Old Testament

Tuesday Devotional: Ruth 3

Devotional

Read Ruth 3bible

12Although it is true that I am near of kin, there is a kinsman-redeemer nearer than I.  13Stay here for the night, and in the morning if he wants to redeem, good; let him redeem.  But if he is not willing, as surely as the Lord lives I will do it…”

Sin is not a fun or comfortable word.  It conjures up a collage of negative imagery that most of us would rather not think about.  However, while the consequences of sin or separation from God are terrible, perhaps we can approach the word through another word that most of us are comfortable with.  The word is hunger.

Sin capitalizes on our appetites.  Throughout the day we have a physiological appetite that nourishes our bodies, and a variety of appetites related to our emotions and our personalities.  Sin within us finds a good thin, something we all have a healthy appetite for, and makes it into an ultimate thing that we are starving for.  Over time, left unaddressed, sin creates in us a famished appetite that hunts for satisfaction and pleasure, an unhealthy need for a particular thing.  Appetite does not consider right from wrong, consequences or righteousness.  Sin creates in us an addiction that relates the thing we hunt for to the source of our emptiness and our need to fill it in order to survive.  Sin creates a spirit in us that ignores right and wrong, and ultimately opposes God altogether.

On our own we are not able to control this appetite.  This is not to say that everyone who is not following God is a rabid animal wreaking havoc on villages of innocent people.  However, sin unaddressed creates in a person appetites that have the power to kill or take away the good things in our life.  Sin can destroy a marriage.  A job.  Friendships.  Families.  Sin creates self-righteousness and destroys mercy and grace.  Step by step, sin divides rather than creating harmony.  Submitting our lives, including our appetites, to Jesus as our King and Savior, we are suddenly given the power to not only resist our prior feelings of starvation but we begin to lose our appetite in our old addictions and instead hunger for new things, pure things, Holy things, Godly things.  While sin creates a tolerance for theft, the righteousness of Christ creates a hunger to give away what we have.  While sin feeds a tolerance for dishonesty, the righteousness of Christ creates a hunger to tell the truth.  It is beyond us to always do the right thing, especially when doing the right thing stands in the way of us feeding our appetites.  But as Christ said, “With man this is impossible.  But with God, all things are possible.”

Tuesday Devotional: Judges 17

Devotional

bible

Read Judges 17

6In those days Israel had no King; everyone did as he saw fit.

What do you do when there is no King?  At first, the absence of a King seems like a gift, a sigh of relief.  No King means no rules.  No King means freedom to do as you please, as you see fit.  However, as the rush of excitement in the face of total freedom to have our own way wears off we’re faced with the reality that we are unprepared, ill-equipped to lead ourselves, and we begin to scramble and guess our way toward what we view as success.

Micah’s mother wanted an object.

 We all have a thing, an object that we either believe will give us peace once we’ve obtained it or gives us peace as long as we retain it.  To some it’s money.  To some it’s education.  To some it’s clothes.  To some it’s a house.  The list goes on and on. Take a second and find yours.  We all have one.  Most of us have many.  Due to our human natures and more importantly our sinful natures we rely on our physical eyes to see and not the spiritual eyes that God, the true King, has promised us.  The promises of God are amazing but, like Jesus, they are in this world, not of this world.  The true gifts that Christ has lavished on us are intangible.  They are not necessarily around us, but are found within us, waiting for us, guaranteed to us in Heaven.  Unfortunately, if we see nothing, most of us believe in nothing.  So as great as those intangible gifts are, we’d simply rather have a thing that we know will make us feel good, no matter how temporary the satisfaction, even if we know full well that our emptiness will soon return and we’ll need a new thing to bring us back our peace.

The Levite wanted a place.

In each of our minds there is a vision of a place that is perfectly made for us.  It’s a place that needs us where we are important and highly valued.  Throughout life we often move from place to place searching for this picture, our place.  In some places we get close, but it’s not quite what we were looking for.  Without a King leading us into our purpose or position in a specific place, we are left to the process of trial and error and are ultimately disappointed in the outcome.  In the same way that our eyes deceive us, our imagination leads us astray.  We strive year after year investing time, money and energy along our vision quest to arrive and we never do.  Somehow, some of us manage to arrive, and soon realize that what we found looked different than what we had imagined. We regret.  Some of us have announced our purpose and destination over and over to the people we know that to admit that we are misplaced is to admit defeat, or look stupid or be wrong, so we fake it until we make it.  Sometimes we force ourselves into a place or a purpose that not only isn’t good for us but could be a detriment to the people around us.  Without the wisdom and guidance of a true King, we evaluate and determine far more than we are made to.

We do our best. God is greater than our disobedience and by His grace there is mercy for our mistakes, but the fact remains that determining our own purpose and place for ourselves always leaves the door open for sin to spread and our distance from God to increase.  While we may feel like we’ve arrived, until the King declares us found, we are still lost.

Micah wanted righteousness.

Why do you go to church?  Why do you read your Bible?  Why are you reading this devotional?  Is it helping you to understand the greatness of the living God?  Is it helping you to understand our sin nature or our need for Christ?  I truly hope so.  Unfortunately, for many people, including myself for many years, the answer to the previous questions would most likely be, “It makes me feel good.”  It makes me feel good because it means that I’m doing what I’m supposed to.  It makes me feel good because it means that I’m doing extra.  It makes me feel good because it makes me feel superior to the people I know that don’t.  As much as we desire an object and a purpose or place to give us value, we also desire to “be good”.  But in the words of Jesus, “…what is good?”  The word “good” is relative. Without a King to define the word for us we are left to define “good” for ourselves.  For many people our goodness is goodness by way of osmosis or by association.  In other words, even though we know that we’re not always doing the right thing, as long as we surround ourselves with things or people that do more good than we do, in turn our goodness increases.  This spirit is rampant in religion.  This IS religion.  Religion is, “I do and therefore I am.”  The gospel and the central message of the Bible is, “God is and therefore I do.”  No matter how many things we do and where we position ourselves we will always fall short of pure goodness or righteousness.  Falling short either makes us feel useless or makes us feel self-righteous.  Neither of these outcomes is the desire of the true King.  God pleads with us to admit that we do not know what we need, where to go, who we are and how to be good.  His response to our helplessness is mercy and truth.  Jesus says, “Come and see.”  Jesus says, “Follow me.”  When we turn to the true King we find what we’ve been looking for. We discover what the living God is willing and able to do and what he deems possible.

Tuesday Devotional: Joshua 20

Devotional

Read Joshua 20 bible

There is a scathing irony in how man views God and how man views himself. Man’s belief in his own humanity and righteousness is foolishly skewed and misguided. Man possesses a view of himself in regards to righteousness and justice that has been proven to be false throughout all of human history. Within man does in fact exist the purity of love and justice that man so desperately defends and professes. However, alongside this purity exists an inability to wield the power of sin also present within man in abundance.

This presence of sin makes executing pure love and justice naturally impossible for man on his own. While man may attempt to be fair or righteous on a daily basis, there will ultimately come a time when he is wronged and seeks justice not for the sake of pure justice but out of a personal and often irrational reaction to the injustice done to him. When action is taken from a standpoint of being wronged, one can no longer claim justice. Justice is objective and unbiased. Justice must be upheld with a standard based not the emotions or opinions of any one man but a fair verdict applicable to all. The scathing irony is that while man often views God as being unjust in the unequal distribution of suffering and blessing portioned out to all of humanity throughout the world, the true source of injustice does not fall at the feet of a Holy God but at Sinful Man. The instinct of man is to be moved by injustice and yearn for justice but falls short in execution. Many people want to act but do not. Many people want to speak up but remain silent. Many people want to be unbiased but cannot.

Therefore, fully aware of his creation and the inadequacies of the human heart to be a judge, the creator God found it necessary to establish law in the world where man could not be expected to create justice. Just as children cannot rule over a household, nor would they ever be expected to, God acknowledged that humankind would not be capable of running the world on its own. While the rules of a household may appear confining to a child or the rules of God may appear confining to human desire, God’s rules and regulations are not purely an exhibition of God’s authority and power. The mere fact that God has given the law and regulations by which to follow it is a testament to the loving nature of God himself. Seeing that a creation left to its own devices would destroy itself, God knew that lacking the law meant death for his children and giving the law meant life. The law is not an oppressor. The law and the regulations that come with are liberators. Within the law is freedom to enjoy this life without living in fear of losing it at a moment’s notice. The law does not prevent us from experiencing our true potential for good. Rather, the law protects us from experiencing our true potential for destruction. With God one finds peace in knowing that in his presence is safety from ourselves. Without God we are left out in the open, unprotected and vulnerable, living in a constant state of anxiety, apprehension and fear.

Tuesday Devotional: Deuteronomy 29

Devotional

bibleRead Deuteronomy 29

The human mind is inquisitive and logical. It seeks answers and explanations and is suspicious of any committed action made without any reasonable explanation. Before we make any decision we want to make sure that we have all of the necessary facts and that we are well aware of why we are making the decision we make. While these decisions are not exclusively correct, we rarely make any decision without a justifiable reason to do so. There are reasons behind every decision we commit ourselves to. To make a decision without any explainable reason would be foolish, and contradictory to the operations of the human mind. Thus, with the questions of life and death hanging in the balance in relation to faith in God or total rejection of him, why would the human mind choose to operate any differently?

In fact, God himself reminds us repeatedly that we are to use our brilliant minds to reach the conclusion that he has saved us and that he has a plan for us. With such a monumental issue, compared to the countless trivial problems and deliberations that pepper our days, it is surprising that we spend relatively little time pondering the secrets of this profound mystery of God. While many choose to settle for the simple conclusion that the God of the Bible is a mystery, desires to be a mystery and will forever be a mystery, this conclusion contradicts the account of God about himself in the Bible. The truth is that God has absolutely nothing to hide and has nothing to fear in the face of his creation. As surprising it is for us to assume that the creator of the Heavens and the Earth chooses to remain silent, it is exponentially more surprising to God that we have not found or seen him yet in the face of all of his work. Daily we are enveloped by the beauty and glory of his handiwork on this Earth. We live and breathe on a planet that daily sings his praises. When we reflect on the aspects of our life that bring us stress or burden, which of any of them have been created or revealed through God’s creation, and which have come as a result of man’s own creations?

The issue at hand is not the existence of a God that is too scared to be discovered as less than his claims and thus chooses to remain in the shadows. Rather, the issue at hand is a people that refuse to acknowledge a power greater and more capable than themselves. The issue at hand is a people that spend so much of their lives worrying about the meaning and purpose of life while never shifting beyond themselves to find an answer that doesn’t end with self. We are children who desperately want to learn a language in order to communicate, while never opening a book on language, all the while bemoaning the fact that we are unable to express ourselves. God makes it very clear on a daily basis that he is God. We, on the other hand, in our persistent falling short make it very clear on a daily basis that we are but man, and not God. In seeking the existence of God there comes a point where one cannot claim ignorance or charge God with secrecy. The facts have been revealed and we are left with only one decision. We can use our uniquely human ability to reason out our decisions and move toward the facts. Or, we can ourselves choose to defy our human instinct to reason and overwhelm our intelligence as humans all for the purpose of inflating our ever-fragile ego that allows us to remain in control and proved right by our own actions and not as a result of anyone else. God clearly states that one decision results in life and the other results in death. The pride of the human heart is so easily corrupted that many would prefer to choose death for the sake of being right.

Tuesday Devotional: Numbers 11

Devotional

Read Numbers 11:4-35 bible

How quickly we begin to crave other food. We are beings of substantial appetites, yet we are so quick to exaggerate our physical needs beyond the point of reason in response to an overflowing and seemingly never-ending stream of temptation that surrounds and rises from within us on a daily basis. Ever so quickly we overlook the provision given us in exchange for the desires that escape us. We turn up our noses at a healthy piece of fruit filled with vitamins and nutrients that provide our bodies with strength and energy, while leaping at the opportunity to devour a snack that has little to offer our bodies nutritionally but effectively satisfies a craving of the mind. We are beings so quick to want and so quick to forget what we have. We are beings so susceptible to the influence of others that in the blink of an eye we turn our backs on that which has given us much and redirect our eyes on something that has given us nothing at all.

All too often we forget the numerous ways that God has blessed our lives because we allow our eyes to wander away from him and on to the lives of others that surround us. We overshadow his provision in our own lives because we find ourselves obsessed by how he is providing in the life of someone we know. As quick as we are to beg for his provision we are equally quick to indulge jealousy of someone else’s provision. We are much like a child on Christmas morning who receives a gift and rejoices, until the next gift is opened and the joy becomes bitterness and jealousy. This typically has nothing to do with the gift itself. It arises out of the craving for something you don’t have but that you don’t necessarily need or even want. The astonishing thing about this tendency is that God does not withhold provision upon seeing it. God is so ready to be seen that he not only receives these ridiculous complaints with grace and understanding but then responds to our requests in a way that only he will be noticed and glorified. God is so in tune with what we need and what we can handle that the reason there is ever a withholding of anything in our lives is that we are not quite ready for it.

However, if receiving what we ask for, regardless of our inability to handle our request, ultimately redirects our eyes back to the Father that knows best, God allows us to crave, reach and take hold of that which has the power to destroy us. In the near destruction brought about by our own hands at the impulse of our own wills are we then able to see the weakness of our own hearts and the strength of his. Our prayers should never be to ask God for what we think we need or feel we want. Our prayers should be to ask God for what we are ready to receive. Only in committing our desires to his will we come into a life that is abundant in the good things that can help us and avoid the things that have the power to destroy us.

The Impossible Religion: Trust

Reflections

trust

source

This reflection series,  “The Impossible Religion,” reveals five specific problems that people have with the gospel of Jesus. These impossibilities arise when Christianity is a religion to achieve, rather than simply the “good news” of grace and redemption that will naturally transform us. Christianity outside of Christ’s redemption is in fact impossible, but with God nothing is impossible. For the next five weeks, we’ll go through Scriptures from five different areas of the Bible in order to confront these impossibilities:

Impossible Trust (Malachi 3)

In studying the Bible with people of various levels of faith, I encounter various levels of opposition to the Gospel and to God.  One of the main reasons people resist the Gospel is that they don’t trust God, and thus don’t trust the Gospel.

The Bible is clear about what God desires, and what he desires is echoed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  He is not interested in a two-hour block of your Sunday schedule to accommodate worship, fellowship and Bible study.  He wants everything.  When most people hear that, their eyes widen in suspicious disbelief.  This is an understandable reaction to such a request. To feel this initially is not wrong by any means.

Imagine yourself walking down the street. A stranger approaches you and says, “I want everything you own right now! I want your family, your possessions, your dreams, your deepest thoughts, your time, everything!”  Our natural reaction to that person would be similar if someone were trying to rob us in broad daylight.  Interestingly, robbery is what God is charging us with in Malachi 3.  Where we feel that God is demanding everything, leaving us with nothing of our own, God views our stubbornness to give back what was his in the first place as equally unjust.  However, only one of these perspectives views the other as a stranger and not an ally.  We view God as a mysterious figure demanding more than we want to give him, but he views us as children whom he has provided for who refuse to acknowledge his provision.

We humans are extremely protective beings.  We know what belongs to us and we know what we have to do to protect our possessions.  We also know that it is wrong for someone to take something that does not belong to them.

The reaction to God’s demand for “everything” is determined by whether we view God as friend or foe. The more we come to see God as he truly is, as a friend and not a foe, the more willingly and naturally we will allow him access to all of our belongings without hesitation or suspicion.

We don’t trust strangers because we know nothing about them, or about their interests and intentions. With this perception of God, the suspicious reaction to the request for “everything” is then quite natural.  To react otherwise would be naïve and dangerous and rather unnatural.  One of the first lessons that parents teach their children about going out in public is, “Don’t talk to strangers!”  Is this because our parents want us to grow to be anti-social and reclusive?  Hopefully not.  On the contrary, it is to protect us from being harmed. It is no surprise that we instinctively react with suspicion when we read that to follow Jesus means to deny ourselves and find ourselves in him alone by committing everything to him.

Many people have self-created ideas of God, perhaps formulated from their experiences of “Church” and “Christians.”  Perhaps they have mistakenly followed the path of least resistance that, to our current culture, is the online landscape of blogs and websites where everyone is an authority.  Perhaps they read one passage of the Bible dealing with gardens, snakes, sacrifices, etc. and concluded that Christianity was not for them.  Regardless of the influence, everyone has an idea of God that leads each person to relate to God in different ways.  The danger or our self-created ideas that come only from experience is that in forming them we often disregard the source of our understanding of God’s character.

In the Bible, one finds the uncompromised nature of God. With this portrait of God one can confidently and fairly arrive at the truest picture of who God, and not others, says he is.  Unfortunately, to do so leads down the undesirable path of actually sitting down and reading the Bible, which is long and often difficult to understand.  However, it is only by this method that one can finally meet the “stranger” personally and understand his interests and intentions.

By reading the scriptures we can come to realize the identity of this stranger who requests “everything,” and what he wants to do with our “everything.” What we find might surprise some.  The reality laid out in the Bible is that this stranger is no stranger at all.  He is a father who has known us longer than we have even considered him.  He always has our best interests in mind.  He specifically designed every aspect of our characters.  He is a father that delights in us and delights in our existence, and always desires to give us more.

In Malachi 3 we learn that God does not want to take from us, but rather desires to give us more than we ask for.  In fact, we learn in this passage that he actually wants to shock us with how much he plans to give us.   We read that he simply wants us to test this promise and then experience the realities of the promise fulfilled.  God doesn’t need your money for himself.  He doesn’t need money.  He doesn’t need your time because he is bored or lonely.  He doesn’t need your dreams because he wants to deprive us of satisfaction. The only reason he desires everything from you is because only when he has full access to your heart will he be able to release the potential of your existence that he created from the beginning.  Only upon receiving your “everything” will he know that you trust him with “anything.”

We are like an addict who feels totally fulfilled, yet to the outside is completely in need of care, incapable of helping ourselves efficiently.  God wants us to be free to experience a life of pure satisfaction that we cannot possibly fathom given our current state.  In the gospels, Jesus echoes this promise when he tells the disciples that none who left everything would not receive one hundred times more in return.

Jesus told his disciples that he does not give as the world gives.  So to understand God’s promise as a guarantee of financial or material exchange is to completely misunderstand the teaching.  What Jesus promises us is that when we give him access to our entire being, he will unleash desires of the heart that go beyond a one hundred dollar bill in the wallet.  He will release desires of the heart that we try each day of our life to satisfy.  He is the bank that we deposit our life savings in, that promises to yield an interest that is unparalleled and unfathomable.  He is the promise that will always be fulfilled.  What we learn from Malachi 3 is that it is up to us to test him on this radical promise.

The Impossible Religion: Devotion

Reflections

Source

This reflection series,  “The Impossible Religion,” reveals five specific problems that people have with the gospel of Jesus. These impossibilities arise when Christianity is a religion to achieve, rather than simply the “good news” of grace and redemption that will naturally transform us. Christianity outside of Christ’s redemption is in fact impossible, but with God nothing is impossible. For the next five weeks, we’ll go through Scriptures from five different areas of the Bible in order to confront these impossibilities:

  • Impossible Devotion
  • Impossible Standards
  • Impossible Trust
  • Impossible Power
  • Impossible Purpose

Impossible Devotion (Numbers 6)

This particular chapter in the book of Numbers, found in the first five books of the Bible, also known as “the Torah,” discusses a particular vow taken by some, but not all, Israelites.  This vow was “the vow of the Nazirite.”

For the purpose of time we will not discuss the details of the vow in depth. The main idea is that it was a vow of extreme devotion to God.

To many people, Christianity is where you “try your best.” But, deep down, we do this with a prepared surrender to the idea that we cannot achieve the devotion to God that is not merely suggested, but expected.  This rebellion and resignation arises out of a distinct misunderstanding of Christianity and the relationship to God depicted in the scriptures.  This rebellious resignation implies that the purpose of Christianity is to try your best, out of your own power, to please an impossible-to-please deity.

The problem with this perception is that, throughout the entire Bible, God speaks directly to his people, telling them that if they don’t want to serve him, if they don’t want to worship him, if they don’t want to love him, then there is no place for half-hearted attempts.

The Nazirite vow was chosen, not compulsory.  God did not demand this life from all of his people.  However, the heart of the Nazirite vow is a life that God’s people should ultimately desire.  The life of the Nazirite was one of complete and utter devotion to a God that deserved such worship and commitment. The Nazirite understood that living this way was the only way to justify the balance of what God had already done and what we could never do.  The Nazirite vow revealed a commitment to God that seems unrealistic: a level of self-denial that is offensive to some and impossible to the rest.

The only way in which to desire such a vow, such a life, and the only way by which to maintain this level of devotion is to understand the reason behind the choice to take it.

Taking a Nazirite vow does not mean that you try harder than the rest and therefore will receive greater praise from the creator.  Rather, the individual perceived this option as the choice that would best honor the relationship between a “Creator” and his “Creation.”  Taking a vow like that only arises out of the knowledge and understanding that anything less would be unworthy worship and service given God’s sacrifice for us already.

Being a Christian with the commitment like a Nazirite is impossible, if one approaches Christianity from the perspective that following God is simply something to add to your repertoire of good deeds and characteristics.  The vow is impossible from the “point-earning” perspective.

The only way that this level of devotion is possible and, more importantly, acceptable to God, is if it is born out of a new identity that surrenders the heart totally to God, the only one worthy of such praise.  Only a person remade in the image of Christ can willingly and wholeheartedly undertake such a vow.

Tuesday Devotional: Malachi 1

Devotional

Read Malachi 1:6-14bible

Most of the “religion” found today is purely an illusion, something man has created in order to serve himself.  Religion, for some, is a means to get what you want in life.  For others, it is a guideline of how to do the “right” things in this world.  Some use it as a standard of judgment and legislation that can control the good and bad of this world beyond the powers of our political and judicial systems.  Religion to many people has nothing to do with God and has everything to do with themselves.  It is a means to retaining control of their own lives, and being served and rewarded in the process.  Only when looking at the words of the Lord will one begin to notice the horrifying hypocrisies and delusions that religion in our world has often demonstrated and promoted.  To many believers in religion, God is no more real than Santa Claus or the legends of Genies in Lamps.  He is an image of hope or an encouraging figure of goodness and power that we all wish were true but, due to his radical claims, can’t possibly be.

Although religious people spend hours worshiping this God, they remain unchanged as a result of a complete lack of faith.  If God is God, he has to be understood and approached as God.  If God is God, we are nothing compared to him.  If God is God, we cannot escape him.  He is everywhere and knows everything.  If God is God, without him we have nothing and deserve nothing.  If God is God, he knows what is best for us better than we ever could ourselves.  If God is God, his words are stone and will last beyond our final breaths in this world.  If God is God, he deserves all that we have without any compromise or bargaining.  The truth is, many people have never genuinely approached God in these ways.  For many, God has less value to them than their boss, their family, their president, their celebrities of pop-culture, and ultimately themselves.  In many ways, God comes last.  God is the scramble for a few loose coins in the pockets of those caught off guard by the incoming offering basket on Sunday at church.  He is an afterthought. An inconvenience.  A burden.  In ignorance of the Word, one can maintain this position of complacency and disrespect.  But in the presence of his Word, this position is unacceptable and inexcusable.  God cannot be God while allowing us to reduce him to an insignificant figure standing in our over-powering shadows.  If he is God, we are always and ever in his shadow, and cannot see the realities of this world in any other way.

 

 

Tuesday Devotional: Zechariah 14

Devotional

Read Zechariah 14bible

Our lives are constantly filled with the pressure to make decisions.  Sometimes these are relatively easy to make.  On the other hand, they may be nearly impossible to make, and we often put them off in hopes that one day we will not have to take a firm stand one way or another.  In those moments that we find it difficult to decide a direction, we are often paralyzed by the fear of making a bad choice.  We fear that a bad decision will result in our losing something precious.  We fear that a bad decision will result in suffering that possibly could have been avoided.  At the heart of hard decisions is fear.  The irony of that matter is that the fear of making the “wrong” decision pales in comparison to the fear that we ought to have of our prolonged indecisiveness.  We develop a notion that making no decision is making a safe decision.  On the contrary, making no decision is the most dangerous and self-destructive position to take.  We think that committing to a “non-position” in the middle of two difficult ones will keep us safe from the consequences of either.  This is a man-made delusion. Merely a coping mechanism and nothing more.  A non-position is in fact a position.  It is simply a position that refuses to label itself as such.

In the case of the gospel of Christ, the message of salvation carries with its hopeful and promising news a warning to those who refuse to respond to the message of the Lord.  The easiest thing to do is to casually dismiss the gospel and occupy a position of indifference.  Without actually reading the gospel, this choice can be defended.  Upon reading the gospel, this choice self-destructs.  The gospel is not casual.  It is deadly serious.  A “non-position” in the face of the gospel has the same qualities as complete defiance to the message of Jesus Christ.  A “non-position” indulges in ignorance, the weakest of all positions on any given issue.  In facing consequences for any important issue, the “non-position” will be given the least sympathy and understanding.  In fact, the “non-position” is the position to be pitied the most.  The message of Jesus Christ in regards to salvation and his future return is both a serious promise and a serious warning.  By maintaining a casual stance in the presence of a serious message, one adopts a position of irresponsible defiance, just for the sake of holding onto a “non-position” that has absolutely nothing to offer, and will lead to losing everything.

Tuesday Devotional: Haggai 1

Devotional

Read Haggai 1:1-15bible

The driving force behind most of our lives is the desire to find satisfaction.  Most of us will spend our entire lives seeking it out.  There are thousands of different ways we all try to grasp this elusive satisfaction, but regardless of what “it” is we chase, the fact remains that we all do a lot of chasing.  While we dedicate our lives toward striving to possess this satisfaction, the reality is that we repeatedly find ourselves closing ground on satisfaction, only to realize that we have not gained any real ground at all.  Regardless of the effort we put forth in trying to satisfy ourselves, we all are confronted by a harsh reality that we are never truly satisfied with whatever it was we chased for so long.  No matter how hard we try, we all want to have and be more than we are.  We all bear an expectation of satisfaction that nothing in this world can truly satisfy. Whereas our expectations of satisfaction are working off of a system of perfection and purity, the things with which we seek to satisfy this deep expectation are superficial at best, and do not possess the ability to satisfy us the way we expect to.

God’s desire that we put him first is not so that we can follow in melancholy servitude.  God desires our satisfaction.  If God is truly God, he knows far more than we do, and this must also apply to our needs.  While we convince ourselves that we have a firm grasp on what will satisfy us, the truth is that we don’t.  Just as a child would argue with a parent that candy is a far better choice for dinner than vegetables and fruit, the child is speaking as a child, with underdeveloped wisdom. To another child this reasoning works, but to an adult is ridiculous.  In choosing candy over nutritious food, the child is seeking to satisfy a superficial need for taste and pleasure.  While this candy is satisfying on the superficial level, it offers nothing for the child’s body and health and will make life much harder on the child if the years of candy-consumption proceed.  Similarly, God does not desire that we not be satisfied with our meals, but that he be fully content.  He desires that we eat what will truly be good for us and will provide for a healthier, more fulfilling life over time.  God is a “God with us,” and not a “God against us.”  His desire that we put him first does not mean him standing front of us, frustrating our progress.  Rather, he commands it so that he can lead us into a more satisfying life, and that he share in that satisfaction with us every step of the way.