Don's Devotionals: Learning to love God

Revelation 1:17-18  When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. ¹⁸ I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.

Have we ever thought of what our response would be if the Lord took us to heaven in the Spirit as He did the Apostle John?  I imagine the nature of the encounter with Jesus could take on many forms.  I wonder if John ever thought about such a thing happening – and if he did, did he think that his response upon seeing Jesus would be to fall at his feet as though dead.

Of all the apostles, he is the one identified as having a special relationship with Jesus.  He is repeatedly described as the ‘one whom Jesus loved’.  That doesn’t mean that Jesus didn’t love the others; it’s just that John’s relationship with the Lord had a special love element of closeness in it.  For me, that is what makes his response in this encounter with Jesus so stirring and provocative.

We tend to think along the lines of Jesus warmly embracing someone (one of His own) who goes to heaven and encounters Him.  Sort of a welcome home, like the father greeting the prodigal son.  Joy and gladness just overflowing – and that might be the way it normally occurs.  But here we have something very different.  Does our understanding of God and the relationship that we have with Him include the aspect of what is revealed in this verse?  Can we see ourselves responding to Jesus as John did?

The fear of the Lord and the love of God are two sides of the same coin.  Jesus’ first words to John after falling at His feet as though dead were “Do not be afraid.”  It’s vital that we understand that although we are recipients of God’s love and are His children through faith in Jesus, He is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings.   In Revelation 5:11-12 John gives this glorious description:

Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. ¹² In a loud voice they sang:

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”

This is our Savior and Lord.  He is the One who died for us and rose from the dead.  He is the One who loves and treasures us so; the One that we have the incredible privilege to love each and every day of our lives.  May we fully embrace His ways so that our lives do just that!

1 Peter 1:8  Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,

This morning I am still overflowing with joy over the wonder and thrill of what Jesus does – and has done – in our lives.  Yesterday’s devotional seemed to just trigger an eruption of that joy.  It recounted how God used my friend Andy and me in His plan of drawing this young Muslim man to Jesus.  The experience of that flight was priceless, but then to receive his email of him finding Jesus!  It just tapped into the wellspring of gratitude and joy that I have for my own experience of finding Jesus.

I’m sitting here writing this, grinning and basking in the inexpressible and glorious joy that Peter writes of in today’s verse.   The joy for this young man and the joy for my own encounter with Jesus are still just engulfing me.  And those salvation experiences are just the beginning!

Becoming a follower of Jesus is not a one-experience life!  If our testimony is simply recounting what God did in our lives years ago, we are missing the mother lode.  Yes, my encounter with Him 57 years ago was astounding.  It’s like the rock of Gibraltar in my life – it is huge!  But that was simply the transforming invitation to ‘come in’.  It’s like the Lord saying, “If you thought that was good, that is merely the foretaste!”

We belong to Him, and as His family we get to experience the treasure of His Word, His ways, His love, His protection, His presence, His provision….  It just goes on and on.  He also surprises us, delights us, disciplines us, prunes us, tests us, comforts us, confronts us, encourages us….  Best of all, we get to experience Him.

Hopefully, this triggers joy within you and the refreshing that comes from remembering the wonder of our God.  But if it doesn’t, hopefully it will spark your active pursuit of Him.  His plan for all of us is for our lives to be filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy because we belong to Him.

1 Corinthians 3:6  I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.

Part 2 – Yesterday I asked you to picture yourself on a jet that has just taken off for a long flight.  The person next to you is not a Christian and is searching the various religions to find the right one.  He has been reading the Bible as part of his search and is filled with questions and begins to ask you them.

This specific scenario happened to me and a young friend named Andy 20 years ago.  We were in Ukraine and were on the first leg of our trip home, flying across Europe.  The young man next to me was raised a Muslim but had concluded that it was not the answer.  In his search, he had narrowed it down to Judaism and Christianity.  He had been particularly struck by the concept of ‘loving one another’.

This Q&A and discussion of our faith went on for the entire 3 hour flight.  The more we talked the more apparent it became just how thorough his search had been.  He raised questions on specific passages throughout the Bible.  He was also very aware of the price he would pay with his family for leaving Islam but he was determined to find the truth.

He had been waiting for over a year to make this trip to come to college in America.  The Lord timed the flight so that we would have the blessing of being with him on this leg of his trip.  How I thought of this verse as we experienced the joy of responding to his questions and sharing our faith with him.  Shortly before the end of the flight we exchanged email addresses and Andy told me that the young man had said to him, “It was no accident that I sat down with you two!”

What a marvelous opportunity this was to be a part of God’s plan to bring someone to Himself.  We had been given the opportunity to water the seeds others had planted.  In the subsequent months, I wondered if this young man had completed his search.  You can imagine my joy and gratitude to the Lord when I received the following email at Christmas of that year:

“Merry Christmas Don,

I guess you don’t remember me. Well, we met in plane when we were traveling from Ukraine to Amsterdam this July.

Let me share something with you what god has done to me, it may surprise you. If you remember me then you will remember that I was on a spiritual journey. And I was not able to find god’s way or light. I was living in darkness. And when we met, I was on the point where I knew that God’s way was in Judaism or Christianity. Well, on the night of 14th Oct, when I was talking to a pastor I found a light. I was literally crying afterwards. I found Jesus. I tell you after that night, I have lived every moment as a complete life. I am thankful to him that he could come to a sinner like me.   

Well, I just wanted to share my experience with you.

2 Corinthians 3:2  You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.

Part 1 of 2 – Picture yourself on a jet that has just taken off for a long flight.  You begin a conversation with the person next to you and discover that he is searching the various religions to find the right one.  His background is not Christianity but he has been reading the Bible as part of his search.  He is filled with questions and begins to ask you them.

Why are you a Christian?  If you had to identify one or two aspects of your life as a Christian that were the most important to you, what would they be?  How does your daily life reflect your Christian faith?

What would your answers be to him?  Would you be experiencing excitement at the opportunity to share your faith?  Or would your experience be tempered by awareness that other ‘stuff’ has diminished the vibrancy of your relationship with Christ in your life?  If your daily life of thoughts and actions were written out, what would they reveal to him about you and your faith?  What would they reveal to those around you?

Today’s scripture presents the reality that our lives are being read by those around us. Their lives are being read by us.  That is simply the reality of life.  It is not an issue of being judgmental, it’s a matter of people being cognizant of the encounters they have.  Think of the incredible opportunity this provides us with, repeatedly every day, to have His love and life shine forth from us!

Is faith reflected in the story, or letter, of our lives?  Do our lives consistently reflect more of our Lord than the worldliness of our culture?   The Holy Spirit is leading each of us to make Jesus the true love of our life.  Hopefully, each chapter of our lives will reflect us coming closer to achieving this goal.

Tomorrow – an amazingly wonderful experience I will never forget!

Romans 2:4b  …not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?

Have you ever had a friend or someone in your life that believed in you and was for you, no matter what?  Have you ever been that person for someone you know?  The relationship is so strong and motivation so right that difficult things can be communicated because the trust is there.

Many years ago when we were involved in ministry, we moved back to an area we had lived in before.  When we arrived we heard very negative things about two individuals we knew – Bill and Erik.  Bill had been a very good friend and Erik was more of an acquaintance. Erik was a newer Christian and bit more radical.  He had also been the recipient of some good things that I thought (at that time) should have come to me.

Although I am forgiven, I am still humbled by my very different responses to these two brothers.  I was so troubled by what I heard that I met with Bill at our center late one night.  I shared with him what I had become aware of and reaffirmed my love for him and our friendship.  I let him know that I would help him in anyway that I could.  We shared, wept and prayed with each other.

With Erik, the troubling things I heard fit with my perception of him.  I simply wrote him off.  Sometime later after we had moved away, the Lord confronted me with the question of why my responses to these two brothers were so different.  As I pondered the question, the answer became so embarrassingly obvious:  I loved Bill and didn’t love Erik!

When the Lord showed me this, it wasn’t like a trip to the woodshed or the Principal’s office.  It was like a treasured friend taking me aside and sitting down with me for a talk.  Although painful to hear, the relationship we had enabled me to hear Him and receive the truth about myself.  Instead of experiencing rejection, my Lord had His arm around my shoulders – affirming me.

Because of God’s kindness, I was lovingly being offered insight into my own misbehavior so that I might repent and learn.  Isn’t that one of the most marvelous realities of our life with Him?  He will regularly show us where we need to change – and enable us to change – so that our lives will be a continuous, ongoing transformation into the image of Christ.  May we all see that this is our daily way of life with Him and recognize His kindness.

Acts 16:34  The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole family.

Have you experienced a time of when you thought you were following God and everything seemed to go wrong?  You struggled with thoughts that you missed what He wanted you to do.  Then in the midst of some of the worst difficulties, things happened that only He could have arranged and you saw that He was orchestrating the events the whole time.

The 16^th chapter of Acts contains such a story and it is one of the most remarkable stories in the Bible.  It details the events leading up to and including this jailer and his family coming to believe in the Lord Jesus through the ministry of Paul and Silas.  These events are rather extraordinary and not exactly what we think of when we discuss God providing us with opportunities to share our faith and lead others to the Lord.

It started with a vision.  Paul wanted to go elsewhere but God used it to direct them to Macedonia.  Things seemed to be going well until Paul cast a fortune-telling spirit out of a slave girl.  Her owners became upset because this meant that they ceased to earn a great deal of money from the girl.  Due to the owners’ efforts Paul and Silas became ‘public enemies 1 & 2’.  They were seized, with the crowd joining in; dragged into the marketplace before the authorities; stripped, beaten, severely flogged and thrown into prison.  Just to get where God wanted them to be!

The jailer, having been warned, placed them in an inner cell with their feet in stocks.  At midnight, instead of sleeping or grumbling or being distressed over their fate – they were praying and singing hymns to God, with all the others listening!  Then a violent earthquake struck that set everyone free – but no one tried to escape.  The jailer was about to kill himself, but Paul shouted out and stopped him from harming himself.

What a blessing that Paul and Silas were more concerned about the jailer than their freedom.  What a blessing that they were glorifying God.  The jailer came and fell trembling before Paul and Silas – asking what he must do to be saved!  He and his whole household responded to their instructions and experienced the joy of salvation.

The next morning, the authorities wanted to release them as though nothing had happened!  I have no difficulty believing that God orchestrated all these events, simply to reach the jailer and his household.  Yes, a group of believers was established there in that city.  But the series of supernatural events led to the conversion of this jailer and his family.  Paul and Silas were faithful in spite of the unjust suffering and abuse they endured.  Do we understand that the Lord will do similar things with us today?  Are we willing?

Hebrews 5:14  But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

In Colorado Springs it sure is easy to know which way is west – and from that all the other directions are clear.  This is because the Front Range and Pike’s Peak are directly to the west of the city.  When facing the mountains, north is to the right, south is to the left and east is behind you.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were that easy to tell good from evil – or right from wrong?

How do we know what is good and what is evil?  What is our basis for identifying such things?  Years ago I remember reading about an art forger who commented that one of the highlights of his ‘career’ was having art critics in Europe declare his forgery the original, and the original work of art the forgery.  Apparently, his forgeries were common enough that the critics got used to them.

We have this problem that the world has its own idea about what is good and evil.  Sometimes it seems that the biggest evil to the world is Christians making any kind of judgment that something is evil or wrong.  Isaiah addressed this problem – that we must contend with daily – when he wrote:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. (Isaiah 5:20)

Some things are so blatantly evil that they are like a Pike’s Peak– so big you can’t miss them.  But that isn’t the general way the enemy of our soul attacks us.  He tries to blur the lines and induce Christians to walk in pathways that lead to temptation – that present unrighteousness in attractive packaging.  We become familiar with pathways that have his ‘forgeries’ presented as the norms of ‘good’ behavior.  His goal is to have us reach a point where we affirm the forgeries and reject the ‘original’.  God forbid that we should call his redefined ‘acceptable’ behavior sin!

If we insist on accurately identifying evil as evil and good as good, the enemy of our souls will try to move us to becoming overtly judgmental of others.  That can produce a prideful blindness that is repugnant to God.  Remember the Pharisees were so concerned with sin they missed Jesus.  When we speak the truth, love must characterize our responses – always.

God’s word, the Bible, is our standard.  It identifies that ‘good and evil’ applies to behaviors, thoughts, attitudes, actions – every area of our lives.  God wants us to walk in righteousness and it is imperative that we learn to do it – and do it in the loving fullness that it entails.  This means we have to learn what His word says.

Satan has the world running rampant declaring evil good and wanting to condemn those who disagree.  We are surrounded by ‘forgeries’ and God’s Word is the standard that identifies them and enables us to choose wisely.  This doesn’t happen by accident.  We must recognize that walking in righteousness requires focus, intentionality and training to do it His way.

Hebrews 13:6  So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”

Years ago when our oldest sons were young, we went to Six Flags over Georgia.  Although I’m the one in our family who had a fear of heights and was allergic to roller coasters, it was my fate to accompany the boys on a couple of rides that I would never have chosen.

I have such a vivid memory of standing in line for this super rollercoaster, dreading every minute of it, while all the children and other adults around me were so excited they could hardly stand it.  Then there was the parachute drop!  Again it was my fate to accompany Jamie on it.  While in line I was timing things so I knew just how long it would take to ascend and drop.

Our turn came and we sat on the tiny board that passed for a seat.  It felt like it was about 4” wide and that I was going to slide off even though we were belted in.  Then, instead of hitting the button to send us up, the guy forgot and turned to the second parachute – prolonging my agony.  He finally turned, saw his mistake – and hit the button   As we ascended, seemingly forever, I kept telling myself I would live through this.  By the time we got to the top, the board underneath me felt like it was 2” wide.

Needless to say, I lived.  I can laugh now, but fear is a reality of life.  Life is filled with opportunities that seem to have fear associated with them.  While sometimes it can be healthy, and keep us safe, often it is a barrier that we must overcome to accomplish what we need or want to do. Rather than viewing fear as a negative and being repulsed by it, see it as a sign of an opportunity to grow.  It is triggered by the risk involved which is a key component of growth opportunities.

Sometimes fear will still be a companion – like with me when I fly.  But with God as our helper we can keep fear in its place and thrive in the opportunities that come – whether they be cold calling, speaking in a meeting or going on a mission trip to Afghanistan.   It’s important that we see that often fear is not a barrier – but a doorway.  With God’s help, we can walk through it.

Veterans Day!

Luke 9:23  Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

If you’re like me, you take advantage of the resources available on line to seek answers to the ‘How To’ questions we have.  There’s stuff we need to do, and by going to Google we can type in our issue and find sources that tell us how to do it.  Today’s verse offers us a prime example of a ‘How To’ issue.  We might ask, “Please tell me ‘How To’ 1) deny myself, 2) take up my cross, and 3) follow Jesus.  We want to do these things, but how?

Some of the themes we’ve been writing about are walking in His ways; obeying His commands; loving God; and continuing in His word.  We have contrasted suggestions versus commands.  We’ve talked about the problem some of us have when we hear the word ‘commands’.  It’s like we have an allergic reaction to the word.  But we must get past that to recognize they are the answers to the great “How To’s” of our faith.

Our goal is to help us come to grips with the fact that the New Testament is filled with such ‘answers’ that we as Christians are to ‘do’.  Today let’s look at some of the ‘answers’ that are spread throughout the New Testament that describe denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following Jesus:

• Do everything in love.
• Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit
• In humility consider others better than yourselves
• Your attitude should be that of Christ Jesus
• Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling
• Do everything without complaining or arguing
• Rejoice in the Lord always
• Let your gentleness be evident to all
• Do not be anxious about anything
• Put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry
• Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience
• Bear with each other
• Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another
• Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts
• Be thankful
• Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly
• Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men

Do we understand that these are not suggestions!  And they are just a handful of what the Bible contains for us.  They are not elective or optional.  By embracing these things and allowing the Holy Spirit to do His work in us, we deny ourselves and take up our cross to follow Jesus.  This is the way – and the only way – to express our love to God.

Psalm 85:5  You are forgiving and good, O Lord, abounding in love to all who call to you.

I have kept journals for years.  I love to look back five or ten years ago to see what was happening in my life.  Sometimes I rediscover experiences that bring back such special memories of family or trips or things at work.  Other times I read about struggles and difficulties we’ve gone through.

One of the cool things that I’ve done with some of my journals over the years is to highlight with a marker special times with the Lord.  I get blessed again reading about the times when He has really blessed me by showing me things in my life or by manifesting His presence while I’m in prayer.  There are times when He just overwhelms me with joy – where I simply weep because I am so overcome with gratitude for His goodness to me.

It is so wonderful to be forgiven – and more than that – to be chosen; to belong; to be loved.  Years ago, when we were just married, we were about to become involved in a ministry to street people.  I prayed and asked the Lord how I could relate to them since I had basically been a good kid.  I never did drugs and I had a good home.  The Lord spoke so clearly to me.  He said, “You know what it’s like to be lonely.”  And I did.  Only half-jokingly did I talk about myself being left out, not-chosen and left behind.

But when Jesus made me His own – all that changed.  For 57 years, God’s forgiveness, His goodness and His abounding love have been life to me.  And the great news is that He has this for all of us.  He wants us all to be so caught up in the wonder of Him and His love that we want to live for Him more than anything.