. These things God is working out for our good, because He loves us, and has called us according to His purpose. His purposes are good.
Let us pray: O Lord, I have spoken of things beyond me. But we ask that your Holy Spirit may so direct us that we may take such as we can understand of your good ways, and be led to live out our days and moments in holiness and blamelessness, to the praise of your glorious grace. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)