Hasn't God Been Good?

This morning as I walked home from the bus stop, I thought back on God's faithfulness.  He was guiding, protecting, and providing for me even during times I was far from him.  The thought that I could possibly be who and where I was then to where I am now is absolutely incredible.  It is not that I have attained or am bragging in any sense, but rather am amazed and overcome by the way God moves and works.

While in high school, I applied and was accepted to attend Baylor University.  For whatever reason, I didn't even care to go.  When I look back I have no reasonable explanation why I didn't.  But what I do know is if I had gone to Baylor I would have not met my future wife Laura in Spanish class.  She was also for a season planning to go to UNLV, but she had a change of heart as well.  A year and a half after meeting we were married.  We have remained married almost 17 years and have been blessed with two sons.  I am very, very thankful I didn't go to Baylor!

After I was accepted into the Local 5 Union as a mechanical insulator, I applied myself in the classroom and the field and by God's grace managed to impress the teachers and fellow students alike.  Many people approached me and encouraged me to teach the apprentices.  Even the apprenticeship coordinator at the time was pleased with the idea.  But whenever I sought to look into obtaining the necessary accreditation, doors were slammed in my face.  Trying to move forward felt like I was headbutting a brick wall.  And then God spoke clearly, stating again something I began to realise in my heart:  "You will not teach insulators.  You will teach my people.  I have called you to be a pastor."

It became a repeating theme between Laura and myself that if God presented us with an open door, we would walk through it.  A door opened to join the staff of our church, Calvary Chapel El Cajon.  A year later I was ordained by our pastor and board.  If the story stopped there it would be crazy enough.  But God placed a call upon me to go serve and pastor in Australia, a place I had never been and knew very little about.  We have now been living in Australia for over 2 and a half years and more has happened than I could possibly convey.  He has joined us with a beautiful church filled with people who love God and us.  It is all God's doing, and it is marvelous in my eyes.

Looking back, it is as if God had me on a razor's edge:  one move to the left or right would have had a massive effect on my life now.  While I was unknowingly walking that line God knew where He was taking me.  To me it looked more like a dark forest with twists and turns of disappointments which led into rich green pastures of great delight and back again.  I could have never imagined how God would bring me to this point of my life in the supernatural way He has.  It fills me with gratefulness and appreciation that even now when I face trials, twists, and turns, He will bring me through them to His desired end.  Even as He has led and sustained me, He will continue.  In Christ we need not dwell in the past, but can rejoice in the present and our certain future - no matter how uncertain life may seem!  2 Samuel 7:21 says, "For Your word's sake, and according to Your own heart, You have done all these great things, to make Your servant know them."

Take a few moments today to think about what God has done and how He has brought you to the place you are now.  Can't you testify that God has been good to you all the way?  We have not always been faithful to Him, but He has remained true to us.  Following Christ is not easy, but when we look back on our travels we see how He expertly navigated us around unseen pitfalls, kept us fed, protected us night and day, provided comforts and rest, and brought us safely to where we are.  Hasn't the LORD been good to us?

Broken AND Contrite

"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart-- these, O God, You will not despise."

 Psalm 51:17

If we desire to be usable in the hands of God, we must first be broken by God.  This is a marvelous thing, how God breaks a man to heal him.  Like a horse must be broken before he can do the work of His owner, so God must break us to make us usable.  When things are shattered into tiny pieces the only thing we can do is to toss them out as rubbish and look for a replacement.  What is impossible with man is possible with God.  He can turn us rotten sinners into new creations by the transforming power of the Gospel.

When we are born, we are born broken - but not in this sacrificial sense the scripture speaks of.  Every descendant of Adam is born spiritually dead, bound with pride, and blinded by sin.  We face every manner of disappointment in life.  We can be hurt, betrayed, ignored, offended, or forgotten by those we love.  Disillusionment and depression may lay us low.  We also must face the bitter effects of our own sinful choices and find ourselves without hope in bondage.  Just like the nursery rhyme of Humpty Dumpty who had a great fall and was beyond repair, so we are in our natural condition.

God, who is rich in mercy, gave us His Law so we might see ourselves in truth as broken without remedy.  He gave us the scriptures, sent prophets and even His own Son Jesus Christ to reveal His love and message of salvation to all people.  After we catch a glimpse of God's perfection, holiness, and righteousness, we recognise how far we are from His standard.  His word clearly states the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through repentance and faith Jesus Christ.  Perhaps you have acknowledged your guilt and great need for salvation from sin, death, and hell.  How sorry you were for your faults!  How desperate you were for eternal life!  But even after people are born again through the Gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit, further breaking is required.  Being broken is not enough.  God wants our response to our brokenness to make way for contrition.  Only then does our brokenness become a sacrifice through which God is pleased.

When something in life breaks your heart, what is your response?  Do you feel angry or vengeful?  Do you resort to gossip?  Do you drown in self-pity and even resent God for allowing such a fiery trial?  When your life feels shattered to pieces, how do you cope?  When your heart is bursting with grief, are you willing to collapse into God's everlasting arms, casting your cares upon Him because He cares for you?  The meaning of "broken" in the Strong's Concordance is "to burst, break (down, off, in pieces, up), bring to the birth, crush, destroy, hurt."  "Contrite" means, "to collapse (physically or mentally)."  How our pride resists the very things that are pleasing in God's sight.  Our flesh hates to be seen as weak or frail.  We must be strong!  We need to keep up the appearance of having everything under control.  We don't want people to know we are broken, and we resist the breaking God must do before He can use us.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart.  God is pleased when we stop fighting to fix our lives and hand over the little pieces to Him to mend and restore.  So often we approach our lives like a stubborn two-year old fighting to complete a 1000 piece puzzle without a border:  "I do it!  I do it!"  We have a way of doing things, and we cry if God should intervene.  Godly sorrow brings repentance.  When we are broken for our sin and respond with a contrite heart before God, He is pleased.  Too many times we confuse brokenness with our pride being damaged.  When your ego is bruised, that is not this brokenness of the heart that pleases God.  Jesus points to those who will be blessed and ultimately happy in Matthew 5:3-5:  "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. ⁵ Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."  This is a beautiful description of what is meant by a broken, contrite heart and spirit.  Those who are poor in spirit, mourn, and are meek who learn to depend on God alone will be blessed.  Our contrite response reveals we are learning the lesson God intends through breaking.

God has great blessings in store for those who are broken and contrite before Him.  These are followers of Christ who have learned through suffering to rely upon God alone and lean on their own understanding.  David wrote in Psalm 51:7-13, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. ⁸ Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. ⁹ Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. ¹⁰ Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. ¹¹ Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. ¹² Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous Spirit. ¹³ Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You."

When God breaks our bones, may we rejoice to have experienced His touch.  When we submit to the breaking, He will bind up our wounds, heal, and make us new.  And we will be stronger than before as we learn to collapse into His arms of love!

Abominations Bring Destruction

This morning I read Deuteronomy 7:25-26 during my devotional time:  "You shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD your God. ²⁶ Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing."  Verse 26 grabbed my attention.  Living in Australia, it is very easy to bring abominations into our houses unwittingly.  With uncut movies and internet, abominations can be digitally ushered right into our homes.  When we do this, scripture warns we will be doomed to destruction.  These are hard words intended to impact hearts hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

As a Christian man, I would never think to invite a woman to disrobe in my living room and perform sex acts.  I would not invite gangsters into my house to swear and curse, nor would I gather the family around to watch people fornicate from the lounge.  Yet this is exactly what happens if we watch television programming or internet videos without discernment.  The potential is great for us to bring abominable practices right into our homes and after a while not even notice we have done so.  When it comes to sin, we are to "utterly detest it and utterly abhor it."  Once we have been exposed to such abomination our conscience becomes seared and we no longer notice.  For this very reason I believe a lot of Christians are weak, sick, and unable to recognise we have compromised.  When we compromise, we are spiritual compromised.  Sometimes we are overtaken in trespasses, and other times we invite it freely.  What did our mothers teach us about playing with fire?  Not only can we be burned, but the destructive power can spread and be fanned out of control.

Be on guard, brothers and sisters.  If we give place to the devil, he will not rest until he increases his hold on our hearts and minds.  He always seeks to bring us back into bondage.  True freedom comes when we recognise our sin and repent, choosing to live a life of holiness and righteousness for God's glory.  1 Thessalonians 4:1-7 reads, "Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God; ² for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus. ³ For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; ⁴ that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, ⁵ not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; ⁶ that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. ⁷ For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness."

The will of God is that we not only abstain from immorality, but we keep our hearts and minds pure and holy from this sin-steeped culture.  Sin is a snare, and those who see it and avoid it are wise.  Snares are carefully concealed for the purpose of trapping and killing hapless victims.  In light of scripture, let us be discerning with what we bring into our homes and what we set before our eyes.  We lose nothing when we walk uprightly.  This is the way to an abundant life with Christ, walking in the way that pleases God as He sanctifies us by His grace.

The God who Cries

It is inspiring how God uses the past circumstances of our lives to use us profitably for the future.  Only He is able to redeem the wreckage of our lives and make it new and beautiful.  Unlike some Christians who have a radical conversion out of drugs, alcohol, and sex, my background is one of a self-righteous Pharisee.  My sinful condition was not on display through crime or gang violence, but through pride as I was brought up in the church.  People talk about "at risk" youth, but there is hardly a precipice more risky than self-righteous pride and arrogance - in a collared shirt, combed hair, and a Bible in hand in Sunday School.

One of the greatest risks in church is we know much of God but never actually hear from Him.  Hearing God speak is not and expected part of many people's daily walk with Jesus Christ.  It should be!  How can we know we are following Christ if we are too distant to hear His voice?  Knowledge of the Bible does not mean a person knows God.  Somehow we have neglected this remedial fact.  I would rather someone doubt their salvation than to assume he is heaven bound because he knows doctrine.  It is not doctrine that saves but the applied blood of Jesus Christ through faith to the heart of a damned sinner who repents.  The Gospel for some people never gets past their heads and into their hearts.  If the Gospel is reduced to a mental exercise, it is rendered impotent of saving power.

Proverbs 8:1 says, "Does not wisdom cry out, and understanding lift up her voice?"  Jesus has become for us wisdom (1 Cor. 1:30).  Seven times in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 Jesus said, "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the churches."  Jesus stands at the door, knocking and crying out.  The question is not, "Does God speak?" but "What is Jesus saying to me today?"  God has put in me a great longing to see people in the church tuned to hear the small, still voice of God.  There are others who have a great burden for people who have never heard the Gospel.  I want to see those people saved too.  But they will not be saved until the people in the church hear God and respond to His call to go.  How will unreached people hear unless someone tells them?

Dear friends, there are unreached people who come to church every Sunday.  God is speaking, but His words fall on soil not prepared to receive the good Word.  Hosea 10:12 reveals the onus is on us:  "Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the LORD, till He comes and rains righteousness on you."  The paradigms of our flesh are fallow areas of our hearts that we must break up.  We must humble ourselves, be willing to clear the rocks from our hearts in God's strength, yield ourselves to the plow (though painful to our flesh), and receive the Word God speaks with joy.  God is the source of our fruitfulness.  Any effort of the flesh will fail, but those who walk by faith in the Spirit and abide in Christ will lack no good thing.

God is speaking; Wisdom is crying out.  Are you listening?  What is God saying to you today?  And what are you doing about it?