Where to Meet God

 

 In our Ash Wednesday worship service (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M7dgGWufo0), I invited our church to practice silence and solitude as spiritual disciplines this year in the season of Lent. The challenge is, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, spend 30 minutes a day in silence and solitude. I believe God will speak to you, in the silence, if you take up this practice

            I found it to be difficult. In the silence, I think about the NCAA basketball tournament, the workout I’m going to try to get done at the YMCA, the tasks I need to get accomplished that afternoon, and 1000 other things. As soon as I drive one distraction from my mind, another takes its place. Some days I can get really quiet and centered so that I give God my full attention. Other days, I spend 30 minutes reaching for God with one hand and fending off competing thoughts with the other.

            This practice takes practice. This very morning, frustrated, I started writing in my journal about my frustration. I was drawn to Lamentations 3:23. God’s mercy is new every morning. God always has more grace to give, and I always need it, and He always gives it. So I thought, if God gives me grace, I’ll extend grace to myself. I finished a distracted 30 minutes. Tomorrow, I’ll try again.

            That’s my word for you. Try again. And again. And again. Relationships demand commitment and sticktoitiveness. In silence, we tune out other stimuli in order to give God our full attention. Learning to be still; learning to hear with the heart; it all takes effort and trial and error. If today’s effort in silent mediation faltered, try again tomorrow.

“It is good to sit alone in silence” (Lamentations 3:27). My prayer is first, you’ll try this, silent prayer, every day, 30 minutes; and second, as you do, you’ll discover why the writer of Lamentations says this is “good.” It is because the solitude and silence are where we meet God.

Out, into the World

 

Jesus tells his disciples, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. … Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Acts 1:8; Matthew 28:17).  Anyone who feels uncomfortable with the imperative on Christians to share their faith and lead others to follow Jesus needs to take that discomfort up with him.  The call to be witnesses and evangelists, comes from Jesus, so if we don’t like the idea of trying to influence others by introducing them to him, we need to take our dislike to him.  Don’t complain to the pastor that you think evangelism is spiritually arrogant or culturally imperialistic.  Take it up with the giver of the command, Jesus.

            I took our youth group for a walk on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, Sunday afternoon, when the weather was so intoxicatingly pleasant.  With social-distancing easing up a bit and the weather so nice, everyone was out.  College students; town residents; the street was abuzz with life.  We were able to catch a glimpse of a bit of the world Jesus wants us to evangelize.

            Refuge (the Hillside young adult small group) has been following the series “In Pursuit of Jesus,” https://inpursuitofjesus.net/.  Pastor Rasool Berry travels the world looking for signs of the presence of Jesus, and he finds them in New York City, Singapore, Sweden, and other places.  Viewing these videos, we get more impressions of the world Jesus sends us to, in order to be his witnesses.  I highly recommend you check this out.

            Evangelism is not easy and can feel kind of icky if we conceive of it as trying to sell strangers something they don’t want to buy.  But, if we can learn to see the people we meet as neighbors, and if we can love them deeply, and if we can think of evangelism as sharing the most wonderful truth that all people need, then we can embrace the call.  To be Christian is to be called by Jesus.  Will we answer?

            Let one of your Lenten practices be prayer for evangelism.  Pray that people who don’t know the Lord will come to know him through the testimony of humble, loving Christ-followers.  Ask God to help you see how he wants you to share your testimony.  Ask Him to infuse your own witness with gentleness, hospitality, and grace.  And, spend significant time asking God to show you the Judea and Samaria to which he is sending you.  What will be your evangelistic field?  Then, listen to His answer.  Then, go.  Go out into the world, to share the good news of life in Christ.

"Hillside Trust" (Matthew 4:1-11)

Watch here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2Bx0I5SXCU

Sunday, March 1, 2020 – Lent 1

            “Then the devil left him, and angels came and waited on him.”  That’s the end of the story.  Put yourself way out in the desert in Jesus’ shoes.  Instead of it being Jesus, it’s the same story, but you’re the one who’s out there. 

You’ve fasted to the point of being utterly famished, no food for 40 days.  The devil comes when you are at your weakest.  What’s God doing to help you through this impossibly hard trial?  You gut it out.  You stay faithful to God.  You stay true.  Finally,  the devil gives up for the time being and departs.  And then the angels come with assistance.  If it were me in Jesus’ place, I would have wanted help much earlier.

            Following Matthew’s story, we have just seen Jesus raised up out of the waters of the Jordan river.  Dripping wet from his baptism, he then saw the Heavens opened, the Holy Spirit came down, and a voice from Heaven, God the Father, said, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (3:17). 

This did not happen when I got baptized.  Do you remember your baptism?  Mine came in summer of 1981, and in my memory, it has a mystical quality, but nothing like what we see in Matthew 3.  The Holy Spirit and the voice of God the Father combine to validate the arrival of God the son.  It’s a trinitarian moment and an incarnational moment all in one!

            But then, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  No navy SEAL training can compare with the ordeal Jesus had to endure in preparation for his ministry.  Forty days of fasting left him famished.  Add to that that he was way out in the wastelands.  Out there, you need sustenance so you have the energy to make the grueling hike back to civilization.  He didn’t soften the edges of his life to make the extreme fast more bearable.  He didn’t situate himself in comfortable surroundings.  He fasted to the point of collapse while desert walking.  At his weakest, that’s the point the devil showed up.

            The devil’s temptations of Jesus recall the serpent’s visit to Eve in Eden, found in Genesis chapter 3. 

            The serpent asked Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’” (3:1)?  From that very minute she was in trouble because of what she didn’t do.  She did not say, “Hey, God, help me here.  I don’t know this serpent and He’s calling your promises into question. What do I do?”  She didn’t do that.  She looked at that serpent and she thought, “I got this.”

            She explained to the serpent that God gave plenty of fruit trees and that they were only to avoid the one in the center of the garden for if they ate from that one, they would die.  The serpent said, “You will not die.”  Again, Eve didn’t say, “Hey, God, help me.  This thing just told me something different than what you promised.”  She didn’t do that.  Instead, she started thinking about the serpent’s ideas.  “Your eyes will be opened.  You will be like God.  You will have knowledge of good and evil.” 

            On her own, apart from God, Eve decided to deal with the serpent’s temptation.  Before long, she was thinking the serpent’s thoughts.  She didn’t tell him how things were in the garden and in the world.  She saw how good that fruit looked and she took a bite.  As the juice ran down her chin, she discovered what people have discovered ever since.  In temptation, there’s some truth.  Her eyes and Adam’s eyes were opened, just as the serpent said they would be.  However, the man and the woman gained their new knowledge apart from God.  They immediately saw each other in new ways.  In communion with God, they saw one another as beautiful creations there to be loved.  Acting apart from God, they saw in each other a nakedness that needed to be covered up, hidden.  Then, they tried to hide from God.  They had never felt the need to do that before.

            That serpent didn’t do anything special.  He just told half-truths that lured the first humans away from God’s full truth.  Their own lack of trust in God did the rest.  Eve, didn’t trust God’s word enough to resist the lie embedded in the temptation.

            Adam and Eve were living in paradise, Eden, when they fell.  Jesus, ravaged by unbearable hunger, found himself in desert wastelands.  He would later on say these words to his disciples in Matthew 7, “Is there any among you who, if your child asks for bread will give a stone?  Or if the child asks for a fish will give a snake?  If then, you who are evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (v.9-11).  He trusted that God would provide him what he needed.

            The devil’s first temptation is “if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (v.3).  We just heart at the baptism which happens right before this hungry desert sojourn that a voice from Heaven declared him to be God’s Son.  The devil calls that into question and then tells Jesus to do what Eve did: act apart from God.  He didn’t tell Jesus to ask God for food.  He told him to command the stones to become bread. Jesus trusted that his father would give good things.  He declares he needed the word of God for life as much as he needed food in his belly.

            Next, Jesus allows himself to be led.  The Holy Spirit had led him out to be tempted.  So, Jesus faces the temptation.  The devil leads him to the highest point in the Jerusalem, the hilltop where the temple sits.  Jesus is told to fling himself off the pinnacle of the temple, a suicide jump.  Quoting Psalm 91, the devil tells Jesus angels will save him.  It’s not a complete a lie.  As we already read, at the end of this story, angels do come to help him.  But not yet! 

            The devil is using scripture for his own means, something we do all the time.  In political arguments or in church conflicts, we see our opponents as God’s opponents.  It’s “them” vs. “us,” and we always cast our side as the side of scripture.  We totally ignore the fact that our opponent uses the same Bible to defend a position opposite ours.  We’re not supposed to use the Bible.  The devil did that with this second temptation.  We are to submit to the God we meet in the pages of the Bible.  The Bible is not here to support our positions.  The Bible is to be a way the Spirit forms us in the image of Christ.  Jesus knew he was in the desert to be tested.  He wasn’t there to test God.  He trusted God and resisted the devil.

            In his third effort, the nefarious tempter brought Jesus to the top of a high mountain and from there gave him a vision of all the great kingdoms of the earth.  If Jesus bowed in worship before the devil, all these kingdoms would be given to him.  Whether the devil could deliver on such an absurd offer is beside the point.  Jesus knew the first commandment: we shall have no other gods before the Lord our God.  We worship him alone.  There’s nothing the evil one could offer that would deter Jesus from his singular devotion to glorify God.  He trusted that worshiping God is better than possessing power.

            Note too, God had given Jesus a mission – to die for the sins of the world.  Jesus would eventually be recognized as king of kings and lord of lords.  But first, he had to save the world.  The devil had him skipping the cross and going straight to the throne.  Jesus rejected this deception trusting that God’s story is the better story.

            Finally, the devil left the scene, and then the angels came to take care of all Jesus’ needs.  As I said, were I in Jesus’ shoes, I would have been just as happy to have the angels show up at the very beginning.  Jesus modeled confidence and faith in God’s plan even when trust appeared to be difficult. 

            In baptism, we are adopted as sons and daughters of God, and the Holy Spirit takes up residence in us.  Do we believe this?  If we say we do, then do we also believe this is for the best?  Do we trust this story for our lives is true and do we trust that it is best life we can have?

            In the desert, on the hillside, Jesus put all his trust in the heavenly father.  We might think, ‘well he, he’s Jesus.  We’re not.’  That’s true.  But we have this advantage.  We know where the story leads.  He defeated the devil and resisted temptation.  Later on, the night that he knows he will be arrested, the devil tempts him again.  Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, in human flesh.  Being fully human, the abandonment by his disciples broke his heart.  The coming trial and crucifixion scared him.  The devil played on this and in anguished prayer, Jesus asked for another way.  We know God did not offer another way, and so Jesus went to the cross to take our death on himself. 

            We also know a few days, later, resurrected, he walked out of tomb.  On the cross he defeated Satan and sin.  In resurrection, he defeated death.  Just as he took our death on himself, he shares his resurrection with us.  We can be strengthened by this promise when the devil comes to tempt us, if we believe the story and trust that the Holy Spirit is with us. 

            That’s where the trust Jesus demonstrated transfers to us.  In this crazy political season, Democrats and Republicans are trying to sell a number of different narratives to the American public.  Advertisers sell narratives which put the product or experience they’re selling at the center of the story.  All these peddlers of stories want you to believe that the story they tell is the one you need to be in.  You need to adjust your life to live out that story. 

            What I’m suggesting is that Jesus, even flattened by hunger as he was, rejected the devil because he rejected the devil’s narrative.   He did that because he trusted that God’s story is the better story.  As we close, I invite you to think about this. For your life, is God’s story the better story?  Do you believe your hope for a happy, blessed life will be found walking the pathway of Jesus?  One thing is clear.  It can’t be both.  We cannot walk the way of the politician or the way of the propagandist or the way of the advertiser and walk the way of Jesus?  We have to decide which narrative we’ll embody. 

Don’t come and say all the ways the way of Jesus is opposite of the politician you oppose.  Notice all the ways the way of Jesus opposes the politician you’re voting for.  Then you’ve really cast your lot with the Savior.  You can still vote for whomever.  As citizens, we should participate in our democracy.  We do it remembering our eternal destiny is to live as subjects in the eternal kingdom of God under the merciful, just rule of King Jesus.  That story defines us and determines how we live. 

Decide which narrative is yours, the story will you live into.  Take this time to pray, asking God to help you trust the story he has for you. 

AMEN

Follow Jesus ... a Lenten Path

            “Jesus went out and he saw a tax collector named Levi, and he said to him, “Follow me” (Luke 5:27).  Christians make it their life’s work to follow Jesus.  Christian pastors preach that following Jesus is the business of the church.  The church exists to help people be devoted followers of Jesus Christ.  The calling of Levi in Luke 5 is one of many passages that lead Christians to insist growing as disciples of Jesus is the purpose of life.

            Why?  Why did Jesus call specific individuals to follow him?  Why do Bible readers interpret the call to discipleship experienced by James, John, Peter, and the rest as a prelude to the calling of all humanity to discipleship?  Christians believe all people are invited by God to follow Jesus.  But why is following Jesus so important?

            “When the days drew near for him to be taken up,” says Luke 9:51, “Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  “Taken up” means the crucifixion.  Where it says Jesus “set face,” it means he was determined from that point onward to journey to Jerusalem.  Nothing would stop him.  Everything in Luke’s gospel from 9:51 to chapter 23 is built upon Jesus’ journey to the cross.  He was determined to go to the place where he knew a brutal death by crucifixion awaited him.  Why?

                Why is Jesus so intent that all people become his followers?  Why was he set on going to his death?     The key to answering both questions is Luke 19:41-44:

⁴¹ As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "If you even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.  Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you, and hem you in on every side.  They will crush you to the ground, you and your children with you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God."  

Jesus wept over the city because they were lost in sin.  Of that city, he said,

³⁷ “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37)!

Jerusalem reject God’s prophets, thus rejecting God’s word.  When we sin, we reject God’s way for us to live and choose our own way.  Jesus desperately wants to rescue us from our sin, but at least in the case of Jerusalem, the week before the crucifixion, the people rejected God’s offer of salvation.  That’s why the cross was necessary.  Sin brings death and eternal separation from God.  Jesus took on himself both our death and our alienation from God when he died on the cross in our place.  That’s why the cross is so important; it’s why he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

            The only way Jesus’ death on the cross become affective in our lives is when we put our trust in him and give our lives to him, acknowledging him as our Lord.  Why is crucial that we follow Jesus?  God wants a relationship with us in which we are His sons and daughters and he is our Father and Lord.  That relationship comes when we follow Jesus.  When we confess our sins, repent, and acknowledge Jesus as Lord, we are baptized in the Holy Spirit and adopted as sons and daughters of God. 

We are called to follow because God loves us.  But we cannot accomplish discipleship by our own spiritual will power.  We sin, we hurt God, we hurt others, and we hurt ourselves.  So Jesus came to cover our sins and effect transformation in us.  Jesus died on the cross because God loves us. 

These are the basic elements of the God-human story.  During Lent, we rehearse this story, retell it, walk in it, and discover it anew.  I have been a Christian for 38 years and am diving to greater depths as I go through the story this year, in some ways as this were my first time in Lent.  I hope you are learning what it means to follow Jesus and as you do, I hope you see the cross.  As you see the cross, I pray you will see your life, covered by Christ. 

Because God loves us, we follow and learn continuously learn new, richer ways to love Him and each other. 

Waiting

“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. ² And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous’” (Genesis 17:1-2). 

“When the days drew near for him to be taken up, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51).

“As they were watching, Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. ¹⁰ While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. ¹¹ They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:9b-11).

Abraham’s wife Sarah was over 90.  They had waited their entire lives for a child.  Now God promised one, and they had to wait some more.

In Luke’s Gospel, we know that after Jesus arrives in Jerusalem come the horrors of the cross.  Luke tells us he’s headed there in chapter 9, but then we have to go through 12 more chapters before he finally arrives.

The scene in Acts is the Ascension.  The white-robed angels promise Jesus will return in the same way he was taken up.  That was 33AD.  It is now 2018AD.

Waiting.

As I write this, I am waiting for Easter.  Preachers always endure a thematic adjustment from February to early April.  Preaching during Lent is unlike preaching at any other time.

As I write this on a Monday, I am waiting for Saturday.  I am scheduled to fly to Ethiopia for a week with some wonderful children.  I will spend this week waiting for Saturday to arrive.

As I wait, I am waiting for a package in the mail that will have my passport in it.  As a part of our trip prep, we had to submit our passports to the embassy.  I can’t get on the plane without it.  Now I am waiting for it to return.  This may be the most nervous of all the waiting.  It is certainly the most immediate.

For what are you waiting?  While waiting, how will you sit in the time?  We Americans “pass the time.”  Or, being the consumers that we are, we “spend the time.”  I don’t think God wants that for me or for anyone.

Read Luke chapter 10-21.  There is a lot that happens in that stretch from knowing the cross is coming to it actually arriving.  Jesus tells the most re-told of all his parables, the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) and the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), in those intervening chapters.  Much of what we think about in the Gospel falls in Luke 10-21.  We may be going along waiting, but in that waiting space, God is working.  Read the Abraham narratives in Genesis 12-22.  A lot happens between God’s initial promise and the arrival of Isaac.

I am tempted to think, well, this mission trip is some big thing.  And it is indeed some big thing.  However, God might also have some things to do before the mission trip. 

Easter, now that’s important preaching.  Sure.  But God isn’t waiting for Easter to speak into my life and possibly through me into someone else’s life. 

What in your life has you waiting?  Waiting isn’t easy.  It can be excruciating.  But it can also be a space in life for God to work.  Don’t “pass” the time.  Don’t “spend” the time.  Sit in the time.  Sit and listen.  When we do that, we hear what God is trying to tell us.

Romans 4:13-25, 2nd Sunday of Lent

            If you have ever attended a popular Christian conference, in the auditorium packed with 10,000 people, you may have heard the speaker say something like this.  “Let go, and let God.”  Similar sentiments like this are printed on bumper stickers and coffee mugs sold by Christian publishing companies.  You might hear the DJ on the popular Christian radio station enthusiastically make this pronouncement.  “Don’t try to control your own life.  Don’t try to determine your own destiny.  Let go, and let God.  Let God go to work in your life.”

            Let go and let God.  What the heck does that mean?  Seriously.  How do we do that?  Do we just sit on a park bench and wait until God does whatever it is God is going to do?  How?  Maybe just as important, why?  Why should we trust that God is going to do something in our lives? 

“For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith” (Romans 4:13).  Our attempt to understand the notion of releasing control of our own lives to God begins with the idea of promise.  In Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, he talks about a promise that was given to Abraham.  He assumed the members of that church would be intimately familiar with the Abraham story.  This story is found in Genesis, a portion of it in Genesis 17. 

17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty;^[a] walk before me, and be blameless. ² And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” ³ Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, ⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁵ No longer shall your name be Abram,^[b] but your name shall be Abraham;^[c] for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁶ I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring^[d] after you.

¹⁵ God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶ I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her” (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16).

Sarah was over 90.  The only way a child comes is through divine intervention.  Paul’s take on this story, thousands of years later, is that Abraham believed God’s promise.  That was the key, his belief.  He was old, Sarah past child-bearing years, and they were childless.  Today, a childless couple certainly may feel sad if they desire children.  That sadness is not to be minimized.  But it does not carry the social stigma it did 4000 years ago. 

In Abraham’s time, if a couple had no children, it meant something was terribly wrong.  Mostly, blame was laid on the wife, in this case, Sarah. As a family, they were failures, and had no one to carry on their family name.  The social cost to both Abraham and Sarah was enormous. 

But they were in their 90’s.  There was no reason to think anything would change.  Even so, Abraham believed God.  Paul understood this belief to be an act of faith.  Purely because he knew God and trusted God did Abraham accept this promise that made no sense.  Going through the entire Abraham story, it feels simplistic to say Abraham “let go and let God.”  Abraham did a lot of others things.  He lied.  He tried to force God’s hand by having a son with his wife’s servant.  He debated with God.  Like all of us, Abraham had feet of clay. 

Maybe that’s why Paul was so eager to link the promise with Abraham’s faith.  Why should we trust God?  Why did Abraham trust God?  Paul’s best answer is don’t focus on why Abraham trusted God.  Focus on the fact that Abraham trusted God.  “For what does the scripture say,” Paul asks in Romans 4:3.  “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”  Reckoned?  He was credited with righteousness because he chose to believe God.  That’s faith!

Why should we believe?  Because we’ll get righteousness credited to us too? 

Let’s look at another story, one that raises the stakes in trusting God. 

This time, Jesus is speaking.  We’re in Mark chapter 8.  Jesus and the disciples are walking through the villages of a region called Caesarea Philippi.  He wants to know the buzz.  Crowds gather to hear him preach everywhere he goes, and he wants to hear what the disciples have heard people say about him.  This is a first-century version of Jesus reading his own headlines.

The disciples report that some think he is John the Baptist, while others call him Elijah or another of the prophets.  Then Jesus changes the question.  Who do you think I am?  Peter declares he is the Messiah!  Good for Peter! 

Immediately following this, Jesus teaches them that the Son of Man, himself, must be beaten, rejected, and killed.  And they stop listening.  He says the one killed will rise again after 3 days but they don’t hear that part.  When they hear Jesus predict his own suffering and death, it is too much to bear.  Just as Peter boldly proclaimed the Messiahship of Jesus, he steps in here to confront the Lord. Mark writes that Peter pulled Jesus aside and began to rebuke him.  Can you imagine?

Jesus isn’t having it.  He says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.  For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things” (Mark 8:33).  He then lays out what he means by “divine things.” 

³⁴ [Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel,^[i] will save it. ³⁶ For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life” (Mark 8:34-36)? 

Abraham’s wife Sarah had a female servant, Hagar, and she had a son by Abraham.  That son was Ishmael.  Why would Abraham believe that God was going to give him a son by his wife Sarah who had never had a child in all her 90 years? 

When Jesus says, “those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”  Why would the disciples and the people in the crowd believe him? Why would anyone believe that losing one’s life for the sake of the Gospel is a good thing?  Why should we trust God?

We began with a promise – the promise of a child to Abraham; the promise that giving one’s self fully to God in Christ – that is, losing one’s life for the Gospel – is a good thing; the promise that the best life we can lead is one in which we fully submit ourselves to God with Him as our Lord, our Master.  In the life of Abraham, in the journey of the disciples with Jesus, and in the theology of Paul, we see this promise come to fruition as faith is exercised by believing what God says. Faith = believe that God is telling the truth and that God’s truth is the best thing for us.

Great!  We’ve received the promise, that in Christ we have forgiveness of sins and eternal life.  We’ve exercised faith by believing that this promise is true and God can be trusted.  So, we are fully submitted to God.  We’re going to abandon control of our own lives.  We’re going to let go and let God. 

Now what? 

Paul writes in Romans 4:18 that when Abraham believed, he was “hoping against hope.”  It’s akin to jumping without a net because God said, “I’ll catch you.”  Abraham abandoned his father’s land.  He did all that God said to do.  He hurled himself off the cliff and into the open air above the Grand Canyon because he believed God would redefine his life.  He believed God would fill in that blank space where his world view had been.  He jumped and waited for God to act.

Paul lived the same way.  He followed wherever the Spirit directed him: Athens, Ephesus, Corinth.  There were also instances where Paul wanted to plant churches in certain cities, and the Spirit prevent him.  It looked different than in the days of Abraham because by the time Paul came along, the world was a very different place.  But the idea is the same.  The Spirit turned over the applecart of all Paul’s ideas about reality, and he had to wait, with a blank space – a space God began to fill in with courage, power, love, truth, purpose, and most importantly grace. 

When we stop, trust God, and then wait, it gives God space to act in our lives.  Stopping and waiting doesn’t mean we just sit inert in complete inactivity.  We worship.  We work our jobs, sometimes temporary jobs, but even in those we represent God and glorify Him in our work.  We stay connected to the church, the family of God.  But our worship, our relating, and our work are sometimes carried out in a period of a stop and wait.  That stop and wait is where we trust that God has good things in store for us. 

In a sense, in that pause, our worldview, our understanding of everything is suspended so that we may clear our minds and hearts and make space for God to step in and re-color all our ideas.

Paying even a little attention to the New Testament, we see that God began this work in Jesus.  Romans 4:25: righteousness will be credited to us who believe that God raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.  A purely scientific worldview does not allow for resurrection.  Once someone dies, he stays dead.  How often is our claim to believe in the resurrection an impotent recitation that pulls no weight in how we see the world?  We say we believe it, but do we live as if we believe God is present and active?

If we don’t think God is real, present, and active, how will we ever give up our lives for the sake of the Gospel, as Jesus said in Mark 8?  And by the way, while “give up our lives,” can mean die for the kingdom in most cases it means live lives fully submitted to God.  To “give up our lives for the gospel” is to make the intentional choice to relinquish our hold on independence.  We stand before God and say, “Here is my life.  I’ll do what you say to do.  I’ll be who you tell me to be.”  The evidence of this complete submission is seen in how we carry ourselves in the normal, everyday places.  The disciple life is evident or absent in the way Christ is seen in us when we are at work, at home, and going about the daily routines of life.  It is there, where we spend the majority of our time, that we give up freedom and autonomy and voluntarily live life as God’s slaves.

The only reason we would do this is that we trust that being a slave to God is better than anything else.   “Let go and let God.”  It has a catchy ring to it, as slogans go.  To actually do it, to actually let go of control is monumental.  Do we trust God enough to do it?

That’s an unfair question.  There’s rarely a time that we can measure how much we trust God.  So, here is what I propose.  Identify one area of life where you’ve been in control, keeping God at bay.  Pick one thing.  Parenting.  Exercise & diet.  Your temper.  Your marriage.  Your money.  This morning, pick one thing in your life. 

Write it down.  Text it to yourself.  Mark it as a calendar reminder so that you get alerts a couple of times a week between now and Easter Sunday.  Starting today, this Second Sunday of Lent, you’re going to hand control of this one thing over to God.

 “Letting go” does not mean going inert.  If parenting is your thing, you still feed your kids and try to help them have success and joy.  But you do that in a state of constant prayer.  Your parenting is done with less worry, almost the point of no worry, and with more attention set on God-with-you, as your parent your children.  That’s just one example.  Whatever is the one thing which you are handing over to God, you continue in that one thing, but now, God is in it with you, all the time.  Prayer is part of it, all the time.

We’re going to gather at the place where we are all recipients of the bread of life, the communion table.  We take the bread and cup, remembering Jesus’ suffering and shed blood.  We come as sinners – sinners who are now forgiven and made new.  Our sins are gone and in their place is the righteousness of Christ.

As you come up the aisle to the table, come preparing to meet Jesus.  Come with that one thing in hand, that thing in your life you’re going to give over to God’s control.  As you take the bread and cup, hand it go God.  In doing so, you create space in your life, space for God to go to work.  Trust Him.  He raised Jesus from the dead.  He’s got new things in store for you.  Can’t you wait to see what they are?

AMEN