The Plumbline

O Lord, I give my life to you. I trust in you, my God! Do not let me be disgraced, or let my enemies rejoice in my defeat. No one who trusts in you will ever be disgraced, but disgrace comes to those who try to deceive others. (Psalm 25:1-3) If you have ever approached God with a bit of 'hey, God, I need your help' prayers, then you know how it is to feel a bit useless, helpless, and at risk for some reason. There is absolutely no better place to take your 'hey, God, I need your help' issues, for he is the only one capable to meet those needs. No one who trusts in God to help will ever be disappointed, or stand in the midst of the battle disgraced or defeated. Disgrace might be the loss of respect for some, but it can also be the feeling of shame that comes from doing something we might now find ourselves regretting painfully. God's answer to that feeling of shame is repentance - to turn away from whatever brought those feelings and embrace his grace. There is absol...

For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile. This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.” (Romans 1:16-17) Have you ever been 'ashamed' of something you have said, done, or believed? I have and it didn't leave me feeling all that good! Why? Shame has a way of 'eating at you'. You feel 'guilty' all the time, and your emotions range from embarrassment to inferiority. Somehow, the enemy of our soul is delighted anytime there is this fear of dishonor, a sense of disgrace, emotions of disappointment, and feelings of extreme condemnation. This is not the way God wants us to live. He wants us to shed our shame as we come to him for when sin has been erased, shame has no place.  There might be times when we feel a bit...

Troubles multiply for those who chase after other gods. (Psalm 16:4)  As we are reminded in Proverbs 17, "Sensible people keep their eyes glued on wisdom, but a fool’s eyes wander to the ends of the earth. Foolish children bring grief to their father and bitterness to the one who gave them birth." (vs. 24-25) Run away from God and toward anything else that we embrace in place of God in our lives, and we will soon know the bitterness that comes from pursuing these 'false gods'. Kids do a wide variety of things that parents may label as 'sweet', 'cute', or 'precious', but God will always label our wayward desire to put anything else in his place in our lives as 'sin'. Reject God by not putting him in his right place as Lord of our lives and we will soon reap the 'reward' of that rebellious spirit - the consequences may not be all that kind to us. If you have been anything like me, you might just know there is a certain amount of ...

Have you ever been in a spot where someone is trying to find a way to accuse you of something - doing nothing wrong, you are under attack and your reputation is taking one hit after another? Jesus healed the sick - that's not wrong. He fed the hungry - not wrong again. He reached out to the rejected, poor, and those society rejected - still not wrong. Yet, no matter how much 'good' he did, the religious leaders sought to find something - anything - they could 'use against him'. Why? He threatened them by his goodness, gentleness, gracefulness, and his claims to be God's Son. Threatened by truth - isn't that just like us to find something wrong with truth? No matter what, Jesus isn't going to compromise who he is or what he does. We can fight against truth all we want, but the more we fight against it, the harder it will be to resist it!  As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of ...

Do you think God wants to judge anyone 'guilty' as they stand before him? If you know anything about scripture, you will know it is quite the opposite - for God "did not send his Son into the world to judge the world guilty, but to save the world through him." (John 3:17) God's greatest joy is to receive us each into his great big family through the work of his Son, Jesus. If we desire to be free of guilt, we only need ask for that gift! The Light has come into the world, but they did not want light. They wanted darkness, because they were doing evil things. All who do evil hate the light and will not come to the light, because it will show all the evil things they do. But those who follow the true way come to the light, and it shows that the things they do were done through God.” (John 3:19-21) When we ask for light, we receive it and so much more. Grace comes in waves upon waves. Aren't you glad that grace is limitless? How is it that grace begins to do more...

All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God... God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So... we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first. If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers. (I John 4:15-21) Fear of judgment - what might that look like? Constantly trying to 'do' better, but never really trusting in the work of Christ in your life. Thinking you must 'clean up your act' in ...

Lord, have mercy on me...a sinner. Those words speak volumes. When we finally get past our pride and begin to see ourselves realistically, we are on the right path. Pride gets in our way so many times - giving us 'reason' and 'permission' to compare ourselves one with another. This is dangerous because these are faulty comparisons. As I have already said this week - there is no degree to sin - all sin is destructive to us and possibly even to others. Pride is hard to identify in our lives sometimes, but it is indeed a 'big deal'.  He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my inc...

Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth. (Ephesians 1:7) Abundantly free - how many of us live as though we were set free and now live free? Most of us struggle with some form of guilt (because we did something wrong) or shame (because we believe we are bad because we have done wrong). Guilt is meant to drive us to a place of repentance; shame just keeps us believing we will never 'measure up' and will always be lacking in some way. Either way, we are likely not living free if we are gi...

When I was much younger I first heard the saying, "Mountains out of Molehills". Have you ever heard that one? It is that kind of behavior that some would refer to as 'histrionic' - kind of always recalling the past and making WAY more out of it than we should. There have been times I have latched onto a memory of something I have done or said and done just that - made WAY more out of it than I should have. It was a 'slip' of the tongue, an action not becoming a child of the King, or a moment when all sensibilities just melted away and I indulged way too much. In an of themselves, those things mattered, but they didn't deserve the continued attention I paid to them by looking back all the time and recounting the 'depth of my sin'. We make mountains out of what really was just a little puff of dust in the scheme of things! A "mountain-maker" is kind of 'over-reactive' - there just isn't the 'substance' to make a mountain...

We ALL make wrong choices. We ALL handle them in one way or another. Some of us have figured out we cannot 'handle' them all by ourselves. Do you ever feel like your "wrong choices" are just staring you in the face all the time? You try to move on, but they just keep "getting in your grill". No amount of "soaking" in our pity seems to take the stain of those choices away, does it? There seems to be no escape, no matter how much we think we are 'dealing with' them. We need God's help if we are to ever be really free of our wrong choices - we will just keep repeating the pattern we have established until we get his help! Generous in love—God, give grace! Huge in mercy—wipe out my bad record. Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry. I know how bad I've been; my sins are staring me down. (Psalm 51:1-3) We need God to "wipe out" our bad record, don't we? When we think of the term "wipe out", we a...

I was listening to a Christian song the other day that made me ask if we really do make 'mountains' out of molehills in our lives simply because we won't let go of our shame. Dare I admit it, I probably do this more than I actually realize? How about you? Do you have trouble letting go of your missteps and things you've already confessed to God, but somehow just feel like you need to 'keep confessing' them to him? It is likely you and I do this because we don't really trust God's grace to be complete, final, and trustworthy. Somehow we think we have to do more, confess harder, get worked up a little bit, or just beat ourselves up with our sin just a little bit more if we are ever to be free from the load of guilt we carry because of it. The opposite is the truth, but we hold onto our mistaken beliefs because we don't fully understand grace. Grace isn't just an action in our lives - it is a person - Christ. Where Christ dwells, there is no room fo...

A great many of us would admit that there are "chapters" or "portions" of our lives that we'd like no one to actually remember or know about at all. We have some failures we'd rather no one really knew about, dreams that seem kind of silly when pondered by anyone other than us, and problems with memories that we just cannot seem to let loose of no matter how hard we try. These "pages" or "portions" of our lives are worked into our lives as 'indelible ink' is worked into paper. It is through the passage of time and the events of the days gone by that they form into 'permanent' parts of our lives. Most people don't have the guts to invite God to investigate their life - to read those "hidden chapters" like they were an open book. Most don't want God to get second-hand knowledge of their actions, attitudes, or attributes - we'd rather rest in the assurance that he gets this information about us 'firs...

There are times when we reduce God to our perception of the circumstances rather than the bigness of his power and grace! We bring him to our level rather than coming up to his. "God wants us to believe Him to be huge, even if we don't know what to believe Him for in a particular situation and circumstance. I can believe God to be God, to come and show Himself mighty and merciful in that situation, even if I don't really know biblically what I'm to ask Him for." (Beth Moore) The more we reduce God to our level, the less likely we are to ever believe he is "big enough" or "bigger than" our circumstances. Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if we don’t feel guilty, we can come to God with bold confidence.  And we will receive from him whatever we ask because we obey him and do the things that please him. (I John 4:20-22 NLT) Guilt is probably the number one thing that gets us bogg...

Izaak Walton was an English writer who often spoke in terms of loss - not in a negative way, but in a very thought provoking manner. For example, he once said, "The person who loses his conscience has nothing left worth keeping." He also reminds us that "no man can ever lose what he never had". Probably one my favorite quotes from Mr. Walton is: "God has two dwellings; one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart."  He certainly hit that one on the head! I am certain God dwells in the heart of meek - for no other pursuit, self-help process, or therapy session can truly produce meekness in a man's heart. True thankfulness also springs forth from a heart that has become intimately acquainted with grace. Yes, we can be thankful without grace, but it is fleeting. Deep, lasting gratitude is only possible where grace has had an affect. When the law came into the picture, sin grew and grew; but wherever sin grew and spread, God’s  grace  was th...

We might call a person who really doesn't like to be around other people a recluse.  We might think of this person as living in a secluded area, or in a house with tall shrubs all around so as to keep people out and their "secret lives" secret.  In reality, anyone who lives "shut off" from the world is living a life of a recluse.  I am not much into quantum theory, although I have had the privilege of speaking with some amazingly intelligent men and women who do very well in this field.  I do appreciate some of the principles they teach, one of which is best stated by Erwin Schrodinger, an Austrian Physicist who studied in this field.  He said, "For a solitary animal, egoism is a virtue that tends to preserve and improve the species; in any kind of community it becomes a destructive vice."  Well said, Mr. Schrodinger!  As long as we live with ourselves and engage with no others throughout this lifetime, we might just find our egocentric lifestyle exac...

Have you ever given anyone an "opening" to just all out tell you anything they wanted?  I have - a word of warning here - it is not always what you might want to hear!!!  Sometimes you learn things about yourself - other times you learn things about the other person - and sometimes you learn things about other people not even involved in the conversation!  Imagine being in the most "open" and "sharing" of relationships with someone.  I like to call this a relationship with transparency and intimacy - the freedom to share your heart.  You want to share things which you might not want to share with other people, right?  I think God gives an open door to each of us to enter into this type of relationship with him.  We can come boldly into his presence, sit right down and "unload" even the deepest and darkest of secrets - all with the confidence of knowing he will take what we say only as far as OUR relationship!  It stays there because he knows the ...

Pursue:  to follow in order to overtake, capture; to proceed in accordance with the plan or purpose.   The most important part of this definition is the word "follow".  Did you ever stop to consider all the things in life you "follow".  In Facebook "speak", we "follow" our friends - keeping up with their lives through the social networking feed we obtain from their posts.  In terms of a military command, when we "follow" an order, we are doing exactly as we have been instructed - not veering from the original intent of the order.  We "follow" certain news events because they catch our eye and stimulate some form of curiosity within.  In all these examples, we "follow" or "pursue" because there is something we count on as a "benefit" to us.  If we "follow", maybe we will learn something, be kept safe, or have the inside info on what is going on.   Whoever pursues righteousness and unfai...

I was listening to a song on the way to work yesterday.  In the verse, a thought crossed my mind which I took as a seed thought for our study today.  The basics of the song inferred we stand on mountains of shame.  Dare I say we do this more than we may actually realize?   When wickedness arrives,  shame 's not far behind; contempt for life is contemptible.  (Proverbs 18:3 The Message) Have you ever heard the saying, "You are making mountains out of molehills"?  In the purest sense, this describes our tendency to respond "disproportionately" to something.  We all have a tendency to exaggerate a situation once in a while.  Yet, as it comes to our shame over misdeeds, I think we start out standing on a molehill and before long it advances to a mountain. We don't have moles in my neck of the woods, but we do have prairie dogs.  Those tiny mounds of dirt they push up as they burrow into the ground are certainly not very "ominous" in ap...

Affirm your promises to me— promises made to all who fear you.  Deflect the harsh words of my critics—b ut what you say is always so good.   See how hungry I am for your counsel; preserve my life through your righteous ways! (Psalm 119:38-40 The Message)   Reassure me of your promise,  made to those who fear you.   Help me abandon my shameful ways;  for your regulations are good.   I long to obey your commandments!   Renew my life with your goodness. (Psalm 119:38-40 The New Living Translation) Sometimes we need to see things written a little differently to help us understand the purpose of what is being written.  From our passage today, let's look at a few similar words that have some very unique meaning: Affirm and Reassure - Affirm carries the meaning of remaining true to that which has been promised.  It is the idea of confirming or ratifying an agreement.  David is asking God to give him confirmation that his promise...