Shut Up and Listen

Let’s talk about Job.  Many theologians today argue that the book of Job was the first book ever written in the Bible.  I find this incredibly interesting due to the intense focus on pain and suffering in Job’s life.  Basically, this book tells the story of a man who is blameless and upright in God’s sight.  Satan eventually requests of God to torment Job by killing his family and taking all of his earthly possessions in an attempt to get Job to curse God.  God allows this.

By the end of the story none of Satan’s plans have succeeded in getting Job to curse God, but these events do not go unnoticed.  It is almost as if a year-long discussion breaks out, between Job and his friends, wondering why there is pain in the world, who is to blame, and why God would allow such evil to oppress a child of His.  Some of Job’s friends are convinced that Job has brought this pain upon himself because of sin.  Job argues back that he is blameless and upright.  Back and forth they go for over thirty-five chapters getting nowhere but more and more frustrated with each others’ particular beliefs about the other and God.

And then something strange happens in Job chapter thirty-eight, God begins to speak.  God speaks for four chapters, asking a multitude of questions.  This is how it all begins:  “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?  Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.”[1]  By the middle of God’s speech Job has one opportunity to respond.  He answers God’s first number of questions by stating the following:  “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you?  I put my hand over my mouth.  I spoke once, but I have no answer—twice, but I will say no more.”[2]

At the end of Job’s story, healing begins to occur and his life begins to be restored.  Job even responds to God again by saying,

“Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things to wonderful for me to know.  You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’  My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.  Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”[3]

So what can we learn about God’s voice from the story of Job?  Maybe we can spend a large portion of our lives talking about God.  Maybe we can get high level degrees in our efforts to understand Him.  Maybe we can even talk to God with theologically correct statements and traditionally honored prayers.  Maybe we can be spontaneous with our prayers to God and claim to be moved incredibly by His Holy Spirit.  Maybe we can try all of these approaches and, at the end of the day like Job, never truly see God for who He is.  Maybe one truth we can learn from Job is that if we really want to see, hear, and know God then we need to do what Job eventually did, which is acknowledge our own inferiority, and then, shut up and listen.

Rod

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[1] Job 38:2

[2] Job 40: 4-5

[3] Job 42: 3b-6

Intimacy Under Attack

I was thinking of this past Sunday’s sermon on Deborah. One of the things I highlighted from her story was the fact that she was a prophet, which implied close proximity to God. She was able to lead the nation of Israel to freedom in large part because she walked closely with the Lord. If you were there Sunday you might recall how the challenge to get with God each day was issued.

Interestingly I found it very difficult the past few days to get at that alone time with God. I’ve been more sleepy than normal, more distracted than normal, more apathetic than normal. My first thought was to berate myself for being a moron.

But then I remembered one of the first points of the sermon. We are living in a world at war. We are living in the midst of two kingdoms in conflict. The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Darkness.

The enemy would like nothing better for me to have difficulty in getting alone with the Lord in prayer and reading the Word. Once the difficulty turns into missing some of that devotional time, the enemy brings condemnation on me (or you if you’ve been absent in your devotional time) and calls me a moron for missing that time.

What I’ve been re-reminded of these past few days is the fact that our devotional times with the Lord are under attack. Satan will throw anything and everything at us to keep us from getting alone with God regularly. He knows that when we walk closely with the Lord the Kingdom of Darkness is in danger.

So here is what I recommend for you as you pursue a devotional life with the King of Kings. I recommend you pray something like this each day:

“Abba, I pray your kingdom come on me as I move into closer relationship with you. I pray in the authority of Christ against the work of the Kingdom of Darkness. I pray against any and all distractions that would keep me from getting with you today. I pray that your grace would pull me into spending time praying and in the Word. I pray that you would place an insatiable urge within me to be with you.”

Rob

Holiness

Mechthild of Magdeeurg, a thirteenth-century mystic prayed, “I cannot dance, Lord, unless you lead me.  If you want me to leap with abandon, you must intone the song.  Then I shall leap into love, from love into knowledge from knowledge to enjoyment, and from enjoyment beyond all human sensations.  There I want to remain, yet want also to circle higher still.”

We want to be holy.  We know it is God’s call on our lives.  We even hear the desire to pursue holiness from people around us, and this makes us desire God’s will for us all the more.  The only problem that arises from this longing for righteousness is, many times, our pursuit.

We read our bibles religiously, we drive ourselves toward sinless perfection, we pray harder and longer than ever before, and at the end of the day, we forget that it is God who makes us holy.

“I cannot dance, Lord, unless you lead me.”  This statement is a humble cry for the injection of a Holy Father into our very lives.  It is a prayer seeking only the action of another, who has proven Himself to be capable and worthy.

Andrew Murray, a South African writer and teacher in the 1800′s, once wrote, “Often and often as we hear the call, Be ye holy, even as I am holy, it is as if there is and ever must be a great gulf between the holiness of God and man. IN CHRIST! is the bridge that crosses the gulf; nay rather, His fulness has filled it up.”

Rod

The Year of the Ox

According to Chinese astrology, I (Doreen) am a rooster.  A “deep thinker, capable and talented”…at least according to the placemat at Great Wall.  Had my parents stepped things up, I could have been a monkey…an “erratic genius”.  That sounds like more fun.

While in China last year, I got to wander through a park dedicated to the Zodiac animals.  Life-size statues of roosters, monkeys, pigs, oxen, rats and more lined pathways of ornate, neatly trimmed landscape.  My daughters posed for photos with their prospective animals, a celebration of their Chinese heritage.  I noticed a woman standing in front of an 8-foot-wide cement ox, rubbing what looked like a necklace pendant made of jade.  Out of curiosity, I asked what she was doing.  Although some of the details were probably lost in translation (literally), here’s the gist of her explanation:  “This is MY year.  Every 12 years, driven by the moon’s cycle, people born under the sign of the ox can approach the gods and seek blessings.  This is my year to be noticed and to plead for health and success.”  So essentially, one year in every twelve offers the opportunity to communicate with, acknowledge and be acknowledged by a higher power.  Marinate in that for a minute…

Can you imagine our creative, all-knowing, loving God only interested in 1/12^th of His people at any given time?  Can you imagine only being able to talk to and hear from God once every 12 years?  God, our creator and redeemer,  has no limits.  He is Immanuel, God with us.  Every year, every month, every day, every moment.  I pray that right now you feel His presence and His peace…no matter what kind of animal you are!

Running on “E”

I played hoops the other day.

About croaked.

You see I was in the midst of a bit of fasting and it had been a few days since I had eaten anything.  So when I went to run up and down the court – the tank was empty.  The feeling in my body was just bizarre.  What would be a normal, no problem jaunt from one end to the other left me with my hands on my knees with my heart pounding.  While playing, I knew what I wanted to do – my body just wouldn’t respond.  If you need a reminder, take it from me, the body needs food to function properly.

The same is true for the spiritual body.  Jesus said that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

The Word.

The Scriptures.

The Bible.

This is the nutrition the soul needs to function properly.

A Christ follower without any Word in him/her is like me trying to play basketball with no food in my system.  You just won’t function the way you were meant to function.

Too many of us go through life devoid of any of the good food for the soul.  Here is what I think you ought to do this week.  Read at least one verse a day for the next 7 days.  And then if you can get through the week try it again for the next week.  And then if you can get through that week try it again the next week.  You’ll find you have more energy and fuel for your inner, spiritual man/woman.

Peace and Joy

Rob

Simplify

Life is complicated. Every day is a necessary balancing act of many different roles and responsibilities. Think about all of the hats you wear and who you wear them for. Seriously. It’s complicated. If someone were suddenly transported into your body from an alternate universe and they were asked to pick up where you left off living your life, they couldn’t do it. They couldn’t manage the relationships that you’ve nurtured or do the job you’ve perfected or celebrate the victories you’ve fought for. There is too much context to all of those things that simply wouldn’t make sense to someone who has not lived it. Life is complicated.

I (Fraaz) feel that way about being a Christian. There is a lot of context involved in the behaviors required of a Christ follower. The ways that we are required to manage relationships and our own impulses and baggage and all of the things that we are supposed to do and feel or not do and feel…it. is. exhausting.

Sometimes I wonder…nope. Let me start again. I think we have a tendency to make Jesus way more complicated than He needs to be. For starters, we associate all of the nuances of our cultural christianity with Jesus…the rules and behaviors and traditions and expectations. It feels like we’ve all been duped (pretty sure I’ve never used that word in a sentence before) into thinking that Jesus requires all of these things from us. And meanwhile, the world suffers. The world suffers while all of our attention is on jumping through all the right hoops.

When the Pharisees asked Jesus which command was the greatest, they were concerned about following all the rules too. They wanted to be sure that people were jumping through all the right hoops…and things were complicated. Then Jesus blows them away…he doesn’t mention any of the rules in their law or make a reference to the ten commandments…he says love God with all that you are, and love other people. (Matt 22:37)

Love God, love people. If we can figure out how to separate ourselves from all of the extraneous baggage that seems to go hand-in-hand with being a Christ-follower I believe the Kingdom of God would advance more pervasively then it has in a really long time. Sometimes, un-learning is the hardest part.

Bewildering Discipleship

Jesus replied: “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“And the second is like it”? What is that supposed to mean? Loving my neighbor as myself is like loving God with everything that is in me? I(Rod) guess to even have a chance at understanding this concept I do need to know what Jesus means when He says, “like.” Homoios, the Greek word for “like” here, means “of a same or similar nature or quality.” I am not necessarily convinced that the English word “like” truly shoots justice to what Jesus was saying in Matthew 22: 37-38.

I have spent a lot of time this week thinking about discipleship. It is not a word that is actually used in the Bible, ever, but for some reason it has been on my mind. I also think that this idea of what discipleship is and how people can do it effectively has been in the front of many church-going Christians’ minds throughout history. Martin Luther said that true discipleship was actually “bewilderment”, and when I read his quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, The Cost of Discipleship, I cannot help but think that this is what Jesus was doing when He shared His little statement about love with the world. I think Jesus was trying to bewilder us. I think Jesus was trying to get us to draw the abstract conclusion that we initially find most difficult: that loving our neighbor, or someone to whom we might not initially find ourselves drawn, is the same in quality as loving God with everything that is in us.

This does seem bewildering, like loving God and loving people should be different. But maybe they are not. Maybe God is my neighbor, and in more than just a figurative sense. Maybe God is the person whom I have resisted knocking on her door because of the way she smells. I do not know for sure, but I do believe that Jesus wanted me to ask these questions when He first told me that I needed to love Him with everything, and in the same nature or quality, love my neighbor. Honestly, if Jesus really is my neighbor, like He mentions in Matthew 25:40 as becoming “the least of these”, then maybe I am the one who is truly missing out on the bewilderment of discipleship when I miss out on another human being. I do know that if I were to knowingly run into Jesus Christ on the street and experience Him, even for a second, I would not leave unchanged. I would leave transformed. And after all, isn’t that what discipleship is all about?

So I guess my thoughts on discipleship are ever changing. However, hopefully the next time I run into someone who might need my time or life, I will realize that this person might just be Jesus waiting to disciple me. And as I step into a more intimate relationship with Christ through knowing Him as one of the least of these, I will also have the opportunity to disciple as I become Jesus to those who have become Jesus to me.

I DO!

“Grandma, I DO want a snack!” When I hear that from my granddaughter, Maddy, I know she really, really does want that snack. She is polite in her asking, but clearly communicates exactly what she wants and her confidence in her right to ask for it.

“I just want to ask for this one thing…” That sentence conveys, rather, a bit of a sense of servitude, an unnecessary humility, that implies that the asker is not very confident in his right to be asking.

“Just” is such a polite word, isn’t it? “DO” is bold.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard myself and others use that word,” just,” when making a request of God in prayer. “I just want to ask you to heal my brother’s sickness.” “I just come before you, God,…”

I want to invite you into boldness. Hebrews 4:16 does that – invites us to boldness as we approach the Throne. “Just” is not a word that conveys boldness. It implies an attitude that is not consistent with the image of a beloved child coming to a loving parent. I challenge you to replace the word “just” with the word “DO” (with emphasis!). “I DO ask you to heal my brother! I DO come before you God,…”

See how your prayers change as you actively affirm your rightful place as a child of the Most High King!

God bless you!

~Judy

I Am Ozzy.

Ozzy isn’t his real name.  His real name is Jon Osbourne.  I (Rob) just finished his autobiography, I am Ozzy.  Wow.  First off, he swears like a sailor – make that 3 sailors.  Secondly, it is truly amazing he isn’t dead from the abuse he put his body through for decades.  Thirdly, the book was filled with him articulating disappointment, embarrassment, and regret for the life he has lived.

What became readily apparent to me as I read about Ozzy, is the fact that he is a wounded, broken man who used to be a wounded, broken little boy.  His life has been spent in the pursuit of meaning, significance and acceptance.  He has spent millions of dollars on drugs, alcohol, etc. in effort to escape his pain.  He couldn’t do it.  Now that he is sober (has been for a few years now), his life is marked with remorse and regret.

Ozzy had all the things that money, fame, and success could buy.  Cars, homes, vacations, drugs, sex.  Yet none of it brought him happiness.  Looking back on his life he doesn’t see peace and joy.  He sees remorse and regret.  Ozzy learned a hard lesson over the years – stuff (material goods, drugs, etc.) is not the source of fulfillment and abundant living.

I think to a lesser degree we are all like Ozzy.  Seeking belonging, purpose, and significance in things that will only prove to be empty.  As I read the book I was given a poignant reminder that only in Jesus is life found.  Only in Jesus is there peace that passes understanding.  And only in Jesus is there joy that transcends circumstance.

Stillness in the midst of distraction

I (Doreen) take Stadium Drive into town almost everyday.  Just last week I had an “aha!” moment when I realized, for the first time, why Stadium Drive is called Stadium Drive.  Bronco Stadium…duh!  I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never put this together before.  So obvious.

As I cruise along Stadium Drive, seemingly oblivious to most things, I can’t help but notice all the car dealerships along the way. Why do  I make note of them, when the immensity of Bronco Stadium completely misses my radar?  It’s the balloons.

Have you noticed the creativity and intentionality with which these little latex jewels are presented to all of us potentially purchasing passers-by?  Every color, every height, every vehicle, everyday.  Some are literally 500 ft. in the air,  seen for miles.  I even saw a balloon shaped like a 25 ft. tall angry gorilla in one of the used car lots.  That caught my attention.  Maybe it should be called Balloon Drive.  Seems to make more sense, at least to me.

I feel kind of bad for God, trying to get our attention in this over-stimulating balloon-filled world.  With all the distractions we encounter day-to-day, it’s a wonder we even function.  But He’s so smart.  He approaches us in ways that catch us off guard (like the angry gorilla), and in ways we might not expect.  A shy smile, a rainbow, puppy breath, a whisper, a sticky note.  He knows each and every one of us so completely that He can tailor just the right attention-getter, with great creativity and intentionality.  At just the right moment.  Amazing.

May you take time this week, maybe even while driving around town, to notice Him, to “be still, and know that He is God”.  (Psalm 46:10)