Following Jesus Son of God …

What is pure joy?

1999, May 20   Pure joy.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2 NIV).

I wonder if we could paraphrase this – “Consider it an opportunity for pure joy when we face various troubles and trials.”

I think I’m “on to” something with my thoughts this morning.  Hopefully things will come together and I will learn the lesson and be able to articulate what is stirring in my heart.

Several months ago I had one of those moments when a seemingly very ordinary, mundane thing was revealed for what it truly was.

I was standing at the kitchen sink, and boom, capow. . .it hit me.

I move the handle this way (forward and to the right), and I receive cold, fresh water in an instant.

I move the handle this way (forward and to the left), and I receive clean, hot water, ready for the task.

I had done this thousands of times without a second thought but not this time.

I saw the gift for what it was and I praised and thanked my God.

Do you want a refreshing drink of water?  Oh, what is that you say?  To have any water at all you have to walk 2k?  And then the water isn’t potable, not fit too drink.

But I just do this, move the handle forward and to the right and hold my glass under it until I have had my fill.

And we haven’t even talked about hot, sudsy liquid to clean our dishes or scrub the dust of our bodies after a hard day’s labor.

How does God do it?

This little beast just crawled up into my lap and captured me.  Sometimes (so often) I am amazed at God’s handiwork in his living creatures, human and otherwise.

Jazz has become a part of our family in just a few weeks.

Jazz likes to show her “kung fu” moves to our Shih Tzu, Abby.  She wheels, spins, boxes, cartwheels and flip-flops her way around her new friend.  And Abby really likes having a buddy.

Okay, so I sound like a little old man doting over a cat.  But don’t be too hard on me as I marvel at my Creator for one of the many gifts he blesses my life with.

God is doing stuff, has been doing stuff and will continue to do stuff.

There. That wasn’t so hard to explain after all.

Last Friday morning, sitting in my car before work at about 6:30 am, but I also became very aware that I was sitting before God and his movement in the lives of men over the last several thousand years and sitting before God and eternity.

That will give a man some perspective. I had just finished slugging my way through all the visions, descriptions, measurements and judgments of Ezekiel and felt such a closeness to God, not because of a specific phrase or truth in Ezekiel but because of the context for life that reading this ancient book provided.

Very honestly, reading through the Bible can be very boring at times, but it is like a watering process, or a cultivating time of breaking up the soil, preparing it for moisture and seed.

Yes, sometimes I can hardly get through a verse of God’s holy truth without stopping to write my thoughts down, a phrase penetrates my hard head and “poof,” an explosion of thought.

But other times you plod, you slug it out, maybe even crawl, take yourself by the scruff of the neck and persevere, drag your worthless hide. . .Okay, I’m getting a little carried away here.

AND GET REWARDED as God’s world invades your world and gives you a giant dose of eternal perspective.

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

I hope I can put my thoughts together as I share this with you.

Once upon a time. . .as I sat in my car before work on Friday.

I  recently finished reading through Ezekiel in my “read through the Bible in a year” plan that I began on March 15, 2006.  Just a slight detour, but I mention this because reading through the Bible with God is so important.  Did you catch the “with God” part?  This is not a classroom assignment; you don’t have to finish in a year.  In fact, often God messes up your schedule as he draws you to places of thought and meditation, points of interest and concern that speak specifically to you and times of worship.

For instance, I may plan on reading 2 Peter in its entirety and God will interrupt my progress by riveting my mind on the
“entrance  into the eternal kingdom” spoken of in 1.11.

(2 Peter 1:11 ESV)  For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Doesn’t he realize  I have a schedule to keep?

Is this entrance on Earth?  I haven’t thought of it in this way before but once we have arrived, it seems that everything will be glorious.

To be continued sometime after church today. . .

My blog time this week has been consumed mostly by my research in pursuit of a laptop.

I labor over these things; it may take weeks but that is my methodology.

Interesting stuff, huh?

Amos 🙂

I know this truth, but then I round a corner on my journey, catch a glimpse of life from another perspective a little farther down the path and realize. . .

I need to learn it all over again.

This time it was “taking up my cross daily.” Daily, as in every day, all the time, as in fighting the temptation to save my life and embracing Christ’s instruction to lose my life for his sake.

God’s way is better, always and I need to allow him to remind me of that and to convince me of that.

Faith, trust. . .daily.

It is just so hard. Kind of like the “give us today our daily bread” thing. I would like to have things squared away for more than just today. I would like to see more.

But. . .oops! That’s not faith, and that is not how we live, truly live.

(Luke 9:23-25 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. (24) For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. (25) For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?”

I fight this when it comes to my time and resources and dealing with interpersonal relationships.  Why do I have to spend so much of me on other people?  There are things I want to do.  What?  Give until I am dead?  Yes.  That is what the Master is saying.

And that is what I will learn and know until I round another corner, and here we go again. . .

Some people have good information and some don’t.

THOUGHT #1: Bad information from the right person can sound really good, and sometimes we like it like that.

For instance, maybe you have worked with someone who gave out information to gain control or prestige, but they didn’t have good information; it didn’t hold true. This type of person appears confident and competent. If you didn’t know better, you would think they knew what they were talking about. So they “hold court” and sometimes people flock to them because they appear legitimate, and because they are saying what you want to hear.

But you find out you can’t trust their information.

It sounded valid, but at some point if you followed through on what they said you would fail. You would order the wrong parts, load the wrong product, send the wrong spreadsheet, fail to assemble the machine according to spec, follow the wrong lead, whatever is relevant to your job.

Likewise we have people who give us bad information about life. In fact, by default this is what we all do. We only have good information if we allow God to “rewire” us, transform us by renewing the way we think.

It’s bad enough that we view life on Earth and life as it continues on to Heaven from a skewed, flawed perspective, but we gladly share our foolishness with others.

We don’t give due diligence to our information gathering process. We make a cursory effort because often we don’t want to know because we would have to make a decision contrary to what we think brings us joy and satisfaction.

But let’s not let being clueless slow us down.
We are clueless and God tries to give us a clue, but we refuse what God says because we would prefer to rely on what we think. Well, that makes sense. What was I thinking?

THOUGHT #2: If you refuse to allow God to change your thinking, you will give a cursory examination to issues that matter for eternity to satisfy your current desires.

You will give decisions that matter for forever “a lick and a promise.”

“A lick and a promise” – An interesting idiom indeed.

Meaning: A cursory effort, for instance at painting or tidying up. It alludes to the perfunctory washing performed by children.
Origin: This is colloquial English and is first recorded in print in Walter White’s All round the Wrekin, 1860. “We only gives the cheap ones a lick and a promise.”
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-lick-and-a-promise.html

A lick and a promise
A superficial effort made without care or enthusiasm.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lick+and+a+promise

Give something a lick and a promise
1. to clean something quickly and not carefully. “I put on my new suit, gave my shoes a lick and a promise, and left the house.”
2. to do a job or piece of work quickly and not carefully. “We didn’t have time to do much clearing up in the yard – just gave the grass a lick and a promise.”
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/give+a+lick+and+a+promise

So just possibly we should listen to God.

Can you see how wise this strategy is? God is the only one who can give us information that will carry through life now and forever. Even standing before God himself, the ultimate adventure in being scrutinized, our information will hold true.

Dang! And I was smart enough to catch on to that while still on this planet.

(Psalms 119:89 NCV) LORD, your word is everlasting; it continues forever in heaven.