Page 2 of 2

Posted on

High Places in Low Times

Circumstances happen to everyone. Life is filled with ups and downs, with mountains and valleys, with heavenly times and hellish times.

Habakkuk faced his own set of problems. The country he loved was devastated by the invading Chaldeans. Because of their sin God raised up a people who ransacked the nation, destroyed the landscape, and carried them off into exile. Habakkuk was a righteous man suffering with the unrighteous.

You would expect him to be angry, frustrated, perhaps even bitter. But he wrote a song and here is the refrain:

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places. To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.
Habakkuk 3:17-19

Continue reading → High Places in Low Times

Posted on

5 Reasons What Is Happening Around the World Should Concern You

We see and hear a lot of news–and become numb to it.  Some news simply fills space but other news is important.  We must determine which news matters and which doesn’t.  I am convinced that what’s happening around the world right now really matters.  Here’s why:

  1. History often repeats itself.  During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln said, “Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.”  Since human beings do not change, history doesn’t necessarily reveal new events, but new human beings acting in the same old ways.  Putin’s antics in Russia should greatly concern any onlooker.  His disregard for human life should disturb us.
  2. Many people are losing their lives for a few peoples’ agendas.  Innocent civilians are dying.  298 people died when the plane was shot down over Ukraine.  Hundreds have died in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.  Most of those who have died have no inherent interest in what is happening–they’re caught in the crossfire of egos and agendas.  Christianity is based on one dying for many, not many dying for one.
  3. There is a growing anti-Christian sentiment around the world.  Kim Jung Un, the current leader of North Korea, has imprisoned 30,000 Christians including entire families, even children.  Just 3 days ago in Mosul (northern Iraq) Christians were forced to either convert to Islam, pay a large sum of money or die.  “We offer [Christians] three choices: Islam; the dhimma contract – involving payment… if they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword,” the announcement read.  On Saturday morning, Mosul residents left by the hundreds–walking in Iraq’s summer heat–old and young, able and disabled alike.
  4. You can pray.  No matter where you are, you can be with persecuted Christians through prayer.  You can join families who have lost loved ones by praying for them as they mourn.  We are instructed to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.
  5. Jesus is coming back.  Scripture is clear that an escalation of events like the ones we have recently seen indicate a reality that most of the world chooses to ignore:  Jesus is coming back.  Though history repeats itself, it isn’t cyclical–it’s linear.  History is moving toward a grand climax.  History is His Story–the Gospel is still the centerpiece of all of history.

So what should you do.  Pray.  And one more thing.  I don’t usually do things like this but I recently signed a confessional letter sent to Kim Jung Un of North Korea.  If you want to do the same, here’s the link: letterofconfession.com.

Posted on

Why Bad Things Happen to God’s People

If we are honest, everyone on this planet recognizes that there is something inherently wrong with the world.  Since the beginning of history, mankind has attempted to provide an answer to the existence of evil.  Horrible things happen.  When they do, people scramble to understand them in light of their beliefs. Whether they are atheists, agnostic, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, or Christians, the problem of evil is too prevalent to dismiss.  The question for Christians becomes an even more difficult one:  If God is good and loving, then why does God allow (or some would say ordain) bad things?  (i.e. Why do bad things happen to good, and even God’s, people?)

When we can’t find sufficient answers, we have a tendency to create our own.  Here are a few of the most common misconceptions:

  • Bad things happen to God’s people because God is not involved.  Technically this is called “deism.”  Deism suggests that God does not interfere with the world in any way–everything runs according to its natural course. To be sure, actions have consequences.  If you smoke, you could get lung cancer and you could die.  Smoking causes cancer.  Actions have consequences.  However, Christians believe that God is very involved.  He didn’t just wind up the universe like some master watchmaker and then step back and watch it run, or worse, walk away completely (Thomas Jefferson ascribed to this belief by the way).  As a matter of fact, God invaded the universe with His Son Jesus Christ.  The incarnation is the centerpiece of Christianity–God becoming man.
  • Bad things happen to God’s people because God is impotent.  God either doesn’t exist, or if he does, he is incapable of controlling or stopping bad things.  Those who hold this view simply point to the cacophony of evil in the world.  “If God is God (and therefore in complete control of the universe), then why did he allow……?” God appears to be impotent–unable to do what is needed to be done in a certain situation.  Atheists hold to the extreme form of this view.  God is impotent because he doesn’t exist, therefore to explain evil does not necessitate the mention of God.
  • Bad things happen to God’s people because of their personal sin.  This assumption is as old as time itself. Jesus and his disciples encountered a man who was born blind.  His disciples looked at the man, and then at Jesus, and asked: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” (John 9:2)  The disciples’ assumption was that personal sin resulted in the blindness.  This assumption has several holes in its logic.  First of all, the blind man, like everyone since Adam and Eve, was born into sin.  If his sin resulted in blindness, then all people would be born blind. Second, the blind man’s parents were born into sin just as he was.  If their sin caused their son to be born blind, then all children would be born blind.

All of those answers leave us feeling guilty or empty, despairing or despondent.

Why, then, do bad things happen to God’s people?

  • Bad things happen to God’s people because Adam and Eve sinned.  Genesis 3 tells the story.  The serpent deceived Eve.  Eve convinced Adam and they ate the forbidden fruit.  God came walking in the garden and they hid themselves.  For the first time in their lives they were afraid of God.  Sin does that.  Sin distances us from God. God cursed the serpent, but he did not curse Adam or Eve.  (Childbearing became difficult and God cursed the land.) God made clothes for Adam and Eve.  The Creator of the universe became a tailor!  Since then death and disease, sin and temptation have been the norm.  Romans 8:22 says all of creation groans as it waits for renewal.
  • Bad things happen to God’s people because suffering stands alone in its ability to draw us into fellowship with God.  Paul wrote in Philippians 3:10 “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”  Christianity is counterintuitive. How attractive is a faith whose leader is described by Isaiah this way: “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (53:3)  The hero of the Christian faith was a man of sorrows.  When you suffer you are most like Christ.  When you suffer, you are in God’s company.  C. S. Lewis, in the Problem of Pain, said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
  • Bad things happen to God’s people because God uses their suffering to reveal Himself to those who don’t know Him.  Jesus’ disciples thought the blind man’s sin, or his parents’ sin, caused his blindness. Jesus’ answer caught the disciples by surprise: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3) The blind beggar was a showcase of the glory of God. His parents never saw this coming.  Neither did he.  Jesus chose to heal him. We don’t know why God heals some and doesn’t heal others. What we know is that God uses the suffering of his beloved children as a showcase of His glory. Jesus spit on the ground, put mud on the blind man’s eyes, instructed him to wash in the pool of Siloam and the man left seeing. The Pharisees complained and the blind beggar became one of the first worshipers of Jesus.

Suffering is inevitable…and so hard.  Christians never dismiss it.  As a matter of fact, when our brothers and sisters hurt, we do too.  Paul instructs us in Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.”  In Galatians 6:2 we are told to “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  We will never have all the answers (that is, this side of glory)–we will struggle to understand.  In those times, we cry together.  During those times we shoulder each others’ burdens…and in the process we fulfill the law of Christ.

Posted on

Triumph in Humiliation

Lord, our master, whose glory fills the whole earth, show us by your Passion that you, the true eternal Son of God, triumph even in the deepest humiliation.  —Bach in John’s Passion

Triumph and humiliation do not usually belong in the same sentence.  God excels in the ironic situations of life.  When Joseph’s brothers worried over the consequence of how they had treated Joseph, he responded, “You intended it for evil; God meant it for good.”

The suffering of Jesus is the supreme example of triumph in the deepest humiliation.  Jesus was beaten mercilessly.  Isaiah completely called this sequence of events:

For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
(Isaiah 53:2-3 ESV)

As one from whom men hide their faces.  People couldn’t bear to look at Jesus.  I wonder, in Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus, if Pilate looked at the ground–did he look him in the eye?

Majesty was veiled by blood.  Glory was masked by groaning.  Royalty hid behind repulsion.

What is your humiliation?  Your shame?  Your embarrassment?  In Jesus’ hands, and under Jesus’ blood, you can triumph even in the deepest humiliation.  This Easter season, call out to the humiliated Jesus who is now exalted.  Cry out to the One who cried out to His own Father on the cross.

It may be Friday…but Sunday’s coming.  Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes with the morning. (Psalm 30:5)