Church Leaders and Pruning Vines

The other weekend, I discovered that while I had been out of town, my tomato vines had gotten completely out of control. Instead of neat and tidy plants producing lots of delicious fruit, they had turned into raging green monsters that were producing more and more out-of-control raging green vines.

I picked up my pruning shears and went to town. Before I was done, I had hauled away two large garbage cans full of unfruitful (or barely fruitful) vines. I reflected on a couple of things.

First, I realized that by not pruning the tomatoes gently and regularly, now I had to prune them fairly harshly, and the result showed: instead of a well-balanced fruitful plant, when I was done, I had plants with great gaps in their branches, but at least they had the potential for growing some fruit now.

Second, I remembered our Lord's promise: “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” John 15:2. The promise of his care for me (more consistent than my care for my tomatoes, I assume) in order that I might bear fruit.

Then this week, I saw that while I had been tending my tomatoes and weeding my garden and harvesting my garlic, my grapevine had gotten completely out of control as well. Another raging green monster, oh boy.

I picked up my pruning shears (and a stepladder this time) and went to work. And I thought about the lessons of pruning the tomatoes, and realized that those lessons applied here, too.

But I learned another lesson with the grapes. Unlike with the tomatoes, I really didn't know what I was doing with pruning the grapes. This was beyond my training, beyond my experience, and I knew it. Furthermore, I realized that while I was doing the best I knew how to do, the reality was that the pruning was harsh and probably excessive. And I knew it was my fault, but the grapevine paid the price for my ignorance.

It was at that point that I heard Father whisper, “You’ve just described a very large number of pastors, Son.” I can tell you I paused to think about that one for a good while.

And as I considered it, I realized that pastors are a lot like gardeners: their values are for the nurture and development of the garden entrusted to them. But occasionally, someone in their care gets excited and starts growing out of control. In my own history, I remember a staid little Presbyterian congregation with a dozen individuals stepping out of the pastor’s influence to participate in the Jesus People Movement.

We discovered intimate relationship with Jesus; we discovered the Holy Spirit; we discovered that the Bible really is interesting and practical. We got terribly excited.

And the pastors didn’t know what to do with this revival. This was beyond their training, beyond their experience, and they knew it. And as a result, their responses to our untidy, out-of-control enthusiasm was harsh and probably excessive.

And Father pointed out to me that they actually realized their limitations, they regretted the damage they were doing, but they had to do something! We really were turning into out-of-control, raging monsters (the fact that we were teenagers didn’t help matters any).

But suddenly I was more sympathetic for those pastors, and for pastors today that are dealing with congregants who get excited and start growing much faster, maybe even irresponsibly.

Some of them are panicking, dealing with situations beyond the training of their seminary or Bible school. They feel (whether rightly or wrongly) that they need to bring that raging, out-of-control enthusiasm under control, and they respond more harshly, more damagingly than they would if they had more experience (or better training).

Some of the church leaders you and I have encountered (and it’s not all pastors, is it?) have been threatened by our excitement, our enthusiasm, our vigorous change. That doesn’t mean we quit growing, of course. And it doesn't mean we get angry, take our ball and go away, either.

Some of these leaders will never understand. Some will, like the leaders of Jesus' time, declare, “If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.” [John 11:48] Some will wish they could throw it all away and join us.

But a whole lot of leaders will be open to learning more, even if we scare them, even if it’s difficult. I’m encouraged to work on building bridges, so the whole Body can grow.

God Reveals His Secrets

“Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.” [Amos 3:7]

I woke up with this on my mind recently and I’ve been chewing on it for a while.

The phrase, “his servants the prophets” suggests there are some prophets who are not submitted as servants to him. He apparently doesn’t reveal his secret to them. The gift is not enough; I need to be fully on-board with him.

Application: I don’t need to listen to prophets who are not God’s servants, whether they’ve anointed themselves or they’re servants of something else (Money? Sex? Power?), or they’ve just fallen off the wagon. Discernment (personal & corporate) is a big advantage here.

The same phrase also suggests that there are some servants who are not prophets. In the days of Amos, there were just a few who had God’s spirit and spoke for him; in our days, well he’s instructed every believer to earnestly desire to prophesy [1Corinthians 14:1].

Application: being fully his is not sufficient; prophets need to speak what God says and when he says to. They need to be called for the purpose of speaking his word to the community. More than that, I need to not pay attention to the “prophecies” from God’s people who are not actually anointed by God to speak for him at this time. Discernment is a big advantage here, too.

I'm going to over-simplify this and say that there are things that he doesn’t reveal, except to people who are comfortable hearing his voice and who are fully committed to him.

The other thing that’s captured my attention is the Hebrew word “sôḏ,” which is variously translated “secret,” “plans,” “counsel.” A couple of translations render it “secret counsel” in this verse, which I think is pretty interesting.

Hold on, this might get nerdly for a minute.

Strong defines H5475 (our Hebrew word “sôḏ,”) as “a session, that is, company of persons (in close deliberation); by implication intimacy, consultation, a secret,” and

Gesenius points out that outside of the Bible, the word speaks of a couch, cushion, triclinium, on which persons recline, hence, (1) a sitting together, an assembly, either of friends or of judges, (2) deliberation, counsel, (3) familiar conversation, or (4) a secret.

In any case, this strikes me as a complex word; no wonder there are so many ways to translate it.

But the imagery in Amos is getting clearer: he invites individuals who are fully his and who are comfortable hearing his voice into a quiet place with himself, where he discusses what’s on his heart. And the imagery is pretty clear: this is not one “big guy” dictating what’s going to happen; this is peers in conversation, in dialog, in deliberation together.

And according to Amos, he doesn’t do anything apart from this sort of counsel, without discussing it with these people in this setting.

It could be argued that he has required that it be this way. In the Psalms, he declares that "The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to mankind." [Psalm 115:16] If he takes that seriously, then he has delegated authority for this planet to us, and no good leader delegates authority to someone else and then steps in, usurps the delegate, and does things on his own authority.

So for God to take action in the affairs of Earth, he needs to first discuss his secret counsel with his human friends, who now carry the authority for action on the Earth.

Moses the Hot Mess

I was talking with God about Exodus 33, one of my favorite conversations in the Old Testament. And if I’m honest, sometimes one of the most confusing.

I was observing that God wasn’t particularly answering that Moses was asking, and then I remembered that Jesus was pretty famous for that, too. “You and your Son don’t like answering questions head-on, do you?”

And to my immense surprise, he didn’t answer my question head-on either. Instead, he took me inside Mo’s heart, inside his soul, and we looked at some of the stuff going on there. And maybe for the first time, I realized how much Mo was a wounded soul.

I mean, look at what he’d been through:

• He was essentially kidnapped by the king’s daughter [Exodus 2:10], raised as a grandson of the maniacal king who was slave master of his entire family [1:11], and appeared to be in the midst of trying to commit genocide on his people’s race [1:22].

• It appears that his genocidal grandfather didn’t know he was actually a member of the race he was trying to exterminate: he lived with a (shameful?) secret his entire life. Some people think he was being groomed to be the next genocidal king in the land.

• He figured out that he was really part of the slave race, presumably from his wet nurse, who was his birth mom, and it appears that he wanted to use his position of power to free them.

• He makes his first attempt toward their freedom [2:12], which a) fails, b) reveals he favors the slave race over the existing power structure, c) alienates the people he’s trying to save [2:14], d) turns his maniacal grandfather against him [2:15], and e) scares the piss out of him [ibid]. He flees for his life.

• He meets strangers in the desert who mis-identify him as a member of the genocidal ruling race [2:19], and he doesn’t correct them.

• He gives up on doing anything important with his life, marries into a family of nomads and settles for being a shepherd on the backside of the desert, for 40 years. (Sounds like a real “death of a vision” to me.)

• On day 14,600 (approximately) of his life as a hopeless, helpless shepherd, he stumbles on an encounter with a God he’s not known [3:2ff], who gives him a quest [3:10] to do the very thing that he had tried to do 40 years earlier. He’s too broken and still too scared to go back, too intimidated to attempt anything that important [3:11].

• So he argues with God, putting up obstacle [3:11] after obstacle [3:13] after obstacle [4:1] after obstacle [4:10] as to why he shouldn’t be expected to do that job.

• He experiences a couple of undeniable miracles [3:2, 4:3, 4:6] there on the mountainside. He believes his fears more than he believes the miracles.

• In the end, he flat-out refuses to comply with God’s instructions. “Send someone else!” [4:13] He pisses God off [4:14], who adds his older brother to the deliverance party.

We could go on. But I began to better understand the whiny tone in Moses’ voice [33:12-16]. And it was at that point that God pointed out that Moses was an 80-year-old broken man, with a lot of un-healed wounds in his soul. He was kind of a dysfunctional mess. An old dysfunctional mess.

And THAT is who God chose to deliver millions of people from arguably the mightiest nation on the planet at the time.

And you know that God made it personal. “If I can use a messed-up man like that (and I heard the tender affection in his “voice”), I can use you just fine, too.”

Lessons About Prophecy From Ezekiel

I’m really thankful that I don’t live under the Mosaic covenant (the “Old Covenant”).

That messed-up covenant was about a priesthood between people and God and about obeying the rules (and getting punished if you didn’t obey them). It wasn’t the covenant that God wanted, but it was the only covenant that the people would accept, but that’s another story.

But even if we’re not part of that covenant, we can learn a lot from the stories that come from those days. We can learn a lot about the weakness of human intentions, I suppose, but the part that I find interesting is when God’s heart is revealed, even through that inferior covenant.

For example, this prophetic word about prophetic words,

“This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! ... You have not gone up to the breaches in the wall to repair it for the people of Israel so that it will stand firm in the battle on the day of the LORD. Their visions are false and their divinations a lie. Even though the LORD has not sent them, they say, "The LORD declares," and expect him to fulfill their words.” [Ezekiel 13:3, 5-6]

This rather talks about both the weakness of human intention and the tender goodness of the heart of God. I came across this passage, and I realized that there are lessons from this Old Covenant encounter that apply even to us who live in the New Covenant. Here are some lessons that stood out to me.

• One of the legitimate roles of the prophet is to strengthen the people of God for days of difficulty and opposition. (He uses vocabulary of repairing breaches [holes] in the defensive walls of the city, a pretty common metaphor.)

In New Covenant vocabulary, the prophetic gifts are for “edification and exhortation and comfort;” this is not news to us.

• In those days, there were “foolish prophets” who speak for God, even when God has not given them a message. He says they prophesy from their own spirits, and haven’t actually seen a vision from God.

I have great empathy for itinerant prophets these days. There’s real pressure on them to always have something to say, always have a fresh revelation, always be in the social media headlines, so that they’ll always have an invitation to minister, and therefore receive a paycheck. The desire to feed your family and pay the rent is pretty powerful, and it probably ought to be.

This is one of the reasons I believe that discernment is absolutely critical these days. God calls out this prophesying from their own spirit pretty regularly in the Old Testament; I believe it happens in our days as well. Which means we need to discern the prophetic words that are actually from God from the prophetic words that come from the prophet’s own spirit. (One tool from this passage to help judge a word: does it “repair the breaches in the walls”?)

• It’s probably worth pointing out that even if a prophetic word comes from the prophet’s own spirit instead of the Spirit of God, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s evil or demonic. If they have a good spirit, then words from their spirit won’t be bad. They may even comfort and encourage, but they won’t carry the power of God; they’re just words, empty words, even if they’re good words.

There were in those days – and there are in our days – declarations made that were not from God, but people expect God to fulfill the empty words. Both the prophet and the hearer are deceived into thinking that God is going to accomplish what was essentially wishful thinking or good intentions behind the “thus says the Lord” declarations. But he is not obligated by promises that come from anyone other than himself.

• I confess that I find it a little uncomfortable that prophets can prophesy from their spirit well enough that they can’t recognize when God is speaking and when it’s just their own good intentions. But I see it happen all over the place.

And if the hearer has not done the work of discerning the prophetic word properly, they may attach their heart to words that were merely spoken from wishful thinking or good intentions, and as a result, be disappointed, even devastated when that which was promised in the flesh does not come to pass. I’ve known people who have walked away from God because of this stumbling block.

This is where Jesus’ warning seems to apply so clearly: “Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.” [Luke 17:1-2] That sounds like Jesus is pretty serious about this.

And this is the point in this article where I sometimes feel the need to come up with a snappy conclusion to what I’m writing, something about guarding our hearts, something about hearing Father’s voice for ourselves, something about purity of motives. But I’m cautious about my own good intentions here.

Instead, I’m going suggest a re-reading of the passage that started this whole thing, and taking a moment to open your heart and visit with God about it:

“This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! ... You have not gone up to the breaches in the wall to repair it for the people of Israel so that it will stand firm in the battle on the day of the LORD. Their visions are false and their divinations a lie. Even though the LORD has not sent them, they say, "The LORD declares," and expect him to fulfill their words.” [Ezekiel 13]

Israel has Sinned. That’s Why They Cannot Stand

In my reading today, this stood out to me. I suspect that there’s a principle for me here. Maybe for your too.

Joshua 7: 11 “Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant, which I commanded them to keep. They have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen, they have lied, they have put them with their own possessions. 12 That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies; they turn their backs and run because they have been made liable to destruction. I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction.”

I don’t know about you, but I was taught that sin is bad because it scares God off from me. “God cannot look upon sin,” they said, completely ignoring the fact that “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

As my attention was grabbed by Joshua 7, I realized (yet again) that the big deal is the effect that sin has on me, NOT the silly idea that sin has an effect on God.

To summarize: “Israel has sinned; That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies.” In other words, sin let failure into their lives, sin let their enemy beat them up, sin opened them up to what the enemy was doing, sin made them victims, not victors. 

God doesn’t like sin primarily because of the mess that it makes in our lives: it separates us from (in this example) victory, from our destiny as overcomers.

So when God says, “Be holy,” he’s not laying down the law. That’s largely about, “Position yourselves in the cross-hairs of my blessing!”

Jesus Freaks Out the Disciples

I've been reflecting on Hebrews 1, which tells us that Jesus is the best representation of God's nature we're ever going to get.

In that context, I'm thinking about Mark 6:48-50, yet another place where Jesus is representing Father’s nature.

"He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified. Immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened."

This, too, is Jesus representing Father to us.

I observe some things here:

• Jesus saw his best friends straining at their work, because circumstances were against them, and he did not stop the events raging against them.

• Jesus let his friends struggle all through the night.

• I remember the aphorism, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” So in the darkest part of the night, Jesus came to his friends. He still didn’t take the storm away, but he brought his presence to them in the midst of the storm. I love how he does this.

• He walks “out to them,” but “He was about to pass by them.” God does that sometimes: he comes to me, but … There are a hundred sermons in this line, but the bottom line is that he came “to them,” and he came close enough to see, but he was not stopping for them. That’s worth thinking about. “He was about to pass by them.”

• But his appearance scares them silly. God’s presence can be terrifying, if I’ve been focusing on the raging storm.

• He didn’t actually get in the boat with them until “They cried out.”

• We know from the other gospels that in here somewhere is the bit where Pete walks on the water, but it’s not in this particular gospel. While that’s a really exciting story (especially for Pete!), apparently that’s not the important lesson here.

• When Jesus gets into the boat, the storm dies down. Isn’t that how it goes?

• They were completely amazed. Duh. This one is not surprising!

• But the reason for their amazement, and maybe for their terror earlier, was because they didn’t understand God’s provision; they “had not understood about the loaves,” the story earlier in the chapter where Jesus “he had compassion” for the crowd of 5000 and taught them and fed them.

Apparently my not knowing God’s compassionate goodness leads to me being freaked out at circumstances, freaked out at his presence showing up unexpectedly, and leads to me being amazed when he changes things.

The last line teaches me that if I misunderstand God’s goodness, my heart gets hardened, and I’ll misunderstand what he’s doing. I might want to guard against this.

And the best way I can think of to guard against this is to be persistently thankful when I see him doing things. If nothing else, it helps me pay attention to what he's doing (so I’ll actually see what he’s doing), and it helps keep my heart in a healthy attitude toward him.

The Pendulum Swings to Mercy

It seems that the history of mankind can be described as a rush from one extreme position to another, like a pendulum gone. We’re doing it again.

For the past several decades, we’ve lost track of the promise at the end of James 2:13: “…Mercy triumphs over judgment.” For the past several decades, the church has earned a reputation as a house of judgment and intolerance, of narrow-mindedness and bigotry. Frankly, we’ve earned the reputation.

You’ve may have noticed, however, that the pendulum is swinging back, as is its wont. There are several changes that are happening in the church that reflect the pendulum’s return: one that I have observed over the past several years today is a rise, an increase, in the expression of mercy gifts among individuals in the church. It’s one reflection of the change in direction of the church: we’re becoming less judgmental, and more merciful. 

We certainly need that change. The bad news is that the world has judged the church for being judgmental and out of touch, and that judgment has been appropriate. The good news is that the church is changing her heading, but it seems that we’re headed for increased turbulence with the corrections we’re making, not toward calmer waters.

The increase of the gift of mercy within the church, has not been well documented, and indeed it’s difficult to document and to analyze. You may or may not have seen what I have been observing for the past year; it is indeed subtle. Allow me to state my point fairly directly, and you can make your own observations.

Our text, then, is Romans 12:6-8:

“Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.”

First, let’s agree that mercy really is a gift, and by divine command, it is to be exercised with “cheerfulness” (literally hílarós, a root word that has become “hilarity” in English).

It’s my observation as one who has been a part of the church for a bunch of decades, that there are more people in the church now than there were a decade ago who are gifted with mercy, and the gift is more respected than it has been before. The church is more aware now than perhaps ever of the need to respond to sinners with understanding and empathy rather than a good clubbing with Old Testament Law. Our services often focus on meeting the needs of “pre Christians” rather than discussing sin and its consequences for “sinners.”

We have softened our approach to people-different-than-ourselves, and even many of our street evangelists are asking questions or meeting needs more than proclaiming judgment on street-corners.

That much is good.

The context for this growth in mercy, however, has been neither cheerfulness nor hilarity. The mercy that is growing in the church is growing without having been disciplined, it is mercy out of control, and it is becoming a destructive force in the church.

Pastors and other leaders are finding themselves confronted by their congregations for being too stern, too strict when confronting sloth or sin. Church discipline – ever the touchy subject – has become anathema: we’re afraid to go there.

Often, the confrontation is motivated at least in part by mercy: let’s not be too harsh. But it’s mercy out of control, mercy without discipline behind it, mercy without maturity. The resulting of the conversation – a pastor afraid to speak the truth – is not normally considered a step toward maturity. This is mercy guided by ignorance or (worse) rebellion.

For example, a friend of mine leads a worship band, and her drummer was getting lazy. He’d use the same riffs for nearly every song, and his playing had gotten boring: he was stagnant and worse than that, he was content with being stagnant. As the leader, she had spoken to him a couple of times privately, and they’d agreed on certain goals, and on the means to achieve those goals.

Once during rehearsal, he drifted back into his old, stagnant patterns, and she needed to remind him of the standards they had agreed to. But when she did, she was surprised to find several other members of the band getting in her face about how she had “judged” him. The other members thought they were being “merciful” (and indeed, they are known to be merciful people), but because their mercy was un-tempered by self-control, it brought division, not unity to their band. This was mercy guided by self-indulgence.

In 1 Samuel 15, God sent king Saul to destroy the Amelekites, with specific instruction to kill everything:

• “But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”

Saul musters the army and conquers the enemy, but instead of obeying God, he shows mercy:

• “But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them.”

Sure, there were other motivations; greed come to mind, but the act was merciful, whether it was mixed with lesser values or not.

The story concludes with God judging Saul, not because he was merciful (who is more merciful than God?), but because Saul’s mercy was undisciplined, and the fruit was disobedience. Saul feared the people more than he feared God; God could no longer trust him as king, and He fired him and began preparing David to replace him.

In our school district, very few students are “flunked” or “held back” because it’s considered bad for the student’s self-esteem. I’m all for being careful with kids’ tender hearts, but if a teacher feels pity for a capable-but-undisciplined student, and passes a failing student for whatever reason, that teacher is not doing the student any favors. If the kid can’t read his own high-school diploma because of well-meaning, but ultimately short-sighted policies, that student will still be illiterate and functionally unemployable, all because of his educators’ misguided mercy. This is mercy guided by shortsightedness, by fear of confrontation, or perhaps mercy without guidance at all.

For the past twenty years, the church has been getting used to the rebirth of prophetic gifts. We’ve seen Prophetic Schools and Prophetic Training Classes and Prophetic Conferences by the hundreds. All of this has been an attempt to teach the prophetic people how to minister their prophetic gifts: ultimately, it’s been aimed at producing mature prophets and prophetesses, who use their gifts responsibly: in other words, we’ve been breeding self-control into the prophetic movement, and I for one, am thankful for it. (Who wants to return to the prophetic poo-flinging and free-for-alls of the late ’80’s? Not I, thank you very much!)

So consider this a call (perhaps even a prophetic call?) to arms on behalf of the restoration of the gift of mercy. It’s time for mercy to come to the forefront in the church.

And it’s time that we begin to expect, even plan for, maturity in the gift of mercy.

Mercy triumphs over judgment.

Mature mercy triumphs better.

I’ve been thinking about something.

Sometimes when I need to think (“meditate”) on a topic or a verse, it helps me to do it “out loud.”

Some days, I go for a walk in the woods, and I teach on that topic to the trees and bushes. But it’s raining enough that the squirrels are marching two by two, so I’m using my other favorite method of “thinking out loud”: writing. 

Hold still. Thinking might happen here. This might get messy.

Part 1: Our words carry power. We’re made in the image of the Creator God, who used his words to do all his creating. We carry some of that.

Part 2: God is in the business of blessing, not in the business of cursing. We’re in the family business (see above), so there’s a reason he has commanded us to “bless and curse not.”

Part 3: If we’re honest, there’s a lot of stuff around us, a lot of people around us, that maybe have earned their fair share of cursing. Some bad people doing bad things.

Observation 1: Take #1 above with #3 above. I suspect that the reason some cities (and increasingly, states) in America are so messed up is because Christians are cursing them so much. Think about the times you’ve heard Christians talking about Washington DC or Chicago or San Francisco. What is usually the topic of those conversations. When was the last time you heard Christians actually blessing Joe Biden or Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi?

And as a result of Christians (and others, but it’s the Christians’ words that are the big danger) declaring curses, these cities, these people are targeted by hell. And you can see it. Just look at them: they’re not actually doing well, are they? Hell is having a heyday with them.

Observation #2: Personal experience: whenever I have asked for prayer for an ill-favored person or place, the curses (“Oh, they’re a bad person!” or “They sure need to repent!”) outnumber the prayers by about two to one. (I suspect that this illustrates our need to grow in the Spirit’s fruit of self control.)

Hmmm #1: If we hear about “God is going to judge this city” (or state, or whatever), we often think of running away from that place. I’m thankful there have been fewer of these awful curses recently, but they make me think of Abe’s conversation with God in Genesis 18, where Abe argues for both mercy and justice. “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

Hmmm #2: I wonder if it might be a healthier response, when we hear a credible declaration of impending doom, for Christians to rush to that city or state. And maybe echo Abe’s conversation in the process. “Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you!”

Hmmm #3: If that’s a reasonable thought (and so far it seems to make sense), would the same apply to individuals? If we see someone whose actions make them a target for hell (or “judgment” or whatever), is it more Christ-like to get ourselves far away from them, or to get close to them, to bring God’s mercy to them?

Hmmm #4: What would that look like?

Hmmm #5: How would God look on that? How would the world look on that?

As I write these thoughts, a verse comes to mind. “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not comprehend it.” I love the thought of confusing the darkness, but I like the idea of shining light into the lives caught in the darkness even better.

Knowing God

“Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.’

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky.

But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.

When Moses went up the mountain, the cloud covered it. The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days.

On the seventh day he called to Moses from the cloud. The appearance of the Lord's glory to the Israelites was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop.”
[from Exodus 24]

A friend drew my attention to the cutting of the Mosaic Covenant, when God and the people of Israel formally entered into the covenant that the people had proposed [Deuteronomy 5:27].

I’ve always paid more attention to the proposal [Exodus 19 & 20] than the marriage [Exodus 24]. A few things speak to me here.

And it occurs to me that an excellent way to get to know someone better, is to sit down to a meal with them. I observe that both the Old Covenant [Exodus 24] and the New Covenant [Luke 22] were established with meals, and that he still invites himself in for meals with his people [Revelation 3:20].

In the Old Covenant, this was the first time they’d ever eaten with God, I think. In the New Covenant, it might have been the three thousandth time they’d eaten together (three meals a day for three years).

A little bit later, Moses gets up and heads further up the mountain into God’s presence, but it takes a full week for God to speak with him.

I reflect that the reality is that sometimes when I’m talking with God, it really does take a few days to connect well with him. But I also reflect that this is more a characteristic of Old Covenant thinking than of the New [Luke 11:13, John 10:27].

But while Mo and God were talking, it looked like a “consuming fire.” Sometimes when we meet with God, other folks can see the change in us. And sometimes the change does not comfort them, if they don’t know him like we know him.

Responding to Testimony

I had been listening to some pretty awesome testimonies of God's goodness recently. One day, I was driving across town, reflecting on the testimonies, admiring how good God really is.

“You know, Son, If you keep welcoming the testimonies, you might be in danger of seeing those things show up in your own life.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

I thought for a while about what he was saying: receiving the testimony empowers the testimony in my own life. Yeah, that's Biblical.

Then the other end of the scale crossed my mind.

“I wonder if that means that if I were to reject the testimony, that I would stop that work of God in my life, I would actually be working against God's move in my life?”

I felt Father sadly nodding agreement. There was a tear.

I pondered some more.

I could hear someone's argument in my mind: “Does that mean that I need to believe every unverifiable, every unbelievable fairy tale that anybody dreams up?”

He was silent.

I thought about that for a while.

After several miles, I realized that this isn't a binary situation. This isn't “Either I fully believe the testimony & receive it, or else I completely and utterly reject it.” There are times, no doubt, for each of those extremes, but there are other options, other choices, where I believe a portion of the testimony and respond to other parts skeptically.

I thought some more.

It came back to my attention that Father has been reminding me of my own testimony recently: how he's taught me how I don't actually need to form an opinion all the time. He reminded me of how much freedom that has brought me in recent years, to occasionally say, “I don’t know.” “I don’t have an opinion on that one.”

And that’s the answer in this situation. Or at least an answer.

If I don't have the faith (or the will) to believe the testimony before us, have another option, other than closing off the grace of God in my life in that area: I’m not actually required to form an opinion, a judgment, of every single thing that we hear.

It's easy enough to let unbelief disguise itself as the wisdom of not forming an opinion, but we’re mature enough to avoid that, aren’t we?

Use discernment. Duh. That’s why he gave us that gift; use the gift, then trust the gift that God has given. Engage your trust, or don’t, as you choose.

But if it's a good testimony, believe it, engage your faith with it, and look for the grace of that testimony to manifest in your life.

But maybe if it isn’t a testimony you find you can engage your faith with, I don’t need to utterly reject and shut down that move of God in my life.

Is All Worship Equally Precious to God?

Is all worship equally precious to God?

That question challenges me quite a lot. They stretch me. And I think I see a trap in it.

It seems to me that worship from a broken place might be more precious, as it costs us more.

It’s pretty easy, when God has just healed your daughter from cancer, to respond in worship toward the God who just restored the love of your life to you. In fact, sometimes it’s hard for believers to not worship God in those circumstances.

And that worship is precious to God.

But worship doesn’t come as naturally, as easily, when you’ve missed your rent payment again, when your family rejects you, when your favorite grandmother just died. Scripture talks about “a sacrifice of praise” [Hebrews 13:15]. One reason that Job is among my heroes is because when he got the news about the death of his children and the theft of his fortune, “he fell to the ground in worship” [Job 1:20].

Worship in these circumstances is more costly to us.

I find that worship in those circumstances is more precious in me as well, from two perspectives.

First, in times of disappointment and failure, my soul is more vulnerable, more pliable, more raw. When I come before God in worship in those times, I am more effectively conformed to his image, and I receive more of his comfort and provision (though I may not recognize that until later).

Second, when I observe you worshipping passionately in the midst of your trials, that ignites something in me in response. Sometimes it’s igniting worship in me, sometimes gratitude or joy.

Watching someone worshipping in the midst of blessing and gratitude is cool too. But when you are worshipping God purposefully in those times, your worship has a more powerful effect on me, and therefore is more precious to me.

Is it more precious to God? That’s a tough one. Since Scripture doesn’t seem to answer that question, I figure I maybe shouldn’t answer for him where he’s chosen not to answer.
However, a good number of people believe that yes, God does appreciate worship more when it comes out of difficult trials.

Now here’s where the trap comes.

If I believe that my worship is more meaningful to God when it comes from trials, then I might be tempted to go looking for trials in order to “level up” the value of their worship before God. And there are all kinds of problems with that.

○ I’ve known people who believed this, and tried to walk it out. Their lives were messed up. They intentionally chose physically demanding jobs, they wouldn’t let anyone help them so as to not “lose their reward.” They had no joy, no friends, and no fruit in their lives. These were miserable people.

○ In some religious movements, this has been elevated to a virtue, an art form. Self-flagellation – whether literal or metaphorical – is always popular. And it’s the metaphorical kind that’s the worst trouble. We all know people who regularly say sad and evil things about themselves (“I deserve this” for example). Many of them will defend these beliefs at some level.

○ The worst of it may be the worship of Molech, which we see in the Old Testament, and which continues even today. One of the more detestable things that evil people in the Old Testament did was to sacrifice their children [1Kings 3:27, Ezekiel 20:31].

I was reflecting on this the other day: Why would these people kill their kids? How could they be so deceived as to think that this was a good thing?

I could feel Father’s sadness as I brought the questions up. He pointed out that these people are badly deceived: it’s not really God that they’re worshipping, though they may or may not know it. But they believe that in sacrificing that which is most precious to them – bone of their bone – that they will be more pleasing to God or gods, or that they will gain more power.

In reality, those child sacrifices are acts of worship to demons, inspired by demons, and used by demons to control the people. That’s not all that hard to see from our viewpoint as twenty-first century Christians. We can see it where they could not.

And then it dawned on me: it is, all of it, in greater or lesser measure, and whether we intend it to be or not, it is all worship at a false altar. (I can’t bring myself to say, “It’s all worship of demons, in one measure or another,” even though that’s what I think I mean: that’s just too harsh.)

Let me say it more delicately, and I’m going to cut to the chase, here: any time we hold up our sacrifice, our works, as making us more pleasing to God, we’ve missed the heart of Jesus. In that moment that we believe (whether with words or not) that “I deserve this,” or that “My sacrifice will make me more pleasing to God,” we have taken our eyes off of Jesus, and put them on a false god of one sort or another.

Summary: Worshipping God in the midst of trials and loss is a beautiful thing. It’s good for you, it inspires people around you, it draws you closer to God and to his provision for you.

It is possible, whether blatantly (as with Molech) or subtly (with our attitudes) to carry that “beautiful thing” to a very ugly extreme and to rob it of all its beauty.

At the same time, it is also possible to be overly aware of the dangers of the ugly extreme, and shy away from worshipping God in difficulty or uncertainty, out of fear of making that mistake.

Reacting out of fear is never a healthy thing, is it? And taking things to extremes is so often such a mistake, isn’t it?

I’m reminded again of the wisdom of “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”

Waiting on the Lord

“But those who wait upon the Lord will find new strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” - Isaiah 40:31.

“Waiting on the Lord” is not about killing time until he’s ready to go.

In English, the word “wait” means: to stay where one is or delay action until a particular time or something else happens. I wait in line at the grocery store. I wait for the microwave to ding.

These imply inaction. I’m waiting for something else to happen so that I can make my next move.

If I were to read the Isaiah verse in this way, I would assume that, in my trials, I sit by while I wait for God to move in my circumstances. That’s not how it works.

The Hebrew word for “wait” is much more picturesque than English (isn’t that usually the case?). In Hebrew, the word qavah, which means “to wait”, has two definitions.

• The first is to look for, expect.

• The second is to plait, referring to the braiding of hair or a cord. It's an active process.

Plaiting or braiding a rope makes it immensely stronger; plaiting our rope with God’s rope is a whole ‘nother thing.

So I’ve just been meditating on this today, this being made into one with God.

Oh, you can see rope being braided here: [https://bit.ly/3udyUJM] I’ve made miles of rope this way; it’s uncanny how well it holds together when it’s put to hard use.

This is the imagery of “waiting on God,” being bound up, twisted up, fully incorporated with him so that you and he are each working towards exactly the same end.

This is the person the promise is for, that they will “find new strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

Scripture Interpreting Scripture: Eternity

You know how some things are better when they’re together? There’s more goodness when the right things come together. Cookies & milk are like that. Red wine & good cheese. Garlic & onion.

I always enjoy finding new combinations of things that belong together, that I had never considered together before. Sometimes that happens to me with Scripture. This is called letting Scripture interpret Scripture, and it’s known to be a good way to interpret the Bible.

When two or three passages are put together, sometimes they mean more than they did when they were apart. And since “all Scripture is God breathed, and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,” we can be confident that it’s a legitimate use of the Bible to use all of it for teaching or correcting our understanding of God.

For example, consider Romans 8:38-39: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

That’s kind of a big statement. It’s basically just a big list of stuff that cannot separate us from the love of God. There’s a lot of comfort in those verses.

Recently, two of the items on the list stood out to me: the first one (“death”) and the last one (“nor anything else in all creation”) also cannot separate us from the love of God. That’s a big deal.

And as I was reflecting on how we can’t be separated from God’s love by death or nothing else, another verse drifted through my mind. (It had my Father’s fingerprints on it.)

“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” [Revelation 21:8]

Wait, what? If death can’t separate me from the love of God, then the second death, the “fiery lake of burning sulfur” cannot separate me from the love of God.

But wait, there’s more! recently, God has been speaking to me through John 12:32, so let’s bring that one into the mix. “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” How many people is he drawing to himself? It doesn’t say, “I will draw some people,” or “many people” or “144,000 people” to himself. It says “all.” Whoa.

It also does not say, “I might draw” all people to himself. It says, “I will draw,” and we studied that word to discover it was indeed a forceful drawing, like drawing a sword, or drawing a bow, or drawing a boat up onto the shore. “All” is a big word.

We can certainly argue that the promise of Romans might be only for believers; I know because I’ve done it, trying to make God exclusive. But God isn’t terribly exclusive (though his people certainly are), which makes that application difficult. Possible, but difficult.

And we can certainly argue that the warning of Revelation only apply to unbelievers; I used to teach that too, though if I’m honest, I know believers who fit every one of those qualifiers for the fiery lake, which kind of messes up that argument.

But John’s verse, now that little word “all” throws a pretty epic wrench in that whole “us vs. them” thinking.

So here’s where this whole line of thinking leads me: if there are people in the lake of fire, then the love of God is there with them, right there in the fire with them, doing what the love of God does: drawing people to Jesus.

That’s an unnerving conclusion. At this point, I cannot set this down as “What I Believe.” I can’t say that I’m confident this conclusion is an accurate representation of God (though I’m pretty confident that my previous beliefs were drivel and malarkey, only suitable for fertilizing the tomatoes).

All I’m saying is that if the whole Bible is true (and it is), if all scripture is God breathed (and it is), then I need to consider this carefully, seriously, in the light of the “whole counsel of God,” [Acts 20:27] and also in light of “the exact representation of [God’s] nature” [Hebrews 1:3].

My tentative conclusion is that God is not nearly so interested in smiting as we’ve tended to think he was. No, let me say it another way: God sure appears to be way more committed to the people he loves, and I think that might be everybody.

I think I’ve believed too little of him.

The Great Cloud of Witnesses: An Exercise

Here’s an interesting spiritual exercise if you’re interested.

Hebrews 12 begins with this image: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

I’ve been reflecting on that great cloud of witnesses. This passage starts with “Therefore,” which means “Because of what we’ve just talked about....” All of Hebrews 12 rests on the foundation of Hebrews 11, the “Hall of Faith.”

The great cloud of witnesses, then, is all the saints of God that have gone before us: the famous ones, the great ones, the ordinary ones, the nobodies. By now that’s several billion witnesses that are watching us run our race. Some of them are my predecessors, though it may take a number of generations before I find the interesting ones.

• The exercise that I’m working on this morning is reflecting on specific “whos” that are among that great crowd. Most of these are family members that have gone before me. In my line, there were some preachers several centuries ago, and Sunday school teachers in more recent years, and I know of one or two forbears whose names show up in history books. I’m thinking of them.

• And I’m thinking specifically of them witnessing my race, my life, my choices. I absolutely reject the idea of making my choices because of how it looks to others, even to them, so that’s not it. But I consider their thoughts and feelings as their look on their great (or more) grandson. Are they embarrassed? (What would they be embarrassed about? Heaven has already blotted out my sins!) Are they cheering me on? They’re probably not bored!

• Most of all, I’m trying to look at my life from their perspective: They see the great plan of God. They see history from beginning to end as they’re watching me. What do they see in my life (which is different than what I see in my life) that relates to the great plans of God.

My encouragement then is to take some time and ask Holy Spirit to show me some of what’s going on as the great cloud of witnesses watch me, and specifically as these witnesses that I can think of are watching me, what’s their response to me? Are they cheering? Can they offer strength or encouragement?

This crosses my mind: “What do family members do when they’re watching one of their kids or grandkids running a race? Especially, what do they do when they are approaching the end of the race?” Why they stand up and cheer, don’t they?

Do you see them cheering for you? Can you hear them? Can you feel their joy in you? Their pride in you? Their excitement as your race is approaching that next interesting thing in the purposes of our mutual King?

If you try this, what do you experience? What do you see? What do you hear? Who’s cheering the loudest? Who’s poking the angels and pointing you out?

A Measure of Faith

Romans 12:3b: “God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.”

Measure: μέτρον Metron. “determined extent, portion measured off, measure or limit.”  This is the same word that describes our “sphere of influence,” also a limited extent.

We learn several things here:

• Our faith is “dealt” or distributed to us from God. We are not the source of our faith. Ephesians 2:8 affirms this.

• God has dealt faith to each one of us. Nobody is left out.

• We’re given a measure of faith, a certain amount. No one among us has infinite faith. It’s possible to increase our capacity for faith, of course, but I’m thinking in other directions right now.

If we reference the mustard seed in Matthew 17:20, we know that a little bit of faith goes a long ways. But if we have a measured amount, it is possible to spend it all, whether a little bit at a time, or in great big battles. This suggests that it’s possible to run out of faith.

That leads me to some questions:

○ Is this the reason we feel depleted after a great fight: we’ve spent a lot of our faith?

○ I wonder if this is why some folks wander away from the faith? Maybe they’ve just run out of faith. Perhaps they’ve squandered it?

○ Does this suggest that maybe we want to be frugal in our spending of faith? (For example: sure we can believe God for every dollar we need, but if we get a job, we spend less faith, so we have more faith to invest in other areas.)

○ Is faith refillable, like my truck’s gas tank? When the gauge is reading low, just go fill it up, remembering that faith is dealt from God. (No pat answers please.)

○ Is faith sharable? It’s awkward to siphon gas from my truck to put into your gas tank, but it’s possible. Can that be done with faith too? Can faith be rented out?

I think we’ve got rather a ways to grow before we know it all. 

Maintaining the Garden

I had an interesting train of thought this morning in the … er… Library.

I have some plants and some starts that will go into the garden when the weather stabilizes (around here, that’s traditionally Mother’s Day). I had already brought many of those out of the greenhouse into what may actually be sunshine at some point in the day; it’s a good idea (in my view) to get plants ready for their new environment before I plant them there permanently.

I’m really looking forward to the growing season. I’ve got a fair number of plants ready to go, the garden beds are ready to go. The soil has been turned and amended with fresh compost. The weeds are gone (except for one: I want to know what it will turn into), and I know where each plant will be going. I have a few seeds in the ground (mostly salad things), and I know where more will be going.

And Father ambushed me on that topic. “You keep your garden up-to-date, don’t you?” and he reminded me how I try to keep it weed free all year, how I add plants and fertilize plants and how I water it regularly.

“Yeah, I do. It is a better garden if I take care of it.” I’ve had gardens in the past that I haven’t taken care of very well. They had been overtaken by weeds and grass and their produce was small and scarce.

Then he shifted gears on me; he reminded me of the investment I make in my marriage. “A good marriage takes the same kind of work that a good garden does, doesn’t it?” He reminded me that a marriage needs fertilizer and needs weeds removed just as much as a garden does.

I am (we are) pretty intentional about keeping the relationship healthy. We talk things out, we regularly express our love with words and touches and time together and such. We have maintained a delightful discipline of taking date nights, just for our relationship, every week (or more often) for more than 30 years.  

I reflected on the different joys that my marriage and my garden bring me.

“A relationship with me takes similar investment, you know. And it will bring you similar joy.”

He’s right, you know. (I say that kind of a lot. I’m not going to change that. He is. :) ) A relationship with another person – a marriage relationship, a friendship, a family relationship, a relationship with my creator – takes maintenance. Since we’d started with the metaphor of the garden, I’ll stick with it: it takes adding things (seeds, young plants, fertilizer, water) and taking things away (weeds, birds who want to dig up the seeds and eat the young fruits, cats who are thankful for a clean sandbox) to make the relationship thrive.

I think I’ll be meditating on this for a bit. How can I best invest into my relations with God and with the people around me? 

A Closer Look at Clearing the Temple

Jesus cleaned out the temple twice, once at the beginning of his ministry, and once at the end.

A lot of folks read the story about Jesus chasing the cattle and sheep out of the temple, of Jesus overturning the tables of the business-people there, and they infer that Jesus was angry, that he was displaying a holy wrath.

But that’s not what the stories actually say. In fact, since the stories never say what Jesus was feeling. Anybody who declares what Jesus was feeling – whether they think he was angry or whatever – are using something *other* than Scripture for that statement. Mostly, they’re imposing their own imagination into the gap of where the Bible is silent.

That is not Bible interpretation. That’s abusing the Bible to justify your own prejudices and misunderstandings of who God really is.

So what does the Bible actually say?

The first time, in John 2, it says that Jesus saw what was going on in the temple, and then stopped to weave a whip out of cords (literally, out of cords made from rushes, from plants like grass). Some observations:

• It takes a fair bit of time to make a whip, and it takes even longer to make one out of *small* cords. This was not a rash action, not an act of rage or passion. This was carefully thought out.

• The sort of whip you make from rushes or small cords is not a weapon. It’s a flimsy thing, only useful for driving livestock. This is not Indiana Jones’ favorite weapon; it’s more like a sisal rope. It will get the animal’s attention, but no more.

• The record is very clear: Jesus used even that wimpy whip only on the cattle and sheep. He reacted to the people differently, and unpleasantly for them, but Jesus did not go after people with even a wimpy whip.

The second event (Matthew 21, Mark 11, and Luke 19) is different. Jesus came into the temple during his “Triumphal Entry” on Palm Sunday. So he saw the shopping mall that they were setting up that day.

But it was the *next* day that he came back and cleaned the place out [Mark 11:11-12].

This was not a rash action either. He went back to his AirBNB outside town, and took no action whatsoever until the next day. He certainly had time to think through his choices. And knowing how Jesus did things, I’ll bet he talked it over with Father before he did anything. After all, this is the guy who said, he “can do only what he sees his Father doing” [John 5:19]. So apparently, cleaning out the temple was something he saw his Father doing.

Conclusion: the actual facts of what the Bible says about these events, absolutely do not support the idea of Jesus flying off the handle, Jesus in a rage, Jesus having a temper tantrum. Jesus was not out of control.

Yes, he did clean the place out. Yes, he did make a big old mess. Yes, he interrupted business in a very big way.

But there is no record of him ever hurting anyone, either human or animal. This was not an emotional reaction of any sort: in both cases, the record is very clear that he took his time before responding.

Summary: there are lot of folks who have a vested interest in the idea of an angry God. Some of them have leathery wings. But the New Testament doesn’t actually support that silly idea nearly as much as they shout and fuss.

Don’t believe their shouting and fussing.