He doesn’t need me, He wants me

 

This world is full of broken things. Broken lives, broken hopes, broken dreams, marriages, childhoods, broken spirits and broken homes. Over the years I’ve had the honor and the privilege to work with some of these broken things; I’ve listened to their stories, which they somehow tell me freely and without hesitation. I’ve watched them cry at the prospects of living in a shelter, on the street, on their own, or worse: an irresponsible adult! I do my very best to, somehow, sprinkle some Jesus in there but I do it, unfortunately, from a position where I cannot reinforce it in their daily lives: I don’t go home with them; they are not my children.

Thankfully, they are Someone’s children and He loves them with an unimaginable Love! You see, so many times, these “misfit toys” believe, from very early on, that love, like respect, is earned. Dad walked out on us so if I could earn his love, he’ll come back; mom ran away and if I could only have found a way to make her love me, she would’ve stayed. This transactional love is not what our Father imagined when He placed Adam in the Garden. He envisioned an intimate, transparent, reckless love with no blemish or shadows hanging overhead: no quid pro quo’s, no tit for tat: He created us for a relationship with Him and that that relationship would serve as a model for the relationships we have with each other. The Triune God is Perfect Love because there is God the Father who is the Lover, Jesus the Son, who is the Loved and the Holy Spirit which is the how He loves. God was not lonely or bored when He created mankind; He wasn’t involved in a domestic dispute and therefore needed an out: God, in His unimaginable loving Kindness, created us in His own image so that He could, we could experience that immensely deep communion with Him as well.

Our role, as Born-Again, Spirit-filled, Bible-believing Christians is to tell the world, this broken Island of Misfit Toys, the Truth. The Truth is this: God doesn’t need them; God doesn’t need anybody! God doesn’t need them, doesn’t need me, doesn’t need Christians: God has no need for any of us! We are the ones in need! We are the ones that need to tell people the Truth and that is: God doesn’t need them, God wants them! The scandal of Grace is exactly that, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us! There’s nothing to be earned: no parent to win over, no spouse to win back, to hill to climb, to valley to walk through: God wants a relationship. He is Eternally ready, Fully willing, and Perfectly able to love them completely!

When the healing doesn’t come…

You’ve done all you could: you’ve prayed, you’ve fasted, went to all the right doctors, asked the opinion of every expert and they all tell you the same thing: ”we don’t know what is wrong with you”; or, they do know what the issue is but they have no cure, no solution, vaccine, ointment, pill, treatment, lifestyle and, above all, no amount of money can buy you, earn you, or get your hands on your healing. You’ve gone to the pastor, the men’s group, Friday night service, Saturday morning prayer breakfast: you’ve done it all, and no amount of intercessory prayer has broken down this wall, this barrier, this obstacle for you. God has simply, at best, said either “not now” or,  at worse, “no”; when all you wanted to hear was a resounding “YES”.

You think back to all the times you quoted Job to yourself and to others. Unfortunately, as the song lyrics can attest to: “it’s easy to sing when there’s nothing that brings me down, but what will I say when I’m held to the flames like I am right now”? You remember your conviction-full “amen”’s when the pastor would say “either He is God of all or He isn’t God at all”. It seems like someone has come to collect on all of your affirmations of faith; a trial by fire to see if you would “curse Him to [His] face” as the Devil said Job would do. 

What do you do when the healing doesn’t come, when the night is too long, when the pain is too great? The psalmist remarked that he would have “fainted had I not believed that I would see the Goodness of the Lord in the land of the living”. The Land of the Living is both here and the Kingdom! How else could Job affirm that “though He slay me yet will I trust Him!”. What was there to trust in Him for? The answer: more than you could ever imagine! 

For born-again, Spirit-filled, Bible-believing Christians, living is the hard sell; dying is gain! In these difficult times, where the world, the flesh and the mind are thinking and talking about anything and everything but God, do as David did and encourage yourself “in the Lord”!  Life for Christians is a win-win proposition: God assures us that, if we put our trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and follow Him and live circumspectly to His precepts in this life, He will watch over us and guide through the hills and valleys for the furtherance of His Kingdom and, when He’s good and ready, bring us Home to Glory and that alone is worth the trouble!

Come, let Us Pray Together!

What a day that we be, when my Jesus i will see, As He takes me by the hand and takes me to the Promised Land. What a day, Glorious day that will be!

Has your need to “know” and “understand” driven you to madness yet? How many times so far: once, twice, more? I agree that the heart of the apologist is to know and to understand but we should never loose sight of what our subject matter is: God! It is, by definition, impossible to know him fully, at least in this current life. The Bible teaches us that:

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known”. 1 Corinthians 13:12

Even the greatest apologist of all times, the Apostle Paul, knew that what really saved people was not “head knowledge” but the move of the Spirit in their lives. In fact, when speaking to the Corinthians, Paul writes:

1 And I, brethren, when I came to you declaring unto you the testimony of God, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom.2 For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.4 And my speech and my preaching were not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith should not stand on the wisdom of man, but on the power of God.– 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (bold and underline are mine).

What a powerful revelation from the Apostle Paul: “that our faith should stand…on the Power of God”! Sometimes we might feel that we have an obligation to dump all of our knowledge on someone to win the argument and prove to them the rationality of our beliefs, almost as though it were up to us to defend the Word of God. That, fortunately could not be farther from the truth. In fact, it’s the other way around: it is the Word of God that defends us as we “put on the full armor of God…for we wrestle not with flesh” and since we do not wrestle with flesh, our battle cannot be and cannot be won in the body but through prayer and the reading of the Word. An unbeliever is not merely the person standing in front of you but the spirit of unbelief that is inside of them and that spirit is just as knowledgeable as you are which means that the only thing that can save that person is God through a miraculous work in their life.

The next time you find yourself at your wit’s end with trying to wrap your head around the whole Scripture or find that your apologetic is not working the way you thought it would, remember that apologetic is not a part of it not the only part and the battle is certainly not yours!.

Acceptable Sacrifice

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. – Romans 12:1

The Bible teaches us that we are to bring sacrifices to God that are worthy of He who is receiving them. But what can we possibly bring to God that is an acceptable sacrifice; once Jesus paid the price for all of our sins, what can we possibly give God something that is new and fresh and worthy of being received by the Creator of the Universe? Just like the old saying “what do you buy a man that has everything”?

The Psalmist David (Psalms 49:14) as well as the writer of Hebrews (13:15) teach us to bring “sacrifice of Praise”. Praise is the only thing that we can bring to God that He will accept; we give it out of our own volition that is spotless and clean in His Presence. Because it comes from our spirit, it is “pure and undefiled” worship; it is not out of material goods which, technically, we received from Him in the first place.

God the Father wants us to want to worship Him in spirit and in Truth. God created us so that we may have a relationship with Him. Relationship with God is no different than relationship with humans, it requires time, effort and sacrifice. Now sacrifice is not intended to be some sort of self-inflicting pain ritual but rather a willful decision to give of yourself to the other person. What better way to worship God in an undefiled Temple than to offer up sacrifice of praise, which is after all our “reasonable and acceptable service“.