Month: May 2013

MAKING A HOME IN HOSTILE PLACES

Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.  Genesis 12:6

         Many have prayed for the will of God, followed His voice, and experienced complete disillusionment when they found themselves in hostile surroundings.  They blame God for being unloving or they blame themselves for being poor listeners.  Hostility within the will of God is common and should not surprise God’s children.

         When Abram encountered the Canaanites, hostile company epitomized, he didn’t pick up and move on.  He settled there.  Though the only Yahweh worshipper, He built an altar.  With far less revelation of God than I have, he was strong enough in his faith to stand out and be different from everyone else.

         Some years back, our family lived in a hostile environment.  We begged, daily, for release.  We were willing to move anywhere and do anything to escape our surroundings.  Surely, we reasoned, God wouldn’t want for us to endure such a place.  Yet, every request for a move away was met by the silence of God.  One morning in prayer, the Spirit of God spoke to me through a verse in Psalms.  “Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.”  Psalm 37:3    We were to learn how to make our little home a place where the glory of God rested.  We were to understand how to eat the sumptuous spiritual meal God provided daily in the midst of our enemies.  We stayed three more years before God moved us out and that time proved to be one of the most formational times, spiritually, in our family’s history.

         Many live in the midst of hostility.  Unfortunately, it can be with a husband, wife, child, or aging parent.  It can even be in a place of ministry.  Scorn and ridicule are the backdrops of daily life.  Instinct says to escape.  Do anything to run from such discomfort.  But God’s way is for His child to learn how to make Him their home.  The glory of Christ can descend on the darkest environment.

Give your child today spiritual grit, a willingness to stay in a tormenting place, and peace in submission.  Amen

PROSPERITY AND DOMINION

And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  Genesis 12:2

         Nothing in our Christian language is misunderstood more than the word ‘blessing.’  Because I am so prone to want earth to be my heaven, I assume it means something it really doesn’t.  When my expectations are shattered, I’m angry with God for supposedly breaking His promises.  What does ‘the blessing’ really mean?

         Blessing equals spiritual prosperity and dominion over what God has entrusted.  God blessed Adam and Eve, Noah, and now – Abram.  They were told to be fruitful and to reign.       I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies.   Genesis 22:17 

         To be fruitful is to apply the laws of heaven and see results.  That can mean as much internal as external.  To reign and have dominion is to enjoy the freedom Jesus won for me at Calvary and to enforce the victory He acquired on my behalf.  What does this ‘the blessing’ mean for every one who struggles today with their health, or finances, or broken relationships?  Is God not faithful to keep His promises?   Here is what two examples look like – and I’m asking God to drive these truths home to my own heart.

         1. I can live in a crippled relationship and still be fruitful, and still reign.  How?  My inner peace is not determined by anything external.  I plant the promises of God in my heart and they are fruitful because they produce peace, hope, and confidence that God is ruling well.  I can reign because, in prayer, I ask for divine healing for what is broken.  I use my spiritual authority to thwart all the schemes of the enemy to wreak more havoc in this relationship.  I speak scripture over every diseased part of the relationship.

         2. I can lie in bed with cancer and still be fruitful, and still reign.  How?  Though in pain, I remember that God is faithful to give me momentary grace.  I am blessed with a relationship that offers me access to an all-powerful God who promises spiritual stamina.  My relationship with Him is fruitful in suffering.  I reign when I take all my fears and doubts and subdue them with the power of the Word.  I preach to my own soul and defer to the hope Jesus offers.

         If I’m experiencing hardship, it’s easy to believe I’m not blessed.  I’m quick to compare myself to others and quote the promises made to our spiritual forefathers.  I forget that they, and the prophets, and the disciples, entered the kingdom through much tribulation – but held onto the promises of God with their faith in tact – throughout their journey.  Freedom from pain does not equal blessed.  In each place today where I groan under weight of living on a cursed planet, I choose to live in the hope that God will one day redeem it all.  In the meantime, my internal world can know blessing as I bear the fruit of living in the Word and reign over my flesh.

Reigning over my own despair is as much a miracle as reigning over people.  Your Word is a magnificent catalyst for all that afflicts my heart.  Empower me and bless me to rule over all You have entrusted to me.  Amen

A LIFE OF PILGRIMAGE

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  Genesis 12:1

         A father is given divine rights to exert authority over his child.  He shapes his identity.  He establishes parameters and boundaries.  He sets future goals for him.  He corrects and encourages along the way.  Obedience and honor are the responsibilities of the child – and while giving honor will last a lifetime – obedience will not.  At some point, that child, if he comes to faith, will gain another Father and everything will turn on its end.

         As an adult, I leave the authority of my earthly father for my heavenly Father.  God’s commands take precedence over all other influences.  As His child, I look to Him to shape me, establish parameters, set goals, and correct and encourage.  Obedience and honor are my responsibility.

         No wonder Jesus said that no one could follow him unless they were willing to leave father and mother, brother and sister.  The changing of allegiances is cataclysmic in families, especially if the earthly family does not know God.

         In this context, I am feeling the stress of Abram’s call. The LORD speaks.  He calls Abram to leave family and everything that is familiar.  This leaving will not be just physical, but spiritual.  He is to turn his back on the gods of his relatives and of his countrymen.  He is to do what no one has ever done by leaving everything to go west.  No concrete destination, just west.  And all because a God he didn’t know yet called him by name and gave him a command and a promise.

         There is always tension between the command and the promise.  My lifetime as God’s child is characterized by hearing a call, setting off on a course for which I have no roadmap, and trusting God for the next step on my journey.  My call cannot be second-guessed.  I never know what today will hold.  It unfolds as I listen and obey.  Even as the founder of a ministry, I do not set ten-year goals.  I cannot begin to guess where God will take me and Daughters of Promise.

         The call of God will also be cataclysmic, at times, when people who love me criticize, when family loyalties are threatened, and when church friends think my steps are too radical. The only one who hears the call and the daily revelations that go with it is the one to whom God speaks.

         A life of pilgrimage is not for the fainthearted.  Strength, direction, and endurance come to the pilgrim who knows he is a child on an adventure, holding the hand of a Father every step of the way.

When my obedience is tested with famine, breathe over me Your encouragement.  Amen

DOES THE PAST DESTROY MY FUTURE?

Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot.  Genesis 11:27

            Ten generations after Noah, through the blessed line of Shem, Terah was born.  Though Shem walked with God, it didn’t take long for his descendants to be become polytheistic.  Their prominent god was the moon.  In later times, with moon worship in tact, food was laid out at night to absorb the rays of the moon, which were thought to have power to cure disease and prolong life.

            Not much has changed, really.  One of the most beautiful and current songs of our day is made famous by the talented Celtic Women.  The name?  The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.  

            It was in this spiritual environment that Abram was born.  It was not ‘Yahweh friendly’ yet it was out of this line that Jesus would be born.  Can children with holy callings arise out of spiritual wastelands?  Yes!

            That answer should comfort any who fear that their past is too scarred for God to use them.  I can place far too much emphasis on my past in trying to determine the odds of future success.  I can fear for children who have unbelieving parents, believing that they are too scarred to ever hear the call of God on their lives.  Yet how many Christian leaders, like Abram, have come to faith simply by coming face to face with Jesus Christ!

            Once God decides to open the eyes of an unbeliever to the beauty and glory of His Son, Jesus, any degree of spiritual blindness is instantly cured.  Whom God has predestined to believe ~ will believe.  Nothing can stop or hinder it.

            A child of an alcoholic, a child of an atheist, a child of a pedophile, any of these will be the next evangelist if God calls them.  No toxic childhood environment can thwart the call.

            What kind of obstacles have me worried today about a relative, friend, spouse, or child?  Do I really believe that their spiritual condition is hopeless?  How small is my God!  How puny is my faith!  Abram, growing up with gods on the shelves on his home, is about to hear Yahweh’s voice for the first time.  Like Saul, it will be such a powerful encounter that he will sacrifice everything to follow.

Give me the grace to kill all despair with faith!  Amen

UNHOLY AMBITION

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Genesis 11:5-6

            What am I building today?  If it is something God does not like nor approve of, He won’t come (most likely) and destroy it while it is in its infancy.  My unholy ambition will prosper according to my efforts.  It will be a while before I see the unwelcome fruits of my labor.  God’s inspection, and/or judgment, may occur after my death.

            The towers of Babel reached high in the sky before God inspected them and pronounced judgment.  He marveled at their ambitious undertaking but in the span of His vastness and glory, it was laughable.

            What I build with my hard work appears to work for a while.  I might even be fooled by what I suspect is blessing.  Ambition does produce some stunning results on its own but self-made efforts and God-breathed success are two totally different things.  To know the difference, I must think with the mind of Christ.  And to have the mind of Christ, I must be humble, teachable, and ever immersed in the Word.

Give me your eyes for my work today.  Am I building a tower of babel or a temple?  Amen

MAKING OURSELVES A NAME

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves.  Genesis 11:4

         How small God must have been.  Solidarity was created among the peoples of this region to think that they could build a tower tall enough to reach into the heavens and, in the process, make a name for themselves that had nothing to do with God.  It was ridiculous and yet nothing has changed.  Our small worlds are full of those who are feverishly building a kingdom to impress, one where God is ignored, one that will give them a name that inspires awe.

         People were never meant to be the objects of another’s worship.  We are to be worshippers.  We were never meant to make a name for ourselves.  God offers us His name instead.  Why would I possibly want another?

         The real tragedy is when people in ministry try to build towers that offer them fame.  Feeling small, they devise their own source of healing. All the while, the names God has given them, as His child, are all they need to stand tall.  Yet, their quest for identity remains earthbound.

         In the 1980’s, when my quest for significance consumed me, I began to put some pieces together about identity and where it comes from.  I wrote this song for me, and for my children, that would allow the things God calls us to wash over our souls.  Anytime we felt weak or insignificant, we could sing it.  Over the years, I have recorded it at different times but I have found that there are days I really need to hear it again.  Earth is an orphanage and reduces one’s sense of worth.  The only remedy is God whispering these truths in our ears.

GOD GAVE ME HIS NAME

Looking down at the ground

Shadows around me are all I see

They accuse and abuse

Stealing my value, whispering lies to me.

CHORUS

I am a light; I am His bride

An heir to His kingdom; His cross at my side

I am His friend; A daughter and saint

Anointed with love, and mercy and grace

I will stand tall and carry no shame

When I remember God gave me His name.

(To hear the song, click here.)

CURSING GENERATIONS

When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.”  Genesis 9:24-25

         Noah is remembered for building the ark but perhaps his greatest moment was the pronouncement of this curse over Ham’s descendants.  Just 24 hours earlier, he had been drunk with wine.  At this moment, he was filled with the Holy Spirit.

         The curse was not made against Ham, per se, the one who had reveled in his father’s nakedness.  The curse was against Ham’s youngest son who, it is believed, already exhibited some of the same sinful bents of his father.  The sins of the fathers were being visited on the next generation. Ham sinned as a son and was punished in the moral decay of his own youngest son.

         Noah was God’s mouthpiece in predicting the future profile of Canaan’s descendants.  They would indeed be vile people, the ones the Israelites would have to conquer as they entered the Promised Land.  Their morality would be like Ham’s sinful bent, only far more exaggerated.  Their sin would reach its height during Abraham’s time.

         Sometimes, when all I see is a seed of sinfulness, I can tell myself I’m overreacting to be concerned.  I am not!  Seeds bear fruit.  Nothing stays neutral within family lines.  It may take several hundred years to see the full effect of unrighteousness.  I cannot be fooled by the appearance of something small and seemingly insignificant.  A seed of unrighteousness should send me to my knees whether that seed is in me or in someone close to me.  One thing is sure; God instituted a sowing and reaping world.  Seeds mature and bear fruit.  Nothing stays neutral.

         A toddler struggles with lying.  He grows up.  As a young man in business, he is crafty and manipulative.  Years later, as an old man, he is in full moral decay and bears the shame of disrespect.  A lifetime of deceit will have borne its fruit.  It will be said, “I can’t trust a word he says.”

         One of John Piper’s most famous sermons from Romans is called, “Kill Your Sin!”  He is animated, agitated, and passionate about taking the word of God and plunging it into my own sin, even young sin that has not progressed very far.  Yet!

         “Be hard on sin,” Noah would tell me today.  Oh, but for the grace of God could our inheritance be the likes of Canaanites!

Help me love Your Word more and hate my sin more.  Amen

HOW DO I HANDLE MY PARENT’S SIN?

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father’s nakedness.   Genesis 9:22-23

   Noah was drunk.  In his compromised condition, he stripped and lay naked in his tent, fully exposed.  Ham went in and looked upon his father, took in the scene in way that was immoral, and went to report it to his brothers.  It wasn’t that Ham just glanced and left.  Several translations present a Hebraic picture of looking upon someone with lust and desire, and then relishing the exposure.  Noah’s two other sons, after hearing, approached their father with their backs turned toward him and covered up his nakedness.

   There can be something evil bent in the heart of a child to glory in a father’s or mother’s weakness.  If the parent has been a poor one and there is unresolved hurt, a child, no matter what age, can rejoice when the power and grandeur of a parent begins to crumble.  The need for revenge takes over to party over their sin.  Though I am surprised that Ham, after being saved from worldwide destruction by the faith of his father, is not more humbled and reverent!

   I have no idea what Ham’s issue with his father was but at that moment, his own heart was revealed.  Noah had not been a perfect father and leader but he had been righteous.  Like David, he had a heart bent toward faith and had proven it over a century.

   Honoring parents is one of the conditional foundational requirements for God’s blessing.  He instituted the family and for anything to pollute the beauty of the relationships is to hurt the heart of the Creator.  Nothing is more tragic than parents who won’t forgive children and children who won’t forgive parents.

   In a particular movie from a few years back, I remember a line that struck me.  A son in his forties is having a heated discussion with his mother.  He raises his voice to make a point.  The mother says, “Son, who taught you to be this cruel?”  His answer, “You did, mother.  You did!”  In this hotbed of anger, each is looking for the vulnerability of the other to rise up and strike.

   Parents aren’t perfect.  Some try their best and fail.  Others don’t care and fail.  Should all parents be forgiven?  Yes.  To fail to forgive is to hurt, not only the parent but the ones who carry the anger.  I realize today that I teach my children how to treat me by how they hear me talk of my own parents.  Respect and honor are godly legacies I can pass on.  Disrespect and dishonor can just as easily become hallmarks of family trees.

Your forgiveness covered my sins.  How grateful am I?  Can I not, in remembrance of Your mercy, cover my parent’s shortcomings?  Drive the point home.  Amen

COASTING

Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard.  He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.  Genesis 9:20-21

         Wine is spoken of favorably in scripture.  God asked for wine to be used as an offering in the book of Numbers.   But like anything, when it is consumed in excess, clear and sound thinking is compromised.

         Noah coasted for just a moment.  While he is recounted as a righteous man in the hallmark chapter of the bible, he was not perfect.  (Nor is anyone else mentioned in Hebrews 11.)  Noah had passed God’s great test of obedience by faithfully building the ark for 120 years.  He withstood the emotional and spiritual challenges of leading his family while hearing the earth destroyed.  Now, the flood is behind him.  The storm has passed and earth is a friendly place to live.  Coasting is never a wise posture because vigilance is laid aside.

         For a moment, he laid his judgment aside and drank too much.  He stripped himself bare, exposed what he never would have thought of exposing while sober, and succumbed to shame.  His judgment was suspended while under the intoxicating effects of alcohol.

         Some years ago, Jaime and I were at a major airport about to board a plane.   At the gate, we stood in line behind our pilot and crew who were checking in with the gate agent.  The smell of alcohol was overwhelming.  Being a peace-loving person, I was not anxious to have to do something about the situation but it became apparent that over 300 people were boarding an aircraft, in bad weather, about to fly cross-country with a severely compromised pilot.  I finally spoke to the gate agent who pacified me and offered to do nothing.  I asked for a supervisor, then another, then another.  Now, Jaime and I are the only ones who have not boarded and the plane is delayed.  Finally, the last supervisor went on the aircraft and walked off with the pilot in question.  He approached us, reeking now of cologne, and lamented that we would think he might have been drinking while on duty.  Hating to be in that position, I was required to speak up.  I stood my ground, told him that I had indeed smelled alcohol.  I assured him that we would be boarding the plane but praying for him throughout the flight – that God would override his impaired judgment.

         All this is a reminder this morning that any addiction, even to something supposedly good and God-given, becomes an impairment.  Nakedness and exposure are the result.  Under the influence, how many secrets are revealed!  Never am I more vulnerable than after weathering a storm, after a spiritual victory. 

Coasting is for heaven, Lord, not here.  Make me ever vigilant on enemy territory.  Amen