Don's Devotionals: Learning to love God

Psalm 1:1-3   ¹ Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. ² But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. ³ He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.

The beginning of Psalm 1 has always been special to me.  It describes the journey to a Godly life.  It’s a simple summary or overview of what not to do; what to do; and the results of a life so lived.  It’s like a father talking with a son or daughter and giving them counsel that will help them in all they do.  The counsel appears to be general in nature yet presents a clear picture of the types of actions required to have a blessed life.

The principles are really common to us because they exist in all areas of life.  No matter what goal we’re seeking, there are things and distractions to avoid, an attitude of heart to have, things to embrace, and the results consistent with such actions.  Sports, music, school, marriage, child-raising, work, life – it makes no difference, the counsel applies.

Years ago, I was teaching in a private school and in the summer following my third year there, the school without warning closed.  With a family to support, I wound up in sales – not somewhere I thought I would ever be.  Lots of people fail at sales or only marginally succeed.  Many of those around me failed because they wouldn’t discipline themselves.  They did not avoid the distractions, actions and associations with others that undermined what they were trying to learn.  They did not approach the job wholeheartedly.

If we’re supposed to be on the phone, making prospect calls, we can’t be daydreaming, reading other stuff or talking with others who are in the process of failing as well.  If we’re supposed to be studying, there’s TV, talking, messaging or tweeting.  There are things and people and ‘stuff’ that call us – distract us – keep us, from attaining the goal we set.  But we must recognize the issue is us!

Great are the rewards of avoiding the pitfalls, and wholeheartedly pursing the actions that enable us to attain a worthy goal.  We must recognize that this reality applies to our relationship with the Lord.  The result we achieve will be commensurate to what we do and how we do it.

James 1:22  Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

Year ago, back when I was surviving as an insurance salesman, I made a significant sale to a small business twice – at least I thought I had.  I remember how excited I was because at the time it was my biggest sale – which meant it was also my biggest commission.  You can imagine my disappointment when their payment check bounced!  I went back to see them again.  They apologized; gave me another check and it bounced too.  I never did complete a sale with them.

Prior to that, I would say I knew I had a sale when a customer gave me a check.  That was forever changed in my mind to I knew I had a sale when the check cleared.  The check was a promise of something real.  It’s the money in the bank that gave value to the check.  If there isn’t adequate money in the bank, the check bounces.

One of the problems that has always confronted Christians is having their lives back up what they say when they verbalize the Gospel.  Words are a whole lot easier to express than the Godly lives that give the words credibility.  There’s an old expression that describes this “Talking the talk and walking the walk”.  There is such power when the testimony of following Jesus is backed up by lives that reflect His glory.

Putting this in the context of my sales experience, the Godly reality of our lives is the money in the bank that gives value to the check – the testimony we give about Jesus and our faith.  If we have inadequate reality of Him in our lives – the check bounces.  This isn’t about walking in perfection but about there being ample evidence of us being a Godly work in progress.

Being a doer of the Word affects everything in our lives – our thoughts, attitudes, words, actions, responses, beliefs – our hopes, our fears – everything.  This impacts what we say; how we say it and how we are perceived.  There is such joy and confidence that come with being a doer of the Word – having lives that truly give witness to the Lord we serve.  Remember, this is something we get to do!

Hebrews 6:1a  Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity…

When we are born again, God does an amazing work in us.  We become new creatures in Christ Jesus.  Old things pass away and all things become new.  Many of us experience remarkable transformations in our lives that impact behavior, thinking and speaking.  The Lord becomes the most important thing in our lives.  We are His, but in terms of living our lives here on earth, we have not arrived – we are merely beginning.

Have you ever considered the perspective that Christianity involves a skill set to be learned and lived?  Foremost it is a relationship with our Lord, but that relationship with Him and with others has requirements of us.  Some we find easier than others to meet.  Some we really struggle with because of the ongoing work that the Lord must do in our lives.  Although we are new in Christ, it’s amazing the lifetime supply of ‘stuff’ we have in our lives that God will bring to our attention and help us deal with.

Our Christian walk is to become more and more like Jesus.  We need to know what that looks like. All too often we think we know but we don’t.  Think a moment about it in terms of carpentry.  It is a learned skill.  Items must be smooth to the touch – no splinters!  How often in our lives are we prickly or ripe with splinters in our interactions with others – and we might even be totally unaware of it.  Some areas of our lives are in need of reconstruction by the Master Carpenter – while others He is putting His finishing touch on.

Change doesn’t all happen overnight in terms of our behavior; it’s a life-long transformative process with the Holy Spirit working with us.  When the scripture says that they will know we are disciples of Jesus by our love for one another, it’s talking about how we live – how we act and talk.  What attitudes do we demonstrate?  Do we have a servant’s heart?

We rejoice both in conforming to His word, and in His dealing with us where we have far to go.  Jesus is our focus.  I remember the slogan of the Zenith Corporation, ‘The quality goes in before the name goes on.’  The same is true of us but with a twist.  We receive the quality within us in Christ.  It’s how we live that reflects our name – whether we are truly followers of Jesus.

Numbers 13:1-2   The LORD said to Moses, “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.”

The twelve spies were given an opportunity by the Lord to see if they would be faithful or not.  What kind of report would they bring back?  Would they simply describe what they found – or would they do something else?

It’s important to remember the history that these 12 men had.  They all were leaders who had experienced God’s incredible deliverance from Egypt. They saw the miracles.  They walked through the parted Red Sea.  They saw the pillar of fire by night and pillar of cloud by day.  They knew the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was with them.  They knew that they were exploring the land promised to Abraham and his descendents.

The 13^th and 14^th chapters of Numbers tell us what happened.  We don’t remember the names of ten of the spies but we honor the names of Joshua and Caleb.  The ten didn’t simply report that there were giants in the land along with all the positive things there.  They allowed the giants in the land to provoke fear and unbelief; giving the people a bad report.

Joshua and Caleb focused on the fact that the Lord was with them.  He would enable them to take the land.  The fact that there were giants and enemies there paled in comparison to the Lord being with them.  Unfortunately, the people chose to believe the ten and rebelled against the Lord.

This story illustrates a principle that God uses repeatedly in our lives.  He gives us opportunities to follow Him and accomplish things that He has purposed us to do.  But in the midst of those things, He allows all manner of problems, difficulties and obstacles to arise.  They can be fearful or overwhelming.  How are we going to respond?  Will fear or faith dominate our responses?

We have a choice to make just like the twelve spies and the children of Israel did.  We can be fearful and complain – or we can seek and trust the Lord, lifting all of those problems to Him.  We can focus on the problems or we can focus on our God – unbelief versus faith.  Each is an opportunity for the Lord in His greatness to enable us to overcome.  The choice is ours.  How will we respond?

Romans 12:2  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

The movie Pinocchio is truly a classic and a wonderful story.  I find myself fascinated by the transformation that this puppet goes through.   In the story Geppetto is a wood carver who creates a magnificent wooden puppet that he names Pinocchio.  He then wishes upon a star that Pinocchio would become a real boy.  His wish is partly granted in that Pinocchio becomes alive but has to prove himself honest, fair and true in order to become a real boy.

This living puppet goes through adventures with Jiminy, his little cricket friend who is his conscience.  He faces and succumbs to temptation but in the end he is transformed into the real boy that Geppetto wanted.  Pinocchio is no longer a living wooden boy, but a real boy with flesh and blood.

On a simple, yet profound level, this story presents a helpful perspective of our walk in Christ.  Before we come to Christ, we are like the wooden puppet.  Then when we are born again, we become living sons and daughters but we have much to learn.  For the sake of illustration, we become like Pinocchio, the living, wooden puppet.  There is still much change that must occur in us.

We are…and we get to become.  Make that, we must become.  While we are truly sons and daughters of God when we are born again, there is a life-long transformation process that we must embrace in order to be transformed into the men and women God wants us to be.  Our lives – behavior, thoughts, attitudes, words, relationships – all have a lot of wooden edges that He wants us to be free of.

This process involves us no longer conforming to the pattern of the world, but conforming to God’s word and ways; becoming men and women who increasingly love God and love one another.  We must make the choices that enable us to become like Jesus.  Through this process the life-long transformation is accomplished.  The wooden edges are replaced by the real.

Psalm 63:1  O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you,  in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Think of the contrast between longing for something we are deprived of; versus longing for something where we are filled with wonder and anticipation that it’s coming.  On the one hand, we can be dominated by our lack – on the other we are dominated by hope and expectancy.

This is one of those verses in the Bible that has gone from being a mystery to me to being a source of unspeakable joy. This was a Psalm of David when he was in the desert of Judah.  Since encountering God when I became a Christian in 1968, I could relate to him writing and saying, ‘O God, you are my God”.  I could also relate to seeking after God.

The thing I had difficulty with was, ‘my soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you’.  I didn’t understand how that could come about.  I wondered how you could get to a place where you could know and feel that your soul was thirsting for Him – that your body was longing for Him.  On the one hand, as Christians we have his Spirit within us.  Jesus has also promised to never leave us.  But on the other hand, I perceived that this verse spoke of something of great value worth pursuing.

I identified the thirsting and longing as passion for the Lord and made it the focus of prayer for weeks, months and years.  These were things that I didn’t have but wanted.  They spoke to me of aspects of relationship with God that were there for those who would pursue them – and Him.

The thing that I discovered in my prayerful pursuit was that these are things that we can experience today.  We can thirst for Him and long for Him. He provides us with living water to satisfy the thirst.  He provides us with His presence to satisfy the longing for Him.

No matter where we are or what we are doing, we can experience Him.  The thirsting and the longing are gifts that He gives that help motivate us to long for Him, to pursue Him, to see Him and to find Him.  He wants to be found.

Isaiah 61:10a  I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God.

What do you think of when asked to name something you delight in?  Is the word ‘delight’ even a word in your normal vocabulary?  By definition, the word ‘delight’ means a high degree of gratification; joy; also extreme satisfaction, something that gives great pleasure.  To me, delight has always had a sense of superlative to it.  It’s more than just being pleased with something, or liking something.

I remember so vividly the time when Becca, our oldest granddaughter, was about 19 months old.  She walked up to me, grinned and said, “HI GRANDPA!”  Oh my!  What I experienced in that moment.  If I could have melted I would have been a puddle on the floor.

What do you experience when someone you love calls simply to hear your voice – to see how you’re doing?  Or how about when the Lord puts someone on your heart and when you call them and give them a word of encouragement, you discover it was exactly what they needed to hear?  The Lord used you to bless them.  Think of how special that feels!

This sense of delight and rejoicing are not to be occasional things.  I think of what I experience whenever my Donna looks into my eyes and smiles at me.  Words simply cannot describe what goes on inside of me.  I never dreamed that I would be loved as she loves me.  I am overwhelmed with the reality that I GET TO love her and be loved by her all the days of my life.  I GET TO be with her – every day.  It never gets old!

Now think about our Lord.  He wants our experience with Him to result in this kind of joy and excitement and pleasure and extreme satisfaction.  He really does!  He has this for us but we have to respond to Him and pursue Him to find it.  If Moses hadn’t turned aside to explore the burning bush, he would have missed what God had for him.

If this is missing in your relationship with the Lord, don’t be disheartened.  Recognize the GREAT NEWS that He has this ‘treasure’ there for you – you simply have to pursue it.  He wants you to want it and turn to Him for help to find it.  The amazing thing is that as you pursue this, you find Him in ways that will thrill you beyond words!

Scripture is at the end.

Imagine living 2000 years ago in the Middle East in the land of Judea; specifically in a region called Galilee.  There are no hospitals, no pharmacies, no vaccinations, no antibiotics and very little medical care of any kind.  Injuries and illnesses that today are no big deal were life changing or deadly back then.

Our neighborhoods and families would likely have individuals who were crippled or sick with conditions that greatly affected their daily lives and the lives of those around them.  Chances are that some of us would be among those with such conditions, with no hope of them ever improving.

Into this mix comes word of a Nazarene carpenter named Jesus who is doing unbelievable things.  He’s going around doing miracles!  Cripples are being made whole, deaf are now able to hear, the blind are receiving their sight, the sick are no longer sick, lepers are being healed, demon-possessed are set free and there are even cases where the dead are brought back to life!  On top of that – we have seen individuals whom we know personally who experienced miraculous healing and restorations through this Jesus!.

Yes he is teaching about God, but teachers have always been a part of Jewish life.  Although people say he is teaching like no one they’ve ever heard.  No one has ever done what he is doing – and it’s not just isolated cases here or there.  He is healing everyone who comes to him!!!!  Multitudes are flocking to him.

Can we imagine the excitement?  Do we think that we’d be sitting around, discussing whether we were going to go see this Jesus – or not?  Rather, doesn’t it seem likely that we would be beyond excited; doing everything we could to gather all our sick and crippled family and friends – helping them to get to him?

Jesus was so much more that a ‘great teacher’ – there has never been anyone like him.  Here is Matthew’s description of the above scenario that we have been imagining together (4:23-24):

²³ Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. ²⁴ News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them.

He was AND IS the Christ – the Son of the living God!  He is our Savior and Lord!

2 Corinthians 9:15  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

Today – a prayer:  For the past couple of days I’ve just been so aware of the wonder we have being loved by our God.  This isn’t just a general Biblical truth but a faith-filled experiential reality. This is one of those precious times when God heightens our awareness and appreciation of Him.

All my thoughts just keep coming back to how fortunate and blessed I am.  I am just overwhelmed with God and His love for me.  What follows is written a bit differently.  I’ve written it in first person so that you can read it and pray it and speak it for yourself.  I pray that it will bless you as much as it is blessing me.

How can I ever thank you Lord for making me your own?  You, the God who created the universe know my name.  That is almost beyond imagining.  I am in awe of the fact that you care about me; that you would want me to be your child – to be part of your family for eternity.  It’s beyond words that you have made me your son and you are my father.

How can I ever thank you Lord that you let me experience your presence; that you give my life purpose and meaning?   How can I ever thank you for allowing me to be your hands extended; that you give me the opportunity to touch others with your love.

How can I ever thank you for Jesus?  Without Jesus, I have nothing.  With Him, I have everything.  How can I ever thank you for your Spirit who lives within me?  I am never alone.  You are always with me; loving me, encouraging me, comforting me, convicting me and helping me to repent whenever I need to.

How can I ever thank you for your Scriptures?  They teach me all about you – but even more wonderfully, they teach me how to love you!  Oh Lord, I do love you!  It is just so amazing that you give me the opportunity to be a blessing to you.  I don’t begin to understand it but I rejoice that I can give you pleasure.

How can I ever thank you for the passion you have put in my heart to live my life for you? – That I can gather with your people and sing to you and worship you and experience you.  Thank you Lord for my heart – that is bursting with gratitude for your kindness and love for me.

Forevermore your child, Don

Psalm 116:2  Because He turned His ear to me, I will call on Him as long as I live.

My story Part 2: Nothing prepared me for what happened when I raised my hand – acknowledging my doubt about knowing Jesus as Lord.  I thought it was hopeless, that I had too many doubts, but what did I have to lose?  I was startled to see a young man of about 15 push a chair to the middle of the circle of students and say, “This is where you meet Jesus!”

The evangelist came over to me and said that I could confess my sins and know that I was forgiven – that I would be clean inside; that if I wanted to know Jesus as my personal Savior and Lord – beyond a shadow of a doubt – to walk out to that chair and let them pray for me – so I did.

All of the students gathered around me and began praying – and pray they did!  There came a point when the evangelist asked me if I knew Jesus as Lord.  I replied, “No. But I want to!”  At that moment, it happened – I met Him!  From the top of my head, through my body to my toes, His power went through me!  God gave me a thunderous conversion experience beyond anything I could have ever dreamed of!  My Matterhorn of doubt was leveled in an instant.  Inside I was utterly changed, cleansed and filled with His presence.  Jesus was real and I was His!!!!

I was absolutely overwhelmed.  Within me was a tumultuous mass of joy, excitement, freedom, cleanness – there was Jesus, inside of me! And He didn’t go away!  After praying for others, we walked out of that prayer room into the main meeting area.  I so clearly remember looking out the windows at the woods and the lake.  I thought, “I’m 20 and life expectancy is about 70.  How do I keep this alive and vibrant for 50+ years?”  There was nothing in my experience that led me to believe that something this incredibly good could be sustained for any period of time.  The idea of it getting even better never entered my mind!

October 11^th was my 48^th birthday in the Lord.  My love relationship with Jesus is more vibrant and more wonderful than ever.  It has never grown cold.  Words cannot describe the gratitude that I have because God made me His own; the joy of tears streaming down my face because of Jesus.  I will love Him forever because He heard my cry.  Because He turned His ear to me, I will call on Him as long as I live.