Encouragement – Page 9

Of What Sort

God says the fire will try our work, our life, the harvest of our time on Earth, to see what sort it is. (1Co 3:13) If anything of our life abides the fire, we receive eternal reward (14); otherwise we suffer eternal loss. (15)

Fire is evidently a reference to Judgment Day (2Pe 3:7), when everyone shall give account of himself to God. (Ro 14:12) The concept of sort, or type, evidently refers to whether our work is essentially good or evil; it also indicates degree: how good or evil.

Since we’re made in God’s image, we intuitively understand the concept of good and evil: it’s in our DNA. God has defined it for us, but we tend to reject God’s view and make up our own as we go, even disagreeing among ourselves. But God doesn’t change (Ja 1:17), and justice demands He use His own definition. He will.

So, what’s God’s criteria? What’s He looking for? What makes something we do, or who we are, good or evil? What is success? What is failure?

Understanding this is to understand everything that’s really worth understanding; to miss this is to miss, well, everything. (Mk 8:36) Most of us will get this wrong (Mt 7:22-23), and only because we don’t want to get it right. (Jn 3:19)

It’s not our actions in themselves that make us good or evil, but why we do what we do (1Co 13:3), and there are ultimately only two possibilities: we’re either out to please ourselves, or God. (Php 2:21) Living merely to please ourselves, self-orientation, is the essence of all rebellion. (Ps 2:3) Each life will be characterized primarily by one motive or the other, love or selfishness, but not both. (Mt 12:33)

What pleases God? Obeying Him; cleaving to Him, loving Him and others; treating others justly, loving mercy, walking in humility. (Mi 6:8)

In being overly concerned with Man’s approval, we’re driven by fear of his displeasure (Jn 12:43), which is sin (1Co 7:23), selfish and evil by definition. (Ja 4:17) We can’t be the servants of Christ if we’re slaves to fear (Ga 1:10); fear ensnares us, polluting our motives and service. (Pr 29:25)

God will inspect every activity of our lives, testing it against holiness, and expose our every motive, which will reveal our general life’s orientation to the universe. His fire will burn up everything that isn’t rooted in Christ (Jn 15:6), in the pleasure of God. (Re 4:11) Everything He hasn’t planted will be rooted up. (Mt 15:13)

Learning to please God is a journey that starts with repenting from dead works; His elect are growing here daily (1Th 4:1), as we purify ourselves (1Jn 3:3) to serve the living God. (He 9:14)

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The Engrafted Word

God tells us to receive with meekness the engrafted word, that it’s able to save our souls. (Ja 1:21) He tells us this after affirming He’s chosen to conceive us by His own will, not our own, with the word of truth (Ja 1:18); so, this salvation can’t be justification (Ro 4:25); it must be an ongoing process, something He’s performing in us now (Php 1:6) through His word. (Ep 5:26)

This word engrafted appears only here in our bible; it means grafted, implanted, transplanted, moved from some place beyond ourselves and permanently seeded and rooted within us. It’s the living expression of God (He 4:12) that becomes a part of our very being (Col 3:16), two distinct living things becoming a single, unique life, God’s words themselves being spirit and life (Jn 6:63), bringing healing within – salvation, deliverance, freedom.

Perhaps this is just another way of God telling us what He’s been saying all along: commanding us to hide His words in our hearts (De 6:6), to meditate in them all the time (Jos 1:8), that we might not sin against Him (Ps 119:11), and prosper in all that we do. (Ps 1:2-3) As we obey Him here He writes His laws into us (He 10:16), enabling us to free ourselves from the lies and bondage of the enemy (2Ti 2:26) so that we might live for Him. (He 9:14)

In seeking all of God, as He is through His Word, obeying all we’re able to obey, He works His words into the fabric of our being, planting them deeply within our minds and hearts, progressively freeing us to obey Him, abounding more and more in us in love for Him and others (Php 1:9), that we might approve what’s excellent, being sincere and without offence until Judgement Day (Php 1:10), filling us with righteousness by and through Christ unto His praise and glory. (Php 1:11)

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Honor and Glory

God is honorable, worthy of great respect and esteem. (Re 4:11). All in heaven honor Him (Re 19:7); how might we do so here on Earth?

A primary way we honor God is by believing Him, taking Him at His word, acting as if everything He says is true, trusting Him. We call it faith. Anything else is calling Him a liar (1Jn 5:10); certainly not honoring to Him.

Obeying God honors Him by acknowledging His right to order our lives, to require right behavior of us, which is itself honorable. (Ro 2:10) Disobeying Him flaunts His authority and majesty, rejects His lordship and moves Him to wrath and indignation towards us. (Rom 2:8)

Treating our own selves with dignity, honoring all as God’s children, also honors Him, for we’re made in His image. (1Th 4:4-5) Purging all dishonorable activity and influences from our lives suits us for His service. (2Ti 2:21)

It is also honoring to God to suffer in hope (Ro 5:3), knowing He’s working all things for our good (Ro 8:28), and that He will be glorified in the end. (1Pe 1:7)

A more subtle way in which we might honor our God is by acknowledging H is goodness, giving Him the benefit of the doubt, as we’re laying the practical foundations of spiritual life. For example, the Bible says God inspired scripture (2Ti 3:16); in accepting this we know the autographs, the original Greek or Hebrew manuscripts, were inspired by God.

Yet the Bible doesn’t explicitly tell us whether any copies or translations of the autographs also contain this inspired property, so we must make an assumption about that: either God did preserve His Word for us in an inspired form, so that we can access a modern version of the scriptures today, in a common language, one that’s equivalent to the originals for all practical purposes, or He didn’t.

Which assumption honors Him? Gives Him the benefit of the doubt? Shall we assume God inspired His word for no practical reason, such that no one has ever actually benefited from this special quality? Shall we act as if no one has ever held a perfectly trustworthy Bible in their hands, one they could call the authentic word of God? Or shall we assume that God inspired His word for a purpose (2Ti 3:17), and that He is fulfilling that purpose, and act accordingly?

Most of us assume He didn’t, and assume inspiration is confined to the autographs, in a perfectly useless place. We’re encouraged to depend on pastors, teachers and theologians to reveal scripture to us. We don’t think we have access to the Word of God today, so we don’t tend to hide scripture in our hearts and meditate on it day and night, like God tells us to. (De 6:6) It’s hard enough to do this with a text we trust, so most of us have given up before we even start. But is this honoring to God?

Wouldn’t it honor God more if we expected Him to act with integrity, with intention? Being Who He is, faithful and true (Re 19:11), wouldn’t He enable our journey with an inspired version of His word in a modern language, a book we can read and understand for ourselves, to feed and guide us safely home, seeing that’s why He gave us the scripture in the first place? If we acted like He did, would we expect this to please Him, or disappoint Him?

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After Their Kind

In 1859 Charles Darwin published his claim that life evolved from a single original life form, without the aid of intelligence. Evolution in itself was not a novel idea, but Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection explained how species might have arisen by random chance, without a god. Since that time, atheists have managed to redefine science itself, asserting that Intelligent Design may not be considered in any scientific explanation, no matter what the data implies.

But the actual scientific evidence available to Darwin troubled him; he never could explain the Cambrian Explosion: the sudden appearance of all known life forms (phyla), all at once in the fossil record, with no evidence of evolutionary history.

Darwin hoped subsequent discoveries would vindicate him, but after 150 years of intense research, they haven’t; the problem is worse than Darwin suspected. His theory is therefore presently in crisis. In other words, hardened atheists are finally being forced to concede that Darwin’s theory is inconsistent with the fossil record, and they’ve nothing to replace it with.

Scientifically speaking, trying to explain the origins of life without intelligence is a dead end: life does not come from non-life, and it’s inconceivable that any part of the complex biological mechanism comprising the building blocks of life formed by chance. It’s much easier to randomly select, on our very first attempt, a single marked atom from among all the atoms in our galaxy.

When it comes to spiritual things, expecting anyone to concede a position based merely on reason and evidence is also a dead end; unless God mercifully intervenes, we continue to hope in the hopeless, even in the face of such mathematical improbability. This is scientific evidence that Man is desperately wicked, driven by a freely chosen disdain for God, and that atheism itself is especially foolish. (Ro 1:21)

God says He created all living things to reproduce after their kind. (Ge 1:25) This is exactly what the scientific record reveals, and we now know this conclusively.

We ought not to be intimidated by irrational, unscientific claims, even when very smart people make them: there can be no real contradiction between science and metaphysical reality. (1Ti 6:20)

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In Your Presence

Being in the presence of Almighty God is amazing, and we’re all continually in His presence (He 13:7); there is no place or time where God’s not fully present (Ps 139:7) or His glory hidden. (Is 6:3)

We’re instinctively aware of His presence: we know He hears us as we pray, any time, anywhere. So, if we aren’t enjoying God it isn’t because He’s far away, it’s that we’re ignorant (Ep 4:18) and blind. (2Ki 6:17)

It’s impossible to be physically separated from God, to create any space between Him and anyone else. Anyone who desires the infinite God is invited to continually enjoy His glory (2Co 3:18), basking in His immediate presence and feeding in His majesty, in unbroken fellowship with Him. (Ps 16:11) The question isn’t, “Where is God?” but “Where are we.” (Ge 3:9) Do we want Him?

We may think we do, that we’d simply love for Him to reveal Himself to us … but if we aren’t already enjoying Him all the time, cleaving to Him, delighting in His Law and rejoicing in Him every hour of the day, when He’s right beside us, in and through us (Ac 17:28) … if we aren’t avidly internalizing the written revelation in which He’s already revealing Himself (Col 3:16), continually hiding it in our hearts so we won’t offend Him (Ps 119:11), and systematically meditating on it so we’ll know Him (Ps 119:99), it should be obvious that we’re not after God Himself.

I think what most of us are really after is an image we’ve constructed of God in our own minds, an idol in every sense: we’re making a god up as we wish him to be, like ourselves: aloof, uncaring, capricious, unjust, hard to reach and connect with. But God isn’t like that: He’s anything but that.

Let’s face it: the problem isn’t God … it’s us. The problem isn’t finding God, it’s wanting Him. Being with God isn’t an option; no one will ever be separated from God, not now, not ever, not even in Hell. What makes Hell unbearable isn’t the absence of God, but His holy, terrifying, indignant presence, as He unveils His infinitely holy nature to the desperately wicked, who genuinely hate and despise Him, which is, evidently, almost everyone. (Ro 3:11)

We can choose to seek God (He 11:6) until He transforms us into beings who enjoy Him, drinking Him into our innermost being, or we can continue trying to hide, lurking in make-believe shadows, hating the light (Jn 3:19-20), as we did in the Garden in our primal father, Adam. (Ge 3:8) Either way, we’re all going to spend eternity with Him, and He’s spending eternity with each and every one of us, right now.

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Fiery Darts

The shield of faith enables us to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. (Ep 6:16) These fiery darts aren’t physical, but they’re very real. What are they? How do we quench them?

The wicked shoot fiery darts and arrows at us with their words: sharp, biting, cutting remarks designed to wound and scar us. (Pr 12:18) The poison and fire they carry are lies intended to make us feel unimportant and inferior, ashamed, rejected and unloved, isolated and vulnerable.

The wicked are prompted to speak these words by their father (Jn 8:44) the enemy, who works in them (Ep 2:2) to steal our joy, kill our passion and zeal, and destroy our witness. (Jn 10:10) As we receive these words, the enemy injects the emotions of fear, rejection and shame into our minds and hearts, lending supernatural, debilitating force to the jabs. It is an all-out, frontal assault on our spiritual life, from which we must be quick to defend ourselves.

When our faith shields are down, and we aren’t being mindful of the precious promises and faithfulness of God, we let these darts through to wound us. They continue to afflict and harm us until we engage our faith, lifting our shields to heal our minds and hearts, by reminding ourselves of the three basic truths:

We’re loved infinitely by God (1Jn 3:1), Whose love is all we’ll ever need; we’re totally accepted by Him in Christ (Ep 1:6), and for Christ’s sake. (Ep 4:32)
God is in control of all things at all times (Da 4:35), and He has a glorious purpose in all our suffering (Ro 5:3-5); nothing is out of order or amiss in His plan (Ep 1:11), and
We each have a unique purpose in God’s eternal plan (2Ti 1:9), and He’s working everything out for our good and for His glory, all the time. (Ro 8:28)

If God is for us, who can be against us? (Ro 8:31) We thus dismiss these fiery darts as the nothings that they really are, ignoring them as lies with no substance, and continue rejoicing in God.

In understanding that those delivering the enemy’s darts are lost, or perhaps that the enemy’s exploiting the elect as they walk out the mystery of faith, as they reach out to us in love and good conscience as best they can, we’re free to look for and receive any constructive criticism or wisdom to strengthen our walk with God, without any threat to our souls, and be the better for it.

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Let Me Not Wander

Without God, the human heart is totally depr aved, unable to do anything good. (Je 13:23) Even the best of men are like this, in and of themselves. (Jn 15:5) In our natural state we’re prone to wander away from God, away from the light, from all that’s wholesome and good, and grope about in the darkness for security, fulfillment, and purpose.

We wander away from God by neglecting and forgetting His commands, Torah, and as we do we deceive ourselves (Jas 1:22) into thinking that we aren’t actually wandering off, that we’re following God and doing the right thing. We ignore God’s definition of sin (1Jn 3:4) and light (Pr 6:23), thinking we can decide what’s good and evil on our own, just making it up as we go.

It’s not just that we’re blind without God, that we can’t see, it’s that in our natural state we love darkness; we hate light. (Jn 3:19) This mindset can’t be reasoned with; it isn’t rational, and it’s our default state, as natural as breathing. We can’t escape it because we won’t, ever, not unless He quickens us. (Ep 2:1)

Knowing this, yet finding within ourselves that our hearts actually are going fully after God, cleaving to Him and keeping His Law, we pray with the psalmist, “With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.” (Ps 119:10) We acknowledge that this in itself is the work of God, that we are going after Him, and we ask God to maintain this Godward state in us, to keep us from wandering away from His Law, away from Him. We ask Him to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before Himself, knowing He’s able and willing to do this. (Jud 1:24)

Yes, God works in His own to will and to do according to His good pleasure. (Php 2:13) He opens our eyes and gives us delight in His law (Ro 7:22) and in Himself, in His way, sanctifying us and conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ. We can’t explain our love for Him in and through Torah any other way. (Ro 8:7)

“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart LORD, take and seal it; seal it for thy courts above.” (R. Robinson)

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Not Grievous

In affirming that the love of God is keeping His commandments, God reminds us His commands aren’t grievous. (1Jn 5:3) His law, all of it, is profoundly good. (Ro 7:12)

Just take a gander at how God recounts His laws for a new generation (my summary):

Love God and cleave to Him. (De 10:20)
Hide God’s words in your heart and teach them to your kids. (De 11:18-20)
Respect yourself. (De 14:1)
Don’t eat disgusting things. (De 14:3)
Enjoy God’s parties. (De 14:26)
Feast with the poor. (De 14:29)
Periodically relieve the poor of debt. (De 15:2)
Be generous with employees. (De 15:14)
Party with God in Spring, recalling His salvation. (De 16:3)
Party with God in Summer, thanking Him for the harvest. (De 16:10-11)
Party with God in the Fall, camp out with Him, thankful for more provision. (De 16:13)
Ensure justice in all the land. (De 16:18)
etc.

The pattern continues … Love God, respect yourself, party with God, care for the poor, be decent, be just … Really tough stuff here … They say God’s law is “a burden … legalism … just can’t do it.”

Can’t? Or won’t?

The carnal mind just isn’t interested in God’s Way, not even enough to find out what it is. (Ro 8:7-8) What a treasure we miss!

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All His Benefits

We’re constantly being lied to about the goodness and faithfulness of God. How easily we forget how graciously He takes care of us, protects us, and rescues us time and again. Remembering specific things He’s done for us, all His benefits, helps maintain spiritual equilibrium and encourages a life of thanksgiving.

JEHOVAH’s benefits include things like forgiving our iniquities, healing our diseases, redeeming our lives from destruction, crowning us with loving kindness and tender mercies, and satisfying our taste buds with delicious nourishment to renew our strength. (Ps 103:2-5) Reminding ourselves, and recounting these blessings to others, is part of how we edify each other in our walk with God.

For example, a few weeks back, my wife and I had just closed on a house and we only had one house key. While she ran some errands, I went for a run on the beach, planning to return before she did and open the house for all the folks planning to deliver appliances, get final repairs done, etc. I put the key safely in the pocket of my gym shorts and headed off.

When I arrived at the beach, noticing only a handful of people as far as I could see in either direction, I stretched out and began my run, thanking God for the cool sunshine, running through the waves and meditating on scripture … it’s one of my favorite things to do.

At a good half-way mark, as I turned to head back, I realized the house key was no longer in my pocket! Somewhere in the last 1.5 miles, over the last quarter of an hour, it had fallen out, lost in the sand and/or the water!

I immediately began thinking what a total inconvenience this was going to be for everyone, particularly my wife, who’d arranged for all of these people to come over and get us set up in our new home! We’d need to call a locksmith and have him bust out the front door lock, reschedule all these appointments, and be without a refrigerator for who knows how much longer! The closing had already put each of us into some stress … and this was just flat out careless on my part! Needless! It would surely mar our joyful memories, especially hers, in finding and securing our “forever home” together.

Praying wasn’t an option — supplication poured out of me as instinctively as breath, begging God for mercy to help me find this tiny little key lost in thousands of yards of sand and waves … I wasn’t hopeful. My dread was palpable.

I began thinking it might have fallen out when I was stretching, lying down on my back in the sand, and that was at least a couple of times during this particular run. Could I find those places based on marks I’d left with my back on the beach? It was a bleak option, but it was my only hope, other than retracing my steps and examining the entire shoreline. That could take hours; I didn’t have that kind of time!

After hunting up and down a while, I finally found the last place I’d last stretched out and started searching carefully. Thankfully, there were so few people out the scene was just as I’d left it, far enough up on land to be undisturbed by the waves … but no key here, best I could tell. I could keep looking trying to find it here, or move on and hope it was back toward at the start of my run. I kept on running and praying, eyeing my earlier footprints and scanning the sand, returning back to where I’d started out.

I got back to the area where I’d begun, searched around a bit, and found a place where it looked like I’d stretched out, and then I recalled it was a couple of different locations, as I’d been hunting for a suitable spot I had tried at least three different places. First one place, then another, scanning the sand carefully and trying not to disturb anything. The dreadful feeling of helplessness and doom looming over me.

Then I saw it! WOW!! Silver, shining, lying on the sand undisturbed, right where I’d been stretching, the first place I’d laid down. How happy and thankful I was to see that little key I cannot say! Whether it was a real supernatural miracle or not really isn’t the point for me; it sure felt like one, another precious token of God’s merciful hand in my life, caring for me and redeeming my life from destruction, chaos, and pain, all of which I fully deserved. Should have been more careful with that key!!

“It is of JEHOVAH’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness!” (La 3:22)

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Your Hands

Jehovah made each of us uniquely in His image, a one-of-a-kind expression of His infinitude. He decreed our existence from eternity past (Ep 1:4), and designed every one of us with beautiful precision. (Ps 139:14)

And He didn’t do this from a distance, just by speaking and decreeing: He made each of us individually, personally, with His own hands! (Ps 119:73)

Like an artist skillfully crafting a masterpiece, God engages His entire divine being as He focuses on each person, designing our body, mind, soul and spirit; we each bear a unique fingerprint pattern of God.

Thanking God for His workmanship in each human life is natural then (1Ti 2:1), asking Him to bless (Lk 6:28) and be merciful, and to fulfill the purpose for which He created each and every living soul. (Pr 16:4)

As we recognize the likeness of God in each other, it is also intuitively good to honor all (1Pe 2:17), valuing each person intrinsically, loving them even as ourselves. (Le 19:18)

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