20 July 2018

What Do I Wait For?

"And now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in You."
Psalm 39:7

How many times have I placed my hope in something other than God!  Even when he was beset by sin, David concluded his only hope was in God.  God is good to allow difficult situations so those who trust in God will be cast down and realise their hope and expectations have been misplaced.  Pains have a way of revealing our devotion is tinged with selfishness, cares, and worry.  We pray so God will immediately change our circumstances according to our will, and our impatience displays a lack of trust in the God we genuinely trust.

When our hope and trust is placed in God, we will find ourselves sustained and greatly helped even when dangers and troubles multiply.  If our hope for deliverance from sin or trials truly rests in our great God we will not fear, worry, or be impatient.  We will be grateful the Almighty God hears us and answers according to His will and timing.  God established the heavens and earth by His power, and nothing is too hard for Him.  How blessed is the one who hopes in the LORD!

David asked a question it does well for us to answer when we are troubled:  "What do I wait for?"  If we are waiting for a light at the end of the tunnel, waiting for a glimmer of hope due to changed circumstances to bolster our faith, we likely are not placing our hope in the Light of the World Jesus Christ and the promises in His Word.  Since Jesus is our life, He is the only one worthy of our hope.  Praise the LORD that He knows us, loves us, and is faithful.  The immortal perspective of Job comes to mind in the first part of Job 13:15:  "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him..."  God is the One who kills and makes alive, and the Christian must die to self before we can live for Him (Deut. 32:39).  The fear of the LORD frees us from the fear of man, for no one can deliver from His hand.

What do you wait for?  Who do you wait for?  God is patient with us, and let us patiently place our hope in Him.  He is our LORD and our expectations are in Him.

18 July 2018

The Perfect Way

How good it is to know we are made righteous, sanctified, and saved by the grace of God!  Many of God's blessings are conditional upon our obedience, but it would be a grave mistake to reduce our relationship with God to a business deal.  Trusting in Jesus is is not like a monetary transaction where the exchange of money confers rights to the buyer and responsibility to the seller.  We have no entitlements as children of God because we have earned them by our good standing with God or our efforts to please Him.  The blessings God supplies we have not earned but received by His grace.  All we deserve is judgment, wrath, and total destruction due to our wickedness, but God delights to bless those deemed righteous by His grace - as well as those who do not regard Him at all.

Those who are born again through faith in Christ and the Gospel will desire and aim to walk in God's ways, and God does reward the humble and obedient.  These rewards are not dependent primarily on our efforts, but these blessings come from a good, gracious, and merciful God.  There is often a visible correlation between obedience and blessing, and there are invisible, eternal guarantees God provides like salvation and fullness of joy.  The blessings seen and unseen we receive from God are all of grace, free gifts God offers to all who trust in Him.  Since God loves us we love Him, and because we love Him we delight to obey Him.  Love is the currency of heaven and the holy motivation God gladly accepts and rewards.

This seeming dichotomy between the grace of God and our efforts is a tricky balance to strike in our minds.  There is something in us which strives to meet God's conditions so the benefits may be ours, and the motivation can be more selfish than godly.  The knowledge of God's grace can also distort our perspective to drift from godly disciplines to lazy and aimless conduct.  We know we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies so our conduct doesn't really matter much, and the flip side is to think everything depends upon our ability to walk uprightly.  Both extremes leave a person depressed:  one can never measure up to God's standard no matter how he tries, and the other sees no need to even try.  The truth is we can never measure up to God's perfect standard through the efforts of the flesh, but at the same time God never is looking for perfection in us.  Perfection is His arena and is all of grace, and He is the one who works this in us.

See what David wrote in 2 Samuel 22:31-33:  "As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the LORD is proven; He is a shield to all who trust in Him. 32 "For who is God, except the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God? 33  God is my strength and power, and He makes my way perfect."  We might think our reception of God's blessings have all to do with our ability to meet His conditions, but then we might as well be trading money for the benefits we want.  David acknowledged God's way is perfect, and because God was David's strength and power (not merely the source of it) He made David's way perfect too.  Was David perfect?  Hardly.  He needed to offer sacrifices to atone for his sin, and Jesus needed to die on the cross and rise again so we could be justified, sanctified, and saved.  God is a shield to all who trust in Him, and we could not trust Him except God help us.  How great is God's grace and goodness to those who seek and trust Him!  From beginning to end we are His workmanship, and He works in us to will and do of His good pleasure.  What a blessing this is!

17 July 2018

Seek and Find

"And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart."
Jeremiah 29:13

My boys and I headed out to Mission beach early this morning for a little metal detecting.  The weather was overcast and cool, and before 9am we had cleaned the beach of tent pegs, coins, nails, bottlecaps, keys, and even a mobile phone.  We weren't the only ones scouring the sands of Mission beach:  because of the low tide many others searched the wet sand for hidden treasures.  I have found metal detecting to be a bit more consistent than fishing.  I have been skunked many times without a bite whilst fishing, but every time I have headed out with a metal detector I have found something - even if every target turns out to be junk.

I've had some interesting finds during my time detecting, but I'm still waiting for a discovery of monetary value.  This is in sharp contrast to the discoveries I have been blessed with when I have sought the LORD:  every discovery and revelation concerning our great God is beyond price.  You can't find buried treasure unless you put forth the effort to search and dig with persistence, and seeking God requires intentional effort as well.  Prayer, reading and study of the Bible, and fellowship with other Christians are keys which aid us in seeking the LORD.

God has chosen to reveal Himself to those who seek Him.  The great irony is we believers can drift from God and become a bit stale - even though we have sought the LORD and discovered Him in various degrees.  No matter how much a person knows of God and His Word, we have a desperate need to continue seeking Him.  We cannot look to our previous closeness with God to validate our current walk (or lack thereof!) with the LORD.  When we sense we are drifting from close fellowship with God, we must repent and return to God and seek Him as we did at the first.  Only then will we seek and find Him, when all our heart is captivated in the search.

Praise the LORD He delights to be found!  Unless He revealed Himself personally, we could never discover or know Him.  We never need to be empty handed or without hope of a future with a great God like ours, for He knows our every need.  Should He be concealed from our gaze or seem far away, this should quicken us to draw near to Him with increased tenacity.  For us, He is our life!

10 July 2018

Embrace the Season

When God created the heavens and the earth, He placed the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens.  He established days, months, and years - but that wasn't all.  He made the earth to experience seasons which are opposite in the northern and southern hemispheres.  The varied seasons are a part of ordinary life we can almost take for granted.  People usually have a reason for their preferred season, yet if a season went on forever, it wouldn't really be a season.  There is blessing in the contrast.  The earth experiences a cycle of seasons, and church ministry does as well.  It is easy to ignore this and assume everything should continue as it has in the past - only more, bigger, and better.

Let us read again what Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, and it would be a shame to reserve these timeless truths for funerals:
"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: 2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted; 3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 a  time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 a time to gain, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; 7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."
There is a time for winter, and a time for summer (spring and autumn too).  God has built into nature growing seasons and a time to harvest.  If there was only planting and no growing there could be no harvests!  We get how this is essential for nature, and we ought to recognise the seasons of life and ministry serve God's good purposes.  How freeing it is when we realise even dry times have their purpose, as well as blazing bush fires and freezing cold.  All of our times are in God's hands, and He has designated different seasons and times of life to serve His purposes.

Reading through Solomon's list, I suggest we would all have our preferences which seasons we like and why.  We like gaining more than losing; we likely prefer dancing over mourning, and laughing over weeping.  But even losing, morning, and weeping can be redeemed and wisely employed by our good God to fulfill His purposes - not ours.  Let us embrace and enjoy the current season God has ordained, whether we prefer it or not.  The upcoming season always brings with it great reason to rejoice because God's plans are greater than anything for which we can ask or think.  He has made everything beautiful in its time, and the future is ever brighter for children of the living God.