The Plumbline

Nathaniel Hawthorne said, "A pure hand needs no glove to cover it." A pure heart needs no covering, either. It becomes evident no matter how hard the journey - purity is something we cannot (and should not) ever try to hide. Some might want to shun such purity, probably because it pricks at their conscience just a bit more than they'd like. Regardless of society's norms, we need to remain true to those God lays out in his Word. Only then will we realize purity of heart, mind, spirit, and soul. Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god. They will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God their Savior. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, God of Jacob. (Psalm 24:3-9) Be a generation that seeks him. If we want to see God move across our city, we might just be the first one to se...

Who may worship in your sanctuary, Lord? Who may enter your presence on your holy hill? Those who lead blameless lives and do what is right, speaking the truth from sincere hearts. (Psalm 15:1-2) Who may worship in the presence of a holy God? Those who lead blameless lives - who do right and speak the truth they have been given by their loving heavenly Father. The first time I read this passage, I thought there was absolutely no hope for me because I was a sinner, not living blamelessly and not speaking God's truth, much less my own truth! Yet, as I read it time and time again, I found God reminding me of his grace, pointing me toward his finished work on the cross, and assuring my doubting heart that there is hope for the one who gives God access to their heart. Blameless lives are more than just living 'above suspicion'. I made some pretty questionable choices in my younger life, no one really pointing the finger at me, but I was not blameless - I was just 'above susp...

Wash yourselves and be clean! Get your sins out of my sight. Give up your evil ways. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows. (Isaiah 1:16-17) I remember undertaking the task of repainting a dock on an empty pond at a Girl Scout camp in Southern California. You have to scrape the old paint before you put on the new, but you also have to use a very thick, oil-based paint to redo the dock. Why? It helps preserve it from rotting. As my friend and I undertook the task, the weather got warmer as the day progressed, the task was less than interesting at some point, and we got a little mischievous at some point. We were at the point of applying the paint when all of a sudden, an all-out 'let's paint each other' rebellious attitude overtook us. There we were, swiping oil-based blue marine paint across each other's faces, arms, legs, and even our painting clothes. We were a mess by the end, but we had a fe...

Only the person involved can know his own bitterness or joy—no one else can really share it. Laughter cannot mask a heavy heart. When the laughter ends, the grief remains. Only a simpleton believes everything he’s told! A prudent man understands the need for proof. A wise man is cautious and avoids danger; a fool plunges ahead with great confidence. A short-tempered man is a fool. He hates the man who is patient. The simpleton is crowned with folly; the wise man is crowned with knowledge. (Proverbs 14:10, 13, 15-18) Whether we know it or not, we often bear our bitterness alone - although others may step in to attempt to help us bear it, it is primarily something we bear alone. We can experience great joy, but no one can fully experience it the same as we do. Emotions are really something others attempt to share with us and we with them, but in essence, the joy or bitterness of another is something we can never truthfully fully comprehend and experience in the same manner as the one e...

You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world. (Matthew 5:8) I just caught a short post on social media about a 'street takeover' in a local community here in which streets were blocked, vehicles were doing donuts around the intersection, a home was hit by gunfire, and people were just acting really dumb. Purity sometimes gets overlooked because we don't live in a very "pure" world, do we? It is hard to make pure choices when all around us we are bombarded with all manner of wrong choices. Purity is the freedom from anything which debases (reduces in quality or value), contaminates (adding/mixing in that which makes unclean), or pollutes (corrupts or defiles). Impurity is the "adding in" of something which does not belong. That which does not belong actually changes the consistency or integrity of what does. It may be hard to keep out that which does not belong, but we certainly...

I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences. (Ephesians 4:2) Devotion to God doesn't happen by accident - we have to actually 'get up' and 'move forward'. Two very specific actions that require more than just mental investment. They require movement on our part. To 'get up' one has to actually stop sitting right where they are at - there must be a change in position. Too many times we think we will manifest change in our lives all while we are taking little to no action to see change occur. To 'move forward' means we have to put one foot in front of the other. There can be no good...

If with heart and soul you’re doing good, do you think you can be stopped? Even if you suffer for it, you’re still better off. Don’t give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They’ll end up realizing that they’re the ones who need a bath. It’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God. (I Peter 3:18) I am gonna meddle a bit this morning, so get ready. I have to ask you how your 'conscience' is fairing these days - is it clear some of t...

By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand— out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise . (Romans 5:1-2) Do you ever get to the spot in your life where life is coming at you so fast you just cannot "pull it all together"? You feel like you are under a mountain of stuff and cannot seem to see any relief on the horizon, much less the solution to the present muddle your are dealing with. I doubt you are in that muddled mess alone! Sometimes we just need a good catharsis to clean out the "stuff" that buried us so deeply! If you have ever gone garage sale hopping, you might have wondered about the p...

Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be—you get a fresh start, your slate’s wiped clean. Count yourself lucky—God holds nothing against you and you’re holding nothing back from him. When I kept it all inside, my bones turned to powder, my words became daylong groans. The pressure never let up; all the juices of my life dried up. Then I let it all out; I said, “I’ll come clean about my failures to God.” Suddenly the pressure was gone—my guilt dissolved, my sin disappeared. These things add up. Every one of us needs to pray; when all hell breaks loose and the dam bursts we’ll be on high ground, untouched. God’s my island hideaway, keeps danger far from the shore, throws garlands of hosannas around my neck. Let me give you some good advice; I’m looking you in the eye and giving it to you straight: “Don’t be ornery like a horse or mule that needs bit and bridle to stay on track.”...

Have you ever considered just how 'clean' your hands really are? In nursing school, I remember this exercise we did where we rubbed hand lotion on our hands, then were told to go scrub them to practice a good handwashing technique. Most of us were going the extra mile by scrubbing back and front, in between the fingers and then even up above the wrist area. Surely our hands were clean, right? We came back to the room for the 'inspection' of our handwashing jobs only to find our instructor had turned the lights off, had a black light set up, and inspected our hands under that glowing beast! Guess what else 'glowed'? Our hands! The lotion was 'laced' with this 'dust' that illuminates under the black light, allowing each of us to see the specific areas around cuticles, under nails, and even here and there on our hands that got totally missed by our good 'handwashing' technique! What we thought was clean really wasn't clean at all. Clean ...

Have you ever stopped to consider how hard it is to get your body to do what your spirit is telling you to do? You likely will find that the way to your "body" is not so much through your "spirit", but rather through your "mind". What you believe in your mind, you see acted out in your body. What you commit to in your mind, you usually see commitment toward in your body. What you focus on long enough in your mind will eventually become a primary part of your life. Most of the time, we try to get our body to dictate what our spirit should do, but it should the other way around. Your spirit should be the one dictating to the body since you get to your body through you mind. If you want to really change the way you are making choices in life, you need to ensure the spirit is working on the mind, not your body! “Still, if you set your heart on God and reach out to him, if you scrub your hands of sin and refuse to entertain evil in your home, you’ll be ab...

What are some of the ways you get the 'dirtiest' in life? For me, I am tinkering with learning to work with wood. All that type of work can leave you incredibly 'dusty', 'stained' with this or that, and kind of 'stinky' by the end of the project. Clean hands and a pure heart - two conditions we often find eluding us or hard to maintain. Our hands get "dirtied" by the things we do - the actions we take - like the times I am working out in the shop. Our hearts reveal their "soiled" condition by the words we speak, the thoughts we entertain, and the ways we respond to life around us. There are clearly benefits to maintaining both clean hands and a pure heart, but I wonder just how often we focus on one and not the other? Who may go up the mountain of the Lord? And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart. He who has not lifted up his soul to what is not true, and has not made false promises. He will r...

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he...  (Proverbs 23:7) Whatcha thinking? It is a common question, but maybe the better one is, "Where you even thinking?" There are all kinds of things that "vie" for attention in our mind. The "loudest" voice is often the one heard the best. Just as much as there are things that demand our attention in our thought life, our emotions are constantly being "played" by the events of our days. Depending on what it is that is running through our thoughts at the moment, our sometimes up-and-down emotions can be manageable, or completely out of control. Therefore, learning to "manage" our minds, or our thinking, goes a significantly long way in learning to live with an emotional "balance" in our lives. Our mind really has two "sides" to it: the totally present and evident conscious side, and the less recognizable, but ever present unconscious. The conscious side of our mind is pretty...

Ever get so 'into' your day-to-day "plodding" through life that you overlook the needs of others, show yourself insensitive to their plight in life, or are just plain oblivious to the heartache of your neighbors because you are just way too caught up in your own life. Been there, done that! Sometimes our "overlooking" of the other's need is not intentional, but a byproduct of the "busy-ness" of our day that results in us not being very open to seeing what is creating huge pain for another. There are other times, though, when we are quite aware that another is in pain and we simply don't want to invest the time, energy, or "heart" to reach out to them. Don't run roughshod over the concerns of your brothers and sisters. Their concerns are God's concerns, and he will take care of them. We've warned you about this before. God hasn't invited us into a disorderly, unkempt life but into something holy and beautiful—as b...