Waiting for Joy

In this third week of Advent the theme is joy. Joy is one of those terms that is hard to define very well. We’ve been told that it is supposed to be different from happiness, which is based in circumstances (related to Old English happenstance, hap, luck). It should be more deeply rooted and therefore more enduring than happiness. The first definition listed on Dictionary.com is “the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; keen pleasure; elation.” That clears things up, right? If we can’t clearly define what we mean by joy, how do we know if we have it?

Bible translations differ, and where some translations use the word “happy” others substitute “blessed.” This is one reason that happiness is often tied to having favorable circumstances. However, the Greek and Hebrew words for “joy” are used fairly consistently across translations.

I find it interesting that the Bible never seems to indicate that joy is unchangeable. Paul wrote that he was “overflowing with joy” (2 Corinthians 7:4), and longing to “be filled with joy” (2 Timothy 1:4). David prayed “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation” (Psalm 51:12). James warned “Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom” (James 4:9). Solomon stated, “Even in laughter the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief” (Proverbs 14:13).

To be honest, I find it a bit of a relief to know that a lack of joy does not necessarily indicate a lack of faith. Yes, joy is part of the Fruit of the Spirit and hopefully will increase over time. But that also means it is up to the Holy Spirit to produce joy, not me. We can do things to nurture joy, but we can’t make it grow. I came across this verse a few days ago, and I have great appreciation for Paul’s prayer here: “May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1:11). Sometimes we have to wait for the joy to come, and faith is our lifeline while we wait.

May we learn to wait, to trust, and to bow to the One who is in control.

(Check out Bow the Knee, words and music by Christopher Machen & Michael Harland)

Rescued

A Short Story

No one knows how we got here. We’ve been on this island our whole lives. The older folks don’t talk anymore. In fact, they don’t do much of anything. They’ll eat a little food if it’s put in front of them, but they all have this glassy stare. The glazed look has been appearing on younger and younger people. Even the kids seem to be more or less oblivious to everything around them.

We get up each morning, go to the fields to collect whatever food is available, cook our meals over the community fire, then go back to our wooden shacks to sleep till another day. There is no school since there is nothing to learn and no one to teach us. No one is interested in learning anyway. We are all just surviving from day to day. You can tell when someone has given up and is preparing to die. They stop eating altogether, and usually they just close their eyes and wait for it to be over.

I don’t know how old I am since no one bothers to keep track of time, but I’m one of the younger people on the island. I realized early on that I was different from the others. I observed the people around me and couldn’t understand their despondent outlook on life. I investigated the island to see what else was here, and found that we had abundant food supplies. I was interested in our world when no one else seemed to look past their own nose.

I looked out over the sea and off in the distance there was another island just barely visible. I really wanted to go there, but our island had no boats and no tools for making anything of substance. As our old shacks rotted, very little was done to repair or replace them. Some folks slept outside because they couldn’t be bothered to make a new shelter. So the chances of getting help making a boat were pretty slim. One of the talking people would just say, “It’s no use.”

It seemed like the island was drowning in hopelessness. There was no hope for change, so there was no reason to work, learn, build, talk, or even think. And eventually each person decided there was no reason to live.

I often pondered these things as I sat on the high rocks overlooking the sea. I don’t know why, but that other island seemed to hold the key for our survival. I held onto that hope even though I couldn’t imagine how deliverance might come. We had no way of getting there, and I had seen no evidence that there was anyone there who might be able to get to us. The island could be deserted, or they could be in the same condition we were in.

It was tempting to give in to hopelessness, but something wouldn’t let me. I kept looking at that island and tried to imagine what life might be like over there. I didn’t have anything to compare it to except for those few times I had seen a young child who still had a spark of life in his eyes. He would make eye contact, and maybe even smile a little. Or if you were lucky, he might hold your hand for a few seconds. But it wasn’t long before the deadened, hopeless look came over him and he was just as self-absorbed as everyone else. I could imagine that on that other island were people who looked at each other, smiled, talked together, and held hands. That was the extent of my imagination, but I clung to it every waking moment. And sometimes it even slipped into my dreams. Once in awhile I would whisper to myself, “Please come find me.”

One night I awakened from a beautiful dream of ‘my island,’ as I had come to call it. The night didn’t seem as dark as usual. I looked out from my shack and thought I saw movement beyond the embers of the cooking fire. I wasn’t at all afraid. I quietly slipped out to investigate. Something was moving in the shadows, and as it headed toward the shoreline I could see that it was a man. He wasn’t moving too quickly, and I had no trouble catching up with him. As soon as I was within a few paces, he stopped, turned around, and looked right at me. Even in the darkness I could see his eyes and I saw that they were full of life and love. He was unlike any of the people on our island. I was so drawn to him that I couldn’t look away from his face.

“I heard your prayers,” he said. I didn’t speak, but I wondered what he was talking about. “I heard your whispers for help, and so I came for you.” As he said that, I realized that he was standing beside a boat. He beckoned for me to get in, and as I stepped up beside him he put his hand on my shoulder. In that moment, my whole world changed. All hopelessness was gone. I suddenly saw the stars in the sky and heard the sounds of crickets and owls in the woods behind me.

“Come home, child. Your place is with me.”

* * *

I wrote this short story several months ago, and as I was thinking about Christmas it came to mind again. It’s a reminder that God came to us, to do for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves. The difference is that He didn’t just come and pluck us out of our situation. He actually became one of us and grew up among us. He rescued us from the hopelessness, but He also left us here to bring the good news of Life, Light, and Hope to others.

Peace in Confidence

I spent Sunday afternoon watching the perennial favorite The Sound of Music. It occurred to me as I watched that Maria had more problems with becoming a nun than just falling in love Captain Von Trapp. She also had some significant theology problems. When she first is ordered to leave the convent, what is the song she sings on her way? “I have confidence in confidence alone; besides which, you see, I have confidence in me!” Don’t you think a novitiate should be stating her confidence in God alone?

Then after the Captain affirms his love for Maria, she sings, “For here you are, standing there, loving me, whether or not you should. So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good. Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could. So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.” So apparently her belief is that you eventually get what you deserve. Even though she could only remember her “wicked childhood,” she is certain that she must have done something to earn this love she now received.

What amazes me is that in the 30 or 40 times I’ve seen this movie I’ve never once considered the heresy that it is propagating! We probably all have times when we get caught up in the drama or the tradition that we don’t really think about the fallacies we’re taking in. (Television is a great anesthetic to the brain.)

Right after watching the movie, I picked up a book I’ve been rereading, Shame Interrupted, by Edward Welch. In writing about the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), he quotes Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the first beatitude: “It means the complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and self-reliance. It means the consciousness that we are nothing in the presence of God. It is nothing, then, that we can produce; it is nothing that we can do in ourselves. It is just this tremendous awareness of our utter nothingness as we come face to face with God. That is to be poor in spirit” (p. 142).

Jumping ahead to the sixth beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” Welch comments, “One good message from this beatitude is that pure is possible for the poor in spirit. How can that be? When you assemble the pieces you have so far, you know that pure is possible because you are purified by Jesus. Pure is something that is done to you. You receive it by faith through the gentle yet powerful touch of Jesus” (p. 149).

Among the many great lessons of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus points out two keys here: 1) We have no confidence, ability, or righteousness in and of ourselves. 2) All that we have comes from God through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Based on those two realities, we can cling to the other promises in that sermon-- “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious...” (Matthew 6:33-34). “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you... how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (7:7,11).

I’ve needed these reminders lately when the promises of Scripture have seemed to apply to either the past or the future, not the present. So Friday evening I started compiling for myself a list of scriptural “Promises for Today” and the beatitudes were one of the first places I stopped. I also spent considerable time in the psalms, and Psalm 27:1 has come to mind several times in the past few days: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

Here are just a few of the other promises I pulled out:

·         Psalm 37:5-6- “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him, and He will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.”

·         Psalm 57:2- “I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills His purpose for me.”

·         John 15:5- “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

·         James 5:11- “Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.”

·         Isaiah 30:15- “In returning [repentance] and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

In this second week of Advent the Peace candle is lit. Peace is built on the foundation of hope. Peace becomes a reality when we fully believe and have confidence in the God who keeps all His promises. Jesus Himself was the fulfillment of many Old Testament promises, and He continues to fulfill promises today and every day. We can depend on Him while we await the fulfillment of the final promise of eternal life in the kingdom in His presence.

“It is impossible for God to lie. We who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Hebrews 6:18-19).

© 2013 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images are copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

I'm Entitled!

I’ve been reading the book of Job lately, and it seems to me that Job’s friends have gotten a lot of bad press over the years. Much of what they say is actually true, despite the fact that they don’t know the back story taking place in the heavens. And Job wasn’t as guiltless as he first seems. Early in the book it says that “in all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (1:22), but by 42:6 he is repenting “in dust and ashes.”

What happened in between? My reading is that Job had a bad case of entitlement. He basically says, “Let me state my case before God. I’ll prove my innocence and convince God He was wrong to put me through all this suffering.” Even the oft quoted verse “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him” actually ends with “yet I will argue my case before Him” (13:15).

I haven’t used those exact words, but that has been the motivation in my heart at times. “I’ve done these good things, I’ve trusted You and praised You, and yet I’m suffering. I’ve endured various types of suffering, and yet You still don’t bring me relief.” Sometimes it seems like we should be entitled to things we don’t get. Not just material things, but the spiritual blessings that come from being a child of God. He says we’ve been blessed “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3), and yet those blessings often seem so elusive.

Now’s a good time to confess that I don’t always practice what I preach. I can write about true hope being founded on the expectation of God’s promises, while simultaneously wishing God would change my circumstances. And when He doesn’t, I can get angry enough to want to argue my case before God. Hope can quickly degenerate into entitlement if I’m not careful.

So where does that leaves us? A few thoughts come to mind—

1) It does no good to argue with God or try to bargain with Him. His ways and means are so foreign to us that all we can do is put our hand over our mouth as Job did.

2) There may be a bigger story taking place than we can ever imagine. I’ve often wondered exactly how the heavenly dialogue of Job 1 was revealed in order to be included in Scripture. Did God tell Job what had happened, or was some other writer enlightened after the fact?

3) God’s promises in Scripture are true whether we believe them or not, and whether we experience them for ourselves or not. Despite Job’s fears that God wouldn’t even listen to him (9:16), he found out that God not only heard him, but knew what was going on better than Job did.

4) Sin can hinder us from seeing what God is doing. Whether it was Job’s sense of entitlement, or the Israelites’ fear that God wouldn’t provide for their needs in the wilderness and in the Promised Land, sin can get in the way. It can make a small problem bigger, and it can make it last longer. I’m sure the Israelites felt entitled to enter the Promised Land after their slavery in Egypt and wandering in the wilderness, but they found out they had missed out on the blessing because of their lack of faith. The Promised Land then became the dream of the next generation.

What it boils down to is: confess and repent of what is revealed to be sin, trust God to keep His promises, and pray for the eyes to see what He is doing and the endurance to wait for His timing. Easier said than done, but I’m working on it!

Expectancy

It hadn't occurred to me till this week that a synonym for hope is expectant. Doesn't "expectant mother" sound more hopeful than "pregnant"? (Personally, I like the term used in the Opus cartoons years ago- "infanticipating.") 

Since we're nearing Advent, I've been thinking about the hope that Mary must have had after learning that she was to be the mother of the Messiah. The announcement from an angel must have started hope growing. Then her visit to Elizabeth strengthened her hope. The shepherds' arrival reinforced her hope even more. She had the expectation of not only raising a child, but a child unlike any other. 

Jesus would literally be the Hope of the world. Mary had no way of knowing how that hope would be fulfilled, though the words of Simeon in Luke 2 told Mary it would not be easy for her to witness-- "A sword will pierce your own soul as well." The ultimate hope for the world would come through the pain of a sacrificial death. The expectation of eternal life came through the apparent hopelessness of death. 

For this first Sunday of Advent, I wonder what hopes we are cherishing right now? If hope is based on expectation, what are we truly expecting, not just wishing for? Christmas tends to become a time of wishing, rather than hopeful expectation.

-Wishing for a particular gift, or wishing for the money to buy the "perfect" gift.

-Wishing for a change of circumstances, or wishing things wouldn't keep changing. 

-Wishing for the holiday season to last, or wishing for it to be over. 

But hopeful expectancy is found in Christ. We can expect that He will always love His children (2 Thessalonians 2:16). We can expect that He is always at work in our lives, making even the hard times work for His purposes (Romans 8:28). We can expect that He will cause spiritual fruit to grow in our lives as we trust in Him (Galatians 5:22-23). And one day we can expect to see Him face to face when He comes in glory (2 Thessalonians 1:10).

-In Christ, we already have the perfect gift, and we are encouraged to share it with others so that it might be multiplied. 

-In Christ, we know that we are loved, accepted, and forgiven, regardless of our circumstances. 

-In Christ, every day is a holy day, set apart for us to serve Him and glorify Him by using the gifts He has given us. 

May this Christmas be one of growing hopefulness as we expect God to fulfill His scriptural promises in our lives!

Faith and Healing

For several days now, I’ve been thinking about what might be considered a grey area of the Christian life. It started a couple weeks ago when, after talking with someone about my ongoing depression, he recommended a book for me to read. I’m still wading through that book, and while it has some good principles, the basic message seems to be “You need to repent!” At the same time, I downloaded a free eBook that looked like it could be interesting. Halfway through the book, the author writes about all kinds of illness including colds and flu, “Why is it that believers are not breaking this curse of sickness? …I’m convinced that there could be several reasons why we’re not healed. It could be because we lack spiritual understanding. It could also be that we are afraid and hope for a quick fix. We are often weak in our confession of faith.”

Now I’m not saying that repentance is unnecessary, or that we don’t need to have a good understanding of who we are in Christ and faith that He can do the impossible. But there are a lot of other factors that come into play as well, like bacteria and viruses! The health side of the “health and wealth gospel” is a lot more insidious than the wealth side. Most Christians can agree that God does not intend for all believers to have great wealth. But there seem to be quite a lot of Christians who believe that healing is more a matter of faith than of good medical care. I won’t argue that sin isn’t to blame for some illnesses. Poor stewardship of our bodies leads to all kinds of problems. And some doctors do tend to overprescribe, often at the insistence of their patients. Humanity can be blamed for many of our problems, both social and physical. But living in a fallen world has its own issues. I’m sure Adam and Eve never had to deal with sickness while they were living in the Garden of Eden.

So I was wondering what the Bible has to say about health and faith. Most of the references come in the Gospels as Jesus healed people wherever He went. He specifically tells one woman, “Your faith has made you well” (Luke 8:48). And He tells Jairus after his daughter’s death, “Do not fear; only believe, and she will be well” (Luke 8:50). The fact that great crowds gathered to be healed indicates that they had some degree of faith in His ability to heal. But how many of those people actually believed in Him as their Savior, Redeemer, and Messiah? It appears that very few of them were still following Jesus at the time of His crucifixion.

The passage that intrigues me is John 5 and the Pool of Bethesda. Verse 3 says there were “multitudes of invalids” waiting by the pool, and yet it appears that only one person was healed that day. There is no expression of faith by the man before Jesus heals him. So why was he healed when no one else was? Then in verse 14 Jesus meets him again and says, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” This seems to indicate that sin was somehow a cause of this man’s suffering, and yet there was no call for repentance before Jesus healed him. So there is no direct correlation between repentance, faith, and healing in this case.

“Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray… And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up… Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:13-16). These verses imply that prayer and healing do often go together. However, if this were always the case, how are we to interpret the following statements?

• “I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus” (2 Timothy 4:20).
• “Indeed [Epaphroditus] was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow” (Philippians 2:27).
• “No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments” (1 Timothy 5:23).

Was there no faithful person to pray for the healing of these men? That’s certainly unlikely, given that they were associates of the Apostle Paul. Some would claim that the dispensation of miracles had ended and there were no longer any people who had the gift of healing. More likely, these illnesses were from natural causes, and though God could have healed them, for whatever reason He chose not to. Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” in 2 Corinthians 12 may also have been some physical ailment that God did not relieve.

I come to the conclusion that 1) God can heal, 2) God sometimes does heal in response to prayer, faith, and repentance, 3) God does not always bring physical healing, and 4) God often uses doctors and medicine to bring some measure of healing. (This site has an interesting article on Luke the Physician: http://www.icr.org/article/doctor-luke/.) Who are we to judge or prescribe how God will or will not work in a particular situation?

“‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).

Stones of Remembrance

I was thinking awhile back about the moments in our Christian lives that we tend to remember. Depending on your denomination or tradition, you may have special recognition for child dedication, baptism, first communion, marriage, and perhaps ordination. Some churches give certificates or Bibles for special occasions. But if you think about it, those events represent a very small number of days out of a lifetime of experiences.

This observation came to mind as I was watching someone being baptized, and I realized that when I was baptized at seven years old I had a child’s understanding of faith, and I didn’t really know that Christianity wasn’t about being good. My understanding has grown through the various stages of my life. The past year has been one of significant growth and change, and part of me wished I could be re-baptized to signify a fresh start. I’m not a proponent of rebaptism, particularly when I think of the symbolism of being buried in baptism and raised to new life. If the old flesh is dead and buried, it does not need to be buried again. I accept by faith that one baptism is enough, regardless of my limited understanding at the time. (Do we ever fully understand our new life in Christ?)

So that leads to the question—how can we memorialize the special events or new stages of our life of faith? I was reminded in the Old Testament of the multiple times that people gathered “stones of remembrance” to build a memorial or altar following some event. Noah built an altar after coming safely out of the ark (Genesis 8). Crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land, God directed the people to gather stones for an altar (Deuteronomy 27 & Joshua 4). Elijah gathered twelve stones to build an altar, which he then used to disprove and disgrace the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18). Abraham, Jacob, and Moses all built altars and renamed places in memory of something that God had done there.

I wonder if we should adopt a similar practice at times—creating something to remind us of how God has worked in a particular time or place? I think we are naturally inclined to create memorials, whether it’s a photo album, scrapbook, souvenir, or bumper sticker. We like to remember where we’ve been and good times we’ve enjoyed. So why not adapt that for the good things God has done and blessings we’ve enjoyed? Obviously we don’t want to fall into the trap of worshiping the creation rather than the Creator (as Israel did on multiple occasions). But we can all use reminders of the things we should be thankful for. It doesn’t have to be anything big. At one time in my life I collected small white stones out of my driveway to mark a certain event, and those stones are now inside a paperweight I made. And more recently, I’ve simply been counting the weeks on my calendar to remind me of how God has given me victory in a particular area (16 weeks and counting).

When God directed the Israelites to gather stones after crossing the Jordan, they were told, “When your children ask why these stones are here, you are to tell them what God has done” (my paraphrase). Part of the value of the memorial is in sharing the story with others, passing it along to children, grandchildren, and friends to teach them how God has worked in the past so that they may trust Him for the future. And in remembering together, you can also praise God together.

It’s something to think about as we approach Thanksgiving. What has God done in the past year that you need to share with someone? What family stories need to be preserved in some way so that they won’t be forgotten in the next generation? Just as the Jews still observe their feast days to remember and teach what God did in the past, we can use special occasions like Thanksgiving to do the same.

“[Remember] so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever” (Joshua 4:24).