Nothing to Something

But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted. (I Peter 1:9-10)

Do we really understand that whatever we have is given to us by God? We might be rich or successful, but those riches and all that success comes from God enabling us to gain the riches and accomplish the tasks that have made us successful. It is quite easy to get a bit too prideful about what we have or what we have gained, but we must never cease to give God the glory, remembering to use what we have been given for Him. All we are, all we own, all we can do is a result of his goodness and grace in our lives.

We are chosen to be a holy people - God's hands and feet to a hurting world. Now more than ever, we need God's protection over our country, his guidance over our leadership, and his will to reign supreme. We might think we know what God is about to do, but we can never 'out-think' or 'out-guess' God's plans. As we consider all we have been given, we must also consider carefully how it is God wants us to put those things and talents to use for him.

From nothing to something, from rejected to accepted. Those words really tell the story of our lives. We might have been labeled as 'something' in this world, but without Christ in our lives the 'something' is really nothing. We can be at the highest position, given the highest of power on this earth, and still be nothing without God at the center of our lives. God's children are called (purposed) to be his instruments, to do his work and to speak out for him. We have been given much, but of those who have received much, much is required!

God's goodness and grace aren't meant to be hoarded or touted as something that gives us 'better standing'. In fact, it should humble us as we consider how much we have been given (entrusted with), and how it is we can put that to use to share the good news of grace in this world. We are called, chosen, and equipped. We didn't accomplish grace on our own - it was freely given! Just sayin!

The deepest renewal

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. (Desmond Tutu) 

But those who trust in the Lord will become strong again. They will be like eagles that grow new feathers. They will run and not get weak. They will walk and not get tired. (Isaiah 40:31)

As we walk throughout our day, weariness can come upon us after much toil and hard work, right? Did you know that we don't even need to toil to tire? Ever hear of a friend say they were more tired when they got out of bed than they were when they went to bed? Weariness is both a state of mind and body - it includes our spirit, soul, and all that makes us human. The 'strain' of life doesn't have to be physical - emotional strain can take more out of us than a hard day's labor. Sometimes we grow weary because we become dissatisfied with how long something is taking - like an answer to our prayers. Even the most 'balanced' individual can grow weary spiritually and emotionally. That is why it is so important that we recharge ourselves in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We can be all 'charged up' at the beginning of our day, or the challenge that lies ahead, but does that 'charge' always last? NO! We need time to recharge with Christ in the midst of it all. It is easy to get caught up in all that is going on around us and miss that God is beckoning us into a little time alone with him. Time in prayer, worship, and in the Word. Time that will recharge our 'batteries' and help us be ready for whatever is about to come next. We might try to push past the weariness, but the more we do, the harder it becomes to resist the things which arise from that weariness. Things like words that are a little too 'clipped' or 'brash', or perhaps withdrawal into an 'emotional dark hole' that seems to surround us with no way out. Before that happens - take time!

We only see light in the midst of the darkness because we have taken time to refill our spirit, settle our emotions, and reenergize our minds. There is no better place to find light for the situation than in the presence of Jesus. It isn't a 'room' as much as it is giving him room to work within us. We might think of the need to renew as going to a place, but God tells us it is him taking our place that actually brings the deepest renewal. Just sayin!

Refashioned Lives

Always be glad because of the Lord! I will say it again: Be glad. Always be gentle with others. The Lord will soon be here. Don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God. Then, because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will control the way you think and feel. (Philippians 4:5-7 CEV)

Gladness comes when we take pleasure in something. I like to find the perfect photo - the bee on the flower, leaf floating on water or maybe even the look of having caught a first fish on the face of a young child. It brings me pleasure to catch "just the right" moment. Gladness is a sense of heart where one experiences joy or pleasure. Gladness and happiness are very similar emotions - both based on finding pleasure in something or someone. Pleasure is really the capacity to enjoy what it is you have found. Our passage suggests a reason for gladness - because of the Lord! Simply put - we are possessed by him and he is re-purposing our lives. This should bring us great pleasure, for it brings him ultimate pleasure. 

His whole life has been dedicated to the purpose of finding lost lives, those cast off into the landfill of sin, and plucking that life from the place of rubble and rubbish. In taking up that life, he begins the work of re-crafting that life from one image to another. Jesus takes our lives and refashions them to resemble something other than what they once were. In so doing, beauty is produced - beauty that fills his ears, eyes and heart with praise! Jesus reminds us we are designed to be gentle giants. In essence, we know greatness simply because greatness dwells within us in the presence of Jesus. Although his presence brings access to great "power" within, he reminds us to be gentle with each other. Why? Love is his mode of operation - not the sword! Disciples are known by their love, not by the sword they carry!

We are to become stewards of prayer. A steward manages another person's property, acting as the "agent" of the other person. In reality, we are stewards of all Jesus gives us in his re-purposing of our lives. In turn, he calls us to lift both our own needs, and those of others in prayer - in reverent trust of the one who has re-created us for his purposes. We "steward" a life given back to us at the point of salvation - no longer demanding control, but realizing the one who owns our lives now has the right to ask us to live it for his glory and honor. In turn, he reminds us to stop worrying about things and people - instead, we are to bring them before him in prayer - as stewards of his grace, love, and mercy.

We are called to give thanks. When something is refashioned into something of usefulness, what is produced is a thing of purpose and beauty. We may not realize the original any longer because the "re-purposed" has more beauty than the original! Jesus makes our life which was once so confined to produce something of a beautiful melody for him in the form of thanksgiving, praise, and worship. We are called to think and feel differently. "Re-purposed" lives don't think the same way they once did. In fact, there is an exchange of thinking which occurs when we give our lives over to Jesus. Our thoughts begin to center on him, and in so doing, our emotions begin to be ordered into a new way of responding. Inner peace is a result of the melody of his grace and love played sweetly from the inner core of our being.

We may not see much we are glad for today simply because all we can see is the rubbish pile we have made of our lives. Herein is the beginning of our life's story - the damaged becomes new again - not in its former state, but in a new and glorious re-created, re-purposed life. A life fashioned by the hands of Jesus - to be used for his glory and honor. Nothing quite brings gladness in the same degree. Just sayin!

Prettied Up?

What a God! His road stretches straight and smooth. Every God-direction is road-tested. Everyone who runs toward him makes it. (Psalm 18:30)

I think some of us serve God for the "perks", while others of us are less concerned with those "perks". God doesn't want us more focused on the perks than we are on him. What makes the difference to him is that we bring the pieces of our lives to him and then allow him to put them together - sometimes with "perks" and other times just regular life, but secure!

David outlines: God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him. When I got my act together, he gave me a fresh start. Now I’m alert to God’s ways; I don’t take God for granted. Every day I review the ways he works; I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together, and I’m watching my step. God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes. (vs. 20-24) All the pieces of our lives - and for most of us there are many - placed in his hands affords us the opportunity to finally see the broken ones mended, the displaced ones brought back into the picture, and the difficult to fit ones made to fit perfectly.

Sometimes we think it is us getting our "act together" which results in God being able to go about this work in our lives. We don't even possess the ability to get our "act together" apart from the grace extended by our heavenly Father, so even that action on our part is because he innervates us to respond! Pieces are all we have to bring to God. All of us have somehow made a shamble of some part of our lives - maybe not totally in every respect, but at least in some area. For some of us, we have made a royal mess of things. The good news is that our messed-up lives are really something God embraces with his love and tender care.

They might look a little battered and "used" on the outside, but under his care, they become shiny and new again. God isn't ashamed of the "shell" of our lives. Nothing pleases God more than to see a broken-down life come right up to him and ask to be made new again! When God undertakes the care and tending of our lives, he does so with the end in mind - that we would all resemble the one who gave our lives so we could live again - Christ. In all matters related to "putting our lives together", God is at work not only getting the pieces to fit but getting them to fit so they bring glory to him.

The neat thing about how God works is that he allows us to "feel" this connection with him - knowing and experiencing his tender care in putting our lives back together. God often has to do a "rewrite" of the pages of our lives because we bring him a "text" with missing pages, tattered edges, and unfinished chapters. Every road we travel may not be straight and smooth - in fact, some have destroyed parts of our lives as a result of choosing to travel them. God lays out before us a straight and smooth path. We have to choose to merge our lives into that path, though.

We bring some pretty "road-weary" lives to God. He has a "form" to work with, but all the battered parts of our lives need his touch! We don't realize the missing all the missing parts and big flaws, but our lives look pretty used up and dingy. He sees the frame of our being and upon that frame, he begins the work of reconstructing our lives - for the frame was created in his image and it is that which he uses to set us right again.

God is more than delighted to have us bring our beaten down wrecks of a life to him - no need to doctor it up or make it appear to be something it is not. In genuine and humble fashion, we present our lives to him - complete with the broken, dinged, and messed up parts. In powerful and compassionate fashion, he embraces what we offer to him. God isn't concerned with our appearance - he is concerned with our heart. He wants us to draw near more than he wants us to be "prettied-up"! Just sayin!

So, you still 'trying'?

So now we have a high priest who perfectly fits our needs: completely holy, uncompromised by sin, with authority extending as high as God’s presence in heaven itself. Unlike the other high priests, he doesn’t have to offer sacrifices for his own sins every day before he can get around to us and our sins. He’s done it, once and for all: offered up himself as the sacrifice. The law appoints as high priests men who are never able to get the job done right. But this intervening command of God, which came later, appoints the Son, who is absolutely, eternally perfect. (Hebrews 7:26-28)

In the Old Testament (OT), there were religious leaders called "priests". The most important thing about the OT priest was that he was "set aside" from the rest of the community in which he dwelt for the specific purpose of all the duties associated with worship and sacrifice. They didn't hold down 'outside work', such as farming or carpentry. There was also this office of "High Priest". He was over all the other priests and saw to it they all knew their duties, but he had some duties of his own that the other priests could not perform. He had the important duty of being the one to offer the sin offering for the people - on the Day of Atonement. It is this role as High Priest that "foreshadowed" the work of Christ on our behalf as our one true High Priest.

Jesus perfectly fulfilled all the duties and requirements of the High Priest, but as our perfect sacrificial lamb, without spot or blemish, he also performed the role of the perfect sacrifice. Once and for all, the sacrifice was offered - leaving no need for further sacrifice. His role in dying for mankind's sin made all the OT required sacrifices no longer necessary. His role as High Priest also did away with the need for the priest as the one to be the "intercessor" between God and man. Two "systems" of known religious occurrences were done away with in his life, death, burial and resurrection - the role of the priesthood on earth as a kind of "mediator", and the need for sacrificial offerings to continue.

As the perfect offering, his blood was shed - making full and complete atonement for our sins (covered over, never to be remembered again, removed as far as the east is from the west). He is the only one now who stands making intercession for us before the heavenly Father, having opened the door of full access to God for those who will believe in him as their Savior. No longer needing a mediator, we enter into God's presence with boldness and confidence. Even the High Priest of the OT times didn't have a boldness or confidence, for if there was any impurity in his life, he could be struck dead in the presence of God in the Holy of Holies.

No other confidence is as great as what we enjoy because of our position IN Christ Jesus. No other position gives us such boldness. In ourselves, we could never get the "job done right" - that is why the OT Law of Moses included the provision for the yearly sin offering during the feast known as the Day of Atonement. It was offered over and over again each year - because the sacrifice of the young bull could never accomplish the forgiveness of our sin. It was a "type" or "symbol" of what Christ would accomplish as he was lifted up on that cross so many years ago. It "foreshadowed" his shedding of blood on our behalf. The perfect given for the imperfect.

He makes a way for us to enter into God's holy presence and ends all need for "works" on our part as a means of making us righteous. Here is the challenge for many of us - we don't fully comprehend the magnitude of Christ's finished work on our behalf, nor do we trust it as enough to give us such boldness and free access to the Holy God. It is tough to give up on a "system" which seemed to be so ingrained for so many years, so maybe that is one of the reasons Israel had a tough time embracing Jesus as Messiah when he came. They became very anchored to the way things had been done for all those years and forgot that the "type" could be set aside once the "real deal" was in their midst. Because we are "fully righteous" in Christ Jesus, we walk in the position we are placed into. If we want to continue in the old way of "trying" to live righteous when we are freely given "full righteousness" already, we probably don't fully understand the completed work of our High Priest. Just sayin!

The Confession of Communion

You don’t want penance; if you did, how gladly I would do it! You aren’t interested in offerings burned before you on the altar. It is a broken spirit you want—remorse and penitence. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not ignore. And Lord, don’t punish Israel for my sins—help your people and protect Jerusalem. And when my heart is right, then you will rejoice in the good that I do and in the bullocks I bring to sacrifice upon your altar. (Psalm 51:16-19)

Old Testament worship involved the bringing of 'sacrifices' to the Temple of God - bullocks, doves, sheaves of wheat. They were part of a 'liturgical system' of worship declared under the Law of Moses. The Law given to him by God as he communed with God on Mt. Sanai. That Law was merely a 'tutor' of sorts - something meant to point us to Christ - to the one 'perfect sacrifice' for all of mankind's sins. Within these verses we find a humbled and penitent servant - having confessed the 'stain' within his heart that his transgressions had left behind. The immediate 'go to' in those days may have been to turn to some form of physical sacrifice on the altar of God - to make 'atonement' for the sin. Yet, we find King David coming before God without a bullock or a ram - he merely brings his heart. Perhaps David recognized something - that God desires a humble and penitent heart MORE than he desires the 'offerings' of any other sort. 

This is something we all could learn as we approach the throne of grace - no 'sacrifice' is greater than to recognize our sin, bring it to the foot of the cross, and then to ask God to heal the sinner's heart. A broken spirit - a contrite and humble heart - this is the 'sacrifice' God desires of us. Our hearts having been deeply 'affected' by our guilt, we come, submitting the guilt and shame of our sin to the work of the cross in our lives. I don't know about you, but to admit my shame and guilt is not always easy. I sometimes believe it is just easier to sweep it under the rug, but every time I have even considered that means of dealing with my sin, the rug is moved! I have come to believe there is no 'shame' in admitting my failures - there is only grace and goodness awaiting the acknowledgement of my sin. 

As we look again at what David tells us here, we might notice he says we 'FIRST' come with a humble and contrite heart, then we can bring our sacrifices. He didn't turn away from the teachings he had been given all his life - he merely recognized a much deeper meaning in those sacrifices. Maybe he knew the bullock or ram would be fine, but until he made things right through confession of his sin and the seeking of God's forgiveness, all the rest wouldn't really matter. God might prompt us to lay down all the 'good deeds' and 'physical sacrifices' for a bit when what he is really after is for us to recognize our need for his mercy and grace. Sin isn't dealt with by 'doing good deeds' and 'keeping the Law'. It is recognized, acknowledged, brought to the foot of the cross, and then covered by a blood sacrifice greater than any other - the blood of Jesus. 

It is when our hearts are right that we are restored to communion with God. Communion - the sharing of our intimate thoughts, our feelings, and opening of our minds, hearts, and souls to his touch. It is in communion with him that we are able to effectively and purposefully 'do good works', for it is in the confession of communion that we are made whole. Just sayin!