Don's Devotionals: Learning to love God

Psalm 139:23, 24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Eureka!  I don’t know how much this word is used today.  Possibly most people think of a brand of vacuum cleaner when they hear it.  Historically this was an exclamation attributed to Archimedes that he made to express his triumph of discovering an important process involving gold.  It was a shout made by gold miners when they discovered gold.  It became a general term used to describe the discovery moment when something being looked for was found, or a difficult problem was solved.

Teachers talked about students having ‘Eureka moments’ in their studies – those wonderful times when the ‘light goes on’ and something that has been elusive is finally understood.  Think of the times when reading the Bible, the Lord opens our eyes and we see something we haven’t seen before.  A verse or a truth just comes alive and it’s like discovering gold.

Sometimes these ‘Eureka moments’ occur when the Lord opens our eyes to see behaviors and attitudes in our lives that are negative and hurtful, both to us and to others, and we just haven’t ‘seen’ them.  It’s like our grasp of the obvious has been turned off.  We’re clueless to the red warning light flashing on the dashboard before us.

On the one hand, my life has too many of these embarrassing moments where Jesus has opened my eyes to see and understand such things in my life.  But on the other hand, they are unspeakable treasures because they are answers to the prayer of this verse.   They are ‘Eureka moments’ because they are priceless ‘doorways’ to repentance.  They are intended to lead us to times of forgiveness and transformation – not condemnation! They enable us to become more like Jesus.

Romans 1:20 and Ephesians 2:10

We are in a time of amazing special effects in the entertainment industry.  Things we see in movies appear real but aren’t.  Think about all the sales appeals made to us.  Claims are presented as real & marvelous but often experience with ‘said’ products reveal they aren’t what they are represented to be.  How often are we alerted about scams?  Being able to discern between what’s real and what isn’t is an essential skill.

Along this same line of thinking are two verses that have an extraordinary relationship with each other.  At face value they both refer to something God has made – His workmanship.  In the Greek, the word is ποιημα (poiema) and in the New Testament it only appears in these two verses.  But the critical fact is that in one of these, we Christians play an absolutely critical role in what the world perceives as real.

Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

The first verse in Romans speaks about how God is (and always has been) revealed to mankind through nature – His creation.  He declares that it alone is sufficient to reveal His existence.  Psalm 19:1-4a speaks so eloquently of this truth:

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.

3 There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.

4 Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.

The second verse in Ephesians (2:10) speaks about how we Christians – His people – are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works.  We have written how God wants His people to love Him – to walk in His ways – to reflect His glory.  His intent and equipping of us is so that the world will see Jesus when they see us.

Jesus came to enable us to do just that.  Further, Ephesians 3:10 states that “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms,”

Putting these two verses (Rom 1:20 & Eph 2:10) together reveals a stunningly important reality:  God has made us both to be critically important revelations. Creation is a general revelation that God exists.  We Christians are to be a specific revelation that Jesus Christ is Lord! 

What do communities see when they look at the Christians in their midst?  Do they see Jesus or do they see something not at all reflective of Him.  How we, who claim to be Christians, choose to live determines whether the picture we reveal is one of Jesus – or one that undermines the power of the Gospel because our lives don’t reveal Him.

Joshua 23:11  So be very careful to love the LORD your God.

I once was able to attend a meeting in which the author Stephen Covey spoke (7 Habits of Highly Effective People).  There was a large crowd and the hall that he spoke in was in the round.  He was in the center and the crowd surrounded him.  He asked everyone to raise their arm and point in the direction that they thought was north.  There were people pointing in all manner of directions.

He proceeded to place a compass on an overhead projector and was able to identify which way was north.  He made a comment that has always stuck with me.  He noted that, “Which direction is north is not subject to public opinion!”  It is what it is and we cannot change it.  Life is filled with principles that are true.

Some time ago a newspaper, The Tennessean, had an article on cheating with cell phones in high schools and colleges.  The writer (Jennifer Brooks) noted “In one recent study, more than a third of teens with cell phones admit to using them to cheat, at least once.  Half of them admit to cheating with the help of the Internet.  Worse, the survey released by Common Sense Media two years earlier found that many of the students saw nothing wrong with their actions.”

Think about that last sentence – students cheating and seeing nothing wrong with their actions.  Even more distressing is the whole-hearted embrace of sexual impurity and immorality by society.  Compounding the problem are decisions from courts and legislatures that call evil good and good evil.  From God’s perspective, sin is sin.  Our opinion doesn’t change the fact.  We are surrounded by a culture that okays all manner of behavior that is incompatible with loving God.

I am reminded of a wonderful article by Rick Reilly of two 11-year-old twins who were hockey players and their family.  He wrote about an event that happened to them and the article is titled Doing The Right Thing.  Honesty was more important to them than keeping the $50,000 prize that was won.  Think about the title of his article.  This is the very point we are dealing with.   Who or what in our lives determines what “the right thing” is?

That is the beauty of becoming passionate about loving Him.  We recognize our utter dependence upon His Spirit and Scripture to instruct us how to do it.  We want our lives filled with righteous thoughts, attitudes and actions.  We want our eyes open to see things in our lives that shouldn’t be there – some of which we might think are okay, but in God’s sight they’re not.  He gives us the grace to repent and change.  Loving Him is to be our passion and goal.

Twin Boy’s $50K Hockey Shot in Jeopardy Because of Dad’s …

ABC Newshttps://abcnews.go.com › News › story

Aug 15, 2011 — Nate Smith, 11, won a $50000 hockey shot at a charity event, but may lose the bonanza because he posed as his twin brother Nick.

Colossians 3:17  And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

In the summer of 1970, I was in my last quarter at Michigan State.  I had been a Christian less than 2 years and was going to marry Donna in September after graduation.  I had seen and experienced genuine miracles since becoming a Christian, but nothing like what the Lord did one summer day.

Donna was in Lexington, KY working at a Christian ministry.  Randy, a college friend offered to drive me down for a weekend to see her.  This meant missing a Botany Taxonomy 4 hour lab on Friday.  The instructor said that if I helped set up the plots on Thursday afternoon for the field work, I could miss the lab on Friday.

The weather was rainy on Thursday.  After helping the instructor and some others set up the plots, Randy picked me up.  We were located next to an expressway entrance.  We no sooner got on the expressway and cars began honking and pulling off the road!  There in front of us in a field to our right was a tornado, touched down and coming right at us – several hundred yards away!!

At that moment, the Spirit of the Lord came down in the car and I came against the tornado in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth and commanded it to disintegrate in Jesus’ name and it disintegrated – right in front of us!  It did not jump up into the sky – it just disintegrated – poof!  We praised the Lord all the way to Kentucky and back.

On Monday I was in class waiting for it to begin and telling the other students (college seniors and grad students) about the tornado we’d seen.  A little voice in my head said to tell them the rest of the story.  So I took a deep breath and told them exactly what happened – as I just described it here.  They knew I was a Christian, but when I said how the tornado just disintegrated they all lost it – big time!

Amidst the laughter and uproar, I sat there thinking “Oh Lord…”.  But then the instructor entered the room and came over to where she lectured.  I looked up at her and asked her if she had seen the tornado on Thursday afternoon.   Her answer stunned the class and stopped all the laughter and ridicule.  She said, “Yes we all did.  And it was the strangest thing.  As we were standing there watching it, all of a sudden it just disintegrated!”

I cannot help but think of one of my favorite professors there at MSU who was Jewish and an atheist who I witnessed to after this experience.  He felt he could explain away most of my testimony – BUT…. I can remember him looking at me and saying with a serious thoughtfulness, “I don’t know what to do with the miracles.”

Romans 12:9  Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

Imagine for a moment someone you love speaking this verse to you; carefully and lovingly, not rushing or reading a list, but focusing upon each thought.  These and the next few verses in Romans 12 present a picture of who we are to be.  They identify the attributes that must characterize our very being.  We get to discover what they each mean and partner with the Holy Spirit to work them out fully in our lives.

Today’s verse raises all manner of questions:

1. What exactly is this love that must be sincere?  Is it feelings?  Is it actions?  How do we know that what we think is Godly love, really is?  Does God’s word define it for us?
2. What exactly does it mean for that love, whatever it is, to be sincere?
3. What is evil?  Are God and the world (our culture) on the same page when it comes to identifying evil?  Where do we look to find out?  Might we consider something okay that God considers evil?  What does it mean to hate evil?
4. What exactly is ‘good’?  Who defines what is good?  How does one cling to what is good?

The point that I’m getting at is that we must be careful not to use worldly wisdom in determining the answers.  Here are two other versions of today’s verse to give us some additional insight – and also raise some more questions:

“Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good.” (The Message)

“[Let your] love be sincere (a real thing); hate what is evil [loathe all ungodliness, turn in horror from wickedness], but hold fast to that which is good.” (Amplified)

Do we ‘run’ for dear life from evil?  Do we ‘loathe all ungodliness; turn in horror from wickedness’?  Picture the contrast of being around someone wearing delightful cologne, where the fragrance is attractive and draws a response of “oooh, I like that!” – and being around someone with body odor that makes us move away, it repels us.

How do we do these things in a way that honors God; in a way that attracts people to God rather than repelling them from us.  Jesus spent a lot of his time with sinners.  He demonstrated that there is a way to hate sin and love the sinners.

Each phrase contains treasure to dig for – to pursue and discover the richness they hold.  They are guiding principles and qualities that we must have in our lives in order to be the men and women that God has chosen and destined us to be.

Romans 12:12  Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

Several years ago on three successive days I received a wonderful email and phone calls from three dear friends who had me on their hearts.  Those contacts were beyond encouraging – they were tokens of kindness from the Lord.  At that time I had been without a job since the end of October and my search hadn’t produced one yet.  There had been a great job opportunity that I thought for sure was going to be mine, but the Lord had that door close.  (As I later learned, God closing that door was a real gift to me!)  In the ongoing job search I hadn’t been without hope but sometimes we flounder because the results seem to be in hiding somewhere.

The first of those 3 days was a very difficult day and later in that afternoon I received the first of these communications from a friend I’ve mentored and is like a son to us.  WOW – what a blessing it was.  Then the next morning another friend called because the Lord had put me on his heart for two days.  We had been involved with Afghanistan together.  The message and encouragement he spoke to me were priceless.  Then the third day, while writing a devotional, a third friend called, concerned about us.  He was a soon to graduate and was a student at the college we had been with.  Three days – three major touches from the Lord through friends.

Then there is the treasure contained in today’s verse – which so powerfully declares how we are to live no matter what is going on.  I’m thrilled with the encouragement God has given me through friends.  All of that just enhances my focus upon Him and the power of His Word.  Our Lord gives us hope and enables us to be joyful in it.

Life is filled with trials and He enables us to develop patience (one of the fruit of the Spirit) in the midst of it.  He teaches us to pray and through spending time with Him we want to pray more.  On top of all that we learn that these concrete actions have an ever greater reality to them.  They are specific expressions of our love for Him.  We love our Lord by being joyful in hope.  We love our Lord by being patient in affliction.  We love our Lord by being faithful in prayer.  And, each of these actions are things that we can grow in.

There are those around us who need to be encouraged.  We need to ask the Lord to show them to us so that not only will they be encouraged by our contact, but also by this wonderful scripture.  Help them remember the power of prayer and to see that they too can have joy and hope and patience in the midst of all they’re going through.  God will provide us with the opportunities to share our faith as we live out these qualities each and every day.  God wants to use us to show them Himself.  We get to be the frame and He is the picture!