It's Not About Me

I've just finished my second turn through Max Lucado's book, It's Not About Me. I do not agree with his positions on every point of doctrine, but he often puts the Christian walk in its proper perspective with simple, direct language and application. This book has been an especially poignant reminder to me about the preeminence of God.

The last chapter has a delightful illustration that I couldn't resist adding to my blog:

"So, you like Jewish authors?"

The fellow asking the question sat on the aisle seat. I had the window, which meant I had a view of the runway. The mechanical crew was repairing a bird dent on the wing. While they worked, I read. As I read my Bible, the rabbi interrupted.

"So, you like Jewish authors?"

The twinkle in his eye betrayed his pleasure in the question. His chest-length mop of a beard couldn't hide his smile. I had spotted him earlier in the waiting area. The tassels from his shirttail and hair-clipped yarmulke led me to peg him as the pious, silent type.

Pious. Yes. But silent? He loved to talk. He loved to talk Torah. I was in for a lesson. Tucked away in the ceremonies and laws of Moses, he explained, are pictures of God. Who could offer a sacrifice and not weep for God's grace? Who could read about servants redeeming their kinsmen and not think about God redeeming us? And who could read the third commandment without remembering to live for God's glory?

I signaled a time-out, opened to Exodus, and read the third command: "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain" (20:7). My puzzled expression was enough to request an explanation.

"Don't think language; think lifestyle," he instructed. "The command calls us to elevate the name or reputation of God to the highest place. We exist to give honor to his name. May I illustrate?"

By now the damaged wing was fixed (the plane's; can't speak for the bird). And as we gained altitude, so did the rabbi. I took notes. He proceeded to create a story involving a Manhattan skyscraper. Everyone in the building works for the CEO, who offices on the top floor. Most have not seen him, but they have seen his daughter. She works in the building for her father. She exploits her family position to her benefit.

One morning she approaches Bert, the guard. "I'm hungry, Bert. Go down the street and buy me a Danish."

The demand places Bert in a quandary. He's on duty. Leaving his post puts the building at risk. But his boss's daughter insists, "Come on, now; hurry up."

What option does he have? As he leaves, he says nothing but thinks something like, If the daughter is so bossy, what does that say about her father?

She's only getting started. Munching on her muffin, she bumps into a paper-laden secretary. "Where are you going with all those papers?"

"To have them bound for an afternoon meeting."

"Forget the meeting. Come to my office and vacuum the carpet."

"But I was told..."

"And I'm telling you something else."

The woman has no choice. After all, this is the boss's daughter speaking. Which causes the secretary to question the wisdom of the boss.

And on the daughter goes. Making demands. Calling shots. Interrupting schedules. Never invoking the name of her dad. Never leveraging her comments with, "My dad said..."

No need to.

Isn't she the boss's child? Doesn't the child speak for the father? And so Bert abandons his post. An assistant fails to finish a task. And more than one employee questions the wisdom of the man upstairs. Does he really know what he's doing? they wonder.

The rabbi paused here. We both felt the plane nosing downward. His remaining time was short. But his point was clear. The girl dishonored the name of her father, not with vulgar language, but with insensitive living. Keep this up and the whole building will be second-guessing the CEO.

But my traveling partner wasn't finished. He scratched his bearded chin and lifted both eyebrows as he proposed, "But what if the daughter acted differently?" and then proceeded to recast the story.

Rather than demand a muffin from Bert, she brings a muffin to Bert. "I thought of you this morning," she explains. "You arrive so early. Do you have time to eat?" And she hands him the gift.

En route to the elevator she bumps into a woman with an armful of documents. "My, I'm sorry. Can I help?" the daughter offers. The assistant smiles, and the two carry the stacks down the hallway.

And so the daughter engages the people. She asks about their families, offers to bring them coffee. New workers are welcomed, and hard workers are applauded. She, through kindness and concern, raises the happiness level of the entire company.

She does so not even mentioning her father's name. Never does she declare, "My father says..." There is no need to. Is she not his child? Does she not speak on his behalf? Reflect his heart? When she speaks, they assume she speaks for him. And because they think highly of her, they think highly of her father.

They've not seen him.

They've not met him.

But they know his child, so they know his heart.

By now the flight was ending, and so was my Hebrew lesson. Thanks to the rabbi, the third command shouldered new meaning. Paul, another rabbi, would have appreciated the point. He wrote: "We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us" (2 Corinthians 5:20). The ambassador has a singular aim - to represent his king. He promotes the king's agenda, protects the king's reputation, and presents the king's will. The ambassador elevates the name of the king. ...

May God rescue us from self-centered thinking. May we have no higher goal than to see someone think more highly of our Father, our King. After all, it's not about... well, you can finish the sentence.

"You know how the story ends?" the rabbi asked as we were taxiing to a stop. Apparently, he had a punch line.

"No, I don't. How?"

"The daughter takes the elevator to the top floor to see her father. When she arrives, he is waiting in the doorway. He's aware of her good works and has seen her kind acts. People think more highly of him because of her. And he knows it. As she approaches, he greets her with six words."

The rabbi paused and smiled.

"What are they?" I urged, never expecting to hear an orthodox Jew quote Jesus.

"Well done, good and faithful servant."

May God sustain you until you hear the same.

Silly celebrations

I finished a pen last night.

And you say, "Um, yeah. And?"

See, I have this thing with pens. (Actually, I have a lot of "things," only several of which have to do with pens. ) One of these is that I like to use them up. Dry 'em out. Make all the ink go away. That type of thing. There's some sort of subconscious sense of accomplishment and closure in seeing the ink level reach zero. If it's been a good pen, I take a moment to be just a teensy bit sad. If it's been a frustrating pen, and I've still managed to stick out using it up (which doesn't always happen), there's a moment of triumph, of giddily sending the empty barrel to its demise.

THAT was the case last night. The pen wrote fairly well, but it took FOREVER to use up and just kind of drained its life away in the process. Very annoying. A good pen writes top quality until it dies. This was NOT a good pen. Neither was it a bad pen, though, which is why I bit the bullet and used it up anyway. And that made throwing it away last night ever so satisfying.

Hence my delighted declaration: "I finished a pen last night."

New Wednesday format

Can't wait!

For the last several years, our Wednesday night Bible study format has been for Pastor to answer a question someone either puts in his "question box" or just writes down and gives him. Well, last night he announced that after the "homework assignment," he got so much positive feedback that we're going to try something a little more interactive on Wednesday nights.

I'm thrilled, and amazed yet again at how the Lord so intimately knows my needs. As long as I really needed to be able to ask questions anonymously, the opportunity was there. The Lord walked me through learning to be willing to open up and admit my mental shortcomings (no surprise to anyone else but me ) - less before men, though, and more before God. He had to put me in my place - like with Job, only much worse. I had to realize that I am never going to understand Him completely, and that's okay. I need to let Him be Who He is, which is bigger and more complex than I will ever hope to get my brain around.

But lately, I've really been craving something topical - to pick an issue and put it to the test biblically. That is WILD coming from me, as for a long time I have been almost strictly expositional in my preferences. I still am for the most part, but I need something practical to stretch myself with, and the proposed new format is something I think will do that. Pastor said he's considering focusing on the wisdom literature - Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, etc. - and suggesting a topic for us to tackle during the week on our own and come prepared to discuss. For example, spend a few weeks dealing with how the concept of foolishness is treated in Proverbs.

I. Can't. Wait.

The heart of the world dances

Many thanks to Emily for bringing this quote to my attention. From C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces:

"And my struggle was this. You may well believe that I had set out sad enough; I had come on a sad errand. Now, flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came as if it were a voice--no words--but if you made it into words it would be, "Why should my heart not dance?" It's the measure of my folly that my heart almost answered "Why not?" I had to tell myself over like a lesson the infinite reasons my heart had not to dance. My heart to dance? Mine, whose love was taken from me, I, who must never look for other love, the drudge of the King, the jailer of hateful Redival, perhaps to be murdered or turned out as a beggar when my father died--for who knew what Glome would do then? And yet, it was a lesson I could hardly keep in my mind. The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other to the world's end. The freshness and wetness all about me made me feel that I had misjudged the world; it seemed kind, and laughing, as if its heart also danced..."

He's in control

Got an email today from a dear friend, and she passed on this little blurb from a plaque that someone had passed on to her. I started to pick it apart, but decided not to burden her with how tangled my thoughts were getting, so here it goes instead. *chuckle*

Good morning.
This is God.
I will be handling all your problems today.
I will not require your help.

"Why do we think He does, anyway?"

Good question. Ever try that whole, "Let go and let God" thing? I think it's hard because we don't understand when we're supposed to take responsibility (because we are supposed to in some things), and when we're supposed to just leave it in His hands. We think that the things we do are actually worth something, when in fact our obedience is just the tool God uses and something we can't take credit for. I don't know about you, but once in a while I get this delusion that I'm in control. If it's broken, don't I have to fix it? Sometimes I can just imagine God shaking His head and smiling indulgently at our foolishness.

God may not require our help, but He certainly expects our participation by obedience. What He asks, we must do. But anything accomplished is His doing, not ours.

Not consumed

My Bible reading last night took me through Lamentations. Considering my general frame of mind lately, I was a little leery of plunging into a book the title of which promised sorrow. However, as usual, the Lord knew exactly what I needed, and when I came to chapter 3, I just sat and read in wonder:

19 I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
20 I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.

Boy, do I remember. How many years did I spend bitter, wandering, and confused? All because I thought I should be able to understand it all, that God owed me some explanation for what I couldn't explain. And I'm ashamed of just how long I wallowed in that state and just how low my rebellion took me.

21 Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

It was when I learned to let go, to just surrender my doubts to the assurance of God's unfailing love, that my hope returned. It's another part of God's immutablity in His emotions that I've been learning about. Because God's love never changes, we can rest in the confidence that we will not - will never - be consumed. His compassion NEVER FAILS.

24 I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him."
25 The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
26 it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.
27 It is good for a man to bear the yoke
while he is young.
28 Let him sit alone in silence,
for the LORD has laid it on him.
29 Let him bury his face in the dust—
there may yet be hope.

The Lord is my portion. I will wait for Him, hope in Him, seek Him. I will wait quietly for His salvation from the yoke He has laid on me. I am young; His strength is sufficient. I will bear it alone and in silence. I will put my spirit in the dust and try to learn its humility. There may yet be hope. What an admonishment! What a challenge! How terrifying!

30 Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him,
and let him be filled with disgrace.
31 For men are not cast off
by the Lord forever.
32 Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,
so great is his unfailing love.
33 For he does not willingly bring affliction
or grief to the children of men.

Humble myself to all around me, regardless of the cause of the humility. God sends His compassion with the grief He ordains, and HIS LOVE IS UNFAILING.

That last verse is going in the question box, though. Verse 32 says He brings grief, and verse 33 says He does not willingly bring affliction or grief. *scratches head in confusion*

God's Emotions

This past week took me through a fascinating study of God's emotions. It all started two weeks ago - well, a little earlier if you get really nitpicky. On Wednesday nights after prayer, Pastor takes a few minutes to answer a question from one of the congregation, and on January 18, he dealt with one of mine:

“Why does God so often talk about changing His mind based upon actions of humanity? (Jeremiah 18:5-10; Exodus 32:7-14). I’m trying to reconcile events like this with what I’ve been taught concerning God’s immutability, providence, and sovereign will. I’ve also come to see God’s word as creative in nature: God cannot lie, because His word defines existence. What He says, is, and so cannot be untrue. He spoke and the universe was. His word maintains all things. So how does this mesh with Him saying He intends to do something when all along He knew He would not do that thing because of the actions of men?”

Well, after going through his notes and answering the question, he told us that next week he would deal with the "emotions" aspect of God's nature another night. The next week, we had a rather long prayer time and very little time for addressing the question, so Pastor gave us "homework" - see what you can find out about God's emotions this week, and come back next Wednesday prepared to discuss. :-)

I had a week of emotional upheaval and a weekend of company, so I didn't sit down to work on my "homework" until Tuesday evening. I started with my Thompson's Chain Reference Bible looking for topics covering an emotion and references to God's expressing that emotion. I found all kinds of references to His feelings, some of them quite exciting.

• Hebrews 12:2 - "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." - Christ considered His suffering and atoning work on the cross for our sakes a source of joy, and scorned as nothing what we fallen humans would have counted a burden too great to bear. How amazing, that Christ rejoiced in the suffering that would save my soul!

So, I had a list. What I didn't have was any real organization, or any real idea what connection there was between my question regarding God changing His mind and God's emotions. My time was up that night long before I wanted it to be.

The next day at work, the upcoming discussion continued to niggle in the back of my mind, so at lunch I typed "God's emotions" into Google to see what might come up. The very first link was God Without Mood Swings: Recovering the Doctrine of Divine Impassibility. I began to read and realized that this was how the two ideas tied together. I emailed the article to Pastor, and our discussion that night was an unusual treat of people actually contributing to the discussion. And the next morning, I sat down and summarized my conclusions.

God is immutable - completely and utterly unchangeable and unchanging. So then, how can He have different emotions in response to different activities and attitudes of man?

God cannot be changed or moved by any force outside His own will and character. His "emotional responses" are the direct results of Who He is in person and perfection. While He does express emotion regarding the actions of men, those actions do not provoke His emotion. God feels what He chooses to feel, and He never feels anything that goes against His own nature.

Human emotions depend greatly upon our circumstances. When we area acted upon or fail to be acted upon, our emotions respond instinctively, outside our control. We do not completely control our emotions because we do not completely control our circumstances. But God's sovreignty enables Him to both rule the circumstances and the emotions He expresses as a result. We are creatures of passion - emotional responses only partially subject to our will. Our God is not a God of indescriminate passions, but of utterly perfect affections. Every feeling of God is in complete agreement with His divine nature.

The fact is both enormously comforting and dreadful, for it asserts the unchanging nature both of God's love for His own and God's hatred of sin. It argues for our eternal security and reward in heaven as well as for eternal punishment for the unrepentant in hell. There is nothing that will cause Him to cease His loving affection for those His justice and mercy have redeemed. And there is nothing to stay His wrath toward those who reject His loving sacrifice of His Son. Both God's love and His wrath are outpourings of His just and merciful character.

And we are to be striving to be conformed to Christ's image. He was in complete control of His emotions, knowing that the Father was in complete control of all His circumstances. So too, we must pray for control over our emotional responses to our circumstances. The human natural response to hatred is mutual hatred. We are commanded to love those who hate us. The natural human response to trials is fear, distress. We are commanded to rejoice in our trials. God's will for us is to bring our whole selves under His subjection, including our emotions. We must learn to turn those instinctive emotional reactions into deliberate emotional responses that conform to God's character, and so grow to be more like Him.

I spent the rest of this week so excited about having learned just an inkling of what God is. It was enormously satisfying to work through a puzzle like that and come out the other end with something coherent and biblical that I can apply to my life.

Struggles and joy

As I was recording the services last night, I found the bit of Sunday morning's sermon that really seemed like it was just for me and typed it up so I could go back to it later.

"God's Word will strengthen us. But you say, 'But I feel so weak, and I struggle so.' You know what? We all do. That's true for all of us. Now that may not be that apparent to you, because most of the time we don't like anybody to know about it when we're struggling. We think of church as a place we come to show off our strengths instead of a hospital to come have our wounds bound up, and we've lost something as a result. The truth is we all are fearful, we all are prone to weakness, we are all prone to discouragement. What do we do? Turn to Scripture and to prayer. He says in Acts 20:32 - 'I commend you to God and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up.' God and His Word will strengthen us. Now, you say, 'But I pray, and I read the Scripture, and I'm still struggling.' That's life! We will struggle. But God doesn't want us to be defeated. He wants us to recognize that we are struggling against a defeated foe, and that our inheritance is sure."

I also listened to my offertory (reluctantly, but I kinda had to in order to get the service recorded), and while I still think it was awful, and it felt awful when I was playing it, I realized it didn't sound quite as awful as I thought it did. It still drives me nuts how it came out, but I did my best, and what I wasn't doing was leaving the result with the Lord. *sigh* Same lessons, over and over. I'm so thick-headed. ;-)

I started working on this month's Ladies' Bible Study last night, and it sent me right back to James 1 (well, not these verses, but still, that's how I got back there ;):

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does."

So, how do we ask without doubting? I haven't figured that one out yet.

But our struggles are our joy. The fact that we struggle tells us we belong to Him, otherwise our sins and failures wouldn't bother us. He sends us trials in order to shape us to His image. So, in order for me to best become more like Christ, I have to go through my stress and difficulties at work. And I have to do it alone, with no one to discuss it with at the end of each day, no spiritual head of my household. Just me and the Lord - I have to learn to rely completely on Him and Him ALONE. This is what it takes to make me "mature and complete, not lacking anything." That is a hard realization to rejoice in! And yet, He has promised that His grace is sufficient, and that His strength is made perfect in my weakness. The fact that He wants to use my weakness to demonstrate His strength, just wow.