Why We Can't Get Along

"When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. "  Galatians 5:19-20

This is the definite Bible list of what's wrong with human nature.  This is what sin has done to us.  A lot of what is on the list is about what you would expect:  sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, drunkenness, and wild parties.  That sounds like what you would expect from a Biblical description of sin.  But let's look at the other half of the list:  hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, and envy.

A few years ago a man in California plaintively asked a now famous question:  "Why can't we just get along?"  And this is the reason why.  Sin, by it's very nature, is divisive and quarrelsome.  This is human nature 101.  What can we learn from this?

We can be more understanding of the political process.  Go back two paragraphs and look at that list again the next time you see the battling talking heads on the TV.  There never has been and never will be a time in which the people in politics put the good of the majority above all other values.  There are exceptions, but they simply prove the rule.  If you want leaders who will be noble and enlightened you'll have to wait for the millennium.

We can be a little more thoughtful about the way we do church.  If you are the devil, and you understand that all this stuff is in human nature, you are going to constantly attack local churches by trying to get a small group of people together to get rid of the pastor.  When we get into church disputes are we really being motivated by principles or is a weakness in our nature being manipulated by evil spirits?

We can be really careful in our relationships at work and at home.  If you reread that list you might wonder if anybody could ever stay married to anyone else for a lifetime.  And you should certainly have a clearer understanding of why there is so much gossip and office politics at work.

How should we respond?  We should love everybody and forgive everybody.  We should be "the very soul of kindness."  And we should always keep a careful watch on ourselves.  There is a lot of junk inside of me.  I have to hold tight to Jesus if I am going to walk in love and be willing to forgive those who sin against me.

Blind Captivity

"The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will."  2 Timothy 2:24-26

I've been praying this passage as a prayer for a Christian woman who has abandoned and divorced her husband.  And every time I pray it seems backwards.  I would expect a knowledge of the truth to lead to repentance.  Wouldn't you?  The devil has you confused ("held captive by him to do his will").  So the Holy Spirit begins to reason with you.  He helps you to understand what you are doing is wrong and why it is wrong.  And because of this you repent.

That's not what the passage says.  The passage says that the repentance is a gift from God and the knowledge comes after the repentance.  You don't repent because you came to your senses, you come to your sense after you repent!  Does this mean that the devil can build some kind of a stronghold in my life (a "snare" that holds me "captive to do his will") that is so strong that I can't think my way out of it?  Does he bring us into a state of pure moral blindness where we simply can not see the truth any longer (at least as it applies to the sin that binds us)?


So all of a sudden, while praying for this woman, I find myself asking if I shouldn't begin to pray this for me!  In what areas of my life am I so blind, so completely given over to Satan's control, that I can't even begin to see things from a godly perspective until God Himself rescues me by giving me the gift of repentance?  Where am I acting so irrationally that I literally need God's help so that I can come to my senses?


Let us pray.

A Penny for Your Thoughts

So imagine yourself holding up a penny at arm's length.  Then visualize how small one of Lincoln's eyes would be with the penny held out at the end of your arm.  The director of the Hubble telescope aimed his telescope at a piece of the night sky just about that size and kept it aimed at that tiny point for ten days.  They picked a piece of the sky by the Big Dipper, a boring part of the sky that didn't have any bright stars or any galaxies that they knew of.  And this is what they found in that little piece of the sky the size of Lincoln's eye on a penny held out at arm's length.

They found thousands of galaxies that they had never seen before.  And each galaxy had 100's of billions of stars.  Intrigued by their amazing discovery, they wondered if they had happened to aim the telescope at a part of the sky that was unusually crowded.  So they repeated the experiment with a part of the southern sky and they found the exact same thing.  As a result of this research they now believe that are 50 billion galaxies, each one with hundreds of billions of stars.

Not only that, in the middle of next week we have to move my dad into a different nursing home.  His Medicare funding has run out so he has to find a new place.  He has a free ride with the VA, but the closest VA nursing home is in Freeport, IL.  None of us live in Freeport, IL.  I'm the closest and it's a little more than two hours away.  The good news is that a dear friend of mine runs a nursing home 1.2 miles from my house and is going to see if she can get a contract with the VA.  But that could take months.  In the meantime I have to leave my dad with strangers and that just seems wrong.  Hopefully they will be the same kind of people who work at my group home, people who really care about their residents and who will treat him with love and respect.

What is the connection between outer space and my dad?  It's found in Romans 8:18.  "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us."  This verse teaches us that being a Christian does not give us an exemption when it comes to suffering.  I don't know that the new home will cause my dad to suffer all that much.  Dad has no memory of your visit after you leave.  He's very happy to see you while you're there, but he doesn't remember it.  So he won't be suffering because I can't get up to see him every day.  Also, dad has always been a very stoic kind of a guy.  He became very accepting of the nursing home he has been living in a remarkably short time.  I think he'll probably adapt to the new place just as quickly.  But he won't be home and he won't be with family.  He could come to live with us but he requires 24 hour supervision and none of us can afford to quit our jobs.  And we don't have the money to make the house accessible.

So what do I do with all of this, other than just learn to accept what I can't change?  I can do what Christians always must do, what God Himself bids us to do.  Like the Hubble telescope I can look up and beyond.  It can look at the big picture.  And the big picture is that my God made 50 billion galaxies, each one containing 100's of billions of stars, without breaking a sweat.  And all of the incomprehensible vastness of space is not big enough to contain my God.  He is bigger than space.  And this infinite being has big plans for my dad.

These plans are so glorious that all of the suffering that you can experience in a really horrible human life is nothing compared to how wonderful it is going to be in the life to come.  The beautiful, perfect mind that created all his is going to spend "the ages to come" expressing the "surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us."  (Ephesians 2:7)  The infinite, perfect mind of God will spend the rest of forever finding ways to be kind to us.

There is a greatness about the souls in heaven.  On earth we might call it "gravitas."  There is a nobility.  You may be an airhead in this life, but you won't remain an airhead in heaven.  Those souls have been fully enlightened and they are creatures of great wisdom.  They are also creatures of great and profound joy.  They live in an ongoing celestial high where the drug of choice is the love of God which gives you an everlasting high that never stresses or strains you in any way.  My mom has already experienced this transformation, and the odds are that my father will experience it before I will.  But the day will come when we will all be together again.  And we will see more clearly than we can right now that in the grand, cosmic scheme of things that it was not possible for God to create a universe with free will beings who could avoid all suffering.

If you could somehow come to us in that place and ask us, "Was it worth it?  Were the trials and pains of your earthly pilgrimage a price too high to pay to come to this place and to be as you are right now?"  This is what our answer would most surely be.  "'The sufferings' are 'not worthy to be compared with the glory' in which we now exist."

25 “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27 And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? 28 And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, 29 yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31 Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32 For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6 NASB)

This passage teaches us not to worry about our finances. Jesus refers to those who worry as those of “little faith.” Faith is the cure for worry. Small faith results in great anxiety. A large faith is the key to inner peace which is much more valuable than great wealth. Note that Jesus wants those with small faith to grow and increase in their faith.

Faith can be strengthened through meditating on a line of reasoning or teaching. Jesus seeks to increase their faith by making simple arguments that anyone can understand. By meditating on these arguments and repeating them over and over again you can grow in faith. These are some of the things that you can and should be saying to yourself.

“God feeds the birds of the air even though they don’t plan ahead and work to guarantee their food supply. God will provide me with food because I am much more important than the birds. God is willing to clothe the flowers, even though they only live for a very short period of time. God is willing to clothe me. I am more valuable than a flower.”

“Worry doesn’t do any good. I can’t add one single hour to my life by worrying. On the other hand, I can waste many hours of my life by worrying. If I put God’s kingdom first in my life God will provide for my basic necessities.”

Teachers in the “faith movement” place a strong emphasis on confessing your faith. They say that you can go from a weak faith to a strong faith by confessing a promise of God over and over again, preferably out loud. On the basis of Matthew six I think we would have to say that the faith teachers are right on this one. Jesus is giving us arguments that we can repeat to ourselves over and over again so that we can grow in faith and inner peace.

We should note that there is no promise here that God will give me luxuries. There are other passages that would seem to indicate that God will help us financially to do better than the simple necessities of life, but first we must have our hearts right before God. Paul echoes what Jesus is saying in Matthew six when he exhorts us in I Timothy 6:8, “But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.”

We live in times of tremendous financial uncertainty. There are those who fear that we may actually slip from a recession into a worldwide depression. It would be a very good thing for every Christian to confront this fear with bold and biblical thinking.

What would happen if I were to lose my job and be unable to find another? What would happen if I were to lose my cell phone, my cable TV, and my internet access? What would happen if my computer and my X-Box were to break (as they inevitably will) and I would be unable to replace them? What if I could no longer afford a car and had to rely on my bicycle, walking, and public transportation? What would I do? How would I survive?

I would be just fine. I would put God first and trust Him to help me with the real necessities of life. The sun would continue to rise and set. And my personal happiness would continue to be in direct proportion to the amount of time I spend seeking God. With more stuff or less stuff, my personal happiness seems to be dependent on the whole God inside thing and how much time and attention I give to Him.

I can’t close without making one final point. Those who want to say that man is just a part of nature and that a man is not intrinsically more valuable than an animal are in direct disagreement with Jesus Christ. He says I am more important that a bird or a flower. I am a created being made in the image of God. I have a right to be here. I have a right to thankfully (and responsibly) use the resources of this planet. If someone wants to argue that point (and in these days, many do) don’t argue with me; argue with Him.

It's just a bump in the road

So here's the deal.  My dad just went into a nursing home.  He's 89.  And I guess the smart money would say that he probably won't be able to rehab to the point where he can go back home to live with my stepmother.  So how do you deal with that?  How should I feel about that?

This is my coping mechanism.  I'm planning to go on a wilderness canoe trip.  With my dad.

We used to do that every year when I was growing up and in my early adult years.  My dad was a very strong guy.  After I got married Nancy went on two of these trips with us.  On the first trip, while Nancy was carrying a pack in this swampy area, she suddenly found one of her legs sinking into the mud too deeply to get out.  I mean she was absolutely stuck.  Going nowhere.  And wondering how she was going to get herself out of this.  And here comes my dad, probably in his early sixties at this point, coming down the trail behind her.  He has his own pack on.  And without breaking stride he grabs the corner of her pack with one hand and all of a sudden Nancy and her leg are being levitated out of the mud.

Not only is my dad strong, he is a great fisherman.  One year I decided to mimic him the whole trip.  When he fished, I would fish.  I would try and throw my lures in the same general area where he threw his.  I would use the exact same bait he used.  By the end of the week he was more than 20 fish ahead of me.  I have no idea how he did that.  On the second trip we took together he asked to be let out of the canoe so he could go up this creek that was emptying into the lake we were on.   I thought the creek was way too shallow to have anything interesting in it, but about a half hour later he comes out with three big bass on a stringer.

So how do you take a man who is confined to a nursing home on a canoe trip?  Obviously you don't.  I'll have to wait until after he's dead.  And then I'll have to wait a little longer until after I'm dead.  And then I'll have to wait until the resurrection.  And then we'll go on the canoe trip.  Accompanying us will be my younger brother who used to take these trips with us.  He has a bad case of MS and, barring a miracle of divine healing, won't be taking any more canoe trips in this life.  (I neither predict nor rule out such a miracle.)

The lakes will probably still be there, but we'll need a new map and we'll have to start from scratch in terms of learning exactly where the best fishing holes will be.  I would expect the topography to be radically transformed.  There is this major event that will happen (in my theological opinion) immediately after the resurrection of the Christian dead (the rapture) but before we (the resurrected Christians) actually return to this planet.  "And the stars of the sky fell to the earth … and every mountain and island were moved out of their places."  (Revelation 6:13, 14)  This may be the most terrifying physical event in human history and I would expect it to dramatically rearrange those wilderness lakes.

Nancy and I just got back from our 24th Rocky Mountain Honeymoon.  We've been on 25 trips to the Rockies, but one of those trips involved other people, so it doesn't count as a honeymoon (hi Scott & Linda!).  To count as a honeymoon trip is has to be just the two of us.  When I was a younger man I put together a string of about 25 wilderness canoe trips.

So how many trips can we expect to take after we're dead and brought back to life?  Well, the Bible speaks of Christ returning to the earth and ruling the planet for 1,000 years.  If that is a literal 1,000 years I would hope to put together a string of about 1,000 mountain trips and 1,000 canoe trips (I'll be taking at least two trips a year!).

Can I tell you a little secret about our just completed mountain trip?  We took it easier than we used to.  For the first time, instead of disappearing into a wilderness area carrying everything we need on our back for a week we took two small trips of three nights each.  That means we only had to carry half the food at one time.  And instead of driving home non-stop (one drives while the other sleeps) we drove part way and spent the night in a nice motel, almost the kind of thing you would expect normal people to do on their vacations.

We're getting older.  The day may come when we won't be able to do anything but car camp.  And then the day may come when we won't even be able to do that (I'll pitch a tent in the back yard of the nursing home!).  And when that day comes it will be time to start planning the next 1,000 trips.

Here is an amazing statement, one you should spend a lot of time meditating on.  "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us."  (Romans 8:18)  The man who wrote that statement had been whipped so many times that he couldn't have had one square inch of skin on his back that wasn't pure scar tissue.  Over the course of his ministry he had received 195 lashes on his back as a punishment for preaching the gospel.  Every single one of those strokes would have broken the skin (this was over the course of five different whippings).  He was also beaten with rods three times (I don't know how many strokes) and stoned once.  He survived three shipwrecks, and in one of those he spent 24 hours clinging to a wooden plank in the middle of the ocean.  In addition to this he experienced "many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure."  (See 2 Corinthians 11) 

And after enduring all that he said that there was something waiting for him after he died that would make all of the suffering seem like it was nothing.  It would be like someone offering you a brand new Porsche for $25.00.  The sufferings of this life are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

So my dad's body has finally failed him and he's in a nursing home.  But that's not the end of anything that really matters.  It's just a bump in the road.  Join me as I write (in advance) one of the trip notes from a trip that won't even happen until after the resurrection. 

"Our first evening in the wilderness.  We had a rugged day of travel to get to this lake, and we've found a decent campsite on a small island.  The topography is all different and we are going to have to find campsites and fishing holes from scratch the way we always have when we travel into a new wilderness area.  While Dad and my brother Wayne and our two sons set up the tents I cooked supper over a wood fire.  Then we headed back out in our canoes with our fishing poles."

"As usual, Dad just knows where the fish are.  You would think that I should be able to figure this out by now but I still don't have a clue.  There is something so beautiful about the way the fishing line undulates out off the end of the rod as the bait goes flying across the water.  As we fished we were serenaded by the eerie cries of a loon at the other end of the lake.  We brought back five Walleye for breakfast.  Day one.  Trip one.  999 trips to go.  Thanks be to God."

Faith #3

To have faith is to be absolutely sure that something is going to happen before it actually happens.  The classic Biblical definition is found in Hebrews 11:1.  "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."  If you are assured of something it means that you are certain about it.  It means that you are absolutely confident about it.  It means that you have no doubt about it.  Faith is absolute confidence without any doubts.

Jesus taught us to "have faith in God.  Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him."  (Mark 11:22, 23)  You can see from this that my definition of faith is taken almost word for word from the words of Jesus.  Faith is being absolutely sure that something is going to happen before it actually happens.  Jesus said that the person must believe "that what he says is going to happen." 

Jesus then goes on to violate good grammar.  "All things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you."  (Mark 11:24)  "Believe that you have received them" is past tense.  "And they will be granted you" is future tense.  Jesus is saying, "Once you believe with absolute conviction that you are going to receive what you have asked for, it's as good as yours.  From that point on, consider your prayer to have been answered, even though the answer is not visible yet."

Jesus said that the man "who does not doubt in his heart" will see his prayer answered.  His younger brother James says virtually the same thing.  "But he must ask in faith, without any doubting."  (James 1:6)  "The one who doubts … ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord."  (James 1:6, 7) 

One of the real keys to understanding Biblical faith is to see that faith is a heart (spiritual) thing, not a purely mental (intellectual) process.  Jesus said that he "must not doubt in his heart."  You may (or may not) have nagging doubts in your mind, but if in your heart, in the core of your being, you believe without any doubting, then what you are believing will come to pass.

A story is told about a woman who sat in church and heard a sermon on Luke 17:6 where Jesus said, "If you had faith as a mustard seed, you would say to the mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea'; and it would obey you."  This woman had a mature oak tree on the left side of her back yard that provided a beautiful patch of shade  -- to her neighbor's back yard!  For many years she had wished that the tree could be replanted on the right side of her yard so that the shade would fall on her yard instead of her neighbor's, but you can't really move a mature oak tree.  Or so the woman thought until she heard the sermon on Luke 17:6!

So one day, as the woman was doing the dishes and looking out the kitchen window at her back yard, she decided to use faith to move the tree from one side of the yard to the other!  If you could use faith to transplant a mulberry tree from the ground to the sea, why not an oak tree from one side of the yard to the other?  So she closed her eyes and began speaking to the tree.  "Oak tree, move to the other side of the yard!"  Over and over again she said it.  Doubt tried to enter her mind but she blocked it out.  "Oak tree, move to the other side of the yard."  Over and over again.  Using will power she was blocking all doubt from her mind.  Once she was sure that she had blocked all doubt, she said one last time, "Oak tree, move to the other side of the yard!" and opened her eyes.

And there was the oak tree, still stuck in the ground on the wrong side of the yard.  The woman stared at the tree and muttered something under her breath.  What she muttered under her breath came out of her heart.  Everything else that had come out of her mouth had come directly from her brain, but this comment came straight from her heart.  "I knew it wouldn't work!" she muttered. 

Faith isn't something in your head; it's a conviction in your heart.  Let me put it to you this way.  To have the kind of faith that would enable you to move a mountain, or even a tree, would require a miracle.  I call it the pre-miracle miracle.  Unless the Spirit of God does a miracle in your heart you can't believe without any doubting that your mountain will actually move.  More on that next week.

Some concluding observations.

It is possible to "move mountains" by faith.  Jesus wouldn't have told us to do it if it wasn't possible.

It's not as simple as you might think the first time you read Mark 11:22-24 or else everyone would be doing it.

Understanding the difference between believing with your head and believing with your heart is absolutely vital.

Exercising this kind of faith is itself a supernatural thing that can't be done apart from the operation of the Spirit of God.

And last but not least, since it all has to be done in harmony with God, no miracles get done, or mountains moved, apart from His will. 

Faith #2

I have two ideas that I want to get across to you today, two rather simple ideas.  God's wants to answer our prayers.  And God wants to answer our prayers because God is good.

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened."  (Matthew 7:7, 8 NASB)  Now if that was the only passage in the Bible that taught us about prayer, and you were a new believer just reading that passage for the first time, you would probably expect every single prayer you offered to be answered.  If you've been a Christian for awhile you know it's not quite that simple; but that shouldn't weaken the message that the Son of God is attempting to communicate in this passage.  Jesus knew exactly what He was saying.  He said it the way He said it for a reason.  He wanted to give us the impression that God wants to answer our prayers.  God intends to answer our prayers.  We should expect God to answer our prayers.

"If you abide in Me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you."  (John 15:7 NASB)  In the passage in Matthew we didn't have any conditions mentioned for answers to prayer.  In John 15 Jesus introduces a condition.  We have to abide (live) in Christ and His words need to abide (live) in us.  If we can somehow fulfill this condition we can ask whatever we want and it will be done for us.  I'm not asking you to focus on the condition today.  We'll talk about living in Christ and having His world live in us later.  The emphasis I want to make is that God wants to answer our prayers.  He intends to answer our prayers.  He is telling us that we can get to the point where we can have anything we want ("ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you").

If you don't agree with the underlined sentence then you don't have a problem with my teaching; you have a problem with the teaching of the Lord Jesus.  Just to be clear, a person who lives in Jesus and who has Jesus words living in Him (the condition for getting whatever you want) is going to want different things that the person who does not live in Jesus and have Jesus words living in him.  A person who lives in Jesus is going to be flowing in beautiful harmony with the mind and will of God.  How does you heart respond to the statement underlined in the previous paragraph?  If somewhere deep in your heart you find yourself saying "that simply can't be true," that my friends is unbelief.  And it has to be dealt with.

What is it about God that makes Him so generous?  Both Jesus and His younger brother James direct our attention to the goodness of God when teaching about prayer.  James teaches us that "God … gives to all generously and without  reproach."  (James 1:5  NASB)  Jesus tells us that "if you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him?"  (Matthew 7:11  NASB) 

As I was meditating on those verses I began to get a sense of the all of the goodness in the heart of God.  God doesn't just want to bless us, He yearns to bless us.  He is very passionate about His desire to do good to us and for us.  The goodness of God is like Niagara Falls.  The force of gravity pushing that water over the falls is tremendous.  God's goodness is like the force of gravity and His blessings are like the water.

But did you know that we can turn Niagara Falls off?  A certain percentage of the water is diverted into a hydro electric power station.  If they want to they can divert all of the flow of the water.  They can turn Niagara Falls off.  I suppose they do this by flipping a switch.  They flip a switch and a door in the bottom of the river bed opens and all of the water flows down the hole and into the power plant.

There is a switch inside of each one of us.  The off position is labeled "unbelief."  The on position is labeled "faith."  As we learn to get the switch moved into the "faith" position we are going to begin to get very, very wet with the blessings of God.  When most people teach about faith they put the emphasis on the switch.  We have to have faith.  We sometimes come perilously close to teaching people to have faith in faith.  But we aren't supposed to have faith in faith; we are supposed to have faith in God.  And our ability to have faith in God is only as great as our sense of who and what God is. 

So this week I would encourage you to begin to let some of God's words live inside of you.  I would choose this simple phrase.  "God gives to all men generously and without reproach."  Write it down.  Say it to yourself over and over again while walking, driving to work, or doing the dishes.  Think about that Niagara Falls illustration and the goodness of God.  Think about the love and goodness of God coming rolling over the falls and splashing down all around you.  And as you think about it, pray and ask God to give you a revelation of His goodness in your heart.

God's wants to answer our prayers.  And God wants to answer our prayers because God is good.