Displaced Hope

If your hope never comes to a realization than your hope was not only useless, it was harmful.  If you really place your hope in something or someone and it does not work out - that is a harmful sense of hope.  It's setting you up for a colossal failure or pain or frustration or hurt.

So, where is your hope?  You live with a sense of hope.  Probably.  Actually, you may not.  The CDC estimates that 1 in 10 Americans lives with clinical depression (yes, clinical).  That means if you are in a group of only 20 people, 2 of them are clinically depressed.  Doesn't that break your heart?  I wonder how many people I talk to each day who are suffering from severe depression.  Do I realize it?

There are so many reasons in our world to lose hope; unemployment, divorce, affairs, gossip, unwanted pregnancies, racism, child-molestation, mortgages going under, sex-trafficking, porn addicted dads, alcoholic mothers, and more.  We are all affected in some way by a lot of the things on that list.  So I understand when the writer of Psalm 39 states, "But now, Lord, what do I look for?"

Where is the hope?  I wonder how many people look at Christians and think they are living in a fairytale world.  Why do people who trust in Jesus have hope?  Don't they look around them?  Can't they see what the world really looks like?  Have they lived sheltered lives?

Many of the most hope-filled joyous people that I know have been through terrible circumstances.  They choose to echo the rest of what the Psalmist writes, "But now, Lord, what do I look for?  My hope is in you."

The only hope that will not disappoint is hope placed in God.  Hope placed anywhere else leads to harm.  It is displaced.  If you struggle with depression, please visit a Christian counselor.  You need it.  If you struggle with hopelessness.  If you struggle to just get through the day.  If you struggle to get out of bed.  If you struggle to leave work and go home.  You have probably placed your hope in something other than God.  

Forgiveness: Beauty from Ugliness

In his commentary on Luke, theologian N.T. Wright pens this:

"The Kingdom that Jesus preached and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd generosity.  Think of the best thing you can do for the worst person, and go ahead and do it.  Think of the people to who you are tempted to be nasty, and lavish generosity on them instead.  These instructions have a fresh, springlike quality.  They are all about new life bursting out energetically, like flowers growing through concrete and startling everyone with their color and vigor."

As we approach Christmas we see a short view of the life of Christ:

1) He had to leave Heaven and the presence of the Father in order to come to a corrupt and painful world marked with hate and greed.
2) When he was born the King wanted to kill him
3) He was born outside to an unmarried poor couple.
4) He came preaching a message of forgiveness of sins and then people wanted to kill him
5) During much of his ministry there is a group of self-proclaimed "God's people" that plot to kill him
6) The climax of his life happens when he is imprisoned, beaten close to death and hung on a cross with no real charges or real trials
7) He is betrayed by one of his own 12 disciples
8) The other 11 disciples scatter and don't support him in death
9) With his last words Jesus asks God's forgiveness for those who are there killing him

I believe that forgiveness is very important to God and a marker of a person who is in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The call of parenting in the Kingdom

I have met many, many people who live with the false sense that they are supposed to forsake their families for the Kingdom of Heaven.  Some of these people understand this outright and some don't even see it but are driven by this principle from somewhere deep in their soul from somewhere they may not even know.  Their is this sense that they should only pursue God and His Kingdom work in order to please God.  It's as if their family is more of a hindrance to the pursuit of DOING God's work (which of course, humans can never really do God's work, God is actually quite capable Himself).

People see verses where Jesus seemingly shuns his family and says that his real family is the brothers and sisters in Christ.  He tells a young man not to say goodbye to his family because the Kingdom is of more value than his stupid family anyways (maybe not a a good interpretation of those verses hmmm?)  They read that Paul said we shouldn't really get married unless we are so pathetic that we get married just because we can't control our sexual desires.

These people are dead wrong.

God also chooses to be know as "Father."  Jesus is known as the "Son."  We are a part of his "family."  The church is the "Bride" of Christ.  Christians are his "children."  Marriage is an idea that actually came from.....yep....the Bible.  Having children is seen as a very high honor throughout much of the Old Testament (think the early Fathers).

I am a part of the Kingdom of Heaven only because Jesus brought it to earth and then died for the forgiveness of my sins.  I enter the Kingdom through my faith in Him and my acceptance of His Lordship in my life.  Therefore I have been given this through grace, not through work.  After I accept this grace I have become his slave and need to continue to die to my own desires and be filled with His Holy Spirit.  Who am I to stop the Holy Spirit's work in my family?

At this point in my life I have been called to serve Christ, serve my wife, serve my children, serve my church, and serve in the world at large, in that order.  That's how I understand it.  These extremists that believe that their families are not important to the work of God are going from #1 to #5 back to #4.  They are living unbalanced and that's why they are actually working against God.  Yes, against God.

I am embarrassed to write that it has taken me years to understand this.  By the grace of God I understand it now.  I included this picture of my daughter because I have been looking at it the last few days and marveling in her pure beauty.  She has been made just the way that she is by God.  My prayer is that I am open to God's work in her life so that she becomes all that God has made her to be.  I pray that I don't hurt her development.  I pray that I don't project my problems and pains onto her but help her to understand the world from God's perspective (found in the Bible).

Parenting is a "Kingdom" act.  If I fail as a parent I am failing in the Kingdom because I do not understand the scripture and have decided to live unbalanced and selfishly.

I pray that God continues to awaken us parents in our understanding of the holiness of Godly parenting.

The life-value of the Bible

I used to be encouraged by very popular verses in the Bible.  Verses like “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” and “For to me to live is Christ and to die is Gain!”  which are both found in Philippians.  Those verses are still wonderful but they don’t encourage me like they used to.  I have to find new verses to inspire me.  The following verses have been like food for my soul the past few months.

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”  Galatians 6:9

“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.”  Isaiah 40:8

I put those verses by my desk because they give me strength.  I don’t mean that they make me feel nicer.  I mean that those verses encourage me to do my best, to work hard, and to try to continually become the person that God has made me to be.

A few years ago I was going through a particularly rough patch in my life and I happened to be reading the Psalms.  I was reading Psalm 15 and my life changed.  God used those words to encourage and comfort me.

The Bible is very important to me.  Words really will not do justice to just how important the BIble has become to me.  On some days it is like food for my soul.  It seems like I turn to the Bible when I am discouraged or sad or angry.  I need to read it to calm me down or help me see just how much bigger God is than whatever I am facing.

I am convinced that reading the Bible is one of the most important things that a human being can do.  My actions, my decisions, and my thoughts are shaped by those words.  I am the person that I am because of the words contained in the Bible.  Going an entire day without reading the Bible is much like going an entire day without food.  If you have gone for an extended period of time without eating you know what happens.  Your body becomes weaker, you get a headache, and you get grouchy.  The longer it goes on the worse everything gets.  If you go without eating for too long you will die.  I believe that if you go too long without reading the Bible you will drift into spiritual death.

God has given us the Bible as a very special gift.  It is a way to understand Him and understand ourselves.  It teaches us how to live and how to recognize good from evil.  It gives us comfort, peace, and courage.  It is far more than a book.  The Bible is alive.  The words that you read are the words meant for your life at that given moment.