Grasping For More

Here’s a test.  Think about what gives you the most comfort.  What motivates you and keeps you going?  Are those things spiritual or physical?

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”  (Ecc. 3:11)

Each of us entertains the physical world and the spiritual realm.  These two modes of existence are constantly intertwined and can often be at odds with one another.  Take some time to think about it.  Anything meaningful is both physical and spiritual.  It’s physical and occupies space.  It’s spiritual and occupies the soul.

Popular culture is sick.  It’s diseased with the idea that the only solution to our discontent and apparent emptiness is MORE, and with greater intensity.  It infuriates me that a YouTube video of a young girl in a tutu singing Super Bass (a song saturated in sex) draws millions of viewers exclaiming “How cute!”  It’s not cute.  It’s depravity, and the blame falls on every enabler because the child does not understand enough to know better.  Do you see what I’m saying?  The reason our culture is saturated with sex is because intimacy was replaced with intensity.  Sex went from private to public because WE WANTED IT THAT WAY.  It’s not just sex though.  It’s wealth, it’s ambition, it’s individualization.  If a person has forgotten or lost the ability to find contentment they will forever seek their own satisfaction at the detriment of others.  In the end the biggest thing that suffers is our joy.

Do you know how much Scripture there is to verify this depravity?  The ENTIRE story of the Old Testament is a story about the majority of the culture falling victim to selfish discontent while a few faithful ones are pointing them back to God, back to the place where physical and spiritual desires and needs are joined together in peace (shalom, wholeness).

Jesus came to earth to fulfill His Father’s Kingdom.  “God is Spirit” but God is glorified in His creation, the place where what is spiritual joins together with physical expression.  How easy is it to miss the spiritual side of things?  Ask Jesus his thoughts on the Pharisees and he would tell you “They know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign” (Matthew 16:1-4).  Jesus, God’s saving grace to us, was speaking directly to these people but all they did was demand more signs.  They had put all their energy into maintaing the physical world around them (laws and regulations, etc.) that they completely missed Jesus and His mission to complete the work His Father had for him.

God created you with a heart that knows His ways.  Eternity was written on your heart because God created you for relationship with him.  Do not be fooled by the liars and fools in this world who would have you trade intimacy with God for intimacy with yourself and with the world.  They promise you intensity is the solution to your happiness but that promise always falls short and even they are slaves to their own foolishness.

Ask yourself this.  Am I finding my joy in things that are perishable?  If what I gain leaves me wanting more, what kind of existence is that?  Will you listen to Jesus’s words when he says “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Will you trust him, even for a moment, and experience the blessing of peace?  Will you pray?

You can have all this world, but give me Jesus.

Following Jesus

Let’s dive into John 6.

To set the stage, Jesus has just fed the five-thousand.  People are amazed and captivated by this man, but “Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself” (John 6:15).  Jesus didn’t seek his own glory because he knew that when the time came, his Father would glorify him.

Crowds followed Jesus again the next day.  They surrounded him expectantly, but Jesus didn’t feed them again as he did the day before.  He said “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” he said (John 6:35).  This upset some of the Jews because Jesus was claiming to have been sent from heaven.  Jesus knew their calloused hearts and knew their grumbling minds, so he responded directly.  He gave a hard message to digest.  “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53).  As if it didn’t hit hard enough the first time people heard this, Jesus repeated this message several times, until people began leaving.  Even those who claimed to be Jesus’ disciples left him, until only twelve men remained.

Jesus worked miracles and amazed people with signs, but he was uncompromising in the words he spoke.  His message never changed, but was always poised to make people respond.  Typically those who gathered around Jesus would either devote themselves to his teaching and commands or they would reject him entirely as blasphemous.  If Jesus was hoping to gain a bunch of followers, why did he always give such uncompromising messages?

Jesus’ goal wasn’t to gain followers.  Jesus was actually a follower himself, a follower of God the Father, who sent His Son to be our savior, our priest, our redemption.

Jesus was most concerned in following His Father’s will, knowing that the Father would glorify the Son.  He says “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:38-39).

After this [message] many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”  (John 6:66-69)

It can be a hard thing to grasp, but if even Jesus sought His Father’s glory before his own, shouldn’t we do the same?

Be reminded that it is not God’s desire that you should glorify yourself.  Let Him guide you in life and lead you into His glory, when you are “raised up on the last day.”  In your speech, your deeds, your thoughts, your prayers, seek to bring glory to God and He will lead you into the greatest joy you could ever experience, which is His ultimate, eternal glory.

Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me" 

(John 8:54)

Thailand Update

        For man to know himself, he must first know his Creator.  The human experience is fleeting and fluid, ever changing in our enjoyment and perception of it, but God is absolute and a solid foundation to our flimsiness.  Truth remains absolute.  God’s Word is truth.  We are the relative ones, wavering in our understanding and devotion.  But even if everything fades and everyone is unfaithful, God is faithful.

Before we can be convinced of our purpose in life, we must be certain of our life in Christ.  But there are indeed many things that would steal our attention away from this foundational truth.  “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.  I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (Jesus, John 10:10).  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17).

And for me, before I can be convinced of my purpose in my work, I must be certain of the purpose and power in which God performs His work.  This was made evident to me while in Thailand because before God revealed anything to me about what I might do in the future, He revealed to me the power with which He works in the present.  I was part of a project and purpose much more pressing than my own desires and concerns for my future.  My attention was, by God’s grace, diverted from myself.  By God working in this way, He opened my heart to experience and understand finally that God will accomplish His will.  God will accomplish His will.  His purposes will not be thwarted.  That is the truth we can stand on, and we relate to it by our experience with God and His work.

Before

After

It was a rainy day in northwestern Thailand.  That’s no surprise because it was mid-September and during the swell of the rainy season.  We had traveled there to work alongside volunteers and the Karen people.  Their mission is to build a jungle hospital inside Burma to provide relief for the villages and peoples being terrorized and attacked by the Burmese Army.  This hospital needs to be bullet proof, inexpensive, and able to be constructed with local materials and lightweight things that can be carried discreetly across the border.  Special training is needed so that the building is constructed properly and remains strong.  It was the second day of training and the rain was coming down so hard that the progress had come to a halt and the work was actually becoming undone.  What do you do when it’s the rainy season in Thailand and you can’t finish the building if the rain won’t stop?  You pray and watch God work.

First two people stepped aside from the work to begin praying about the rain.  For a moment it seemed that the downpour relented a bit.  Then a few more people joined in the prayers.  Within seconds the rain began to cease and before long it was gone.  It didn’t return until over a week later, after the project had been completed!  The sun came out and the work continued.  The next day it was so sunny and so hot that working a 12 hour day seemed too difficult to do.  Heat exhaustion was in the near future.  But the work progressed with enthusiasm because we were so thrilled that God had held back the rain.  Confident that God desired for this building to be built, some of us prayed for cloud cover and a breeze so we’d be more comfortable!  Admittedly, those prayers were slightly humorous, but nevertheless God answered them.  For the majority of the project we worked in either reasonable heat or with a breeze and cloud cover!

The work was progressing well, but things were taking longer than we had planned for.  It seemed that the project wouldn’t get done in time.  Our team decided to stay and work extra two days and take a day to rest on the Sabbath.  On that Sabbath day we enjoyed worship and prayer with our Karen family and then were blessed to take an incredible trip up the river that separates Burma and Thailand.  We visited a refugee camp just inside Burma and were able to see the people we were working for.  They are the friends and families of many of the medics and volunteers who work with Free Burma Rangers and live sacrificially.  Their enduring spirit and sacrifice provides a light to thousands of people who live under the constant threat of danger and death.  To me, it was a light that shone to the darkness of my own heart and devotion.  It is a light that humbles me in the Lord’s presence.

God provided for the work to be completed and the people worked, so it was completed.  The project really came together those extra two days that we stayed.  Not only that, but if we had gone back to Chiang Mai when we originally planned, we would have arrived in a city covered with a few feet of flood waters.  By the time we actually arrived in Chiang Mai most of the flooding had subsided.  The day after we left the project site, having completed the work, it rained and the bridge we used to leave was washed out.  

God will accomplish His will.  His purposes will not be thwarted.  We are the instruments of His work and we need to keep seeking Him, take time to listen, and be flexible to change as His Spirit leads us to the places we never thought we’d go.  Things are better in those places because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

I find comfort knowing that God’s plan for my life isn’t something I have to have figured out from start to finish.  It’s something that’s uncovered step by step, and only by continually looking toward Him.  “For your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”  I’m in awe of where the Lord has led me thus far - it’s totally His doing because I couldn’t think up some of this stuff!  Keep the faith.  Stay faithful to the present, confident in the future.