Idolatry

“The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.  It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place….Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous.  The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.”  --A.W. Tozer

Good without God?

Back in October of last year in New York around the time when Greg Epstein’s book Good without God was released, there was an advertising campaign with the slogan “A Million New Yorkers are Good Without God.  Are you?”  (More about it here:  http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/good-without-god-atheist-subway-ads-proclaim/)  (This summer, I saw some signs that I suppose were done in response to this advertising saying, “I am good with God.”  (More about this here: http://www.goodwithgod.org/thecampaign.html).

So in thinking about this, I wasn’t thinking of whether I think people are good with or without God because I believe what the Bible says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  None of us is good without God.  People are imperfect and are incapable of being perfect.  And because of this we deserved a separation from God [death]:  “For the wages of sin is death.” But instead, God gave us the greatest gift:  “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).  And so Jesus exchanged His righteousness for our unrighteousness and He paid the penalty for our sins.  So now, when God looks at us, He sees Jesus’ righteousness and not our unrighteousness.  Because of Jesus we were made righteous.

But anyways, I digress.  What I was thinking was okay, so people who are not Christians say that they are “good without God.”  But I wonder, how many people in the Christian community, in how they live their lives, are saying the same?  Perhaps they are not broadcasting it our saying it out loud, but how many people’s lives are demonstrating the exact same thing?  How many Christians are trying to become “good” people without God’s power?  How many people are focusing on conforming to society’s standards of “good” behavior or conforming to the church’s standards of “good” behavior, rather than abiding in God, remaining in Him, and being transformed from the inside out and bearing much fruit?  How many Christians are trying to perform, perform, perform for other people and for God?  How many people are trying to live the Christian life out of their own power and strength?  Instead of remaining in the vine as it says in John 15.  Or how many people rely on their strategies and their methods to try to see life change in people rather than depending upon God? 


I know I’ve definitely seen this in my own life.  Those are the times when I think the Christian life is so difficult.  Those are the times when I realize of course it’s difficult because I’m not relying on God to do the transformation.  I’m trying so hard to change the outside through my actions, when it’s my heart that really needs the transformation.  It’s in those times that I need to remind myself of Jesus’ words in John 15:5—“I am the vine, you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Psalm 37:4

I believe that Psalm 37:4 is true—Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart.  God knows deeply what the desires of our heart are.  He sees beyond our feeble attempts to fulfill our desires and sees what we really need.  He sees what our deepest longings are; He sees how to most fully satisfy those desires.  And He is more than capable of meeting those desires.  It reminds me of a quote of Amy Carmichael—“It is a safe thing to trust Him to satisfy the desires He creates.”  


But why is that contingent upon our delighting ourselves in the LORD?  I think that God knows that He is the only one who can satisfy.  I think that He knows that by giving us other things, they could potentially draw our eyes away from Him and onto something else.  It is only when we have deep satisfaction in God that we have become trustworthy enough to have Him satisfy the desires of our hearts.  When He knows that we will follow Him regardless of what He gives us or takes away from us, that’s when He’ll most fully satisfy the desires of our hearts.  


And the psalmist says “Delight ourselves in the Lord.”  He doesn’t say, “Obey all the Lord’s commands.”  He doesn’t say, “Follow God wholeheartedly.”  He doesn’t say, “Have daily quiet times.”  What is most important is to “Delight ourselves in the LORD.”  To love Him to the utmost that our hearts can, to regard Him not as a Master, but as a Lover, to run to Him eager to spend time with Him, to smile when thinking about Him.  All these things are signs of delighting ourselves in the LORD.  It is God's desire for us to delight in Him, not just obey Him.

Broken

[I'm currently in week 2 in a 5 week long summer project/missions trip in NYC.  I'll post more stories soon!]

If there was one word that I could use as the theme of my time here in New York, I would use the word broken. Not that brokenness is only seen in New York and not anywhere else, but that God is really opening my eyes to see how things are not as He had intended or designed. And it breaks my heart. To see such deep family hurts in students’ lives, to see homeless people sleeping on the stairs in the subway station, to see sex shops on street corners, it breaks my heart. Then I realize that as much as these things break my heart, I’m sure it grieves God all the more. He fully sees what the world was meant to be and He fully sees how far the earth is now.


And yet, I have hope. The world has hope. This, right now, is not the end of the story. Students with deep hurts is not the end of the story. People going to those sex shops on the street corners is not the end of the story. Homeless people sleeping on stairs is not the end of the story. In Him, we have hope; we indeed have hope in Him who sees the beginning from the end. God is the ultimate Redeemer and He is coming to redeem the world. He will come back to restore the world to the way it was supposed to be. And I can’t help but long for that great day. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away (Revelation 21:4). How I long to live in the world that is as God designed and intended!

Unfailing Love

May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant.

-Psalm 119:76

To have something be unfailing is a curious thing. I think that nothing in this world is unfailing. After some amount of time, things fail. People disappoint. Brakes fail. Hearts fail. In this world full of change and tumult, there are no things that are unfailing. But there is God. He is unfailing. There will never be a time when you run to Him and He doesn’t open His loving arms to you. There will never be a time when God doesn’t listen to your prayers. There will never be a time when God stops loving you. God is unfailing. His love is unfailing. He is constant, this current world is not.

Taking Things Day By Day

Exodus 16—Manna and Quail

The Israelites left Egypt and were in the dessert. At this point, they were starving. They thought back to the times when they were in Egypt and had all the food they wanted. Now, they were blaming Aaron and Moses, saying “…you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

Exodus 16:10—While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the LORD appearing in the cloud.

God provided. He heard their grumbling and provided them with bread each day, with the exception of the Sabbath. On non-Sabbath days, the Israelites were to eat as much as they wanted on that day, but they could not keep the manna overnight because it would become filled with maggots and would reek. I think God might have done this to develop the Israelites faith day-by-day. It also caused the Israelites to run to God each day and remember Him. (It is in times of excess when we are more tempted to forget about God.) Each day they had to trust Him for that day’s bread. Each day they had to trust that God would provide.

I think that it is similar in following God throughout our lives. Many of us want to have everything mapped out from beginning to end. We want to know where we will be five, ten, twenty, fifty years in the future. Instead of promising us the map, God promises us His presence. He wants us to take it day-by-day. He wants us to trust Him every step of the way. He wants us to run to Him each day.  It would be so easy to forget about Him if we had the map, saying, "Well, I know where I'm going, no need to consult God."

One of the verses I like that speaks of following God is Psalm 119:105:

Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light for my path.

Someone once pointed out to me that if you put a lamp to your feet, you can only see where you will take your next step. That’s what it is like in following God—you only see enough to take your next step. I think sometimes God reveals more than just one step, but oftentimes it is only a step. But that’s what faith is—trusting that God isn’t going to lead you off a cliff if you follow Him.

Jeremiah 34

In this chapter, God speaks to Jeremiah telling him to go to Zedekiah, King of Judah, and tell him that he will be captured by the king of Babylon.  However, even though that is to happen, God promises (Jeremiah 3:4-5): You will not die by the sword; you will die peacefully. As people made a funeral fire in honor of your fathers, the former kings who proceeded you, so they will make a fire in your honor and lament, “Alas, O master!"

It’s interesting because I think that in many of the prophets’ visions and even in our lives now, God tells us as it is—that we’ll face hardships and sufferings (like in John 16:33b—In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart! I have overcome the world.).  God tells us that it’s going to be hard.  However, He doesn’t just leave us there; He promises a coming victory.  He promises to come back and usher in a new time where there will be no more suffering or grief or tears or hardship.  It will be a time where see Him face to face and delight in His presence.  What’s great about this, especially when we face hardships, is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and we’ll reach it; we will see God.