Looking back...

You ever look back on old pictures of yourself and just have to smile and shake your head? "How could I have ever thought baggy shorts were an appropriate complement to these spindly legs?" "Am I glad I learned that lime green shouldn't ordinarily be a style preference." "Look at that hair!"

Growth and maturity are beautiful things, and I'm so thankful our Father is committed to seeing that they happen in our lives. Often those of us doing the growing tap our foot impatiently, wishing we could just get to the final product. The growing process is blessedly awkward and looking back on where we've come from elicits blushes of various shades. But I don't think we need to throw dust-sheets over our old selves, as though no one can read the "Work in Progress" sign the Father hangs in front of every one of His children.

Looking back on this blog, I feel the temptation to grab those dust sheets. "Ugh. That doesn't really represent my views anymore." "Yeah, that boy needed some seminary training." "Good night. Wasn't I angsty in college!"

You know what's funny? In five more years, I'll be looking back on today and feel the threatening red of embarrassment laying siege to my ears. I'm forever amazed by how lovingly patient the Lord is with me, particularly when I look at old representations of me. But then "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6). God is ever in the renovating process. He loved the old Kent with the baggy shorts and angsty soul, so much in fact He hasn't given up on shaping him into the image of His beloved Son. That should give us confidence to look back on His work in our lives with humble and even humor-filled thankfulness.

We can praise God for His work in our lives both currently and in those days that have no remaining record because we destroyed all the evidence tracing us to the color lime green!

Where is the Awe? Where is Our God?

Acts 2:43, And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.

Note that this feeling of wonder did not come about because of the miracles performed by the apostles (as the NIV translation would lead us to believe). Rather, looking back to verse 42, this sense of the presence of a worthy God within the early church was the result of sitting under the apostles teaching and delighting in each other's fellowship.

Where is the awe today, Father? We perform our religious duties perfunctorily and wonder that Your presence is nowhere to be found in our midst. Therefore we see none of Your mighty power surging through Your people for we have lost our first love. But how can we stand in awe of a God who means so little to us and whose worth and omnipotence we assent to intellectually but do not embrace with our hearts? We need a bigger God in the West, a deity that is more sovereign and more Godlike than our material-bound culture is willing to accept. We need our eyes unveiled to see the real Yahweh that we may tremble and stand in awe-full wonder of Him! Desvele nossos olhos, ó Pai, para que tenhamos corações que maravilham a Ti, atitudes dignos dum Rei tão potente. "Unveil our eyes, oh Father, that we might have hearts that wonder at You, attitudes worthy of so majestic a King."

Christ, Our Authority on Eternity

Ecclesiastes 3:11b, He has set eternity on [man’s] heart.

How true! Even those who deny there is a life after this spend much of their time defending their position. Every human thinks on eternity and most of us admit we have to take into account life after death. And Christianity is the only religion has authority on such a subject for we have God who has told us what to expect. Moreover we have the testimony of the God-man, the first fruit of the resurrection and our surety that there is a life after death and that, for we who believe, it will be wonderful! No other religion has one who has tasted death and life after it and therefore can speak with authority on what will happen.

Embracing the Creature's Sophistries and Eschewing the Creator's Statutes

I Kings 13:14-24, And he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak. And he said to him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?” And he said, “I am.” Then he said to him, “Come home with me and eat bread.” And he said, “I may not return with you, or go in with you, neither will I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place, for it was said to me by the word of the Lord, ‘You shall neither eat bread nor drink water there, nor return by the way that you came.’” And he said to him, “I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘Bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water.’” But he lied to him. So he went back with him and ate bread in his house and drank water. And as they sat at the table, the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back. And he cried to the man of God who came from Judah, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Because you have disobeyed the word of the Lord and have not kept the command that the Lord your God commanded you, but have come back and have eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which he said to you, “Eat no bread and drink no water,” your body shall not come to the tomb of your fathers.’” And after he had eaten bread and drunk, he saddled the donkey for the prophet whom he had brought back. And as he went away a lion met him on the road and killed him. And his body was thrown in the road, and the donkey stood beside it; the lion also stood beside the body.

(Please read I Kings 12-13 for crucial background on a story we never hear in church or in our devotional materials.)

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This story has always troubled me, Lord. Your measures were too drastic, too harsh for something this insignificant. After all, this man was Your servant and You killed him for merely eating and drinking?! Are You not unfair, unsympathetic? No, and a thousand times no! This is how we humans understand things, we who do not fully grasp the greatness of Your person, the terribleness of our mission, and the awfulness of our sin.

First, we must not downplay the truth that this was a true servant of the LORD, chosen by Him to bear a message of judgment to Israel. He’d been charged with a specific, personal command from the LORD to not eat or drink in Israel but to return straight way after discharging his burden at Bethel. Yet, when the evil prophet finds the LORD’s servant, he is sitting down. I could make too much of this little detail, but it does seem the man was weary and ready to give in to his fleshly wants, fearing too little the awful weight of judgment the LORD had cast upon Israel. In this state of weakening resolve, the man of God meets the old prophet who convinces him that the old man has received a message from the Lord contradicting the revelation the servant of God had received directly from the LORD Himself. The man of God chose to ignore what he know to be the word of God for what he heard from another man regarding the Lord’s plan. He abandoned divine revelation in favor of human interpretation.

Why? Because, I think, human interpretation sounded more appealing than God’s stark commands requiring sacrifice and suffering (lack of food and water). Fleshly desires for comfort (a comfort promised by those who claimed to speak for God) superseded God’s clear commands and the importance of complete obedience. And, Lord, as You so often do to underscore the enormity of such an offense in Your eyes, You slew Your own servant so the rest of us would not mistake the gravity of rejecting clearly divine revelation in favor of man’s more comfortable interpretation.

There is so much in this passage that applies to our souls today! Lord, preserve me from following the easy way, from being weak in my heart and ready to crumble before temptation. Don’t let me sit in the way of sinners (Psalm 1:1). Help me to be ever moving away from the kingdom of judgment toward Your kingdom of truth. Do not let me be fooled by false teachers (Matthew 7:15-16a) who come bearing a word that seems similar to Yours but that leads to a drastically different end (Proverbs 16:25). Never let me swap the truth I know comes from You for something more palatable reinterpreted by men who do not believe in the sufficiency of Your powerful and eternal Word. Make me such a lover of truth, such a man of Your word, that I will immediately recognize, avoid, and condemn any false doctrine that leads to death! Do not let me be led by any man save Him who is also God. Jesus my Shepherd, speak often to me that I may know Your voice and Your voice only (John 10:26-27). One final request, loving Savior: let me die before I follow anyone but You!

Betraying Our Jesus With a Kiss

Luke 22:48, Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?

Yes, Lord. With attestations and outward forms of affection and loyalty, I would surrender this body You have doubly bought back to sin. I kiss You before my fellow Christians, yet leave You to mockery and shaming in the presence of Your enemies. With a kiss, I too often betray You for the same lips that proffer love to You are the same that speak the evil that draws blood from Your back.

How cheaply do we sell our Savior? How little do we value the preciousness of His blood split to buy us back from all our impurities? And we who are saved have a thousand reasons more than Judas to remain faithful to our Jesus because we understand to some degree just how beautiful He is and how much He has done for us. But sometimes I wonder how my own heart is so easily enticed by the silvery glint of sin offered me by the devil if I will only betray my Savior's wishes for me.

Why is it so easy to put on a front, to skulk with sin and come shortly after and kiss the altar of our God in pretended worship? Who are we fooling? Jesus knew what darkness lay in Judas's heart. Sadly, I think the show we put on is more for other Christians than it is even for our God. We don't want others to see what Judases we really are inwardly.

But maybe if we all were frank with each other about our failures, we'd find allies in our war against secret sins. And perhaps, rather than kiss the Son with falsehood in our hearts, we might honor Him with purified lips, having had our brothers and sisters in the faith put the coal of God's gospel to our unclean, duplicitous mouths (Isaiah 6:5-7). Then might we better serve as His messengers for the world will see our affection for Jesus is real and not some hypocritical show put on by yet another Judas.

He Is Longsuffering, But Not Ever-Suffering

Romans 2:4-5, Or do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.

One day we will see just how we have misjudged You, oh God. We will see just how awful sin is and how terrifying its consequences are! We will tremble before a God who is no longer mighty to save (Zephaniah 3:17) but mighty in judgment… And we will be completely undone. Our hard, impenitent hearts will be shaken to their core to see our Creator’s almighty power, the beneficent side of which we have only known thus far, now turned in all of its irrepressible, inavertable potency against us. We will feel the full weight of horror for having made God our enemy. In dread we will cringe before the wrath of God from which there will be no escape. We will call on the hills to fall on us and the mountains to cover us (Revelation 6:15-17), desperate to find some deep place where we can be hid from the all seeing, burning eye of God. But there will be no place to run to from the omnipresent Judge who will tread the winepress of His wrath and bathe His righteous robes in the blood of those who spurned the Son’s sacrifice for them and chose instead to be their own blood offering in payment of their sins (Isaiah 63:1-6)! And in that day, we will realize just how foolish we were to think You would treat sin as lightly as we do. We will weep that we so presumed upon Your kindness and did not repent when You had given us years to do so. And the flames of hell will burn hotter for our knowledge that this eternal agony might have been avoided.

The Things That Are God's

Luke 20:25, He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.”

I think too often when I have read this story I marvel at Christ's wisdom in getting out of the bind the Pharisees thought to put Him or I take this lesson as proof that Christ commands submission to our temporal authorities. But this is usually as far as I go: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's..." Yet the implications of the second half of the verse are its most profound!

How we fail to render to our God the things that are His! We are so much better at giving our temporal leaders their due (especially as tax season rolls back around in the US). And still God receives so little of what we owe Him––perhaps because He doesn't tax audit. And what are God's things? Hardly the mere "ten percent" we grudgingly place in the offering plate as though we were trying to buy off God's claim to our entire being! This week I heard a terrifyingly convicting quote from John Piper regarding our reluctance to give even the minimal tithe: The question of giving is not "how much do I give" but "how much do I dare keep for myself."

God claims our all, our every breath, thought, action, moment. He expects devotion to Him with all our emotion, our will, our strength, and every fiber of our being. Yet how often do we yield even one percent of the total consecration He expects? The stats say that American Christians, among the wealthiest self-professed Christ-followers in history, don't even give 5% of their income. Yet a tithe of one's material gain was simply the minimum for Israel, and they didn't even have the permanent indwelling of the Spirit! Where is the all we should be consecrating to God as the temples in which He chooses to abide?

Father, I give You my all, only to take it back again later today, I know. But I give it to You again and ask You would keep me from my continued attempts to steal it off the altar.