“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9
My wife and I went to a dinner theater last week with my aunt, uncle and a few of their friends. Shortly before the intermission, one of the ladies in our group collapsed into the lap of the woman sitting next to her. Admittedly, given her symptoms, most of us thought that she was dying. Thankfully, by the time the ambulance arrived, she had recovered enough to walk to the gurney. After spending the night in the hospital, she was released with a heart monitor. Aside from the obvious concerns for those involved, it raised a deeply rooted fear of my own. As much as I accept God’s will in my life, the thought of a public medical emergency still haunts me…and I’ve had a few. For many of us, it raises concerns about embarrassment, image, and acceptance. Ultimately, we cannot control the events of our lives, but we can control our response to them with a bit of truth.
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“Trouble and anguish have come upon me, yet Your commandments are my delight. Your testimonies are righteous forever; give me understanding that I may live.” Psalm 119:143-144
Healthy relationships are built on knowledge, understanding and grace. Sharing a conversation with a person will, in most cases, allow one to get to know them. However, that does not necessarily mean that they have any kind of significant relationship…at this point they are, for the most part, acquaintances. Solid relationships are built when people share their lives. They celebrate the high points together, comfort at low points and offer aid, wisdom and guidance in the midst of struggles. Grace covers the gap between knowledge and understanding as well as when there is a need for forgiveness. Developing a strong relationship takes time and effort but yields a great reward.
Last week I was looking for scripture verses to post on social media and came across Psalm 119:43-44. Despite having read and sung it many times, this time it struck a nerve. The natural tendency of any human when faced with trouble that causes anguish is to seek understanding. The important question is: what kind of understanding?
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“I will extol You, my God, O King, and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of Your majesty and on Your wonderful works, I will meditate. Men shall speak of the power of Your awesome acts, and I will tell of Your greatness. They shall eagerly utter the memory of Your abundant goodness and will shout joyfully of Your righteousness.” Psalm 145:1-7
As I was finishing a run recently, I was overcome with the urge to glorify God. As I pondered His glory, I had to check my soul to make sure it wasn’t merely an emotional high. After all, it was a beautiful day and I had just completed my first good run in a long time. Thankfully, while the weather and my mood may have been contributing factors, upon reflection, they were minor ones as I truly just needed to praise God. However, my contemplation led me to consider how easy it is to glorify God when the sun is shining and things to seem to be going well, but what about the dark and cloudy days or when times are tough?
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For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 12:3
I went out for a run the other day and struggled through most of it. Somewhere in the last half mile, I decided it might be wise to walk the remainder of the way home. Shortly after I started walking, I met a young woman running in the opposite direction. As we met, she cheerfully encouraged me to start running again. As tempting as it was, I declined as my choice was not a matter of giving up but rather a bit of prudence for a few reasons: I have asthma and had forgotten to use my inhaler before running; my body is recovering from injury, and I’ve been pushing myself to meet various demands and have not been getting the rest that my body needs. In better circumstances, the encouragement would have yielded the desired effect of the other runner. However, under these conditions, I had to allow reason to overrule desire. As we endure in our walk of faith, we need be intentional as well.
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“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-7)
This was not the topic that I originally intended for this week’s post, but given a few divinely inspired events, my plan was changed. As is my habit, I started the day with the “verse of the day” emails from Bible Gateway and KLove. The one from Bible Gateway was a portion of Psalm 139. It is a favorite of mine for many reasons; one of those is that it was the last passage my parents read together on the eve of my mother’s death. That circumstance coupled with the quote that I posted this week beckoned me to consider love and grief.
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“Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, ‘I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,’ so that we confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?’ Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:4-7
This past weekend Marie and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. While I would like to say that it was an entirely blissful 40 years, that would not be a true statement for two reasons. We are both fallible humans still in the process of sanctification and there have been trials that have tested our faith in each other and our God. However, what I am able to declare as true is that those 40 years have been blessed and I would, therefore, like to share a bit of our walk with you.
If you read from the beginning of Hebrews 13, you will see that Paul is asserting a list of essential behaviors for the body of Christ; they are in essence keys to living well. Honoring marriage is just one of them. However, if you look beyond the issues themselves, you see a few common denominators that allow for success in these areas.
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Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth; break forth and sing for joy and sing praises. Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody. With trumpets and the sound of the horn shout joyfully before the King, the Lord. Psalm 98:4-6
Praise when things are going well, when we are blessed by a great time of Christian fellowship and learning, or amid a large body of believers is usually fairly easy, but what about the dark days…the days of pain and suffering? As I’ve mentioned many times, music is important to me. I love to listen to it, I love to sing it, and I love to dance to it. What I love most is singing to praise God. As much as I love it, there have been two periods in my life that required a bit of effort to sing praise. The first was a longer period (several years) from the time it was determined that I was chronically ill until God began to instruct me regarding the value of trials and pain with respect to my soul. During that time, songs like “Blessed Be” and “Untitled Hymn” became very important as I struggled understand and to come to peace with God’s plan for me. The second period was the years from 2012 to 2015 in which we dealt in varying degrees with the various health issues of our fathers and their deaths. While I had previously learned about God goodness even in trials, the struggle was still difficult and there were many times that I had to will the praise out of my mouth. Rather than succumbing to the urge to be silent, I knew that praise to God is especially critical in difficult times. What makes it so critical is the message that it sends.
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Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:14-15
The small group that my wife and I participate in is currently studying the statements of faith that our church affirms. As I began preparing for a study on the statement related to Christ, I thought it would be appropriate to walk through it here since the Christian world will be celebrating Easter in a few days. It’s a brief but great reminder of what we are celebrating and is as follows: “We believe in Jesus Christ, His virgin birth, sinless life, vicarious death, burial, bodily resurrection, His ascensions to the right hand of the Father and His personal future return in power and glory.”
Why Christ?
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Christmas is based on an exchange of gifts, the gift of God to man – His unspeakable gift of His Son, and the gift of man to God – when we present our bodies a living sacrifice.
“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13
Christmastime in our culture can be a tough time of year. As Christians, we struggle with those who miss the whole point of the celebration because they do not believe in Christ. Beyond that, there can be many hurdles to our joy shining through in this season. The holiday schedule can get hectic which often leads to stress. For those of us with illness, we often have enough trouble managing our heath without the additional burden of the social obligations that can exacerbate our symptoms in various ways. For some, it will be the first Christmas without a loved one…or a few. Others may have learned that this may be the last Christmas that they celebrate with a loved one as disease advances. The opportunities for Satan to jump in and help us lose our joy are varied and endless, but if we are truly going to celebrate and maintain our joy, we need to intentionally focus on why we are celebrating…the incarnation of Christ. This declaration of love bestowed upon us that brings us both joy and hope now and for eternity is the single source of our reason to celebrate. We celebrate because He came, He rules and He is righteous.
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