Road Trip!

     Road trip! Every six months or so, I do a road trip. Over the hills and through the woods to grandmother’s house I go.  This usually entails hours and hours and miles after miles of interstate highways, State toll roads and the occasional road designated only by a number.

     The trip also entails listening to a little nag pestering me to go this way and that. Turn left, turn right, take the next exit, nag, nag, nag. Lucy is my traveling companion, she does not eat much, but she just refuses to shut up. Lucy has an English accent that does not make her droning any less annoying.    

     Lucy sits on the dashboard of the car in her 3 inch by 4 inch box. Lucy is the name that we gave to the car’s GPS. Lucy was the first English name that came to mind when we heard her voice. Lucy was named after the character Lucy Pevensie from the C. S. Lewis classic Narnia. Small, English and annoying, she had to be Lucy. Kind of like the little sister that I never wanted

     Although I have now taken this trip four times and could find my way through three states to get to my Grandmother’s house, I still rely on Lucy to get through some parts of the trip. She ticks off the miles and gives a turn by turn commentary of the trip. Even though we bring out Lucy on every one of our trips, we have, missed a turn or two which just causes her to say,” recalculating, recalculating.”  Lucy searches for a way to get us back on track and going in the right direction.

     Life is full of wrong turns. We turn left instead of turning right. What looks like the right path for our lives can turn out to be a dead end or worse we can find ourselves miles from the place that we wanted to be. We can get further and further from the right path. On our own we can get ourselves desperately lost.

     The good news is that we don’t have to go it alone. We have our own GPS that we can follow. For those who are willing to listen we have God’s Positioning System. God says in the book of John, “My Sheep know my voice and they follow me.” Through the pages of our bible, through our church services, and even through our prayers we can navigate through life by listening for God’s voice.

     Through the midst of the chaos and tumult of our busy lives we hear his turn by turn directions. But we don’t hear him in the whirlwind, we don’t hear him in the earthquake, but we can hear him in his still small voice. By listening for his voice, we can avoid the dead ends, one ways, and the wrong turns of life. We don’t have to worry about getting lost, but even if we do get off course, God’s word recalculates to get us back on the right path.       

Long row to hoe.

     I’m a city boy. I don’t like to be far from the creature comforts. The only things that grow around me are asphalt, glass, and steel. The only green of the city are the weeds pushing up between the cracks in the sidewalks. Eggs come in Styrofoam containers by the dozens and milk in sanitized cartons behind frosted glass doors.

     An hour drive in any direction and it is a different story. Buildings turn from skyscrapers to single level storefronts; multiplex malls turn into mercantile and feed stores. The speed of the city turns to a slower pace, and the inherent tension slowly disappears like a sigh.

     Drive out into the country and you’ll see a patchwork of farms. Each farm  neatly lined with cultivated rows ready for the spring planting. In some will grow corn, some will contain wheat, others a myriad of possible vegetables.

     This is a life style that is foreign to me. It is a life that, though it has its appeal, can never replace the home of the city boy.  After all, how can you return to the farm once you have seen Paris?

     Just because I’m a city boy does not mean that I’m beyond taking a lesson from the country side. Jesus often used the agrarian life as a setting for his parables when he taught his disciples. He taught about planting seeds, he called his followers to go into the fields that were already ready for the harvest, he talked of vineyards and warned of Gods threshing floor where the chaff would be removed from the wholesome wheat.

     One of the images that strike me is the image of the man who plows the fields. Jesus tells one of his potential followers in the book of Luke, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”  It is a lesson that all Christian should remember. 

     The man who plows the field does not look behind him while he is plowing. If he looked back the rows would meander all over the place. None of the rows would be straight. He only looks forward to the end of the row.

     In our walk we have to go forward as well. The past can only serve as a distraction from our walk with Christ. No matter if the things of our past are beneficial or not.   Those past things will get us off the path and take us into a different direction from the one that He, Christ wants us to follow.  

     The things of the past only serve as a distraction.  Everything that we did in the past, even those things that we got right, those things have to be set aside. It does not matter that you once taught Sunday school or that you had a wonderful prayer life it is what is happening now. Used-to-be’s  don’t  make honey. What you are doing now in your relationship with God is all that matters. We have to keep in mind that we have an end goal and Christ is at the end. Our goal is to become more like Jesus, to achieve Christ likeness. We can only do this by looking forward and by keeping our eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.     

 

Trust Me

     Have you ever had to go to one of those team building meetings that seem so popular these days with companies and organizations?  The whole bases for these meetings are to get your staff or organization to work together as a cohesive unit.

     Each of those meetings use various games, all geared to solve some problem; creating a stories out of random words drawn from a hat, building a structure out of straws, or drawing a picture from the instructions proffered by their team members.  One of the oldest of these games is a trust building exercise where one person falls backwards into the waiting arms of another person.  At least they hope that they will be caught.

     Building trust is essential in any relationship. In our spiritual life it is mandatory. Hard habits are hard to break. Especially here in Texas we are an independent breed. We hold the notion that we will be beholding to no man. We think that, “If it is to be, it is up to me.” We would not even trust one of our own family members to catch us in one of those exercises.  My family would yell, “Ole,” laughing as I crashed into the floor.

     We spend most of our lives making ourselves into our own personal god. It is extremely hard for us to “Let go and let God.” Most of us would say that I trust God to take care of XYZ, but I’ll take care of the rest. It does not even have to be on a conscience level. We can let God have every aspect of our lives and yet still find ourselves picking up things or worrying about things that are not ours to worry about.

      Jesus said follow me because my yoke is light. It is light because He is taking care of everything. Doing all the heavy lifting. The weary can have rest because He is carrying their burdens. It is all in His power not in ours. If it was up to us we would mess it up every time. Nothing says that we mistrust God like a joyless life filled with drudgery.

     Not too long ago I was blessed to perform the wedding of a dear friend. This was not my first Rodeo, not my first wedding. It was important that it go off without of a hitch. I have been preaching off and on since 2002 and I have always been a little nervous before a sermon.

     While preparing the sermon I trusted God to give me the right words. I trusted Him to give me the right passages to read from. I even trusted Him to run all aspects of the service.  Yet I was more nervous than I’ve ever been.  I almost forgot the sermon that I had spent hours memorizing. The rings got tangled in the strings of the pillow. I had to have one of the groomsmen untie it so that I could do the ring ceremony. 

     I was upset that the wedding had not come off the way that I had thought that it would. I was so disappointed. I had the perfect passages.  I had thought of everything that could go wrong and had minimized it. I had memorized the sermon and I had it down cold. All that I had to do was to preach the service.  Give me a half an hour and I could still do the service by memory today.

   And yet… and yet…  After the service I prayed. I asked God why things had gone wrong, why I was so nervous. The answer that God gave me stunned me. He said,” You did not Trust me.” “You trusted me in everything, but when it came to the sermon you did not trust me.” “When it came to the most important part, you did not trust me.”

     In the clutch I did not trust God to catch me. I figured that he would let me fall so I took things into my own hands. I tried to do it in my own power. I took out the “me” god, and put it at the center of my life. I should have seen the outcome before it even happened.  Trust is essential in any relationship. Our relationship with God is no different. It may take a while but we can cultivate a relationship built on trust. It does not even take toilet paper suits or crayon drawings suitable for framing on you fridge.

Good to the last drop!

 You can get coffee anywhere in the city. It’s pretty hard to go anywhere without passing a Starbucks. You can get coffee at 7-11, a Mc Café at Mickie-d’s, Kona that once could only be had at specialty roasters, can now be had at any hole in the wall. Whether you go for your morning Joe or a tiny thimble full of cappuccino, there is nothing like a good cup of coffee. Nothing ruins a good cup faster than reaching across the diner counter, or pulling a carton out of the fridge before you realize the cream you just poured into your cup has gone bad.

     Anything that is left long enough will start to sour and over time will become unusable. If we were not to use our legs, the muscles will start to shrink and over time will cease to function. If we do not exercise our faith, it will shrink. We can get to the point where we don’t see God working in our lives, after a while we can get to the point where we don’t see the blessings anymore. We act as if there is some kind of point system with God. When we get to that magic number, we get to quit, this far and no more.  We get to a certain age where we think that we have done everything that we were supposed to do. Our faith was never supposed to have an expiration date. 

     If you are living and breathing God has a plan for you. It is us who puts restrictions on how God gets to use us or work through us. Jeremiah was called to be a prophet of the people of God. All he had to do was to repeat everything that God told him to speak, but Jeremiah told God that God was wrong and that he was too young to be of any use to God. If Samuel had looked through the eyes of man, instead of God’s eyes, David would have been left in the fields tending the flocks. He did not look like the kind of King that the people expected. He did not even look like a King that they would have chosen for themselves.

      Moses thought that his time for serving God was long gone, dead and buried along with the Egyptian that he had slain. It was forty years later before God was ready to use him to bring Israel out of Egypt. Moses would later take the people to the very brink of the promised-land. The night before they were to take the land they sent spies into the land to check it out. God had said that the land was theirs, all they had to do was to go in and take it, and instead the people believed not God but the spies who told them it could not be done.

     For forty years the people wandered the wilderness, they trailed behind them the bleached bones of those who would rather listen to men than to God.  God raised a generation that would have the faith to follow Him. Forty years later when Joshua got them to the edge of the river Jordan, he would not listen to any voice other than the one that said the land is yours. They crossed that mighty river on dry land. Joshua told the people that God had given them everything that the eye could see from mountain to sea. There were still those who said,” There might be Giants.” Caleb at the age of 78 came forward and said,” There might be Giants, but God said go.” “There might be Giants, but give me the Mountain.” “There might be Giants for He makes Young out of the Old.”

     If you still draw a breath, God is not through with you. If you still draw breath, God still has a plan for you. We were never intended to sit, soak, and sour. Most of us think , I have done enough, I can sit and be fed; but what we find is that we have nothing to show for it but day old Manna. God has given us enough for today and if he has given you more than you need, it is up to you to pass on the rest. Look around you, there are plenty of ways that you can serve. Jesus tells us that even if we give someone a cup of cool water in His name we show our love for Him.      

      There are plenty of people who need to hear from God. There are widows and orphans who we are responsible for. There are prisoners who need to be visited and not all of them are in jail, some are in the prison of failing bodies.  We are responsible to the least of these. We have a job to do, but we hold to our excuses, I’m too young, God couldn’t possibly use me, I’ve failed God, and it’s too late for me. We tell ourselves, “There might be Giants,”    God still says “Go.”

         

NO!

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11

      I have to say that God has given me a love for children. I must confess that it has not always been the case. Every teacher will tell you that come Friday; the last thing that they want is to deal with screaming kids, so to hear in the middle of one of those chain stores the plaintiff wail of a child screaming to his mother, “No, I don’t wanna!!! I DON’T WANNA!!!” set my teeth on edge like taking a huge bite of a juicy cringe inducing lemon.

     Sometimes I wonder what we sound like to God. Do we sound like the perfect little child of God saying,” Oh Father, you are so wonderful and we thank you for everything you do.” or do we sound like that child demanding, “NO!!! I don’t wanna!!!”

     We have spent our lives defying God. Some deny him, refusing to acknowledge that God exists and that he has a standard for our lives, for others they just fail to hold to Gods standard. Either way we distance ourselves from God. Our sins and failings build a wall between us and our Loving Lord.  We can be taken captive by our sins, captive by addiction, unhealthy relationships, even pornography can ensnare us.  We alienate ourselves from God and we become defiant in our disobedience. All of our Actions say, “No.”  

     Everything that we do tells God that we don’t trust Him to take care of us, to truly be there when we need Him. In Jeremiah God tells his people that no matter what they have gone through, no matter what they have done it is not too late to return to a relationship with Him.

      In verse 11 He reassures us that he does have a plan for our lives and that we can trust Him to bring us through. All of Gods plans are for our benefit, He offers us a huge life, beyond anything that we can think or imagine. Everything that God has planned for us is to give us a life and a hope.  A life that is better than the one that we have fashioned for ourselves and a hope grounded not in our finite abilities but in Him.       

      It is wonderful that we hold on to favorite passages of the Bible. God’s word has the ability to comfort us and to guide us but if we are going to hold on to them we have to realize what the verses mean.  Jeremiah 29:11 is one of those verses that we love. God promise the people of Israel that he has a plan for them and that the plan is wonderful but to really understand the passage we have to understand the context of the passage.

      The whole book of Jeremiah is Gods message to His people to return to Him. God’s people were disobedient, they were chasing after other gods, they were ignoring their commitments to other believers, and they were giving lip service to their relationship with God. They were saying No to God.

     In the middle of the Book we have this wonderful promise from God telling his people that He has this wonderful plan for their lives. There is a catch; if we stop at verse 11 we miss the conditions for the promise.  God says that He has a wonderful life planed out for us but we have come to Him if we want it. We have to return to Him, we have to seek Him with all of our hearts, and then and only then will He bring us back to where we had left Him, then He will restore us to where we were, He will hear us calling out to Him, He will hear our prays. If we want to experience the plan that he promises his people Israel it can only be had in relationship with Him, seeking after Him with everything that we are, on His terms not ours.