Prayer for a Garden

Father God, it's easy to thank You for the plants, but first, I thank You for the dirt. The grit that gets under my fingernails and fills the tread of my shoes, dropping little black zigzags as I walk, a breadcrumb trail of sorts that gives away "she's come from the garden." 

It's into the dirt that the seed falls and dies, to sprout green shoots that look nothing like it, a picture of resurrection. It's into the dirt that a bare root nestles, stretches underground to anchor to life, to bloom with roses that look nothing like it, to display in their petals logarithmic spiral, Fibonacci Sequence, Golden Ratio. Oh, the precision, the mystery, the intentionality! Oh, how everything You do speaks.  

It's into the dirt that the seed of the good word falls when it falls on our hearts, though now we call it soil, lest dirt be too humble a word, too reminiscent of sin. But dirt is correct; rocks and thorns will not do. It's the good soil that nurtures life.

Lord, you chose to form man from the dirt. We, made in your image, come from the dirt. Oh, how holy, set apart, is the dirt!

Father, we celebrate the plants, the vegetables, the fruits, the flowers, the bounty, the beauty. We celebrate that season after season, year after year, they will not fail, because of the garden plot. The land. The soil. The dirt.

Thank You, Holy Lord, for the dirt.     

Marriage Like Christ and the Church (His Mysteries #2)

 

How does marriage in the world differ from marriage among God's people (the church of Jesus)? I think a lot of Christians' minds would go first to sex and living together: those belonging to Christ should do neither before marriage. Correct enough--as far as it goes. Some will point out that there should be far less divorce in the church, or that marriage is between one man and one woman. Also true. But do these details define the difference between worldly and godly marriage? No, and if we consider the real difference, these more superficial differences both fall into place and become meaningful boundaries rather than arbitrary, spoilsport rules. They are not the difference(s); they are right practices that arise out of the difference.

Is the difference that Christians (should) realize love is a choice, not a feeling; that we're not in it only for what we can get out of it and whether it's "working for me"; and that a woman doesn't file for divorce because a man asks, "What's for dinner?" (We may laugh, but social media reveals these attitudes are out there.) Well, we're getting warmer, but these don't cut to the quick either.

Christian marriage is different from worldly marriage in that marriage between Christians is a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32). 

This is the #1 reason that a saved person shouldn't knowingly marry an unsaved person. Neither party is able to enter into the kind of marriage available to the other. (An existing marriage between a saved and an unsaved person is to continue unless the unsaved person leaves, per 1 Corinthians 7:12-15.) 

In a Christian marriage, the man represents Christ and the woman represents the Church. This is why he is to love her as himself and give himself up for her. This is why she is to submit as is fitting in the Lord (this doesn't mean following him into sin or allowing it to be committed against her). Unlike the world's marriage, but like the relationship between Christ and the church, Christian marriage is a covenant sealed by blood. This is why the first sex is to be a consummation following the wedding: it is accompanied, in many but not all cases, by a show of blood as a sign of the covenant. Even just beginning to think of Christian marriage in this way helps us see why sex follows the ceremony rather than preceding it, why Christian divorce should be rare (unrepentant adultery and the forms of abandonment that include abuse and addiction should be the only reasons), why marriage isn't at all about "What's in it for me?" but "How can I serve my partner?", and why marriage is between one man and one woman (same-sex pairings are not, in fact, marriage at all, no matter what kind of coupling ceremony the two went through). 

Continuing in Ephesians 5, the husband loves his wife as his own body, and the church (wife) is the body of Christ. The two become one flesh. Paul himself then declares this a great mystery. How two become one (how the Three Persons of the Godhead are One, in fact) yet remain two is a mystery, one it is our honor to participate in before the Lord, and model to the world, with our spouse. Father, let us honor our marriages as precious symbols of the relationship between Christ and His bride, the church. 

The Living Word (His Mysteries #1)

 

We know Jesus Himself is the Living Word, and our Father is the Living God. Doesn't it make perfect sense, then, that His inspired recorded word, the Bible, is also living? This surprises us sometimes, and it's good to never lose the wonder of it. But what should surprise us more is that we could ever think His word isn't living. However could it not be? 

But what does this mean, that the Bible is living?

To me, as to many, it means we will always find new things in it, no matter how many times we've read it. The other day, I was in Isaiah 54. At verse 11, the chapter begins prophesying the New Jerusalem, speaking of foundations, battlements, and gates made of precious stones (I love gemstones and can't wait to see this!). God goes on to say that terror and attacks will not succeed against the Israelites, and that their enemies will fall because of them. Verses 16-17 say, "Listen carefully, I have created the smith who blows on the fire of coals and who produces a weapon for its purpose; and I have created the destroyer to inflict ruin. No weapon that is formed against you will succeed; and every tongue that arises against you in judgment you will condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me says the Lord" (Amplified 2015).

The first phrase of verse 17, usually heard as "No weapon formed against you shall prosper," is familiar and often quoted, claimed, and prayed. But what I cannot remember ever seeing before is the part about the smith. There, God is saying, "Hear me; weapons have their purposes and I've created, anointed, and appointed the people who make them. I have even brought about times and situations where destruction has happened by My will." What this context does, I believe, is make the well-known statement "No weapon formed against you shall prosper" even stronger and dearer. Some weapons, some wars, and some of the people who produce both, do so according to God's plan and within His will. Our world being as it is, war and destruction aren't always outside of God. Yet, even though weapons sometimes prosper by his permission, still no weapon formed against His people shall prosper. 

Words and phrases in the Bible--the living word--that we "haven't seen" before are illuminated for us when we need them, are ready for them, or when God chooses. They speak to us in our current situation. Or give new insight into another part of the passage, as in our Isaiah example. Or reveal more to us about the character of God. When we experience this enough times, we truly grasp that we could never read the word, listen to it, or hear it preached so often that we could ever plumb its depths, much less exhaust it. All other books, even great ones, sooner or later give up the whole of their content. But the Bible never does. Printed on paper though it be, it is living. And that is one of His mysteries. 

Why the Devil Shakes in His Boots When we Become Christians

Just how defeated is the enemy?

This defeated. 

We know he's defeated because of Jesus' victory on the cross. Christ paid for our sins, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him (Matthew 28:18), and anyone who confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believes in their heart that God raised Him from the dead will be saved (Romans 8:9). In addition, we have armor (Ephesians 6), binding and loosing (Matthew 16:19), scripture quotations, resistance, prayer, praise and worship, and the name and blood of Jesus Himself with which to fight him. 

But the scripture that sticks with me today is Revelation 12:11a. "They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony" (NIV). 

Two ways. The blood of the Lamb, which we know. There is no victory unless we are in Christ. And the second way is the word of our testimony. How do we get a testimony? By having a story to tell of what Jesus has done for us. In other words, by going through some stuff.  

We can go through stuff for several reasons: because we live in a fallen world, because we're under God's discipline, because we've made poor decisions. Another big reason is that we unfortunately have a spiritual enemy who hates us, and the more we do or are called to do for the Kingdom, the more he has it in for us.

People who don't know Christ have no victory over the enemy, because they have no means to fight a spiritual battle and because hell is the default afterlife. But when they come to know Jesus, they satisfy the first condition of Revelation 12:11--they have the blood of the Lamb. What the devil hopes they never realize is that, because of the blood, they now have the power to also satisfy the second condition. They are in a position to take the very ammunition he lobbed against them and fashion it into a weapon with which to turn around and defeat him: a testimony. He fears us, as he should, as sleeping giants, and he hopes we never fully awake.

Meditate on this: when the devil messes with us, he's throwing raw material at us out of which we can build the weapon to defeat him. He is so beaten, defeated, and lost that he can't even come against us without putting himself in a losing position. All we have to do is see our testimony for what it is: the crud he himself supplied, assembled into brilliant artillery that we can use to strike him down. 

He's that defeated.   

Picture Yourself

 

...at the foot of the cross

you thought he was the one

now he's dying 

in the worst way.

It's over

all a mistake

too good to be true

worse than if he'd never come

and on top of it, on the third day

they steal his body

I'm going fishing.

...that evening, behind barred doors

maybe one last meeting

before you go fishing

for good

a man appears

just appears

the women said they'd seen him

but that's crazy

so who is this

who walks through walls?

His hands

his side

something rumbles inside you

a volcano

and when its lava bursts forth

it's not water or blood

but unimaginable

joy.

...at a moment in life

when the indescribably 

hardest news

you could ever receive

turns to news so rapturous

there will never be better 

only heaven could imagine

much less perform it 

before your eyes.

...grasping the magnitude

of the victory. 

  

Agony

In the olive press

sweat spills blood from holy brow

dread Gethsemane

The Act that Doomed Judas (Controversies #6)

 

It wasn't the betrayal of Jesus. Many, if not most, think it was. It was not. 

It wasn't lack of sorrow. Judas sorely regretted his action. The NIV translation says he was "seized with remorse" (Matthew 27:3). He gave back the 30 pieces of silver. That is what a true penitent would do. 

It wasn't failure to confess his sin. "I have sinned," he said, "for I have betrayed innocent blood." What's more, he confessed to the priests. The priests. If you can't confess to the mediator between God and the people and receive help for your condition, what then?

The act that doomed Judas wasn't even suicide. 

No, the act that sealed Judas's condemnation was giving in to wrong belief. 

When the chief priests rebuffed him, saying, "What is that to us? That is your responsibility," he believed their lie.

He believed he was alone in his sin with no remedy.

Judas had spent three years as one of Jesus' twelve, yet he didn't know his Master well enough to realize that if he went to the foot of the cross and cried for mercy he'd have been just as saved as the thief who went to Paradise with Jesus that very day. Had Judas known he didn't have to die in his sin, we might today read in Mark 16 that the angel said "Go, tell his disciples and Peter and Judas, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee'" (Mark 16:7).  

Those of us who think Judas was condemned because he betrayed Jesus haven't come to grips with the very depth of forgiveness Jesus offers, or the power of his blood--or, frankly, with salvation by faith and not works. If you want Jesus, but believe he can't possibly forgive what you've done, please pause and grasp this. Don't give in to the same wrong belief that sent Judas to hell.

The Way to Hosanna

 

From "Hosanna!" and palm branches

to "Crucify!" and thorns

in less than a week

seems a vile reversal--

till we realize "Save!"

and then "Crucify!"

are one and the same:

due to us wretched sinners

crucifixion is the only way

to Hosanna.

No Beginning

 Of course God has no beginning; any God worthy of the name has no cause. 

Beauty for Beauty

Next to the word "intricate" in the dictionary, there must be a picture of a rose.

Praise God for giving such to us;

Praise God for beauty just because.

Five __What Kind__ of Stones?

 

Reading the story of David and Goliath, we may notice several things.

1 Samuel 17 tells us Goliath was a champion, which means he was a stand-in for an entire army and could challenge one man from among his opponents to a single battle that would determine the outcome of the war. Goliath was nine feet, nine inches tall, and because King Saul stood head and shoulders above his countrymen, he would be the obvious Israelite to take the giant on. 

We're told that Goliath challenged the Israelites for forty days, and, to a man, they cowered in fright.

When David arrived to bring supplies to his brothers in Saul's army, we see that his oldest brother scorned him and accused him of just coming to see the battle.

We learn that David, as a shepherd, gained fighting experience when he killed the lion and bear that had attacked his flock, and that Saul, agreeing to let David face Goliath, tried to put his own armor on David. But the boy couldn't even walk in it.

Maybe most important, we find that David came to the battle in a different spirit than any grown man in Israel's army, including the king. He called Goliath an uncircumcised Philistine, and wrapped up in that one word uncircumcised is this statement: "We are the covenant people of God. This man is not. What more needs to be said?"  

But you know what aspect of this story hit me between the eyes--if you'll pardon the pun--the other day, as never before? 

That the stones David picked up to put in his sling were smooth stones.

Why do we need this detail? Why do we need to know the stones were smooth? Why did David choose smooth stones?

Because he wasn't trusting in stones (chariots, if you will). He didn't need jagged rocks to get the job done, and he knew it. David knew the battle was the Lord's, that God empowers us when we fight in his will, and because of that he sank a smooth stone into a nine-foot-nine warrior's forehead in one try. 

We learn that we can fight the enemy just as we are, with what God has provided, as long as we fully trust in Him. Saul's armor, however strong, wasn't right for David. The shepherd's sling and the shepherd's experience were, and when we are smack in the center of God's will, our preparation and equipping from God, and our complete reliance on him, are enough to win our battles, too.