Category: Devotions

My Spiritual Birthday

November 30 is my spiritual birthday. That’s when I was first touched by amazing grace! Back then, I experienced a day and night difference. My world was turned upside down with feelings of happiness. I was a new creation.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

As John Newton said, “How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed”

This meant (I thought at the time) that I would enjoy my best life now with no major obstacles. I’d complete my doctoral dissertation with no sweat, and I’d quickly be married to an excellent Christian wife.

Wasn’t that what it meant to be a child of God? Nope, it didn’t quite work out the way I thought it would.

Why?

Because without realizing it, I was focused more on what I could get from God than on who he was. Indeed, what my attitude really amounted to was “Lord, if you won’t quickly meet my needs, don’t expect me to go out of my way to change my way of doing things or bother too much with learning what it means to please you.” 

With that attitude, God allowed me to enter a very dry time. (While at the same time continually protecting and preserving me much more than I realized!)  

God used many ways to change my attitude, but today I want to focus on just one. He brought me into fellowship with some strong Christian helpers. Amazingly, I first met them on April Fool’s Day! (I love how it says in 1 Corinthians 4:10 We are fools for Christ) 


Even with a renewed attitude, it still is taking much time for God’s beautiful truths to better percolate through more of my life. I knew the Bible was doctrinally true but was pretty poor at connecting it to the life changes God was calling for in a stubborn, independent man. 

So, it’s been helpful to have Christian friends who connect the truths of God and scripture to daily real life and who lovingly let me know when I am full of baloney. 

I never did complete my doctoral dissertation. And it took nine years until I married the love of my life. And another 10 years after that before I finally found my true vocational calling from God (Not a professor but a computer geek!)  

My story shows how we have a patient and longsuffering God who cares enough to spend decades molding and shaping us to be more like what he wants. And the more I grow, the more I see I still need to grow. Wherever you are on your journey, be encouraged that God ain’t done with you yet!

Ezra’s Temporary Winning Streak

Ezra was one of the Jews who was deported from Israel and dragged into exile in Babylon. Later, in an amazing turnaround, the Babylonian king gave Ezra and his fellow exiled Jews permission to return to Israel.

Led by Ezra, the returnees looked forward to erecting a new temple on the site in Jerusalem where their old one had been destroyed. Stunningly, the king even gave construction supplies to the Jews: The king had granted him everything he asked, for the hand of the Lord his God was on him. (Ezra7:6b)

Even though the king may have had his own political motives for giving aid, it was nevertheless an amazing blessing from God. (God sometimes does use unbelieving politicians to achieve his purposes!)

Ezra’s winning streak continued:

 Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in the fifth month of the seventh year of the king. He had begun his journey from Babylon on the first day of the first month, and he arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month, for the gracious hand of his God was on him. For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the Lord, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel. (Ezra 7:8-10)

During this time, God’s hand continually rested on Ezra and his endeavors. Yet even such a wonderful blessing as Ezra got is only temporary. There came a time when all his work for God was completed. Even the best of God’s workers eventually dies.

 Indeed, I thought of two men I knew who died in 2021.

 First, Alex. He was a good teacher of the Bible and was a man who lived out what he taught. And you could say “the hand of the Lord his God was on him.” Yet his body was being ravaged. He was taken by cancer around the age of seventy.

Second, Sal. Sal was a strong Christian man, a husband, father, and elder. He too knew that “the hand of the Lord his God was on him.” Yet, at the age of forty-four he died suddenly from a coronary.

We all have an expiration date! The book of Ecclesiastes has a timeless truth:

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die, (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)

I am sad for Sal and Alex and their families, while yet being glad that the two men have joined Christ in eternity. They inspire me to reflect on which things are worthwhile to give my own time and energy to while I am still alive and well on this earth.

Nukemare

I just listened to the finale podcast of Dan Carlin Hardcore History Supernova in the East.[i] It concludes by describing the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Exceptionally grim details.

For those of us who were kids during the cold war…. we would wake up from having a nukemare. In one of mine a fireball was over the Alpine Tower (which was visible from my New Jersey bedroom window in Tenafly), and thousands of birds were flying away from the flames.

I now view it as likely that a nuclear weapon will be used somewhere during my remaining lifetime. I am surprised that it has been almost 77 years since atomic weapons were used against Japan, but I can think of reasons for the delay.

First, in the US vs USSR cold war, we had the MAD (mutual assured destruction) doctrine. That was a strong constraint against atomic warfare. Second, other nuclear-armed countries like Israel and the UK have behaved responsibly. Even nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have (so far) not brought nukes into their disputes over Kashmir.

But what about the largest invasion force in Europe since WW 2 poised on the Ukrainian border? I am surprised that, considering all the nukes that are in that area, I have not heard much talk about nuclear risk.

I don’t know if Putin would nuke Ukraine. But now consider proliferation. Countries that want to join the nuke club. Would North Korea nuke South Korea? What would hold Kim back? Self-preservation? What if he thought could get away with it? And what about Iran with its hatred of Israel?

I know that God is in control of history. God has (so far!) restrained nukes. But will this restraint last indefinitely? Could there be a World War III nuclear conflagration that would be the end of life as we know it on our planet?

I don’t have a crystal ball for that. So, I’ll conclude with the advice from Ecclesiastes:

Now all has been heard;
    here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
    for this is the duty of all mankind.

Good to keep right with God in advance of any nukemare!

[i] https://www.dancarlin.com/

This I Believe (The Creed)

We sang “This I Believe” in our men’s group. The song is based on the Apostle’s Creed and the linked version is from Hillsong.1

Both the Apostles’ creed and “This I Believe” say I believe many times.

Is that just a list of facts to believe? You may have heard the statements in the Apostle’s Creed as cold intellectual truths. I know I used to. But there’s quite a difference between assenting to cold facts and saying “Yes!” to a truth that our life depends on.

If someone says, “Atlantic City is the capital of New Jersey,” not much is at stake in whether that is true or not. 2 But what if I were driving a fully loaded 18-wheeler towards an old one lane bridge across a deep gorge. Can it support me and my load? To go across that bridge is to trust it with my life.

That second kind of belief, trusting with our lives, is the kind of belief sung about in “This I Believe.” Full-bodied genuine Christian belief is much deeper than simply saying “Yes” to some facts, and “This I Believe” takes what might only remain as head knowledge and transforms it into wonderful warm praise.

How do we get that kind of heartfelt belief? In certain circles you are ordered to believe each point in the Apostle’s Creed … or else. You must persuade yourself to believe and confess each of the points or you are in trouble.

But that attempt at self-persuasion is futile because we can only truly grasp these truths by faith. And that faith is itself a gift from God. In Ephesians 2:8-9 it says For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

We have been rescued from sin and death by faith in what Jesus accomplished in being crucified on the cross for our sin and then brought back to life. And as we follow Christ today, we continue by faith. By faith, we trust our lives to the God who gave us the creed’s truths:

I believe in God our Father. I believe in Christ the Son. I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the resurrection, that we will rise again. I believe Jesus rose again. I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.

The preceding truths all focus on our personal relationship with God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But now consider these truths:

I believe in the saint’s communion and in your holy church.

Here, we have union with Christ —– we join the faith and life of everyone who has ever loved Jesus —- in the unity of the Holy Spirit. God is invisible and we demonstrate our belief in this unseen God by loving real life people. Real life people whose flaws start to disgust us — until we look in the mirror! 

That’s when the great theological truths of the apostles’ creed stop being only abstract and cerebral. God is the God who changes us. The creed comes alive as we live out the Lord’s command to Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32.)

 

  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDeA-SAlklU
  2. Atlantic City is not the capital, Trenton is