Prayers For Daydreamers (And Other Mental Escapists)

Photo by Vera Kratochvil        

I confess, I'm a daydreamer.

Okay, to be more honest, I'm an extreme daydreamer.  Or perhaps "pathological" would be a more honest word.

Perhaps you don't daydream...but you DO fill up your mind with other people's imaginations in the form of novels, TV shows, and movies.  Or perhaps you feast your mind on endless video games.  Whatever your mental escape may be, it's probably fine in small doses.

The problem with me was, daydreaming became a drug.  It became Escape.  I never had to "be there" mentally, even if I was there physically.

Do you have a problem with mental escapism?  Perhaps, like me, one of the reasons you find it easy to slip into "escape mode" is that it's hard to see what's wrong with it.  If that describes you, and you really don't feel like you're missing out on anything by excessive escaping, you'll definitely want to prayerfully consider the requests I've written below.

Or, perhaps your form(s) of escapism have become an addiction...as I'm ashamed to admit they have with me. Especially my imagination; my skill at weaving compelling dramas in my head.  It's so much a part of me that I hardly feel like it's optional.  The stories are always there, always waiting, always beckoning, always entertaining, always seeming to fulfill a need.

In fact, our mental escapes are far more responsive than God is.  We've got to wait on the Lord, but entertaining screens are never far away.  We never have to wait for our imagination either.  And how do you walk away from a drug that literally resides inside your head?  There's no passing by the fantasy counter, the way people can choose to pass by the cigarette counter.

But after a while, as Christians, we have to come to terms with the fact that we love and trust our oh-so-available escapes more than we love and trust the God we can't control.

Then what do we do?

Scripture tells us that conquering bad habits by mere force of will doesn't make us righteous before God.  That's the Pharisaical approach, and it only trades the original sin for the greater sin of religious pride.

Romans 8 tells us that we must put sinful deeds to death "by the Spirit."

And how does the Spirit work?  He works by drawing us to read the Scriptures, illuminating it to our minds, helping us love and revere God as revealed in His Word (and to love His word for revealing Him to us), recalling the truth to our minds (especially if we memorized it), teaching us to love what God loves and hate what God hates, and changing our hearts to want to obey Him.  In this way, He turns our hearts onto the right paths.

So I decided to attack the problem of excessive daydreaming with some specifically targeted prayers, ones which help me aim for ways to pursue a joy in Christ that's better than mental escapism.  And I thought I'd share them with you, in case I'm not the only one with this problem.  So without further ado, here are:

Prayers for Daydreamers
(and other mental escapists)

1. Father, instead of daydreaming/mentally escaping today, may I love the Lord my God with all my mind.  If love is spelled "T-I-M-E," then my mind is loving its constant escapes more than I love You.  Help my mind to be set on You and seeking you more and more of the time.

2. Instead of daydreaming/mentally escaping, by Your grace may I obey the command to "Love my neighbor as myself."  Because the fact is, I can't recognize my neighbor's needs or prioritize them in my life if I'm wrapped up in my fantasy world. 

3. Help me to "Walk as as child of light, trying to discern what is pleasing to the Lord" (Eph 5:8-10).  I can't be constantly trying to discern what is pleasing to the Lord in my real circumstances if I'm daydreaming about being in different ones.

4.  Help to obey Your command that says, "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men."  Forgive me, Lord, that I used to think this meant "Try not to mind the work by distracting myself with my imagination."  After all, what's heartier than my imagination?  But no, it means putting my heart into the work itself in order to lovingly serve others and willingly obey You in the situation You've actually created for me.  It means "redeeming the time," in my real world.

5.  Spirit, please help me to "In everything give thanks."   Daydreaming prevents me from noticing things to be thankful for, or from even committing to noticing them.

6. Help me to remember that I can't "Behold the Lord and be changed into His image, from one degree of glory to another" (2 Co 3:18) if I'm constantly beholding the contents of my imagination instead.

7.  Help me, Spirit, to obey the command: "You shall meditate on God's Word day and night, that you may be careful to do it."  Ignoring Your Word is the same as disdaining Your commands, Your promises, and Your blessings.  It means not caring whether I obey You or not.

8. Help me to "Pray without ceasing."  I clearly can't do that while mentally escaping into fantasy or video games.

9. Help me to receive the blessings of Truth, such as sanctification (John 17:17) and freedom (John 8:32).  All commands, promises, and blessings related to Truth are blocked by an insistence on living with the mind marinating in what is not true. The blessings of Truth can only be applied to my actual reality, even in all its periodic ugliness.

10. Help me to cooperate with You as You prepare my heart to "Go to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach" (Heb. 13:13)  In our daydreams we feed our lust for glory, we dream of human accolades, we focus on mastery rather than dependence, and we further unfit our hearts for bearing His reproach.

Can you see how different this is from "white-knuckle fighting" with our sin?  By the Spirit we seek to love God more, to find our joy in God instead of in sin.  He alone makes that possible, because we can't change our hearts ourselves.  But we can and must choose to seek Him, to "fight the good fight" against our tendency to believe the promises of sin more than the promises of God.  We can and must pray and wrestle and repent in the fight for the greatest joy there is...the joy of believing and knowing Him.

When a Disliked Verse Becomes Beautiful

Photo Licensing: See footnote

"Save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh."  (Jude 1:23)

Clearly this verse, when viewed in its context, is talking about doing something good for sinners.  And we can easily recognize that the first part of the verse mirrors the kindness that the angels showed to Lot in Gen 19:16.  But what on earth is that "with fear" and "hating clothes" thing supposed to mean?

I always disliked the latter portion of this verse.  It made me picture a sneering guy in priestly garb, his nostrils flared with disgust while doing whatever charitable deed he felt forced to do.  If this "mercy-giver" had to touch the recipient of his "kindness," he'd do so with as few fingers as possible, and with an expression of nausea on his face.

But whether I like it or not, this verse says, "hate even their clothes."  So I have to be the arrogant jerk described above, because that's what it says, right?

Or is that what it really says?

Thanks in part to the wonderful Biblehub.com website, which allows laymen to study Biblical words in their original languages, I was able to learn that this verse is, in fact, beautiful.  It is a command to walk in humble love and mercy toward others when they sin, knowing that we're sinners ourselves.  But in order to understand that, we have to get a handle on some fundamentals here.  Namely, we must understand:

1.  Why the fear and hatred?
2.  What is the proper spirit of this hatred and fear?
2.  What do the clothes represent?

First of all, it's important to note that "show mercy" is a command, but unlike what I had assumed for years, the word "hating" is not!  (It looks like it could be a command in the English, but in the original Greek it's quite clear that it's not.) "Hating" in this sentence is a simple statement of the emotional condition that you're in while you're being negatively affected by something.  In this case the negative is the idea of "staining" or "contamination."

Okay, but isn't "hating clothes" a weird way to talk about our reaction to sinners?  Not to the First-Century Jewish writer and his audience!  Back in Leviticus 15, the Jews were taught the laws regarding items, including clothing, which were contaminated by contact with an unclean person.  Those items had to be dealt with in ways that sometimes seem drastic to modern readers.  And these laws were deeply ingrained into the Jewish psyche and way of life.

God's reasons for such laws were multifaceted.  He taught the people the basics of quarantining and hygiene, millennia before germ theory ever entered the human mind.  But he also taught them a strong loathing for sin by equating sin with uncleanness.  Don't miss that.  In the Bible, sin is uncleanness.

Back to our verse in Jude.  The hatred here is not primarily for the clothes.  The focus is on the uncleanness.  It's about hating uncleanness so much that you hate even clothes which have become contaminated.  And hatred for uncleanness (sin) is commanded all throughout the Bible.  It's the right thing to feel.

Yes, as distasteful as this fact sounds to modern ears, sin is offensive.  It is offensive to our holy God, and when it affects us, it offends us, too.  If we're honest, we have to admit that the sins we excuse when they're done by us, really bug us when they're done to us.

The Bible makes it clear that we're to hate sin.  And the Bible also makes it clear that it's impossible to truly love our neighbor and remain indifferent to the sin that is destroying his soul.  If our own souls have tasted the sweetness of undeserved mercy and salvation, how can we not hate the sin that destroys our neighbor?  Hating sin is part of loving our neighbor, no matter what the modern mantra of tolerance says.

It's also important to understand that, in Jewish ceremonial laws, when a clean thing comes into contact with an unclean thing, it's always the uncleanness that spreads.  The clean thing doesn't cleanse the unclean thing.  Rather, the unclean thing contaminates the formerly clean thing (Haggai 2:12-13).

So why would a Jewish person hate and fear touching an unclean thing?  Because he would become unclean himself!  "The garment stained by the flesh" is metaphorically loathsome because it represents contagion...the contagion of sin.

But wait...didn't Jesus touch unclean people, like lepers, without becoming unclean Himself?  Absolutely!  That's because Jesus' cleanness was not merely ceremonial.  He was the perfect, holy Son of God.  So His cleanness can never be lost.  He's the only one who cannot be contaminated.

Photo licensing:  See footnote

And here's where, if we're looking at our Bibles humbly, we recognize that there's no place in the "fear of contamination" for us to be proud. No place for the sneer.  No place for the "holier-than-thou" attitude.  Why?  Because we know we are absolutely contaminable.  We are not God, we're mere mortals.  Other people's sins can influence us to sin.

This is one of many things that the Pharisees (the religious elite of Jesus' day) got all wrong.  They really did think they were better than everybody else, and so they wouldn't touch anything they considered unclean (and they had made their own rules about clean/unclean things, which were even more restrictive than God's law)!  So blind were they to their own uncleanness, that they would order the murder of the sinless Son of God on trumped-up charges in an illegal court proceeding, but during that process, they would refuse to go into the house of an "unclean" Gentile, so that they wouldn't be contaminated and be unable to celebrate the Passover.  They would stand in the Temple without a qualm about their own uncleanness, while declaring that the blood money they had used to pay for Christ's betrayal was too unclean to be put in the Temple coffers. Blind pharisees, indeed!

No, though we must hate uncleanness, it can't be an arrogant hatred if we know we are sinners.

How do we know that the hatred and fear in Jude 1:23 is a humble recognition of our own contaminability?  By comparing it with verses like Gal 6:1, which command us to be gentle with others and careful of ourselves when confronting someone who is caught in sin, "lest we also be tempted."

So what is the point of this verse as I now understand it?  Simply this:  When rubbing elbows with sinners like yourself, who are currently in a really dangerous spot and need spiritual rescue, of course you need to show them mercy!  That's a command.  And of course you're likely to feel a certain revulsion if the sin offends you...but be revolted at the sin only.  Love the person and show mercy to him despite those feelings!  Don't let those feelings stop you from showing mercy!  And be humbly aware that you're in the same boat with this guy.  Unless you're God (and you're not), sin is contagious to you! You can easily be tempted and fall into the very same sin that you're trying to help him escape.  So you must be gentle with him, and fearful of your own sinfulness...not rudely condescending to him and fearful of his sinfulness.  No plugging your nose here.

This verse is a call to be like Christ, and to bring people to Christ, the only one who gently, lovingly touches sinners like us and makes us clean.

Sinners like us.

This is a beautiful verse.

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Footnote:  I was unable to find licensing information for these photos.  Please contact me in the comments section if you own the rights to either photo and wish to rescind or altar my use of it.

Loving Religious Freedom, But Not Christ

English: Ruins of Laodicea engraving by William Miller after T Allom (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To what shall I liken this generation, this Laodicea?

You are like men who fight for freedoms you do not care to enjoy.

When you pull your noses out of entertainment long enough to notice that your government-given rights are threatened, you get mad. You get really mad.

NOBODY STEPS ON MY RIGHTS!

You fire off angry words at whoever you think needs to be reminded of your rights.  

And then you put your face back in your screens and ignore God,
because you never really wanted God.

You just wanted your rights.

You want your pride.  You want the right to choose God if you ever get around to it.

But you never get around to it.

There's just so much else that's more important.

You know... the next level on that video game,
the next episode of that show,
that next hand of solitaire,
the next novel,
the next round of shopping for that next cute thing or cool gadget to stuff in your house.

Yes, you want the right to God,
but you don't want God.

Jesus died to save you from sin.
You designate a huge portion of your budgets to be entertained by sin. 

Jesus died to give you the gift of enjoying God forever, instead of suffering the eternal punishment your sins deserve.
You feel you're doing God a favor by showing up at church on Sundays... because you still can do it without fear... but He's too boring, intrusive, demanding, and irrelevant for the rest of your week.

Jesus died to give you the power to become sons of God... to live under the authority of your Heavenly Father, to die to this world, to take up your cross and follow Him into glory!
You only want the right to show up at a building on Sunday without fear, and the right to keep living just like the world for the rest of the week.

"What?" you gasp. "I'm not just like the world! I don't do this sin, and I don't do that sin."
But you "don't do these things" because it pleases your religious pride not to do them, and because you believe you can throw these "proofs" in God's face to defend your utter self-absorption and contempt for Him.

Don't kid yourself. For you, persecution for Christ's sake is a moot point. The government will never take away your right to freely worship as you see fit. They'll only take away your right to freely worship Christ.

Even if you do go to prison fighting for your right to a God you don't want, and even if you give up your body to be burned for your rights, but have not love for Christ, you gain nothing.

God is not your God. And the freedoms your pride defends will come back to haunt you on that Day, because when you had the freedom, you did not use it to come to Him.

Repent and believe the Gospel. Jesus died to save you from godlessness and bring you to God.  So come to Him that He might save you!

But oh, tender words for those of you who love and trust Jesus!  Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom, a Kingdom which cannot be shaken, a salvation stored up in Heaven for you, ready to be revealed in the Last Day. If your government throws you in prison, you will not lose Him. They can NOT take you and Christ away from each other! You have nothing to fear. When (not "if") you walk through the fire, He will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.

The government did not give you this right. GOD DID.  And they can never take it away.

When God's Covenant Looks Like It Died

I'm on bedrest again. 3rd time in a decade.

Between a heart attack (2004), hysterectomy and repair of prolapses (2011), and now deteriorating disks pinching nerves and causing foot pain, my body has betrayed me often.  (Spinal surgery may be necessary. Prayers appreciated!)

I know I am a child of the Covenant of Grace, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I also know that this covenant has nothing to do with making my life a bed of roses.

Considering that this life is microscopic compared to eternity, I don't want my best life to be NOW!  So I have a lot of peace about this... certainly much more than I had in 2004 when I only had religion, and no relationship with Christ!

But still, it's easy for us to feel we can excuse a certain amount of spiritual wandering at times of hardship, isn't it?  God promises grace to endure, but I'd rather have escape than endurance, thank you. 

So the old familiar idol of escapism rears its many seductive heads, tempting me to forget my troubles... and to forget seeking to love God and my neighbor, too!  How easy to want everything to revolve around my quest for comfort!

Looking at Genesis today, I was struck by the bizarre-seeming covenant-cutting ritual in chapter 15. Could there be anything more foreign to modern Western eyes?

But as I think about it, I am even more struck by the image of Abram chasing away carrion birds which kept trying to pick apart the animal carcasses... those bloody, nasty carcasses which God had ordained to be signs of the covenant (Gen.15:11). 

Carrion birds are often used to represent satanic forces.  And don't the enemy's minions love to swoop down and tear up all visible evidences of God's promises to us?

How often do God's promises look like ugly, dead things to us? What beauty or hope did Abram have to look upon in those mutilated animal carcasses? And how relentless would those carrion birds have been! How frustrating and discouraging to have to keep chasing them, non stop, for who knows how long!

I would have been tempted to walk away, but Abram stayed and chased the birds away, over and over again.

If Abram had allowed the birds to pick apart the bodies, wouldn't the signs of the covenant have become hideous and loathsome in his eyes?

So, when he chased them away, he preserved the integrity of what he had to look at. 

Do I have carrion birds in my life? What do they look like?  I believe I know.  

Doubt, distraction, anger, self-rule, lusts of various kinds, discouragement, fear, irritability... these things don't merely indicate understandable human weakness. No, if unrepented of, they can distort my view of God and His covenant promises, until even the physical evidences of His truth can begin to seem like ugly, worthless corpses.  The carrion birds tear them apart.

But in Abram's story, even without carrion birds, the dead bodies would have become loathsome on their own, just through the process of decay while he waited for God. In the same way, the process of waiting for God makes the promises lose luster in our eyes, unless we continue to see them through the eyes of faith.

Lord, help us to recognize those carrion birds as they appear in our own lives, and help us to resist them tirelessly by Your Spirit (because we can never do it in our flesh).  Help us to remember that Your covenant promises are all about resurrection, so even when things seem dead, there's hope!

Help us to seek to love You with all our hearts and souls and minds, and with all our strength, no matter how long You see fit to delay, or how many carrion birds of temptation we have to fight off. In Jesus' name, amen!

When I'm weak, then I'm strong? Why?

Power Board (Photo credit: yum9me)

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. 

For when I am weak, then I am strong. 
(2 Co. 12:10)

I memorized this verse when I was a teenager.  (Let's not talk about how long ago that was, please!)  And I thought I knew what it meant.

Somehow, when I'm weak, then Christ comes and bolsters me up to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish by His strength instead of mine.  

In other words, His strength looks and acts just like mine, except on steroids.

Is that what it means?  I wonder.  In fact, I doubt.

Is Christ just the proper power cord for my goals?  Does "plugging in to Jesus" feel like a power rush, ready to mow down the world?  Or have we got this "power vs weakness" thing wrong?

I read this helpful article a little while ago, and it got me thinking.  Here's an excerpt from a comment I wrote there:

     Slowly, slowly, I'm learning that godly parenting isn't about wielding human power but extending grace in wise ways.  And whenever I forget that, whenever I start trying to be powerful again, I get ugly again.

     The beautiful power of humble grace doesn't feel like power at all, but it does more good than all of my prideful/terrified power-grabbing could ever do.

Does this sound like a "Jesus is my power cord" theology?  Not to me it doesn't, and I'm glad.  But until I wrote it down today, I didn't realize just how radical it was, or how much I still default to wrong-headed "power cord" thinking.

Why, in Christ, am I strong only when I'm weak?  Perhaps we can't understand that until we define our terms.  What, in God's eyes, is strength?  What is weakness?

"Strength," as the Bible promises and commends it, is the power to accomplish God's will, not my own.  Such strength was displayed most clearly in two places that I can think of.  First, during Jesus' wilderness temptations, when he was starving, but refused to use His power to relieve His hunger without authorization from the Father.  And second, at Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed, "Not my will, but thine be done."

"Strength" - the kind which is promised and commended - is the power to do things which have eternal Kingdom significance, as opposed to things which will burn up on the Day of Judgment (1 Co. 3:13-15).  Such strength most often shows itself in Christ's life in acts of humility and sacrifice.  There were "Temple cleansing moments," but those were very much in the minority (and were still done in godliness, but that's a different subject).

By contrast, my strength, human strength, is an ugly, grasping thing when it doesn't have what it wants.  It gets violent, in words if not in deeds.  Human strength has done much good (at least temporarily), and it has done much evil.  It has gone as far as genocide many times in our history.  And yet, in God's eyes, it's puny.  Laughable.  It will come to nothing.  (Ps 2.)  In fact, it's weak.

Human strength is weak.

But what is "weakness?"  Specifically, what is the weakness which is commended, which is sought, which is boasted in (2 Co 12:9)?  Surely God doesn't commend the weak, futile rage of the earthly strength in Ps. 2.  So what weakness does He commend?

Could it be that He loves the weakness which not only lacks human power, but disdains it?

When I have felt powerless as a parent, yet have yearned for power, and have felt angry and hopeless because I didn't have it, was that the weakness that God commends?  Or was it the weakness that makes me ugly, grasping, enraged and snarling like a trapped tiger?  Isn't yearning for human power just as weakening as having it?  Doesn't it leave me just as powerless to do eternal good?

Do I just need to "plug in" to Jesus to regain the power my flesh craves?

Or do I need to recognize that human power always gets it wrong in the end?  Do I need to turn my back on it and go the way of God's power...the way of humble grace, of love and service, of meekness...and discover the hidden, gentle power there?

If you truly believe in the meekly Crucified One who lives...who died in weakness and is mighty to save, and who is exalted above every other name...then you don't need me to answer that question for you.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matt 5:5).

Me? Rejoicing at Wrongdoing?

Pile of stones (Photo credit: Michel.h)

Love your enemies (Matt 5:44)

Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing.  (1 Co. 13:6)

You, good Christian, are certainly not someone who rejoices at wrongdoing, right?  Same here.

Why, we hate wrongdoing!  We prove it every chance we get!  We are so diligent about jumping on every sin we hear about in public figures, and personally lambasting the offenders on Facebook or wherever else we can do so.  Nobody could ever deny how much we hate wrongdoing!

Nobody clucks their tongues louder than we do.  Nobody's voice can get more shrill.  Nobody's quicker on the draw with the social media megaphone...and why should we wait for verification of the facts we're spreading?  Why would we hope that the badness might be less bad than we thought, when it feels so good to hate those people?

Why, it's a pure, delicious pleasure to be horrified, offended, and hit that "Share" button with righteous indignation.

Yep.  It shows.  The pleasure, that is.  It shows.

It's called, "Rejoicing in wrongdoing."  We mustn't kid ourselves.  That's exactly what it is.

And love does not do that.

When we do that, we are not loving our enemies.  We are loving their sin, because we love feeling superior.

We love licking our chops and diving in for the kill.

We love being offended at those who we feel are wrongfully offended by us, or by the things we hold dear.

We love hating the haters, mocking the mockers, attacking the attackers.

It feels so good.

And it's eating away at our souls.

C. S. Lewis addresses this better than anybody.

"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper.  Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out.  Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible?  If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils.  You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker.  If we give that wish [free rein], later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black.  Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything - God and our friends and ourselves included - as bad, and not be able to stop doing it; we shall be fixed forever in a universe of pure hatred."  (From "Mere Christianity.")

Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing.

Christians...you and I who claim to follow Christ...when was the last time we followed Him into praying for those who persecute and mistreat us, or who sin against us in some other way? When was the last time we mourned over our neighbor's sin and wept for his soul, rather than hurrying to click, rejoicing at the chance for a social media scandal?  When was the last time we followed Christ into dying to self for our enemies' sakes?

When was the last time we followed Christ?

Yes, there's a time to speak against what is wrong!  But no, there's never a time to rejoice and prepare to feast on our neighbor's downfall.  Not in this Age of Grace; grace without which we, too, would be damned.

How, with rocks in our hands, will we ever help our enemy believe we follow a merciful, forgiving Savior?  Is that even what we want him to believe?  (It had BETTER be!  But search your heart, really, and I'll search mine.  Because I fear that it's not always our desire.)

As long as we clutch our rocks and rejoice in the throwing, we're utterly, damnably blind to our own corruption.

And we will only be forgiven as we forgive.  (Matt 18:32-35)

We will only receive mercy as we give it.  (Matt 5:7)

We will only receive grace as we are humble.  (James 4:6)

Ever wonder why nobody out there believes we're children of the One True God?

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God."  (Matt 5:9)

May God forgive us for rejoicing in wrongdoing, and failing to love our enemies.

May God forgive me.  Because I know I've been there.  I've done that. But this week an organization which I care about, and for which I meet with others to pray regularly, has been the victim of a viral whirlwind of misinformation and false accusation.  A Christian brother has had his good name smeared all the way up to the level of national news.  The organization has issued a clarifying statement, but somehow it's not forwarded nearly as often as the delightful, beloved, rejoiced-in offense.

These are people for whom I pray.  And praying for them has made me care.  Has made me love them.  Has made me grieve at the delighted stone-throwing that I'm seeing.

Praying produces love.  Make yourself pray for others until you love them...and then you'll pray for them because you want to.

Pray for your enemies.  And join Christ in mourning over the sin that threatens to destroy them, instead of joining the enemy in hurrying their destruction.

And pray for me, that I will do the same.

We don't have a clue how much depends on it, and not just for them, but for us, and for the honor of Christ's Name.

Scenes From the Spiritual Gym (A Farce That's All Too True)

Scenes from the Spiritual Gym

(Part 1 of a Series)

(Photo credit: jackiebese)

At one of thousands of branches of the American Church Gym:

"Good morning, sir (or ma'am).  What are your spiritual goals, and how can I help you achieve them?"

"Well, I haven't been having my quiet times regularly enough.  I looked in the mirror the other day, and my 'quiet times' abs aren't looking much like a six-pack anymore."

"Oh, well, we can't have that, now, can we?  So, to help us get to know you a little better, please tell us which coaching model you prefer:

• The legalistic accountability partner who motivates you by fear and guilt
• the warm-fuzzy, 'you're not so bad,' coach
• the highly-inspiring 'cheerleader' coach

"Um...well, I guess whichever one will help me reach my goals the fastest.  I really hate these flabby 'service' muscles in my arms, and this fat 'self-control' abdomen!"

"Oh boy, I sure do understand that!  Well here, let's try one kind of coaching approach, and if you find that that's not helping you reach your goals, we'll try a different one, okay?"

"Sounds good!"

"Now, to get us started, let's step in front of that spiritual mirror.  Let's chart what you see compared to what you hope to see, and then we'll know what goals you'll want to pursue."

"Makes sense.  But I'm a little uncomfortable with all the mirrors in here.  Doesn't that seem...I don't know...egotistical or something?  Aren't Christians supposed to be humble?"

Mirror (Photo credit: Chapendra)

The coach laughs and waves a dismissive hand.  "Oh, don't be silly. The Bible says we're to examine ourselves, right?  And how can you do that without a mirror, or goals, or other Christians to compare yourself to?"

"Well, I guess the Bible does say that.  But ugh, I HATE mirrors!"

"Oh, don't worry, we'll whip you into shape in no time, and pretty soon you'll be so spiritually buff that you'll LOVE mirrors!"

"But...but...what about humility?"

"Oh, don't worry about that, either.  We'll keep reminding you.  Humility is one of those spiritual goals, after all, right?  So you just remember to repeat to yourself every day as you look in the mirror, 'Yes, I've still got a ways to go, but by the grace of God I'll be more spiritually buff tomorrow, and then I'll have more to praise Him for!'  That's the key to humility, you know.  The more spiritually buff you become, the more humble it is to scoff and say, 'Oh, no, God did this for me.'  Your 'humility pecs' will pop for sure!"

"So it's a win-win, I guess.  I get to like what I see in the spiritual mirror, and I get to say things that give Jesus the glory!"

"Exactly!  Now you understand the Christian life!"  The coach gives you a wink and an elbow-nudge.  "Don't those 'Praise Jesus' T-shirts look better and more convincing on a hot bod?"

You laugh, and you have to admit that it's a convincing argument.  But there are still some things that you don't understand, so you keep asking questions.

"Okay, well, pardon my dumb question, but what exactly is 'sin?'"

"Oh, well, sin is forgetting your spiritual goals, and not working on them.  You know, not doing quiet times, not putting money in the Salvation Army bucket, that sort of thing."

"And repentance?"

"That's easy!  Repentance means recommitting yourself to your goals!"

"And what is faith?"

"Why, faith is believing that Jesus will help you reach your goals, of course!"

"What is worship, then?"

"Worship is praising God for helping you reach your goals.  And besides, he likes praise, right?  Who doesn't?  So worship helps motivate him to help you reach your goals!"

"Then who is Jesus in this whole process?"

"Well, think of him as your Invisible Fitness Coach.  When you're looking in the mirror, he's looking, too!  If you're getting more and more buff, he smiles more and more.  If you're being naughty, he starts to frown.  But don't worry."  Another dismissive wave of the hand.  "He's very forgiving.  Just say 'I'm sorry,' and promise to do better next time.  It's all good."

"Okay, I think I see it all now.  Let's get to work!"

"Whoo, I love that spirit!  Let's make you look like you want to look, and be what you want to be.  Let's make you LOVE that spiritual mirror!"

So, you begin what you hope will be a lifetime of buffing up under the eye of Jesus, the Invisible Fitness Coach.  But you dread his gaze, and you hope you can buff up quickly.

You look around yourself at the guys and gals who have bulging muscles everywhere.  It's obvious they've been doing targeted toning, so that they've reached a point of fashionably grotesque physiques. The kind of bodies that actual, productive physical labor never forms.  Their bodies are consciously-sculpted gym bodies.

You have to admit, they impress you, and you know that a "Praise Jesus" T-shirt looks a lot better on them than it does on you.

Come to think of it, they inspire you much more than your Invisible Jesus guy.  He's a mystery, but they're clear.  And you like them better...at least some of them...the ones who think you're worth their time, and who will notice you and encourage you.

After a while, the Invisible Coach makes you even more uncomfortable to think about than he used to. Why? Because not only is he judging your buff-ness, but you also have a sneaking suspicion that, if you could see Him, He wouldn't look anything like the pec-poppers around you.

And that means (HORRORS!) that you suspect He wouldn't look anything like what you're trying to become.  And that makes you vaguely angry.  What does he want from you anyway?  You're not sure, but you know what YOU want from yourself.  You know what YOUR spiritual goals are.  You know which part of you you want to sculpt next.  And you know that it has something to do with reading your Bible every day and doing good works (especially the specific types of good works that are most heavily promoted by your branch of the gym).  So you just keep going, following the coaches you can actually see.

Zulfiya Chinshanlo World Champion 2009  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the end, you'll love yourself, and either forget the Invisible Coach, or find that the highest praise you can give Him is, "Look at how awesome he made me!"

Or, you'll hate yourself and the coach, because it was all just too hard, and everybody in the gym is a hypocrite anyway.

Welcome to the Christian life.

Or not.

Stay tuned...

Next:  Scenes from the Sheepfold

My New Bible Reading Plan

(My plan doesn't rely on the high tech stuff, but this is my setup.)

Have you ever struggled to find a Bible reading plan that works well for you?  That has been my struggle recently, and I wanted to share with you what I have developed, and have found to be a great enhancement to my morning devotions.

Why did I need a new plan?

(Feel free to scroll down to the details of the plan if you want to skip the “why.”)

I've used several plans over the years. Usually, I default to a plan that includes some Old Testament, some New Testament, some Psalms, and some Proverbs each day.  But for a while I also used and enjoyed Professor Horner's system (link to PDF), which gave an incredibly broad overview of the Scriptures, with large amounts of reading from all over the Bible every day.

Each system has its advantages. But I found I couldn't stick with Professor Horner's system for more than about a year and a half before the frenetic pace left me a bit frazzled. There are great advantages in swallowing large amounts of Scripture every day for a while, but it does keep one back from a more careful, in-depth look at the Word.

Lately, I had begun to find myself dissatisfied with every Bible reading plan I tried. All involved multiple chapters a day, and I really felt I needed something that allowed me to give greater concentration to small amounts of Scripture.  But I couldn’t bring myself to embark on a one-chapter-a-day, Genesis-to-Revelation type of study. Perhaps it’s shameful to have to admit it, but there are certain books I just didn’t want to get bogged down in for a month or more. After a great deal of time spent in Deuteronomy, for example, I’m nearly gasping for the refreshment of the epistles. And while some of the Bible’s most beautiful words of hope can be found in Isaiah, it also has many, many chapters of judgments against the enemies of God’s people. All of that is useful, but one can only read so much of it at a time before one begins to thirst for words of grace.

I began to toy with the idea of creating my own Bible reading plan, one that would give me small amounts of Scripture each day, while giving me a great deal of variety in my reading. At the same time, I didn’t want to be reading things out of context, since context is such an incredibly important part of Scripture interpretation and understanding. So I certainly wasn’t going to choose some sort of random, “shut-your-eyes-and-open-the-Bible-and-read-whatever-page-it-opens-to” approach.

The more I puzzled about it, the more I thought that Professor Horner’s plan might have some answers for me.  It did offer lots of variety, it was not calendar-based, and it divided the Bible into sections from which one would read each day.

What if, instead of Professor Horner’s ten-chapter-a-day approach, I adapted it into a one-chapter-a-day plan, and read from a different section of the Bible each day? That way, I could get the variety that I thirsted for, could get the in-depth study that I knew I needed, and could keep my daily selections within their natural contexts.

And so, from these musings, my new plan was born. And I’m finding it to be everything I hoped it would be.

The Details of the Plan

It is generally recognized that the Bible can be divided into five or six different categories. Of course there is some blurring of the lines between categories, but for a weekly reading plan, you can do very nicely with the following divisions:

·        Law – Genesis through Deuteronomy

·        History – Joshua through Esther

·        Poetry and Wisdom – Job through Song of Solomon

·        Prophets – Isaiah through Malachi

·        Gospels and Acts

·        Epistles and Revelation

That gives me one different type of Scripture to read each day of the week. So Mondays I read one chapter from the “Law” section, working my way through the chapters in order, so that everything remains in its correct context. On Tuesdays I read a chapter in the “History” section, also working through that section in its natural order. And so on throughout the week. This way, I get a very nice survey of the Bible every week (except Sunday), while at the same time going through at a slow enough pace that I can spend time studying and taking notes.

Since this plan is not calendar bound, in the sense that you don’t have to finish at a certain pace, I am also free to divide a long chapter in half if I find that I want to spend more time on it. There’s no guilt for having fallen behind what someone’s predetermined plan says I should be reading today.

I find that this plan really helps me to get through the sections of the Bible that I find harder to read than others, such as the thundering judgments of Isaiah, or the grieving of Jeremiah in much of his two books. Since I know that I will only be reading one chapter from these difficult sections each week, I approach them with a better attitude. And that makes me more open-minded, and enables me to gain more from these valuable passages. And believe me, these are vital and valuable passages. It is my own sinfulness that makes it hard for me to appreciate these sections. With this new approach, I’m learning to appreciate them more.

While not everyone will agree with me on this, I also skim over the genealogical stuff. I know and believe that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. I believe that the profit in the genealogies comes from the fact that they show that God knows every individual, and, more importantly, they confirm the necessary genealogical line of the Messiah. (That’s why the Bible stops keeping track of genealogies after the birth of Christ.) So, when I encounter a chapter full of names, I thank the Lord for His intimate knowledge of all people, and for His wisdom in bringing the Messiah into the world. And then I skim over it and move on to the next chapter. (But be careful if you do this. Sometimes there are real gems stuck in the middle of the lists of names. So don’t just skip them. Skim them, looking for those little nuggets. It would be a shame to miss them.)

So how do I keep track of where I am? I decided to borrow Professor Horner’s strategy here, too. I created a bookmark for each section, and I clearly labeled it to show what section it belongs in. I just move it forward with me as I go along. You can see a sample below.

(I chose to make magnetic bookmarks that fold over top of the page so they won’t fall out. I labeled both sides of the bookmark for easy identification from any angle, and then placed a distinctive mark on the side of the bookmark that shows which side of the page I actually left off on.)

Since in-depth study was an important consideration in designing this plan, I also needed to set up a note taking system that would work well for me. Being the computer geek that I am, I chose to set up my system in Evernote. You can of course use a much more traditional system, such as pen and paper. But whatever system you use, you may find it helpful to use an organizational strategy similar to the one I am about to describe.

I created six individual notebooks, one for each day of the week and its corresponding section of Scripture. Each notebook then has its own page devoted to a book of the Bible within that section. So, within the “Law” notebook, I have a page for Genesis, a page for Exodus, etc. (If you’re using pen and paper, you will of course need much more than a single page for each of these books.)

I then take chapter and verse notes wherever and whenever thoughts strike me. But I make sure that I date the notes, so that the next time I come to this section of Scripture, I can review the notes that I made last time. This is a great way to refresh my memory on important points I might have forgotten, as well as giving me a glimpse of my progressive understanding and appreciation of the passage over time.  (If you're a regular reader of this blog, you may recognize the fact that the notes on chapter 4 verse 5 turned into a recent blog entry!)

Please let me know if you decide to try this Bible reading plan, and how it works for you!

My "Good Fight" For Today...Against Shame

Photo by jfg

The shame comes in waves.

It hasn't been this bad in years.

I'm endlessly re-living, constantly cringing at the memory of yesterday's Stupid Moment.

I literally feel my stomach knot up, every few seconds, as the memory assaults me again.  Often a little grunt or whispered word of distress escapes me.

And, underneath it all, there's the rage.

I can NOT be that stupid!

Well, yes...yes I can.  And, in fact, I was.

But I'm not willing to be.  I can't bear to be.  And on days like today, that means I can't bear to be me.

I used to get haunted by shame all the time, but by the grace of God, it's not nearly so frequent now.  But yesterday's Dumb Moment (which also turned out to be an Expensive Moment) was made worse because it was a semi-public event. (As in, I believe I was probably the laughingstock of the police department's locker room at the end of the day.)

Don't ask.  Just don't.

Coming home last night to face the usual nighttime routine (and the usual nighttime chaos!) of family was hard.  As you know if you've been reading this blog for a while, I'm an escapist by nature.  And all I wanted to do last evening was curl up in a ball in bed.

But God has been working, and I could feel something new inside of me.  A new strength that did not originate with me, but came as a gift of faith.  And again today, when the shame waves started crashing over me, I felt the Holy Spirit coming alongside me, bringing the truths of Scripture to mind from a whole new angle (for me, anyway).

I'm actually kind-of excited about this.

It's funny...yesterday morning, when I wrote the blog entry that I posted this morning, my Big Embarrassing Event hadn't happened yet.  And, when I wrote that post, I really didn't think it had any bearing on my life at the moment.  It was just a thought that had popped out at me from my scheduled reading in Joshua.  But after my Stupid Moment, when I became terrified by the memory of How Dumb I Can Be, I began to hear my own words coming back to remind me that I don't need to be afraid to relive what happened.  And I may even come out of this painful time with some brand new memorial stones to set up.

Isn't God good?

So, what does my "good fight of faith" look like today, when I'm fighting shame?

First of all, let me tell you what it's not.  It's not a fight to improve my self-esteem.

Instead, it's a fight to align myself with the greatest truths of the Christian faith, so I can live in the freedom of the truth (see John 8:32).  That's why it's called "the good fight of faith" (1 Tim 6:11-12).  We're to fight to increase our faith in God, not in ourselves.  It's the fight to walk in the light when the enemy (and our own egos) tell us to run or to arm for war against some human foe.

So, what truths am I loading into my arsenal?

How about this one?  "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."  That means that I mustn't arrogantly insist that I BE something awesome (instead of being someone capable of really bone-headed moves).  I am to be at peace with my own humanity, NOT because sin and failure are no big deal, but because those things have been bought and paid for by my Savior in whom I have placed my faith.  And so I pray, "Thank You, Lord, that You are teaching me to live humbly with the reality of my shortcomings.  Thank you that the Kingdom is promised to those who are poor in spirit.  Help me to value poverty of spirit, to value humble acceptance of my shortcomings, to value Your kingdom more than my own imagined greatness."

And how about this?  "For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory" (Col 3:3-4).  This speaks to the fact that, as a believer, I was crucified with Christ and raised with Him to a new life.  My life is hidden in God...and that means I can't see it yet.  But I must fight the temptation to find my life in other people's esteem.  My life is not hidden in their approval.  It's hidden with Christ in God.  "Thank You, Lord, that my life is hidden in You, and that I need no longer torture myself with what man thinks of me.  Help me to find my life in You more and more."

Or how about "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice!" (Php 4:4).  I am not cruelly called to rejoice in my stupidity, but I am reminded that the Lord is in Heaven, reigning gloriously for the good of all His people (including me).  He knew in advance what I was going to do, and planned to make it work for my good (Rom 8:28).  So I pray, "Lord, help me to rejoice in all that You are for me, rather than raging over what I am not."

The "good fight" also looks like simply staying present when I want to run and hide, not just so I can "be strong" (there's that desire to be awesome again), but because God has promised to make me stand, and because He has work for me to do.

It means remembering (and praying) to be increasingly patient with other flawed people, when their flaws impact me. For we who have been forgiven much are to love much (Luke 7:47), and are to forgive others in return (Matt 18:21-34).


Do you know what began happening last night as I lay in bed and fought the shame with truth?  I began to feel a wonderful feeling of freedom from the fear of man, a fear which Scripture warns us against. It came back with a vengeance this morning, but that just means it's time to fight again.

"For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."  I want that.  I do.  It will be worth the fight!

When God Says, "Go Back There"

Imagine the scene, if you will.

Your name is Avram, perhaps, or something similar.  You're a middle-aged Hebrew wanderer, finally getting ready to enter the Promised Land.

All of your life you've heard about this land.  You've stared longingly across the forbidding Jordan at its verdant beauty...so far out of reach of your desert abode.

You've heard of your parents' rebellion against the Lord, which stopped your national progress and doomed you to decades of wandering.  You've heard about the miracles they saw, but you were so young when they happened that you don't remember them yourself.

You have experienced daily miracles yourself:  A pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night, each of which guides your nation in its wanderings.  You've seen bread fall from Heaven every day, without fail, except of course for the Sabbath...but the bread always fell in double portions on the day before the Sabbath, so you could gather extra then.

But these miracles have always been there, as far as you're concerned.  They're kind-of humdrum to you.

Now Moses, the great Man of God, has died, and Joshua is in charge.  And the 40-year exile has reached its end.  It's time to enter the Land of Promise.  That means, for starters, that it's time to do battle with the mighty city of Jericho.

But the even mightier Jordan River lies between, and to make matters worse, it's currently in its flood stage.

Were the old stories of the Parting of the Red Sea really true?

Could it happen again, even without Moses?

You're almost ashamed to admit how amazed you are when it does happen again.  Your jaw drops at the sight of the turgid wall of water piling itself up.  That wall is trembling with unimaginable power, held back only by forces you cannot see or comprehend.

And you have to walk in front of it...you and a few million others.  Including your wife and your children.  You look at them now, so weak and vulnerable next to the forces that threaten them.

And you have to lead your whole tribe, because you've inherited (and risen to) a position of power in that tribe.  So, you square your shoulders, hide your fear from your wife and kids, and step onto the now dry river bed.

The water-wall beside you seems like a raging stallion, eager to break out of its restraints.  And yet you walk.  Your mouth is dry, and you hope the Almighty can forgive your fear.

He promised, and He's done this sort of thing before.  We will get safely through.  We will.

And, finally, you do.  You turn to look back at the hordes which are still coming, and at the priests who stand along the way as God's representatives, almost seeming to hold back the walls themselves (but you know they're not the ones who can do that).  There they stand, though, and you don't envy them.  You couldn't get through that trial fast enough.  It was a creepy place to be, and you're glad you came through it in one piece.

Finally, the last of the nation has crossed, except for the priests, who still stand their ground.  And then Joshua calls all of the tribal leaders together.  You go to him, expecting your orders to advance toward Jericho.

But no.

He says, "Go back."

What?

"Go back."

Go back into the danger zone, back into the place that so recently filled you with awe and fear, back into the trial you thought you were done with.

You can't believe your ears.  Why would we do that?

"This is what the Lord has commanded.  Go back into the heart of the Jordan and gather stones, one stone for each tribe, and bring them back to set them up as a memorial for future generations, so no one will forget what happened here."

You don't argue.  This is, after all, the man whose word had just parted the waters.  You don't play at dueling words with such a man.

So, you and eleven other men walk back into the place you just escaped from.  You feel even more vulnerable now, in such a small company of men. Just the other tribal leaders and, of course, the priests at their posts.

You don't rush.  You can't.  You know your job.  You've seen stone memorials before, and you've appreciated the skill that it takes to build one that will stand for generations to come.  You recognize that you have to get a rock that is not only very large and heavy, but also one that is suitably shaped for its purpose.

You have to spend a fair amount of time finding a good candidate, conferring with the other rock-gatherers until you all agree that the twelve stones you've found will work well together.

And all the while, the Jordan quivers against its restraints.

You hadn't wanted to be here once, and you still can't believe you're here again.

Why aren't we invading Jericho?  That's what we came across to do, right?  Why are we wasting time back here?

But finally, bending under your heavy load, you trudge back to where your family and tribe and nation await. You make eye contact with each priest as you pass him, and you nod.  His burden is greater than yours, and you know it.

At last you're back with your tribe, and you can drop your heavy burden on the ground.  You straighten up with some difficulty, and for some reason you can't stop yourself from looking back at the Jordan yet again.

I made it through.  Not once, but twice.  

And God held the water back each time.

You look back down at the stone you've carried. It's good that we have these stones.  It's good that our people will always remember.

And now, amazingly, you're glad that you were one of the few who had the privilege of walking that road again.

#####

Has God ever made you revisit a scary place that you thought you were through with?

Maybe it was a real, physical journey.  Or maybe it was a journey of remembrance, a journey of telling others, of setting up your own memorial.

What was that like for you?

Could it be that you're still standing on the banks, afraid to step in again?

If you've been called to revisit the painful place, please look again.  What...or rather whom do you see?

There is not a row of priests there, like there was in the Jordan.

No, there's something better. Someone better.  The Great High Priest.  Jesus.  The One who held back the waters the first time, saying "This far, and no further."  He is still holding the ground you gained.  He's also on the shore beside you, and also at the Jericho that awaits.

And He knows, dear brother or sister, that you can better face your Jericho if you remember your Jordan.  If you revisit His faithful deliverance through it.  If you look Him in the eye and nod as you bring back your memorial stones.

Do it.

Trust Him.

He's still there.

And finally, a word to those of you still in the middle of your first scary trek.  Those of you who can't even imagine getting through the first time, much less coming back for a stone.  My word for you is this:  Don't worry that you don't have a heavy stone on your shoulder right now.  The command to fetch it hasn't come yet.  It won't come until you're safely through.

Please don't hear this harshly.  Please hear it as gently as I mean to speak it.  You're not qualified to set up a memorial yet.  It's not that you have to prove your qualifications...oh no!  Your trials are never about you proving yourself to God, or even to yourself.  Your trials are about seeing God holding the waters back. Your trials are about seeing God's power and His deliverance.  So if you haven't yet seen the salvation of the Lord, how can you talk about it?

If you have no memorial stone with you yet, just keep walking and trusting Him.  The day will come when you'll be able to come back and get one.

And you'll be glad you did.

For Those Who Can't Walk on Water Either

Sarah Trimmer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?"

Was Jesus rebuking Peter for lacking the faith to keep walking on the water?

That's the way I've always heard it, but now I wonder.

You see, I've had a life full of sinkings.  So many sinkings that I rarely get out of the boat.  And I'm less likely to get out of it if I think that my next drubbing will be rebuked by Jesus because... terrible failure that I am... I can't do the impossible.

Is the Christian life a process of learning to walk on the water?

I wonder.

Years ago I wrote something that I knew I needed to read again this morning.  (I hope you'll read it too, and I'll link to it so you can.)  I said,  "What if 'arrival' has nothing to do with reaching a certain level of perfection, and everything to do with maintaining the kind of humble, childlike faith that expects nothing from itself and relies totally on God?"

I really believe that that's true.  Please do read the article I linked to above, for more reasons WHY I believe it.

Whole sermons have been written about Peter's lack of faith causing him to sink.  Because of that mindset, people strive to grow stronger faith, and when they're faced with stormy seas or risky situations, they can only see two options.

• Proudly step out, believing their faith to be mighty enough
• Stay in the boat, believing that they haven't yet achieved a strong enough faith.

What if neither of those options are right?  What if the "proudly stepping out" is just that...religious pride rather than true faith in Christ? And what if the "staying in the boat" is a sign of spiritual failure?  What if both are wrong, and neither is right?

UGH!  Before long you can start running in circles like a terrified rabbit, and you give up on this "faith thing" because it just drives you nuts.  You can't do it.  You can't figure out which is right!  You can't figure out your own motives!  You can't see any way to step out in faith or to stay in faith, because you can see sin in yourself either way.  So you get paralyzed.  

To that I say (both to you and to myself):

STOP IT!

Right now, just STOP IT!

Jesus didn't say to any of the disciples, "Why did you stay in the boat?"  And I don't believe he said to Peter, "Why did you sink?"

For what doubt did Jesus rebuke Peter?

Will He rebuke you, too, if you step out of your safe place, and you start to sink?

No, that's not my Jesus.  More importantly, that's not the Biblical Jesus...the Jesus who is tender towards the weakest, the lowliest, the most helpless.  He does not break the bruised reed (Matt 12:20).

There are several accounts in the Bible of Jesus saving the disciples from stormy seas.  In the one we've been looking at, Jesus walked on the water to the boat, and Peter walked out to meet him.  In another case, Jesus was asleep in the boat, and they came and woke him up.  In both cases, they were terrified.

And in both cases, the rebuke was the same.  "Why did you doubt?  Where is your faith?"

Maybe we've been asking the wrong question.  Maybe the question isn't, "Why did Peter sink?"

What if the right question is, "Why did Peter fear that Jesus wouldn't save him when he sank?"

Remember, in both stormy situations, for the disciples both in and out of the boat, the question was the same. The gentle, loving rebuke was the same.  "Why did you doubt?"

Why do you and I doubt that He will save us when we are sinking?  Why are we making "in vs. out of the boat" the issue?  Why are we making "on top of the water vs. going under the water" the issue?

Are we to fear, in either location?

Was half-dunked Peter filled with less faith than the ones in the boat?  I don't think so.  All of them were afraid of going under, regardless of where they were when it happened.

Joyful, free faith doesn't have to examine its own perfection to see whether it should get out of the boat or stay there.  It doesn't say, "I'm disqualified from getting out of the boat, because I can spot sin remaining in myself and in my motives." It doesn't say, "Oh no, my sinking must mean that my faith wasn't strong enough!"

Joyful, free faith trusts Jesus no matter where we feel the water threatening to overwhelm us, even though we're not yet perfected, because HE is our Savior.

Why must we keep relearning that HE saves us?  Why do we keep thinking that we save ourselves by making our faith perfect enough, instead of believing that He saves people of little faith?

He is the Savior...not of the perfected, but of sinners (Luke 5:31-32)!  Why do we doubt?  He who saves those in the boat, will he not save those who walk out on the water and then start to sink?

Where are you in your walk?  Does Jesus want you to believe that you could be anywhere, anywhere where He cannot save you?

The life of faith is not a life of staying always on top of the waves.  It's a life of believing that you are free to walk with Him in humble-but-imperfect ways, without doubting that His love will pull you out of the water no matter where you are when you start to sink.

Because you WILL sink sometimes.  I guarantee it.  Life's billows WILL overwhelm you.

Cancer.  Loss of a loved one.  Betrayal.  Failure.  Injury.  Job loss.  Moving to an unfamiliar place.

You WILL sink sometimes.

The question from Jesus, I believe, is not, "Why did you sink?"

It is, "Why did you fear I would not be here to lift you up when you sank?"

So step out if you feel that's what God is calling you to do.  Don't question if you have enough faith to stay on the water.  Just believe that He will save you when you get wet.

And here's a final word of love to those who are currently under the waves, and have been there, perhaps, for a long time.  I am NOT preaching a despicable "prosperity gospel" (which I hate) here.  I am not saying that Jesus will always take the waves away.  His salvation is sometimes through the trials, not from the trials. Your pain does not mean He loves you less, or that you are a failure.  Trust Him, trust Him, that He will pull you out of the water when the time is right, when that part of your life's story has been written to perfection (even if that relief doesn't come in this lifetime).  Trust that He is your Savior, no matter where you are in relation to the boat, the water, or the other disciples. He will bring you to the right place because of your continued, trusting obedience.  Remember, as long as we're on this earth, it's a Christian walk, not a Christian arrival.

Trust Him, trust Him, trust Him, wherever you are, no matter how far you've gone under life's overwhelming forces.

That's a stronger faith than one which skips lightly across the waves.