Mission Faithwalk

                   For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;   and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting they have been cleansed from their past sins. (II Peter 1:5-9) Yesterday, the points were that living a godly life isn’t necessarily as complicated, difficult, or dramatic as we may make it out to be, and that God is, has, and makes available all we need to live a godly life. In today’s passage. So why does Peter start listing off qualities we’re supposed to “make every effort” to add to our lives? Isn’t that the opposite of what he said yesterday? If someone gives you a tool

    His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.   Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desire s. (II Peter 1:3-4)   I’ve told the story before of arguing with God (in the logical, not the emotional sense) about not being a jogger, or a poet, or “good enough” or “ready” because I didn’t have something, didn’t do something, didn’t something something necessary to be whatever I was denying. Then this verse says that God has already given me everything I need for a godly life. Oh, maybe He gave everyone else what they needed. Clearly, He missed me in the shuffle. Someone else must have a double dose. I’m exaggerating - a tiny bit. I suspect I’m not the only one who thinks, “I have everything I need? Is He crazy?” Just to start with, I don’t

              Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”     “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5) The Bible makes it clear that Eve was deceived. In Under Cover , John Bever points out that the first thing the serpent does is to change the focus from all that she could freely do to the one thing she was told not to do. He went on to suggest that God was withholding godhood or equality with God from her, when the truth is that equality with God simply isn’t possible. One must be les

                 Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them . (Hebrews 7:25)   In some ways, the ancient pagans had it easy. They had statues to show them their gods. That’s probably one of the reasons the Roman Catholic Church got so into crucifixes and stained-glass windows. Another reason was to depict the stories told in Scripture to people who couldn’t read or didn’t have books. The Jews were commanded not to make images to represent God. Eventually, He sent His own representation and Representative, who lived sinlessly, taught, performed miracles, died, and rose again. Only 20 years later, however, Paul was chiding the Corinthian church for getting hung up and divided over Peter, Paul, and Apollos.    We’re still doing the same thing today. Whether it’s preachers, teachers, celebrities, athletes or their teams, scientists or other experts, or politicians, we choose our champions and are ready to g

  “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? (Matthew 6:25)   Yesterday, I listened to a three-part discussion between John Ortberg and another clinical psychologist on this passage, and remembered a time years ago when I realized that I was literally worrying about nothing. I recognized that what I was doing was worrying. I asked myself what I was worrying about - and could not come up with an answer. I was (and am?) so in the habit of worrying that even without a locus, I was just doing what came naturally. As I’ve shared before, I also tend to worry about “missing my exit” whether on a road trip (thank God for GPSes!) or in life. God has made it clear to me that He won’t let me miss my exit. But I’m in a time of life that feels like I’m trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be when I grow up - and the problem is that I think I have to b

                 He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” (Luke 11:18)   It’s not unusual for me to read several books at a time. My side reading is a book by John Bevere, Under Cover . The topic in the chapter I’m reading is the definition of sin, which comes down to any deviation from God’s will. If God said to take the dog for a walk at 6:45, if I left at 6:44 or 6:46, it would be sin. It seems like a petty example. Is God really the sort of God to condemn a person to Hell for not leaving on schedule?  The answer is “no” and “yes.” Leaving off schedule isn’t so much the issue as choosing to leave at a time other than what God said and standing in judgment of God based on whether or not He would condemn someone to Hell for doing so. More importantly, if you had an employee who regularly decided to show up late or whenever the whim took him, would firing that employee be an arbitrary fit of temper on your part, or would the responsibility be t

                 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’   “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’” (Matthew 13:24-30) The book I’m reading set me off on the “spring” theme and I’m a gardener, so I’m going to camp out on the subject until I find something in the book I’m intere

                 You have heard these things; look at them all. Will you not admit them? “From now on I will tell you of new things, of hidden things unknown to you. (Isaiah 48:6)                Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. (John 12:24)   Spring is almost here. I know that for some, it’s been here since March 20, or it’s been here for a couple of weeks. But the end of April is when work picks up at the garden center where I work, it’s when the panic sets in about my own gardens. And it’s beginning of a “new year” in my life, when, in the next week, I officially become one year older than I was last week. We have also (finally!) finished slogging through the winter part of the book I’m reading.           I hope that spring is also almost here spiritually. I’ve been slogging through the winter of dreams in the book I’m reading, and with my dreams. Like a kernel

                 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry . (Colossians 3:5)               No pun intended, but it may seem as though I’m beating a dead horse. Today’s chapter in Journey of Desire seems to cover the same material. We need to have dreams. We’re supposed to have desires. But God keeps interfering. John Eldridge talks about five years in which he tried to go fly fishing. The first year, there was a blizzard. The second year, thunderstorms ruined the fishing. Someone opened the dam the third year, and again ruined the fishing. Drought hit the fourth year and the fifth, the fish just didn’t bite. Later, as he drove by a piece of property, he thought, “I could really be happy here without God.” (p. 100.) That’s when he realized the problem. As he put it, “God must take away the heaven we create, or it will become our hell.”             That sentence sums up what he’s

                 The blacksmith takes a tool and works with it in the coals; he shapes an idol with hammers, he forges it with the might of his arm. He gets hungry and loses his strength; he drinks no water and grows faint.           The carpenter measures with a line and makes an outline with a marker; he roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes it in human form, human form in all its glory that it may dwell in a shrine. He cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.  It is used as fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it. Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.” From the rest he makes a god, his idol

                 The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you…” And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” (I Kings 19:7 & 9-10)   Today’s topic isn’t one I would wish on anyone. After Elijah had been God’s instrument of miracles and judgment, Jezebel threatened his life, and he ran away. Life was too overwhelming. I’m not a psychologist but having finished big projects and having spent enough of my life dealing with depression, I suspect he may have been depressed. He’d worked hard, and there were still unvanquished threats. He hadn’t won. It wasn’t rational, but that didn’t mean he could just shut the feelings off. There

                 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;    to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:22-24)   Yesterday was a bad day. I don’t know what it was, but I was in a major mental fog. I knew before I cut myself that I was going to cut myself (no stitches required) but I did it anyway. I knew what the crew was doing, but I could best be described as listless unless I was told to do something. People had to point out customers who weren’t in the “right” place, and when I left at the end of my four-hour shift, it was with someone else trying to solve a problem I either made or was involved in its making. When I got home, I was almost hoping they’d fire me. It’s not that I don’t like my job - it’s one of the best jobs I’ve had in my life, but I had convinced myself that I’d just d

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food though there are no sheep in the open and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.   The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to tread on the heights. (Habakkuk 3:17-19a)   Desire --- it’s the only way you will ever make it. Take marriage, for instance. Or singleness. Either makes for a far more difficult and arduous ascent than Everest, in large part because it does not seem so. The struggles are not heightened and focused into one month of do or die, rather, they stretch across a lifetime. (John Eldredge, The Journey of Desire , Nashville, TN, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000. P 18.)   I love the Eldredge quote above because we so often admire those who are martyred, or who climb Mr. Everest. They have done something we are sure we could not. I’m

                 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness… Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground…   God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.” (Genesis 1:1-4, 26 & 31)   I opened a different book today, The Journey of Desire by John Eldredge. He begins with the sense we have that things are not as they should be and that we are not as we should be. In today’s passage, we glimpse how things should be from a distance, through a loo

                 Remember, Lord, in David’s behalf, all his affliction; How he swore to the Lord and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob, “I certainly will not enter my house, nor lie on my bed; I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.” Behold, we heard about it in Ephrathah, we found it in the field of Jaar. Let’s go into His dwelling place; let’s worship at His footstool. Arise, Lord, to Your resting place, You and the ark of Your strength. May Your priests be clothed with righteousness, and may Your godly ones sing for joy. For the sake of Your servant David, do not turn away the face of Your anointed. The Lord has sworn to David a truth from which He will not turn back: “I will set upon your throne one from the fruit of your body. If your sons will keep My covenant and My testimony which I will teach them, their sons also will sit upon your throne forever.” For the Lord has chosen

                 Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes arrogant; nor do I involve myself in great matters, or in things too difficult for me. I have certainly soothed and quieted my soul; like a weaned child resting against his mother, my soul within me is like a weaned child. I srael, wait for the Lord from this time on and forever. (Psalm 131)   My thoughts go in two directions about the first sentence. The first is “Ha! Liar!” Sometimes, there’s even a “Dude. Hold my coffee,” thought or two. The second is “This is all I want to do. Make the big and difficult matters disappear, and let me garden, craft, and write. Why can’t I just be a hermit?” That’s a topic I might do well to explore further, but I suspect it conflicts with the idea of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The second sentence also gets split responses. The first is, “Soothed and quieted? Ha!” and the second is, “That’s what I want.” Mr. Peterson wrote that the song includes not being too big for our britches

  Out of the depths I have cried to You, Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the sound of my pleadings.   If You, Lord, were to keep account of guilty deeds, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, so that You may be revered. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and I wait for His word. My soul waits in hope for the Lord more than the watchmen for the morning; Yes, more than the watchmen for the morning. Israel, wait for the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is abundant redemption. And He will redeem Israel from all his guilty deeds . (Psalm 130)             I like Mr. Peterson’s interpretation of the first line. “The bottom has fallen out of my life!” Of course, the problem for some of us is the fact that we’re drama queens, and/or we’re weak. Any time anything happens that disturbs our sense of mastery and control, the bottom has fallen out of our lives. If the past couple of days have taught me anything, they’ve t

               “Many times they have attacked me from my youth up,” Let Israel say, “Many times they have attacked me from my youth up; Yet they have not prevailed against me. The plowers plowed upon my back; they lengthened their furrows.” The Lord is righteous; He has cut up the ropes of the wicked. May all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned backward; may they be like grass upon the housetops, which withers before it grows up; with which the harvester does not fill his hand, or the binder of sheaves his arms; nor do those who pass by say, “The blessing of the Lord be upon you; We bless you in the name of the Lord.” (Psalm 129)   According to Eugene Peterson, who reminds us that these psalms are about discipleship, this song is about endurance and patience. It could also be about perspective. In life, we face suffering, pain, and warfare. We may be innocent, guilty, or even mistaken, but we feel stretched out and whipped emotionally if not physically. And, I must ad

                 Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, Who walks in His ways. When you eat the fruit of the labor of your hands, you will be happy and it will go well for you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house, your children like olive plants around your table. Behold, for so shall a man who fears the Lord be blessed.                The Lord bless you from Zion, and may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life.                Indeed, may you see your children’s children.  Peace be upon Israel! (Psalm 128)                  Baruk (Blessing): favor, happiness, living according to God’s ways of approval. It was tied to God leading the children of Israel forward and taking refuge in the Lord.               I’m going to approach today’s blog a little differently because in today’s chapter in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction , Eugene Peterson says things that I think deserve to be quoted and considered. “The easiest thing i

  Unless the Lord builds a house, They who build it labor in vain; Unless the Lord guards a city, The watchman stays awake in vain. It is futile for you to rise up early, To stay up late, To eat the bread of painful labor; This is how He gives to His beloved sleep. Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; They will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127)             I’m stuck on the first verse because whether or not God is building my “house” (my life) is a huge question in my life. It is always a question we should ask Him. This is part of “Your kingdom come, Your will be done…” In Experiencing God , Henry Blackabee writes of observing where God is working, and joining Him there rather than trying to get Him to come join you in your work.           Things have happened that make

  When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed.   Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them. (Psalm 126.)   Today’s psalm focuses on anticipated blessing (hope) and joy. The Israelites been slaves in Egypt and in Babylon. When they returned home, it was a great joy them. They were free! They were home! I relate better to the second half of the song, though mine isn’t as dramatic. The streams in the Negev spent part of the year dry. The rains would come, and they would swell, providing water for crops. Whether or not they had food depended on that rain. I live in mode

                 I don’t have a passage to connect with today’s first idea. But the idea fits the day, so I’m going with it. An eclipse takes place whenever one planetary body passes between the sun and another planetary body. It “just so happens” that the sizes and distances of the sun, Earth, and the moon from each create total or near total eclipses. When the moon eclipses the sun (as will happen today), we can only see the corona of the sun. When the earth eclipses the sun, we have blood moons. As I thought about this earlier and listened to the lecturer on the videotape in Sunday School talk about the judgments, the ideas merged. Eclipses are an illustration of what people will face. If we represent Christ as the Earth and us as the moon, either Christ stands between God and us (a lunar eclipse), or we stand between God and Christ (a solar eclipse). Either He can take (or block) God’s judgment on us in full, or we can take it God’s judgment ourselves, which might be said to cast

                 If the Lord had not been on our side—   let Israel say--   if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us,  they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against us;  the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us,  the raging waters would have swept us away.  Praise be to the Lord, who has not let us be torn by their teeth.  We have escaped like a bird from the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken,  and we have escaped.  Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. (Psalm 124) “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)             There are many verses I could quote that suggest that when one becomes a Christian, all one’s problems disappear. We get everything we ask for, and God sends His angels to protect us. So, if trials and danger come our way, that must be a sign

                 I lift up my eyes to you, to you who sit enthroned in heaven. As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he shows us his mercy. Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us, for we have endured no end of contempt. We have endured no end of ridicule from the arrogant, of contempt from the proud . (Psalm 123)             Jesus told us that if we believed, we could ask whatever we wished, and it would be done for us. That seems a long way from looking up to God as a slave to a master. And in our modern culture, we tend to like the ask-receive pattern rather than the look-receive. The former makes us feel more in control. It makes us feel as though we are the master, and that God is supposed to leap from His throne and slide down some supernatural fire-pole the moment we voice a whim. The image of the slave looking up to the master brings to mind the pi