Friday #CoffeeTimePrayer

Faith vs fear

And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Matthew 14:28-33 ESV

It’s interesting to me that Peter only began to sink after he’d gotten out of the boat and started to walk towards Jesus. He actually had the nerve – or let’s call it faith, though I think more often than not it amounts to the same thing – to get out of the boat in the first place. I think this episode illustrates the fact that there are two basic fears in our Christian life.

The first fear is the fear of taking that first step, that initial leap of faith. It’s the fear of getting out of the boat. When we experience this type of fear, we’re reluctant to hand our problems over to Jesus, for fear of his response (or lack of response). This fear renders us spiritually inert. It immobilises us. When it takes hold of us, we become spiritually passive. Physically, mentally and emotionally we may still keep going, but those essential spiritual components of faith, trust and surrender are missing. When we become stuck in a rut, or an apparently unending loop of difficulty, I think this is the fear to blame.

The second type of fear is that of sustained trust in the Lord. When we experience this type of fear, we usually surrender our situation to God, but then as time goes by we begin to doubt the integrity of God’s heart. We begin to waver, to doubt in God’s faithfulness, especially when something is a long time coming. This kind of fear is rooted at least partially in impatience. When a deadline looms, it can easily feel like God is oblivious to the practical realities of human existence.

So how do we cope with fear? I think there are two steps we can take:

First, we need to repent of our fear. Do we even realise that worry is in actuality a sin? Consider these verses:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? (Matthew 6:25-30 NRSV)

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7 NRSV)

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. (1 John 4:18 NRSV)

Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. (James 1:14 NLT)

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. (2 Timothy 1:7 NLT)

Since we are so often instructed NOT to fear, not to be anxious, actually doing so should be considered disobedience and therefore a sin. When we worry, we are being disobedient to God – and like all sin, it turns our faces and hearts away from God, leaving us open to the temptation of seeking answers in all the wrong places.

Secondly we, like Peter, get to ask for help. God doesn’t expect anything of us he won’t help us with. Peter, wavering, cried out to Jesus to help him. What was Jesus’ response? Did he reprimand him and stalk off, annoyed? Did he leave him to sink as a kind of test? Did he give him theological homework to do? No! Jesus reached out and grabbed Peter’s hands. In my Bible it reads that Jesus immediately reached out to Peter. Jesus hauled him up out of the water and then asked him, “Why did you doubt?” It didn’t make sense to Jesus that Peter should doubt him because it never occurred to Jesus not to help him.

In the moment, fear can be overwhelming, even crippling. It can feel a whole lot like being stuck out on open water in a boat during a storm. Visceral, threatening. But Jesus walks out onto this lake, and his hands are ready to lead us out of the storm. Let us be ready to greet him with the declaration, “Truly, you are the Son of God!” on our lips.

Prayer inspiration: Psalm 27

The Eternal is my light amidst my darkness
and my rescue in times of trouble.
So whom shall I fear?
He surrounds me with a fortress of protection.
So nothing should cause me alarm.

(Psalm 27:1 VOICE)

Wednesday #CoffeeTimePrayer #devo

Jackpot

“God’s kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field for years and then accidentally found by a trespasser. The finder is ecstatic—what a find!—and proceeds to sell everything he owns to raise money and buy that field.”

Matthew 13:44 MSG

Have you ever accidentally stumbled across something cool? Last year I found a rock shaped like a butt on the beach. I won’t say it’s the highlight of my life, but it was pretty novel. This is why I haunt our SPCA’s used books shop: the idea of finding a hidden treasure – a classic among a sea of Solly Ozrovech and well-thumbed Westerns – appeals to some deep-seated part of me that is both incredibly geeky and a cheapskate.

This parable Jesus uses strikes some visceral notes for me. Imagine finding a random treasure in a field, like that scene in The Shawshank Redemption! Just thinking about it makes me slightly nervous with excitement. I can imagine this man in the parable’s energy as he reburied the treasure and ran off, making plans to sell all his things and buy the field and the treasure in it. I can understand both his joy and his haste. If he were the hero in some story, I wouldn’t put the book down until I was sure he had gotten to keep the treasure.

But this is a parable. It tells us one thing by telling us another. I’m sure Jesus, knowing hearts as well as he did, understood what kind of chord this parable would strike in the hearts of those listening. Marketers and movie makers are still using (and abusing) this same basic desire: of finding, and keeping, something glorious. The dice falling in our favour for once. Luck, we call it, and hunt casino aisles for it, trying to appease this odd creature with even more odd superstitions.

We have hit the jackpot, though. That’s what Jesus is trying to teach us here. That jackpot is the kingdom of God. It is both the promise of eternal life, and the ability to live a resurrected life now. This is treasure we have stumbled upon. It’s not something we deserved to find, and it’s not something we could earn. But do we experience it as viscerally as we would finding actual treasure? Do we even still think about it as treasure, or has it been put up on a shelf to collect dust while we fruitlessly search for something shinier?

Why would we put something like the privilege of belonging to the kingdom of God on a shelf? Probably because we don’t realise how much of a privilege it is! But what if it was something we could lose? What if this treasure could be reclaimed by its owner? What if, one day, a person belonging to one of the names scribbled in the front page of those second-hand books I buy ten at a time, showed up at my door and wanted them back? I would be outraged! But what if this person reasoned that, since I wasn’t presently reading them (having bought ten at a time) and since I wasn’t actually using them… Since they were just sitting on a shelf, gathering dust…

You get the picture. I would tell this person all sorts of (colourful) things. Like, how dared she? They were mine! I found them! I’ll read them at some point!

In this chapter of parables, Jesus also told one about a net gathering up fish (Matthew 13:47-50). This fish-filled net would be hauled onto the beach, where the good fish would be collected and the bad ones thrown away. Now, I don’t think Jesus is going to show up at our doors to demand the kingdom of God back. But he is going to show up at some point, and he’s going to want to know why we’ve put our greatest treasure up on a shelf next to pre-owned Joyce Meyer books.

We have found something far greater than a butt-shaped rock washed up on a beach: we have found the treasure of knowing and being known by God. Living for and with him. Let’s not leave this reality up on a shelf. Jesus gave up literally everything j=he had so we could get it. Let’s take it down and write our names all over it.

Prayer inspiration: “A little kingdom I possess”, Louisa M Alcott

Dear Father, help me with the love
That castest out my fear!
Teach me to lean on Thee and feel
That thou art very near.
That no temptation is unseen,
No childish grief too small,
Since Thou, with patience infinite,
Dost soothe and comfort all.

Monday #CoffeeTimePrayer #devo

Salvation for bad asses

The Lord is my strength and my might;
he has become my salvation.

Psalm 118:14 NRSV

In movies there’s a trope where a character – usually a bad ass – comes face-to-face with a luckless Christian who proceeds to ask them, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour?” That’s the question we usually answer right at the start of our faith journey, the “yes” to God’s prompting, whatever form that prompting takes – accepting Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. But here’s a question I think we ask far less than we should: “Has Jesus become our salvation?”

If you’ve been doing the Christian “thing” for a while, you know that there is a big difference between where you started out from and where you are now. That progress isn’t predictable or always logical or linear, and comes with more than a few backslides; do not pass “Go”, do not collect $200. But there’s been change. Would that be the case if salvation were purely a static thing?

It wouldn’t. Being absolved from your sins and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb is a once-off. That’s a done deal. That’s what we typically think of when we say “salvation”. But salvation is also the continual process of parting from our lives, surrendering onto God, and that’s day-to-day, moment-to-moment. God becomes our salvation every moment we realise that we cannot be saved by anyone or anything but him.

Psalm 118 is billed as a “victory song.” The psalter records how God helped them and brought them victory. To them, God had in a very real way become their salvation. Do we allow God to become our salvation? Do we continually listen for his Holy Spirit and train ourselves to seek out God’s will, his protection, his peace, grace and mercy?

Technically saying “yes” to God once is enough. But by God, why would we say it only once, if we could say it over and over again?

Prayer inspiration: Psalm 118

You are my God, and I will give thanks to you;
you are my God, I will extol you.
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever.

Psalm 118:28-29 NRSV

Friday #CoffeeTimePrayer #devo

Grace reminder

Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”

Matthew 9:12-13 MSG

I want to share with you something Donald Miller wrote in Blue Like Jazz. He’s talking about grace:

But if I cannot accept God’s love, I cannot love Him in  return, and I cannot obey Him. Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God’s love will. The ability to accept God’s unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God’s kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love. (2003:86)

I recently read something on Facebook, the gist of which was that this person was tired about hearing how sinful we humans are all the time and to give us a break, etc. And I remember thinking, “Why?” Why on earth do we want a break from hearing how sinful we are? After all, being reminded of our sin is also being reminded of our grace… And vice-versa. 

I think we need to hear both messages. Terrible things happen to our faith when we forget, even for a moment, how great our debt is, how great a debt we’ve been freed from. Or maybe “debt” is too mild a metaphor – what about death? That’s the metaphor Paul uses (Romans 6). We were dead. Dead. And now we are alive. That’s something to celebrate, but the celebration only lasts as long as the remembrance of what we were before. 

When we’re religious, it’s easy to forget just how sinful we are. What a travesty! We get used to grace. Religion as a system is primarily about ticking boxes. To a good purpose, but still. Therein lies the trap: the better we get at ticking those boxes, boxes like tithing and volunteering and teaching and preaching, the less good we are at ticking that other box, the one that reads “sinner, saved”. The one that has a picture of Jesus on a cross next to it. The one that’s sort of the whole point.

Why is that? Like Donald Miller says, we can’t love if we don’t accept God’s love. But accepting God’s love is a simple task, and I’m convinced that’s why we struggle with something that should be very easy. It’s too easy! I think it boils down to deservingness. It’s a catch-22: we work to earn God’s grace, which we don’t need to do; but the working tells us we don’t need his grace. What a number’s being done on us!

This is why Jesus is after mercy, not religion. Religion can fool us, but mercy is a pretty straightforward concept, as straightforward as a man on a cross saying, “It is finished.” Just one box to tick there.

Prayer inspiration: “Amazing Grace”

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

Wednesday #CoffeeTimePrayer #devo

Soft hearts

The baby’s older sister found herself a vantage point a little way off and watched to see what would happen to him. Pharaoh’s daughter came down to the Nile to bathe; her maidens strolled on the bank. She saw the basket-boat floating in the reeds and sent her maid to get it. She opened it and saw the child—a baby crying! Her heart went out to him. She said, “This must be one of the Hebrew babies.”

Then his sister was before her: “Do you want me to go and get a nursing mother from the Hebrews so she can nurse the baby for you?”

Pharaoh’s daughter said, “Yes. Go.” The girl went and called the child’s mother.

Pharaoh’s daughter told her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me. I’ll pay you.” The woman took the child and nursed him.

After the child was weaned, she presented him to Pharaoh’s daughter who adopted him as her son. She named him Moses (Pulled-Out), saying, “I pulled him out of the water.”

Exodus 2:4-10 MSG

As Sunday school colouring-in stories go, Moses’ birth is a favourite, and I’m pretty sure most of us have coloured in water and baby, reeds and basket. Pharaoh’s unnamed daughter is usually present in these images, but it’s only for this one moment that we see her, before Moses’ narrative moves on. But what do we see? And what can it teach us?

We need to realise something here: Pharaoh’s daughter knew. She knew the baby was a Hebrew child, and she probably knew that the woman fetched to nurse him was his mother. But she also knew that there was a political agenda against the Hebrew infants; that their boy children were to be slaughtered. She also knew she wasn’t alone. She found herself in the middle: on one side were her retinue of watchful attendants, and on the other a Hebrew witness, Moses’ sister. So Pharaoh’s daughter played along, played her part in the story, and saved the life of the Hebrew liberator and the man who would lead the slaves into nationhood, who would lead them into becoming Israel.

We never coloured in this image, did we?

Now, some might say that God compelled Pharaoh’s daughter, like he compelled her father and/or brother to resist Moses and Aaron’s demand to let the slaves go. But the Bible makes no mention of that, and I think that’s because God didn’t need to compel this woman. She saw not an enemy in that baby, and probably not a slave – she saw a child. She saw in his sister’s behaviour no impertinence, only love. And her soft-heartedness, her God-heartedness, saved the nation of Israel.

Having (and keeping) soft hearts isn’t an easy thing. Recently I was in a meeting and someone said something well-meaning but ultimately hurtful to me, something that pricked a well of emotions this person couldn’t have known was sitting under the surface. My first instinct was to harden my heart, to clam up and tough it out. But soft-heartedness means letting your fists unclench, your heart stay open. Soft-heartedness means being constantly vulnerable, being consciously vulnerable. It’s the only way to live from a place of love.

We follow a soft-hearted God, did you ever think about that? If you’ve read Hosea you know what I’m talking about. We hurt God constantly: with evil, sin, apathy or indifference. We’re fickle creatures to love, you know, but he loves us anyway. He sent his soft heart to earth in the form of a Son, and this Son laughed and cried, overturned tables and danced children in his arms, lifted up the sick to health and the dead to life, washed feet, broke bread, broke his body, arose again. It’s in this soft heart that we see God’s desperate love sprawled on a cross; it’s in this heart’s bleeding that we are cleansed, resurrected, new.

Soft-heartedness will be painful: it’s an open wound in a world of caustic sin. But it’s also this pain that will keep us attuned to God, to people, to their needs, to the evil in this world. Apathy allows us to forget what pain never will: that this place is temporary, fallen, fickle. It helps us remember what’s really important, and that’s two things and only two things: God and neighbour.

Let’s approach the rest of this week like a soft-hearted woman finding a baby abandoned in a river. The world may not deserve our soft hearts, but we never deserved God’s either.

Prayer inspiration: Hosea 11

But how can I give up on you, Ephraim?
How can I turn you loose, Israel?
How can I leave you to be ruined like Admah,
devastated like luckless Zeboim?
I can’t bear to even think such thoughts.
My insides churn in protest.
And so I’m not going to act on my anger.
I’m not going to destroy Ephraim.
And why? Because I am God and not a human.
I’m The Holy One and I’m here—in your very midst.
“The people will end up following God.
I will roar like a lion—
Oh, how I’ll roar!
My frightened children will come running from the west.
Like frightened birds they’ll come from Egypt,
from Assyria like scared doves.
I’ll move them back into their homes.”
God’s Word!