Don's Devotionals: Learning to love God

Psalm 116:15  Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.

Note: This was my post February 12, 2018.

What a delight my sister was!  Last night after 10 PM we received word that she had gone on to be with Jesus, her Lord. My heart goes out to her amazing family and I rejoice in the treasure they were to her as she was to them.  She was surrounded by her family and it was very peaceful.

This morning as I continue to respond to this news, my sadness and sense of loss, as deep as they are, are secondary to the effervescent joy that is flowing within me from the memories I have of her.  I’m crying and smiling at the same time.  Judy was just such a precious person and I cannot think of her without remembering the love and laughter and joy and encouragement that she brought to my life – and so many others.

Then I think of her husband, children and grandchildren – while my heart is aching for their loss, I am grateful and blessed by who they all are, in spite of my pain and tears.  I don’t begin to understand all of what is going on inside me.

For 18 months there has been the struggle of her illness.  If she hadn’t responded to treatment and prayer it could have been only 3 weeks.  We believe the Lord gave her those 18 months to experience important family milestones.  And as things neared the end, we were able to go see her again last Monday. It was a divinely choreographed trip to their home to spend a special hour with her.  The days before and after Monday were snowy but Monday was sunshine and blue sky for our 7 hour round trip drive.

What can I say? – to see her; to hold her hand; to see her smile and laugh; to share some precious moments and memories with her; to see her loving husband and one of her sons who helped us arrange the trip; to hear the peace in her voice as she talked of being ready to be with Jesus, her Lord.  What memories to treasure!

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.

2 Corinthians 12:9a  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Have you ever had the experience of trying to put something together only to discover a key part is missing?  Or getting a group together to address an issue at work and someone vital to solving the problem is unable to attend?

I know there have been numerous times when my wife is making something in the kitchen and she calls me to run to the store to get a missing ingredient.  Sometimes you can get by with what’s missing or substitute something similar.  But often times there is no getting around the problem posed by a key item being missing.

Fortunately the missing ‘key part’ problem never applies to God’s grace.  It is always in sufficient supply for every situation we encounter.  Can you imagine the uncertainty and trauma we would go through if God routinely withheld His grace from us?  Think of the nightmare if He allowed temptations to come our way that were more than we could bear.  Our faith would be radically impacted – and undermined.

Faith and grace are there for us to apply to everything we do.  We need them for the problems we face AND how we respond to the problems.  Suppose we are asked to do something and we do it in a negative manner.  In God’s scheme of things, it’s possible that the only reason we were asked to help was for Him to reveal our attitude problem to us; that we were not walking in His provision for us.

One of the most helpful paraphrases I’ve been taught applies to the Lord’s Prayer and to the “Lead us not into temptation” phrase.  The teacher paraphrased this, “Lord let there not be anything in my heart that would cause you to put me to the test.”  God never tempts anyone (with evil) (James 1:13, 14) but He will allow us to encounter situations that reveal problems we have that we might be unaware of – like spiritual termites.

What a privilege we have in God enabling us to respond in a way that glorifies Him no matter what we encounter.  The key is for our faith to focus more and more on Him throughout each day recognizing that He and His grace are there for us to respond righteously.

Psalm 105:3  Glory in His holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.

Isn’t it wonderful that we have a miracle working God who is intimately involved in our lives?  Isn’t it incredible that our God, who made the universe, wants – no, make that insists – upon a personal relationship with each of us.  But He doesn’t take a distant, unapproachable, sterile approach of demanding we serve Him.  He woos us as a lover!  His goal is for us to love Him in return.  All of creation is speaking to us, drawing us to seek and to know Him.

Our God is the Holy One of Israel.  He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  He is Yahweh.  He gave His son Jesus to die for us and because of that sacrifice we have the opportunity and privilege of becoming His family.  Jesus is our Lord!  He is incapable of failing, or lying, or being unfaithful.  He never has an ‘oops’.  Nothing escapes His notice.  He never leaves us; He is always with us, inside of us.  He wants us to be aware of Him always.  The more we are aware of Him, the more we seek Him.

I am reminded of a wonderful experience that is so reflective of what we have in Jesus.  What a joyous day it was!  The setting was perfect where we were house-sitting.  It was a  warm spring day with temperature in the 60s and bright sunshine.  The back yard bordered on a large pond and there were toys and stuff for kids to climb and play on.  Better still was the family and friends we had there for a surprise birthday party for two of our family.

We had 3 of our sons and their families here plus another family of dear friends.  The kids, and there were 10 of them, had so much fun playing.  Snuggles had a field day running and playing with them.  She even went in the pond!  Enhancing this all was the exquisite pleasure of relationships.  I not only had the pleasure of being with people I love, but better still was the delight of seeing them together.  They so enjoyed one another.  This is family.

This all is a wonderful picture of the treasure we have in Jesus.  The joy and laughter and the warmth of being loved and being with those we love.  We not only get to experience relationship with one another, we get to experience relationship with Him.  As followers of Jesus, the love we have for one another is reflective of His love for us.  His intent is that everyone should experience the wonder of such love.  What a privilege we have to receive it and share it.

John 15:8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

When I was a new Christian I remember being given some advice by an evangelist friend.  He said it was a good idea to identify those around me who were really like Jesus and to go rub up against them in hopes that some of it would rub off.  After we quit laughing, I took to heart the importance of identifying the qualities of Jesus in others and learning from them how to make them in my own life.

This led me to realize that I had to learn what the qualities of Jesus were.  It was a whole lot more than just someone who is nice or pleasant to be around.  Have you ever had a friend who was nice but cheated at games you played?  What about friends who would talk about Jesus in a great way, but then they would go out and involve themselves in immorality?

Or being a sales person and stretching the truth regarding their products in order to get the sale?  What about not following through on commitments made, leaving it to others to pick up the loose ends?  What about someone one who is nice with everyone but has a habit of taking their frustrations out on their spouse?  They might be wonderful to their spouse most of the time, but with some degree of frequency they let their anger fly wounding the one they say they love the most.

This was the one that I was so guilty of 30+ years ago.  I was so blind to the anger I would let fly at home.  I had to come to grips with the reality that in spite of all the wonderful things I did for and with my wife, this one “fruit” was undermining it all.  I was so embarrassed that my grasp of the obvious in this area was so totally malfunctioning.  Fortunately, God dealt with it and me, and our marriage became better and stronger than ever.  Using the fruit illustration we’ve been talking about, it was like seeing a beautiful apple and turning it in our hands and finding it rotten on the back.  Thankfully, repentance and forgiveness works!!  Jesus can touch that “apple” and make it rich and new.

The simple reality is that we don’t become perfect overnight – or in a lifetime.  But when we are truly disciples of Jesus, the Holy Spirit enables us to more and more walk in His ways.  We are continually being transformed into His image.  We learn to recognize our sins much more quickly so that Godliness flourishes in every area of our lives.  No matter where we are or what we’re doing or who we’re doing it with, we want our lives to glorify our Father in Heaven.  This comes by bearing the fruit consistent with being full-time disciples of Jesus.

Mark 16:17b In my name they will drive out demons;  Proverbs 16:22a  Understanding is a fountain of life to those who have it,

About six weeks after meeting the Lord (my thunderous encounter with Him), I went up to Minneapolis for what I thought was going to be a youth retreat for high school and college age over Thanksgiving weekend.   I had just turned 21 and hitched a ride up there with 3 other Western Michigan college students in a VW Bug.  I was in the back seat with a large suitcase and another large person.  That was a ride to remember!

When they dropped me off, I discovered the retreat had been cancelled.  The folks at the ministry center there were then wondering what to do with me – probably not the first time in my life that’s happened.  They had a Christian community / retreat center in northern Minnesota and one of the families was going up there for the weekend so they decided to take me along.  It turned out to be one of the most critically important times of my entire life.  I didn’t know it but I had a date with destiny.

The people at the community where we went were wonderful and very gracious to me.  The worship and ministry times were wonderful.  In my joy as a new Christian I was struggling with a serious issue that was warring within me.  It was only after meeting the Lord that I discovered it was a sinful issue.  During one of the services, the leader called me up to the front.  The Lord had divinely given him discernment of my sinful struggle and its demonic component.  He had me renounce it and confess it as sin and then he took authority over the demonic spirit in Jesus’ name and commanded it to leave me.  I was set free!! My war with this issue was over!! 

What followed next was profoundly important.  He said to me, “Don.  You cannot afford dating either spiritually or financially.  Seek Christian fellowship.”  Then he said, “I want you to pray for your wife – but don’t pray, ‘God, send me a wife’.  I want you to pray for her like this.  Lord Jesus, I thank you that you have the girl I am going to marry.  I pray that she will come to know you – that you will protect her and bless her.  Thank you that you are preparing us for one another.  I acknowledge that in your time and in your way, you will bring us together.  I commit her and our relationship to you.”

So I regularly began praying in this way for the unknown girl who would be my wife.  This enabled me to really release this whole area to the Lord.  Later the next spring I read an article by Billy Graham where he wrote about his children playing on a hillside.  He realized that on some other hillside were the children who would one day be the spouses of his kids.  So he prayed for their future spouses in the very same way.  We should do so as well.

Proverbs 20:11  Every child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right.

One of my favorite memories is the time about 10+ years ago when I drove to Akron where our son Jamie and his family then lived.  He and his wife Tiffany have a daughter Sophia (now 23) and a son Sam (now 21).  My wife was already there and I had not seen them in 16 months.  I didn’t realize how much Sophia and Sam wanted to see and be with me.

I was the recipient of repeated hugs and lovin’s.  They snuggled next to me just wanting to be near me.  They expressed their love verbally and physically.  Sometimes it felt like they were applying a tourniquet to my arm or leg they squeezed me so tightly.

The marvelous thing is that they weren’t asking for anything.  It was clear that they were not “doing to get” but they were “doing to give”.  They were expressing what was within them.  They simply wanted to be with me and they freely expressed their love and affection in wonderful ways.

It’s amazing the impact that their expressions of love had on me.  I wanted to be with them even more.  I wanted to bless them and I found myself looking for new and creative ways to express my love for them.  This struck me as a significant aspect of what God wants in us as His sons and daughters.

He desires us to express our love for Jesus, not out of duty or obligation, nor as an attempt to get something from Him.  He desires that our lives express the genuine reality that we are thrilled to have Jesus; that we don’t take Him for granted.  Our actions and attitudes determine the genuineness of our love.  The more we walk in His ways and allow the Holy Spirit to transform us, the more we express our love for Him.  And He responds to that love in ways that allow us to experience even more apsects of His love for us.