DOES GOD FIX WINDSHIELDS?
Psalm 112 – Praise the Lord! How happy is the man who honors the Lord with fear and finds joy in His Law! His children will be powerful in the land. Each family who is right will be happy. Riches and well-being are in his house. And his right-standing with God will last forever. Light rises even in darkness for the one who is right. He is kind and has loving-pity and does what is right. Good will come to the man who is ready to give much, and fair in what he does. He will never be shaken. The man who is right and good will be remembered forever. He will not be afraid of bad news. His heart is strong because he trusts in the Lord. His heart will not be shaken. He will not be afraid and will watch those lose who fight against him. He has given much to the poor. His right-standing with God lasts forever. His horn will be lifted high in honor. The sinful man will see it and be troubled and angry. He will grind his teeth and waste away. The desire of the sinful will come to nothing.
Malachi 3:10-12 – Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test! Your crops will be abundant, for I will guard them from insects and disease. Your grapes will not fall from the vine before they are ripe,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
My wife and I were having our devotions last night. One of the passages we read was Psalm 112. We immediately began to chuckle, as this Psalm succinctly sums up the first quarter of 2008 for us. Nice of David (or whomever) to write about us a few thousand years before we were even born.
Five days before Christmas I was informed that my position was being eliminated. I would not be needed after my vacation. Approximately one month later I accepted a part time job. Karen and I figured out our budget. Cut everything we could cut. Pared down our budget for groceries to a ridiculous figure. Calculated fuel costs and devised a plan for combining trips across Atlanta. Then we calculated how much we would need to get through the summer, as my part time job could go full time in July. From all that figuring, we determined we could get to my first full time paycheck, with a little help from a couple other (temporary) part time jobs and an aunt who gave us the gift of a mortgage and car payment. We wouldn’t have anything left over, and would have to exhaust our meager savings, but we would have enough.
The loss of employment hit particularly hard because we had wanted to participate in our church’s Christmas offering. They were raising money to purchase equipment to drill water wells in a community in Africa. The lack of clean water is a preventable cause of many deaths, especially those of children. We had decided to take the money we were going to spend on each other, and donate it in that offering. Once I lost my job, however, and we had to begin budget cuts, Christmas was the first thing to go. We even decided against traveling to any of our family in order to conserve gas.
This is where Psalm 112, especially the underlined verses, and the familiar passage from Malachi 3 comes in. Karen very much wanted to give in that offering. So we prayed and asked God for the money to give. The very next day we received a check for an amount equal to what one of us was going to spend at Christmas on the other. So we went to church that weekend and, with a very grateful heart, gave our offering. Then, again, the very next day, we received another gift in the same amount. So we gave again the next week. The gifts to us were not Christmas gifts, rather they were just extras due to our circumstances. And the offerings were not our tithes, they were extra.
Now hold on. Here comes the “rest of the story”.
One morning around January 6 we awoke to a very cold house. The heater had quit. Turned out that the fan blower had gone out. A couple days after that, our car’s brakes needed repair. Our car has 100,000 miles, so this was not a $99-dollar special. In the course of a week or so, $1500 dollars gone. But soon after someone spoke to me just 3 days after I started working 20 hours a week, and told me he wanted to bring me on staff for 20 hours to help with a specific issue. Another miracle. Now we could go back to a normal budget, without feeling the effect of the heater and brake repairs. Or so we thought. After waiting over a week to meet to finalize what he spoke to me in earlier, I received an email telling me they were not going to hire me after all. Considering the circumstances, it was a bit of a blow, but we knew God was faithful. After all, the day after I was laid off He told me in prayer that I would have a job by January 26. I started my part time job January 23. We knew He was in control. So we prayed.
Then a rock hit our windshield. Now in FL car insurance pays for one windshield repair with no cost to the consumer, but in GA there is a $250 deductible. We don’t use credit cards, and had just depleted whatever extra cash we had on the heater and brakes. So we did all we could do, we prayed. Keep in mind that this rock was a rock, not a pebble. It made a multi-faceted dimple in our window. I know because I cleaned the glass to inspect the damage and ran my finger across it to determine how bad it was. So we prayed.
Did you notice the title of this article?
A few days after the rock hit we were getting gas on our way to work. Karen was with me because she was spending one day a week volunteering at our church. While the gas was pumping I cleaned the windows, as I normally do. When I cleaned the windshield, I saw Karen’s face through the glass. Then I noticed it. Actually, I noticed nothing. NOTHING. No damage to our windshield. Damage that I had ran my finger over just a few days ago was now gone.
As I write this, it is mid-April. And amazingly enough, our budget is still going to get us through July. Because God is faithful. Because we are faithful. There is much more to this story that I will not go into now in detail. Things like Karen giving $20 to someone in our small group, while almost simultaneously someone else at the group was giving me $20. Things like a 12-year old girl giving us a dollar just before Christmas as her display of faith that God will take care of us. Things like my former employer asking me to come back part time and suggesting me to someone else for a similar position. Things like this being the first winter in years that neither Karen nor I needed medical care and/or prescriptions for the cold and flu. Things like my lawn mower being on a 3-year warranty when I distinctly remember not purchasing such, so that a potentially expensive repair actually cost us nothing. Things like a leaky roof being only a leaky exhaust vent boot, and not a leaky roof.
If you read the underlined portions of the above scriptures, you get this:
How happy is the man who honors the Lord with fear and finds joy in His Law. Each family who is right will be happy. Good will come to the man who is ready to give much. He will not be afraid of bad news. He has given much to the poor. Bring all the tithes. I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will guard (your crops) from insects and disease. Your grapes will not fall from the vine before they are ripe.
Our life is walking proof of God’s Promises being true and trustworthy. We seek to live according to the Word. During the course of these events we have not had a moment of despair or despondency. And very little uncertainty. We gave so children could have clean water, and we gave what little we had to someone who needed it more. We have paid our tithes. And God has protected us from harm. He either provided the funds to pay for what we needed, or He kept us from needing it.
And, yes, God does fix windshields.
JEALOUSY
I recently heard a well-known celebrity talking about God, Jesus, and religion. This person's belief was being challenged by someone who believed Jesus to be the only way to salvation. The celebrity kept repeating "there couldn't be only one way". She was incredulous at the suggestion that there wasn't more than one way to reach "what you refer to as God".
This same person also says that her current religious beliefs (but she refuses to use the word belief) were formed years ago after hearing a preacher in her church refer to God as "jealous". She said she was offended at the idea that God could be jealous.
That started me thinking. Exactly what is wrong with the idea that God could be jealous? You see, we often use 21st century American definitions for Bible words. For example, "Fear the Lord" is seen through our current use of fear, and in the process we lose the complete idea that is presented in the original languages. Same for the word "love". We love our spouse, our kids, our dog, and pizza. But in Bible languages, that sentence would have been 4 sentences, each with a different word for love.
I think a similar thing applies to the word jealous. Americans in particular, but people in general, are selfish. Naturally so. Come out of the womb that way. Think about it. A baby wants its needs met when it wants them met, regardless of whatever you might being doing at the time. And if you don't meet those needs immediately they have an extremely loud way of letting you know their displeasure.
So, we are selfish. In our selfishness we have made the word "jealous" a bad word. Boyfriend gets caught looking around at other girls, girlfriend gets mad. His response, "Don't be so jealous". Or possibly, the other girl says that to the girlfriend. But why shouldn't she be jealous? What is wrong with that?
What is "wrong" with it is simply that the guy is selfish. He wants the relationship with the one girl, and would not be happy with her hanging around other guys, but wants the other also. He doesn't care what affect his actions may have on his girlfriend. What he doesn't realize is his girlfriend's "jealous" reaction is actually her saying, "I love you. I want to be with you and you alone. This relationship is important to me. I don't want anything else to get in the middle and spoil it. I don't want anything to separate us." It is an expression of love.
But we don't want to hear it as love. We want to hear it as nagging and complaining. We want to hear it as a restriction on having fun.
I think it is the same with God. Remember, the Bible is not just a collection of stories about God. It is a book by God. So God is calling Himself jealous. He loves us, know the plans He has for us, created us to have a natural longing for Him, and designed heaven to be the place He can spend eternity with us. And he knows what awaits us if we choose not to spend eternity with Him. So when we start looking around, and so endanger that perfect plan, of course His response is jealousy. But it is a jealousy rooted in the knowledge of the disaster we will cause for ourselves if we choose "other gods".
Funny thing is that God made it very simple. So simple in fact, that we can't always accept it. There is only one way to reach God, through Jesus. Very simple. No ifs, ands, or buts. And no room for mistakes. It is not up to chance. It is a set and definite plan. Simple. But we don't see it as simple. We see it as restrictive. Our natural selfishness rises up and says, "Why can't I choose another way? That's not fair!"
But it is actually the very essence of fair. One set of rules. Laid out for us in advance. Everyone so blessed by God to be the first-born of their family knows what it is to have to play by different rules. And we know that changing the rules in mid-game is not fair. We can look back and say, in relation to our younger siblings, "I could never have got away with that". Or, "I would never have been given that". And some then get mad at their parents for "changing the rules". But what it really amounted to was they figured things out along the way, and our younger brothers and sisters simply benefited from that. At least that is what Mom and Dad say now.
However, it is not that way with God. He didn't have to "figure it out as He went along". He made one set of rules, and will apply them with even-handed fairness. Now you might be tempted to say, "Oh no. He's not being fair. This thing or that thing is called sin, but He made me that way, so it can't be fair to apply that rule to me". But sure it is fair.
And no, being "born that way" is not an escape hatch. We are all "born that way". Born that way referring to the propensity to sin. Look back at the example of the baby. When that selfish baby is about 3, and you walk in to find crayon drawings all over your freshly painted walls, with that toddler sitting in front of it, holding the crayon, what will that child do when you ask, "Did you do this"?
It will lie. Isn't that wonderful. All your hard work in teaching your child how to lie has paid off. You should be so proud.
No, or course we don't teach our kids to lie. And we are not proud when they do so. But they do so because it is in their nature to sin. To know the truth and willingly go the opposite way.
So God being a jealous God, and His providing only one way, through Jesus, to access Him, is simply His being fair. If left to our own devises, we will by nature go the wrong way. He took that out of the equation by giving us one way. And He guards against it by being jealous.
And jealousy is good. It simply means that someone (in this case God) cares for us so much that even the hint that we might be heading the wrong direction causes a "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger" response.
Thank you God for loving me so much as to jealously guard my relationship with You. And thank you, Karen, for loving me so much as to jealously guard my relationship with you.
Jealousy is a good thing. I hope everyone has a jealous person in your life. And that you respond to that jealousy with grace, not selfishness.
AN ACORN BLESSING
What are acorns?
I have been thinking about acorns lately. What is their purpose? What affect do they have on the environment around them? What would God have me learn from an acorn?
Well, an acorn is a seed. From it mighty oaks grow. But what about it as a seed? Obviously, like any other seed, it must be planted to do any good. It must be put into one place, and it must stay there, for any growth to come of it. You can see a great number of acorns scattered on the ground, but those seeds will simply not make a tree unless they are buried in the ground.
But an acorn on the ground is not altogether worthless. On the ground an acorn can provide nourishment for a squirrel. It can be the source of food for the squirrel and its family. And when collected and stored properly, acorns can feed the ‘family squirrel’ for an entire winter. But, once again, if all acorns are merely scattered on the ground, if some of them are not planted in the ground, the squirrel’s supply will eventually fade away. However, once an acorn goes in the ground and grows into that mighty oak, it then can supply acorns enough for many families of squirrels. Plus the fuel to grow more trees, produce more acorns, and feed more squirrels.
When God blesses us, is it possible that those blessings are intended to be acorns? Is it possible that His blessings on us are not only provided to supply our immediate need, and the needs of our family, but also to produce blessings for others?
Deuteronomy 8:10-18 -- When you have eaten and are filled, you will honor and thank the Lord your God for the good land He has given you. Be careful not to forget the Lord your God by not keeping all His Laws which I am telling you today. When you have eaten and are filled, and have built good houses to live in, and when your cattle and flocks become many, and you get much silver and gold, and have many things for your own, be careful not to become proud. Do not forget the Lord your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house where you were servants. He led you through the big desert that brought fear with its poisonous snakes and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water. He brought you water out of hard rock. In the desert He fed you bread from heaven, which your fathers did not know about. He did this so you would not have pride and that He might test you. It was for your good in the end. Be careful not to say in your heart, 'My power and strong hand have made me rich.' But remember the Lord your God. For it is He Who is giving you power to become rich. By this He may keep His agreement which He promised to your fathers, as it is this day. I think so. I think God wants to impart an “acorn blessing”.
An acorn blessing is one I am defining as a blessing with multiple manifestations. To begin with, God wants to bless us with our immediate needs. An acorn on the ground feeds Mr. Squirrel. Whatever our needs our, when God grants us an acorn blessing, He meets those needs. But that is not all. Haven’t you noticed that there is never just one acorn on the ground?
Ecclesiastes 7:11-14 -- Being wise is as good as being rich; in fact, it is better. Wisdom or money can get you almost anything, but it's important to know that only wisdom can save your life. Notice the way God does things; then fall into line. Don't fight the ways of God, for who can straighten out what he has made crooked? Enjoy prosperity while you can. But when hard times strike, realize that both come from God. That way you will realize that nothing is certain in this life.
So the one acorn feeds Mr. Squirrel. But beyond that, Mr. And Mrs. Squirrel can also gather some of the remaining acorns to store up for the long winter. In an acorn blessing God not only provides the immediate need, but also gives us enough to take care of us “down the road”. But some of the acorns get buried in the ground. Planted, whether on purpose or by accident. And those acorns produce oak trees. It is in the oak that the squirrel makes his home. And a home is a place where we find stability, provide shelter and security for our family, train and teach our kids, get rest and rejuvenation, and retreat from the pressures of the world around us. God’s acorn blessing provides us enough to not only take care of the immediate moment, and not only provide “money in the bank” for tomorrow, but also gives us all that is necessary for us to provide what our family needs to grow “in the fear and admonition of the Lord”.
Genesis 33:11 -- Please take my gifts, for God has been very generous to me. I have more than enough.
Once the trees grow to a certain point, though, they begin to produce more acorns. These acorns provide all the same benefits to other squirrels. And God’s blessings are just the same. He does not give to us for us to spend on us alone. In the acorn blessing, God gives more than enough so that we can also give to others in need. Our blessings are to be invested (planted) so that they produce more blessings, so we can bless others. And if you pay attention to the Great Commission, we are to bless others in our family, our neighborhood, our community, and our world.
Easton’s Bible Dictionary says that the most abundant type of oak tree in Israel “covers the rocky hills of Palestine with a dense brushwood of trees from 8 to 12 feet high, branching from the base, thickly covered with small evergreen rigid leaves, and bearing acorns copiously”. I like that word copiously. Think of the synonyms: a lot, profusely, plentifully, abundantly. God’s “acorn blessing” is a promise to provide what we need, but also to provide profusely, plentifully, abundantly enough, not for us to use on ourselves, but for us to use in blessing others. Providing for the work of ministers and missionaries. Promoting the spread of the Gospel.
Isaiah 61:1-3 -- The Spirit of the Lord God is on me, because the Lord has chosen me to bring good news to poor people. He has sent me to heal those with a sad heart. He has sent me to tell those who are being held and those in prison that they can go free. He has sent me to tell about the year of the Lord's favor, and the day our God will bring punishment. He has sent me to comfort all who are filled with sorrow. To those who have sorrow in Zion I will give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes. I will give them the oil of joy instead of sorrow, and a spirit of praise instead of a spirit of no hope. Then they will be called oaks that are right with God, planted by the Lord, that He may be honored.
Jesus came that we might be called the “oaks” of God. The little acorn that God blesses us with is intended to be planted so that a tree will grow. A tree that produces beauty, joy, and praise. A tree that honors God. A tree that provides shade (to heal those with a sad heart). A tree that has strong branches (to tell those who are being held and those in prison that they can go free). A tree that produces lots of acorns (bring good news to poor people).
From little acorns mighty oaks do indeed grow.
THERE IS A GOD ... AND HE LIKES US ... AND HE HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR
Of course there is a God. And we know He "likes" us. And I have never doubted His sense of humor, after all, He made me. But, every once in a while, something happens that, in the words of that old philosopher Arsenio Hall, makes me go "hmmm".
As you have seen in our profile, Karen and I are on staff at a church we helped to start. We are very happy in Winter Haven, and at Christ Community. But, as you have also read, we have begun to feel moved to begin an alternative church. We believed it would happen in about a year at CCC.
But then God laughed. Our Pastor sent us to a conference about church planting. While there we ran into an old friend. He shared his vision to start a multinational, multilingual church south of Atlanta. Of course, since I have known him almost 15 years, I have heard his heart about that before. But never in such detail. After seeing him again, and hearing his story, Karen asked if I thought we might work with him someday. I wasn't sure, although I have in the past and know we work together very well. But, I thought his church vision was just that, a vision. Something for the future.
Well, I was wrong. He contacted me a week or so later and laid out his plan in greater detail. And his timeline, which has this church opening its doors in September. The next day he told me how much he would like to have Karen and I join him. He didn't ask me. I had to ask him. Then I heard "the rest of the story".
Turns out he has felt the freedom from God to ask anybody for anything to help get this church started except one thing. In order to guard against people helping him out of a sense of personal loyalty, he wasn't supposed to ask friends to come help. He was to rely on God to bring people to him. So when I asked if there was anything we could do to help, his reply was instantneous. "Absofreakinglutely!"
Then God laughed again. We started to talk about the potential timeframe for Karen and I moving to Atlanta. It figured to be about 8-12 weeks, well into May. We had to give our notice in Winter Haven, staying long enough to help with Christ Community's transition into its new (and first) building. We had to put our house on the market and then sell it. We have to find a home near Atlanta and buy it.
But the timeframe got co-opted by another set of circumstances. As a result, our notice to leave CCC became public knowledge long before we had planned. In fact, it was known to some before I even had a chance to tell my boss. So we put our home on the market on a Sunday. By that Thursday we had received and accepted an offer. By the weekend we were in Georgia looking for a home. Our offer on the third house we visited was accepted by the following Tuesday. And both our buyer and our seller are motivated to get the deal done, and to get it done fast. As I write this we are awaiting word on whether or not our closing on the sale of our home will be in two weeks, instead of a month. If so, then we could be in Georgia less than one month from making the decision to leave Winter Haven.
If I were God, I would not have moved this thing so quickly. But I am a school teacher by trade. In order to support ourselves in Georgia, I intend to substitute teach. If our original timeline had gone through, we would not have made it to Georgia until school was almost out for the summer. Which would have meant not being able to make meaningful school contacts until August.
We are sometimes tempted to believe that the way we think things should go is also the way God thinks. And when it doesn't go that way, and the way it does go seems to be not in our favor, we think something must be wrong. When my notice to leave CCC was co-opted by other circumstances I was tempted to question God why it was happening that way.
When things go better than we plan we have no problem believing that, in the words of my title, "There is a God ... and He likes me". But it is the last phrase in the title, '"and He has a sense of humor", that we need to pay attention to. Not every good thing that happens is a blessing. Not every bad thing is a curse. And not every blessing is something that appears to be "good" at first.
God is God, and He always will be God. I am not God, and I won't ever be. It matters not if we believe it, or accept it. It is the truth nonetheless.
IF JESUS IS IN THE BOAT
In Matthew 8 and Luke 8 we are told of an incident in which Jesus and His disciple get into a boat. In the middle of their trip, while Jesus is asleep, a violent storm comes up and threatens to capsize the boat.
The disciples fear they are going to drown. They wake Jesus up from His nap, and it is a well-deserved nap since He had just finished healing many people, saying, "Lord, save us! We are going to drown!"Now, I've got a question for you. Where in the Old Testament does it prophesy that the Messiah will suffer and die by drowning? These guys are in the boat with Jesus. Jesus can't die by drowning; He has to die by "hanging on a tree". He can't die by accident; He has to die via a willful act of self-sacrifice (check out John 10:17-18 -- ...I lay down My life only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord...).
Why are these guys afraid? My question to the disciples (as a reporter from the DGNN (Destination God News Network) would have been, "If Jesus is the Messiah, and He is in the boat with you, why were you afraid of drowning?" And I think that is what Jesus really meant when he told them in Matthew 8:26, ...You of little faith, why are you so afraid? I don't think the comment about their faith was directed at their inability to believe Jesus could save them, but at their inability to yet comprehend He was the Messiah.
Of course, the truth was they couldn't drown if Jesus was in the boat. A little later in the Bible there is a story of the disciples being caught in a storm when Jesus was not with them. Now that's the time to be afraid. But when Jesus is in the boat, why are they afraid?
And the greater lesson for us is the same. If Jesus is "in the boat", and the storm of life is raging against us, WE CAN'T DROWN!!! So, why be afraid of drowning?
But be sure you understand whose definition of drowning you are using. To not be able to drown does not mean you will suffer no hardships. Just look at the stories of the Apostles (according to tradition):
- James the son of Zebedee was beheaded in Jerusalem, the first of the apostles to die.
- Matthew was slain with the sword in a city in Ethiopia.
- Mark was dragged through the streets of Alexandria until he expired.
- Luke was hanged on an olive tree in Greece.
- James the Less was thrown from a pinnacle or wing of the temple.
- Philip was hanged up against a pillar in Phrygia.
- Bartholomew was flayed alive.
- Andrew was scourged then tied to a cross where he preached to the people for two days before dying.
- Jude was shot to death with arrows.
- Thomas was run through the body with a lance.
- Simon Zelotes was crucified.
- Peter was crucified upside down.
- Matthias was stoned and beheaded.
- John was exiled to the penal island of Patmos and later became the only apostle to die a natural death.
Now you might be want to say, "Jesus was 'in their boat', so to speak, yet they suffered terrible deaths. Wouldn't you call that a drowning?" And the short, easy answer is NO! That is "drowning" only by our definition. Not by God's. God's definition of drowning is to die without Jesus "in your boat".
We tend to equate suffering with evil. We suffer because we did something wrong, therefore God is punishing us. We suffer because God is not with us, therefore we are not truly saved. When I have hear such nonsense I like to say, "Go get a lamb and build an altar". If that is what you believe about suffering, then your religion is one of legalism: do right and God smiles, do wrong and God frowns. And the only way to make a frowning God smile again is to sacrifice some poor little sheep.
But God does not equate all suffering with evil. Except in the event of the rapture, all of us will die. And most death has some element of pain and suffering attached to it. The Apostles died a death that had some element of pain and suffering attached to it. But their deaths also had the effect of transforming the entire world, spreading the Good News of Jesus.
And because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, death is not the end. A natural death will occur. But the grace and mercy extended to us through Jesus means that we don't have to "drown".
So, the disciples couldn't drown. Jesus was in their boat. Can you drown? Is Jesus "in your boat"?
If you can't definitively answer that in the affirmative, click on Free Stuff. It will show you how to get a "life preserver".
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