Tag Jesus

Finding Time for God During “RTO”

Todd R 1 Comment
Photo by Michelen Studios on Unsplash

During the pandemic, most of us found we had extra time on our hands.  In my case, I did not have to commute to work, and many other activities I’d normally do were shut down, so it was easier (not easy) to make time for private time with God in Bible study and prayer.  However, as I’m now in “Return to Office” mode, working 2-3 days a week in the office, I’ve been reminded of Mark 1:35, which says: “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, [Jesus] departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.”

Jesus got up early after a very busy night, which Mark describes in verses 33 and 34: “That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons.  And the whole city was gathered together at the door.  And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.”

I am not naturally a morning person, and finding time has been harder, but as I’ve written: “whether you’re working at a job, at home, retired, a student, a parent, or in any role in this world, as God’s creativity was to be reproduced by Adam and Eve, the character of Jesus is being developed in His people in this world.”  “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”[1]  If even Jesus needed daily prayer and time to listen to the Father to get His work done, how much more do we all need that time?

My post-pandemic routine is different than my pre-pandemic routine, and daily time with God is not about the means, but the end.  He has work for each of us to do, and whatever your means of having relationship with the Father, making time to spend with Him is vital for approaching each day as an act of worship and service.

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” – 2 Chronicles 7:14

[1] Ephesians 2:10

Reblog: “The Only Way — A Lawyer’s Prayers”

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Today I’m sharing a post from blogger Anna Waldherr, with a sermon excerpt from Dr. Michael Youssef showing how Christ is the focus of each and every book in both the Old and New Testaments. Follow the link below for a great illustration of how the Bible is all about Jesus, a point I tried to make in this earlier post about how to say “Bible” in sign language.

Oldest known icon of Christ Pantocrator (6th Cent.), St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mt. Sinai, Author JoeyEspo984 (CC BY-SA 4.0 International) “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me’ ” (John 14: 6). Tragically, Bible-believing churches are becoming all too rare.  Many churches […]

The Only Way — A Lawyer’s Prayers

Popularity is a Withering Fig Tree

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After Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and after driving the moneychangers out of the temple, He left Jerusalem and stayed in Bethany for a time.  On His way back into the city, an odd event occurs where Jesus curses a fig tree so it can never bear fruit again:

“In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry.  And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once.” – Matthew 21:18-19

Today’s post covers why I think He did precisely what He did at this time and place, and also why and how Matthew records it in his gospel in this context.  But first, a couple of concepts for background.  Elsewhere, “Jesus said to [His disciples], ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.’” (John 4:34).  Also, from the very beginning the will of the Father has been that His creation bear fruit both physically and spiritually. (Genesis 1:22, 1:28).

Although Matthew says Jesus was hungry, He could have easily found food somewhere else or gone without it.  Therefore, Jesus did not make the fig tree wither because He was upset about being hungry.  That would have just been uncontrolled impatience or rage.  He was making a point about something else, which is God’s authority over both nature and man.  The will of the Father is more important than food.  The fig tree was rejecting that authority by not bearing fruit where fruit was needed.[1]

The next event in Matthew’s gospel is “the chief priests and elders of the people” challenging Jesus to prove that He has the authority to do things like chase moneychangers out of the temple and to heal on the Sabbath.[2]  If Jesus was going to disregard the authority of the priests and the elders, they were going to make Him explain, so they ask: “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”.  Masterfully, Jesus asks a question of His own: “The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?”  In this response, Jesus revealed that the priests and elders were like the fig tree bearing no fruit because they rejected God’s authority.  They knew if they answered: “’From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’”  Believing in John the Baptist would require genuinely placing their faith in the God of heaven, and it is no coincidence that John told them to “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance” earlier in Matthew’s book (3:8).

Jesus’ question proved whose authority these religious leaders feared because in verse 26, they reasoned that they couldn’t say John’s baptism came from man, because that would be unpopular.  They were “afraid of the crowd,” who thought John was a prophet.  They were not interested in learning about Jesus by asking Him questions, but in preserving their own position.  Jesus had provided them all they needed to know about His authority, but they would wither like the fig tree because they rejected Him.

In truth, they were already withering, not knowing how to answer a simple question from Jesus.  They had no integrity to stand on and were subject to the whims of the people to keep what little temporary authority they had.  The parable of the tenants continues this idea in Matthew 21:33-43, and again the religious leaders “feared the crowds” who thought Jesus was a prophet in verse 46.  Ironically, the popular view in both verse 26 and 46 was closer to the truth than what the religious leaders were willing to commit to, but they were not interested in truth.  However, they would not publicly reject it because they needed their popularity.

To be continued tomorrow…

[1] In Mark’s gospel, he notes that it was not the season for figs (11:13), but Matthew leaves that detail out since it is not necessary for the point he is making.
[2] The following quotes are from Matthew 21:23-26

How to Avoid Being the “Greater Fool”

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My day job involves helping people save and invest for retirement, and every now and then it involves helping people avoid speculation.  What’s the difference between investment and speculation?  A short explanation is that speculation often means you’re trusting the “Greater fool theory” to make money.  According to Investopedia[1], “The greater fool theory states that you can make money from buying overvalued securities [stocks, bonds, currency, etc.] because there will usually be someone (i.e., a greater fool) who is willing to pay an even higher price.”  Another way to put it is that speculators buy things because they think someone else will later find them more valuable, whether they actually are or not.  Speculators seek to sell before others figure out that what they’re selling might be worthless.  Instead of trusting this, investors do some work to find out what something is worth and why it would be worth more later to someone else.

In an earlier post about saving for retirement, I noted that “Solomon did encourage us to invest for the future” but also “not to stress too much about what may or may not happen.”  So, this post is not about how to best invest for goals like college or retirement, but about how do we avoid ultimately being the greater fool?  The longer you extend the time frame – even beyond death and into eternity – any investment or speculation in this world looks very different.  In the words of Jim Elliot, an American missionary martyred in Ecuador: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”[2]  In eternity, much of what we now consider investment will look like foolish speculation.

Consider this excerpt from Ecclesiastes 2:18-21.  “I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool?…sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.”

Solomon is cautioning against counting on things we can’t control, such as what will be done with our worldly goods after we’re gone.  If we agonize over accumulating goods, not only are we not satisfied, but do we also teach the next generation to overvalue things, rather than their Creator, thus making our efforts futile and foolish?  Even if our goods outlive us, can we hope that they help those who receive them more than they helped us?  Or is this just speculation?

As an alternative, Solomon says in 2:24: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?”

Solomon argued that we can’t trust in goods to help our descendants – but what about the question of whether our goods will do us any good in eternity?  Can we trust goods to help us after we’re gone?  Jesus had this in mind in Mark 8:36, when He said: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.  For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?  For what can a man give in return for his soul?”

Jesus’ question is rhetorical, because we cannot offer any goods to God which are not already His: “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.”[3] Also, nobody else can pay the cost of our soul either, because they owe their own.

Jesus, the Greater Fool
If our souls are eternal, but we’ve spoiled them by speculating on the goods of this world, who is the greater fool who will pay for them?

Fortunately, the only One who can pay the cost of our souls is also the one who values them the most – even more than we do.  This One was willing to become a fool to the world to purchase the souls of His people.  This One has a soul that was not wasted on the things of this world; therefore, He can offer it for others if He chooses to.

Fortunately, this One is also the One who values every soul the most because as Creator, He loves His people.  An old proverb says, “a thing is worth only what someone else will pay for it.”  On the cross, this One paid His own life for you, because to Him you are worth it and His own life was the price He was willing to pay.

Jesus is this One and in eternity, the only way to avoid the “greater fool theory” is to give our lives to Him and follow His advice to love Him and love our neighbor.  Then we will always have everything we need, and we will never lose it.  Even after death and into eternity.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” – Jesus, in Matthew 6:19-21

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/greaterfooltheory.asp
[2] More on Jim Elliot likely coming in a future History Bits post.
[3] Psalm 24:1

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

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Since it’s been nearly 3 months since the last post on the topic, here’s a review of the series on meekness[1] 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.”[2]

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.

Post Script
Sometimes I put off writing thinking the time is better spent on the people and situations right in front of me.  Is hiding behind a screen and keyboard just an avoidance tactic?  At other times I know that each person’s meekness includes a response to their own calling and use of their specific gifts: “if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching.” (Romans 12:7). Meekness is difficult, and I pray we all find better balance as we grow in Christ.  Do the things God calls you to, even if it stinks sometimes!

[1] If you have the time, the previous posts are here: [1], [2], [3], and [4].  But I’ll summarize here as best I can.
[2] Matthew 12:25