“But when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened itself on his hand. When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they began saying to one another, ‘Undoubtedly this man is a murderer, and though he has been saved from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live.’ However he shook the creature off into the fire and suffered no harm. But they were expecting that he was about to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But after they had waited a long time and had seen nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and began to say that he was a god.” Acts 28:3-6
My wife and I were recently on vacation and decided to stop for dessert after while walking back to our hotel from a craft fair. The dinner rush had passed, but there were still a few stragglers entering the restaurant for a meal. After being seated, we waited an unusually long time without being acknowledged by a server…long enough that the couple in the next booth who had been seated after us had already received their drinks. Slightly irritated at the lack of service, I suggested that if we weren’t acknowledged in the next five minutes, we should just go back to the hotel. Our waitress finally showed up just before we were ready to leave and seemed less than enthusiastic about serving us. However, she apologized and explained that a tourist had come out of the ladies’ room and hit our server’s nose with her elbow causing intense pain. What we had assumed to be poor service was in actuality something entirely different. Having heard the explanation, our demeanor quickly changed from frustration to concern. That’s the problem with assumptions, just because we have a little information, doesn’t mean that we know the truth of the matter.
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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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True faith means holding nothing back. It means putting every hope in God’s fidelity to His Promises.
“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Philippians 2:5-8
Two years ago we put down what we thought would be our last pet. We had decided that we couldn’t take having to say goodbye to another beloved dog; further, the freedom the lack of pets would afford seemed beneficial. That plan began to erode when our younger daughter’s family rescued a shih tzu last fall. I liked the dog so much that our grandsons regularly reminded me that Leo was their dog and he had to go home with them. As a result we adopted Tiffany in December. She is mostly a sweet and somewhat timid dog, but as she is part terrier, she has an aggressive side as well. In fact, her outbursts of aggression are the primary reason that she ended up back at the humane society after roughly seven months with another couple. While she has historically been fine with all others, she has a tendency to snarl at her owners when she doesn’t want to be disturbed. This is her greatest weakness and the ultimate manifestation of her animal instincts. The difference in her owners is that the first family quickly gave up, but we have enrolled her in obedience school and are working with her to make her a good companion. The goal is to teach her to submit to us in all ways for her safety and well-being as well as to provide more peaceful lifestyle for us all. While none of us likes to be compared to an animal, the fact remains that as Christians we are all like Tiffany in varying degrees. We have this sinful nature that urges us to follow our “animal instincts” rather than to humbly submit to God. Left unchecked, it separates us from God. Consequently, the process of sanctification is in reality obedience school in which we learn to give up control and submit to our Savior, our Master, our Lord and our God.
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Control seems preferable to what we typically think of as its opposite–chaos. But I want to suggest that the opposite of control is not chaos. It is trust, and trust is far preferable to control. We want to control because we fear the outcome of letting God be in control. We fear we won’t be taken care of, won’t have what we need, or will be taken advantage of. But trying to be in control is futile, because in reality there is very little that we can control.
Hope is called the anchor of the soul (Hebrews 6:19), because it gives stability to the Christian life. But hope is not simply a ‘wish’ (I wish that such-and-such would take place); rather, it is that which latches on to the certainty of the promises of the future that God has made.
We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. 1 John 4:16-17
We all like to be reminded that we are loved…especially by those who are dear to us. My wife was out of town this weekend and I wasn’t feeling the greatest on several levels. At one point, I considered staying home from church on Sunday morning. However, realizing that it was not a wise choice in that moment and that there are others who would love to attend a worship service, but are unable, I rose to the occasion and went. During the praise time, the worship team led us in “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us”. For various reasons, I desperately needed to hear those words.
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We must cease striving and trust God to provide what He thinks is best and in whatever time He chooses to make it available. But this kind of trusting doesn’t come naturally. It’s a spiritual crisis of the will in which we must choose to exercise faith.
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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