Not Without Love

Mike Leake

I have been listening to Jimmy Needham this morning.  Really solid stuff.  I especially like this song of spoken word:

I tried Lord
I tried Lord
I tried hard to be Your good little boy
Chin up, head high
All zeal and no joy
Thinking all my good deeds could please Jesus
Boy, was I wrong
Though I knew the right songs, all my cymbals and gongs played the melodies wrong
And it wasn’t long ‘til I saw my disease
A life spent wanting to please
On hands and knees
To make right, to appease
God help me please
This can’t be Christianity, it can’t be
The whole thing’s like insanity
Where’s the rest of eternal security?
Where’s the hope of a God big enough to cope with all my hang-ups and insecurities?
Certainly this isn’t breathing
My chest burning and heaving
It’s like my pulse is ceasing
Like my heart quits beating
Yet this I recall to mind and therefore I have hope:
You died, Lord
You died, Lord
Assuredly, like the coming of the dawn, the Father’s love song goes on
Drowning out my bitter songs
And breaking through walls and barriers
Christ swoops in, removes sin, picks up His bride and carries her
So I can sing in agreement with the King this thing:
There’s only one thing that pleases the Father
The God-man on the tree in the midst of the scoffers
Now I finally see that Christ is what Christ offers
And I’m finally free in the love of the Father

When Sovereignty Evokes Terror

Mike Leake

“But he is unchangeable, and who can turn him back?  What he desires, that he does.  For he will complete what he appoints for me, and many such things are in his mind.”  (Job 23:13-14)

What comes next? 

“Therefore, I am joyously content…”?

“Therefore, I will trust Him…”?

“Therefore, I can relax…”?

Nope.

“Therefore, I am terrified at his presence; when I consider, I am in dread of him.  God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me…”

Job 23:13-14 is only good news if “God is for us”.  If you are convinced, like Job, that “the arrows of the Almighty” are in you, and if you have no knowledge that there is an “arbiter to lay his hand on us both”, then the immutability and power of God is something that evokes terror rather than peace.

This is why a good amount of our counseling of hurting people (including ourselves) is to buttress—or establish–a confidence in the goodness of God.  Furthermore, our hearts and minds must be readjusted to believe that our greatest good is conformity to Jesus and drinking from the fountain of God’s sustaining grace. 

Here comes a really weird transition statement…

I almost killed a guy once. 

It was not intentional.  Total accident.  I was playing church league slow-pitch softball and hit a rocket to third base.  The ball hit something, took a bad hop, and absolutely jacked the face of the third baseman.  (Actually one of my former students, that I had poured a good amount of time into).  He was hurt pretty bad but I left the ball park, feeling pretty bad but convinced that I had only broken his nose. 

A few hours later the news turned grim.  Apparently he had some sort of condition that made that part of his cranium softer than normal.  He now had swelling on his brain and it was looking pretty serious.  Needless to say, I was pretty shaken up. 

During this time someone assured me “God is in control”.  They pretty much told me Job 23:13-14.  My response was similar to Job’s…terror.  I knew that God was more dedicated to His glory than He was to my unblemished not-accidentally-killing-a-guy record.  I knew that He could very well allow my friend to die and I would be (in part) the reason, though accidentally. 

Again, the counsel that I needed was not “God is in control”.  The counsel that I needed was that “God is good”.  I needed to know that he would withhold no good thing from me.  I needed to be reminded that all things work together for good (fundamentally conformity to Christ). 

Thankfully the story is that I almost killed a guy once.  But I learned a valuable lesson during that time—that often it is the goodness and not the sovereignty of God that suffering people must be graciously reminded of. 

It Doesn’t Change the Promise

Mike Leake 1 Comment

C.S. Lewis once quipped:

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  (Problem of Pain, 140)

I agree with Lewis that this is true most of the time.  But then again, there are times when our suffering causes us to be so broken that we cannot even hear (or respond positively) to the voice of God.  Consider Exodus 6.  God gives a long list of what He is about to do in the lives of the Israelites.  He promises all this:

  • I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians
  • I will deliver you from slavery to them
  • I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment
  • I will take you to be my people
  • I will be your God
  • You will know that I am the LORD your God—who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians
  • I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.  I will give it to you for a possession

To top it all off he attaches His name–The LORD—to the beginning of this litany and to its end.  That is HUGE.  The very character and viability of the LORD is attached to Him coming through on these promises. 
You would think that such bold promises would “rouse a deaf world” in the midst of their suffering.  But notice what happens:

“…they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery”  (emphasis mine)

Occasionally our spirit is so broken and our bondage so taxing that we do not respond believingly to the promises of God.  Sometimes our pain is the megaphone and the voice of God is the whisper.

If the Israelite’s are anything like me they wanted to believe everything that Moses was saying, but because they were still living on the slavery side of redemption they could not fathom rescue.  Their spirit was too broken to even have a spark of faith.  Their bondage was too burdensome to dream of a Promised Land.

But this is one reason I really love the LORD.  “He knows our frame, he remembers that we are but dust”.  The Israelites are not simply being stubborn and discontent here, they are broken and God knows that.  And because of this He is going to rescue the Israelites whether they believe Him or not; at least in this instance.

It Doesn’t Change the Promise

A good husband does not respond to his broken-spirited wife only when she musters up enough strength to believe a ridiculously awesome and yet hard to believe promise.  No, a good husband rescues His broken-spirited wife even while her spirit is absolutely crushed; so crushed in fact that she cannot even turn towards her husband.

Her broken spirit does not change the promise of God.  All seven of those promises God fulfilled to the Israelites.  And He has fulfilled them in an even mightier way through our redemption in Jesus.  And He did it even while His bride was constantly vacillating between firm belief, broken-spirited dullness, and even disbelief.

I am glad that God is more dedicated to the glory of His name than to responding to my varying frames.  Perhaps that is why I have always taken such encouragement from this gem by John Bunyan:

“One day as I was passing into the field, this sentence fell upon my soul: ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven.’ And with the eyes of my soul I saw Jesus at the Father’s right hand. ‘There,’ I said, ‘is my righteousness!’ So that wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say to me, ‘Where is your righteousness?’ For it is always right before him.

I saw that it is not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness IS Christ. Now my chains fell off indeed. My temptations fled away, and I lived sweetly at peace with God.

Now I could look from myself to him and could reckon that all my character was like the coins a rich man carries in his pocket when all his gold is safe in a trunk at home. Oh I saw that my gold was indeed in a trunk at home, in Christ my Lord. Now Christ was all: my righteousness, sanctification, redemption.”

The most vital thing in our life today is union with Christ.  If we have Christ then we have everything…yes, even when in a “bad frame”.

GET A LIFE…Free Book Giveaway

Mike Leake

Actually it’s not only one life that you can get…Attic Books (a division of New Leaf Publishing) has graciously agreed to give away all 5 volumes of their Life of Series.  That includes the Life of Martin Luther, Andrew Jackson, John Knox, John Newton, and George Washington.

 
                 

It would cost well over 50 bucks to buy all 5 of these but they can be yours for free.  Enter the giveaway below and you could win.  UPDATE: Contest will end on the evening of Wednesday, July 6th.  Winner will be announced Thursday the 7th!

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