Jesus’ Brutal Honesty

As I read the beatitudes, I am struck by how brutally honest Jesus was. This was the worst recruiting speech ever! I can almost picture the disciples begging Jesus to stop and talk about more positive things. Instead He talks about how people who are poor, hungry, meek, and persecuted are blessed by God. This must have been incredibly shocking to the people of that time. They were raised to believe that if you were good, God gave you good things. If you were getting bad things out of life, it must mean that you had sin in your life. So how can Jesus say that you are blessed even when bad things are happening?

This is even more shocking when Jesus says that those who are persecuted for righteousness are blessed by God. Israelis of that time had been raised on the teaching that the only reason there were being oppressed and persecuted by the Romans was that there was sin in the nation of Israel. Jesus is basically saying that you can do everything right and still be persecuted. In other words, our outward circumstances are not necessarily indicative of our spiritual state.

I love the fact that Jesus did not try to soften this truth. He does not hem and haw around the facts. He just tells it the way it is. You can be a good person, in right relationship with God, living a holy life and still experience pain in this life. BUT you are still blessed! When times are tough, hold on to the One who was brutally honest with you. He told you it would be tough but He promised to be with you and to bring you through.

Cursed Work!?

Have you ever gone through on of those periods in your life where it seems like all you do is work? I have been going through that for a while now. I am averaging 70+ hours a week between my two (and three and four) jobs.The thing that concerns me is that it is about to get worse.  I am transitioning out of professional ministry and will need to hustle ever harder just to pay the bills. I guess this paragraph serves as my lame excuse for not blogging as much as I used to…

Needless to say, I am exhausted right now. When I get worn out like this, I usually start thinking really evil thoughts about at Adam and Eve. After all, if they hadn’t sinned, there would be no curse and I wouldn’t have to work. Before sin, Adam and Eve just hung out in the garden and did nothing, right? That is what I used to think but I am beginning to realize how wrong I am about this.

Recently I read Genesis again and saw some interesting things. I saw that Adam had work to do even before the curse. In 2:15 the Bible tells us that God “took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and guard and keep it.” Apparently even the Garden of Eden needed tending. I always pictured trees in perfect rows and nicely manicured (by God) grass. Maybe one of those cool mazes made out of hedges like you see in movies about England… But I guess Adam had to mow, pull weeds, and blaze trails himself. Whatever work it was, it wasn’t just sitting around picking and apple here and there when he got hungry.

Then God created all the animals and “brought them to Adam to see what he would call them” (2:19). How many hours of work would it take to name every kind of bird and animal in existance? Maybe he only had to come up with “dog” and not each breed of dog but that was still a lot of naming. And he was still responsible to keep that Garden straight. Can’t just let the place get overgrown while you spend a year or so coming up with names for animals. Adam was the first multi-tasker.

Even after creating Eve to help Adam with his loneliness problem (helper (2:18b) refers to the man being lonely (2:18a), not to his need for someone to do the dishes) God gave them jobs to do. In 1:28 (yes, I know chapter 1 comes before chapter 2 but God is addressing both of them so it must have happened after the stuff addressed to Adam alone) God says to them, “be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion…” While the first part of this sounds like a fun job, any parent will tell you that it involves at least 18 years of hard, stressful work to multiply. And subduing the earth and having dominion over it doesn’t sound like something I can do from the couch with the remote control…

All of these jobs were before the curse on the ground (3:17-19). My point is that while the curse made work harder, we were always meant to work. We were created to feel satisfaction from a job well done. We need to get rid of this idea that the ideal was to sit around naked in the garden and pick only as much fruit as it took to satiate our momentary hunger. We need to embrace our work and do it all as unto the Lord. We also need to understand that jobs like gardening, parenting, studying animals, and harnessing the power of this wonderful world God created are all holy callings. Yes, He calls some to preach but he also calls many more to do many different jobs. They are all holy unto the Lord. Do your work with passion. Do it to serve God, not your boss. Do your job with a thankful heart no matter how thankless your job is. You will not find fulfillment in avoiding work, but in embracing it. by “you” in the previous sentances, I mean “me.” I need to learn these things to keep myself from falling into the abyss of depression and burnout. I want to fully embrace my work but could I embrace just a litlle less of it fully? There is such a thing as balance after all, right?

Living death

As I read through Acts chapters 20 & 21 I am struck by the determination of Paul. Over a period of a couple months or more Paul is trying to get to Jerusalem. Every step of the way he is warned that he will be put in chains and suffer when he gets there. But Paul responds repeatedly that he is not only willing to suffer but to die for the Lord.

What strikes me is that Paul is not making one grand gesture. It is one thing to stand up in the moment and sacrifice your life. It is another to get up day after day and move toward certain pain, suffering, and death. I think It is much easier to die for Jesus than it is to live for Him. If we are really ready to die for Him, why is it so hard to get up day after day and endure the hardships of life?

I admit that many times I get worn down and don’t want to go on. Things get hard and I start whining and complaining. I start pouting and asking why God doesn’t love me enough to make the world exactly the way I want it to be. I pray that someday I can develope the attitude of Paul who could get up day after day and say, “not only will I face the hardship of today, I will do tomorrow and the next day. If nothing ever changes, I will go on serving Jesus until the day I die.” Another way to say it would be that I will give up my life every single day until I give up my life: Or as Jesus said, “Take up your cross daily and follow Me…”

Keep Plowing

Last week I had the privelige of being invited to speak at a spiritual retreat at a school for troubled teens in the Dominican Republic. There are about 40 high school students there who have been sent by their parents to go through a Bible based, boot camp type school to deal with a wide variety of issues. For a week, they suspended classes and I was the speaker every morning and evening.

Most of these students are very much hardened to the world and to the Lord. It was a challenge to say the least. I was astonished when the two oldest boys, who had been in the program for years and were the leading “atheists” on campus each went to counselors after the service the first night and said, “I am tired of fighting God. It is too hard to not believe.” The next night one of them got up and read an essay he had written about stepping out to trust God. It sent shock waves through the students. By the end of the week, a third to half of the students had given their lives to the Lord. I ended up spending four days doing back to back counseling with students. There was no hype, it was just an awesome, spontaneous move of God!

One day I got to speak to just the staff. I stressed to them that, by no means was I under the illusion that what was going on had anything to do with me. I was just some guy passing through and getting to do some harvesting. None of it would have been possible if they had not been there day after day, month after month, year after year planting and watering the seeds of God’s word and love. Some of these people had gone round and round with these young men for up to four years, then suddenly, everything broke loose. I would describe myself as a migrant farm working coming through for the harvest season. The teachers, counselors, and house parents are the farmers. They have loved, prayed, and shed tears over the students. They have sacrificed by living in the Dominican Republic (a beautiful place but without the comforts of home like reliable electricity and water). They are the true heroes!

The problem is that there aren’t too many of us who want to be the planter or the waterers. It is great fun to be the harvester. It was an incredible experience. But it isn’t always so much fun being the one to love on kids who reject you and your Lord. I run a youth center and after school program that doesn’t always seem to be bearing fruit. But I am called to plow up the ground. I may never be the harvester in these kids’ lives. I may never even get to see the harvest. Am I still willing to plow and plant and water? Many times I get frustrated and want to quit. But there is no harvest without the guys doing the dirty work all year long. So keep plowing and thank God for the times you get to swoop in and harvest where someone else has been faithful to prepare the ground for you!

Effective and Fruitful

For many years I have taught that there are two reasons for our existence. More specifically, there is a reason for our existence and a reason that we continue to live on this earth. We exist to know and love YOU, LORD. But we are still here on earth to lead others toward knowing YOU. If the only purpose was to know YOU, why don’t we immediately go to be with YOU when we get saved? Why leave us here? As I was reading 2 Pet 1:8 today, I saw these two parts or purposes clearly. Peter tells us, “If these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Peter is saying that there is still a reason for us to be here once we know YOU. While we are still here, we are expected to be effective and fruitful.

So what kind of fruit are we to bear? Is Peter talking about spiritual fruit? No, he just listed the qualities we normally associate with spiritual fruit (Vv. 5-7) and told us that those qualities are to keep us from being ineffective and unfruitful. So this fruit must be leading more people toward YOU. Once we come to know YOU, it is no longer just about YOU and us. It is about YOU, us, and everyone else.

Of course to lead others toward knowing YOU, we must develop the qualities that Peter listed. We need faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love (Vv. 5-7). If we focus on knowing You. Your Holy Spirit will produce these qualities in us. And the natural outgrowth of knowing You and growing in these qualities is bearing fruit, leading others toward YOU. Lord, I want to fulfill both my purposes. I want to be effective and fruitful.

Unjust Suffering

There is a very interesting passage in 1 Peter 2 :19-20 “For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly…when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called…” You just can’t get any more countercultural than that. We are raised to look out for number one. We are supposed to stand up for our rights and make sure no one takes advantage of us. Suffering unjustly is the worst possible thing in our culture. But it is gracious in the sight of God. So who am I trying to impress? Those I want to think I am tough or the creator of the universe? Who do I trust? My ability to defend myself or God’s ability to redeem even unjust suffering? Who am I trying to imitate, The rich, tough, and powerful, or Jesus who suffered unjustly for me?

This is really hard. I am all about what I deserve. I know how much money I think I should make. I know how much respect I think others should show me. But if I really want abundant life, I have to lay that all down, take up my cross and follow Jesus. Even when my flesh is screaming that this makes no sense. After all, flesh screams when it is being crucified. Lord, give me the strength to endure and walk in YOUR victory.