“No problem, I’ve got it…” Second try…
I started writing this message inspired by Richard J. Foster’s book, “Prayer – Finding the Heart’s True Home” and in particular Chapter 9 - The Prayer of Rest. These days our congregation could use a rest as epic challenges to more than a few of our members have struck at us. I began my work with the utmost confidence that I would complete my task and a heartfelt message of encouragement would result where we would all learn to fall completely into a peaceful rest in God’s care.
Sure enough I was off and running with a great story about the benefits of accepting help in tasks too big in our daily lives, anecdotes, scripture and a smooth transition to the Communion Table but when it came time to critique it, the whole message was flat. It had all the elements in all the correct places but it wasn’t real.
As I am driving to Spectrum Hospital Friday morning to support one of our flock I am pondering why I can’t lock this message down and it comes to me – You can’t passionately implore your fellowship to do something you still aren’t really good at or at least pursuing with all heart, your mind, your strength…I won’t go so far as to say it was God’s voice calling me out this time but it probably was.
I fought back…
“Who me – not good at trusting in God’s peace?”
I guess I’m a lover not a fighter if that’s the best counter attack I have.
“Yes you, the man who prides himself in not going on “Retreats” because they are called “retreats”, the man who took 38 years to realize it is about surrender because that word sticks in his throat, the man who can’t even sit still long enough to pray so he has to go on a 50 mile bicycle ride and at the point of exhaustion finally hears Me in prayer!”
“Oh, that man…”
“Yes, that man!”
“But really, who has ever been remembered for giving up, for conceding the big fight, for taking a knee, for having the ability to win and opting for retreat or surrender?”
Just then the Newsboys are belting out on my CD player, “…Amazing love, how can it be? That you my King would die for me…”
Christ surrendered.
CHRIST SURRENDERED – for me!!!
Jesus Christ who could have called down the Angel Army of Heaven and obliterated all the people who mocked him, who spat on him, who whipped him, who pushed that crown of thorns deeper on his head, who drove those nails in…
That Man?
That Son of Man?
That Son of God?
When we were utterly helpless, with no way of escape, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners who had no use for him. Even if we were good, we really wouldn't expect anyone to die for us, though, of course, that might be barely possible. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. TLB Rom 5:6-8
When I was bleeding out my ears, still trying to do it all myself, thinking I could manage it all – Jesus Christ had paved the way for me – and all I had to do was surrender?
Yes, but it has to be a complete surrender!
But all these things that I once thought very worthwhile - now I've thrown them all away so that I can put my trust and hope in Christ alone. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have put aside all else, counting it worth less than nothing, in order that I can have Christ, and become one with him, no longer counting on being saved by being good enough or by obeying God's laws, but by trusting Christ to save me; for God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith - counting on Christ alone. Now I have given up everything else - I have found it to be the only way to really know Christ and to experience the mighty power that brought him back to life again, and to find out what it means to suffer and to die with him. So whatever it takes, I will be one who lives in the fresh newness of life of those who are alive from the dead. TLB Phil 3:7-11
Closing Thought
I have won some very small races and it is an exhilarating high – for a moment or maybe even until the next race which I may have won too – but we can’t keep winning them all. We get sick, we get tired, we get injured, we get older and victory begins to escape our grasp. Our spiritual lives can be the same way. We may win a victory or two but we get worn down, our own motivation to “fight the good fight” wears out after the challenges get bigger, our “competitors” get stronger, faster, and younger and just keep attacking…
My nature is to fight until the last breath, which has its place, because I want Dena, Ev, Linda, Lyle, Gordon, Sandy, Natalia and our fellowship at Woodgrove to keep fighting – those battles we can reach – but for our souls, our spirits and our life eternal to be realized in fullness and for us to grasp God’s real peace here and now…
We all have to surrender up to Christ completely!
May God give peace to you, my Christian brothers [and sisters!], and love, with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May God's grace and blessing be upon all who sincerely love our Lord Jesus Christ. TLB Eph 6:23-24
Servant of Christ
Randall
Silence, what a relief!
How would you take it if you heard this from God:
"I have decided to destroy all mankind; for the earth is filled with crime because of man. Yes, I will destroy mankind from the earth.” TLB Gen 6:12-13
Some Biblical personages start haggling at this point (Abraham in Genesis 18) but not the person to whom God delivered this apocalyptic message! This person is not recorded as having said a word and wait there is more!
Make a boat from resinous wood, sealing it with tar; and construct decks and stalls throughout the ship. Make it 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. Construct a skylight all the way around the ship, eighteen inches below the roof; and make three decks inside the boat - a bottom, middle, and upper deck - and put a door in the side. TLB Gen 6:14-16
Now you know we are talking about Noah here and at this point he must open up some sort of verbal dialogue with God which has to sound like, “Build a what?” If he didn’t we all might think this poor guy just doesn’t know how to speak up for himself!
Still, only silence from Noah and more direction from God!
"Look! I am going to cover the earth with a flood and destroy every living being-everything in which there is the breath of life. All will die. But I promise to keep you safe in the ship, with your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring a pair of every animal - a male and a female – into the boat with you, to keep them alive through the flood. Bring in a pair of each kind of bird and animal and reptile. Store away in the boat all the food that they and you will need." TLB Gen 6:17-21
“Enough is enough God! If you want to destroy all of mankind because they are rotten – I can’t stop you although it seems a bit extreme to me but I am no boat builder and I am certainly no zoologist! You will need to find someone else. I’ll just try to tread water as long as I can when the flood comes!” Should I have been there in Noah’s sandals I think I might have delivered such a speech – humbly of course – and I am not alone as other people have had this type of exchange with God (Moses – sans sandals -in Exodus 3:11 to name just one).
Noah however was different and regardless of how literally you take the account of the Great Flood – ponder this:
But Noah was a pleasure to the Lord. Here is the story of Noah: He was the only truly righteous man living on the earth at that time. He tried always to conduct his affairs according to God's will. TLB Gen 6:8-9a
How did righteous Noah respond to this extraordinary collection of Divine Mandates?
So Noah did everything the Lord commanded him. TLB Gen 7:5
Zip it and ship it! No whining, no crying, no doubting, no questioning…Just Noah getting on with it!
Here’s a word we don’t hear a whole lot these days as it seems to have been replaced with, “God is love and everything’s cool with him.” How’s that for like totally awesome theology dude? If you need an answer try – worthless!
Ok I digress; here is the word – OBEDIENCE!! Noah had it in surplus as God was with him through it all and saw him safely carried atop the flood!
Well, there was a guy back in the day after the flood named Saul who became the first king of God’s people. He received a very distinct command from God through the prophet Samuel and did not get the job done. He imposed his idea of what he thought was right on God’s command and let himself be swayed by the desires of his fighting men and tried to make it right by sacrificing to God what God did not want:
Samuel replied, "Has the Lord as much pleasure in your burnt offerings and sacrifices as in your obedience? Obedience is far better than sacrifice. He is much more interested in your listening to him than in your offering the fat of rams to him. For rebellion is as bad as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as bad as worshiping idols. And now because you have rejected the word of Jehovah, he has rejected you from being king." TLB 1 Sam 15:22-23
I used to take pride in being a stubborn rebel! That is very scary! Mercy, I have done some pig-headed stuff “interpreting” God’s word to me which is why this passage on Noah speaks to me on a new level this time around.
I was always intrigued by the drama of the flood, the art history capturing the animals arriving in pairs; the quest to find the ark in modern times, the geological evidence of a great flood...Everything like that fascinates me which is ok but now…
Today, reading about Noah, all I hear is the deafening sound of silent OBEDIENCE!!
So __________ did everything the Lord commanded him.
Am I ready to fill in that blank with my name?
Closing Thought
God’s journey into the free will of humankind is going badly. All the noise of people’s wickedness revolts him! He can’t be heard over the din except by one man – Noah!
Do you know what Noah’s name means? It means “Relief”. Very cool!
Randall means “guarded by wolves” which may have served me well on the ark but I don’t think I would have made it that far on the trip. I would have been arguing with God about “Where am I supposed to get all that lumber?” all while dancing in the rain!
I want to change that! I want my name to be a relief to the ear of God. I want him to hear me driving nails and building boats and herding animals two by two and…Doing whatever he asks me to do!!
Servant of Christ
Randall
Walk this way?
Back in the time before the flood of Noah’s Ark fame, there was a man named Enoch (Noah’s great-grandfather) who is not to be confused with a man by the same name from Cain’s family. Here is what we know about Enoch from Genesis:
Enoch was sixty-five years old when his son Methuselah was born. Afterwards he lived another 300 years in fellowship with God, and produced sons and daughters; then, when he was 365, and in constant touch with God, he disappeared, for God took him! Gen 5:21-24 TLB
Imagine Enoch’s journey with God or as some of the more poetic Bible versions say – “Enoch walked with God”. Imagine being so “in constant touch with God” that you don’t taste death but instead get invited into eternity by God at the end of your time! Enoch’s life has long intrigued humankind and is referenced by the author of Hebrews (Hebrews 11:5) in the New Testament. Still, much remains unknown about Enoch including the potential authorship of a book of his same name dating from ancient days, fragments of which were recorded with the Dead Sea scrolls and in “entirety” elsewhere in the Ethiopian Canon. Portions of the book attributed to Enoch are even cited in Jude’s (Jude 14) New Testament contribution.
Sorting through all of this would be the stuff of a theological/archeological epic (or at least another Indiana Jones Movie) because it is vast and fascinating and beyond my present scholarship and certainly today’s time constraint. So, in the interest of sparing you all the hours of study into the “Book of Enoch” this message has already produced for me, let’s focus on the communion Enoch had with God.
Enoch made his journey with God for 365 years, totally sanctified and pure of heart resulting in the abiding presence of God. I can’t even walk 100 yards without falling back into my humanity. Where am I going to find the strength to walk with God in constant touch with him my entire (relatively short) life?
Was Enoch just one of those people blessed with such a gift of faith (1 Corinthians 12:9) that God was perpetually and practically real to him every moment or was he able to obey every jot and tittle of an ancient law that fell between the one in the Garden and the Ten etched in stone thereby enjoying direct access to God? Was Enoch privy to some special dispensation that freed him from the more rigorously examined weights of spiritual discipline past and present? Was he so in tune with our Triune God that he walked in the presence of Christ so profoundly that he benefitted from that atoning sacrifice before it was even made! Is that possible? Was Enoch simultaneously reconciled into the holy presence of God the Father through God the Son?
Are all of these questions my attempt to circumvent/justify my failure to enjoy this kind of relationship with God?
I don’t know – and if you can’t hear me I am saying that in reverent hushed tones!
This message has been eluding me all week and in my walking – which I do as my schedule and destination permits – I have tried to visualize walking with God because I desperately want to know how we all can find that perfectly peaceful “spiritual recipe” to enjoy such divine communion!
Last night (Friday) my wife and I went to workout and finishing up together we looked down into the gymnasium where there was a huge wrestling tournament going on because our gym is attached to the local high school. These guys were working hard on all of the four mats as several teams were present and each simultaneous match was an ongoing battle of monumental struggle. It looked like life or death for each gladiator. Then Agathe spoke up observing, “It isn’t a pretty sport.”
Indeed it is a sweaty, grasping, twisting, escaping, barely-but-completely-controlled brawl!
So here I am at 3:11am (Saturday morning) writing because this message has escaped me until now as I was trying to find out for myself and eventually our congregation and you all how we can go about enjoying that harmonious tuning with God where our walk is a constant contact of questions answered in the present, where problems are resolved to our desired conclusion and the rewards of a tangible faith are immediate and satisfying! I want all of that for all of us until one day we achieve Enoch-like balance in our spiritual journeys!
Then I hear, “It isn’t a pretty sport” in my head and I see God nodding and it’s His voice and he’s talking about our faith journey and he’s recalling to my mind those images of sweaty, grasping, twisting, escaping, brawling grapplers and I hear Him say, “Sometimes, we have to wrestle with faith.”
“You mean Enoch wrestled?” I pondered.
“Occasionally. Isn’t your Sunday School doing Psalms 23? Go read it.”
I do and reply, “Ah, so You and me together isn’t always going to be walking lightly through acres of Forget-Me-Not’s beside clear cool streams like in Spearfish Canyon?”
“Correct.” comes the felt response.
“So when I wrestle I am not failing? I am not wandering away from you?” I ask.
“Not always…” (I can’t tell you how bad I wanted complete affirmation here!)
“When I see my skaters outside the library in thin jackets, in biting cold, shivering together clinching cigarettes between chattering teeth and they tell me they just got kicked out by the cops for ‘doin nothin’ it’s ok for me to wrestle in my soul with what we are called to do? When one of them, a mere boy with three colored hair, said it was alright because he wasn’t sure if his daughter was being dropped off at the library for him to look after so standing outside in the snow waiting to find out was good. At those times it’s acceptable for me to get a little crazy in my heart?” I plead.
“Yes.”
“So what do I do? How do we get ahead of this as a church to help?”
I didn’t hear anymore so I guess we keep wrestling!
Closing Thought
When my wife commented on the nature of wrestling and its lack of aesthetic my response was, “Yeah, it isn’t pretty but the workout those guys put in to get into that kind of shape is one of the most rigorous regimens of fitness you’ll ever see! It will whip you into shape or you will quit.”
Let’s not quit wrestling.
The world needs us! The world needs us to be in constant contact with God, to be walking with God, to be wrestling with our faith, and to be refined into righteousness!
We are called to season this world which has forgotten there is a God who wants to walk with them!
We have to get on with that calling!!
Are you in shape for it?
Servant of Christ
Randall