Tag: afflictions

Unfixable Things, [Desperation]

sisyphis-bwLife is jam-packed with problems.  Money, marriage, children, work, health, church and so much more.  In Greek mythology, we find lessons from a man named Sisyphus.  He was the king of Corinth, and known to be a rascal. He was conniving and arrogant  (a good description, “hubris”). The gods hate hubris in people.

Somewhere along the line, he really ticked someone off and he was condemned for all eternity to roll a huge boulder up a large hill.  He would toil and sweat, to reach the top, only to have that boulder roll down the hill.  He would have to start all over again– endlessly repeating this work. Up and down– forever and ever. (Apparently– he’s at it today.)

I suggest that there are quite a few things that are inherently unfixable. It certainly seems like we are going to resolve them.  It may even seem like we’re making some headway.  When we get close, our boulder rolls down the hill. And we stand there looking dumbfounded, wondering what we can do differently next time. Often when we are aware of the tedium and the monotony– the repetitive effort; it seems about time that we do something different.

But there are also hard, and ghastly things, issues that we will never change.  We try, and then we try harder.  But it is apparent we can never make things so they click.  These are simply unfixable from our point of view. We’re completely– “over our head.” And, guess what?  We really are.

But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things. 42 Only one thing is important. Mary has chosen the better thing, and it will never be taken away from her.”

Luke 10:41-42, NCV

Making things work should never be your top priority.  We face problems that in ourselves we will never correct.  I must tell you this, we can’t turn these issues into our primary focus.

  1. The Lord Jesus is to be all that we seek.  He is our first priority. We are to concentrate on His dear presence– above all else.
  2. Perhaps, instead of seeking solutions for our lives, we should be seeking His face?
  3. Apart from His power we will forever labor and toil.

“Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.”

Philippians 4:13, MSG

We are to talk to Him about these things that perplex us. I would suggest that these convoluted problems are the Fathers’ way of driving us to Him.  Eternity is now our real home, and we must come to the place in God where we seek Him now, just like we will in heaven.  We can quit rolling our boulder up the hill.  We will cease and desist. Instead we will trust and seek His face.

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. ” 

Ps. 32:8, ESV

“But we are citizens of heaven and are eagerly waiting for our Savior to come from there. Our Lord Jesus Christ 21 has power over everything, and he will make these poor bodies of ours like his own glorious body. ” 

Phil. 3:20-21, CEV

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The Test of a Profound Silence, [Extreme Faith]

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But Jesus gave her no reply, not even a word. Then his disciples urged him to send her away. “Tell her to go away,” they said. “She is bothering us with all her begging.”

Matthew 15:23, NLT

This is exceptional.  Jesus is always engaging people around him.  He teaches and preaches, fully energized by the Holy Spirit.  He is a veritable hurricane of goodness and love.  He heard every request, and healed every disease.  But yet.  On this occasion he is completely silent.

The woman’s piteous crying, and begging was seemingly ignored.  “If Jesus won’t respond to me, I will go to his followers.”  She presses, and cajoles.  She falls on her knees.  Have you ever seen a person truly beg?  It is a very disconcerting experience.  Yet, Jesus does nothing, in spite of being able to do all things.

She is a Canaanite; a pagan widow, and her daughter was demonized.  Curiously, there was a large heathen temple to Eshmun, the Canaanite god of healing, was just three miles down the road.  But her desperate cry was for something real.  Something authentic and real that would heal her daughter’s affliction.  Only Jesus has what she needs.

Jesus is astonishingly silent.  He stands and sees, he hears her cries.  She is sobbing, clutching at the disciples robes, disheveled and distressed.  It was a desperate scene. Very ugly and very sad.

Jesus responds to his disciple’s plea.  Then there is something that seems like a negotiation.  A protracted conversation with a ‘seemingly’ reluctant Messiah.  It is somewhat disturbing as we listen.  Jesus seems to treat her callously.  I have always been mystified by this, troubled by his behavior. I can only conclude that what he did was necessary in some way.

But the Son of God sees through this. 

And then she makes an incredible statement.  Jesus is suddenly amazed at her faith in him.  This faith is what he has been waiting to see. She may have known despair, but that isn’t enough. Jesus leads her from the edge. Until she moved to a position of belief, nothing will change. Faith seems to change everything.  This is key.  It isn’t her words that alters things– it is her heart!  At that moment, Jesus declares a healing for her daughter.  She is now free from the demon’s grip.

So often I have also felt the pressure from the darkness.  I am often embattled and driven into a despair that seems to cripple me.  But Jesus is waiting for me, to come to him through an unflinching faith.  My good works can never, ever be enough.  I’m just like a dog, waiting for food under the table.  I have little, if any, decorum or sophistication.  There is nothing at all, to commend me to him. Nothing at all.

“Our Lord sometimes yet seems to be silent to His people when they cry to Him. To all their earnest supplications He answers not a word. Is His silence a refusal? By no means. Ofttimes, at least, it is meant only to make the suppliants more earnest, and to prepare their hearts to receive richer and greater blessings. So when Christ is silent to our prayers, it is that we may be brought down in deeper humility at His feet, and that our hearts may be made more fit to receive heaven’s gifts and blessings.”

–J.R. Miller

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Someday Soon, We Will Wear White [Heaven]

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by Robert Murray McCheyne

As long as you live in your mortal body, you will be faulty in yourself. It is a soul-ruining error to believe anything else. Oh, if ye would be wise, be often looking beneath the robe of the Redeemer’s righteousness to see your own deformity. It will make you keep faster hold of his robe, and keep you washing in the fountain.

Now, when Christ brings you before the throne of God, he will clothe you with his own fine linen, and present you faultless. O it is sweet to me to think how soon you shall be the righteousness of God in him. What a glorious righteousness that can stand the light, of God’s face! Sometimes a garment appears white in dim light: when you bring it into the sunshine you see the spots. O prize, then the Divine righteousness, which is your covering.

My heart sometimes sickens when I think upon the defects of believers; when I think of one Christian being fond of company, another vain, another given to evil speaking. O aim to be holy Christians, bright, shining Christians. The heaven is more adorned by the large bright constellations than by many insignificant stars; so God may be more glorified by fine bright Christian than by many indifferent ones. Aim at being that one.

We shall be faultless. He that begun will perform it. We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. When you lay down this body, you may say, Farewell lust for ever, farewell my hateful pride, farewell hateful selfishness, farewell strife and envying, farewell being ashamed of Christ. O this makes death sweet indeed. Let’s long to depart and to be with Christ.

 

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……

For more from this preacher, you may want to start with these links:

http://www.wholesomewords.org/biography/bmcheyne3.html

http://dowboy.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/robert-murray-mccheyne/

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Tempting Offers [Enticement]

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“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry.”

Matthew 4:1-2

Jesus was incredibly human.  We can never overlook this, or minimize this fact.  Jesus has just experienced the presence of God in a bone-shaking way after his baptism.  And instead of building on what has happened, he gets turned and directed to leave and go into the wilderness.

The Holy Spirit has initiated this.  The Spirit is leading, directing Jesus to the solitary places.  He has an appointment, and He must keep it.  Satan, the evil prince wants to test Jesus, to put Him on trial.  I believe these examinations are real and substantial.  Because of Jesus’ humanity, He is vulnerable.

Jesus fasted, “and became very hungry”.  His physical defenses were at their very lowest.  He simply could not maintain His walls in this level.  He will need to rely on the Word of God, exclusively.  And perhaps this is the lesson that the Holy Spirit intends to convey.

Jesus overcame each “real” temptation with a promise.  It was His only defense as His enemy subtly and malevolently adapted to take down Jesus.  The Word has become a powerful weapon, and Jesus wields it deftly and precisely. It was his escape hatch.

“The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure” (1 Cor. 10:13).

On the other hand, most people who want to be delivered from temptation, would still like to keep in touch. We will send it our forwarding address. This is tragic.

Why are church leaders so committed to the study of the Bible?  Because it is the modus operandi for believers in every time and every place.  The promises are truth wrapped in words.  Disciples from every age and theology have found the Bible to be a razor-sharp spiritual weapon.

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” 

Hebrews 4:15-16

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