Tag Humility

God Breaks Out of All Boxes

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Written around 600 B.C., the Old Testament book of Habakkuk outlines a conversation between the prophet Habakkuk and God, in the few years prior to Judah’s exile in Babylon.  The book begins with Habakkuk’s complaint that evil was running rampant in Judah.  Habakkuk cries out to God about the prevalence of “violence” and “iniquity.”  He cries out about how people are ignoring God’s law, yet nothing is being done about it.  There was no justice.[1]  He’s tired of seeing nothing but evil in the world every day and is frustrated that God doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it.

Then comes Habakkuk 1:5, which to me is one of the most shocking verses in the Bible:

“Look among the nations, and see;
            wonder and be astounded.

For I am doing a work in your days
            that you would not believe if told.”

Why is this verse shocking?  Because next, God tells Habakkuk that He has arranged for Babylon, a “dreaded and fearsome”[2] nation that does not respect God and that lives by the creed that might makes right, to conquer Judah.  Basically, Habakkuk asks God why He was allowing evil to prosper in Judah, and God answers that He will allow an even more evil nation to prosper and conquer Judah.  Habakkuk must have been perplexed, and God knew it.  He knew Habakkuk would “wonder and be astounded” and we probably feel that way sometimes too.

Habakkuk had expectations about what God could and couldn’t do, but here God says He can, and will, do things that shock us.  Things that we cannot understand, but things that will teach us to trust instead of understand.  Sometimes God doesn’t behave in line with our theological doctrine, but He always does so for a reason.

Another example of shock at God’s out-of-the-box behavior comes from John 13, one of my favorite New Testament stories.  Mere days before going to the cross, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”[3]

Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash

Peter was shocked.  This was not what he expected from the Messiah, the incarnate Son of God.  So, when we get to verse 8, we read: “Peter said to [Jesus], “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.””

Peter was reluctant to accept a God that would serve him by washing his feet, but what Jesus was trying to tell the disciples was that if they wanted to follow Him as their master, they would have to serve as He served, even if it wasn’t what they expected from God.  They needed to be washed, and then to wash others.

Peter was learning that if Jesus is doing something, don’t question it!  His actions are right by the mere fact that He is doing it, whatever our reason or expectations tell us.  In the Old Testament, God decided to send His people to a Promised Land, then to cause a heathen nation to kick them out of the Promised Land.  In the New Testament, He showed us that His Messiah would be a suffering servant, to teach us to be suffering servants.

God will never do anything that contradicts His character as revealed in the Bible, but the Bible also says, “Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD, or what man shows him his counsel?” in Isaiah 40:13.  God does not fit within our boxes, our expectations and rules.  We don’t fully understand Him.  Therefore, pay close attention to Jesus the Master, and be ready to follow where He goes, even though it might be shocking!

“Look among the nations, and see;
            wonder and be astounded.

For I am doing a work in your days
            that you would not believe if told.”

[1] Habakkuk 1:2-4
[2] Habakkuk 1:7
[3] John 13:3-5

Using Your Talent: A Quint of Quotes

Todd R 1 Comment

Fellow travelers,

Here is another “Quint of Quotes,” or five somewhat related sayings, from my collection.  I hope you find them interesting and thought-provoking.  Enjoy!

Photo by Tom Bradley on Unsplash

“Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best” – Henry Van Dyke

“We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” – Mother Teresa

“It is not your business to succeed, but to do right. When you have done so the rest lies with God.” – C. S. Lewis

“All God’s giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them.” – James Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission

“No one can do everything, but everyone can do something” – Max Lucado

Jesus is the Best Fisherman

Todd R Leave a comment

During His life on earth, Jesus called 12 men to special positions as His disciples or apostles.  Out of these 12, at least 4 and possibly 7, were fishermen, a common trade at that time.  The gospels have many fishing stories, including one in Luke 5 when Jesus is about to call His first disciples.

One morning after Simon Peter and some other fishermen had been working all night without catching anything, Jesus decided to preach from Simon’s boat to the crowd that was following Him.  After teaching, Jesus told Simon: “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”[1]  Simon answered: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”[2]

Simon ended up obeying, but not before objecting: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!”  Some questions may have gone through Simon’s mind: Did this travelling rabbi just tell me how to do my job?  Nighttime was the best time for fishing, and they caught nothing, so why did He tell them to try again?  Maybe Jesus, as a non-professional, didn’t know that?  Maybe he felt like “I’m the expert here!”

However, Jesus knew what He was doing because when they obeyed, “they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.”  There were so many fish that, they “filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.”[3]

One lesson of this story is that Jesus can perform miracles by controlling nature.  Another is that Jesus had an unlimited ability to help Simon and the others do their jobs!  And if Jesus was better than professional fisherman at fishing, what does that mean for other jobs?  Jesus always knows better than we do about any job!

So, whether you’ve had a productive day, or you feel like you’ve “toiled all night and took nothing” don’t hesitate to ask Jesus for career advice! As Simon (later known as Peter) wrote in his own letter, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” – 1 Peter 5:6-7

[1] Luke 5:4b
[2] Luke 5:5
[3] Luke 5:6-7

Don’t Let the Stink Stop You – Blessed are the Meek #5

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Here’s a review of the series on meekness so far.  The first two posts contrasted two characters from the movie The Matrix, Agent Smith and Neo, to Jesus.  Agent Smith was the “Malevolent Incarnation,” who used and enforced rules to keep people in their place.  Smith can’t stand the stink of humanity and just wants to be free of it.  Neo, the hero of the Matrix series, is the “Ambivalent Incarnation” who wants to free mankind from rules, but otherwise wants to let them be as they are.  However, under Neo’s no-rules philosophy of “everyone should do what they want,” there is no foundation from which to object to anything someone else does, including brutal oppression.  Any objection is also an objection to the same philosophy Neo claims to hold, and “no city or house divided against itself will stand.”[1]

Jesus, contrasted to these, is the “Benevolent Incarnation.”  Jesus is more aware of the problems that make Agent Smith repulsed by us and that make him want to control us, but He also does not leave us alone with no way to overcome our problems.  He rules us for our good, and because we cannot meet His perfect standard, He lived it in our place, then died to cover the cost of our failure.  He wants to fix our stink, not because He hates us as Agent Smith does, but because He loves us in spite of our stink.  He refuses to allow us to stink forever, as Neo would.  He is benevolent, not malevolent or ambivalent.

Meekness is the third step in the Beatitudes, an intentionally sequential series of statements that describe what’s involved in following God, like gears in a machine: “First, being poor in spirit means that we have emptied ourselves of all illusions that our plans are better than God’s.  Second, mourning the state of ourselves and our world means we are emotionally engaged.  That we care.  In the third Beatitude, being meek is where we begin to engage our will, submitting it to God as our benevolent Lord.”

He wants us to also be benevolent incarnations, however we often don’t want to engage the third gear of meekness, where “the rubber meets the road” so to speak.  But if we don’t embrace it “the first two Beatitudes alone can leave us in a place where we’re a mess and the world is a terrible place and there’s nothing we can do about any of it.  It can be a place of depression and despair.”

Martha almost found herself stuck in this place when Jesus returned to Bethany after the death of Lazarus, her brother.  Jesus found the family mourning, then: “Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”  (John 11:39).  Jesus intended to raise Lazarus from the dead, but for Martha the stink was all she could think of.  Patently, Jesus encouraged her, the stone covering the entrance to the tomb was moved, and Lazarus walked out of the grave alive!

Don’t Let the Stink Stop You
Does the stench of sin keep us from being meek?  Do we, like Agent Smith, just want people to behave so we can go about our way?  Or does our obedience come first?  Jesus wants us to live as He lived, but we only can if we accept His righteousness and become invested in it at all levels of our being.  If we are truly poor in spirit and mourn our sin, what’s stopping us?

God won’t tell us to move the stone from Lazarus’ grave – that was Martha’s task. It also was not Jesus’ task.  We don’t do what Jesus would do, but what He would have us do.  He could have moved the stone Himself, but He wanted Martha to participate in His work, but to do that she had to be willing to be uncomfortable.

We all are often in Martha’s place, struggling with what Jesus wants us to do.  He asks us to do things that don’t make sense to us, that don’t make sense to the world, and sometimes it stinks (sometimes literally).  Jesus wants to bring His people to life, as He did with Lazarus, but there may be a stone He wants you to move, and it will only move if you have faith in Him stronger than the stink involved.

Meekness is the Cross
Meekness means carrying the cross the Father assigns to us.  For Jesus it was taking on all the sin of the world, not just by His death on a literal cross, but also by proactively taking on the consequences of it for the benefit of others.  We stink but He did not leave us alone.  For us, carrying the cross involves taking on some of the stink of the world, stepping into the suffering of others and offering the life that only Jesus can give.  What an amazing contrast this is to what’s so common today: pointing out sin everywhere and demanding those “other sinners” pay the price, or demanding that government solve the problem somehow, or withdrawing from problems that seem too big to do anything about.

Is there a stinky situation you’re aware of, but avoiding?  Being meek toward Jesus means we’re on board with His plan of salvation and willing to do our part, whatever that is.  Sometimes all that’s needed to bring someone life is moving a stone and enduring the odor.  While the smell was enough for Martha to hesitate, to Jesus it was part of the cost of living and dying for us.  He was willing to bear it, and if we meekly move the stone, Jesus will do the rest.

[1] Matthew 12:25

When You’re Stuck in Second Gear – Blessed are the Meek #4

Todd R Leave a comment

Everybody struggles with maintaining hope in tough times, and also with knowing and doing God’s will when what we feel is right seems irrelevant.  Today I’m going to cover a story of how the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah struggled to understand an idea God gave him to share hope with future generations, including us.  The story also loosely follows the outline of the first three Beatitudes and therefore fits in the “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” series.

If misunderstood, the first two Beatitudes alone can leave us in a place where we’re a mess and the world is a terrible place and there’s nothing we can do about any of it.  It can be a place of depression and despair.  Like in the theme song from the TV show Friends[1], we feel like “It hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year.”  Where does it end?  But God promises that there is work for each of us to do: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10) The third Beatitude, “Blessed are the meek” promises a way forward – for every person in their own way to do whatever He has prepared for them.

The Gearbox of the Beatitudes
As I wrote in the first post on “Blessed are those who mourn” I believe the Beatitudes are an intentional sequence, and here I’ll describe better what I mean.  The Beatitudes are not a chronological path we move through as we mature.  We don’t learn to be fully poor in spirit before we can get any better at mourning or being meek.  The picture is more like gears in a machine that all need to work together for the machine to function in each specific situation.  Weakness in one place affects the entire machine and Jesus was explaining specific parts of becoming more like Him.  God, as our maker, knows how we function, the reasons behind when we fail to function, and the solution.  With the Beatitudes, Jesus encourages us to use the machine for what it was made for – loving God and neighbor in all times and circumstances.  First, being poor in spirit means that we have emptied ourselves of all illusions that our plans are better than God’s.  Second, mourning the state of ourselves and our world means we are emotionally engaged.  That we care.  In the third Beatitude, being meek is where we begin to engage our will, submitting it to God as our benevolent Lord.  If we don’t, “it’s like you’re always stuck in second gear” from the Friends theme song.

The story today (from Jeremiah 32) finds Jeremiah stuck.  The Jews had him imprisoned for speaking the words of their own God, and while he was there, God told him that he should buy a field.  Not only was Jeremiah in prison, but the field he was asked to buy was in enemy territory.  The Babylonians had already conquered much of Judah and were besieging Jerusalem.  Surrounded by despair, we can easily imagine Jeremiah asking: what good will it do?  He might think cutting off Nebuchadnezzar’s ear would be a better idea[2].

Jeremiah Inspects the Gears
As readers of the book of Jeremiah, we are doubly blessed to know that he did buy the field, but also that he recorded his prayer to God as he tried to overcome his reservations.  The prayer is in chapter 32, verses 17-25, and loosely reviews the first two Beatitudes, while he is having trouble engaging the third gear of meekness.  His mind and emotions are engaged, but his will hesitates.

First, Jeremiah reviews the power, character, and history of God to remind him to rely on His Spirit, not on the poverty of his own spirit in verses 17 to 23:

“‘Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.  You show steadfast love to thousands, but you repay the guilt of fathers to their children after them, O great and mighty God, whose name is the LORD of hosts, great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open to all the ways of the children of man, rewarding each one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds. You have shown signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, and to this day in Israel and among all mankind, and have made a name for yourself, as at this day.  You brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with a strong hand and outstretched arm, and with great terror.  And you gave them this land, which you swore to their fathers to give them, a land flowing with milk and honey.  And they entered and took possession of it.”

Second, Jeremiah mourns the consequences of Judah’s disobedience starting in the middle of verse 23 through verse 24:

“But they did not obey your voice or walk in your law. They did nothing of all you commanded them to do. Therefore you have made all this disaster come upon them.  Behold, the siege mounds have come up to the city to take it, and because of sword and famine and pestilence the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans who are fighting against it. What you spoke has come to pass, and behold, you see it.”

Yet the prayer closes with Jeremiah doubting the significance of his own obedience in verse 25:

“Yet you, O Lord GOD, have said to me, “Buy the field for money and get witnesses”—though the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans.”

In a book where the main theme is (temporary and partial) judgment on God’s people who had turned away from Him, there are also moments of (eternal) hope.  Jeremiah bought the field – to show God’s people that their exile would be temporary, and their eternal hope was secure. As the Beatitude says, the meek “shall inherit the earth“!   But there are also two notes of hope for us living centuries later: 1) that doubt is not something only “weak” Christians feel.  Jeremiah felt it too.  And 2) that encouragement matters, even if we see it as a meaningless drop in a turbulent ocean.  If God calls us to do it, it is meaningful.  For a lot of people “It hasn’t been their day, their week, their month, or even their year.”  To quote an old friend of mine in a recent Facebook post: “Encouragement. Everyone needs it, and we hardly ever share it. Don’t wait. Spread the love!”

If you still find yourself stuck, hesitant to shine God’s light in the darkness, go before God and follow the pattern of Jeremiah’s prayer – remember the power of His Spirit when yours is weak and the significance of obedience even in small things.  You might find not only yourself getting out of second gear, but also helping someone else move beyond a rut they’ve found themselves in.

“Let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” – Hebrews 10:25

[1] “I’ll Be There For You” by The Rembrandts (audio here)
[2] See the post “He Who Sits in the Heavens Laughs (Part 2)” for more on the growth in the Apostle Peter from cutting off Malchus’ ear to teaching “So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.” (1 Peter 2:1)