Following Jesus Son of God …

Think about it for a minute. Unless you live in a very protected social environment, you realize that cursing is about as ordinary and everyday as it gets.

It is part of my day, not me cursing, but being around a group of people who for most of them cursing is an accepted norm. Not a thought is given to it.

But why do we curse? Why do we fling words out that rail against God, or each other, or often just for sport and entertainment? What do these words accomplish?

And, why do people use God’s name to curse? Why is Jesus Christ to some a curse word? Why is God accused of damning so many things? Why is God’s name used in all of this?

It’s crazy how so many live on the edge, cursing God and using his name to curse other people and everything else under the sun, and we are oblivious to the danger.

What are we expecting to accomplish when we curse the president or our ex-wife, especially when that person is not in our presence?

They can’t hear us. What good or evil will it do?

Our words, even cast out into the air with no particular audience, have a purpose and meaning.

We fling them out in anger and bitterness. We want to do some damage, drag somebody down, inflict pain.

But this is preposterous. There is often no one there. No one hears our comments about the “blanking b#$!@.”

Nothing happens, just words in the air. It doesn’t mean anything.

Or does it?

(Matthew 12:36 NIV) But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.

In true worship, when we draw near to God with our lips and our hearts, we begin to see who we worship.

I mean we already know God and “see” him, but now we see more clearly.

In worship, God doesn’t grow bigger or greater but as the fog of earthly thinking clears away in our hearts and minds, we see him as bigger and greater than before.

In true worship God’s greatness is on display and we allow him to convince us of his greatness as we bow before him.

(Isaiah 29:13 NCV)  The Lord says: “These people say they love me; they show honor to me with words, but their hearts are far from me. The honor they show me is nothing but human rules.”

Israel, at the time of Isaiah’s writing, honored God but only with their words.

And please note what is so critical to this truth:  Because they kept their hearts from God, they were tied and bound by their humanity.  They could only go as far as human rules and human thought would take them.

Worshiping God with our lips and our hearts, allowing God to draw our hearts to him, we allow God to bring us before his throne, before eternity and infinity, into the presence of God himself, not into the presence of what a man or a woman figures God to be.

I am so thankful for the true places you find in my heart, Father.

Those places  you create and cultivate, where I connect with you in moments of perfection, pictures, snapshots of where I will one day live forever.

Thank you for allowing me to see your mercies new and fresh every morning, and for your overflowing forgiveness and utter faithfulness to your task of bringing me before yourself perfect and clean.

Thank you, Mighty God.

I am still struggling to understand and explain what it means to live by the words of God.

Sometimes we call this application. That term used to seem okay to me but no longer. It denotes exactly what we struggle with – control. I will take this truth and apply it to my life.

Not enough bowing down going on; not enough submission to the grandeur of God.

We must give up control, give up the attitude that I can take truth and fix my life and make it better.

God’s words are so much more than that. They are life.

(Deuteronomy 8:3 MSG) He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don’t live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from GOD’s mouth.

Let’s use the model God has given us. We don’t take a sandwich or a bowl of soup and say, “Okay, I am now going to apply this food to my life.”

No, we eat it.

So is it so far reaching to believe that God wants us to figure out how to eat his words?

What we have come up with is the term “feeding on God’s word” which means studying the Bible or listening to a message being preached. Where do we get that? The only thing we are feeding is our intellect thus our pride. Our biblical idea of “feeding on the Word of God” is not biblical at all.

This is like studying the recipe for a meal but not eating it.  We drool over the recipe and the ingredients but never taste the food.

We are back to control. I will study, figure it out and do with it as I choose.

No bowing low before God going on.

Why not try to set ourselves in a more biblical direction where we are bowing before God and receiving his words for life-changing nourishment?

How about this? “Here, eat this. Accept these words and see how they work themselves out in our lives.”

Chew on this all day tomorrow: Never pay back insult for insult. Instead bless the person who insulted you. This is what is on your spiritual menu.

(1 Peter 3:9 NCV) Do not do wrong to repay a wrong, and do not insult to repay an insult. But repay with a blessing, because you yourselves were called to do this so that you might receive a blessing.

Eat the words and taste God.

Psalms 13:1-2 ESV To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? (2) How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

How long, how long, how long. . .

Does God forget about us and hide from us?

Maybe. In a sense. But not really.

God doesn’t let go of us. He doesn’t quit protecting or boot us out of the high tower. He doesn’t withdraw his refuge and hiding place from those who are his through Jesus Christ.

But sometimes he does let us “feel the storm.”

Sometimes he lets us feel the cold rain of this world so we have hearts of compassion for people in their struggles.

If we never leave the high tower to feel the cruel brunt of this world’s evil, then how can we ever care as we should for the people of this Earth?

(1 Timothy 2:1 NCV) First, I tell you to pray for all people, asking God for what they need and being thankful to him.

Pray for all people. I do that sometimes on the way to work in the morning – pray for all people everywhere. So many lives are crushed and bruised by this world.

I thought of a definition for gentleness the other morning, and it fits here.

“Gentleness” – handle so as not to damage further.

(Philippians 4:5 NKJV) Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.

(Galatians 5:22-23 NKJV) But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, (5:23) gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

So sometimes we need to feel the storm of someone’s life so we can handle them in such a way as to not further damage them but to bring our God’s healing into their lives.

I like that. I like that a lot. 🙂

We have probably all watched the scene in a movie unfold something like this: the good guy chases the bad guy wearing the black mask who was sneaking around somewhere he shouldn’t be.

Who is this mysterious intruder?

What will we find when we catch him or her and pull away the mask?

It just so happens that I had a similar experience several days ago.

Yessirree, my very own action scene, except it was only played out in my mind; safer that way; at least I think it is.

Anyway, I chased the shadowy figure until I caught him, wrestled him to the ground and pulled off the mask of this villain. . .only to find I was looking at myself.

Surprise!

I caught myself somewhere I never thought I would be: Distancing myself from people I love to avoid more pain.

This “other me” was just too tired and too sad to face any more sadness. At least that was his story, and he said he was sticking to it. Too much pain in the lives close to him; too much potential pain in lives around him, such as the people who attend his church, neighbors, the neighbors to his church, co-workers.

So he thought he would steal away, find the comfort of oblivion, the peace of not knowing.

Less information equaled less involvement equaled less pain equaled…

Equaled not honoring his calling, not trusting God, not living by faith. . .

Good thing I caught this guy when I did, huh?

Another reason to know what it means to worship God.

Where do we think best? Are most aware of our resources? Have the best perspective?

Before the throne of God.

(Psalms 73:16-17 NKJV) When I thought how to understand this, It was too painful for me; until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I understood their end.

(Psalms 73:16-17 MSG) Still, when I tried to figure it out, all I got was a splitting headache . . . (17) Until I entered the sanctuary of God. Then I saw the whole picture.

The psalmist couldn’t find a good answer for the well-being and prosperity of the wicked until he went before the throne of God.

Sunday morning I sat in my study and asked God to “just bring me before you, Lord, to bow before you, O God, this is where I need to be.”

Hear the air locks closing? And then “whoosh.” There I was transported before my refuge, strength, exactly where I am meant to be, before the throne of God, bowed before my Creator and Redeemer.

And I thought – This is where “I can see clearly now.”

This is where we need to be when we make our most important decisions. This is where we understand who God is, who we are in Jesus Christ, our spiritual resources, God’s power and love.

Living above anxiety, not below the weight of this world.

How many times have I started a project at work and thought shortly after – Why did I ever start this? What was I thinking?

Have you done that?

It seemed like a good idea. I knew it was necessary, or at least beneficial, but then I would find myself in the middle of a mess and think – “Oh, man, why didn’t I leave well enough alone?”

Because “well enough” is not good enough is the short answer. It needed done and the mess was part of the fix.

Important “rule” in life: The mess is often part of the fix.

If I had the mentality to avoid the mess, then I would not be the employee that I should be. I could still do much of my job and do it very well, but I would leave out important things that help our company.

Another thing is that I could avoid the mess and most people would not notice because of the more routine things that I accomplish day-in-day-out.

But I made a commitment when I began working for this company again in 1996: That I would be an excellent employee.

I was a good employee the first time I worked for them but now good is not good enough. The bar has been raised, part of my thankfulness and appreciation for having a job.

How do I live this out spiritually?
I don’t dodge opportunities to serve God by avoiding the mess.

And that is what I am dealing with right now. I believe God is calling me to the mess again. Oh, boy!

Here is possibly a description of this process of success.

Good idea (well thought out; a good thing to do) ->
Begin project ->
Dismayed with the mess (“What was I thinking?”) ->
Keep going (it was a good idea and needed to be done) ->
Make the best decisions you can and keep at it ->
Possibly more “Oh, no’s” ->
Things start coming together ->
Immense satisfaction over a necessary job well done.

As I thought through this, I tried to think of a project that as I look back that I really wish I had not started. And I have started many “Oh, no, why did I start this” projects. I can’t think of one that didn’t work out. There is probably one or a few but if there are, they are not significant enough to have been captured in memory. The closest thing I have is rerouting a ramp for a sand stockpile and discarding the idea later, but even in that “failure” I was given insight in how to solve another problem with water drainage in that area.

Whether you apply this to excavating and the earth you are working with doesn’t seem to cooperate, or whether you apply this to speaking the truth in love to a brother or sister in Christ and the relationship seems to deteriorate, the principle seems to hold true.

I am not saying every project is a good idea. I am not saying we are able to execute every good idea. I am saying that it seems that if we begin with the right motivation and planning that we need to keep going.

We must understand that “the mess” does not necessarily mean we started down the wrong path. It could mean that but very often it means just the opposite, so we must not misinterpret the mess because we have a wrong view of Christian life and service.

Immense satisfaction over a necessary job well done.
We can be very skillful on the job and not be the employee we should be or be very skillful in serving God and miss our holy calling. We can do things well – A job well done. But there is a difference between a job well done and a necessary job well done.

Are we doing what is necessary? Are we doing what God calls us to? Or are we doing church well without serving God in crucial areas?

Jesus calls us to die, to give up our lives to receive them.

(Luke 9:23 NKJV) Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”

(Luke 9:24 NCV) Those who want to save their lives will give up true life. But those who give up their lives for me will have true life.

Unless you are different than me, you want smooth and easy, clean and neat, no jagged edges, no mess.

But if you are like me, you have made a commitment even greater than being an excellent employee.

That is to please God and be pleasing to him, to hear his “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I don’t believe this will come from merely doing church well but from serving our Creator and Redeemer well, pressing on through the mess to fulfill our necessary calling.

We can be very skillful in our service but not be pleasing to God.

The mess calls for faith. And that is what scares me.

(Hebrews 11:6 BBE) And without faith it is not possible to be well-pleasing to him, for it is necessary for anyone who comes to God to have the belief that God is, and that he is a rewarder of all those who make a serious search for him.

(Isaiah 29:13 NCV) The Lord says: “These people say they love me; they show honor to me with words, but their hearts are far from me. The honor they show me is nothing but human rules.

The hypocrites made it too easy for me to reject God as I grew up in church.

I mean it was no contest, seeing their inconsistencies and meanness, their lukewarm attitude and “play church” mentality.

I didn’t have to look very hard or long to find the flaws.

Okay, so there was one big problem. The real problem was that I wanted to sin. I didn’t want to go to hell, if there was a hell, but I didn’t really want a relationship with God.

I wanted to sin, sought it out, spent my time doing it, enjoyed a good portion of it.

And the hypocrites helped me out, gave me plenty excuses.

Of course, therein lies a problem because God will except none of the excuses that I concoct.

“Hell’s a waitin’, boy. Sure as the sun rises. Don’t make no never mind about the hypocrites. Hell’s a waitin’ for those with flimsy self-serving excuses.”

So after I tired of pursuing the fleeting pleasure of sin, I began a new search for God.

Left the damned hypocrites out of the process this time.

Why did they believe something so preposterous?

If the machine was only capable of running only 65 boards per 10 minutes, then how on this particular morning could “Amber” [Name changed – I want to say to protect the stupid, but I shouldn’t.] be running 100 boards per ten minutes?

And how could “Toni” [ditto above] as our supervisor support this breakthrough in production?

I want to share the details of this incident to help us question our methodology in “processing life” and possibly help us to better understand the struggle it is to see truth and reality apart from our biases and desires.

Why are we so effective in distorting reality?

The story:
I worked in a factory several years ago and learned to run a variety of machines. I came in to run one of those machines early one morning and Amber had already begun feeding the circuit boards into the machine to have the necessary parts glued on.

Toni had Amber start the machine an hour early because we had other circuit boards to put through the machine. Toni asked me when I would be ready to run the other boards and I calculated the time and estimated something like 11:00 am. It was around 6:00 am when we spoke.

Toni was impatient and could not understand why this would take so long. I explained that with the number of boards that needed assembled at approximately 65 boards per ten minutes (which was optimistic) that it would take about five hours. I don’t remember the exact figures as this was ten years ago. These particular boards were “YY” boards; the boards were coded by combinations of letters.

Toni stated, “But Amber has the machine running at 100 boards per ten minutes.” And Amber agreed.

Please bear with me; this story is very revealing as to how we make our minds work to our advantage.

Now more details: Amber was a good operator, but this machine was not capable of running the YY boards through at this pace. Our time study person calculated the machine to run about 72-75 boards per ten minutes. This is another story in itself because although our time study guy was a nice person, he wasn’t very competent. He tabulated his results based on the entry feeder to the machine which would line up several boards quickly so that when the machine was ready, it would not have to wait for a board to process. The machine ran slower than the entry feeder, but he did not calculate that.

So we have Amber’s claim for 100 per…, the time study guy says 75 per…, but the machine would only run 62-65 if everything was just right.

Do you see that we have a problem, Houston?

So how could I explain to my supervisor how Amber could run the machine so much faster than I could?

I asked Amber: Did you reset the counter before you began?

Oops! Forgot to reset the counter and began with a head start.

That explains the inflated production figure, but it doesn’t really explain how two people who were well aware of the capability of this machine could have it running over 150 percent more than what it could run under ideal conditions.

How could they disregard something so obvious?

Because they wanted to. Sound familiar? We believe what we want to believe. We believe what fits our agenda. We process life according to our desires. Blind leads blind.

Now bringing this around to the professing Church: We believe much of what we believe because we want to. It fits and we are sticking with our story, no matter the reality of life, God and his words.

Why do we cling to the distortion? Because we want to.

Wishful thinking, friends.

Here is part of what was going on with my job. Amber was a good operator, and she wanted to show Toni that she was better at running this machine than I was. Amber wasn’t a bad person, but she was going to use me to promote herself.

Dang! If she only hadn’t overlooked the counter.

Toni (our supervisor) wanted to put me in my place. She seemed to want to do that a lot. She didn’t like me. Why? I am not sure, but I know she thought I was too uppity. She told me once during an evaluation that my co-workers didn’t feel that I was concerned about production. This perception was based on my reactions to problems with running the machines. I didn’t look concerned enough.

I asked Toni if she ever read the machine logs. Her answer? No, she had not.

As machine operators, we recorded our production figures for the shift in the machine log. If she had taken the time to read the machine logs, she would have seen that I had higher production figures than most of the other operators, sometimes tripling their production.

But she evaluated me on perception rather than hard data.

Yes, this was a little bewildering to me. Hard data or perception? Hmmm… I am not concerned enough about production because of her perception even though my actual production figures are outstanding. Sheesh!

And third on my list in the wishful thinking category is this. Toni did want to get more production for the day. The more we did; the better she looked to the higher ups.

So everything was in place for a good day, until I ruined it by bringing them back to reality.

Of course, they thanked me for catching their mistake.

No, somehow, it was still my fault that those *&d@##$%^ YY boards would not be done until 11:00 am.

So why have I gone on and on with this?

Because we do it so often, and we don’t even realize what we are actually doing.

(Isaiah 28:14-15 NKJV) Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you scornful men, Who rule this people who are in Jerusalem, (15) Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, And with Sheol we are in agreement. When the overflowing scourge passes through, It will not come to us, For we have made lies our refuge, And under falsehood we have hidden ourselves.”

Our lies become our refuge, and in becoming our refuge become our security.

Bewildered. What lie do we want to believe so much that we refuse to face the reality before us?

Look at what we have done. Look at our production. Look at our relationship with God.

Oops! Forgot to set the counter. Was so enthralled with my story that I missed the Story of God.