God’s Power Over our Shame - Luke 8: 43-48

 Luke 8:  43-45, “In the crowd that day there was a woman who for twelve years had been afflicted with hemorrhages. She had spent every penny she had on doctors but not one had been able to help her. She slipped in from behind and touched the edge of Jesus’ robe. At that very moment her hemorrhaging stopped. Jesus said, “Who touched me?”

When no one stepped forward, Peter said, “But Master, we’ve got crowds of people on our hands. Dozens have touched you.”

⁴⁶ Jesus insisted, “Someone touched me. I felt power discharging from me.”

⁴⁷ When the woman realized that she couldn’t remain hidden, she knelt trembling before him. In front of all the people, she blurted out her story—why she touched him and how at that same moment she was healed.

⁴⁸ Jesus said, “Daughter, you took a risk trusting me, and now you’re healed and whole. Live well, live blessed!”  (The Message)

Last week we talked about God’s guidance in and how to find it.

The first step is to know your desire.  Ps 37:4

“Delight yourselves in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” 

Delighting is a feeling we have towards God. To delight in Him is to recognize that His thoughts towards us is not judgment, but love and warmth. He doesn’t judge or hate the believer, but He likes us just as we are. We are His children and He wants us to be happy.  When our relationship with Him is based on love and delight, He gives us what we desire. 

Our lack of receiving is not because God won’t give, but because we’re ashamed to ask. Our misconception of God as a tyrannical ruler makes us afraid to talk to Him. He’s a scary, distant king--not a playful, tender Daddy. That’s why we are afraid to express our inner desires. 

This misconception means that we can’t accept the compassion and the love that’s behind everything He does. We don’t want to come to Him—we want to get away from Him! But when we bring Him our brokenness, He heals us.

Look at this woman He healed in Luke 8:43-48. He healed her body, but even more, He healed her shame, embarrassment and broken relationship to God. 

We read Bible stories like we are sitting in Sunday school. We think we are supposed to sit, listen and not ask too many questions, but this story invites us to ask questions. For example, if she was bleeding for twelve years, how was she still alive? She must have suffered from constant anemia. 

A more important question is this-- if her condition was not life threatening, then why worry about it? Why spend every penny you have to fix a problem that is just a minor inconvenience, especially if no one else knows you have it? 

It was important to her, because this physical problem interfered with her relationship to God.  Leviticus 12:7 and 15:25 mention what should be done with women who had an issue of blood. In Lev.  12:7 we read that because of the blood of childbirth, where the woman who had just had a baby was held in seclusion for forty days. Anyone or anything that touched her during the time of her bleeding was considered unclean. Leviticus 15:25 referred to a woman’s monthly discharge.  Made her unclean, untouchable. She could not attend worship or come out in public.  

That’s what was to be done with women who bled. Now, imagine bleeding for twelve years. According to the Law, she could never leave the house.

But she didn’t stay in the house. No one knew her secret. By being outside her house, she was technically breaking God’s Law. She might be the nicest, most God-fearing woman in church, but inside she was unclean and couldn’t help it. She was living a lie. 

Could you be living a lie?  Are there things that you keep hidden because you would be ashamed to have others know? It may not be your fault. People who have suffered physical, mental, or sexual abuse often carry shame that they can’t shake. They believe they can never be healed or forgiven, so they live in shame. We keep our shame locked away inside, in the darkest recesses of our heart, like the woman with her issue of blood--constantly bleeding on the inside.  The legalistic, moralistic, and literalistic reading of the Law that this woman had absorbed since childhood made her ashamed to even walk down the street.

But God isn’t as condemning us.  He doesn’t hold things against us that aren’t our fault.

 This woman felt defeat as well as shame. She had spent everything on doctors and they couldn’t help.  She had given up on being fixed. 

A great failure of modern Christians is that we think the human heart is unfixable.  When we can’t fix ourselves, we think that even God can’t fix us.  We accept depression, anger, fear, worry, and loneliness as things we must live with. Because we are broken we think that God has forsaken us. 

But He hasn’t. We don’t have to be healed to come to God, but we come to God to be healed. We don’t wait until we are clean to take a bath and we don’t wait until we are well to go to a doctor. We go to Jesus when we are sick and broken.

Inner change is hard, but it isn’t impossible.  God can remake our inside and heal the pain of our inner person.

The woman in this story didn’t really believe that anyone could help her, but even so she took the risk and reached out to Jesus. 

This incident happened when Jesus was in the middle of another miracle. The president of the local synagogue called on Jesus to heal his daughter. He was traveling across town to this man’s house, followed by a crowd of people. This woman lost herself in the crowd and tried to get close enough to touch Him. When the people crowded in, the woman saw her chance. In a crowd, no one would see her touching Jesus’ garment.  

In those days, people believed that kings and other famous people had the power to heal just by a touch. The Roman and Greek records record people buying sweat and spittle from the emperors as medicine.  The Jews believed the Messiah would have healing powers.  Even a touch of his robe was supposed to be able to heal.

It might not work but it was would worth a try. She reached through the crowd and touched Him.  Immediately, the bleeding stopped.   

Jesus stopped and said, “Who touched me? I just sensed power going out of me!”

The disciples didn’t understand. “What do you mean ‘who touched me? We’re in the middle of a crowd!”  But this wasn’t an ordinary touch. It was a holy touch.  Jesus felt power flow out of Him.

The woman’s reaction was a mixture of elation and terror.  Elation--because her biggest problem just went away. Terror--because in the process her most embarrassing problem was exposed. She was afraid that God would be angry with her. 

Not only was a woman with an issue of blood unclean, but everyone who touched the woman was unclean, too. By touching Jesus, did she make Him unclean? No wonder she was terrified!

Fear overcame her, and she blurted out, “I did it!” By admitting to touching Jesus, she was also admitting she had a problem. It would come out now that she’d been living a lie for twelve years.

But Jesus wasn’t angry. He praised her for her faith. Her desire to be clean was a holy intention. Her simple action be a reminder and example to others for thousands of years. 

Unless we admit to having a problem, God can’t fix it. The exposure of our brokenness is part of the process of our healing. But those who admit their struggles find God’s redemptive love.

Lately, I have been contemplating what Christ did for us on the cross and have come to believe that our current picture of Christ’s work on the cross is true, but inadequate. Christ did more than die for our sins. He also healed inner hurts.

Remember, how we said that in ancient times people believed even the spittle or sweat of a king had healing powers?  If the spit and sweat of a king could heal, what power would there be in the blood of the King of Kings? Caesar’s sweat was supposed to heal, but it really never healed anyone. But Christ used His spit to heal a blind man. The hem of his robe healed this woman. If his spit and His robe could heal, what could His blood, shed on our behalf, do for us? He didn’t just die for our sins, He shed His blood for healing our inner hurts. His blood was shed to mend our inner pain, close our inner wounds, and reshape our inner memories into something beautiful. In His blood virtue flows from Jesus into us.  His blood is strong enough to heal our own inner hurts and pains. 

All you have to do is ask and Christ’s healing will come to you, and work inside you. 

 Maybe there are hurts in your life that you are ashamed of, something no one else can know. Maybe they’ve come about because of something you know you have done wrong, or maybe they have been inflicted on you by others. It doesn’t matter. Jesus can heal them. No one else has to know them but Jesus. God’s power flows from the cross and into us. 

Anxiety, depression, worry, doubt, and other mood issues are not all from sin. We live in a broken world, and the brokenness inside of us isn’t just because of something we have done personally.  It may come from what others have done to us, due to abuse or neglect. It may come, because of a physical problem, like this woman experienced.  Chemical imbalances inside are often the reason for depression and anxiety.  Don’t be quick to call things sins that aren’t. 

But we don’t need to know where our brokenness comes from—all we need to know is what can end it. Christ can heal our brokenness through the power of His blood shed on the cross. That power can and will work miracles. 

God’s Will and our Desire - Psalm 37:4 and 1 Samuel

Psalm 37:4 

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."

Guidance is a subject I have been wanting to talk about for some time, but the Holy Spirit hadn’t given me permission. I originally had an outline of what I was going to say, but somehow, I never felt the time was right. Now, I begin to see why God never let me speak on the subject. I’m learning that the subject of guidance is much bigger than I ever imagined.  

We usually associate finding God’s will with big decisions—taking a job, getting married, obeying a call to the mission field, etc. But guidance really isn’t about just the big decisions. It’s about how we live every day. If we only seek guidance for big things, we’ll miss it.  Discerning God’s will is something that we do every day and every moment. It’s learning to tell which of our feelings are from God and which originate from ourselves or some other spirit.

When Jesus said, “Follow Me,” He didn’t give the disciples a printed schedule of where they were supposed to be for the next three years. He gave them a command to walk with Him day by day. They didn’t need a calendar-- they only had to know at every moment where Jesus was, and stay close to Him.  That’s real guidance—to know where Jesus is all the time. 

There are three key words in daily guidance—desire, discern, and decide. Desire is the first and most important of the three. We must desire God and make our desires known.   

Psalm 37: 4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”  The word “delight” comes from the word meaning delicate or dainty. It means warm, tender feelings towards God. It’s that loving affection we have towards our wife, our children or out pet. “Desire” means what we really, really want. When God is our delight, and God delights in us, guidance is easy. God wants what we want, and we want what God wants.  But we must know that God loves us, and we must know our own desires. 

The problem with most of us is that we don’t know what we really want. This causes three problems. One problem is mistaking secondary desires for primary desires. Ask a homeless alcoholic what he desires, and he might say a fifth of scotch.  But if you give him that drink he will be even more miserable tomorrow. Ask a bored husband what he wants, and he might say a mistress, but he would hate himself tomorrow and probably ruin his hope for happiness at home. What we desire is not always apparent to us. But when God’s delight and our delight line up, then we are on the way to happiness, if not already there.  

The second mistake is mistaking lack of desire for sacrificial love. I once had a friend who was convinced God was leading her to the mission field, to a country where people ate bugs. She thought this because there was nothing more disgusting to her than eating bugs! She was sure that God was requiring her the ultimate sacrifice of herself, so she thought whatever He had for her had to be disgusting!

Discerning God’s will for your life doesn’t start with what you think you desire or don’t desire, but with learning how much God loves us and desires our happiness.

A third mistake is desiring from God without love. Before He grants the desire of our heart, we must ask in love, not coercion. 

This is not “name it and claim it.” I cannot demand my will from God based on a legalistic reading of some verse, as if I were suing God in court. God grants my desires out of delight, not rights. God doesn’t allow me to demand from Him, but he abundantly gives us what we ask, because he loves us. If there is something that will make us happier in the end, then He will gladly give us that instead. We do not demand from God—we do not have to demand. God already is on our side, and wants to give us everything. 

We see this in the Old Testament story of Hannah, Samuel’s mother, in 1 Samuel 1. 

Hannah was a young woman who was married to Elkanah--one of his two wives. Now we don’t practice polygamy today for a very good reason--it’s a stupid idea! It’s hard enough keeping one wife happy, let alone two, and it’s impossible to have two wives without jealousy. There’s not one case of polygamy in the Bible where everyone was happy!

Elkanah was a good man. He was very good to Hannah and gave her a double portion because she had no children. Even so, she desperately desired a child. 

The people around Hannah didn’t understand what her problem was. Elkanah was something of a jerk. He said to his wife “Aren’t I better than ten sons to you?” Men are always saying silly things like that to women. Was he so egotistical as to think that sharing a husband would satisfy her as well as having ten sons?

Elkanah was telling her what she ought to desire. People were always doing this to women of her time. Her father told her who she was to marry.  “Here, daughter, you are going to desire this man!”  He husbands said.  “if you can’t have children, so you should desire me even more!”   

Maybe the reason we don’t get what we desire from the Lord is because we haven’t been honest with ourselves about what we really desire. We’ve been told what we are supposed to want, but we haven’t told God what we really want.

In the movie The Runaway Bride, Julia Roberts plays a woman who was almost married several times. Every time she walked down the aisle, she panicked at the altar and ran away. Then one day, a friend asked her how she liked her eggs for breakfast. She didn’t know. Every fiancé she had liked his eggs differently, and she went along with what her fiancé wanted. If he liked scrambled eggs, she liked scrambled eggs. If he liked them poached, she liked poached. Then, she realized that she never knew how she liked them personally. Every time she married, she was ready to accept his desires as her own, giving up her individual desires in union with a man. What she really wanted in marriage was to be herself. She longed for a man who allowed her to be herself.

Ladies if you have ever felt this, I have good news for you! Such a man exists, and His name is Jesus!  When we delight in Him, He lets us be ourselves. The world forces us into molds, but Christ transforms us from the inside out.  He honors our desires and our personality.  We may not always get everything we want from the Lord, but He always hears our desires and works with our desires to give us more than we can imagine. 

The psalmist says, “Delight yourself in the Lord.” The word translated “delight’ means be tender or delicate. It doesn’t just mean obey, but to have a gentle, tender and delicate relationship, like a slow dance with the woman we love. Following Jesus is an invitation to a relationship, to a slow dance where one partner moves with the other. And (like any good husband) He listens to your desires and seeks to meet them.

Most people are afraid to make their desires known, so they censor them. Hannah could have prayed. “God, it would be nice to have a child, any child, but I know that you are always good, and I know I’m supposed to honor Elkanah, so just let me believe that my husband is as good as ten sons.”  That’s what a polite, cordial person would have prayed. But instead she owned up to her desires and laid before God her passion and pain. “O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son,” In other words, “God, give me a baby—and make it a boy!”

We’re too gentle in our prayers, because we have accepted the lie that God expects from us a barren cordiality before Him. Sometimes the church seems to encourage dispassionate prayers. Eli, the priest personifies this squelching of spiritual desire.  Eli had a wrong idea in his mind about how much passion was “right” and “proper” before this. Anything more than normal must mean that the poor woman is either crazy or drunk. God doesn’t want so much passion in church.

With this kind of attitude, it comes as no surprise, that Eli’s children Hophni and Phinehas, never had much passion for God. They eventually became great hypocrites in God’s service. Their relationship to God was no more than a job, without passion or sincerity.

 In much teaching on prayer, it appears we are teaching people not to pray our desires, but to accept without question what others think to be impossible. We pray “God’s will be done,” before we ever dare reveal our will. We think God doesn’t care to know our desires. For fear of offending God, we fail to make our will known even to ourselves. Our relationship to God degenerates into passionless cordiality. Like Ralphie in The Christmas Story, we ask for a football when we really want a Red Ryder BB Gun!

Hannah is not satisfied being poor old helpless Hannah. She goes to God honestly and openly, letting Him know what she really wants. She seeks God with passion and desire. 

Hannah had a boy, but she didn’t raise him.  She gave her son Samuel to Eli the priest. In time, he became a prophet—one who dwells in union with the living God. Eli’s natural children. Eli’s own children, Hophni and Phinehas, never knew God, and became famous scoundrels later. But it is the child of the woman who took delight in God, who desired God, who grew to anoint two kings and begin the prophetic movement that led to John the Baptist and Jesus. 

 “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desire of your heart.” Christ died on the cross for you, so you could have a relationship with Him based on mutual delight and mutual desire.  He wants you to ask, because He delights in seeing you happy. 

If you want to know what God wants for you, first know what you want from God. Ask-don’t be shy. No real relationship can be sustained by the denying feelings. We must ask, to receive, seek to find, and knock to have the doors of God’s delights—of our delights—be opened. 

 

All Out Praising God! - Psalm 150

We’ve been talking about the Joy of the Lord.  Joy is a feeling of genuine happiness in God. We have discussed two things that bring about feelings of Godly joy. The first is trust that God is on our side and loves us personally and unconditionally.  Because He is absolutely trustworthy, we can know He will always be supportive and caring.

The second is heart obedience. This is not obedience, of action, but what occurs when when the Holy Spirit changes our hearts to make obedience possible. It is yielding to the work of the Holy Spirit that turns grudging submission to joyful service. The Holy Spirit makes it possible, not just to say we rejoice, but really feel happy; not just pretend to be calm, but to not be anxious, not just to act gentle, but to feel gentleness. The obedience that produces happiness, comes from a heart that has been changed by the Spirit. We can’t produce it on our own. It comes from the Spirit’s work in us.

First we must desire that the Spirit changes us. Then we pray for it. In time, the Spirit creates the change of feeling that produces joyful, willing obedience. 

But there is still one more necessary step if we want to walk in the Joy of the Lord. We must choose to live and act in joy. The joy God produces in our hearts must be lived out in our bodies. 

This is not as easy as it sounds. We must differentiate the feelings that come from the Spirit from the other feelings inside.

If all our feelings were from the Spirit, then obedience would be easy and we would be happy.  But our hearts are mixtures of feelings that come not only from God, but from our own sinful fallen nature. We are mixtures of joy and sorrow, optimism and anxiety, faith and fear. In church or in prayer, we may experience the joy of the Lord briefly, but then another part of our nature produces feelings of jealousy, anxiety, anger, shame, and insecurity even while we are rejoicing. Our two-sided and double-minded nature is very much who we are.

Paul says it well in Romans 7: 22-25.

^“For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

He’s referring to this confusion of emotions inside us. There is the tug of our baser feelings—the “natural man” as he calls it in another place—that is present even in this apostle. He calls these negative feelings the “law of the flesh.” Our unsanctified parts have control over our bodies, so that they seem to us to have a mind of their own. Our bodies are like a car with two steering wheels. One wheel is in control of the “natural man” with all the fears, anxieties, anger, and jealousy. The other wheel is the “spiritual man” which is trying to get control.

Most of the time, it is this unsanctified man who is in control of our bodies and its parts. 

We want to sing praise to God, but our mouth won’t open. We are afraid of being too lout. 

We want to stand our ground, but our feet want to run. We want to look away from temptation, but our eyes can’t stop looking. We want to control our appetites and eat healthy, but where did that fistful of potato chips come from?  Our bodies seem to have minds of their own, because the “natural man” is really in control. We want to do good, but the “bad” parts of our nature seem to be in control.

In the battle between our two natures, rejoicing in the Lord has a crucial and decisive part in victory over the old sin nature.

If we dethrone the flesh’s power over us, then at some time, the Spirit must take control over the body. We must yield our bodies up to Spiritual control, even if it is only for a short time. Once the Spirit is in the driver’s seat, it becomes easier to maintain that control.

Now, when and where are we most likely to see the Spirit take control? Isn’t it when our hearts are moved to worship Him?  If we want to dethrone our flesh, let’s begin with the most positive times when we are actually seeking the Spirit’s control.  We must worship God, not just with our minds and hearts, but our bodies. If our faith is kept as purely an internal thing, we are by default allowing our bodies to remain in the control of the flesh. But when we express the Spirit in our bodies, then we are putting the best parts of our nature on the driver seat. Our wills and bodies are surrendered to praising Him. We must use our bodies to express our most positive feelings towards God.

This is a wisdom that the Church has always possessed. We use sacraments to involve our bodies in worship. We tell people to gather for worship, not just stay home and watch it on TV or the internet.  We don’t just listen to Christian music, we sing Christian songs. We kneel or life our hands in prayer and worship. The actual bodily expressions of praise do not matter nearly as much as the yielding of our members to the joy in our hearts. 

In other words, don’t to keep the joy of the Lord inside. Make a conscious choice to use our bodies to express our inner joy in the Lord. When we do this, we are surrendering our bodies not to the rule of the flesh, but to the joy of the Spirit. 

In much of our worship, we have allowed praise to become divorced from the body. Praise is encouraged, but any physical expression is not. 

Let’s see how this works. Our hearts are moved to praise the Lord. Our minds agree—He is worthy to be praised. So, we want to express it in the church somehow-to shout “amen” raise our hands, or sing loud. But there are other feelings inside us. We’re shy. We’re ashamed of our own voice. We worry that we might offend others, or what others might think of us. Legalistically, we say that this isn’t “proper” even though the Bible says it is. In short, we feel the presence of the Spirit, but instead of yielding our bodies to it, we allow our bodily behavior to be dictated by fear, anxiety, legalism and shame—the very things that Christ came to liberate us from!  We are yielding our bodies to the flesh, not the Spirit. Our hearts may rejoice in the Lord, but our bodies are given over to fear.

As a result, our joyful feelings don’t last long, and have little impact upon us. In fact, we might even feel shame for wanting to rejoice.

In our culture, there are very few times when we allow ourselves free expression of proper emotion--ball games, playing with children, weddings and funerals. But for many of us, we were taught feelings should be bottled up, for fear of looking weak. Anger, fear, shame and sorrow are about the only feelings we allow to take control. As a result the Joy of the Lord is stifled, while the flesh remains in control.

This wasn’t true of ancient Hebrews. Look at—psalm 150.

“Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness!

Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp!

Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord Praise the Lord!”

When the people of God gathered together, they were not supposed to sit quietly. They sang songs of praise. They danced and played musical instruments. They even danced!  When David’s wife Michal criticized him for dancing before the Lord, God struck her barren. God clearly approved of all this religious exuberance.

Psalm 150 is a command by God to praise him with our whole bodies. 

Where do we praise God? First of all in His sanctuary—in church. Express your joy. Don’t treat worship as a spectator sport or a music concert. Express it to the best of your heart.

Praise God outside of church, too, out in the open air. Don’t just keep it in the church building--take it to the street. 

How do we praise God? Talk about His mighty deeds! Tell what God has done in your life. If God has blessed you don’t keep it to yourself. If you can’t think of some mighty deed He’s done for you, then talk about who He is. He’s greater and mightier than anything else you can imagine. 

What means should we use to praise God? With all musical instruments. Musical instruments fall into four families—wind instruments, reeds, percussion, and strings. The psalmist mentions them all—the horn, the tambourine, the pipes, and the harp.  Whatever you have, use it.  The idea that only certain musical instruments or styles should be banned from worship is contrary to Scripture. God wants every kind of music, and every kind of human voice. He wants all to praise Him.

Praise him with the dance. Yes, it actually says that!  Use your bodies to worship Him.

Jack Hayford once told of an experience that he had while worshipping the Lord alone in his office.  He said that he heard God’s voice, telling him to dance. Jack is a scholar, not a dancer, and balked at this command. But since he was alone, he started to hop back and forth from one foot to another, like a child. Then he realized that this was what God was doing. He had to cast aside his fears and inhibitions, to express the joy inside.

Who is supposed to praise God? Everyone who breathes!  If you breathe, you’re part of the praise team of this church!

Let me summarize what we’ve learned about the joy of the Lord. The feeling of joy in the Lord does not come from what we do—we can’t fake joy. Joy comes from the knowledge that God loves us fully and unconditionally, without reservations. He expressed this in the sacrifice of Christ for our behalf, and in His giving of life. If we believe this, we must obey His command to praise Him. This praise cannot be kept inside, but must be expressed with our bodies. 

So, if you’re happy, and you know it clap your hands! Make the choice to find a means of expressing that joy in real, tangible ways of worship, expressed with our bodies and lead from our hearts.  

Trust and Obedience - Philippians 4:1-9

Do you remember the old hymn? “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

 

Trust and obedience are interconnected. Trust in God leads to our obedience of God. Obedience to God builds trust of God. 

Suppose you had to choose between trust and obedience--which would you choose?  Would you rather have people trust you or obey you?  For me, I would rather be trusted than obeyed. If I obey, then I am more likely to learn obedience. If I obey without trust, I will most likely learn to resent it.

Many of us have learned to obey God, but we never really trust Him. We are afraid of his wrath so we do what He says. But it’s hard for us to imagine that God is really on our side. Go through the motions of obedience, but they don’t seem to lead us to trust. Our result is that we are anxious, fearful, and unhappy.

When we trust God we happily obey Him. We know that when we trust, he won’t let us down. It may be difficult to follow what He calls us to do, but we know that He will bring victory, even if we don’t see the way, because we know He’s trustworthy. 

In this passage, Paul tells us to both trust and obey, but he begins with giving us a reason to trust.

 That reason is simple, because He loves us!

“Therefore, my brothers whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved.”

It isn’t just Paul calling us “beloved” it’s God! It isn’t just Paul calling us his brothers and saying he loves us and longs for us, his joy and crown—it’s God saying it through His Word!

So if God loves us that much, why don’t we trust Him? We can see why in verses 2 and 3.

“I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored   side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.”

This seems out of place. Suddenly, he’s talking about two women and encouraging them to get along. He doesn’t pick sides or reveal what the quarrel was---he just tells them to get over it. 

We all have a few Euodias or Syntyches in our lives—people who are close to us, with whom we don’t really get along. We may love them, but we don’t trust them. Our past experience with others taught us to distrust. These personal quarrels keep us from recognizing Christ’s love. 

The church is full of imperfect sinners, (including ourselves) who will let us down. The more we see ourselves as victims of others’ abuse, the harder it is for us to believe in a loving, caring God.

We learned distrust from our ancestors. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers it says something about Southerners that is probably obvious to anyone growing up in the South. We’ve been taught to distrust strangers. He traces this all the way back to our Scottish ancestors, who were cattle farmers and always on their guard against cattle rustlers.  Fear of cattle thieves taught them to be wary of strangers, which they taught to their children. The cattle rustlers are all gone but the distrust remains. 

We learn distrust from our parents. Parents are a child’s first model of God. If we don’t feel love from them, it is hard to trust throughout life. 

We learn distrust from those we live and work with. Bosses abuse us. Lovers desert us. Friends betray us and take advantage of us. So, naturally, we learn to protect ourselves by trusting no one, not even God.

Paul doesn’t doubt the Christianity of these two women, in fact he praises them for their work and devotion. But it’s hard for us to get over our petty differences and to trust each other. 

We can’t really trust God without trusting other people. When we distrust others, we distrust the God who uses them for His purposes. God allows all things to come into our lives, whether good or bad, and all the blessings we have come ultimately from Him, no matter who gives them. Even wicked people can be used for God’s good purposes by God. Even good people let us down. Our trust is never really in people, but God who holds everything in His hands.

Are you willing to trust God with your friends, family and fellow workers? Can you believe God will work in your life even through wickedness and injustice? If you have a difficult relationship, thank God for them. God is using them to make you more Christlike. If God directs the whole world, he directs those you distrust. His love is always with us.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if everything isn’t perfect in your life that God has abandoned you. On the contrary, if your life is running smoothly, it may be a sign that you aren’t progressing in the Lord. Whatever friction we endure in life, God is still in it. 

 “Trust and obey”.  Paul next discusses obeying. 

God wants us to obey His commands. But what commands does He want us to obey. We think about winning the lost, feeding the poor, supporting foreign missionaries. But all these commands are nothing compared to the hourly, daily commands of God to become new people. Obedience to God is mainly about changing our lives and attitudes. 

Look at what Paul commands of us in 4-9.

^4” Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.”

The word for “rejoice” isn’t talking about the way you act, but the way you feel. God commands us to feel happy. Then he doubled down and says it again! It’s not about doing something, but feeling something. He isn’t talking about fake happiness either, but really being happy in every circumstance!

This was brought home to me recently when I took spiritual inventory that measured, not my actions, but my motivations. It revealed that although I have been doing the right things and saying the right thing, I often didn’t feel the right way about it. It’s one thing not to hit a person who insults me, but it’s quite another not to be upset with the insult. It is one thing to act calm, but it’s quite another to actually be calm. When Paul commands us to rejoice, he doesn’t mean just act happy—he means us to be joyful.

^5 “Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand;”

Be calm, and don’t fly off the handle when someone upsets you. Don’t allow your negative emotions to cause you to act impulsively, but exercise self-control. Gentle and calm isn’t something you do, but what you are.  

^6 “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

I’ve got a list of things that are useless to tell another. One of them is “don’t be anxious.”  Yet here is Paul, speaking on God’s behalf, telling us not to be anxious, but to have peace and pray about every situation.

Surely God means, “don’t act anxious,” right?  No, Paul says what he means. Don’t be anxious.

^8 “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Think on the right things, not the wrong things. 

You may have heard of the “seven deadly sins”---lust, greed, gluttony, pride, jealousy, wrath, and laziness. These are actually taken from a list of destructive thoughts from Fourth Century monk named Evagrius. He didn’t call them sins, but of “desolations”-- attitudes of the heart that lead us away from God. He included an eighth, that we don’t call a sin. It is despair. It’s the belief that things are bad and can’t get better. Despair is probably the surest sign of a lack of trust in God. If we always dwell on what is bad, then we need to focus on what is good and productive. 

^“ What you have learned^[e] and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

If you want to have peace in your heart, learn to focus on the good.

These commands are not difficult—they are impossible!  We can’t change the way we feel, and if we try we just build hypocrisy and resistance. We can’t deny our real feelings.   

God isn’t interested in training us to be good actors, but in changing our hearts. The Holy Spirit has the power to give us real joy, remove our anxiety, and to produce good thoughts in us. But if we try to change our hearts by ourselves, we will only become frustrated.

We have to trust Him to make the changes in our hearts that will enable us to obey Him and rejoice, be calm and stay focused. Rejoicing in the Lord opens us up to receiving God’s Spirit, which changes our lives and hearts to match the plan God has for us. It cannot be done by human effort, but only by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. 

We cannot make our feelings disappear, but we can learn to place our attention where it should be.  I can’t keep people from betraying me, but I can choose whether or not I focus on being betrayed. I can’t stop worries from coming to my door, but I can choose to ignore them and look at something else. I can’t stop dishonorable, unjust, ugly, and despicable things from happening, but I can choose to look instead at something better. 

I can do all this, because deep down I know that I can trust God. My life is not doomed. I can still choose instead to focus on the things that shine with God’s glory. I can trust Jesus to make internal changes in me that will help me rejoice, be calm, and be optimistic in the middle of pessimistic circumstances.

Trust Jesus. We can be happy in him, if we trust Him and obey Him. 

The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength - Nehemiah 8: 9-10

Last month has been among the hardest our family has ever had. We’ve made two trips to Michigan to deal with Joy’s mother, who died on December 28. Her brother and father have financial problems and my niece in Atlanta has had an emergency appendectomy.

It has been hard month for others, too.  Ray Benfield passed away. Robert has been in the hospital. Beth’s mom has gone on hospice.  One friend lost his wife to cancer. Another posted that she is dying and has been given last communion. One took a medical leave of absence to help her daughter who has renal failure.

Because of all these tragedies, I want to talk this month about the joy of the Lord. 

For most people, joy becomes because of good fortune. Our team wins the championship so we celebrate. Our mother comes home from the hospital and we throw a party. Joy is like a flag that we fly on our car when our team wins a victory. 

But in the Bible, joy is not a victory dance we do when things go well. Joy is a realization that our fortunes are not bad, nor is our situation hopeless. It is a recognition that God is still in control.

Let’s look at two Bible stories. The first is from Nehemiah 8: 9-10. It is a celebration held in Jerusalem around the Fifth century BC. In 587, the Jews were run out of Judah and Jerusalem and the temple was destroyed. Then seventy years later, brought them back under the leadership of Nehemiah and Ezra.

 At first, the place was a mess. They fought for even basic necessities, and were vulnerable to their enemies. But with God’s help they got a wall and they were relatively safe. Nehemiah and Ezra threw a party.

What were they celebrating?  It could have been their good fortune, but Nehemiah and Ezra said it wasn’t that. They celebrated because the Joy of the Lord is our strength.  They weren’t celebrating their accomplishments, but the Lord.  He accomplished all that was done.

It’s easy to say this, because we all know that it’s what we are supposed to say. “It wasn’t me, it was the Lord.”  But Nehemiah isn’t saying this superficially.  He doesn’t say “the Lord is your strength.”  But “the joy of the Lord is your strength.”  It’s not celebrating God in good times that’s our strength, but celebrating God in bad times that’s our strength. 

The joy of the Lord means more than just praising God. Praise is a recognition of worth. But joy is emotional, not intellectual. It is a feeling, not a fact.

We may praise God without rejoicing in God. I am thankful for indoor plumbing, but I don’t celebrate my bathroom. I celebrate things that give me strength, joy and encouragement.   A mere intellectual assent to necessities is not the same as joy.

Nehemiah is telling us something different. He says that in times of trouble, the celebration of God becomes a source of strength. Not just acknowledging his presence, but glorying in His love.

Think about this in relationship to the husband-wife relationship. If you’ve been married for many years, you are no doubt grateful to have a good spouse. You probably depend on each other a great deal, and have an effective partnership. But this recognition of mutual support is not going to add as much strength to your relationship as a date night and displays of affection. If you want to have a marriage that will give you strength in tough times, you must have more than mutual dependency and intellectual appreciation.

It is the same with God. Strength comes not just from the acknowledgement of God but the celebration of God. That is why people find more strength and encouragement from praise songs and hymns than they do in good preaching. Preaching appeals to the mind—music to the heart.

This was brought home to me recently when I took a spiritual inventory for the Spiritual direction program in which I am enrolled. It revealed that one of my deficiencies was celebration. I do what I believe to be right, but I do not take time to celebrate while I am doing it. I plug ahead stoically doing the right thing, but mostly out of duty, not out of joy.

Most of the Christians I know are much the same. We do the right thing, but do not enjoy it.  Our heads and actions are right, but our hearts don’t keep up with it. As a result, we are not as strong as we think we are. It is hard to keep the head and the hands working for Jesus if the heart isn’t enjoying Jesus. But when we can access the joy of the Lord in our everyday lives, then the burden on our head and our hands are not so great. Jesus said his yoke is easy and our burden light, but that is only true when the joy of the Lord is our strength.

This passage in Acts 16: 19-24 illustrates this point. Paul and Silas had healed a slave girl possessed with an evil spirit. But her owner couldn’t use her evil spirit to make money, so he complained to the authorities. They were beaten and thrown into jail without any medical care. How could they stand it? 

Here’s what they did in verse 25:”About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” Instead of moaning in misery they celebrated God.

They accessed the joy of the Lord and that was their strength.

Now where does that joy come from? It comes from three realizations.

1.  That God loves us specifically, without conditions and limitations.

2.  That they obeyed God completely, no matter where they were.

3.  That we have a choice to mope in misery or rejoice in the Lord.

Over the next three weeks, we will look at all three of these concepts, but today, let’s look at the first of these three. The reason we can rejoice in the Lord is because the Lord rejoices in us.

Once upon a time there was a school of fish. They had been told that the purpose of fish was to swim in water, but they did not know what “water” was. They asked everyone they knew where they could find water or the ocean, but no one seemed to know the answer. So finally, they asked one wise old fish and he answered. “You are already there. This is the ocean. You’ve been swimming in it all your life, but you just never realized it.”

What was missing in these fish was not effort or direction, but awareness. They did not know that what they sought was already there.

When it comes to the love of God, we are the same. All our lives we seek for someone to approve us, someone to love us. We seek to please God who we think of as some kind of absent Father who expects us to measure up to His invisible standards. If we don’t, then God hates us. Who is going to rejoice in a Father who hates them? 

But the Bible reveals a different picture of God. God doesn’t hate you. He loves you. Christ died for your sins, because He loves you. 

God doesn’t just love us generally. He loves us specifically. Most people think God has a general love of mankind, but a specific displeasure with them. But He enjoys our company, and rejoices in being near us. He loves us specifically, completely and passionately. 

This realization of God’s continuing love for us makes rejoicing in hard times possible. It means that we can lean on that love whenever we need to.

 

Most people’s relationship to God is transactional, not relational. They know that God is sovereign, and that all things are under His control. So when something goes wrong, we say that God must have caused this or allowed this, and then we make the leap to assume that He must have caused it, because He is punishing us for some reason. This is not the way God generally works. God can bring punishment, but not every bad thing is a punishment from God.  Even punishment is in the context of overarching love. We can rejoice in that love no matter what.

The Joy of the Lord is our strength. When we celebrate the love of the Lord, this strengthens our faith, and give us hope to go on, because we are recognizing that God’s love is supreme. We swim in God’s presence all around us, even when we don’t see it.

Give praise to God this year, not because you think it is going to be a good year, but to make this year good in your eyes. No matter what happens this year, God’s love is the same for you. Be joyful in knowing that God still has you by the hand.  

Remember - Deuteronomy 6: 4-8

Here we are go at another Christmas season. There is so much fun about it. But it’s also the most stressful time of the year. 

A recent psychological study suggested that prolonged exposure to Christmas music can be bad for your health. Christmas music reminds people of the presents they haven’t bought, the decorations they haven’t put up, and the fun they were supposed to be having, but they aren’t. Our expectations of what the holidays are supposed to be like are very different from our real experience of them.

Christmas comes from “Christ’s Mass”-- a worship service. All the social and family stuff associated with it has nothing to do with the core of Christmas and can be an unwanted distraction. This is why many Christians reject all celebrations at Christmas. In the Seventeenth Century, Christmas was banned in England. It was not celebrated at all in most Presbyterian churches for centuries. The number of Christians not celebrating Christmas today is only about 1.5%, but the number is growing.  A recent article in Christianity Today declared, “Let the Devil Have the Holiday!” 

With all the commercialization of Christmas, why not just give it up? The answer is complicated. 

Set aside for a moment whether we enjoy Christmas. Frankly, I don’t think God cares whether we like holly, carols and mistletoe. It’s a matter of personal taste. If you enjoy giving gifts and putting up a Christmas tree--do it. If you don’t, leave it down. Christmas shouldn’t be required. It isn’t commanded in the Bible. The burdensome, stressful obligations of Christmas come from the demands of family obligations and guilt-driven consumerism. If you don’t want to exchange gifts or go to some Christmas gathering, don’t go. God won’t think any less of you if you don’t. God doesn’t impose the burdens of compulsory family gatherings and social pressure that are enforced by shame.

If we feel obliged to give a gift just because someone gave us one, then we don’t know the meaning of the word gift. A gift is something we give freely with no obligation to return. Feeling an obligation to give a gift back to everyone who gives to us warps our understanding of God’s love, since He gave us Jesus freely without any expectation of return. That’s what grace is—something given without having to give back. If we feel obliged to give back, then every gift becomes a burden of guilt.

It’s also a burden to have to spend when we can’t afford it or have to go when we don’t have time. Christmas has become a time for stressing over presents we don’t want, decorations we don’t need, sweets that are bad for us, and parties that we don’t enjoy. God never requires any of this to celebrate His Son. 

But back to the question—why celebrate Christmas at all? What was the point? For that matter, why do we celebrate other holidays that once had a religious base--Easter, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, or Halloween?

The reason is found in one word—Remember.

One of the hardest things we do is to remember stuff. Our memories are like sieves--we put stuff in, but it doesn’t stick. We’re always forgetting things that are important.

To help us remember, we make habits. Habits are connections between things we think feel and do. For example, when we connect twelve o’clock with lunch. Just seeing noon on the clock reminds us that we ought to be eating. If we hear a song we connect it with a memory or state of mind. Just hearing that song triggers a memory. We see a cross and we think of Jesus.  We see a flag and we think of America. We see a date on the calendar and we connect it with a birthday or anniversary. We automatically remember something important.

Now the main theme of the Bible is this ---remember God. All the things it says about worshiping Him, honoring Him, obeying Him requires that we keep Him always close in our memories. It does no good to say that we will always obey our Lord Jesus Christ on Sunday if we wake up on Monday and forget He exists. Obeying God requires we remember Him and think about Him. 

God gave the Jews the Law to help them Remember Him. Circumcision, not eating pork, the putting of Bible verses on doorways and windows, and the feasts and holy days, reminded the believers of God’s presence in their lives. Without it they quickly forgot Him. Out of sight, out of mind. 

God doesn’t require anything of the Believer except that we remember Him and Jesus. But to do that, we must keep Him before our eyes. The New Testament doesn’t give us a Law but expects us to develop daily, monthly and yearly habits that will remind us of God’s presence. He doesn’t give us a schedule. Instead, we write Him into our schedule. Here’s a few things that help us remember:

1. Blessings over meals remind us three times a day.

2. Prayer in the morning and evening.

3. Keeping Sunday as a day of rest. Not only do we remember God, we also get some rest.

4. Giving a percentage of your income off the top to God’s work—tithing--teaches us to trust God for our daily bread, and not our job.

 All these things help us to remember Him.

What if you feel you can’t do one of these things, or don’t feel you’re doing them right? Well, there’s good news--you don’t have to, and there is no “wrong!”  They’re just ways to help us remember God in all things. But if we don’t do any of them, I doubt if you can remember to put God first, which is what we mean by “Jesus is Lord.”  We can’t remember God without any daily habits of submission or devotion. Even if we had a photographic memory, we can’t remember God all the time unless we include Him in all of our life.

Now, to remind ourselves of the story of Christ’s story of birth, life, death and resurrection, the church developed a calendar of yearly reminders. The Church calendar doesn’t start on January 1, but five weeks before Christmas, at the beginning of Advent. Advent is the period of preparation for the feast of the Nativity, or Christmas on December 25.

 Why December 25? It doesn’t matter. It had to start sometime. However the date was chosen, it was intended to be a time for remembering Christ’s birth. 

To make that time special, the church fathers designated the period leading up to it as a time of fasting and prayer. Imagine that: December was a month for getting thinner, not fatter! 

December 25 was considered the first day of Christmas. The last day of Christmas was January 6.   The time between December 25 and January 6 were the twelve days of Christmas.

After January 6, the main events of Jesus’ life were regularly celebrated up to Resurrection Sunday, or Easter. Forty days after Resurrection Sunday, the church celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit, or Pentecost. In addition, there were special days for remembering saints and martyrs, which is where we get St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween. 

There are many inaccuracies in dates, pointless customs and empty rituals involved in holiday celebration. Much of what we associate with the holidays is nonsensical, and that the rituals associated with them may be meaningless. But isn’t that true of all celebrations? What does a bride wearing white have to do with marriage? If there is no Biblical justification for a Christmas tree, does that mean an annual celebration of the coming of Christ is also meaningless? If customs help us remember, fine. Habits and symbols only when they stir our memory of something important.  

  

If our Christmas becomes so associated with commercialization and overindulgence that we can think of nothing else when you hear a Christmas carol, then forget it. It’s not required. If you don’t celebrate, then find some way of jogging your memory to think of God sending Jesus. No memory is good enough to remember Jesus daily without having some regular habits.

The pressure and stress of the holidays comes from the world, not Christ. The world puts pressure on us that God doesn’t like telling us to pay our taxes, drive in the speed limit, salute the flag and prepare for tomorrow. Without daily and annual habits of worship you can’t remember what is really important without some habits to help you. But you don’t have habits to help you remember Christ, you won’t remember. Spiritual habits keep our faith so we won’t be buried in trivialities.

Our business in the church is simple, and that is that we help you remember God. The church calendar is one tool we use, but even here, it’s easy for holiday celebrations to become more important than what they’re supposed to remember. We shouldn’t get caught up in secular Christmas.

 We’re not here to remind you to visit your mother, be patriotic, or practice good dental hygiene. 

There are all kinds of good and helpful things to remember in the world, but they are not what we are called to do. We remind you of heavenly things. In a world that has forgotten Jesus to the point that the celebration of His birth has been dominated by Santa Claus, we must put Jesus first, last and always. Making Santa the center of Christmas is like having a kid’s birthday party and making the clown you hired to entertain the center of all attention. This is Jesus’ birthday, and Santa is just the entertainment.

The point of Christmas is to remember Christ—not our family, being nice to each other, being cheerful, or anything else. You think that this is the season for celebrating family, friendship, children, or world peace that’s fine--just don’t call it Christmas. But If you use this season to remember Jesus came to do, that’s Christmas—Christ’s worship service.  

Remember to reinforce the habits that enable you to draw closer to Him year-round. Celebrate by becoming more like Him and closer to Him. Ignore the burdens of celebration the world forces upon you. Try to end this Christmas season less stressed, more at peace, less in debt, thinner, happier, and most of all godlier than you were in November. Use this season to build habits of remembrance that you will keep all year long.