Every False Way

"Therefore I consider all your precepts to be right; I hate every false way." -- Psalm 119:128

Do I though? Do I really hate EVERY false way? Or are there some "false ways" that I really like? Are there "false ways" that I benefit from or enjoy the fruits of so I keep quiet about them and go on taking advantage of them for my personal gain?

These days it seems everyone has their favorite cause. We adopt them like pets from a shelter, put them on a fancy leash with a shiny collar and walk them around town so everyone can see what authentic, deeply caring, socially conscious people we are. We desktop activists hit the "like" button for our favorite issues -- women's rights, gay rights, animal rights, pro-life, pro-choice, save the rain forest, protect the environment, boycott companies with reckless disregard for the size of their carbon footprint, global warming, racial injustices, immigration reform and refugees seeking asylum, MAGA...

One thing is clear: We all know something has gone horribly wrong with this world. And most of us would agree that it largely has to do with humans. But where we miss it, IMHO, is that we have become really good at pointing the finger at everyone else and blaming them for the mess we are in (echoes of Eden... "It's the woman... no, it was YOU who gave her to me... No, it was the snake!"), seldom considering the hundreds of ways we are every bit as stupid and selfish. For every pet cause we like to feel righteously indignant about, we have a pet hypocrisy we sneak scraps to under the table. We all have them -- blind spots we just can't recognize (or won't) because it feeds our desire for pleasure, comfort, safety and security, meaning and purpose. 

David issues a challenge here to our carefully constructed fortress of righteous solitude: IF you truly consider ALL God's precepts to be right, THEN you must hate EVERY false way. No exceptions. You may not hold back any for yourself, or keep a couple in your pocket for special occasions. Everything false must go. Everything that the filter of God's revealed Truth doesn't allow through.

• Things that we rely n to make us feel safe other than the Truth that He is our only safe place, our only rock, refuge, shield, shelter, hiding place.
  

• Things that we delight in other than His beauty and glory. All that we consider beautiful or desirable is only an echo of the Beautiful One who created it, so why would we allow our worship to terminate on the creation rather than the Creator?

• Things we look to for our identity, affirmation, and worth other than the love God has for us, the delight He takes in us, the precious blood of His only begotten Son, as that of a spotless Lamb, which He poured out completely -- not a drop withheld from us! 

Hating every false way means letting go of some things we would rather hold on to; it means admitting you have been wrong about something you could have sworn you were right about, and now all your friends will think you're crazy.

Look, there's nothing wrong with standing up, speaking out, and acting on behalf of a worthwhile cause. Scripture teaches that those who truly know God will delight in what delights Him -- justice for the voiceless and vulnerable, the poor and powerless, the overlooked and outcast. Those who love God will hate the abuse of power by the dominant over the marginalized minority. They will abhor the corruption of justice, bought and sold at the expense of the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the sick and disabled. He expects those who bear His name to act on their behalf IN HIS NAME precisely because it is His name we bear and its authority we are called to wield wisely.

So... real talk...for me personally: Do I really care about the systemic, institutionalized racialization of America, of the nearly invisible and almost imperceptible cancer of white supremacy that disadvantages blacks and other minorities with patriotic zeal?

OR...

Do I just want to appear "woke" to my ministry peers? I can read the books and learn the lingo, but if I truly "consider all Your precepts to be right," what will I actually DO abut it? Do I really hate EVERY false way enough to put my reputation and relationships at risk in order to stand up, speak out, and act on behalf of black and minority Americans, many of whom hate me just because I'm white?

Will I "hate the false way" of demonizing those whose sexual desires are different than mine, labeling them as a group to be hated or a problem to be solved rather than seeing them as human beings in need of compassion? I don't have to compromise my belief in what the Bible teaches about gender, sexuality, or marriage to just simply see another person as a human with a soul and treat them with dignity and respect. Will I even bother to get to know him or her before I stick them in a cage in my brain, lock the door, label the cage and walk away?

Will I "hate every false way" when it comes to justice for the immigrant, the refugee, the oppressed asylum seekers trying to make a better life for their families, even though almost every other white evangelical sees them as a liberal political issue to be debated dispassionately, as if they weren't humans with souls?

Will I "hate the false way" of hypocrisy when it comes to the militant right-wing conservative party line on abortion rights? Yes, abortion is murder, no question. Yes, it must be stopped, I agree. But are we false to the truth by mobilizing in the millions for the rights of UN-born children while, at the same time, turning a blind eye to the ALREADY-born children flooding our foster care system in America? Why is there a foster care crisis in this country with more churches than Starbucks? Why do Christians in America not step up and eliminate this crisis overnight by taking in these children who, remember, were once unborn and to be protected at all costs?

Father, "I am Your servant; give me understanding, that I may know Your testimonies." It's a crazy world and I need wisdom to sift through the lies and the spin, to know what's true and hate what's false. Begin with me, right here, in my own heart. In Jesus' Name, Amen!

Feeling all "misty" this morning...

 

 

Reading in James this morning...

"Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." (James 4:13-17, ESV)

There are two important facts about being a human on planet earth that James reminds us of:

1. Our days are numbered. Literally.
2. We have no idea what that number is.

I have no idea if this is my last day on earth or not. The coffee I sip now could be the last cup I ever taste. The good-morning kiss I just gave my wife a few moments ago could be the last kiss we ever enjoy. The sentence I am hastily scribbling across the page of my journal may be the last thing I ever write. I simply do not know the number of my days.

So to live as if I did know, or as if it didn't matter, or even worse, as if God did not have a say in how I spent my numbered days is actually evil, arrogant, and sinful. James calls it "arrogant boasting" because we do not stop to ask God what He wants to do with our lives. Planning our futures -- even in the short term -- without seeking the Lord's will is actually "evil." It actually works against what is good and right and true.

That's why James says, "Hey, if you know you are a mist, and if you know you are subject to the sovereignty of God, and if you know you ought to ask Him what He wants to do with the number of your days -- and yet you spend it pursuing your own plans without a thought to His plans or purposes, then you are sinning against God." We are basically giving Him the middle finger as we run off to do whatever for a few years before launching out into eternity. And then we get to stand before Him and explain why our plans were somehow better. (Cue Dust in the Wind by Kansas...)

Father, what do you have for me this day? If it is my last day, let me live it purposefully for Your glory. Use me to tell someone the good news of the love of Christ. All my plans and hopes and dreams I yield to Your gracious, sovereign will. I am a mist, here for a little while, then gone and eventually forgotten even by my own great-grandchildren. I am only two generations away from being forgotten entirely by my own family!

God, help me to live in light of the glorious reality that this mist may only last a little while, but in Your hands it can accomplish something eternally significant in Your Kingdom. I am Your, Father. Live through me today, in Jesus' name.

So I came across this in Proverbs...

"To do justice AND righteousness is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice." 
(Proverbs 21:3, ESV. Emphasis mine)

     In scripture, righteousness and justice are always mentioned together. Like conjoined twins they are inseparable. They are two sides of a single coin; both are necessary for the coin to be of any worth.

     Justice is big these days among young evangelicals. They are understandably sick of the apathy, sick of the lazy church sitting in pews and singing dry, dusty hymns while the world goes to hell all around them, sick of the hypocrisy of claiming the title: Jesus-follower" but not actually following Jesus into the world to heal the sick, care for the poor, touch the leper, and love the outcast. There is a lot to admire about the "social justice" movement in the church these days. The world is dying to see if there is an ounce of authenticity left in Western Christianity. But there is a caution to be taken if we are to follow Jesus into the world: Justice is never far from righteousness. Never. Ever.

     Many want to cast off the holiness of God in the name of His justice. Some would feed hungry stomachs with bread, but starve their souls of the Bread of Life in the process. They want to reach out and embrace the marginalized and outcast, but not require repentance from sin. They cast off God's unflinching call to purity and holy living because, after all, who are we to tell anyone how they should live? Aren't we all sinners? Isn't everyone broken in one way or another? We imagine that enough efforts to promote justice will somehow excuse us from the demands of righteousness.

     In fairness, the vast majority of American Christians have done the inverse: we have reduced the gospel to a set of doctrinal statements and a moral code of conduct: "If you agree to the truth of these statements, and can manage to avoid these particular sins (usually sexual in nature), then you are a Christian." Meanwhile, the cries of the oppressed and impoverished largely go unheeded. They can barely be heard above our state-of-the-art sound systems in our multi-million dollar facilities. Justice is re-labeled "Missions"and left to those who "feel called" to it. (BTW, you don't "feel called;" you ARE called. You either listen and obey or you don't.)

     But the truth is that Jesus requires both. The Proverb above doesn't say, "Righteousness is acceptable to the Lord, but justice is optional." Nor does it say, "To do justice is better than righteousness." It says that both together were more acceptable to Yahweh than merely superficial religious ceremony. Why? Because they are the metric of our spiritual maturity. They are the barometer of our hearts -- where they are, what they desire, how we regard the Lord.

     Righteousness is how we live before God. It measures our moral choices as they flow from the affections of our hearts. Like water that will seep through and rise to its own level, what -- and who -- we really love will be revealed by how we live. God is very concerned with what our hearts desire and how we go after it. There are ways to live that promote human flourishing in every area -- physically, materially, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. And there are ways to live that destroy us, sometimes quickly and obviously, but more often quietly over a lifetime, like a slow poison working its way through our bodies, shutting it down one system at a time until we stop living.

     Morality is what we think of most when we talk about righteousness but it is actually much more than that. It's not rule-keeping; it's loving God more than we love ourselves and trusting that His commands are an expression of His love and protection towards us. Righteousness deals more with our relationship to God, while justice is more about how we treat other people because of our relationship to God.

Righteousness and justice always go together. To attempt one without the other is to accomplish neither.

     Jesus said this was the sum of the whole Law and Prophets: "You shall love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength (righteousness), and you shall love your neighbor as yourself (justice)." He told His followers to "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness." Righteousness and justice always go together. To attempt one without the other is to accomplish neither.

     You cannot claim a zeal for justice and embrace or accept something God calls sin. You are not being just towards those who are trapped in that self-destructive lifestyle, misleading them to believe they are safe from the wrath of God and penalty of their sin. Nor are you being just towards God by treating His Word and His holiness as something that can be casually dismissed whenever it's expedient or unpopular.

     Conversely, you cannot claim a zeal for righteousness -- holding up your morality and doctrinal positions as evidence -- if that never results in action taken to oppose oppression, injustice, exploitation, corruption, or abuses of power. What kind of righteousness leaves the helpless undefended, the hungry unfed, the naked unclothed, the sick uncared for, and the captive left to rot in captivity?

     The Proverb is saying, "Don't look at your religious service as the metric of how well your relationship with God is going. Rather, look at the interplay of both righteous living before a holy God and compassionate justice towards those made in His image. That's what God is really after." James affirms this in his letter:

     "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." (James 1:27, ESV. Emphasis mine.)

     Justice AND righteousness. Never one without the other.

     Father, help me to live a life pleasing to You. I fear there are days when not only do I not do both, but some days that I do neither. God, make me more like Jesus, who loved You more than life itself and expressed it by loving others. In Jesus' name I ask these things. Amen!

   

Martha: Distraction, Anxiety, and the One Thing

Reading in the Grand Story about Martha and Mary...
"Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, 'Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.' " (Luke 10:38-42)

I've heard a lot of different takes on this story in my time. The latest trend has been to rush to the defense of Martha and make her heroic or misunderstood. But Jesus understood her perfectly and He addressed the problem in no uncertain terms: "Martha, you are distracted."

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines distraction as "something that makes it difficult to think or pay attention." There is nothing wrong with serving people. In fact, it's an earmark of a true disciple of Christ. Most church leaders would probably agree they would love a church full of Marthas. The problem is that Martha wasn't serving out of obedience to anything her Lord had told her to do. He was speaking. He was teaching them. It wasn't time for scurrying and working and serving. It was time for being still and listening. Martha couldn't see that because she was distracted.

What distracted her? Jesus named two specific things: anxiety and trouble. Martha was a worrier, and she was annoyed and irritated that she was the only one who seemed to be worried. The original Greek word for "troubled" is where we get the English word "turbulence." In the modern vernacular we would say she was "in a tizzy." Why? What had her worried? The key is in her request to Jesus: "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me." Did you catch that? "I'm the only one doing anything! If I didn't do it, it wouldn't get done, and then where would we all be?" I have a sneaking suspicion that even if Mary did try to help, Martha would just go behind her and re-do everything she did, all the while muttering under her breath about how if you want anything done right you just have to do it yourself.

It's easy to fall into the Martha trap. It's the classic case of an over-exaggerated sense of our own importance. I have seen it creep into ministries that started off doing good work, but  slowly, over time, they became a little world unto themselves thinking, "We are the only ones doing real ministry. Nothing else is as important as what we are doing." There began to be an attitude of contempt towards other ministries. Other ways of serving. Other styles of worship. Other approaches to preaching. Other denominations. Other people. Until we are all alone in our minds. The only ones who matter. Busyness is not so much about activity as it is the posture of our hearts.

Look, nobody asked Martha to do anything. Not from what I read in the text. Jesus simply responded to her invitation to use her house as a place to teach. It was her idea to complicate it with a bunch of extra service. Like so many churches that busy themselves with a million programs and events and activities, cleverly marketed and catering to every demographic imaginable. Jesus said, "One thing is necessary." Everything else is a distraction. But how would we ever know if that's true. We refuse to try. "No, Jesus, you don't understand. People expect it. They want it. If we don't offer it, they will just go somewhere else. Then what will happen to our church?" And then we wear ourselves out (and our volunteers) chasing every idea that pops into our heads about how church ought to be.

"One thing is necessary." Apparently, stillness is required for listening. Like the mirror-surface of a calm lake, I can only perfectly reflect an image if I am perfectly still and peaceful.

God, help me today to stay focused on that One Thing, and may all other distractions fall away. Keep pride from seducing me into believing I am indispensable or alone in my work. Let me only busy myself with those things that You have told me to do. teach me to be still and listen. For Your glory, and in the name of Jesus. Amen.

How to know if your spirit has been "stirred"

“In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia… Then rose up the heads of the fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God had stirred…” (Ezra 1: 1, 5)

The Hebrew word translated “stirred” literally means to awaken. Not stirred as in mixing two things in a container, but stirred as in roused from sleep.

What does it look like when someone’s spirit has been “stirred up”? A person whose spirit has been stirred by God:

1.  Takes God at His Word. “Then arose Jeshua the son of Jozadak, with his fellow priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel with his kinsmen, and they built the altar of God of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God…And they kept the Feast of Booths as it is written, and offered the daily burnt offerings by number according to the rule… “ (Ezra 3:2, 4)

For these men, the scriptures weren’t something nice to put on a coffee mug. They were the words of God given not as homilies or sentimental thoughts, but as commands for living in His presence. Obedience was not optional. And when it ran up against the popular opinions and customs of the culture, they didn’t back down. Even when it meant personal suffering, they took God’s Word seriously and obeyed it to the letter.

2.     Makes worship a priority. “… the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem… and they built the altar of the God of Israel… But the foundation of the temple was not yet laid.” (Ezra 3:1-2, 6)

These guys started offering sacrifices before the foundation of the actual temple was even started yet! They weren’t going to wait until the building was completed before they began worshipping; they knew they would never be able to complete the work without God. So they began regular worship every single day from the first day forward.

Gut check: What do we let keep us from making worship the first priority of our day, every day?

·      I have to get up early for work.

·      I have to work out.

·      I’m too tired.

·      It’s too hard.

·      I forget.

·      I get busy, distracted, stressed out with other responsibilities, etc.

How easily we forsake seeking the presence of God for other, lesser gods! How freely the excuses come! But let our world get rocked by some tragedy and suffering and we immediately expect God to drop everything and make our problems His first priority.

Look, I don’t want to be legalistic about it, but the reality is that if we don’t intentionally spend time in the presence of God at the earliest possible moment each day, we will most likely never get around to it at all. The root of the word worship is worth; the root of our worship is what God is worth to us. That’s why you never see worship without sacrifice. The only way of knowing the true worth of a thing is by seeing what someone is willing to give up to get it.

3.     Get generosity. “… everyone who made freewill offerings to the LORD… So they gave money to the masons and the carpenters, and food, drink, and oil…” (Ezra 3: 5, 7)

Let’s just cut the crap right here, right now. If you want to know where a man’s heart is, look at what he spends his money on. Period. Ignore the whiners and squealers who start squirming when the pastor mentions giving. If someone has to stand in front of you week after week and beg you to be generous towards the work of the Kingdom, you just flat don’t get it. Sorry, but it’s true.

If you really believed the gospel, if you really understood who Jesus is and what His death, resurrection, ascension, and return really mean for this world, your pastor would have to beg you to stop giving because the church would be overwhelmed. Ha! And monkeys might fly out of my… well, you get the idea.

Generosity is the natural response to grace. A person who has received so much, so lavishly, so undeserved should have no trouble at all showing generosity towards others in need of grace.

Why don’t I give away more? Why don’t I spend more time, energy, resources, focus on those around me? The flesh is that inward gravitational pull of the heart towards self-worship. And it never sleeps. It never rests or goes away or takes a break. The second we stop being intentional about focusing our hearts on Christ, it immediately starts drifting back towards self. Like a garden that must be weeded constantly or it will revert back to wilderness, so is the heart.

When God “stirs up” our spirits, we awaken to what’s really true. And they reveals what’s really important. And that fuels our choices. And those choices take us in a direction towards God and away from self. That direction will some day end at a destination. Generosity is one of the surest signs that you are headed in the right direction.

4.     Know how to party. There is this sick idea in the modern church that emotions are bad and should not be a part of worship. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that that’s not just wrong, it’s evil. It’s a lie from the pit of Hell. The Thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy. And what he has successfully stolen, killed, and destroyed in modern churches in America is authentic, heart-felt, emotional worship.

Look, the appropriate response to the Gospel is overwhelming joy. It’s shouting, singing to the top of your voice, dancing like a fool and not giving a rat’s hairy backside who is watching or what they think about it. “That’s not reverent,” someone may say. My good friend and mentor Johnny Hunt would respond, “Sir, that’s not reverence; that’s rigor mortise!”

There’s no disconnect between doctrine and emotion in the Bible. The Gospel of the Kingdom is not data to be stored, it’s Truth to be celebrated – with our whole hearts!  In Ezra 3:10-13, it says that when the people finally finished the foundation – not the building, mind you, just the foundation – that they were so overcome with what that meant for them as the people of God that “all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD… But many of the priests and Levites and heads of the fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy., so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard very far away.”

Authentic worship always, always, ALWAYS involves emotion. Emotions are part of the very image of God we bear, they are a family resemblance. Emotions are only  harmful if they are inappropriately self-focused. They were created and given to us to be appropriate responses to a God-centered reality. Those whose hearts have been roused awake by the Spirit of the Living God know this to be true – and they are happy! (See what I did there?)