Realigning Our Desires With Our Needs - Are We There Yet Dad?

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him! - Isaiah 30:18

I don't think it dawned on me until I had read the same stories like 10 times. It might have even been more than that. All I do know was that I didn't remember the preacher's in my life pointing it out and it had not dawned on me.

Have you ever noticed that God is not in a hurry?

It took 40 years for Moses to receive his specific orders from God the Father to lead the people out of Egypt. Again, in the Old Testament, it took 17 years of preparation before Joseph was delivered from slavery and imprisonment. I still think that it's funny that we call that preparation; as if it is some requirement that we go through some hideous experience and it was the same as Spring Training is for the Cubs! Praise His name that God is more effective in His choice of preparation for us than the Cubs are for their Spring Training! (Sorry, I needed that rant) It took 20 years before the Old Testament patriarch Jacob was released from his father-in-law Laban's control. And, Abraham and Sarah were in their old age when they finally received the son of promise, Isaac.

So why isn't God in a hurry?

God called each of these servants to accomplish a certain task in as that person or persons particular calling. The work of it was, in God's thinking, Kingdom of God activity. You would think if anything demanded urgency it would be something that God is requiring you to do. I mean, in each of these cases, the stories I mention above, each one affected the outcomes of the history of the entire world! Yet our Heavenly Father was in no hurry to bring their mission into fulfillment. At least as we count time, it didn't seem to be hurried.

Well let me point out some things that have struck me about each of these stories and perhaps your story as well.

First, our God accomplished what He wanted in each of them and not just because of them. And, actually, I think this is really the only point I want to make here. We are often more focused on "the goal" or the end result than we are in understanding the process that He is accomplishing in our lives each day. What God does on the road of life you and I travel is often the real story. When we experience our God's presence daily, one day we wake up and realize that God has done something special in and through our lives. It is very much like my realizing that repetitive reading has put God's word in me to recognize truths that were never evident when I had only read them once, twice or more. In this case we get to a point where the accomplishment of the task is no longer what excites us. Instead, what excites us is knowing Him. As we travel the road that is our journey in our faith, we become more acquainted with our God's love, grace, mercy, methods of guidance, His glory, what gives Him satisfaction and His power in our lives. When this happens, we are no longer focused on the outcome because the outcome is a result of our walk with Him. Our life becomes a play for our Lord's very creative mind. It's more like, "Okay Father, what will you do next?" God's great accomplishment is not the goal of our life journey, but the by-product. Hence, when Joseph came to power in Egypt, he probably couldn't have cared less. He had come to a place of complete surrender so that he was not anxious about tomorrow or his circumstances.

This is a massive lesson for you and I. What is that lesson? We must wait for God's timing and embrace wherever we are in the process. If you do not have an insight into what you are doing in your life, ask your Father. He wants you to know! Just realize that if you are feeling anxious it might not be the tugging of the Holy Spirit on you to hurry up; rather, it might just be the enemy trying to get you to ignore the real lessons that cause God to transfer His character into you! When we find contentment in our life, where we are at, the now and now place, we begin to experience God in ways we never thought possible.

For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel,"In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength." - Isaiah 30:15 The rest of this verse said, "you were not willing..." We need to willingly understand where God is in our life today. We need to "get" that our God can move us from where we are now to where He wants to take us if we will but look up, worship and adore and realize who He is right now. May we but learn to wait, gain insight into our today and expect His personal leadership in our lives.

I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~

The Great Heist

But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. - Luke 12:39

I got up this morning contemplating what a great day it had been yesterday at the Church on Rogers Street. Sharing the blessing and realizing all that Ephesians 1 informs us about as to our calling, election; that God has chosen us and it is in Him we find our purpose was awesome!

As the old preachers might say, it was a good day in the Lord.

It also got me to thinking. What are the times when you and I are most vulnerable to being caught off guard by the enemy of our souls? When does it seem easiest to go from being the guy God wants us to be and migrate back into the one that no one wants to be around? Let me suggest that one of those times is just after you've had a great victory. Consider Jesus when He was baptized and was about to begin His public ministry. He was taken away into the desert to be tempted by satan.Now I realize you and I are not Jesus. He is a pattern however, His life and trials for what we can expect from an earthly perspective.

Leisure time is another place that satan seeks to take us off our normal routine of personal quiet time, meditation and contemplation. In the normal routine of life, our senses are tuned to the need to draw upon God's Spirit to see us through the activities of each day. However, when we get away from our routine and go on vacation, we can often drop these routines. Whether we do it intentionally or simply change our dance, we wrongfully think that we do not need to spend time with the Lord during leisure times. This is a grave mistake. The vacation becomes a test of character. During vacations we turn freely to what we enjoy from an earthly perspective most. It reveals to us what is at the core of our existence and often that core is not nearly as strong and stable of a structure that we had presumed or hoped to have.

As a ex-teacher I can tell you that we often exchanged thoughts on the hardest challenge we had to students getting in the "learning groove." Whether it was the long summer or the shorter times during holidays during the school year vacations never helped move the learning process forward it seemed. Just when we had brought the students to a certain discipline and place in their study habits, we would take massive steps backward.

It is the same in our spiritual lives. It only takes a small crack in the door of our heart to lose our spiritual focus and impetus.

I know it is late in the game but I hope this summer you will be on guard when times of retreat are made available to you. Use these times for spiritual refreshment, not just physical refreshment, and you will keep the thief from entering your house! I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~

It's Just My Nature - Ya, No Kidding...WE KNOW!

When the report was heard in Pharaoh’s house, "Joseph’s brothers have come," it pleased Pharaoh and his servants. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Say to your brothers, 'Do this: load your beasts and go back to the land of Canaan, and take your father and your households, and come to me, and I will give you the best of the land of Egypt, and you shall eat the fat of the land.' And you, Joseph, are commanded to say, 'Do this: take wagons from the land of Egypt for your little ones and for your wives, and bring your father, and come. Have no concern for your goods, for the best of all the land of Egypt is yours.'" The sons of Israel did so: and Joseph gave them wagons, according to the command of Pharaoh, and gave them provisions for the journey. To each and all of them he gave a change of clothes, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred shekels of silver and five changes of clothes. To his father he sent as follows: ten donkeys loaded with the good things of Egypt, and ten female donkeys loaded with grain, bread, and provision for his father on the journey. Then he sent his brothers away, and as they departed, he said to them, "Do not quarrel on the way." So they went up out of Egypt and came to the land of Canaan to their father Jacob. And they told him, "Joseph is still alive, and he is ruler over all the land of Egypt." And his heart became numb, for he did not believe them. But when they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. And Israel said, "It is enough; Joseph my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I die."
- Genesis 45:16-28

So what is the scene we have here? Joseph's brothers are on a journey back home. They had come seeking food in a time of great famine. They had gotten much more than that. However, I want to focus on a smaller point here so I won't go into the whole reunion with Joseph thing. They not only had been given plenty to eat on the way back to their homeland, but had also been given new threads as well. In short, they had all that they needed---and they once again had it in abundance!

Returning to a land that was in the depths of depression and poverty they must have really looked like something. In the midst of a land drying up under the feet of it's inhabitants they would have looked like kings!

Notice, however, the one directive Joseph gave them: "Don't get into an argument on the journey!" It had been years, yea, decades since Joseph had been with his brothers. Yet, through knowledge and wisdom, he knew those men, didn't he?

I just crack up in these historical biblical stories when little tidbits like that are inserted. Centuries may come and go, but human nature stays pretty much the same. As much as we wish it would go away, it's impossible to erase depravity. I know. It would be kinder to call it "human nature." But the fact of the matter is that it's the human nature, the sin nature, that Joseph was bringing to their remembrance.

There is an old Chinese proverb: "Not very many men can carry a full cup without its disturbing their equilibrium." Sudden wealth or promotion can be a tottering experience, both for the recipient and those surrounding him or her. But it's not just when good things happen to us that we are thrown off of our spiritual game.

Is it?

Superiority, inferiority, arrogance, and jealousy can easily to create out of you and I something ungodly and unlovely; certainly not something that God would be honored to call His own. We know this is true. All we have to do (on the positive side...or is it?) is to check on those who win the lottery. Very few can handle the financial windfall.

To top it all off, in our little story here, Joseph had given his younger brother Benjamin more than he had given to the other brothers. He gave them all provisions and gave each of them new garments, but he gave Benjamin three hundred shekels of silver and five new garments. YIKES! Apparently Joseph had not had mommy lessons in counting the sprinkles on the cupcakes to create an "even" or "fair" playing field.

A similar experience had been had in the life of Joseph decades earlier that had caused hatred in the ranks of his brothers toward Joseph. His dad had shown him special favor also. It had cost him years in slavery, prison and humiliation.

It had cost Joseph...

...hadn't it?

No, probably not...not according to God's view; but certainly yes, according to man's view.

No doubt Joseph remembered well what had happened years before when he had been given more than the others, but he had his own reasons for giving Benjamin these items. He didn't want that to result in a fight. "So don't argue about it!" he told his brothers. He wanted to see what they had learned.

A great principle of the Christian faith might be this: Trust one another, but we are never to trust one another's nature. That's one of the reasons parents give their children the warnings that they do. Parents understand their children's natures better than their offspring do. It's not a question of trust; it's a matter of knowing the nature within. The only way that nature changes is when the Spirit of God rules and reigns in a heart. That is a supernatural event and it must happen every day...daily we must die to our natural man. Daily we must realize, "Christ in me is the hope of Glory!" Daily we must come to grips with our eternal nature and invite through our worship, our praise, our affection toward God the Father and our habits God's Spirit to grab hold of us, once again, for that day...and that is why today, I must remain...

InHISgrip,

~J~

To Obey Is Better n' A Sack of Ice?

We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him. - Acts 5:32

As the Shins once sang, "there's no connection" in the title and to the subject matter of this devotional.

Other than this...obedience is often obscure to Christians and means something very different than we might have thought we were taught.

I am a sales person in my chosen profession. I work in franchising. I have for quite some time. My work requires me to create solutions for both the franchise company and potential franchisee's (franchise owners.) If I can't I do not get paid. It is straight commission. God has been good to me over the years. I have done well. But, it is never far from me that my success and productivity is measured by numbers; you make the numbers you receive the accolades (and pay).

So often we as a society equate numbers with success and my day job is just an example of that. The larger the conference, the more successful we deem it. Sadly, a whole generation of evangelicals got trapped in a "the larger a church, the more we believe that God is blessing" mentality. Most of us know better now.

When I was at AlphaGraphics Printshops we once were planning a conference and because we did not initially promote it with our usual pomp and marketing drive registrations were not where they should have been. We were just a few weeks before the event. There was a new ownership. They had a new Board of Directors. The pressure was on to ensure this conference was as good as any we'd previously held. It wasn't long before I began to get "under the pile" about the level of attendance. One of my Area Managers who was assisting came into the office to check up on me. Though he was not a particularly spiritual guy, Don immediately reminded me of my own teaching in this area. "You always say, (stealing it from Keith Green, the Christian Songwriter) just do your best and pray that it's blessed and God will take care of the rest."

Hmm...

The first part of the lesson about obeying and doing your best was this: God doesn't judge us (though mankind might be ticked) on the outcomes. "If my job required I take responsibility to put on this conference, then the outcome is up to Him if we have done our part."

Since that time, in the world of ministry I have seen God work in just this fashion. We had one idea of success but God had a different idea. His idea was about an individual; or maybe two or three. While we worried about the crowds Jesus wanted us to touch a person.

I have to constantly remind myself of the tension between the world's standards of success and Gods'. Being led by the Spirit often means we must not use the world's standard for success as our measuring stick. You never know what an act of obedience will yield at the time. Leave the results to God. Our role is to obey. His role is to bring results from our obedience. What God ordains He brings to pass; just be prepared for something different than you might have imagined.

This kind of God-led success does however lend itself to a specific issue: "My sheep hear my voice..." - Jesus

We have an obligation as followers of Jesus Christ, as the Redeemed, as His disciples to both hear and follow. We need to focus on the front-end of the process much more deeply. We need more knowledge of the Holy as He relates to us. We need His people to speak into one another's lives. His word needs to be more deeply understood and we need to ensure our goal is His glory and honor.

Do you make decisions based on the potential outcome or by the direction of the Holy Spirit in your life? Do you overly evaluate the pros and cons without consideration to what the Holy Spirit might be saying deep inside? We are all prone to make decisions based on reasoning alone. Ask God to give you a willingness and ability to hear the Holy Spirit and to obey His promptings.

I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~

And So There I Was...Dying...

So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. - 2 Corinthians 4:12

I've been watching practical transformation in my own home and amongst the members of the Church on Rogers Street.

It's fascinating and it's inspiring!

Many of us have had to adjust to things about our economy, our work, our career paths and even our foundational expectations. We have been in deep valley's. We have gone on emotional roller coaster rides that no earthly roller coaster can compare to. Our cores, our foundations, our relationships...everything about our lives, or lives of important people in our group have been shaken.

We were forced into this internal and external labor and being forced into hard places gives us a whole new perspective on life. Career paths, bank, savings, and retirement accounts, "things" we once valued, no longer hold the same attraction and attachment to us. And, all those things that people used to quip were most important, family, friends, our heritage in our children, they have become big things. That which we cannot take with us into eternity has actually begun to fade.

Have you been experiencing this or watching someone else you know go through and conclude that the world truly should not and cannot hold us in it's grip?

When you are in the midst of it you get a glimpse into the hard places of others. Our "hard places" in America are hardly at all yet that hard in this time. They do not rival the hardship of the Great Depression and that hardly holds a candle to what occurs in third world countries. Does it? Nonetheless trials keep us from having a shallow view of the hardships of others and allows us, like brothers-in-arms, to identify with them. Since this is a transitory time we can also observe those not having the same calamities befall them speak of such trials from no experience and often judge others who have had such hardship. I now have seen the superficiality of Christian experience that often permeates shallow believe and receive kids of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Our kinship with pain means that those going through the fire do not need to explain; they merely look at one another with mutual respect and admiration for their common experience. They know that death has worked a special thing in them. In 2 Corinthians 7:10 Paul talks about two types of sorrow. One leads to life. One kind of sorrow, earthly sorrow, leads to death. This is even deeper than that in many ways but this death leads to life in others because of the hard places God has taken them through and as they watch life triumph over the death working in us.

It is virtually impossible to fully appreciate any valley experience while you are in it. However, once you have reached the top of the mountain, you are able to appreciate what terrain you have passed through. You marvel at what you were able to walk through. The valley of the shadow of death has yielded more than you ever thought possible. You are able to appreciate the beauty of the experience and lay aside the sorrow and pain it may have produced.

Death works in you for a greater purpose. If you are in a place like that today, please know that your Heavenly Father is producing something of much greater value than you will ever know...it is ultimately the greatest triumph of all...life, eternal life of Christ in others!

I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~

All That Is New

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. - Philippians 3:13b-14

Our past can be a hindrance or a help in moving toward God's purposes for each of us. For some, the past has meant pain and heartache, and grace is required so that we do not let that which shaped us dictate our responses and the outcomes of those responses in our future. If we allow our past to make us a victim, then we have not entered into the grace that God has for us. To be sure it is a decision we make. God's grace saves us and changes us or it does not. If we live on memories of past successes and fail to raise our vision for new things, we again are victims of our past. Our past becomes our highlight reel.

That is not God's vision for your life

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland - Isaiah 43:19.

Our past should only be viewed for what we can learn from it. We should understand it so we can trace the finger of God, even when we were in rebellion, in our lives. We must move forward and avoid viewing the negative or the positive for more than what we can learn; for how our Heavenly Father can take that information and build our future from and with it. Are you going to allow your past dictate your future.? God is always about doing new things in our lives. New things means He is doing something unique today and will again do something unique to you and I in our tomorrow's. He gives fresh insight of His purposes in our lives. At the very least these new adventures provide us with new clues to His calling and His election of us into the offices to which only He can call us.
Do not live in the past. Do not hold onto bitterness that may hinder God from doing new and exciting things in your life.

Our eternal Father turns our wastelands into streams of water to give life, not death. He means for each event and memory to lead to the glory of His name. Your quest, your adventure is to figure out how.

How are we viewing our past? How much time are we giving to it? Are we glorying in it? Has it hindered us to become more of Jesus Christ? Have you relied on past successes to dictate what you will do in the future or stymy you from moving forward toward new goals? Put your memories in their proper place. Allow God to do a new things in your life. Seek His guidance to assist you to see the new things He wants to do in and through you today.

"When your memories are bigger than your dreams, you're headed for the grave" [Author unknown]...I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~

O' Where O' Where Has My God Gone? (In the mirror or to the heavens?)

God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. - Psalm 53:2

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive. – Jeremiah 29:11-14

As a pastor I am a blessed man. I have men in my church that seek after God's heart. As a pastor I am a challenged man. I am challenged not just because of my own shortcomings and inadequacies (the Lord knows) but also because I have men in my church who seek after God and their desire for more of God encourages me on to more of Jesus Christ in my life and less of me.

My men are not my primary motivation for my growth, when I have growth in my Christian walk however. Though these good, godly men keep me on my toes, encourage and exhort one another and bless me with their dissatisfaction with just remaining where they are in their maturity, they are but one tool and not the chief tool God uses to provide my own impetus to be the man God has created me to become.

Late in His three year ministry Jesus explained about an element of His own personal joy and the reason He pressed on through all of life's difficulties. Now, to be sure, Jesus wasn't speaking about a singular joy. Clearly there are kinds of joys that we experience. But each joy is the end-game satisfaction of a more complex series of events and our obedience to God the Father in those events. We see this in John 3:25-28 where John the Baptist, as the forerunner to Jesus, indicates the joy of having been tasked, by God, as the one to announce Jesus' coming. John preached it and saw that it was fulfilled. To that John would say, "Therefore this joy of mine is now complete." John was to receive more eternal joy later.

What I am thinking here is what Jesus expressed in John 15:8-12 when He said, "By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruits and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full."

To have the love of Christ permeate my body, soul and spirit and to be privileged to express it to others and share it's healing, peace and personally satisfying provision is what must drive you and I on into more of Jesus and less of me. Jesus, with great love and care, had been given instruction from the Father. The instruction looked past the discomfort and disharmony. It looked beyond heartache and the physical abuse that would follow Jesus in the same way that training is embraced by a great athlete so that they may reach to the goal; realizing that both Father and Son loved and had as their center attention mankind. Jesus, with love in his eyes for His Father, accepted the task at hand. Here in John 15 Jesus is passing on the lesson of eternity to us instructed us to do likewise, Abide in my love If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love, just as I have kepty my Father's commandments and abide in His love."

Has God gotten your attention. Have you become one who is a seeker of God? The Lord delights in seeing those children of His who truly understand the meaning of life and why there is only one thing worth seeking and that is God Himself.To follow after Him and pursue living the life you now have in this earthly domain in a way that pleases Him because He instructs it was precisely the message Jesus was attempting to convey to His disciples on that day 2000 years ago.

Life on planet earth has been cruel of late. But that isn't God's main concern. It isn't supposed to be mine as it relates to "me" either. I know when I've not been pursuing my God and Father. The cares of this life, the urgent over the important, and the petty irritations begin to affect me. I become emotional. Guys these are the symptoms of a life that has not been seeking God; praying, reading, meditating, waiting on Him. Can you relate to any of this? Is this sinking in with you? These would be questions, our Savior would pose to us. We need to ask them of ourselves daily.

If we understand that it is only in keeping the only two commandments Jesus gave us, to love God with all of our hearts, mind, body and soul and to love others with that amazing, self-preserving, "give-me-joy at all costs" love we provide to self we will have our wish and desire; pure joy.

If you are toiling and fretting over what will soon be dead and gone where are you getting your spiritual strength? What will you pay to get your joy back? We need to set self-preservation boundaries in our lives. We best preserve and serve self when we seek Him! That means time spent with Him and His tools. This is the great challenge in a world that screams for our attention and threatens us with ruin if we do not oblige them.

Create a schedule of time to be with your God, His Word where you meditate, listen, and hear! Are you committed to developing that intimacy with your Lord that He so desires so that YOUR joy as John 15 says will be complete? If not, ask Him today to help you. This is the longing of His heart. Ask Him to make it the longing of your heart. Then you will demonstrate to Him that you understand, and you will be a seeker of God. I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~