Finding Favor with God

Noah found favor with the Lord. (Genesis 6:8) 

The hope of every believer's heart is that they 'find favor with the Lord' in all they say, think, and do. At times, we aren't very wise in our choice of words, so we waver a bit there. We waver a bit in the area of our thinking as we don't always 'put our thinking caps on' before we speak or act. We definitely waver in the 'doing' part of life as our mind may desire to do one thing, but we end up doing what our emotions 'feel' rather than what we know to be right. Noah was righteous and blameless before God. Out of all the people on earth, he alone found favor before God. Compared to the rest of the world around him and you will see they were so evil that God got to the point he could not bear it anymore. His justice demanded that he punish them. 

I can only imagine how difficult it would be to live a righteous life in this kind of evil and vile environment. There was absolutely no restraint against sin. Everybody else was engaging in the worst of sins shamelessly and actually encouraging others to follow in their choices. Violence, immorality of all kinds, cheating in the marketplace, lying to get ahead, murdering one another, and a number of other sins that would curl your hair if I wrote them here. But Noah, just like Enoch and Seth before him stood out to God as 'different'. He didn’t make the same choices as those around him. From God's account of the conditions that existed around him, there was no one else outside of his own family who truly trusted God. 

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2) 

We also live in a dark world, but it is not nearly as dark as at that time. We have the blessing of fellowship with other believers who can help us where Noah and his family were truly alone. If God were looking at us as he did that day, do you think we would find favor in God’s sight? If God were to build another "ark", who would he choose to build it today? Would any of us stand out as being righteous, in love with Jesus, and following in his footsteps, or are we basically the same as everybody else? Just askin...

Walk in it

And this is his commandment: We must believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he commanded us. Those who obey God’s commandments remain in fellowship with him, and he with them. And we know he lives in us because the Spirit he gave us lives in us. (I John 3:23-24)

We must believe - there is no other way into a restored relationship with God the Father than through Jesus Christ, his Son. This truth sometimes gets a little tweaked in religious circles - wanting to add some manner of 'works' to the simple belief God requires of us. No amount of us 'doing' will ever measure up to what Christ has already done. Simply believe that Jesus is the Son of God, died on the cross to make us free from the guilt and shame of our sin, and stop adding to the simplicity of grace. Grace is given, never earned. It is based on a finished work - that of Jesus and not on what we will ever be able to do in 'addition' to what has already been done.

Love one another - another very pointed command involves us living at peace with each other, giving of ourselves to one another, and removing the 'obligation' to love us in return. Those who do not have this deep, growing relationship with Jesus have a great deal of difficulty loving in such a manner. Why? There are strings attached to their love. They want something in return. Love as though you have received everything you need in Christ Jesus because you have! We cannot receive more than we have already been given - all we need is found in Christ Jesus. When we love one another, we are just sharing bits and pieces of his grace, goodness, and kindness that has been extended to us.

Remain in fellowship with him - engaging in an ongoing, continually growing relationship with him. As we do, we find loving one another is a 'natural offshoot' of having experienced his tremendous love. Relationship is always a two-way street. We don't just talk to God; we listen to him. We don't just receive from God; we share what we have received. We don't just get to keep; we receive to give out until other lives are overflowing with his grace and love just like ours. Those who 'remain' in fellowship have a special privilege - the Spirit of God lives within them. We no longer 'walk out' our salvation alone because we have God's Spirit to guide our choices and influence our actions. Believe, love, remain - three very specific actions on our part. God's grace and love backs each of these very specific actions. All we do is walk in that grace and love. Just sayin!

Eyes fixed, heart dedicated, and mind focused

But I am a worm and not a man. I am scorned and despised by all! Everyone who sees me mocks me.
They sneer and shake their heads, saying, “Is this the one who relies on the Lord? Then let the Lord save him! If the Lord loves him so much, let the Lord rescue him!” (Psalm 22:6-8)

Have you ever been under attack so badly that you imagined you no longer mattered - that your existence was like that of a worm, crawling defenselessly along the ground, only to be trampled underfoot? That is a pretty low view of one's life, isn't it? Here was David, the anointed king of Israel, bemoaning his life, feeling like everyone and everything was working against him. If the king could feel this way, what makes any of us think we can escape similar feelings on occasion? There will always be times when we face such hardships with a bit of doubt, frustration, and even some whining!

In these moments of deepest despair and depressing circumstances, we have one of two actions - either we give into them and allow ourselves to be beaten down, or we look to the one who will never abandon us or forsake his care over our lives. The outcome is based on the choice we make. There is a principle taught in counseling studies that suggests having a 'plan' to deal with troubling emotions and responses ahead of time will help when faced with those issues in real time. The 'pre-worked' plan actually gives us a means to dispel the worry and fear associated with the issue. If David 'had a plan' in this moment, it wasn't quite clear in the way he was talking, was it?

He is really just telling us how OTHERS saw his circumstances, but maybe he saw them differently. The very next verse begins to tell us exactly how David saw himself: "Yet you brought me safely from my mother’s womb and led me to trust you at my mother’s breast. I was thrust into your arms at my birth.
You have been my God from the moment I was born." (vs. 9-10) Thrust into God's arms at his birth - his God from the moment he took breath into his lungs. That paints a different picture, doesn't it? He might be feeling a bit beaten down by life and his 'foes', but he was never rejected by his God. We can be beaten down by all the things and people around us, but we should never begin to believe all THEIR actions outweigh God's!

David's 'pre-worked plan"? Trust God with his whole heart, even when the difficulties were mounting, and the future seemed as bleak as it could be. How? We only need look a little later into this psalm to see him "proclaiming God's names to his brothers and sisters" - not allowing anyone to think God's plan and purpose was being overturned. He would "fulfill his vows in the presence of others who worship God", because he had determined to not ever turn his back on God, even when he didn't see him or feel his movement around him. This is the 'pre-worked plan' - keep his eyes fixed, his heart dedicated, and his mind focused. Maybe we could develop a similar plan! Just sayin!

An Edison Moment

It was the American inventor, Thomas A. Edison, who reminded us that "just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless." This is a good reminder for each of us who get down on ourselves because we didn't do what we were supposed to do. We aren't useless just because we failed. We are human! We are fallible. We are going to make unwise choices from time to time. It is what we choose to do IN those moments that makes all the difference. Do we get down on ourselves, labeling ourselves as 'useless', or do we take our failure to Jesus and ask him to help us find a way to take different steps the next time?

You can’t whitewash your sins and get by with it; you find mercy by admitting and leaving them. (Proverbs 28:13)

Edison also recounted that he had tried a lot of things, but in trying these 'new ways' he found lots of ways that don't work. We oftentimes find ways that just 'don't work' in life and then we stop trying because we think we will never find the 'way' that will work. The thing that made Edison successful in his attempts at inventing was that he didn't stop when he had 10,000 ways that did not work - he was determined to find the ONE way that did! If you know anything about Edison, you will soon realize he was not content with failure - it created what he called a 'restlessness' within him. That restlessness caused him to not stop taking 'next steps' in life. I think we might learn something from him - next steps aren't easy, but they are necessary if we are to make forward progress!

Our failure really comes when we stop taking 'next steps'. When we settle into our sinfulness and just accept our failures in life, we abandon our mission. We were created to be a holy people, decisive in our actions, determined in our commitment, and demonstrative in our love. When we accept our failures as 'where we will always be' in life, then we wither and die right there. We cannot stop with the 10,000 times our steps didn't work in life - or even our 100,000 attempts to abandon our sin. Instead, we bring our sin to Christ, accept his grace, and take whatever the 'next step' is he asks us to take. Yes, it won't be easy. Yes, it is sometimes us 'repeating steps' we have taken before. There is no getting around it - the ONE way we need to find is there - we just have to take the next steps into it!

Edison didn't abandon his inventions just because they didn't work. In his case, he applied the principles of science to each failed attempt to see what went wrong. In our case, we apply the principles of grace as they apply to repentance - the confession and forsaking of our sin. Then we look at how we can use what comes out of our failures to take 'new steps' that don't result in the same failures. Yes, we will fail again on occasion, but be determined and decisive about your commitment to see each failure become the ground upon which you learn what steps not to take the next time. We aren't 'inventors' here, but we can learn from what inventors do. They don't give up because they fail. They learn from their failures and don't repeat those same steps again! Just sayin!