Notes of Faith September 5, 2020

Eternal Instants

We played every game we knew. We ran up and down the hall. We played “find me” behind the couch. We bounced the beach ball off each other’s heads. We wrestled, played tag, and danced. It was a big evening for Mom, Dad, and little Jenna. We were having so much fun that we ignored the bedtime hour and turned off the TV. And if the storm hadn’t hit, who knows how late we would have played.

But the storm hit. Rain pattered, then tapped, then slapped against the windows. The winds roared in off the Atlantic and gushed through the nearby mountains with such force that all the power went off. The adjacent valley acted as a funnel, hosing wind and rain on the city.

We all went into the bedroom and laid on the bed. In the darkness we listened to the divine orchestra. Electricity danced in the sky like a conductor’s baton summoning the deep kettle drums of thunder.

I sensed it as we were lying on the bed. It blew over me mixed with the sweet fragrance of fresh rain. My wife was lying silently at my side. Jenna was using my stomach for her pillow. She, too, was quiet. Our second child, only a month from birth, rested within the womb of her mother. They must have sensed it, for no one spoke. It entered our presence as if introduced by God himself. And no one dared stir for fear it leave prematurely.

What was it? An eternal instant.

An instant in time that had no time. A picture that froze in mid-frame, demanding to be savored. A minute that refused to die after sixty seconds. A moment that was lifted off the timeline and amplified into a forever so all the angels could witness its majesty.

An eternal instant.

A moment that reminds you of the treasures surrounding you. Your home. Your peace of mind. Your health. A moment that tenderly rebukes you for spending so much time on temporal preoccupations such as savings accounts, houses, and punctuality. A moment that can bring a mist to the manliest of eyes and perspective to the darkest life.

Eternal instants have dotted history.

It was an eternal instant when the Creator smiled and said, “It is good.” It was a timeless moment when Abraham pleaded for mercy from the God of mercy, “But if there are just ten faithful.” It was a moment without time when Noah pushed open the rain-soaked hatch and breathed in the clean air. And it was a moment in the “fullness of time” when a carpenter, some smelly shepherds, and an exhausted young mother stood in silent awe at the sight of the infant in the manger.

Eternal instants. You’ve had them. We all have. Sharing a porch swing on a summer evening with your grandchild. Seeing her face in the glow of a candle. Putting your arm into your husband’s as you stroll through the golden leaves and breathe the brisk autumn air. Listening to your six-year-old thank God for everything from goldfish to Grandma. Such moments are necessary because they remind us that everything is okay. The King is still on the throne and life is still worth living.

Eternal instants remind us that love is still the greatest possession and the future is nothing to fear.

The next time an instant in your life begins to be eternal, let it.  Resist the urge to cut it short. Don’t interrupt the silence or shatter the solemnity. You are, in a very special way, on holy ground.

Excerpted from God Came Near by Max Lucado, copyright Max Lucado

Some will understand this better than others, but God does seem to stop time for us at times, to examine, appreciate, and worship His glory.  I have experienced this more than once and pray I will never forget those blessings from God. 

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith September 4, 2020

You might hear the news from a policeman: “I’m sorry. He didn’t survive the accident.”

You might return a friend’s call, only to be told, “The surgeon brought bad news.”

Too many spouses have heard these words from grim-faced soldiers: “We regret to inform you…”

In such moments, spring becomes winter, blue turns to gray, birds go silent, and the chill of sorrow settles in. It’s cold in the valley of the shadow of death.

David’s messenger isn’t a policeman, friend, or soldier. He is a breathless Amalekite with torn clothing and hair full of dirt who stumbles into Camp Ziklag with the news:

The people have fled from the battle, many of the people are fallen and dead, and Saul and Jonathan his son are dead also. — 2 Samuel 1:4

David knows the Hebrews are fighting the Philistines. He knows Saul and Jonathan are in for the battle of their lives. He’s been awaiting the outcome. When the messenger presents David with Saul’s crown and bracelet, David has undeniable proof — Saul and Jonathan are dead.

Jonathan. Closer than a brother. He had saved David’s life and sworn to protect his children.

Saul. God’s chosen. God’s anointed. Yes, he had hounded David. He had badgered David. But he was still God’s anointed.

God’s chosen king — dead.
David’s best friend — dead.

Leaving David to face yet another giant — the giant of grief.

We’ve felt his heavy hand on our shoulders. Not in Ziklag, but in emergency rooms, in children’s hospitals, at car wrecks, and on battlefields.

And we, like David, have two choices: flee or face the giant.

Many opt to flee grief. Captain Woodrow Call urged young Newt to do so. In the movie Lonesome Dove, Call and Newt are part of an 1880s Texas-to-Montana cattle drive. When
a swimming swarm of water moccasins end the life of Newt’s best friend, Call offers bereavement counsel, western style. At the burial, in the shade of elms and the presence of cowboys, he advises, “Walk away from it, son.

That’s the only way to handle death. "Walk away from it.”

What else can you do? The grave stirs such unspeakable hurt and unanswerable questions, we’re tempted to turn and walk. Change the subject, avoid the issue. Work hard. Drink harder. Stay busy. Stay distant. Head north to Montana and don’t look back.

Yet we pay a high price when we do. Bereavement comes from the word reave. Look up reave in the dictionary, and you’ll read “to take away by force, plunder, rob.” Death robs you. The grave plunders moments and memories not yet shared: birthdays, vacations, lazy walks, talks over tea. You are bereaved because you’ve been robbed.

Normal is no more and never will be again. After the wife of C. S. Lewis died of cancer, he wrote, “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”1

Just when you think the beast of grief is gone, you hear a song she loved or smell the cologne he wore or pass a restaurant where the two of you used to eat. The giant keeps showing up.

And the giant of grief keeps stirring up. Stirring up…

Anxiety. “Am I next?”

Guilt. “Why did I tell him…” “Why didn’t I say to her…”

Wistfulness. You see intact couples and long for your mate. You see parents with kids and yearn for your child.

The giant stirs up insomnia, loss of appetite, forgetfulness, thoughts of suicide. Grief is not a mental illness, but it sure feels like one sometimes.

Captain Call didn’t understand this. Your friends may not understand this. You may not understand this. But please try. Understand the gravity of your loss. You didn’t lose at Monopoly or misplace your keys. You can’t walk away from this. At some point, within minutes or months, you need to do what David did. Face your grief.

Upon hearing of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan,

David lamented. — 2 Samuel 1:17

The warrior wept. The commander buried a bearded face in callous hands and cried. He

[He] ripped his clothes to ribbons. All the men with him did the same. They wept and fasted the rest of the day, grieving the death of Saul and his son Jonathan, and also the army of God and the nation Israel, victims in a failed battle. — 2 Samuel 1:11–12 MSG

Wailing warriors covered the hills, a herd of men walking, moaning, weeping, and mourning. They tore clothing, pounded the ground, and exhaled hurt.

You need to do the same. Flush the hurt out of your heart, and when the hurt returns, flush it again. Go ahead, cry a Mississippi. Jesus did. Next to the tomb of his dear friend,

Jesus wept. — John 11:35

Why would He do such a thing? Does He not know of Lazarus’s impending resurrection? He’s one declaration from seeing His friend exit the grave. He’ll see Lazarus before dinner.

Why the tears?

Amid the answers we think we know and the many we don’t is this one: death stinks.

Death amputates a limb of your life.

So Jesus wept. And in His tears we find permission to shed our own. F. B. Meyer wrote:

Jesus wept. Peter wept. The Ephesian converts wept on the neck of the Apostle whose face they were never to see again. Christ stands by each mourner, saying, “Weep, My child; weep, for I have wept.”

Tears relieve the burning brain, as a shower in the electric clouds. Tears discharge the insupportable agony of the heart, as an overflow lessens the pressure of the flood against the dam.

Tears are the material out of which Heaven weaves its brightest rainbow.2

We don’t know how long Jesus wept. We don’t know how long David wept. But we know how long we weep, and the time seems so truncated. Egyptians dress in black for six months. Some Muslims wear mourning clothes for a year.

Orthodox Jews offer prayers for a deceased parent every day for eleven months. Just fifty years ago rural Americans wore black armbands for a period of several weeks.3 And today? Am I the only one who senses that we hurry our hurts?

Grief takes time. Give yourself some.

Sages invest themselves in hurt and grieving. — Ecclesiastes 7:4 MSG

Lament may be a foreign verb in our world but not in Scripture’s. Seventy percent of the psalms are poems of sorrow. Why, the Old Testament includes a book of lamentations. The son of David wrote,

Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us. — Ecclesiastes 7:3 NLT

We spelunk life’s deepest issues in the cave of sorrow. Why am I here? Where am I headed?

Cemetery strolls stir hard yet vital questions. David indulged the full force of his remorse:

I am worn out from sobbing. Every night tears drench my bed; my pillow is wet from weeping. — Psalm 6:6 NLT

And then later:

I am dying from grief; my years are shortened by sadness. Misery has drained my strength; I am wasting away from within. — Psalm 31:10 NLT

Are you angry with God? Tell Him. Disgusted with God? Let Him know. Weary of telling people you feel fine when you don’t? Tell the truth. My friends Thomas and Andrea Davidson did. A stray bullet snatched their fourteen-year-old son, Tyler, out of their lives. Tom writes:

We were bombarded by the question, “How are you doing?”… What I really wanted to tell everyone was, “How do you think we are doing? Our son is dead, our life is miserable, and I wish the world would end.”4

David might have used different language. Then again, maybe not. One thing for sure, he refused to ignore his grief.

The mighty warriors — fallen, fallen! Women of Israel, weep for Saul… O my dear brother Jonathan, I’m crushed by your death. Your friendship was a miracle-wonder, love far exceeding anything I’ve known — or ever hope to know. The mighty warriors — fallen, fallen. — 2 Samuel 1:19, 2 Samuel 1:24, 2 Samuel 1:26-27 MSG

David wept as creatively as he worshiped, and — underline this —

David sang this lament over Saul and his son Jonathan, and gave orders that everyone in Judah learn it by heart.
— 2 Samuel 1:17–18 MSG

David called the nation to mourning. He rendered weeping a public policy. He refused to gloss over or soft-pedal death. He faced it, fought it, challenged it. But he didn’t deny it. As his son Solomon explained,

There is… a time to mourn. — Ecclesiastes 3:1, Ecclesiastes 3:4 NIV

Give yourself some. Face your grief with tears, time, and — one more — face your grief with truth. Paul urged the Thessalonians to grieve, but he didn’t want the Christians to “carry on over them like people who have nothing to look forward to, as if the grave were the last word” (1 Thessalonians 4:13 MSG).

God has the last word on death. And, if you listen, He will tell you the truth about your loved ones. They’ve been dismissed from the hospital called Earth. You and I still roam the halls, smell the medicines, and eat green beans and Jell-O off plastic trays. They, meanwhile, enjoy picnics, inhale springtime, and run through knee-high flowers. You miss them like crazy, but can you deny the truth? They have no pain, doubt, or struggle. They really are happier in Heaven.

And won’t you see them soon? Life blisters by at mach speed.

You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath. — Psalm 39:5 NIV

When you drop your kids off at school, do you weep as though you’ll never see them again? When you drop your spouse at the store and park the car, do you bid a final forever farewell? No.

When you say, “I’ll see you soon,” you mean it. When you stand in the cemetery and stare down at the soft, freshly turned earth and promise, I’ll see you soon, you speak truth. Reunion is a splinter of an eternal moment away.

There is no need for you to “to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13 NIV).

So go ahead, face your grief. Give yourself time. Permit yourself tears. God understands.

He knows the sorrow of a grave. He buried his son. But he also knows the joy of resurrection. And, by His power, you will too.

C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1961), 24.

1. F. B. Meyer, Abraham, quoted in Charles R. Swindoll, The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart: And 1,501 Other Stories (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1998), 254.

2. Ann Kaiser Stearns, Living Through Personal Crisis (New York: Ballantine Books, 1984), 6.

3. Thomas P. Davidson, I Called Him Roosk, He Called Me Dad: A Collection of Thoughts About a Father’s Faith, Love, and Grief After Losing His Son (privately printed), 36–37.

Excerpted from Facing Your Giants by Max Lucado, copyright Max Lucado.

For some of us, it is a season of rejoicing. We are thankful for that. And, for some of us, it is a season of tremendous grief and suffering. Tears and lament. According to Romans 12:15, we join our brothers and sisters who weep and mourn.

Do you miss the presence of a loved one?  In my experience, weeping has brought some physical relief.  They have not returned, but by God’s grace I will join them soon.  This life lasts like a morning fog and then is gone, but life with Christ is eternal, with all those who have believed and followed Him.  Lord, give us compassion to weep, to cry over the loss of loved ones.  We cry over the seeming loss of our once Christian nation.  We pray for relief from this pain and suffering.  Give us a renewed hope in our Savior, a focus on Jesus, truth, and the free gift of eternal life in Him.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith September 3, 2020

Do you ever struggle with beating yourself up?  Too many of us do – from the moment we roll out of bed.

I remember one morning before I decided to stop beating myself, lying in bed after hitting the snooze button. I had an ambitious morning workout I planned.

But I wasn’t ready yet. So, still half asleep, I had a conversation in my head that went something like this…

This is the morning I’m supposed to get up early to work out before anyone else gets up. It’s still pitch black outside. I’ll get a head start on my day if I just sit up right now and swing my legs over the…

I take a deep breath and sigh. It’s a sigh of guilt because I know exactly what I am about to do. I pull my hand from under the covers and reach over and feel for my alarm clock. I know I shouldn’t, but I hit snooze again. The negative emotions wash over me like an extra layer of sheets in my otherwise cozy bed.

Just seconds into my day and I am already feeling guilty. But that’s just the beginning. I miss my workout. Guilt.

My mother calls. When I answer, she says, “Oh, I thought you’d be working by now.” She’s right. I thought I would too, but I’m late! Guilt.

I notice the date on my phone. Oh no. It is the day after my high school BFF’s birthday, and I forgot to call her yesterday. Guilt.

Later, while driving, I have a moment at a red light and don’t resist the urge to pick up my phone and check my latest social media post. Guilt.

I get to work and open an e-mail from my son’s teacher. I forgot to sign the field trip form and the trip is today. Guilt.

I see news of a similar business to mine launching something new. Rather than being intrigued, I immediately feel like I am not doing enough in my own business. Guilt.

You get the picture. These feelings of guilt were so automatic that I wasn’t really conscious of them.

I just had a continuous feeling of not measuring up and a belief that I could do better if I just got my act together.

It was a familiar narrative, a story I often told myself, until I became aware of my thoughts and began to change them.

Guilt isn’t always about feeling indebted to another person. Often it is about feelings of not measuring up to our own expectations, including the expectations we believe God has of us.

Authentic Guilt Is a Spiritual Guide; False Guilt Is a Spiritual Detour

From a spiritual perspective, this false guilt isn’t even “your” guilt. It is a weapon the Enemy uses to steal your joy, condemn the very essence of who you are, and even kill your dreams. If that sounds dramatic, it’s because it is. The very mission of the Enemy is to kill, steal, and destroy (John 10:10). And that is exactly what the lies of false guilt do.

Unlike authentic guilt, false guilt is a feeling, not a fact. It is the condemnation that whispers, “You are not enough. You’re not doing enough. You never get it right. You need to pay.”

But even when you have made a mistake or done something wrong, authentic guilt changes nothing until it leads you to act differently. Conviction about your behavior and a sincere decision to change is what God is after. The Enemy knows that if you wallow in guilt, you will waste your precious time. If you believe your guilt makes you unworthy, the Enemy has won. You won’t glean wisdom from your experience or turn the pain into purpose. Instead, you’ll see guilt as proof that you have no purpose. Not all guilt is good guilt.

Good guilt is the kind led by the Holy Spirit, that convicts you to do the right thing even when you’re tempted to do otherwise. It’s the kind that says, “That was wrong. You need to apologize, make amends, do better next time.”  But bad guilt is more a feeling than a fact. It’s not so much that you’ve done something wrong, but that you feel like you have. You feel like you’re not measuring up. You feel like you’re doing something wrong all the time.

When guilt is at the center of your emotions, it steals your confidence and your joy. It causes you to shrink from the fullness of who you are. It makes you vulnerable to guilt trips and manipulation. The good news is that you can change the narrative. You can choose new thoughts that create a truthful and freeing narrative.

Respond

In your quiet moments, when these feelings arise, push back on them. Notice what you’re saying to yourself – your narrative – and intentionally choose thoughts that are true and align with God’s expectations and love towards you.

Your narrative is the story you tell yourself about the events of your life. It is the stream of thoughts you choose that explains what and how and why your life has unfolded the way it has. Your narrative influences how you feel, and therefore, the decisions you make about what should come next in your story. So if your narrative says you are guilty when you are not, what comes next may be punishment, compensation, or even shame.

Prayer

Lord, in areas where I am feeling guilty even though I am not, where I never feel like I measure up, renew my mind with thoughts that are aligned with Yours. Free me from the lies and doubts the enemy plants and help me see Your truth and make decisions based on that truth.

Written for Devotionals Daily by Valorie Burton, author of Let Go of the Guilt.

If your guilt meter is set to “high”, you are not alone! But, what messages are you listening to? And is that guilt authentic or false? Helpful or harmful?

Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ESV

Condemnation and conviction have very different meanings.  To be condemned is to be judged, by yourself or another authority.  To feel conviction (from the Holy Spirit), is to feel the guilt of disobedience toward God that brings about change.  Conviction reveals truth which bring repentance, turning and moving toward righteousness.  May we understand the difference and never condemn ourselves, pay attention to the conviction of the Spirit and daily reach toward the prize of our calling in Christ Jesus!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith September 2, 2020

THE MASTER’S EXAMPLE

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under His power, and that He had come from God and was returning to God; so He got up from the meal and began to wash His disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around Him. — John 13:3-5

The basins and towels sat waiting. The foot-washing would be a remarkable experience.

Of course, for the disciples in the Upper Room, the scene must have been considerably more unsettling, but this was plenty uncomfortable. It was one thing to wash someone’s feet. It was pretty awkward to have a friend wash your feet. But when the pastor — also a friend, but still the pastor — washed your feet! And imagine having Jesus wash your feet…

Jesus washed the feet of the Twelve to give them — and us — an example to follow:

Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. — John 13:14

We will be able to follow Jesus’ example — we can volunteer more willingly for the lowliest job — when, as Jesus Himself did, we keep in mind whose we are.

As children of the King, we find our value in His love, not in what we do on this earth.

*

“SURELY YOU DON’T MEAN ME?”

Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray Me. It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, He gave it to Judas. As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him. — John 13:21, John 13:26–27

What recent conversation or interaction comes to mind when you hear the word awkward?

Whatever came to mind could not have been anywhere as awkward, as tense, as strained as this moment around the Passover table. Jesus, “troubled in spirit,” said simply, “One of you is going to betray Me.” And He must have said that loudly enough for everyone to hear, because John reports that “His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them He meant” (John 13:22).

When John asked him who it was, Jesus answered by handing Judas a piece of bread and soon thereafter saying to Judas, “What you are about to do, do quickly” (John 13:27).

Before Judas left, however, the disciples ask Jesus a question that helps us realize that we ourselves are entirely capably of betraying our Lord: “Surely You don’t mean me?” (Mark 14:19).

May I never betray You in thought, word, or deed, my Savior and my Lord.

*

THE BODY AND THE BLOOD

Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to His disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is My body.” Then He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is My blood of the covenant.” — Matthew 26:26–28

Foreshadowing may remind you of a high school English teacher who saw way too much in every novel the class read. Yet foreshadowing happens not only in a fictional literary world; it happens in day-to-day life as well. At the Passover meal, after Judas left, Jesus also offered His disciples a sense of what was to come.

At this Passover meal, Jesus used actions and words to foreshadow the fact that He was going to die and rise again. Taking on the punishment for humanity’s sin — for your sin — would literally cost Him His life. His body would be broken and His blood “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28).

The Passover location had been prearranged. Jesus had washed His disciples feet. He had talked about one of them betraying Him. And now He was saying strange things. What was going on?

Excerpted from The Story Devotional copyright Zondervan.

We used “The Story” as a jumping off point for a year-long study through the Word of God. We did find errors in some videos and differences in interpretation of the Scriptures but all in all it was productive and fruitful for God.

I miss our three-fold communion...how about you?

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith September 1, 2020

If it’s true that how you think defines who you are, then what you think about God is the most important question of your life.

All life on earth was created by God and for God, and for the most part everyone is wrestling with what they think about God. For some He’s a tyrant, and they reject Him as unworthy of their love. For others He’s a genie, and when He doesn’t give them what they want, they either pout or lose their secure footing. Some view God as a kind of force that can be found in everything — not a personal being, mind you, but more like a providential mist that isn’t super interested in rules or details but only in the big picture of things. Some view God as a puppet master, causing all the good and all the bad in the world. They are elated when good things happen but devastated when tragedy strikes. Others view Him as a figment of people’s imaginations.

What you think about God is who God is to you, and it affects every aspect of your life. It’s your spiritual reality, even if it may be entirely wrong.

Hebrews 11:6 tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God. This verse fascinates me because it is so direct. I think a lot of people miss this and they replace faith with religious activity. We often think that the more we do for God, the better we are with Him. If I can just do my devotions on a more regular basis, or if I can just soak in His presence more, or if I can serve more at my church, then I know that will please Him. Well, I’m sure He will find anything you do for Him pleasing, but don’t forget the one thing you must have if that is your goal. You have to have faith. But what exactly is faith?

The definition is pretty straightforward. Merriam-Webster says faith is “complete trust.” So then, how much trust must we have in God for it to qualify as faith? Jesus said if we have faith the size of a mustard seed we can see great things. So I guess even the tiniest amount of trust in God counts for something. But I would like to make the argument that if our goal in life is to please God, then the main thing we should be focusing on is our faith level. If it’s impossible to please God without trusting Him, then wouldn’t it make sense that the more we learn to trust Him, the more pleasing we are to Him?

Why does it need to be this way? Why is God so preoccupied with our faith in Him? Why is it such a big deal?

When Saul screws up big time and basically loses his kingship (1 Samuel 15), he doesn’t lose everything because he kills someone or commits adultery (shoot, David did both those things). He loses it all because he has no faith in God and this lack of faith leads to disobedience. The Lord told Saul to go bust up a town named Amalek, and he was to spare no one — not even the animals — in this mission.

This was divine retribution for stuff Amalek had done to Israel, so Saul heads out on a military sortie. He does what he’s told — mostly. Saul takes the king of Amalek, Agag, hostage, and keeps a bunch of the best animals to offer as a sacrifice to God. It seems like Saul has good intentions, but unfortunately it’s not what God asked him to do.

The prophet Samuel rolls in, and Saul is feeling pretty good about himself. He has even built a little monument to himself to mark the occasion, like an idiot. Saul proudly tells Samuel that he’s done what God asked him to do. Then Samuel drops the hammer:

What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? — 1 Samuel 15:14 NKJV

Saul tries to put a nice spin on it, but Samuel wants none of it.

Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.

For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. 

— 1 Samuel 15:22–23 NKJV

Saul is toast. And all because he didn’t obey the voice of the Lord. He didn’t trust God’s word. He didn’t have faith but did what seemed right in his own eyes. Lesson #1: If you want God, you’ve got to take Him on His terms.

We know faith is a big deal to God, if not the biggest, but again I ask, why? While I realize there are three currencies in God’s kingdom (faith, hope, and love) and 1 Corinthians 13 tells us plainly that the greatest of these is love, we still can’t avoid the utter importance of faith as explained in Hebrews 11:6, particularly when it comes to pleasing God. I would argue that while it’s impossible to please God without faith, if your faith isn’t grounded in love, the whole thing kind of falls apart. Hope then is the glue that holds them all together. But for our purposes, I want to focus on this slippery little thing called faith, since the battleground we’re dealing with is the mind, and faith is very much a mind thing.

A frustration that has never left me is the fact that God is invisible. When He asked me to make films about Him, my first thought was, Uh, God, You do realize that film is a visual medium and You’re, well, not. Figuring out new ways to make an invisible God visible is the biggest hurdle I have in making my movies. It’s like trying to film air. The only way you can even tell it’s there is when the wind blows. So I have to try to find situations where God’s wind is blowing on people.

In my book Finding God in the Bible, I talk at length about “God’s invisibility cloak.” Maybe it’s because I’m a filmmaker that I obsess about God’s invisibility so much, but I think it’s a thing for a lot of other people too. I mean, let’s face it, if you’re a Christian, you literally believe in an invisible man. As in, an invisible man is your best friend. No wonder the world thinks we’re nuts sometimes.

When I examined the invisibility problem, I found a possible explanation. There are two wildly different instances of God “showing” Himself to people in Scripture, and both can teach us a lot about God’s nature.

The first is found in Exodus 33. Moses has gone up Mount Sinai and is hanging out with God. The two friends are talking about Israel, with Moses reminding the Lord that these are His people after all, so, you know, don’t smite them, please. Yes, they’re a dysfunctional tribe, but they’re His dysfunctional tribe. God shows great affection for Moses, saying,

You have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name. — Exodus 33:17 NRSV

So Moses realizes he’s holding the golden ticket, and he just goes for broke and asks to see God’s full glory. What a request! Shockingly, God decides to grant his request, but with the caveat that Moses only be able to look upon His back. If he looked at God’s face, he’d die. Like, Raiders of the Lost Ark face-melting die. So God puts Moses in a cave and passes by, allowing Moses to see His full goodness. Man, I’m not jealous of much, but this one is off-the-charts cool.

After this little love fest, God makes new tablets for Moses to take to the people with His commandments, and Moses scurries down the mountain. But he doesn’t realize that because he just literally saw God, his face is now glowing. Everyone freaks out when they see Moses, and he has to wear a veil because the people simply cannot deal. Understand what’s going on here — the people are freaking out at the aftereffect of someone else seeing God. Just imagine what would have happened if they’d seen Him with their own eyes!

There will come a point in time when the entire world will see Him in His fullness with their own eyes. God minced no words when He said:

By Myself I have sworn, My mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: before Me every knee will bow; by Me every tongue will swear. They will say of Me, ‘In the Lord alone are deliverance and strength.’ All who have raged against Him will come to Him and be put to shame.

— Isaiah 45:23–24 NIV

God is not messing around here, and He wants you to realize it. He swears by Himself (there is nothing higher) that what He’s about to say will happen. And why is He so sure that this is going to happen, especially considering how horribly messed up the world is these days? Are we Christians suddenly going to become incredible witnesses for Him? That’s highly doubtful. No, I think there’s only one way for this event to happen, and it’s going to come at the grand finale of life as we know it on earth. Whenever that “date and time that only the Father knows” comes, that will be the moment when God throws off His invisibility cloak and the whole world will see Him for who He truly is. At that moment, when He shows Himself clearly in all His goodness and glory, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is indeed Lord of all.

But there’s a funny little thing about love that most people forget.

Love must be a choice. Its very nature demands freedom, and all love comes with the risk of rejection. It’s why God gave man free will. You cannot have true love without the possibility of rejection.

It’s that possibility of rejection that all of us have faced at one time or another.

I have vivid memories of hiding in my parents’ bathroom at age fifteen, staring at the beige phone I’d pulled in with me, trying to will myself to call a girl and ask her to go to the skating rink with me. But calling meant I’d have to admit I liked her and, good Lord, what if she said she didn’t like me back? I’d sit and stare at that phone, but the fear of rejection was simply too great. I couldn’t do it.

Yet God does it over and over and over again. He puts Himself out there, asking us to choose Him, to love Him like He loves us. And when we reject Him and His kindness for our own selfish desires, He simply looks for another opportunity to prove His love and grace once again. For many, it will be a lifetime pursuit, and they will never choose Him, usually because they never fully understand how wonderful He is. They look at His other kids and think their dysfunction is somehow His dysfunction. But we are all in need of a Savior, even when we’ve chosen Him. The war rages on around us, and it won’t ever stop.

You see, God cannot reveal Himself to us physically, because if He were to do that our choice to love Him would cease to be a choice at all. Every knee would bow because no matter what you do or don’t believe, if you were to see Him for who He is, not through the filters of our brokenness, but truly as He is — He’d be utterly irresistible. When that day comes, for those who have chosen to love Him when it was most difficult, our love will be made complete. For those who haven’t, it will be a day filled with the greatest regret of their lives.

Excerpted from [Excerpted with permission from Chasing a God You Don’t Want to Catch by Darren Wilson, copyright Darren Wilson.] Chasing a God You Don’t Want to Catch by Darren Wilson, copyright Darren Wilson.

What we think about Him matters! It matters more than anything else and directs the course of every step of our lives. Take a step of faith.

With the way things are going, we may see God sooner than later!  Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly!  The glory of the Lord is more awesome than anything we could ever imagine.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith August 31, 2020

After calling my name multiple times to no response, my daughter found me sitting on the edge of my bed, eyes trained on my computer screen. She started to speak and stopped abruptly when her eyes fell on my nightstand. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her nudge my hand cream and a book aside and lift the boning knife I’d placed next to them the previous night. Polished steel caught the light from the window as she held it up. Now she had my attention. An uncomfortable pause passed between us before she spoke my name as a question, “Mom?”

I brushed it off with a short laugh, “Oh, that? That’s nothing.” And I laughed the laugh of one who’d spent most of the night awake in fear. My husband was traveling, and two nights prior I’d pulled an all-nighter when my garage doors suddenly opened and shut without warning at 2 in the morning. I’d called 911, certain someone was breaking into our house, and spent the longest, most emotionally intense 10 minutes of my life waiting for the police to arrive. An hour later, the police determined no intruder existed, and my garage doors needed servicing. I spent the rest of the night peering out from my windows with a knife nearby, my house lit with every bulb ablaze inside and out.

I slept with the same knife next to my bed two nights later, where my daughter found it resting casually, as if I’d decided to debone a chicken bedside. She giggled when I blew it off as a silly whim, one of my fantastical notions. She has no idea how many nights over the years I’ve slept with a knife nearby, a baseball bat tucked beneath the bed, two phones within reach.

This sounds ridiculous in the daylight, and I’m often ashamed of my fear when dawn breaks over our safe suburban home, still breathing the sounds of sleep. But when my husband travels, I feel my anxiety build as the sun lowers. I begin to practice my fear like an addiction. Thoughts and images from past news reports snake their way from memory to the present. I remember things I’ve long forgotten—reenacted like a screenplay across the fabric of my mind.

I know the fingerprints of fear—they’re imprinted on my soul, held there by my own practiced thumb. I feel the anxiety rise, a familiar, unwelcome companion, and rather than reject it, I grab a knife. I replay scenes of fear rather than freedom. I rehearse what to do, where to hide, whom to save first, if an emergency arises. The next night, I hit repeat and the images replay, leaving me with a fear as familiar as my own reflection.

Kathleen Norris writes in her memoir Acedia and Me, “[W]hile we can’t control whether or not the bad thoughts come to us, we can learn how to respond to them.” I’ve often believed that as a Christian, I should have control over my thought life, and this has only perpetuated my anxiety. Why can’t I practice freedom over fear? Perhaps, as Norris suggests, fearful thoughts will come my way regardless. Paul seems to agree when he writes in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” The King James Version says we are “casting down imaginations.”

To live without fearful imaginations in a culture that sensationalizes evil as a form of entertainment feels impossible. Paul says to cast down, to destroy, to take captive these imaginations that rise up in us. My imagination can be used for bad, for sin, for unbelief. How can I use my thought life as a means of healing, trust, and grace instead?

Perhaps “casting down imaginations” might require me to realign my thoughts with reality. Reality: My children sleep across the hall while the house sighs in peace. The locks are turned; our home is secure. There is no violence, no evidence of sinister movement in the meadow behind our home, only graceful hooved prints marking paths in the snow, or nibbled marigolds in spring.

Reality eminates from, is grounded in, the realm of the heavens, as the psalmist reminds us: “He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways” (Psalm 91:11). If this vision of freedom—one of watchful angels and sleepy sighs and grazing deer—becomes the practiced pattern of my thought life, perhaps fear will become the less familiar of the two.

There are may things that we fear, some real, some imagined.  Still other placed upon us, telling us that we should fear!  Let the word of God be our guide for who and what to fear and we will live with peace of heart and mind.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith August 30, 2020

Notes of Faith August 30, 2020

Imagine living in the ancient Near East in 1500 BC. You’re a Hebrew, formerly a slave in Egypt, now traipsing through the desert around Mount Sinai.

You inhabit a spiritually charged universe of “gods” and “goddesses.” And these divine beings are anything but nice. Read any ancient text. The gods were mean — finicky and capricious and ready to fly off the handle at the slightest infraction.

So, you made sacrifices. Naturally. To keep the gods off your back. Or maybe to get the gods on your side. At first it was a bird or a goat. Then you ratchet up to a bull. But eventually they might ask for your child. Maybe even your firstborn.

Anybody remember History of World Civilization class from freshman year? Think of the story of Troy. It takes place around the same time as the story of Moses on Mount Sinai.1 The Greek king Agamemnon is sailing across the Mediterranean to fight in the Trojan War, but his fleet is dead in the water, no wind. Because Artemis — the goddess of Greece — is angry.2 She’s always angry. She demands that he makes a brutal sacrifice — his daughter Iphigenia. So, what happens? He does it, cutting her throat to appease Artemis’s wrath.

And immediately, the wind starts to blow.

Myth or history?

Random weather patterns in a superstitious age? Or a cruel, malignant elohim at work?

Hard to tell.3 But if you live in the ancient world, you live in fear of the gods.

Then Yahweh — say it with me: the one true Creator God! — comes to your rescue. He saves you out of Egypt. Leads you through the Red Sea and across the desert. Gives you food and water to survive the journey. And you’ve done nothing to deserve any of it.

Who is this God?

This God is nothing like Artemis or Amun-Ra or Marduk. He tells you His name — Yahweh — coaxing you into relationship. Apparently, He really wants to know and be known by you.

Then He tells you what He’s like. And the first thing you learn is that He’s “compassionate and gracious.”

In the Hebrew Scriptures, order matters. Order is a clue as to what’s most important. The fact that “compassionate and gracious” is at the top of the list of Yahweh’s character traits means it’s the dominant one — the most important thing there is to know about him.

Now, this phrase “compassionate and gracious” is rahum we-hanun in Hebrew.4

Can you say that? Come on, give it a try… Rahum we-hanun. Well done.

Rahum we-hanun is a word pairing in Hebrew. Meaning, not only do these two words sound alike, but they are laid side by side to help explain each other.

Let’s pull these two words apart, and then we’ll put them back together.

First off, rahum, or “compassionate.” It’s usually translated “merciful.”5 It’s from a root word meaning “female womb.” The idea behind it is the feeling a mother has toward her infant child.

So Yahweh is a mother? He has a womb? He has feelings?

Kind of.

Here are a few examples of where rahum is used in the Scriptures…

In the history books, there’s a quirky story about two women fighting over a child. Both claim they are the mother, but it’s the ancient world and there’s no DNA test, so King Solomon comes up with an ingenious plan: cut the baby in half and give it to both mothers.

That should flush out the true parent. Immediately, the true mother “was deeply moved out of love for her son and said to the king, ‘Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!’”6  In the original Hebrew, it reads that she was deeply moved by her rahum — her intense, visceral, motherly love for her child.

Here’s another one: in the prophet Isaiah, Yahweh says,

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!7

But one of my favorites is the Hebrew poetry. First the writer quotes Exodus 34:6:

The Lord [Yahweh] is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

Then he speaks to the rahum of Yahweh:

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord [Yahweh] has compassion on those who fear him.8

So rahum is how a parent feels about their children.

I watch my wife, Tammy, with our three kids. If there’s so much as a single cry in the middle of the night, she’s out of bed and by their side — usually before I even wake up.

She’s compassionate.

Honestly, I’m not compassionate by nature, and to tell the truth, I’m not really a kid person — I’m quiet and orderly and, well, neat. But my three kids melt my heart to butter.

The other day, Moses — my six-year-old — asked if we could wrestle. R’s are hard for Mo, so “wrestle” becomes “westle.” I was in my office answering an email and said, “Sorry, Moses, not now. Daddy’s busy.”

But then he said, “If I kiss you, then could we westle?”

Five seconds later, we were on the floor laughing and kicking around like kung fu masters.

When it comes to my kids, I’m compassionate. I feel a deeply rooted love and affection for Jude, and Moses, and Sunday.

And this is just a glimpse, a faint echo of how Yahweh feels about His kids. About you. And me.

Tragically, for some of you this doesn’t connect at all. Your family of origin is so warped out of shape that you have no idea what a compassionate parent is like. Your dad was always mad at you, just waiting for you to screw up. Or your mom was the archetypal perfectionist — always nagging at you, critical and condescending. You were never smart enough. Athletic enough. Pretty enough. Good enough. Or maybe your parents just weren’t around.

You grew up on your own. So, the idea of Yahweh as a parent doesn’t resonate.

But for others of you, this taps into a deep part of your soul. Especially if you’re a parent yourself. You know there is no love as fierce as that of a mother or father for a child. The love of a man for a woman, of a soldier for their country, of a sports fan for their team — none of it comes even close to the love of a parent for their kids. It’s this emotive, visceral, in-the-marrow-of-your-bones kind of love that is stronger that life itself.

And it’s how God feels about you. Pause for a moment.

Let that sink in . . .

So, rahum, or “compassion,” is a feeling word.

In contrast, “gracious” is an action word. In Hebrew, it’s hanun. It means “to show grace” or “to show favor.” It’s something you do. It has this idea of help.

To hanun somebody is to help them out in a time of need.

For example, hanun is used in Exodus:

If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can they sleep in? When they cry out to Me, I will hear, for I am gracious.”9

So here, “gracious” has to do with interest rates on a loan. It’s justice for the poor. It’s a coat to keep you warm at night.

The word pops up again in 2 Kings:

Hazael king of Aram oppressed Israel throughout the reign of Jehoahaz. But the Lord [Yahweh] was gracious to them and had compassion and showed concern for them.10

Here, “gracious” is saving Israel from annihilation by a foreign army. It’s a wall of defense around an embryonic nation.

Then it shows up in Psalms. The poet quotes Exodus 34:

You, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

Then comes a prayer:

Turn to me and be gracious to me; give your strength to your servant, and save the son of your maidservant.11

Here, a prayer for God’s “grace” is a prayer for God to rescue and save Israel out of danger. For the God-who-responds to do something.

So, to recap: “compassionate” is a feeling word. Yahweh is like a father, or even a mother, and we’re like His children.

And “gracious” is an action word. It means, like a parent, God comes to the rescue when His kids need help.

These two words link up and fuse together to show us what Yahweh is like: He’s compassionate and gracious.

When we come before God — in morning prayer or in worship at church or on our afternoon run or in the middle of a crisis at work — we come before a God who feels, who cares about us. And a God who acts, who wants to help, to do something about our situation.

1. Dates vary, but probably between 1260 and 1240 BC. A few hundred years after the exodus.

2. Some versions say because of the young men who were about to die in battle (see Aeschylus’s play Agamemnon), others because Agamemnon killed an animal sacred to Artemis and bragged that he was her equal in hunting (see Sophocles’s Electra).

3. For a fascinating (and disturbing) biblical example of this, go read 2 Kings 3:26-27. The story is vague, but it seems to connect the king of Moab’s sacrificing of his firstborn son to an unnamed deity to Moab’s victory over Israel.

4. Note that in the Hebrew, the word hanun has we attached to it — that’s the conjunction “and.”

5. In fact, in the ESV, it’s “merciful” in Exodus 34:6.

6. This is in 1 Kings 3:26.

7. Isaiah 49:15, my emphasis.

8. Psalm 103:8, Psalm 103:13, my emphasis.
   
   

Excerpted from God Has a Name by John Mark Comer, copyright John Mark Comer.

Aren’t you glad God is compassionate and gracious?  Our sin and rebellion screams for God’s wrath to appease His righteous anger.  But God is compassionate and gracious.  He is forgiving and giving.  He does not give us what we do deserve and does give to us what we don’t deserve.  His wrath is held back as He offers grace through faith in Jesus.  Those who will believe in Him are forgiven of their sin and given the free gift of eternal life!  What a compassionate and gracious God.  My mother taught Latin and English for over 40 years.  A study of Greek and Roman mythology was often included.  I see in the lives of people today, the same tendency to establish gods of their own making, that they can control, profit from, destroy and build another, at their whim and fancy.  Today’s world is being led by dark demonic forces that are anything but compassionate and gracious.  May we pray to the only true God to pour out His compassion and grace upon this earth, needed now more than ever!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith August 29, 2020

Whom Do You Serve?

Do you want to be liked or do you want to actually do something significant with this life? Let pleasing God become bigger than pleasing people. ~ Jennie Allen

The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? — Psalm 118:6

It was pretty late. Most of the lights were out. I had gotten tied up with friends and packing and forgotten that my parents kept 10:00 p.m. bedtimes. But they were still up waiting for their oldest daughter, the first one to have left the nest — a freshman now at the University of Arkansas — to come home for the weekend.

This night I went into their room  and sat on the corner of their bed, home from college with something important to talk about. I am sure that night I looked to them like their little girl who hadn’t really grown up that much, like I might be asking if I could go to a dance with a cute boy or spend the evening out with a friend.

But I wasn’t asking to go to a dance.

After the wooden crosses at camp, God kept getting bigger to me.

I was hearing Him and God was real and speaking and moving in me. I was hearing Him and obeying — but was I obeying Him in every way, no matter the cost?

Was I willing to do anything He asked?

When God began awakening in me, He started awakening me for the things of Him. I wanted to be about building His Kingdom, not only at the University of Arkansas but throughout the world. I was feeling led overseas. It was not clear where, but I could go for a year or two and serve through a ministry I was involved with in college.

As I sat on their bed I told them, “Mom and Dad, I feel like God is calling me to go overseas. I don’t know all the details, but I feel sure of this calling in me.”

I looked at them expectantly, waiting to hear what they had to say.

Every conscious person has thoughts, feelings, and passions streaming through him or her. These streams never stop, and they’re rarely filtered. They flood us with messages, and out of those thoughts we live, we make decisions, we create — we even regress as a direct result of these streams moving to and from our hearts and minds.

The obvious streams are our preoccupation with food or sex, or more likely, returning e-mails or building grocery lists. But the deeper streams, the ones that control our lives, those are where we doubt and dream and feel afraid or insecure. Typically we just leave them all there, streaming through us, controlling us.

God often speaks of the heart, or our souls. Nothing about me matters more than my heart, so why can’t I seem to control my heart or even locate it? For most of my life it seems to have had its own way, navigated by fear or desire. It moves and it ends up moving me.

I know my heart is tangibly real in this sense — I see evidence of its affections. But how does one control the heart?

Ever since I was young, I have been fascinated by the life of King David. He made so many terrible mistakes, and yet he bled God. He was passionate. Over and over again throughout his journaling through Psalms, he says variations of this phrase:

The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? — Psalm 118:6

And his life flowed out of this mentality. Because he feared and adored God, he feared nothing else. No one else. What was different about my faith than David’s? Why did I live with this stream of fear of people?

The current running through my heart loved un-invisible was no little creek — it was a frantic river drowning out my God and controlling my heart and thus my life.

I loved God, but I loved un-invisible people more. I worshipped them. I bowed down for their gold stars, especially from the two people I found myself looking at that night on the corner of their bed.

I grew up knowing the facts about God, and one of those facts was that He wanted to possess my heart completely. That I would love the Lord, my God, with my all my heart, soul, mind… that all of me would love Him the most (Deuteronomy 6:5). But I couldn’t live it then. I was busy making most everyone in my life happy, and it was working for me — at least most of the time.

I’m lying. It wasn’t working. I was completely wrecked inside.

How does anyone ever make everyone happy?

I waited for my parents’ answer.

Was I the only one torn like this? In love with God and yet eagerly serving everybody but Him?

That night on my parents’ bed, as I told them I wanted to obey God by serving Him in another country, far from their categories and dreams, many streams flooded me. They were streams that, at the time, trumped the planet-building God.

My parents weren’t wrong to express their opinions. I was only eighteen, and I was their daughter. They never said I was forbidden to go. But I was intuitive. I could feel it. I could feel their disapproval.

So I didn’t go. I didn’t even think about going anymore.

In the decade that followed, as much as my love and understanding of God grew, this river of idolatry only rushed stronger and stronger, oftentimes making me anxious, even frantic. Since the invisible thoughts of people are not easily controlled, I would spin, longing to control them.

People had to shrink for me before God had me completely… but how?

When you close your eyes and everything gets scary quiet, you hear your heart. It’s always there, of course. But you never hear its streams and rivers moving through you until it gets uncomfortably quiet.

When I get still and hear the loudest thing in me, it is often that I am chasing everyone but God. And I fear if He gets too close, He’ll see it. But if I let Him close anyway, we sit together on days like that, looking over the frantic river that is wearing me out. He never says, I told you so. He could, but He never does.

Love is jealous… especially God’s love. He wants me, and I want everybody else.

God knows we all have this problem, loving everybody but Him. So He called a prophet to dedicate his days to answering the same question I ask: how do we stop chasing everybody else and come back to God?

God told His servant Hosea to go into town and take a prostitute as his wife. God saw Israel pursuing every idol but Him — similar to my ways — and this was His way of talking to Israel about it. Hosea obeyed and married the prostitute Gomer. Together they had several children, and though Hosea was a loving, gracious husband and provided all she needed, Gomer kept going back to other lovers who abused her and never loved her back. The streams of her heart were nearly drowning her.

As I started reading Hosea, though, I thought its purpose was to display God’s wrath — His anger with Israel… with me. He did start off pretty ticked. He said things like,

I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel… You are not my people and I am not your God. — Hosea 1:6, Hosea 1:9

But then, in the midst of this dramatic metaphor, God says about those of us chasing other loves,

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call Me “My Husband,” and no longer will you call Me “My Baal.” For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. — Hosea 2:14-17

Every time I sit by the banks of my sin and my other loves, right as I think He is about to wipe me out because my heart feels so out of control, He steps into the river and redirects it.

The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He will. — Proverbs 21:1

It is only God who moves my heart. He chases me down and lures me back to Him; while I am running to everyone else, He runs after me. God brings me back to the place where it fares well with me, reminding me He is my Husband. There is no spinning, no fear, only perfect acceptance and peace.

I can let other people down. If God is for me… the God of the universe for me… who could be against me? Whom else do I fear?

When God became real to me in high school, I came home from the crosses at camp and gathered an assortment of younger girls so we could talk about Him. I don’t remember thinking I was supposed to do that. After I fell in love with God and was filled with His Spirit, I just did it. I started gushingly teaching everything I knew about Him. I’ve lived since then with a very clear sense of what He wants me to do, and usually it’s to talk about Him in some form.

His gifts in my life were never a secret to me or those who saw them used. As He did with every believer, He gave me something to make Him bigger. When I would speak or even write, I was on display — and being on display would at times make me physically ill.

I simply could not handle people’s invisible thoughts about me, or at times their very visible criticism. I dreaded it more than facing God and telling Him that I had sat on every gift He had given me. So I would teach, but I always held back. I always kept the pulse of how I was being received, and I agonized to the point of paralysis when it was negative. I was like a politician worried about the polls.

Rather than dying to my need for approval, I died to the clear callings God had put in my soul and the clear gifts and equipping He had given me.

I just wished it all away… it was costing too much. It was costing me my people, everyone’s approval, the thing I loved most. So I sat on it. The little portion of His work that God gave me to do for a few years before I see Him again, I sat on, praying it would go away. I was no different than Jonah running from God’s clear call to share Him with Nineveh. I was not going. I’m thankful He didn’t have me eaten by a whale.

I did wonder sometimes, when I closed my eyes and let it get scary quiet, if I was missing the best things, the things that matter most, because I was afraid.

He knows we keep chasing other loves until we love Him most. We keep spinning. We keep searching, restless. We keep missing all He has for us. He’ll always feel far away, drowned out by other louder rivers, until every other thing fades away and He becomes the only thing.

Excerpted from Anything by Jennie Allen, copyright Thomas Nelson.

Whose approval do you need to abandon to live fully for God alone?  Do you worship at altars of idols?  Think long and hard before answering.  Putting God first will change our hearts and minds to do His will rather than our own.  May we all pray “not my will but Thine be done”.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith August 28, 2020

Keep Fixing Your Eyes on Me

I, the Creator of the universe, am with you and for you. What more could you need? When you feel some lack, it is because you are not connecting with Me at a deep level. I offer abundant Life; your part is to trust Me, refusing to worry about anything.

It is not so much adverse events that make you anxious as it is your thoughts about those events. Your mind engages in efforts to take control of a situation, to bring about the result you desire. Your thoughts close in on the problem like ravenous wolves. Determined to make things go your way, you forget that I am in charge of your life. The only remedy is to switch your focus from the problem to My Presence. Stop all your striving, and watch to see what I will do. I am the Lord!

What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? — Romans 8:31-32

But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me. —Micah 7:7

Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. — 1 Corinthians 12:3

When things don’t go as you would like, accept the situation immediately. If you indulge in feelings of regret, they can easily spill over the line into resentment. Remember that I am sovereign over your circumstances, and humble yourself under My mighty hand. Rejoice in what I am doing in your life, even though it is beyond your understanding.

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. In Me you have everything you need, both for this life and for the life yet to come. Don’t let the impact of the world shatter your thinking or draw you away from focusing on Me. The ultimate challenge is to keep fixing your eyes on Me, no matter what is going on around you. When I am central in your thinking, you are able to view circumstances from My perspective.

Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 

— 1 Peter 5:5-6

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” — John 14:6

Are you anxious and worried? Disappointed? Regretful? God is still in charge! Today, let’s fix our eyes on Jesus. He is the Creator of the entire universe; He can handle our problems and concerns.

I find myself all too often trying to fix the problems in my world, working to near exhaustion before I even think to give these issues to Almighty God.  It is natural human behavior to attempt change in circumstances but more often than not we bring more anxiety and discouragement upon ourselves until we come to the throne of grace.  Might we do some of the same things after communicating with our heavenly Father?  Yes, but the outcome of the circumstances and especially the peace in our heart and mind will be quite different.  May we endeavor in all things to seek God first before acting and speaking.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith August 27, 2020

I lost my job!

I was jolted by my husband’s words.

Later that morning when he arrived home, I hugged him, then listened to him share the details of this unexpected happening. His position was eliminated due to budget cuts in defense spending.

I encouraged him to take time to grieve the loss of his job. Over the next few days emotions surfaced — disbelief, fear, anger, and sadness. Questions flooded our minds. How would we survive? My income could not sustain us. What steps should we take?

When someone you know loses a job, here’s how you can offer hope during their unemployment:

Pray and enlist others to pray. “I know the plans I have for _______, declares the Lord … plans to give hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). Invite God to open the person’s heart to be willing to trust, have courage, and persevere.

• Grieve the loss. Job loss hurts. Feel the pain.
  Replenish. Losing a job is emotionally draining. If you have a cabin or time share, offer it to the person for a weekend or a week away for rest and refocus.
  
  

• Give personal favorites. Make a meal, yummy dessert, or provide a gift card to a favorite restaurant, sporting event, movie, or bookstore. If the person has a hobby, show up with supplies.
  
  

• Develop strategic support. Enlist people or organizations like Career Connectors (www.careerconnectors.org) to help. Who offers expertise in résumé writing? Interviewing? Human resources? Job search? Life coaching? Personal finance?
  
  

• Don’t offer advice unless asked. Be sensitive to how and when to offer ideas.
  
  

• Celebrate the small stuff. Job hunting is hard work. Acknowledge accomplishments. Go out for ice cream.

Finally, if you are a colleague as well as a friend of the person who lost their job, be sensitive to their hurt but do not avoid them. Reassure them that your friendship will continue outside the workplace, then take steps to make sure that happens.

Excerpted from Hopelifter by Kathe Wunnenberg, copyright Kathe Wunnenberg.

There are many of you who have experienced job loss and the suffering that comes with it.  During current times people are losing jobs that have nothing to do with their performance or ability but government mandates and political positioning which they cannot control.  May we be compassionate toward these and others struggling with income issues.  As the Lord enables you, bless those in need.

Pastor Dale