Lucky Charms

No, I am not talking about the cereal.  I am thinking about those things in our lives in which we place a belief that their presence makes a difference in the outcomes of circumstances.  When you were little, did you ever have a  rabbit's foot on a key chain because someone had said it was lucky?  How about hunting in the grass for a four leaf clover?  What about famous sports players who declare that they have to wear the same shirt or the same color to insure their win?  Examples abound all around us.  As true believers we know that these become false idols in our lives, even if trivial ones.  Then again, can you use the word "trivial" in the same sentence as fasle idols?

Recently I was studying 1 Samuel and reliving the battle of the Israelites against the Philistines.  The battle was not going well (chapter 4).  An unidentified individual came up with the bright idea to get the Ark of the Covenant and bring it into the center of the battle. From verse 3, "Let's bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from Shiloh.  If we carry it into battle with us, it will save us from our enemies."  Did you catch the subtle shift of emphasis there?  Notice they say "it" not Yahweh or the Lord.  Their faith was in the physical Ark not in the Lord whom the Ark represented.  If you are familiar with the story, then you know that their plans failed - miserably.  The Ark of the Covenant was captured by the Philistines and God began to wreck havoc on the Philistines.  Fascinating story and worth the re-read.

What is the message for us?  Far too often we put our faith in ritual or in the manifestations of the Lord and His love for us instead of in Him alone.  The shift in our own lives is so subtle that just like the verse quoted above, we can miss it.  God's adamant commands about idol worship are clear and unequivocal.  There are to be no other gods before us.  He is the only one that deserves our allegiance, our love, our attention, our faith.  Yet too easily we succumb to lowering our eyes onto other gods and allow them presence in our lives.  This particular sin is as old as man.  Think about Adam and Eve's initial sin, or even go back further and think about the fall of Lucifer.  He was putting faith in his own abilities to compete with God Almighty.  He made himself equal to God able to do whatever the Creator could do.  He used a piece of fruit to lure the original first couple away from God.  Perhaps the first idol worship - this fruit would give what we desired.

Let's take this down to a very miniscule level.  Have you ever gotten into a routine with devotional time with the Lord, a daily routine?  Then in the midst of the chaos that sometimes descends on us, you miss a day, or two or three and then are convicted with guilt.  What is the source of the guilt?  Is is fear that because you have failed to maintain this commitment that God will descend on you with discipline as He did with the Israelites for abusing the Ark of the Covenant?  Or is it more appropriately sadness that you have allowed life to interfere with your passionate pursuit of intimacy with the Lord and setting aside time for Him to speak into your life?  There is a significant difference between these two reactions to the same circumstance.  One is born out of creating an idol out of our routines and the second is born out of agape love for Yahweh that takes second place to no one or no thing.  

Superstition is a tool of the enemy, a weapon of the dark side to distract us.  However it is usually accompanied by idol worship of some form.  Do you know anyone that reads horoscopes?  Is this not putting credence in knowledge that is not God delivered?  Divination is spoken of frequently throughout scripture - Old and New Testament.  Tarot cards, mediums, Ouija boards and the like are all forms of this and they are a form of idol worship because more credence is given to them to tell the future than developing an intimate communion with the only source of life, our Creator, our Lord, our Abba.  However most of you already know this and have turned from any such activity long ago.  Therefore my question for all of us is this: What could be a distracting idol in our lives?

As I ponder this question for myself, I am evaluating those things that pre-occupy my mind.  A very wise person once said to me, what you think about the most is the Lord of your life. There are unquestionably aspects of my life that trouble me and cause me to stop and dwell on them.  However, I am blessed because Holy Spirit quickly asks me a simple question, "Do you trust God to handle this or not?"  My answer is an absolute yes!  So then Holy Spirit asks, "Then why are you dwelling on it?  Release it to His tender care and mercy and trust that He will do the best thing in this situation."  By the way, God's best thing may not be Janice's idea of the best thing.  But Abba has the big picture and I can only see my corner of it.  So I had better trust the master artist; trust Him, keep my faith centered in Him and not let anything else interfere with a laser beam signal from God's heart to mine.  Sweep away those false idols, burn them at their source, clear the way for God to move freely without my interference.  Yes, it is time for spiritual spring cleaning and to make way for an incredible sowing and reaping.  Will you join me? 

The Spirit of Giving

Giving is not as simple as it seems on the surface.  Most of us understand the concept of taking something in your possession and handing it to another.  This includes gifts, resources, time, talents, etc.  First we identify a need and then decide that we can meet that need.  Whether this is buying a gift to celebrate an occasion, or assessing what we have to provide for someone or a cause.  Recently I realized that often times our giving is complicated by our own expectations of how the recipient is going to utilize our gift.  Sadly comments are frequently heard that stipulate how a gift should be appreciated and utilized.  Is it truly a gift then?  

If I have pre-determined expectations of what someone should do with my gift, then I have attached invisible strings to it. In my mind, it is as if I am saying, if you will do such and such with my gift, then I will give you this gift.  And if they fail to appropriately utilize my gift, then I can fall into criticism of their choices and values.  It goes downhill from there.  Becoming acutely observant of their choices, voices begin to play out in my head: "Well that was not what I intended them to do with my gift."  This is especially true in situations where money is involved.  Sadly I have witnessed too many times when money changed hands and hearts were changed.  Have you ever heard someone comment to you, "Well when I gave so and so the money they should have used it for......" with great indignation. 

Ironically, the reason for my writing this blog had nothing to do with a negative experience on my part with giving a gift.  Rather I began thinking about the gift(s) that the Lord gives to us and what we do with His gift(s).  Without question, our God has great desires for what we will do with His gifts especially the gift of Jesus Himself.  God knew what the vast majority of the population of the world - past, present and future - was going to do with His gift.  We have only to look around our current world to shudder at the incredible rejection of this extraordinary gift of love.  However, this knowledge did not stop Him from giving us this gift.  Did it?

Agape Love means unconditional, without motivation, without expectation of return.  Not only does our Lord love us this way, but His heart is that we will love one another with the same love.  In talking with different couples in our marriage ministry, we have discussed the difference between the emotion love (a noun) and the action love (a verb).  Love as a verb is behaving in love, acting in love, giving and receiving in love.  There are no strings of expectation.  There is no manipulation.  It is a freely given gift of ourselves and our heart.  It is proactive.  The emotion of love is a feeling that is precipitated by someone's actions or words to us.  It is reactive.

Please do not misunderstand and misinterpret that I am condoning being abused or neglected by people with whom you are in a love relationship.  We must be cognizant of placing our heart in harm's way.  Withdrawing from harm is not a bad thing.  However turning that withdrawal into hate and anger against the harmer is a bad thing.  Studying how Jesus operated when He walked this earth provides an excellent example of walking in truth and love without condoning evil.  We all have choices to make in our relationships.  Hurt is inevitable; it is what we do with that hurt that separates us from others.  

Reactive versus proactive action is a key to walking in freedom and shalom.  I have a choice to make about 2 aspects of giving.  First I can choose to give the gift (my love, my time, my talents, my resources) with an agape heart and hope that this gift will somehow make a positive difference.  Second I can choose how I will act no matter what the recipient does with my gift.  There are so many factors about which we know nothing when it comes to the recipient.  Timing, life circumstances, previous patterns of behavior, etc.  If we want to control what happens with our gift then not only has it not been freely given, but we are trying to control the impact our gift has.  Are we releasing this gift to the hands of God for Him to use it as He sees appropriate for that individual's life?  Are we trusting Him to accomplish His plan (and not ours)? 

As I continue to grow in His love with the ongoing counsel of Holy Spirit I continue to recognize my shortcomings.  What I hear come out of my mouth (which remember is the wellspring of my heart - Proverbs 4:23) sometimes makes me shudder the same as if I had drunk a big gulp of vinegar.  Good grief!  Did I really say that?  Fortunately Holy Spirit is usually very quick to convict me that I must have an issue with my wellspring.  Some pollution has snuck in there without my filtering it out.  This recent revelation is a good check for me.  Proactive love and giving versus reactive is a great place to start my wellspring cleaning.  Perhaps there are a few of you out there who need a little wellspring cleaning too.  I pray that this message has been helpful in a bit of introspection.  Let's all walk in the freedom that the Lord has for us through living in agape love. 

Resurrection Reverence

I may well date myself with this statement, but then again, if that were important to me there is a lot I would not admit.  I can remember a time when I was young when Good Friday was held with such reverence that everything stopped at 3 PM.  Stores closed their doors, church bells rang and everyone stopped to meditate on what happened at that hour on the day of the crucifixion.  In contemporary society, few people stop to think about what Good Friday is all about.  However, far more compelling to me is the larger statement that this behavior makes about the priorities of our culture.  The telltale signs are everywhere.

This past Sunday during our worship service we celebrated the resurrection and the fact that He is Risen, Risen Indeed!  Yet while a very important message was being shared with us, individuals were carrying on conversations about a variety of topics, phones were ringing and yes, people answered them.  Parents allowed children to play with electronic games with the sound on.  Not only was this distracting for those wanting to focus on the message, but it demonstrated how far we as a society have departed from demonstrating honor and reverence for the House of the Lord.

Call me old fashioned, but my roots were developed deeply that when we entered the House of the Lord, we did so with great respect and honor for Who "owned" the house.  Even though I was raised Catholic and learned quickly the importance of reverence through simple things like bowing my head when we said the name of Jesus, and genuflecting before sitting at church, I observed the same reverence at my grandparents' very small Methodist church in their little town.  Although I did not truly understand reverential fear of God until I was born again, I certainly was in awe of the power and authority of God from the time I was old enough to reason.  When I listen to people talk about life and God, I sometimes wonder, do they not understand who God is?

I must ask your indulgence for my soap box mentality today.  As the contrasts in our society become more pronounced between those whose passion is Christ and those whose passion is the world, I find my vision become sharper.  As I read my devotions each day, Old Testament as well as New, I find myself digging deeper into the Word and seeking greater revelation from the Source.  What is He calling us to do in these volatile times?

The first thing that I hear is, "Daughter, examine thyself!"  Are my words consistent with my beliefs?  Are my actions Christ-like?  What am I doing to advance the Gospel message?  Sadly I come up short in response to each of those questions.  I think about those individuals whom I admire and who I believe emulate the lifestyle that seems to fit the Gospel and then I look at myself.  While I believe that Jesus Christ Himself is the one that we need to emulate, I must admit that I do look at those individuals who appear to be meeting the mark better than myself and use that as a starting place to ask myself a series of questions.  

We each have our own way of examining ourselves.  One thing that I combat regularly is the performance mentality.  I strive to refine who I am not to earn His love but because I love Him.  Yet performance is an ingrained aspect of who I am.  Always has been.  So I must daily combat the behavioral tendencies that are part of me.  Nothing I do will cause Him to love me more or love me less.  So if that is what I believe than why does the disrespectful behavior of others upset me so?  He loves them exactly as He loves me - no different.

I believe that at issue is the fact that we have become seeker friendly.  As a whole, we are more concerned that someone entering our churches (or our homes) is not upset or made uncomfortable by anything that we say or do.  So we modify our level of our tolerance, even the message that is being spoken so that it will not offend.  Yet do we stop and think about how we are offending God Himself?  No, I am afraid not, and that is where we are no different than the Israelite people of the Old Testament who assimilated themselves into the pagan cultures so that they would not be different and would be accepted.  Where did that get them?  When the German radicals in WW II were attacking the Jewish people the vast majority of the population who professed to be Christian ignored what was going on in their front yards.  We all know the result of that inaction.  Where is our behavior getting us?

You may have observed in many churches, individuals come dressed as if they are going to a nightclub.  People walk in half way through the service as if there is no need to come on time and not be disruptive as they find seats.  People are up and down, in and out of their seats as if this was an informal gathering in their living room.  Think about it.  If you paid to attend a show at Fox Theater, you are ushered quickly and quietly into your seats and often are not allowed to be seated once the show has begun.  Why is there more respect in a theater than in God's house?

Maybe it is time that we speak up and require respect from all people who come into the House of the Lord.  Maybe just maybe if we require reverence, reverence will happen.  Maybe just maybe, we need to defend our God and our beliefs and stand up for them.  Maybe just maybe it is time to stop being seeker friendly with words that tickle ears and begin speaking truth that pierces into the depths of the soul.  Maybe just maybe, time is getting short and we need to decide Who it is that we do not want to offend.  Maybe just maybe.......