Little Faith ?

Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”                                                                               He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. (Matthew 8:23-26)

hus

A certain family wanted a good guard dog and they came upon a picture of a Siberian Husky. “What a fierce looking dog!” they said. “And full grown he can give us up to 60 pounds of ferocity. We have faith that our new pup will grow up to be a good guard dog for us; we’ll name him Myka.”

But as their pup grew, they were shocked to see how, instead of being suspicious and aggressive towards strangers, Myka was good natured and welcomed strangers. He wanted to play with them. Some guard dog!

We can’t say that the family did not have “enough” faith in Myka.  Rather, this family’s faith was based on a flawed understanding of what a Siberian Husky is really like.

Similarly, we can’t say that the disciples did not have “enough” faith in Jesus, but, just as the Husky owners had a flawed understanding of who Myka was, the disciples had a flawed understanding of who Jesus really was.

The disciples may have believed Jesus was a great guy and a good teacher who would say challenging, provocative and enigmatic things. But they did not understand that he was actually the Lord of creation who had authority over creation. Instead of being terrified by the storm, they needed to see that Jesus was Lord over the storm. They had the opposite problem of Myka’s owners : Myka’s owners did not understand how little Myka could protect them from danger; and Jesus’ disciples did not understand how much Jesus could protect them from danger.

Thankfully, Jesus was, and is, patient and compassionate when people have flawed faith. Think how compassionate Jesus was with the father who found it hard to believe that Jesus could heal his son. The passage begins with the father’s request:

“ But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”                                                                                                        “‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”                                        Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:22b-24).

Jesus will help you overcome your unbelief too, if you ask.Do you believe that Jesus is the Lord who saves us from sin and death? If you don’t, ask him for the faith to believe.

Do you have an area of life where it’s difficult to believe Jesus? In this difficult zone, ask him to help your unbelief.  Sometimes he will resolve the difficult situation exactly the way you want, but that is not guaranteed. It is guaranteed, however, that Jesus will alleviate the worry and doubt you may have in the situation. Do ask him!

“I’m F.I.N.E.”

 “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” (Psalm 32:3)

3194318-i-m-fine-really-means

How easy it is to glibly say “I’m fine” when someone asks, “How are you doing?”

In today’s blog, you and I are prohibited from saying “I’m fine” unless it means we are Frustrated, Insecure, Neurotic and Exhausted. 1

Years ago, I learned a lesson from a good brother in Christ when I did not glibly say “I’m fine” when he asked me “Why are you in despair?”  That opened a chance to deal with the issues and frustrations I faced back then as a single man. There were no quick answers, but it was one step forward in a growing process that takes a lot of time—years later, it’s not done yet  and won’t be completed this side of glory! But if I had only smiled on the outside and said, “I’m fine” the chance to grow would have been choked off in a stranglehold.

Even now, it is still a temptation to slip back into quickly saying “I’m fine” again. Writing this post is a reminder for me and an encourager for you. As the Psalmist said, there’s no need to keep silent and groan. We do need someone we can trust enough to be open with when we are Frustrated, Insecure, Neurotic and Exhausted!  Someone who does not say “Oh, come now! You’re a Christian! You shouldn’t be feeling and reacting that way!” Then we can have a culture of vulnerability, and ask people, and have them ask us, “How are you really doing?”

What a refreshing change—from projecting an image of what you think a godly Christian should  be like—to showing your real self and being able to grow into what a godly Christian is really  like.

Headwind or Tailwind ?

 If you fear the Lord and serve and obey him and do not rebel against his commands, and if both you and the king who reigns over you follow the Lord your God—good! But if you do not obey the Lord, and if you rebel against his commands, his hand will be against you, as it was against your ancestors. (1 Samuel 12:14-15)

I ran on a local track before church on a cold February morning. On the northbound straightaway was a strong headwind from the northwest. The wind was so cold that it was physically painful and it held me back.

But on the southbound straightaway, by the home team’s stands, a strong tailwind pushed me—I started to gloat about how fast I was running, because I did not really feel how much the wind was helping me.

My cold run on the track gave me a picture of what it means to walk with God or resist God.

The headwind and tailwind reflect two different heart attitudes. To live in obedience to God is to live being pushed along by a grace-filled tailwind. But my experience on the track suggests a warning:  it’s easy to forget that God is pushing me, and to take the credit for myself for doing well.

To rebel against God is to run into a very strong headwind.  I wish that when we do this in real life, it would be as quick to be felt as I felt it on the track. But, since we can unfortunately be rather pig-headed, sometimes we start to get a hardened heart, and we begin running into the headwind, often without even realizing that we are doing it. I am thankful, though, that God shows us mercy.  He loves us enough to give us a shout of warning that we are running into the headwind. And…… That means we can stop and turn around and start to run with the tailwind— we call this repenting!

Running on the track, I was forced to run into the headwind half of the time. But, in our walk with the Lord, we can pray “Lord, I always want to run with the tailwind, and do warn me quickly if I start running into the headwind.”

 How are you doing? Are you running with God’s tailwind today? Or do you need to repent and do a quick turn around?

Does God run our world like a clock?

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  (Colossians 1:15-17)

As we move towards Spring, I have noticed the daily increase in daylight, enjoying both the brighter mornings and brighter evenings that occur in late winter each year.

public sunrise

In the 1700s, there was an explosion of interest in and discoveries in natural science. Scientists discovered that there are orderly “laws of nature”. It looked like the universe displays an intricate machine-like order—indeed, the exact times that the sun will rise and set as the seasons change, or when the next eclipse will be, can be charted out years in advance.

Coming out of this interest in natural science, some thinkers created a new view of God. Picture an old-fashioned Grandfather’s clock that has been carefully designed and crafted. You wind it up and set it running….it will run for many days with no further intervention required. This new view of God said that he is like a clockmaker who set the universe in motion, but who now has a hands-off attitude towards personal intervention in the creation. This new view changed God from being a powerful, intimate, supernatural-acting moment-by-moment sustainer, to being an impersonal Creator who never intervenes in supernatural ways.

But let’s push back against the clockmaker God. What if the laws of nature only keep working because of the second-by-second personal decree of God? Note the end of today’s passage: and in him all things hold together.   This implies that the laws of nature only continue the way they do because of Jesus’ good pleasure and grace.

Another amazing implication of today’s passage: God reserves the right to overrule the normal order of operation of anything at his good pleasure. There is no guarantee that the laws of nature will continue to run indefinitely as they do now. Indeed the Bible seems to say that they will not—-especially when you read passages about stunning celestial changes during the end times:

All the stars in the sky will be dissolved
     and the heavens rolled up like a scroll;
 all the starry host will fall
     like withered leaves from the vine,
     like shriveled figs from the fig tree. (Isaiah 34:4)

I don’t exactly know what’s going on in this passage, but somehow I don’t think your local TV weathercaster’s description of when sunrise will be will be on that day will be particularly valid!

How does this affect our daily lives? Well, it sure is easy for us to drift into a clockmaker mode of living, where thoughts of God go to the back of our minds. When that happens, we still know that he exists, but we lose the sense of his intense personal caring about what is going on in our lives, we lose sight of it being God and not scientific farming and our great economy, that provides our daily bread. We may even think our economy, our country, will go on pretty much the same and not change………..or even that we don’t need to change !

For now I am glad that when I am flying in an airplane, God is keeping the natural laws like the laws of aerodynamics working, so that the plane does not fall from the sky. But these laws come far from explaining everything, and I am glad that there are times when God overrules the normal ways that things work—look how often answered prayer defies the natural explanations for things.

The more we experience how much our loving God is no clockmaker, how he sustains us by His loving grace moment by moment, the more we can grow to better express who he is, and through the grace of Jesus, love those he brings into our lives.