Binding speech

I've been thinking lately about words-- specifically promises and vows, spoken commitments, and their decreasing power in our day. Throughout the Old Testament, an emphasis is placed on carrying out your commitments. The books of the Law strain over and over the weight of vows and the importance of honoring them, and Solomon affirms this in Ecclesiastes 5:5, saying, "It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it."

Even outside of the Bible, looking to history and literature up to the 18th and 19th centuries, a truly respectable person was a man of his word. If a person spoke a promise, he carried it out, regardless of changing circumstances or desires. At a cursory glance, this looks ridiculous. Should a person be unhappy and stay tied to a wrong decision made rashly? I would argue that such a mindset prevents rash and meaningless speech. As the spoken word has become less and less binding, we feel more and more free to speak whatever will get us the desired results in the moment, knowing we can back out later from whatever we commit to now.

I want to be a woman of my word. If I speak boldly of anything, I want it to be truthful and earnest. I don't want to be given to extreme statements and sensationalism, and I don't want to vow and break vows lightly. I want my yes to be yes and my no to be no and my promises to be worth something, made in light of careful consideration and prayer. And it makes sense that these are the people I want around me. In hard times, you turn to the friend whose word is his deed. I want to be that friend-- consistent, measured, and faithful.

Inwardly renewed

Health problems have been a part of my life for a little over a decade at this point. I won’t go into the specifics here—that’s not the point of this—but suffice it to say that I’m not dying (or getting significantly worse) and I’m also not getting better. Feeling entirely well is more remarkable for me than feeling unwell, and I spend a lot of time being generally achy and exhausted. Some days are better than others, and today is one of the others.

But today has also been a day of feeling closer to God than I had in a long time. I’ve been able to feel His presence and just to rest in it, to seek His guidance for my future and His comfort for some of the things I am facing in the present. Days like this are so sweet, and I would take a lifetime filled with physical pain and sweet communion with God over a healthy, self-sufficient one any day. I love the book of 2 Corinthians because of the way Paul speaks into situations like mine:

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
From 2 Corinthians 4

“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take [the thorn in my flesh] away from me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me… For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
From 2 Corinthians 12

Paul's struggles were considerably rougher than mine, but even he looks on them as light and momentary troubles in view of eternity and the inexpressible greatness of knowing Jesus Christ.

What I want to do

This passage came to mind today as I thought back over the past couple of weeks and tried to come up with something encouraging to write:

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do... I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out... for what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing... In my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
Paul, in Romans 7

It's been a pretty lazy, selfish week or two, if I'm honest about it. And the funny thing, as I was discussing with a friend on the phone a few days ago, is that selfishness doesn't tend to actually get us the results we want. We want joy, fulfillment, peace, purpose, and comfort, but we turn from the Source of every good thing and try to meet those needs elsewhere. It's selfish because it does not seek first to glorify God, but it's also futile, leaving us bitter and unsatisfied. The truly self-serving choice would be to take up our crosses and seek God's kingdom first, losing our lives for a short while and thereby gaining every worthwhile thing in this life and the next.

I take comfort that Paul expressed my very feelings so very well. If a man used so mightily by God struggled with these same things, God is truly able to redeem any life. I rest in His grace.

Empty thyself of self

How quick I am to be crabby and short and sarcastic when I am all full of myself, and how quick He is to answer when I pray that He would come in and fill me with Himself instead. How much lighter and quicker a day's tasks seem when I do them all as unto Him. How quick I am to forget this and have to learn it all again the next day! His mercies are new every morning, and so is our need for His mercy.

If thou could'st empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf,
And say, "This is not dead,"
And fill thee with Himself instead.

But thou are all replete with very thou
And hast such shrewd activity,
That when He comes He says, "This is enow
Unto itself - 'twere better let it be,
It is so small and full, there is no room for me."

-Thomas Edward Brown

Picture of a king

This is the description of a godly king given by Moses to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 17:

"He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, 'You are not to go back that way again.' He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.

"When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel." Deuteronomy 17:15-20

This goes against so much of what we see and understand and have as examples through history. Israel didn't always follow these guidelines faithfully, but here is the root of God's heart for leadership and authority. The king is to be one of them, humble and not self-serving, not chasing after multitudes of women, not seeking out riches but burying his head in God's word. This is government.

One foot in front of the other

Some days, everything comes together. You read the Word, it impacts you, and you are filled with joy or sorrow or penitence or hope. You pray and God answers. You walk through your day and He is present in every step.

Some days, it all feels like an empty shell. You read the Word and don't understand it or feel it past the surface level of comprehension. You pray and feel like you are talking to yourself. You walk through your day oblivious, not sure where your purpose went or how you are to get it back.

It's not about what you feel. Thank God for the emotion when it is there-- what joy to feel His presence and hear His words so close to your heart! But in any marriage, only fools would expect the emotion to last forever and carry them through. There are days when the only reason you do what you do is because you have committed to it. In those days, not in the mountaintops of emotion, lie the true strength of the relationship. The mountaintops will come again, but only if you keep putting one foot in front of the other all the way through the valley.

Submitting to love

"And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD's commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?"
Deuteronomy 10:12-13

The Bible, the Old Testament especially, can seem a little harsh at times. Repeated over and over again are commands that we will love and serve the Lord first and the Lord only, worshiping Him and obeying Him and honoring Him and following Him. Submission is not a concept of which I have always been particularly fond, whether to God or to another human being, but it's a concept I've started to understand a little more this year.

We are trained to want to be in control. In our ideal world, we call the shots and make the decisions and serve our own interests, and it's all about us. To submit would be to sacrifice that self-interest and to lose all of the benefits, right? Not necessarily. What if you were submitting to One who knew better than yourself what would be good for you? What if you were submitting to One whose love for you surpassed even your own self-love? What if submission to another's commands and laws and orders would actually bring you the most satisfaction and fulfillment?

What if the One we were submitting to looked something like this?

"To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt. Fear the LORD your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. He is your praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes."
Deuteronomy 10:14-21

Disobedience and disbelief

"All disobedience to God's laws, and distrust of his power and goodness, flow from disbelief of his word, as all true obedience springs from faith."
-Matthew Henry, from his commentary on Deuteronomy 1

God's Word is pretty straightforward. Love Him, love others, honor and obey Him, acknowledge your sinfulness and His grace through Jesus on the cross. All of the commandments basically melt down, as Jesus pointed out, to "Love God and love your neighbor." And yet we disobey. And Matthew Henry hits the nail right on the head with his commentary: when we disobey, it is because we disbelieve in God's goodness, His promises, and His faithfulness to do what He has said (both the positive and the negative). If we obey Him, it will be the best thing we can do, the best life we can live (not easiest, but best) and the best consequences we can reap. If we disobey Him, it will be the worst. And if we really believed that, we would act accordingly, repenting of sin and stepping out in faith. So why don't we?

Overwhelmed (in a good way)

I wrote this for the Jonah (where I work) blog today, but I'll post it here as well for those of you who don't read that one:

Maybe it’s due to getting a little less sleep than usual last night, or maybe God is calling my heart to wake up, or (most likely) those factors are working together, but I have found myself overwhelmed several times today by the grace of God and the evidence of His hand at Jonah Ministries.

As I write this, the team from Synergo is finishing up the repairs on our ropes course, which means it will be usable for our first group in March. We were heartbroken when the windstorm took it down, and I think we often walked in doubt instead of faith as we tried to piece together the logistics of the repairs. But we prayed with the little belief we had, and all it took was one miraculous check from our insurance company to get us back on our feet again. God’s timing is perfect. He is faithful to provide for His work.

I also have the privilege of reading the responses that have been pouring in for our first annual Jonah Family Reunion. I have been moved to tears on several different occasions by the testimonies of how God has used Jonah to shape lives. We are so flawed, so human, and so often at a loss to even know what the next step should be. But God uses us, over and over again! Lives are being changed as the doors stay open year after year, and we sit here in the front row seats getting to watch it all unfold. It’s not by any greatness of our own—in fact, when we think we’ve got it all together just right is usually when things fall apart—but by the mercy of God and the mystery of His choosing to work through imperfect people. So we praise Him for that and settle into our front row seats, gaining a little more faith with each miracle and waiting to see where He will overwhelm us next.

Focus and perspective

"He that rides to be crowned, will not think much of a rainy day."
-John Trapp

"A man's greatest care should be for that place where he lives longest; therefore eternity should be his scope."
-Thomas Watson

Where is your focus? Is your heart set on the crown, or are you delayed and distracted by the rain on the journey?

Remembering

I was telling stories today about my time in Africa-- the humorous (and horrible) health stories at first, but then the deeper stories of what God did in my heart and life during that time. As I talked, I was encouraged and challenged, reminded of the faithfulness of God during that time and seeing the events of that summer in a new light now that a few years have passed.

Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name;
make known among the nations what he has done.
Sing to him, sing praise to him;
tell of all his wonderful acts.
Glory in his holy name;
let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.
Look to the LORD and his strength;
seek his face always.
Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles,
and the judgments he pronounced.
Psalm 105:1-5

The Israelites commemorated God's great work in their lives and in their nation with songs and poems. They would mix those stories in with their words of praise, telling of the Lord bringing them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, keeping them safe and faithfully guiding them. Their children and grandchildren knew of the goodness of the Lord because they heard the stories over and over again. What are our stories? Where has the Lord's hand been evident in our lives? What will we strive to remember and tell our children and our children's children? How do we remind ourselves?

"In every stage of our lives, nay, in every step, we should notice what God has wrought for us; what he did at such a time, and what in such a place, ought to be distinctly remembered."
-Matthew Henry in his commentary on Numbers 21

Balancing anticipation and presence

A few days ago I wrote about Israel's position of waiting on the Lord and living from day to day. As I've continued to mull this over and study that period of history, I have been struck by another facet of life as an Israelite at that time.

It's true that they were to wait every day for the Lord to show them what to do. They couldn't plan ahead and make a projected schedule of events. But, at the same time, the whole purpose of all of the years described in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy was to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. So while they were waiting each day for the Lord to show them His purpose for them in that day, they were also holding the promise in mind. They took life one day at a time, but each day was only important in how it prepared them for the Promised Land. They were learning to listen, obey, live in fellowship, worship, and relate rightly to God.

Sound familiar? There are things I am waiting and hoping for in this life and beyond it. I hope to one day marry and have a family. Nothing compares to the promise of freedom from sickness, sin, and suffering and the hope of being united with Christ when my time on the earth is through. But right now, God has not given it to me either to be married and have a family or to be with Him. I can dream of those things and hold onto the hope He has given me, but I am called to be where I am, fully present in each day to learn what He has for me. In this, as in so many other things, it all comes down to finding the balance.

On the move

"Whether the cloud stayed over the tabernacle for two days or a month or a year, the Israelites would remain in camp and not set out; but when it lifted, they would set out. At the Lord's command they encamped, and at the Lord's command they set out."
Numbers 9:22-23

The Israelites didn't get to plan. They didn't get to look a month or six months or year or ten years down the line. There was no five-year plan on which they could base their days. They had promises from the Lord, they had commands from the Lord, and they had the Lord's presence, and that was to be enough. They were to honor Him daily, observe the statutes He had put in place, and watch for His presence to move. They were to be ready at all times to follow Him wherever He led, and ready at all times to stay however long He asked. The emphasis, in their daily lives, was not on God's big plan for the Israelites. The emphasis was on honoring Him and obeying His commandments every day, trusting that He had a plan and would give them the information they needed.

"If You say go, we will go;
If You say wait, we will wait.
If You say step out on the water
and they say it can't be done,
we'll fix our eyes on You and we will come."

Trusting Him today for tomorrow

"If we are careful to do our duty, we may trust God with our comfort... Many Christians anticipate evils, questioning what they shall do, and fearing to proceed in the way of duty. But we have no right to anticipate evils, so as to distress ourselves about them. To carnal minds we may appear to act absurdly, but the path of duty is ever the path of safety."
Matthew Henry, in his commentary on Leviticus 25

"Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
Jesus, in Matthew 6:33-34

"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
Micah 6:8

Little by little, I get glimpses of the future, fragments of plans among the oceans of possibility. But more common still is the sense that for the moment I am precisely where I need to be, and my lot at present is to live it out well. There are times of action and movement and change in life-- may we act boldly when required to! But so much of life is to be where we are and to live it well. Tomorrow will come, and we will receive it and make our plans and adjust accordingly, but God has given us only today. What will we do with it?

The gift of uncertainty

"My part is to receive whatever He gives. Guidance for a decision that need not be final until next Wednesday may require one small move or commitment today. I accept that and act on it without haggling with God because He has not yet granted me all the information I'm itching for. Perhaps patience is His gift of bread for today, or quietness, or the gift of uncertainty, that I may rest in His love, confident that when the time is ripe, the guidance will be clear."
-Elisabeth Elliot in God's Guidance

The gift of uncertainty? I'll be honest, I almost chuckled to myself upon reading that part of the paragraph. But the words that follow confirm that it is, or can be, a gift-- "that I may rest in His love, confident that when the time is ripe, the guidance will be clear." Uncertainty is a gift because it disallows self-sufficiency and forces us to wait on the Lord and to actively trust in Him. I say actively trust to distinguish between this kind of trust and another: the everyday, passive trust where we say we trust the Lord, and maybe we do, but we feel we've got a pretty good hold on the present circumstances and the immediate future. Trust, in that sort of environment, is on the back burner. It's there to fall back on, but it's not terribly relevant at the moment.

When given the "gift of uncertainty," though, trust becomes active. God may not give us tangible steps to take or leading in one way or another. It may be that all we are able to do is to trust Him, and trust becomes the action-- every minute of every day, committing our future into His hands and trusting. Taking worries captive and exchanging them for trust. Letting go of the fallback plan and choosing trust as our only plan. It makes me uncomfortable just to think about it. But when we choose discomfort for Christ's sake instead of the immediate comfort the world has to offer, we are given the opportunity to know God's comfort. I trust it will be worth it.

Robbing the Gospel

We see all things in light of our own experiences. There is really no stopping it, and I do not think this fact is, in and of itself, a bad thing. There is a great deal of diverse wisdom to be gleaned from the experiences and perspectives of the people around us. However, I think we have to watch out for the tendency to focus too single-mindedly through our own lens, especially in looking at the Gospel. We cannot shape the Gospel with our personality and experiences. The Gospel shapes us.

If we, out of a disproportionate sense of guilt and shame, focus only on sin and repentance, we rob the Gospel of mercy.

If we blithely fixate on joy and love and freedom, we rob the Gospel of wrath and justice and heartbreak.

If we spend all of our energy on puritanical law-keeping, we become Pharisees and rob the Gospel of its power to redeem the imperfection of our unredeemable lives.

If we throw aside law and justice altogether and fix our eyes only on grace and forgiveness, we rob the Gospel of its structure and guidance for this life.

If we look at the Gospel and see only a good man, or a forgiving man, or a revolutionary fighting for social justice, we rob the Gospel of its holy divinity.

In short, if in any way we make the Gospel about ourselves and our own agenda, we rob the Gospel of its axis and anchor, Jesus Christ. The Gospel is for us, and hallelujah for that. There is mercy and grace and joy, and we are the ones that benefit. But the Gospel is about Jesus. The Gospel is about the glory of God. It is not about us.