Category Archives: Living Well

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The Winding Road of Faith

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“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  For by it the men of old gained approval.”  Hebrews 11:1-2

 

In my late twenties and early thirties, I had two friends with whom I went camping and hiking twice each year.  As we were trying to avoid insects and snakes, we would go late in the fall and early in the spring.  Sometimes we would experience wonderfully warm weather; sometimes it was cold and rainy; the rest were somewhere in between.  Together we enjoyed great vistas, got lost on poorly marked trails, endured wet sleeping bags and very cold showers (as it was off season in the parks), joking about each other’s quirks, met some nice folks and feared a few; but mostly we grew closer through the shared experiences and evenings by the campfire.  Two of the three of us are probably too infirmed to tolerate those trips now, but they will ever live in our memories and be a bond that draws us together.

The walk of faith is a lot like that.  Sometimes we feel great about our faith and our relationship with God.  Other times we have more questions than answers and feel a distance between ourselves and our Lord.   There are the seasons when the battles are raging around us or temptation seems to be impossible to withstand.  Some stretches of our journey seem so clearly marked and well defined while others just don’t make sense and we find ourselves doubting and lost.  In short the path of sanctification is usually a winding road.  While we may understand that God is moving us closer to Him and leading us to our Heavenly home, it’s often difficult for us to see or feel any sense of progress from our limited vantage point with incomplete information.  To that end, there are some situations and their related promises that we would do well to ponder carefully in order to maintain clarity.

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Avoiding the Darker Side of Kindness

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“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”  Colossians 3:12

Some of the definitions or synonyms of kindness are:  benevolence, humanity, generosity, charity, sympathy, compassion, and tenderness.  As indicated above, scripture calls us to be kind and engage in charitable acts.  However, there are times when our best intentions may not be charitable at all.  For example, the Sunday after I was released from my last major hospitalization, very well intentioned people, who truly cared about my well-being, greeted me with a hug…many of which were quite firm.  The problem was that I had just had a PICC line inserted and every hug involving my left arm was painful…so much so that I had to start doing body checks to protect myself.  Another example was while I was caring for my father.  In the last months of his life, visits from people became difficult for him and anything more than about five minutes would cause stress to the extent that he would beg me to send them away.  Some people graciously accepted the request, but others insisted on staying which created an awkward situation leaving me no choice but to demand that they leave.  My point is that there is a darker side to charitable acts that can, in fact, harm rather than help or encourage.  As in all things concerning godliness, we must be intentional about in our compassion to avoid having a negative impact. 

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Loving Well

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“Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart.”  I Peter 1:22

We have two daughters and two grandsons.  I paced a good bit at each of their births and was rewarded by having a newborn placed into my arms.  At that moment, there was nothing but love, joy and thankfulness.  It was easy…all reward and very little, if any, sacrifice.  After all, they didn’t complain, didn’t exert their will, and didn’t ask for much except to be clean and fed.  However, as they grew older, that love would require a fair amount of patience and sacrifice.  It is in the choosing to have sacrificial love, that relationships and bonds are formed.  As Christians, we are called to love well.   Not just within our families, but both in and out of the church body.  Further the call to love is not just when it is convenient.  We’re called to love during our trials as well as our times of ease.  We’re called to love not only the lovable, but the difficult, including our enemies.  Let me be clear, I struggle with this as much as anyone and, as with many of these posts, I’m writing to myself and using this as an opportunity to start refining my own behavior.  However, the fact that loving well may be difficult or inconvenient is not justification to ignore or take likely this direction.  When we’re tempted to take love for granted, put little effort into it because it seems too demanding or we just refuse to love someone that we find despicable, we would do well to consider the following. 

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“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

Geroge Bernard Shaw
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Looking to Heaven

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“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.  No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.  They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”  Revelation 22:1-4

Our four-year-old grandson stayed with us overnight last week so we got to spend a day together.  One of the things that he loves to do is play the game Mouse Trap.  While my wife and I both enjoyed the original game as children, we both find the current version rather tedious.  As Liam and I were playing a third round of the game, I began to feel a bit cranky and the hard floor we were sitting on wasn’t helping.  His elation and my crankiness caused me to consider the varying views that people have about heaven.  You can get a bit of an idea of someone’s spiritual maturity by their expectations for eternity.  Similar to the assumptions regarding what a loving God would include in our lives, many consider the wonder of heaven to be the eternal enjoyment of things that brought them pleasure in this life.  In that sense, what is reward for one person may be punishment for another.  Fortunately, that is not the case.  While I generally avoid conversations about heaven and the subject of eschatology because people tend to assume things that scripture doesn’t speak to as well as attempting to predict what God’s word tells us is unpredictable, I would like to touch on a few fairly clear characteristics of heaven.

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God in His Mercy

Part 3 Compassion

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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”  Ephesians 2:4-5

“Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.  For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.”  Psalm 103:14-15

In the last two posts I discussed my mother’s ability to forgive her father and the relationships with him that it permitted.  I also discussed her stewardship, hospitality and integrity and how they encouraged me and benefited others.  These are a very few of the high points or strengths in her life.  However, as Christ warns us in John 16:33, my mother also bore a fair amount of pain and suffering.  Over the years, I watched as my mother endured physical illness, emotional pain and spiritual trials that God included as part of her life.  One of the complaints that I often hear from people who are suffering is that they are very alone or have little to no help.  Thankfully, I believe that this is the exception in my church home, but within the larger body of Christ, this seems to be a prevalent problem and it was certainly true for my mother.  In my mother’s case, she was seen as an outsider as she was not reared within the denomination and she came from an unchurched family.   Further, she did not feel called as the pastor’s wife to run the social programs of the church and she suffered from depression.  Therefore, for the most part she was condemned for a lack of faith and godliness and, but for a few exceptions and like many, found no real support within the church body.

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Checking Our Baggage

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But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  1 Corinthians 11:28

Some of my family members tease me about the amount of luggage that I take on a trip.  In my younger days before the health issues took center stage, I used to be able to pack rather efficiently.  However, things are a bit different now.  Because I no longer tolerate cold weather or changes in weather well, my luggage often contains everything from shorts to winter sweaters.  Further, in addition to a case for my toiletries, I have another one just for the medicines that I need or may need.  Consequently there is some concern when we’re flying as I’m worried about the weight limit for checked luggage.  It requires a bit of scrutiny to make sure that I take what I need but not so much that I’m over the limits.  I am most efficient and discerning when I have time to lay everything out that I think I need and then carefully examine it and evaluate what I truly need versus what I can leave behind or risk going without.  If I’m not careful, it’s easy to go over the limits and find myself weighed down with luggage and additional expense.  Life is like that too.  If we don’t examine ourselves and sort out our lives, we often carry around a lot of unnecessary and even harmful baggage.  In the book “The Emotionally Healthy Church, Peter Scazzero compares us to an iceberg.  “About ten percent of an iceberg is visible to the surface.  That is the part of our lives of which we are consciously aware.  Note, however that the Titanic sank because it collided with a section of the submerged 90 percent of an iceberg.”  In other words, many of our problems with other people and how we handle difficult situations is greatly impacted by the 90 percent of which we are unaware.  That is why several passages in scripture, including the one above, call for us to examine ourselves.  It’s not intended to make us feel bad about ourselves, but rather to deal with negative issues so that we can walk more closely with our Lord, enjoy better relationships and, in general, have a better quality of life spiritually and emotionally.

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The Comfort of God’s Love

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“For if He causes grief, then He will have compassion according to His abundant lovingkindness.  For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men.  Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it?  Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill go forth?  Why should any living mortal, or any man, offer complaint in view of his sins?”  Lamentations 3:32-33, 37-39

As I lay on the doctor’s exam table over 25 years ago, I was hard pressed to reconcile what I had been taught about the love of God with the extreme pain that I was experiencing with no definitive cause.  The physical pain was intense, but the spiritual pain greatly exceeded it.

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Dropping the Ball

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“Now it came about when the sons of Israel cried to the Lord on account of Midian, that the Lord sent a prophet to the sons of Israel, and he said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “It was I who brought you up from Egypt and brought you out from the house of slavery. I delivered you from the hands of the Egyptians and from the hands of all your oppressors, and dispossessed them before you and gave you their land.”’”  Judges 6:7-9

It’s that time of year again when we move from one calendar year to the next and anticipate the dropping of a well-lit ball atop a skyscraper in New York City.  While some see the change in years as a new beginning, the reality is that it is a continuation.  Many of the New Year’s memes reflect the idea that 2017 will be better than 2016.  Overall and statistically, it will be roughly the same because, as Solomon put it, “there is nothing new under the sun”.

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Pregnant Words Part 1

Character

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“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.  And she cried out with a loud voice and said, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would come to me?  For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy.  And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.’  And Mary said:  ‘My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.  For He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave; for behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed.  For the Mighty One has done great things for me; and holy is His name.  And His mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him.  He has done mighty deeds with His arm; He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their heart.  He has brought down rulers from their thrones, and has exalted those who were humble.  He has filled the hungry with good things; and sent away the rich empty-handed.  He has given help to Israel His servant, in remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his descendants forever.’”  Luke 1:41-55

I have a wife, two daughters, a mother, a mother-in-law, five sisters-in-law, seven nieces, and three great nieces.  Add to that friends’ wives and daughters and the fact that the majority of the people that I have supervised were women, I have heard my fair share of conversations between and about pregnant women.  First it’s the joy (or surprise) of pregnancy, then the trials of pregnancy, than all of the things that are needed for the baby, then the labor symptoms and finally upon the baby’s arrival comes the vital information i.e. sex, name, weight and length (and pity the poor guy that doesn’t get all of the pertinent information).  However, never have I ever heard a conversation even remotely similar to the one between Elizabeth and Mary recorded for us in Luke 1.  While they may have gotten around to the details of pregnancy later in their visit, their first priority was to acknowledge the works of the Lord.

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