Good Enough

I was talking with friends this week about how some people, Christian or otherwise, seem to have this idea that all we need to do to get into heaven is to be "good enough".  Somehow, we tend to think that if our good behaviors outweigh the bad on some cosmic scale, that we will be able to make it on our own merit.  As good as that may sound, it just isn't biblical.  If that were true, Jesus would never have had to die. 

It is natural for us to want to maintain control over every aspect of our lives, and salvation seems to be included in our endeavors.  It is so much easier to have a list of do's and don'ts to check off, than to accept the fact that "all our righteous acts aer like filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6).  The pharisees, in Jesus' day, were an example of salvation by "works".  They had rules for everything, including more than 600 on how to keep the Sabbath holy.  They were not even allowed to spit on the ground, because that would create dirt, and would therefore be working on the Sabbath.

While I am not advocating giving up on trying to do good, I am saying that it is much more important that we maintain a relationship with Jesus than focus on following the rules.  The Bible says to "believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved."  Believe.  Not do, not don't, no list of requirements.  Just believe.

Jesus, himself, while teaching about the coming judgement and salvation, said, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, "lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?'  Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you.  Away from me you evil doers!"

Now, you can argue that the miracles and prophesying were not from God, but my point here is that even sincere Christians can fall into the trap of working so hard "for the Lord" that we have no time for a relationship with him.  He wants us to "know" him.  Spend time with Him.  Pray, study, talk to him, LISTEN to him.

The apostle Paul, who had an amazing spiritual resume, brings this point home:  "  ⁷ But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in^[a] Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

We need, above all things, to know Christ.  Then, and only then, can our works count, because only then will our behavior match our thoughts, and those must be in tune with his.

It is not what we do, but Who we know.  What a difference it makes to live a life seeking to know and be known by God, to build a relationship with Him, rather than spinning our wheels trying to be good enough.

Idols

In my daily devotions, I am reading through the books of Kings and Chronicles.  I am always amazed when I read this history part of the Bible that the people turned so easily to idol worship.  I know this was written in a different time and place, so it is easy for me to initially think that this has nothing to do with me.  I don't know anyone that worships idols made of wood or stone.  I really can't relate.  But I need to stop a minute and think about that.


In American culture, idol worship isn't easy to spot.  I know in other cultures there are obvious statues and shrines, evidence of the worship of a pantheon of gods, but not so in America.  Here, the prevailing thought seems to be that educated people don't worship any god.  We've evolved beyond that.  But to what?  Where is our heart?  Where are our thoughts?  My first thought is that in place of the worship of God, we turn to materialism.  We use all of our time and talent to amass more and more stuff.  Bigger, better, and more.  So much stuff that we need to rent storage facilities to house it all.  That is what we live for.  Now, maybe we don't worship the big screen LED tv, but we spend our time and energy on it.   I could see this as idol worship in a broad sense.

Then I thought a little further.  Maybe our idol worship is even more than that.  There is a line in a song by Michael Card that says, "we have made You in our image, so our faith's idolatry."  That's heavy.   We want to worship God, but not the powerful God of the Bible that spoke the world into existence and gave us the Ten Commandments.  That God holds us accountable.  That God has rules and standards.  We want a God that is more like, well, Barney.  Happy all the time.  Easy going.  No committments.  No rules.  He is just there to make sure we are happy and healthy and have everything we want and need.  A god that serves us!  Wait a minute!!! That, then, makes us God!

So, when I read the struggles of the people in the time of the Kings and Chronicles, I can see that they are not just turning from worshipping the true God, they are turning to the current culture.  They don't want to be different, to stand out and worship a different God.  They just want  to be like everybody else.  When I put it that way, it sounds a little too familiar.   Something to think about.

Thoughts on Marriage, Part 2

The second lesson that I learned is that the Christian ritual of marriage was designed to teach us about God.

Just as God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one, a man and a woman become one when they unite in marriage. (See Genesis 2:24). This means that when I decide to get married, I am no longer just one person. While I certainly have the right to be and to do anything I want, and so does my husband, if we are living as "one", then we will make our decisions based on the good of our relationship, not on our own selfish desires.

In addition, marriage teaches us about the character of God. Jesus calls the church his "bride" throughout the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God used the life of a prophet, named Hosea, to teach us about his character. In this strange story, God tells Hosea to take a prostitute, Gomer, as his wife. Hosea marries her, and she repeatedly runs off with other men, pursuing her own desires, making her own living, independent of Hosea's needs, and breaking his heart repeatedly. He continues to seek after her, and he even buys her back with his own money. This is so like us and our relationship with God. He asks us for 1/10th of our money and 1/7th of our time. But we choose to do things our own way, to seek after our own desires. And he patiently runs after us, buying us back with his own blood.


When we give up our individual rights to do what is right for our families, we learn about sacrifice, as Jesus gave up his rights as the King of Kings to live on earth and take on our sins and shed his blood for us. When our spouses hurt us deeply, and we forgive them, we learn about how much it must hurt God when we turn from him, and what it must be like for him to forgive us.


Marriage is certainly about love, and relationship, but it is so much more than that. It is about trusting God, about understanding bigger truths that we would otherwise know. It is not a relic from days gone by, but a lasting sacriment, to teach us holy things.

Thoughts on Marriage, Part 1

Over the past few weeks, the same topic has come up in several conversations:  marriage.  What do I think of gay marriage?  Should a believer be allowed to divorce an unbeliever?  How do you know if your marriage is really over?

Now, I am not a marriage counsellor, or even a counsellor at all, for that matter, but I have life experience, and I have gleaned much wisom from the older folks I care for in the nursing home.  Moreover, I have read the Bible, and it has much to say on this topic, so I indulged these conversations.

Two things that I have learned, I have decided to share here.  First, I think our culture has, for the most part, given up on marriage.  it used to be that when two people would fall in love, they would promise to be together "for better or for worse," and that would settle it.  The idea of divorce wasn't even part of the equation.  I find it ironic that today, the homosexuals are begging for the right to get married, and the Christians are throwing it away, as a useless tradition that no longer has any value.

I think that we have lost sight of what marriage is all about.  Like we do in every other arena of life these days, we think it is all about us.  What am I going to get out of this relationship?  As soon as it no longer meets my needs, I am done with it, and I move on to the next thing that may bring me happiness.  News flash:  Our spouses were not created by God to meet our every need.  That empty or lonely spot we have within us is meant to be filled with a relationship with God.  No human being, no matter how much we love them or they love us, will ever fill that void.  We cannot get our needs met by anyone else.

The older folks understood this.  When they got married, they knew they were going to face trials.  They expected hardships.  They stuck together and worked through the hard times, and they were closer and had a stronger love for each other each time they overcame another obstacle.  If you ask me, we give up much too easily.  If we would stick it out in the hard times, we would not only gain a better relationship, but we would develop skills that could help us in every area in our lives.

So, lessen # 1 is "never give up."

Once Upon a time

I have been watching a new tv show during prime time this season, called, "Once upon a time."  This is outside of my normal viewing genre, but I was intrigued by the storyline, and now I am hooked.  If you haven't seen it, it is basically a twist on all the fairy tale stories that we all grew up with.  The characters have been taken from their world to ours, their century to ours, and the stories are a bit different than I remember them....

Last week's episode was thought provoking.  In this episode, Rumpelstiltskin has a son.  The son hates seeing the changes that have taken place in his father's life, due to the magic that he inherited, which began to eat away at him, changing his heart toward evil.  The son searches for a cure, but instead is offered an opportunity to take himself and his father out of their world into a world without magic, where the two would be able to live a "normal" life.

What a twist!  Don't we all too often pray to God for a miracle, a bit of magic if you will, to fix our problems?  Wouldn't we rather have a pill, potion, or magic spell that would take away our pain, rather than to have to face life's battles the hard way?

But I praise God that this is not how life is for us.  We do have to struggle, but it is in the struggles that we learn and grow.  I praise God that he is consistent and unchanging.  Long ago, he put the laws of nature in place, so that we don't have to worry that some enemy could come after us and turn us instantly into toads!  We can count on gravity, cause and effect, and all the other laws of physics as we navigate this world.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Who is God?

I am reading now into 1 Samuel.  I noticed something new this morning. (Isn't it amazing how you can read the Bible a hundred times and still find something new each time?)  Saul had just been annointed King of Israel.  He was immediately in heavy conflict with the Philistines and had to do battle against them several times.  This was the reason that the Israelites wanted a king in the first place; they were tired of being kicked around by their neighbors (which wouldn't have happened if they had trusted God and defeated all of their enemies immediately, as God had told them to do).  Anyway, Saul seemed to show this pattern of asking God, through the prophet Samuel, what he was supposed to do, then going off and doing it, but only partly.  He would go into the battle and fight and win, but when it came to following God's instructions, ie: destroying everything and not taking any person or property for himself, or performing a sacrifice in a certain way, or even waiting for Samuel to arrive at a certain time or place, Saul would do his own thing, and then try to justify himself after the fact.  Hmmm...this pattern reminds me of someone....

What I noticed, though, was that each time Saul met with Samuel, he would talk about "the LORD your God" rather than "the LORD my God."  I think this was the root of the problem.  Saul saw God as someone "out there" helping him, guiding him, but not really being a part of him.  The Bible says that the spirit of the Lord came upon Saul when he was annointed, but somehow Saul never really accepted God as part of himself.  He didn't see any connection.  It wasn't a personal relationship; God was just an advisor. 

So sad that this happens all too frequently to us as well.  Our concept of God really determines how we respond to him.  Do we follow him wholeheartedly, even when we are asked to do something that is not what we would like to do?  God instructed Saul to destroy his enemies and not take anything for himself.  He brought back the best of the livestock, supposedly for a sacrifice that God did not ask him to make.  Do we sometimes go against God's clear direction, telling ourselves that doing it our way will actually be more pleasing to him?   For example, one might say,  "Maybe I don't have time to spend with God in prayer or Bible study, but I am making a lot of money, so I can pay more to the church."  Would that really be acceptable?  If God is truly God in our lives, if he lives within us, if he is "my God" rather that just God, wouldn't that make all the difference?

The Land at Peace

Well, I am now finished with Joshua and reading into Judges.  I found it interesting that at the conclusion of every passage concluding the conquest of the Israelites over a particular king or tribe, the "Land found rest from war" for x number of years.  I realize that the point of this section of scripture is that whenever the Israelites would follow God, they would be victorious, but when they would reject God and start worshipping the idols of the surrounding cultures, they would lose ground and become enslaved by their neighbors or at least tormented by them.  God was trying to teach his "children" the way we teach ours, with privileges and punishements.

What got my attention, however, is that it is kind of the same thing in my life.  When I am in crisis, I cry out to the Lord for deliverance.  When he helps me, I find "rest from war" for a while.  Then, it seems, I get more lax in my prayer and devotion time and begin to think that somehow I am in charge of my own life and that I have it all together.  On my own.  No need for Him.  Then, the cycle starts all over.

I don't fall into idol worshipping, like the Israelites do, but I might as well.  I fall into the trap of self-sufficiency.  I become my own idol in a way.

I am so grateful for God's word, with the examples of his patient endurance while we mortals struggle to stay on the path he so graciously lays out before us.