Who's your #2

Two people are better than one, because they get more done by working together. If one falls down, the other can help him up. But it is bad for the person who is alone and falls, because no one is there to help. If two lie down together, they will be warm, but a person alone will not be warm. An enemy might defeat one person, but two people together can defend themselves; a rope that is woven of three strings is hard to break. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)

There was a day I would try to put together all that box furniture - big stuff - all by myself. I'd get someone to load it into my vehicle, but when I got home, I'd take a box cutter, slice open the box and take piece by piece into the house. That stuff was heavy! Then it would be strewn all around the living room, and I had the task of putting all the pieces together - a feat daunting in and of itself! Side one put with back one, shelf A inside side and back, wheels attached here, and stabilizing bracket attached somewhere between instruction 52 and 94! Then I'd get to the point I had to lift the stuff up to go onto the next step. Ever been there - seeing clearly what needs to be done, but knowing very well the ability to lift that gigantic piece is beyond your ability? What I did next matters, but not as much as what I should have done to begin with - asking for help doesn't make us weak - trying to lift beyond our strength does!

We all need a "Number Two" in our lives - not just for the box furniture, but all of life. There will always be moments when we fight against things way beyond our ability, but if we don't have our "Number Two" alongside of us, we are standing there weakened and facing things beyond what we should face alone. Solomon realized it was BAD for a person to be alone - not just because there will be 'falls' and 'trips', but there will be work beyond our expertise, times when we aren't able by ourselves, and seasons when we feel the 'coldest' in our lives. He isn't just referencing a 'chilly night' there, but times when our spirit is 'cooled down' and we need to see it ignited once again. Times when we need to experience God afresh. Moments when we are about to battle something that will fill us with fright. Standing alone is not an option in those moments!

Two together can defend themselves - one alone is open to attack. Two together - stop for a moment to think that one through. Who is your "Number Two"? What has "being together" with that individual done to help you create a defense in your life? Look at that last verse again - three are better than two! God in the midst of you and your 'Two' makes a pretty doggone powerful cord that cannot be broken! Defenses are best when they are 'threefold'. Just sayin!

P.S. Happy birthday to my "Number Two"!

Doubts and Defense Stand No Chance

 God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one can resist God’s Word. We can’t get away from it—no matter what. (Hebrews 4:12)

Doubt or defense - God's Word cuts through it like a hot knife on cool butter! Think about doubt for a moment - it 'creeps in', doesn't it? Doubt may be instantaneous, but the really nagging and crippling kind of doubt may be the kind that 'creeps in', unnoticed at first, but settling into our minds and hearts like a wicked virus. We don't usually wake up one day and determine to doubt everything we are thinking - doubt comes bit by bit, failure by failure, mistake by mistake. I remember trying to learn to make cookies like my mom made. I would put in all the ingredients, but they didn't turn out quite the same. My impatience, lack of desire to spend hour upon hour in the kitchen, and desire to eat rather than create those cookies made it all the harder! Did my doubt come all at once? No, as one cookie disaster resulted in another, I began to doubt my ability to be a good cookie maker! In time, I began to doubt I could ever 're-create' her luscious baking. We sometimes allow doubt to keep us from trusting we will ever accomplish what we know we are called to accomplish.

Little things creep in to cause us to doubt, yet these 'little things' all add up. The 'addition factor' actually is what God's Word is excellent at REDUCING and ELIMINATING. Our doubts 'add up' - one upon another - until they are gigantic. God's Word comes into our lives and in rather short order, those words begin to tackle the biggest piles of doubt, reducing them to rubble that can finally be discarded. How? The Word of God actually has this way of helping us to listen and then to obey. We begin to listen to reason rather than chance. We begin to obey the 'directions' laid out and begin to see change. When I finally buckled down and followed the directions mom had taken such pain-staking time to write out on those recipe cards, those cookies began to turn out a little better each time! God's Word REDUCES doubt into bite-sized pieces - the size we can begin to challenge and overcome. His Word ELIMINATES what remains once we begin to obey what he tells us to do.

His Word is also useful for cutting through our huge defenses. Don't have any of those, you say? Let me assure you - we ALL have some 'defenses' we mount to ward off some form of 'invasion' we don't want to face. It might be our tendency to avoid certain topics in discussion, or our reluctance to address a problem because we see it as too far out of our league. Defenses go up to keep us from 'getting too close', or getting roped into involvement. God's Word cuts through those defenses - even the ones we don't know exist right now. If you have no real knowledge of the defenses you mount from time to time, ask him to show you where they exist. When he does, don't deny they exist - embrace his willingness to expose them so he can finally reduce them so we can begin to no longer hide behind them. God isn't afraid to cut open those walls so we can finally see the light they kept us from seeing all along. In fact, he relishes bringing light where dimness or darkness once existed. Just sayin!

The naked turtle

“I, the Lord, am the one speaking to you. Come, let’s discuss this. Even if your sins are as dark as red dye, that stain can be removed and you will be as pure as wool that is as white as snow." (Isaiah 1:18 ERV)

If God were to speak to you today, with an invitation to "discuss things" just between the two of you, what would that invitation outline as the topic of "discussion"? I daresay it would involve a little different outline for each of us, but it all begins with the discussion of where we are at in relationship with him. The nearness, or distance we maintain is at the center of his attention and he is going to bring us to the place we recognize this has to be our "numero uno" focus in life.

"Come, let's discuss this" may seem a little frightening for some simply because there has been very little "exposed" about one's life up to this point. The "cover" has been working well - or at least you think it has. Could it be possible the "cover up" you thought you were maintaining hasn't been working all that well? Sometimes I don't even know I have my "cover up" on! It is like a turtle in his shell - I pull it on instinctively and just walk around with it on me, thinking nothing of it!

Then comes the day God asks me to shed the shell....and it is harder than it looks. Have you ever seen a naked turtle? I have, but only in cartoons! In the first place, what is under all that shell is not much to look at! It is the shell that protects - with the shell gone the turtle would need to find a new form of protection. A while ago, I saw a show on turtle rescue. One of the vets actually made tiny "plates" to fix the holes in a turtle's shell because he knew just how critical it was to the turtle.

What we fail to recognize is that we AREN'T turtles - we don't need the shell for our safety! It is nothing more than an awkward hiding place for us! It is an encumbrance that we tote around, but which is little more than an additional burden for us to carry around all day! We don't need plates to strengthen the shell - we need to get free of it and stop carrying it around. While dropping our defenses isn't all that comfortable, when we do, God is able to "discuss" things with us that he'd never be able to let us see otherwise. Just sayin!

But...I built my defenses!

Worry gives each of us a little sense of anguish we don't really need to experience, but somehow we continue in our own person "anguish" and don't really let go of things we don't need to be focusing on.  Why is that?  I think it may be either because we think we "deserve" the anguish, or we just have issues with letting go of the control we want to maintain in life. Either way - it is foolish for us to live in worry.  Fear or dread is one of the natural responses we are given as a result of certain "senses" which kick-in various hormone responses in our body.  We are a little less in control of when fear may "kick-in", but we are capable of having equally as much impact on how long we allow fear or dread to "rev-up" those hormones within us.  Worry is usually because of uncertainty of some kind, while fear or dread is usually in the face of what we interpret to be "literal" threats to our lives in some way. We heard the screeching of tires behind us, only to look in the rear view mirror to see a large truck stop within centimeters of our rear end - that is a real sense of dread - it is something we literally experience.  Worry is almost an internal kind of thing which we "manufacture" based on the "what-if" scenarios we can imagine in our minds.  Either of these can be damaging forces for our minds and bodies, but both are responses God wants us to learn to get "under his control".

You won’t need to worry about dangers at night or arrows during the day. And you won’t fear diseases that strike in the dark or sudden disaster at noon. You will not be harmed, though thousands fall all around you. And with your own eyes you will see the punishment of the wicked. The Lord Most High is your fortress. Run to him for safety, and no terrible disasters will strike you or your home. (Psalm 91:5-10 CEV)

Things which go bump in the night can give all of us a little fright.  I have been awakened from sound sleep by loud noises, voices outside, and barking dogs.  When I lived alone, those sounds were amplified like 1000% because being alone and hearing noises from "unknown" sources is kind of creepy!  Once awakened, what happened?  Yep, you guessed it, sleep came hard again.  Why?  My internal "juices" (hormones) were in the flight mode! They got stunned into action and it takes a while for the body to shut down, ridding itself of the mess of hormones released when fear begins to mount.  As soon as I realized the "source" of the noise (like it being the neighbor dumping his trash at 11:30 at night while wildly banging the trash can against the trash dumpster), we can begin to settle those internal responses, but the "damage" of those "juices" already flowing around in your body is simply something which takes time to overcome!  This might be the tremendous blessing God gives when we refuse to allow fears to mount in the first place - we don't have to go through the rebound phase of "coming down" off our emotional fear high!

Much of what our psalmist describes are those things we cannot predict, or even rationalize. They are situations and circumstances often out of our control - like dangers in the night, diseases we cannot see, and sudden disasters like the truck barreling toward our car's rear end.  As long as God has become our fortress, these things may attempt to strike us down, but they are unable to do so because our lives are securely placed within the "garrison" of his care.  I play a computer simulation game which starts out making you develop colonies of people, complete with finding resources such as lumber to build with, mines to find valuable ores which will help you fashion additional tools and have trade coins, and foodstuffs from animals you hunt or ponds you fish.  As the game progresses, you have to keep upgrading your towns and the "garrisons" you place around them can make all the difference if you are not quite ready to form alliances with other "peoples" in your immediate area.  Without those garrisons, the other peoples may just invade your fields and take your much needed resources.

Try as I might, on occasion I build a mighty town and it has stones walls.  I develop armies of men who will act as my protectors of that community I have created.  Yet, if I fail to erect sufficient defenses, even the stone wall I erected may be insufficient to hold off the invading forces from without.  I may have missed the opportunity to develop my armies fast enough, or I don't erect defensive guard towers to alert me to approaching forces.  I take my eye off the happenings around me because I am so focused on something I want to create or do within my own little section of territory I neglect to see how well advanced those surrounding me have become!  This is kind of what it is to live life just "inside" our own little fortress we call "self".  We think we have adequate defenses against the stuff which will come against us, but if we are totally honest here, we often don't realize how powerful those things which are coming against us are, nor how stealthily the have prepared to invade!  No wonder we have those responses of fear and dread, worry and anguish!  We have been distracted, caught up in what we think are pretty reliable "defenses", and oblivious to the real dangers which surround us.

This is why it is important to have the right "fortress" - God himself.  It isn't about the volume of the defenses - it is about the quality of that defense.  It isn't about the existence of resisting forces - it is about the presence of defensive resources within!  No other fortress will give us the sense of security and peace that God will - just sayin!

Defense Let Down

 ¹⁵ Patient persistence pierces through indifference;
   gentle speech breaks down rigid defenses.

(Proverbs 25:15)

Indifference is really a condition of the heart and mind in which a person has determined that they have little interest or concern.  Another term we use that is quite similar to indifference is the term "mediocrity".  There are some telltale signs that someone is pretty much indifferent, or that they have "settled" for a position of mediocrity in their lives.  An indifferent individual might look like this:

- Apathetic to the needs of their life or those of another

- Calm, cool indifference in the face of what would cause uneasiness or apprehension in others

- A seeming absence of emotional connection with others or circumstances around them

When you hear indifference described that way, you might think of an individual who struggles with frequent periods of depression, but they are not the only ones that experience this kind of apathy or distanced-connection with the world around them.  In fact, any of us can be indifferent in much the same way simply as a matter of our choosing.

Rigidity is something a little different.  This condition suggests an unwillingness to bend, no concern for yielding the stand one has taken.  We might label this person as "hard" or "callous".  It comes from a Latin word from which we get another term - rigor.  When we think of rigor, we might also think of rigor-mortis - the stiffness of death!

Solomon was giving us instruction that we can both use in our own lives and in our interactions with others.  Neither condition of heart, mind, or soul is desirable.  An apathetic mind leads to very little positive action.  A rigid heart, hardened by life's hurts will do little to reach out to another for help.  An unyielding soul is in danger of hell.

Two things are presented by Solomon as the antidote to indifference and rigidity.  The patient persistence of a loving God is what breaks through our indifference - he challenges us to take up this same patient persistence in dealing with the indifference of others.  The gentle words of a merciful God breaks through the areas of hardness in our lives - he challenges us to exercise the same gracefulness in our conversation with each other.

It seems like we have the greatest difficulty allowing God to "get into our business" where we have the greatest amount of indifference or where we have erected the walls of rigid unyieldness toward him.  We need to remember that he "counters" our apathy and hardness in much the same way he asks us to "counter" those same traits in others.  A wise friend used to tell me, "We are quick to see in others the things we don't want to see in ourselves."  She was so true in her assessment of my actions and attitude!  What I was unwilling to allow God to deal with in me became the thing I "criticized" most in others.

We would do well to ask God to target areas of apathy and hardness in our lives.  In turn, we need to ask him for the patience to persist and the gentleness of speech that will allow us to be instruments of grace in the lives of those we have been the hardest on.  When we really begin to ask why we are being so hard on them, we might be surprised to know that it is because the area we find fault with is really so close to what God wants to deal with in us!