Here's the journal entry for my quiet time with God this morning.
Look: “It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them.” (Hosea 11:3)
Eight-centuries before Jesus’ birth, the prophet Hosea was used by God to call God’s people to repentance and faith. If they refused to respond to God’s grace, their faithlessness, idolatry, and injustice would catch up with them; they would be overrun by powerful enemies and be sent into exile. Ephraim was the largest of the tribes of Israel and was sometimes used, as here, to describe all of God’s people, the entire nation.
God uses different metaphors to describe His relationship with His people. Sometimes, God is portrayed as husband to a faithless wife. Here, God is the nurturing father who raised His people from infancy, who now in their adolescence, have spurned God. They’ve forgotten their father, even if they sometimes still invoke His name (Hosea 11:7). They’ve forgotten that it was He Who taught them to walk, Who brushed them off and cleaned their skinned egos and hearts when they stumbled.
Listen: How easily we forget God when everything is going well. There may be no atheists in foxholes, when adversity and pain target us. We often are prayerful and pious in our desperation. But when things “smooth out,” we forget about the One Who steadied us and set us on the paths to healings of all kinds. We forget about the One in Whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
But if we disconnect from the God Who, in Jesus Christ, gives us “life...to the full” (John 10:10), we walk away from life. We walk into death Arrogance and the myth of self-sufficiency sets in. “My people are determined to turn from me,” God says of His people in Hosea 11:7. Then, when hard times come or times when we face the consequences of our idolatry and hard-heartedness, as they do inevitably come in our fallen world, we blame God for not taking care of us. Or we disavow His existence.
But this verse speaks of God’s tender feelings for His people, the same tender feelings that Jesus says God has for all the people of the world (John 3:16). He wants a relationship with us. He doesn’t want us to remain perpetually infants. God wants us to grow in our relationship with Him, in our faith. It’s we who choose either to walk away from God or to remain spiritual infants. God wants to have a grown-up relationship with Him, one in which He empowers us to live in the freedom from sin, death, and idolatry that is our childish default mode, in the freedom He gives to us to love Him and to love all of our neighbors.
To those who have been made God’s people through Jesus, Jesus says, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15)
I talk with my father almost every day. I honor him as my father. I respect him. But now that dad is 88 and I’m 64, our relationship is as much one between two old friends as it is as between father and son. We have many shared memories and interests. We strive to be good to each other. That’s a little bit like the relationship God wants to develop with believers saved through Jesus, I think. God is always God: our Creator Who is infinite, eternal, perfect in love, justice, and power. To honor and worship Him as our only God and King is to give Him His due. But the One Who gives me life also wants to be my Friend. He wants me to get over myself and place myself in His hands and at His disposal so that He can make me over into the adult child of my Father that I’m intended to be.
This process of renewal, which is called sanctification, is a gift of grace from God by which He makes us over in the image of Jesus...if we will only be with Him and let Him love us and change us and show us the way. This is the process that happens, the apostle Paul says, when we all “...who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)
God wants those to Whom He gives life and gives life again in Christ to grow into the men and women He meant for us to be when He first gave us life. He wants us to be able to say, along with Paul: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” (1 Corinthians 13:11)
Respond: Today, Lord, help me to grow up: to let go of my hubris and pretended self-sufficiency, to ignore the calls of this world’s false gods: security, acceptance by others, popularity, power, ease, comfort, stuff I don’t need, and a thousand other things I could mention. Help me to keep my eyes, my attentions and my intentions on Christ alone and so have my views of the world and my daily activities changed by the freedom only You give to believers to become all that You make us to be, all that Christ died and rose to set us free to be. In Jesus’ name. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Showing posts with label John 15:15. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John 15:15. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Friday, July 20, 2018
Wanted!
Below is the journal from my morning quiet time with God.
Look: “‘In that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘you will call me “my husband”; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’” (Hosea 2:16)
Hosea was called to confront Judah and Israel for their prostitution, their idolatry, worshiping the baal idols rather than the one true God Who saved and nurtured them by His grace.
The baals were sticks of wood (Hosea 4:10) that the people--God’s people--called “master,” which is what baal means.
But God wants to have an entirely different relationship with His people. He wants to be their husband.
Listen: While Biblical faith never ceases to treat the God now ultimately revealed to everyone in Jesus with respect and awe, calling Him things like Lord, Master, and King, God also, throughout both testaments, calls people to an intimacy we could never have with an inanimate stick of wood.
Jesus tells those who seek to follow Him and do God’s will (disciples, ancient and modern): “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15)
Unlike the ancient deities people worshiped that might take on human form in order to have sport with people or to use them sexually, the one true God revealed to Israel and then to the world in Jesus, cares about us. This is also true of all the deities we worship or may be tempted to worship today. (I like how Martin Luther explains idolatry to those of us who may think that it’s solely the behavior of superstitious ancient peoples who aren’t as smart as we moderns are: “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.”)
John 3:16, of course, is one place where Jesus talks about how much God loves us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
This is stunning whenever I think about it. (And sadly, I don’t think about it enough!) God cares about me. God wants a personal relationship with me, not as opposed to a relationship with the rest of His people in the Church or with those who are outside the fellowship of the Church (with whom I’m called to share the good news of everlasting life with God that only comes through faith in Jesus), but as part of those other relationships!
God is no inanimate, implacable deity. God is the Creator of the universe Who seeks a relationship of love with His creatures, especially with those who are made in His image (Genesis 1:27). He aches for we human beings, weeps for us, loves us, gets angry with us, not for His sake or to satisfy any sick need for codependency, but simply because He wants what is best for us. God yearns for a relationship of intimate love between Himself and, in Lewis’ wonderful phrasing, “the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve.”
The God of the Bible, the God we see in Jesus, is a living God and He wants us to live with Him forever. This is what lay behind the New Testament imagery of Jesus as the bridegroom and the Church, the fellowship of believers in Jesus, the only earthly thing that will survive the end of this world, as His bride.
Respond: Forgive me, Lord, for sometimes keeping you at arm’s length, avoiding intimate, quiet moments with You in Your Word and in prayer. It’s so stupid too, when I avoid You because I don’t want to be confronted for my sins--my failure to love You or love others, because You already know everything about me, yet still love me and want a relationship with You!
Forgive me for hardening my heart to all those other people you love and who you free me to love in Your name.
Today, I cherish and worship You not just as my Lord, Master, and King, but also as my Savior and Friend, Who saves me from myself, from sin, and from death by Your grace through the faith in Christ You have fostered in me. Thank You, Lord. I love You. In Jesus’ name. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Look: “‘In that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘you will call me “my husband”; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’” (Hosea 2:16)
Hosea was called to confront Judah and Israel for their prostitution, their idolatry, worshiping the baal idols rather than the one true God Who saved and nurtured them by His grace.
The baals were sticks of wood (Hosea 4:10) that the people--God’s people--called “master,” which is what baal means.
But God wants to have an entirely different relationship with His people. He wants to be their husband.
Listen: While Biblical faith never ceases to treat the God now ultimately revealed to everyone in Jesus with respect and awe, calling Him things like Lord, Master, and King, God also, throughout both testaments, calls people to an intimacy we could never have with an inanimate stick of wood.
Jesus tells those who seek to follow Him and do God’s will (disciples, ancient and modern): “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15)
Unlike the ancient deities people worshiped that might take on human form in order to have sport with people or to use them sexually, the one true God revealed to Israel and then to the world in Jesus, cares about us. This is also true of all the deities we worship or may be tempted to worship today. (I like how Martin Luther explains idolatry to those of us who may think that it’s solely the behavior of superstitious ancient peoples who aren’t as smart as we moderns are: “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.”)
John 3:16, of course, is one place where Jesus talks about how much God loves us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
This is stunning whenever I think about it. (And sadly, I don’t think about it enough!) God cares about me. God wants a personal relationship with me, not as opposed to a relationship with the rest of His people in the Church or with those who are outside the fellowship of the Church (with whom I’m called to share the good news of everlasting life with God that only comes through faith in Jesus), but as part of those other relationships!
God is no inanimate, implacable deity. God is the Creator of the universe Who seeks a relationship of love with His creatures, especially with those who are made in His image (Genesis 1:27). He aches for we human beings, weeps for us, loves us, gets angry with us, not for His sake or to satisfy any sick need for codependency, but simply because He wants what is best for us. God yearns for a relationship of intimate love between Himself and, in Lewis’ wonderful phrasing, “the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve.”
The God of the Bible, the God we see in Jesus, is a living God and He wants us to live with Him forever. This is what lay behind the New Testament imagery of Jesus as the bridegroom and the Church, the fellowship of believers in Jesus, the only earthly thing that will survive the end of this world, as His bride.
Respond: Forgive me, Lord, for sometimes keeping you at arm’s length, avoiding intimate, quiet moments with You in Your Word and in prayer. It’s so stupid too, when I avoid You because I don’t want to be confronted for my sins--my failure to love You or love others, because You already know everything about me, yet still love me and want a relationship with You!
Forgive me for hardening my heart to all those other people you love and who you free me to love in Your name.
Today, I cherish and worship You not just as my Lord, Master, and King, but also as my Savior and Friend, Who saves me from myself, from sin, and from death by Your grace through the faith in Christ You have fostered in me. Thank You, Lord. I love You. In Jesus’ name. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Friday, January 26, 2018
God can be my friend, never my buddy
Here are reflections from a recent quiet time with God. I try to do this five days a week, letting God's Word speak to me in a dynamic, relational way. To see how I approach quiet time, read here. I hope that these journal entries are helpful to others. But nothing can replace your own personal quiet time encounters with God!
Look: “...And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” (Exodus 3:6)
God has just revealed Himself to Moses in Midian at the burning bush. When Moses realizes that he’s in the presence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he hides his face. Moses understands the infinite distance between God and himself: God is immortal; Moses is mortal. God is perfect; Moses isn’t. God is the Creator; Moses is the creature. God is sinless; Moses is, like the rest of the human race, sinful.
No wonder Moses hid his face. His response is appropriate, understandable. Centuries later, Isaiah was conscious of the infinite distance between God and himself when he encountered God. He knew that for an unclean human to dare to look at God meant death. He cried out after God had initiated His call to Isaiah to be His prophet: “ “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5)
Theologians and experts in comparative religions say that Moses and Isaiah experienced “numinous awe,” awe, respect, terror, fear in the presence of the God of all creation.
Neither in Biblical history nor in the history of Jews and Christians since would this be the first time that people experienced awe or terror in God’s presence. During their wilderness wanderings, the people of Israel, who God called Moses to lead, caught a glimpse of God’s holiness and were terrified. They asked Moses to act as a go-between so that they wouldn’t have to look at God and be killed by the infinite distance. "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die." (Exodus 20:19)
Decades later, Israel would marvel at how Moses enjoyed an intimate relationship with God. Deuteronomy 34:10 says, “Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face…”
Here’s what strikes me in this passage: Where is my numinous awe?
I often seem to treat God as an afterthought.
Or I take Him and, maybe worse, His grace for granted.
I often ignore Him or treat Him like a buddy.
Listen: Of course, with Jesus, the new covenant or the new testament has come. God has revealed Himself to all people in Jesus Christ. John writes in the prologue to his gospel: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” (John 1:19)
In Jesus, to use Martin Luther’s phrase, all are able to see God’s friendly face, the same friendly face Moses, Isaiah, and others came to “see” as their relationship with God developed.
God IS perfect. God IS immortal. God IS sinless, righteous, and, in Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich’s phrase, “wholly other.”
But God loves us, cares for us, and wants a relationship with us. If these things weren’t true, God wouldn’t have met Moses and Isaiah. And if these things weren’t true, He wouldn’t have reached out to Gentiles as well as Jews, to the whole world, in Jesus Christ.
God wants to be reconciled to us, to forgive us our sins, to give us new life, and to shower His love on us for all eternity. Jesus told Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
To all who repent and believe in God as revealed to us in Jesus, God offers life, forgiveness, citizenship in His kingdom, and intimacy with God.
Through Jesus, we can speak with God and ask of God anytime, anywhere. “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full,” Jesus says (John 16:24).
“...we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin [God has been subjected to temptation and death when He shared in human life in Jesus]. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16)
Citizens of God’s kingdom, believers in Jesus, are to approach the God revealed in Jesus, our “high priest,” “with boldness,” the preacher in Hebrews says. But it’s interesting to see where Jesus is as we approach Him: “God’s throne of grace.”
No matter the intimate friendship with God that Jesus opens to those who believe in Him (John 15:15), He is still the King of all creation, my God, my Creator. He still deserves our honor, praise, and submission. When unbelieving Thomas finally realized all of Who Jesus is, he fell to his knees and confessed Jesus, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).
The God Who seeks intimacy with me is also owed by submission, surrender, awe, and praise. In fact, His desire for intimacy with a sinner like me, along with His desire to cleanse me of sin and make me fit for living in His kingdom, should incite me to the deepest and most reverent of fear, honor, and praise.
But too often, I turn Jesus into a buddy.
Or my prayers are like emails dashed off to an indulgent uncle, an easy mark.
Not only does such an approach to God mock Him and His desire for closeness with us, it risks turning God into an idol, a good luck charm. Instead of being an expression of an intimate friendship with God, my “prayers” risk becoming messages to a false god I’ve created in my own head, a god I use for my convenience and comfort. I don’t want that! I want real intimacy with God! And I never want to forget that God is God and I am not!
Forgive me, Lord! For taking You for granted. For forgetting, in the words of the preacher of intimacy with You, that it is nonetheless, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). Forgive me for forgetting that only You are God and I am not. With the saints in the heavenly city, help me to say and believe, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!" (Revelation 5:12).
I realize that this is a practical issue. If I don’t reverence, fear, honor, praise, and glorify God, it indicates a deficiency in my understanding of You, a deficiency in my relationship with You.
Help me, Lord, to heed the words of the preacher in Hebrews 12:28: “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,”
Respond: Lord, to help me to get in the habit of acknowledging Your holiness and giving it to You, help me to spend time next week contemplating several passages of Scripture for five consecutive days: John 9:16-24; Revelation 5; psalms of praise. Help me to note reasons to honor and praise You. Help me to understand more fully the depths of Your love and grace. Teach me to honor You more fully as God. Help me to not be flippant. Help me to know You more fully as my best Friend, but not my buddy. In Jesus’ name I pray.
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Look: “...And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” (Exodus 3:6)
God has just revealed Himself to Moses in Midian at the burning bush. When Moses realizes that he’s in the presence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he hides his face. Moses understands the infinite distance between God and himself: God is immortal; Moses is mortal. God is perfect; Moses isn’t. God is the Creator; Moses is the creature. God is sinless; Moses is, like the rest of the human race, sinful.
No wonder Moses hid his face. His response is appropriate, understandable. Centuries later, Isaiah was conscious of the infinite distance between God and himself when he encountered God. He knew that for an unclean human to dare to look at God meant death. He cried out after God had initiated His call to Isaiah to be His prophet: “ “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5)
Theologians and experts in comparative religions say that Moses and Isaiah experienced “numinous awe,” awe, respect, terror, fear in the presence of the God of all creation.
Neither in Biblical history nor in the history of Jews and Christians since would this be the first time that people experienced awe or terror in God’s presence. During their wilderness wanderings, the people of Israel, who God called Moses to lead, caught a glimpse of God’s holiness and were terrified. They asked Moses to act as a go-between so that they wouldn’t have to look at God and be killed by the infinite distance. "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die." (Exodus 20:19)
Decades later, Israel would marvel at how Moses enjoyed an intimate relationship with God. Deuteronomy 34:10 says, “Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face…”
Here’s what strikes me in this passage: Where is my numinous awe?
I often seem to treat God as an afterthought.
Or I take Him and, maybe worse, His grace for granted.
I often ignore Him or treat Him like a buddy.
Listen: Of course, with Jesus, the new covenant or the new testament has come. God has revealed Himself to all people in Jesus Christ. John writes in the prologue to his gospel: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” (John 1:19)
In Jesus, to use Martin Luther’s phrase, all are able to see God’s friendly face, the same friendly face Moses, Isaiah, and others came to “see” as their relationship with God developed.
God IS perfect. God IS immortal. God IS sinless, righteous, and, in Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich’s phrase, “wholly other.”
But God loves us, cares for us, and wants a relationship with us. If these things weren’t true, God wouldn’t have met Moses and Isaiah. And if these things weren’t true, He wouldn’t have reached out to Gentiles as well as Jews, to the whole world, in Jesus Christ.
God wants to be reconciled to us, to forgive us our sins, to give us new life, and to shower His love on us for all eternity. Jesus told Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
To all who repent and believe in God as revealed to us in Jesus, God offers life, forgiveness, citizenship in His kingdom, and intimacy with God.
Through Jesus, we can speak with God and ask of God anytime, anywhere. “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full,” Jesus says (John 16:24).
“...we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin [God has been subjected to temptation and death when He shared in human life in Jesus]. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16)
Citizens of God’s kingdom, believers in Jesus, are to approach the God revealed in Jesus, our “high priest,” “with boldness,” the preacher in Hebrews says. But it’s interesting to see where Jesus is as we approach Him: “God’s throne of grace.”
No matter the intimate friendship with God that Jesus opens to those who believe in Him (John 15:15), He is still the King of all creation, my God, my Creator. He still deserves our honor, praise, and submission. When unbelieving Thomas finally realized all of Who Jesus is, he fell to his knees and confessed Jesus, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).
The God Who seeks intimacy with me is also owed by submission, surrender, awe, and praise. In fact, His desire for intimacy with a sinner like me, along with His desire to cleanse me of sin and make me fit for living in His kingdom, should incite me to the deepest and most reverent of fear, honor, and praise.
But too often, I turn Jesus into a buddy.
Or my prayers are like emails dashed off to an indulgent uncle, an easy mark.
Not only does such an approach to God mock Him and His desire for closeness with us, it risks turning God into an idol, a good luck charm. Instead of being an expression of an intimate friendship with God, my “prayers” risk becoming messages to a false god I’ve created in my own head, a god I use for my convenience and comfort. I don’t want that! I want real intimacy with God! And I never want to forget that God is God and I am not!
Forgive me, Lord! For taking You for granted. For forgetting, in the words of the preacher of intimacy with You, that it is nonetheless, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). Forgive me for forgetting that only You are God and I am not. With the saints in the heavenly city, help me to say and believe, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!" (Revelation 5:12).
I realize that this is a practical issue. If I don’t reverence, fear, honor, praise, and glorify God, it indicates a deficiency in my understanding of You, a deficiency in my relationship with You.
Help me, Lord, to heed the words of the preacher in Hebrews 12:28: “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,”
Respond: Lord, to help me to get in the habit of acknowledging Your holiness and giving it to You, help me to spend time next week contemplating several passages of Scripture for five consecutive days: John 9:16-24; Revelation 5; psalms of praise. Help me to note reasons to honor and praise You. Help me to understand more fully the depths of Your love and grace. Teach me to honor You more fully as God. Help me to not be flippant. Help me to know You more fully as my best Friend, but not my buddy. In Jesus’ name I pray.
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
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