“Boy, Did I Need You Today!”

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How often does our thanksgiving ring hollow to our Lord?

Imagine this with me.

A great circus performer thrills audiences night after night under the Big Top. His specialty is the high wire, and he performs it with ease. For him, walking on that slender strand is no harder than walking the floor at home. His skills and his balance are so great that he doesn’t even bother working with a net, even though he works at heights that would mean instant death if he were to fall.

Then one day he accepts a challenge…to walk the wire at twice the height, and do it outside. The date is set, and the conditions of the challenge are clear. No matter what the weather, he will perform. Failure to do so would be forfeiture and disgrace.

The day of the challenge does not dawn well. High winds buffet him on the platform and make the wire dance before his eyes. Rain slaps his face, blurs his vision, and slickens the already treacherous strand that he must traverse.

He is terrified, but he feels he has no choice. The show must go on. His honor must be upheld.

So he steps out.

What follows can only be described as a nightmarish ordeal. He wobbles, and bobbles, slips and catches himself. Every nerve is strained to the limit as he calls upon years of experience and finely-honed reflexes to keep him on the tightrope. While heights do not normally bother him, today he is all too terrifyingly aware that only one thin wire stands between him and a fall of hundreds of feet. He glues his eyes to that wire, his literal lifeline, clinging to it with everything he has.

Somehow, miraculously, he makes it across. And as his feet find the ending platform, and his hands grasp the pole, he sinks to his knees in gratitude.

Then, bending down, he kisses the wire and says to it, “Thank you! I’ve never needed you before like I needed you today.”

Is that true?

How well would he have done without the wire on all of his earlier performances? Could he have gone safely from one platform to the other without it? If it had failed him in mid-performance under the Big-Top, would any of his skills have been able to keep him alive? Would falling hundreds of feet have left him any more or less dead depending on the weather?

If the wire had feelings, it would probably think that the acrobat was being condescending. The thanks would ring hollow somehow. Who do you think you are? Don’t you know you’ve needed me every moment?

How often does our thanksgiving condescend to our Lord?

Do we flatter ourselves that we do just fine on our own most of the time, when the winds are calm and the skies are clear? On the good days, do we place all our faith in our skills, our reflexes, and our balance, as if they alone could hold us suspended over the abyss?

Of course we are right to be thankful on those days when His support is so obviously needed. But is there ever a moment when we do not depend utterly on Him?

Recently I faced a day with some unusual emotional difficulties. The next day was much easier, and I let myself rebound into what felt like a well-earned day of rest. Sadly, for me, “rest” meant wasted time and dereliction of duties from which I’d already “rested” far too often. It meant drowning out the Spirit with the drone of the television (I don’t often watch TV anymore, so it felt justified). It meant coasting on every level, preferring not to engage in anything more serious than entertainment. Then came another conversation, full of forebodings of the economic uncertainties facing our nation right now, and suddenly I felt like I needed the Lord again. And that’s when He reminded me of one of my current memory verses.

“When I fed them, they were satisfied. When they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot Me.” (Hos. 13:6, NIV)

Comfortable days are so dangerous! And yet how much of my time is spent trying to make myself comfortable?

Maybe I need to spend more time…much more time…out where the winds buffet and the rain falls. I don’t mean looking for trouble, I mean taking up my cross despite the beckoning of my cozy chair. You see, I’m too blind, too proud, too foolish to recognize my need of Him when I’m comfy.

I may remember to read His Word. I may remember to pay lip service to His worth. But if I have forgotten that I need Him every moment, then to that extent I have forgotten the wire under my feet. I have mistaken my skills for my Savior, even though my skills mean nothing without Him. I have become proud.

“The desire of our soul is…for the remembrance of You (Isa. 26:8).

How deeply do I desire to remember Him? Deeply enough to step out in faith when it’s painfully obvious that my own resources aren’t enough to hold me up?

Deeply enough to refuse the comforts that numb me to my need?

Deeply enough to enable me to remember Him even when I am comfortable?

No, sadly, not yet. But it’s where I want to be. And thank God, it’s where I know He plans to take me.

Where are you on this journey? How have you learned to remember Him more? I look forward to your comments.

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The Extravagant Artist

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What kind of artist makes delicate masterpieces of exquisite, beautiful detail…and then throws them on the ground?

Who makes millions of icy jewels…no two alike…and lets them fall in the farthest reaches of the earth where no human eye will ever see them?

No one would do such a thing…unless he had unlimited resources and an infinite imagination, so that quintillions of priceless gems could be created and destroyed without depleting his treasury at all.

Who would take pleasure in such unseen creations, except the one who sees them all? The one who can thrill to every minuscule, glittering detail of each precious flake, even though the recipients barely can see them at all.

Who could find joy in such giving, except one whose love knows no bounds?

Have you entered the treasury of snow? (Job 38:22)

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Trifles and Triumphs

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I read something from my beloved G. H. Morrison devotional today that seemed to dovetail perfectly with my previous two posts.  I already had a different devotional scheduled to post today, but it will have to wait.  I want to share this with you.

Morrison was opening up the grandeur of Matt. 10:42, showing the great importance which Christ placed on simple, lowly acts of service.  I read it all with pleasure, but was stopped in my tracks by this particular sentence (emphasis added):

“Great hours reveal our possibilities;

Common hours reveal our consecration.”

Oh, how I dream of great hours!  I long to do heroic deeds, or at least fill my heart with heroic feelings.  And how I heap disdain on common moments and common tasks!  How easily I convince myself that they don’t matter at all, and that it’s perfectly fine to neglect and waste them altogether.

I want to believe in my possibilities.

God wants my consecration.

Do you want to know how consecrated you are?  How devoted?  How set apart and committed?  Do I want to know this about myself? 

Then you and I need to look at how we approach the commonplace.  As Morrison points out:

"Life is not a little bundle of big things, but a big bundle of little things…And for our Lord the ‘usual’ was the big thing, because the ‘usual’ is nine-tenths of life.”

We love the special “Holy Places” in our lives, the places where God touched us in a special way.  We treasure memories of the times when He met with us almost tangibly.  And it’s right that we should love them.  But if those are the only places and times which we devote to God, then we neglect the great majority of our existence.  We may have consecrated times and places, but we do not have consecrated lives.

Isn’t He with us every moment, even when we don’t know it?

If we can’t feel that He’s there, does His presence matter?

What does King Solomon tell us?

He has made everything beautiful in its time (Ec. 3:11).

How does He do that?

I believe He does it sometimes, to a small degree, during our physical lives.  But mostly this is a promise for that eternal Day in which every moment will unfold itself to reveal new beauties we had not seen before.  And each new beauty will really be an old one, because it will be but another facet of our glorious Lord revealed more fully to us.  Jesus will show us His beautifying touches on every moment of our earthly lives.  When we see His good purpose for our every experience, His faithfulness through our every trial, His presence in our every activity, we will see each moment robed in splendor.  Even a cup of cold water given in His name will shine forever.

Morrison says:

“To neglect the trifle is to miss the triumph.  A tiny snowflake is as exquisitely beautiful as all the splendid pageantry of sunrise.”

Every moment touched by God, no matter how trivial it may seem on this earth, will reveal itself to be as rare and beautiful a masterpiece as the tiny snowflakes He lavishes on us so extravagantly.

Every moment lived for God can be enjoyed, even if it’s also painful, if we truly understand this mystery.  Each second is a gift which flutters past us like snow’s airy crystals, and because we don’t look closely enough, we can’t see the astonishing detail and depth and loveliness of it.

But under the microscope of eternity, what wonders will we see?

Oh Father, help us have eyes to see and ears to hear!  Help us to forget the idea of the “mundane” and the “trivial.”  May we see each moment as an unopened treasure, one which we barely glimpse as it goes by, which is then stored up in Heaven for us to enjoy in its full grandeur for all eternity.  May we offer each moment, even the painful ones, back to You with joyful appreciation for the wonders that they are.  For you are the One who makes everything…even every common hour…beautiful in its time.

Holy Places

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I’ve never been to Israel, but I’ve been to the pool of Bethesda (John 5:2-9). You see, I was crippled once, with no way to help myself, and no one to help me. The Master touched me and made me walk.

I’ve never been to Israel, but I’ve sat on the Galilean hills. I’ve listened to the Master, wondered at His words, felt their conviction and power pierce my heart.

I’ve never been to Israel, but I’ve been to the well of Sychar (John 4:5-26). I’ve been a woman full of sin and shame, trying yet once more to draw life-giving water out of the ground…out of the same dust that I’m made of. Thirst kept bringing me back, because it could never be fully quenched. And that’s where I was when I met the One who told me everything I ever did, and yet loved me.

I’ve never been to Israel, but I’ve been to Golgotha (Matt. 27:33-35). I have seen the Savior dying for me. I have felt the earth quake, seen the sun darken as all of creation convulsed with the horror of what happened there for me.

For me.

I was there, because I died with Him (Gal. 2:20)

I’ve never been to Israel, but I know Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb (Matt. 27:57-60). I was buried there with Jesus, and rose with Him (Rom. 6:4-5).

It’s not the physical places which matter, it’s what happens there.

The Pool of Bethesda was just one of several such pools. The hills of Galilee probably differ little from the hills at the edge of my own city. The well of Sychar was nothing special…just the local watering hole. Golgotha was probably never expected to be a famous place for all of eternity. And when Joseph of Arimathea dug a grave out of the rock, he never dreamed it would be used for anything other than the corpses of his own family and himself.

It takes a backwards look through time to see these ordinary places as landmarks.

Do such landmarks exist only in Israel? Have you and I no holy places?

What will we see when we look back from Heaven, as God shows us our history from His perspective…when He pulls back the curtains of obscurity that shrouded our mortal lives? Will we gasp to see our humble kitchens touched with the finger of glory, because Jesus worked through us there? Will we realize with awe that the spot where we knelt by our beds every night is as precious in the eyes of God as Sychar’s well, because the Spirit of Jesus interceded for us there? Will the chair where we read the Bible to our children hold the same glow as Galilee’s Sermon Mount, because Jesus Himself spoke to our children as we read? Will we find endless holy places that we walked through unknowingly, even carelessly…holy not because of the places themselves, but because God was there, touching and guiding and disciplining and healing and comforting and refining?

As we look back from Heaven’s perspective, I have no doubt that the holy place we will see most often will be our own versions of Bethel, where “the Lord was in this place, and we did not know it!” (Gen. 28:16-19)

How different would our lives have been if we had known it?

How different will our lives be from now on if we believe it?

To Walk Where Jesus Walked

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I would love to visit the Holy Land.  I can’t imagine touching stones that Jesus Himself touched, or seeing the same landscape (admittedly changed a bit by time).  I think it would bring certain parts of the Gospel narratives to life for me.

Ah, the romantic in me!

I know that the stones, the streets, and the hills themselves are not holy.  The places themselves are not the important things.  What matters is what happened there.

I want to walk where Jesus walked.

Or do I?  Really?

Maybe I’m not being entirely honest with myself.  Because on the one hand, I say that I know that it’s events and not places which really matter.  And yet, when I think of walking where Jesus walked, I only think of places.

I ignore the fact that the Calvary road is right here.  It runs right through my house.

And yours.

Do we really want to walk where Jesus walked?  Where did He walk, anyway?

He walked the streets of self-denial (Matt. 4:2).  He slept the sleep of a man with no home to call His own (Matt. 8:20).  He ate the meat of His Father’s will (John 4:34), and drank the cup which His Father poured for Him, even though its taste was inexpressibly bitter (Matt. 26:39).  He wore out His soles on long days of ceaseless, selfless labor, dressed in a robe of utter humility.  Those stones that He touched felt the moisture of His sweat.

Do I really want to walk where Jesus walked?

He followed the path laid out for Him, knowing full well what awaited Him at its end.  He deliberately surrounded Himself with the poor, the hungry, the desperately needy, the sinful.  He chose traveling companions who misunderstood Him, failed Him, denied Him, even betrayed Him.  He ran the gauntlet of hecklers, mockers, and blasphemers.  He did not choose on His own, but did everything the Father commanded Him (John 5:30)

Do I really want to walk where Jesus walked?   Or am I just kidding myself with dreamy notions of places to visit?

Because Calvary’s road was under my feet when I first stood up this morning.  And every step I have taken has either proven my desire, or made a liar of me.

And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
Luke 14:27

If I really wanted to walk where He walked, I would be there now. Because it's not the places that matter. It's what happens there. 

I am not called to Jerusalem’s dusty streets.  I am called to the rooms and hallways of my home, to the pavement of my city, to the aisles of my grocery stores, to the sanctuary of my church.  I am called to take up my cross here.  Now.  To accept with a willing heart whatever cross my Father has given me to bear, to eat the food of His will, to drink His cup.  To do it all because of love.

I am in the Holy Land.

 

Some Blog "Housekeeping"

Ok, I'm overdue.

Quite a while ago now, a dear fellow blogger named Karin gave my blog the above "Fabulous" award. This is quite an honor, and I greatly appreciated it. But I never got around to accepting it (i.e. posting it on my blog), because there's a "catch" - in order to accept the award, I had to post an entry about, "Five things I'm addicted to."

Eek!

Do I really want to 'fess up to that? I confess, it was easier to just keep putting it off until I pretty much forgot about it. I'm so sorry, Karin, I shouldn't have done that!

Well now another dear blogger named Sharlyn has given me the same award! That gave a sharp elbow-jab to my conscience, and so here I am, ready to give you my deep, dark list of addictions.

(Don't run away scared. It's not TOO dark...)

Oh, and I think I should explain how I personally define "addiction." To me, it's an acquired need for something that I wasn't designed by God to need. So, for example, I don't consider oxygen an addiction, even though I am rather dependent upon it (and I'm willing to bet that you are, too). So I won't be listing things like "God" or "The Bible" here, since I was designed to need those and don't consider them "addictions." Just my own quirky way of looking at things...

So here, without further ado, are five things I'm addicted to.

1. The computer. (My husband is nodding his head emphatically as he's reading this, I'm sure!) It's hard not to be addicted to something that can provide SO MUCH at a moment's notice. Dangerous stuff. True, I only go to Christian sites, or to sites that give me news, or sites about the latest great tweaks for...you guessed it...my computer! What could be wrong with that? But of course the problem is spelled T-I-M-E. This electronic box eats my days. It eats my attention and focus. It eats ME. Pray for me.
2. Diet Mountain Dew. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you already know that. I'm doing better, honest! I used to drink a liter a day, but now I don't drink nearly that much. The secret is not buying it. If I have it in the house, I guzzle it. There's no such thing as drinking in moderation if it's in the fridge. But I'm getting better at not walking down that particular aisle in the grocery store. All soda is bad for you, and diet soda is the worst... Pray for me.
   
3. Checking my blog statistics. I want to know how many people are visiting, and where they come from. Who doesn't love the thrill of saying something like, "Wow, I got a hit from Poland today!" The problem is, it's hard not to put too much emphasis on the world's measure of success. The world says, "More is better. A bigger reach means a bigger you." On a day when my blog gets fewer than 20 hits, I feel kinda down about it. On those rare days when I get 40 or more, I feel pretty big in my britches. Oh puh-lease! The truth is, there is but one definition of success...obedience! If I obey the Lord and write what He wants me to write, and only ONE person reads it, then I have succeeded. In fact, if NOBODY read it, I would still have succeeded, because I did what the Lord wanted me to do. I know that...but I still check my stats. A lot. Pray for me.
4. Solitaire. Specifically, computer solitaire. It's nowhere near as bad as it used to be, but I can still go on escapist binges. I suppose that's really just an extension of addiction number 1... Pray for me.
5. Man's approval. (That's "man" as in "humankind," not as in "The male of the species.") I still need this way too much. Yep, pray for me. Please.

Ok, that's my little confessional. You are each individually sworn to strict confidentiality. I would hate for news of this to get out...

Thanks again to Karin and Sharlyn.

Now comes another hard part. I have to choose 5 blogs to pass this along to.

I'm going to try to avoid passing it along to blogs which have already received it, so after scanning through some pages to see if the award is already there, here are the ones I've picked (in no particular order). Each one is an enjoyable blessing in my days:

1. Meditations and Confessions of A Woman Found
   - I really appreciate her humble desire to follow the Lord wherever he leads
2. Dancing Barefoot On Weathered Ground - An incredible blog from a woman who knows suffering in ways most of us will never experience it...and through it all has come to know our Lord in a deep and uplifting way.
3. Reformed SHEology - Challenging, sometimes a bit controversial, but always reflective of heartfelt God-centeredness. Since I embrace Reformed Theology myself, I love anything that feeds my soul with its rich and Biblical views. This site, as the title suggests, specifically looks at Reformed Theology as it relates to women, addressing the beauty of true biblical womanhood in its many facets, including biblical submission. I always come away with a richer desire to find God's ideal for me (which is far removed from what I actually am, I'm afraid.)
4. The Heart of a Pastor's Wife - A spirited and Spirited blog. Lots of good insights here.
5. Writing Canvas - Another God-honoring blog from someone who has come through a few fires, and still has plenty of hot spots to deal with!

Well, there you have it. I hope each of these blogs becomes a blessing to you if you hadn't already discovered them.

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Why Calvary? Gospel 101(b)

Contrary to popular Western opinion, God is not the least bit interested in “getting sinners off the hook.” His desire is far richer and deeper than that.

He wants to restore them. Save them. Re-birth them.

In the light of that, what was the point of Calvary? Why did Jesus have to die? Why couldn’t there have been some other way?

Those of you who know your Bibles well will probably answer, “Because without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins” (Heb. 9:22). And of course you’d be right.

But WHY is there no remission without the shedding of blood? God makes the rules, right? He’s not bound by anything higher than Himself, because there is nothing higher than Him. He could have come up with any plan He wanted to to save us. He didn’t have to make the Gospel so bloody, did He?

So why was there a Calvary?

It’s my belief that God’s work at Calvary is the only thing that can restore what we lost in Eden. And what we lost in Eden was our God-centeredness.

Sin is, by nature, a turning away from God and toward idols (including the huge idol of Self). To make things right again, God had to bring us back to Himself! (Titus 2:14, 1 Pet. 3:18, 2 Co. 5:19). Any “gospel” that tries to get us off the hook without bringing us to God is a false gospel.

Adam and Eve decided to find their lives and their joy outside of God, and from that dreadful day onward, mankind has suffered from a warped view of God and of himself. He has invented religions which make God vindictive and in need of placation, or else portray Him as easy-going and unconcerned about sin. He has imagined God displaced and humanity enthroned.

Calvary shatters those notions.

Jesus was not the only member of the Trinity present at Calvary…but He’s the one we most like to see. The Forgiver. The Savior. But if He is the only one we see there, we’ve missed much of the point of the drama on Golgotha. Because it was not primarily human treachery which inflicted the wounds and brought death to Jesus.

It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, He has put Him to grief (Isa. 53:10).

God the Father bruised God the Son on our behalf. Calvary had to be bloody. Why?

• So we would know how horrible and how deadly sin is. Sometimes we can’t know the awfulness of a thing until we see its terrible consequences. Sin naturally brings about death (Eze. 18:4, Rom. 5:12, Rom. 6:23, Jas. 1:15), and Calvary shows us that truth in vivid detail. (Think about it…how would you feel about sin and about God Himself, if God had sent Jesus to “time-out” to save us?)
• So we would know how holy God is, and how much He hates sin. (It’s vitally important that we know who God is! See John 17:3)
• So we would know that God’s justice must be satisfied. What kind of God would He be if He were to allow injustice to continue?

And why did Jesus take that punishment for us? Was it because we would have been destroyed without remedy if it had fallen on us? Was it so that He could be our substitute?

Of course it was, and those are magnificent truths, but they alone don’t give us the full Gospel. Remember, the Gospel isn’t just a gift from God, it’s the gift of God. Somehow, in the Gospel, God gives us Himself.

At the very least, Jesus took God’s wrath:

• To spare us
• To be our substitute
• To show God’s love and shatter our notions of a vindictive God
• To restore us to God-centeredness

Every false religion is man-centered…either expecting man to atone for his own sins, or honoring man as too good to deserve God’s wrath. Only Calvary shows us that salvation is a work of God alone: necessary because of His holiness, initiated by Him, carried out by Him, honoring of Him, satisfying to Him. Calvary is the place where God brings us to Himself, to find all that we need concentrated in Him. After all, humanity’s only contribution to Calvary was the sin that nailed Jesus there.

The Gospel must be God-centered because our salvation can be nothing less than an act of God that restores us to a proper relationship with Him. Because He is God, the only way to relate properly to Him is to center on Him. Saving ourselves by our own merits would shift the focus to ourselves. Calvary sets it straight.

When humanity fell into sin, we chose our own life. In so doing, we also chose our own death.

When we believe in God through His Gospel, we die to that self-life, and to the death that comes with it. We receive Christ’s death instead of ours, and His life in place of ours (Rom. 6). We receive His righteousness instead of our sin. We feast on Him, quench our thirst with Him.

Saving faith is not quantitative. We needn’t worry about whether we “believe hard enough.” Saving faith is qualitative. It restores the natural, proper relationship of man to God, with God as center and source, and man as joyful worshiper and partaker by way of God the Son (John 14:6).

No mere repetition of a “Sinner’s prayer” will save anyone. Any gospel which places its faith in an act of man is, by definition, man-centered. That’s why we can only be saved by His grace (something that He does) through our faith. Our faith is not a work we perform. God is concerned with our belief, and insists on it, because our faith is simply our empty-handed acceptance of the truth of who He is, and the work which He performed. It is submitting to the way things truly are (with God as our life, our joy, our salvation, our all), and delighting in it. It’s a relationship thing. A love thing. And so this Gospel is immensely practical and relevant to our needs, because it brings us to the One we need most.

The God-centered Gospel is spelled out with beautiful clarity in a marvelous Old Testament passage:

I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against Him, until He pleads my case and executes justice for me. He will bring me forth to the light; I will see His righteousness.
Mic 7:9

Who is the judge in that passage? God. Who is the lawyer who pleads the sinner’s case? God. Who executes justice in a way which brings the sinner forth to the light? God. Whose righteousness in highlighted in this wonderful salvation? God’s.

Is this the salvation you know?

For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. (Rom 11:36)

As Good As His Word

Today I’m interrupting the series on “Gospel 101” so I can participate in this week’s

Monday Manna

Joanne Sher at An Open Book is hosting this week, and she provided the following verses for us to use as our topic.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1:1)

 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)

Remember that fine old expression, “He’s as good as his word?”  It means faithfulness to one’s commitments.  “If he says he’ll do it, he’ll do it!”  He’s as good as his word.

We couch the same idea in a warning, too.  As I often remind my children, “You’re only as good as your word.”  We cannot trust or respect those who don’t say what they mean or mean what they say.

How good is God’s Word?

“And God said, “Let there be…” 

Three little words, and the cosmos obeyed.  Stars ignited.  Planets danced around them.  Gravity reined everything into proper orbits.  Light shone.  Water coalesced.  Life roamed, and slithered, and flew, and swam. 

Because of the Word.  His Word.

What is a perfect word?  You and I can’t utter them.  Our humanly-spoken words carry with them only the representations of ideas.  If someone understands our language, then our words carry meaning.  To a foreigner, our words are so much noise.

God’s perfect Word is no mere representation.  It is His declaration of His Will, and so it carries the power to make His Will happen.  Let there be light…and there was light.  (Gen 1:3)

His Word is His Truth conveyed (not merely represented) to us.  Your Word is truth (John 17:17).

It is His expression of His very Self.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

Jesus is that Word.  The very same Word which spoke creation (John 1:3), now wrapped in flesh.  God’s Life in the form of human life, His glory shining brightly despite its imprisonment in a jar of clay (John 1:4).

Jesus said to him, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9)

Never think that our Heavenly Father is a hateful, vengeful being, and that Jesus came to save us from Him.  I’m sad to say that I saw God that way in my younger years.  God forbid that we should think such blasphemy!  Jesus came to save us from the sin which separates us from the Father!  He came to bring us to God (1 Pet. 3:18), who is our exceeding joy (Ps. 43:4)!

How good is our God?  He is as good as His Word.

As good as a promise made back in the garden.

Look at the part of the Genesis account where the creation of man is explained in greater detail (Gen. 2:7).  Do you notice something different about the creation of man compared to all of the rest of creation?

God did not use the Word alone for that one.  He did say, “Let Us make man…” (Gen. 1:26), but He gave His Word hands for that task…hands which formed the man from the dust of the ground.  And then He breathed life into him.

Why?

All of the rest of God’s creatures live their stories and die when their curtains close.  For them, a single act of creation was enough.  Flesh and life were given all at once.  But for man…

For man, there had to be something more.  The props were all put in place, and the supporting actors knew their parts, but what was this drama now disclosing, as God broke form and made man in a different way?

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3:6)

Do you see the Gospel being sculpted from the dust?  Animals and stars are what they appear to be.  They have bodies, and the living creatures have a form of life.  But for humans there must be something else.  The physical form is not all there is.  When it dies, we do not.  There is more.  Much more.

Adam awaited the breath of God.  Until that was given, there was no life.

Do you know that the Hebrew word for “breath,” נשׁמה(neshâmâh), also means “Spirit?”

Adam and Eve forfeited their divinely-given life when they chose the way of death.  And when that happened, God gave them a promise.  A coming One who would crush Satan under His feet (Gen. 3:15).

The Word who spoke creation would create us anew by His life and His Spirit.

Have you been created only once, or are you a new creation now (2 Co. 5:17)?

God breathed only one Word for our eternal life, and His name is Jesus.

And God is as good as His Word.

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Be sure to drop by An Open Book for links to more devotionals on this subject.

Lost and Found – Gospel 101(a)

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What was lost in Eden?

Generally, we think of Eden as the place where humanity lost its innocence, and of course that's true. But there's more to it than that. Eden was the place where humanity lost its God-centeredness, and only when we understand that will the Gospel make complete sense.

After all, what's the connection between a bite of fruit and the repetition of a "Sinner's prayer?" How does one supposedly make up for the other? Is it even possible that one could make up for the other? (If you’ve followed this blog for long, you know where I stand on that question!)

How does the Gospel restore what Eden saw fade?

Eden declared the glory of God.

If the heavens declare the glory of God now, even after the fall of man (Ps. 19:1); if all of creation still speaks of God’s eternal power and divinity (Rom. 1:20); if the knowledge of our Creator’s existence still lies embedded in every depraved soul (Rom. 1:21), then how much more were God’s attributes magnified in the perfections of Eden and in the eyes of innocent humanity? Eden was created for man, but Eden wasn’t about man. It was about God’s goodness, and man’s extraordinary privilege of enjoying that goodness to his heart’s content. His glory was their joy.

And Adam and Eve didn’t want it any other way.

You see, they met with Him, face-to-face in the garden. They knew He was their greatest joy. They knew He had made all of the lesser things that they also took pleasure in. And they knew that He was in charge of them. Adam worked because God told him to. And because no sin yet warped his soul, he enjoyed his work thoroughly.

God was their center. God was their source. God was their purpose. God was their all.

It changed when, at the suggestion of the Fallen One, they decided to look elsewhere for their happiness. And mankind has been looking elsewhere for its happiness ever since.

Somehow, the Gospel is the answer to man’s problem. And though I grew up under solid Biblical teaching, I have to confess that the Gospel never made sense to me. It seemed so arbitrary, this method God chose to make things right. It seemed like it came out of left-field, and it bore no discernible connection to my need. I was miserable in my life, and doomed in my death, and by faith I had to believe that Jesus had somehow applied His death to me in order to give me life. Okay, I’d believe it, but it seemed so bizarre.

Sure, I knew that He was punished in my place. But that didn’t make sense to me either.

If I were dying of thirst in the Badlands, and someone came up and told me, “Don’t worry. A couple of thousand years ago, thousands of miles away, someone died to give you water! When you die, you’ll have all the water you want. Do you believe that? Get up and get back to living if you do. Be happy!” Would that really meet my need?

I might be able to believe it, but I couldn’t see how it would help my parched throat now. And if anyone had wanted to help me, why would they do it that way? It just seemed so disjointed.

How is a two thousand year old gospel, or the events surrounding that old wooden cross, supposed to relate to me today? Why did He choose to save me that way?

When I dared to ask, the answer I generally got was, “Don’t question it. Just believe it.” But questions are good things, if they lead us to seek our answers in God.

In God.

As John Piper so aptly says, God is the Gospel. (Though I’ve never read that book, I’ve absorbed enough of Piper over the years to feel pretty sure of what he means by that phrase.) As Eden was about God, and as Heaven is about God, so the Gospel is all about God as well. And the Gospel that revolves around God is the only one that makes sense.

As Oswald Chambers reminds us, “Eternal life is not a gift from God. It is the gift of God.” In the Gospel, God gives us Himself.

How? What does the Gospel give us that nothing else could? I can think of a few points offhand (which sounds like it could turn into a series if I’m not careful…)

Like nothing else could, the Gospel gives us:

1. Who God is
2. What we are
3. What is the deepest need of our soul
4. How to have what we need

Yep, this is going to need at least one more entry to complete.

What are your thoughts? How does the Gospel give God to us? Why is it important that we believe it…so important that the fate of our eternal souls rests on it? Why is God so big on belief? How is the Gospel relevant to our needs…not just in an abstract way, but very practically? How does it restore what we lost? I look forward to your comments.

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