Tuesday, July 27th
7th & 8th grade Teen Camp at Trinity Pines
10:00am Ladies Bible Study - Room 162

Wednesday, July 28th
7th & 8th grade Teen Camp at Trinity Pines
6:00pm Youth Group - Teen Center
6:00pm Children’s Ministries - Jumpin’ Jungle in Nampa

Thursday, July 29th
7th & 8th grade Teen Camp at Trinity Pines
6:30am Men’s Prayer—Chapel
7:00pm VBS Volunteer meeting
7:00pm Love INC. Celebration Night - Nampa First

Friday, July 30th
7th & 8th grade Teen Camp at Trinity Pines

Saturday, July 31st
9:00am Garden Work Day

Sunday, August 1st
8:45am Orchestra Practice
9:30am Sunday School
10:45am Family Worship Service
1:00pm Bullock 50th Anniversary celebration - BFC
6:30pm VBS!!!

Psalm 32:1-7

Series: “What Do I Need to Know for Life?

Lesson Seven (David)

July 25, 2010

It’s great to be back with you!  Cindy and I missed you last Sunday, but last Sunday we were thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to be with our three kids, their spouses and our two grandchildren in Nashville, Tennessee.  And then last Sunday afternoon, we gathered with my parents and my two brothers and all of their families as we spent a couple of days celebrating my parents’ 60^th wedding anniversary.  It was a wonderful time!

And I heard a missed a great sermon on Ruth—another hero from the Bible!  My thanks to Gail Zickefoose for opening the Word for us last Sunday.

Can you believe that we’re two-thirds of the way through the summer?!—and through our series on Lessons from the Heroes of the Bible that I’ve entitled “What Do I Need to Know?”  We’ve considered heroes like Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Job and Ruth and the lessons learned through their life stories:

• God can be trusted.
• We win when we forgive.
• God uses ordinary people in extraordinary ways.
• We can be strong and courageous.
• God is with us even when we suffer, and
• God will provide.

Hopefully you’ve found these truths to be helpful in your own life!

Today we move to consider the life of King David—one that I suppose is a favorite hero for many people.  Many of us even as kids identified young David as a hero as we heard the amazing story of how David, with only a slingshot and a few small stones, single-handedly downed the towering giant Goliath and protected the people of Israel from the Philistine army which had attacked them.  There’s something amazing about how God chose David to be King—even though David was the “little brother” who wasn’t considered to be significant at all among even his own family.  We have loved the image of David the musician soothing the troubled spirits of King Saul—and we have read and re-read from the Book of Psalms, many of which were written by David himself.  We love the stories of David’s loyalty to King Saul, and how David and Saul’s son Jonathon represent the ultimate height of what it means to be friends.  And the thought of David being called “a man after God’s own heart” is something that not only challenges us but also helps us to see that’s it’s possible to have that kind of relationship with God.

David had been chosen by God and anointed to sit on the throne over the people of Israel.  He became the nation’s leader and enjoyed God’s favor wherever he went.  He was loved dearly by the people who served under him, and God gave David great success as a leader.

You know, when I first planned to consider David for this series of sermons, my mind went to a scene we find in 2 Samuel 11 and 12.  It describes not the height of David’s days, but what was likely the lowest point in his life.  You see, in the midst of all his high privileges, David saw, desired and took for himself the wife of another man—and he then sank even further into the darkness of sin by arranging the death of the woman’s husband in battle.  The woman’s name was Bathsheba, and the mere mention of her name ushers in the harsh reality of David’s most shameful moment.

If you’ve never read the story, you need to do that, for it paints word pictures I can’t do justice to!  God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David with the ugly truth.  Nathan told David a story about a wealthy man of privilege who assumed possession of the only thing of value held by a very poor man.  David was outraged that the man of great means would take advantage of the poor man in such a heartless and callous way.  And after David had finished his self-righteous tirade against the offender in the story, Nathan looked at David and said boldly, “You are the man!”  And Nathan began to expose the ugly sins which David had committed against Bathsheba and her husband.

David was devastated as he was forced to see his sin for what it was.  As I’ve said before, Satan is such a liar.  He will lead us into the most awful things, and put blinders on us so that we don’t see it for what it is.  That’s what he’d done with David.  But with Nathan’s bold confrontation, David had to admit that he was an adulterer and a murderer.  He had destroyed a happy home.  He had allowed his sexual desire to go rampant and uncontrolled.  And God was not pleased with David—just as God is not pleased whenever we get caught up in sin.

I also considered for our text to go to Psalm 51.  It records David’s powerful prayer of confession—a prayer many of us have prayed many times.  It begins—

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.  Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.  For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.  Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge…” (Psalm 51:1-4)

But when I got into my sermon preparation, I realized that the real story of hope is that God allowed David to get past the shame of 2 Samuel 11 and 12.  God answered David’s plea for forgiveness and cleansing in Psalm 51.  The rest of the story is that God redeemed David’s life.  While David’s escapade with Bathsheba had an impact on the rest of David’s life, it did not define who he was.  God helped David to get past that—and the lesson I want us to glean today from David’s life story is this: Failure Need Never Be Final.  Our sin and our failure need not define us.  If we will humbly turn to Him, God forgives sin and helps us to get beyond failure.

In Psalm 32, we read that the broken man has become the blessed man.  That’s an act of God, you know!  That’s not something we can do on our own!  Listen to the first seven verses of this Psalm that David wrote and is numbered Psalm 32—

[Read Psalm 32:1-7, NIV]

In preparing for this sermon, I kept coming across a quotation from Winston Churchill—

Success in not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts. (Winston Churchill)

From a purely human perspective, that’s true—and it gives encouragement for us to do all that we can to push beyond the failures in life—to exercise courage to keep going even when we have failed miserably.  But, as I think you’ll see, there’s a greater, more important source for us to tap into when we realize that we have failed.  David wasn’t merely exercising courage as he continued beyond the Bathsheba incident.  David needed forgiveness.  And while he had violated a woman and her husband, even more significant was the fact that he had violated the trust God had placed in David.  And yet in a sad twist of reality, it was only this God whom David had violated Who was able to cleanse the dark stain of sin in David’s heart.  Only God could forgive—and the Good News is that that is exactly what God did for David!  God forgave David and redeemed the mess David had made of his fairly charmed life—thus we learn that failure need never be final!

I have a pastor friend who years ago, while serving as a youth pastor, had an affair.  The Church of the Nazarene sees the integrity of its ministers seriously, and so my friend lost his ministry credentials and his position—as he should have.  And while I know that we as a church may not always have handled such situations in the best way possible, I am glad that the church was also redemptive with my friend.  When a minister has had a moral failure of this kind, it’s a long road to journey on and very few commit themselves to the process of restoration.  Unfortunately, most get angry with the church and blame them, rather than acknowledging their sin for what it is.  But fortunately, my friend was repentant and humbly submitted himself to the discipline of the church, which was fairly rigorous and extended through several years of time.  I know it was a difficult season of life for him and for his family—and, I might tell you, his wife also stuck by him and, from all I know, they have a solid marriage today.

Fast forward now to a conversation I had with my friend a few years ago—one of the first times we had ever discussed the topic of the sin of his moral failure.  He made a comment that has stuck with me a long time.  While acknowledging his shame over what had happened and his gratitude that the church had a process by which his ministry could eventually be restored, he said, “But I know that there will always be an asterisk by my name.”

You know what an asterisk is, don’t you?  It’s the little star-like symbol that is used after a word to point you to a footnote at the bottom of page that tells you more that you may need to know about that word in the text.  So, do you get what he was saying when he said that he felt there would always be an asterisk by his name—that it would forever mark him, that it would be the thing others would whisper about when they spoke of him, that doors of opportunity would close before him when people learned “his full story.”

The truth is that every one of has an asterisk by our name—the asterisk of sin and failure.  How do I know that?  Because the Bible tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  Besides it being confirmed over and over in scripture, I guess I’d have to tell you that I’ve also observed it to be true—that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist brain to figure out that not one of us is perfect.  You’ve probably heard it said before, but they say that if you’re looking for a perfect church, don’t go there if you find it because the moment you step through the doors it will no longer be perfect and you’ll ruin it!  We all have an asterisk that tells of sin in our lives.  And, rest assured, David’s asterisk that told the shameful story of him with Bathsheba wasn’t the first sin in his life either—but it was the most well-known and it was the sin that seemed to force David to deal with his own sinful nature.

Most of us can also identify ourselves with some kind of failure—perhaps a failure that is so severe that we feel it may forever put an asterisk by our name, defining who we are (or aren’t!), perhaps limiting what we can do, somehow making us second-rate.  More often than we like to admit, there are three small words that need to come from our mouths—“I blew it!”  I suppose another version of those three small words is “I was wrong.”  I don’t know about you, but I’m not overly fond of either set of three words—at least not when they need to come out of my mouth!  But we all make mistakes!  We are all imperfect, faulty, mistake-prone people!

Sometimes our mistakes are minimal, with minor ramifications—like when we misjudge which street to turn on and we have to go out of our way a few blocks or even a few miles.  The sky’s not going to fall in because we have to take a few more minutes to get someplace!  But other times our failures (or what we feel like are “failures”) are costly, humiliating and demoralizing—with serious consequences.  I guess the kind of failures I’m thinking of here are things like business failures, lost jobs, home foreclosure, failing a class, divorce, rebellious kids…you fill in the blank.  And we sometimes feel that others are keeping track of the asterisks by our name—and sometimes they may be!

Why would I deal with both sin and failure in the same sermon?  The example of David’s affair with Bathsheba was clearly a matter of sin—no bones about it!  There were no excuses!  Sometimes we don’t want to call sin what it is—and we may as well get over that, because God doesn’t have any problem calling sin in our lives “sin” at all!  I’m confident that God calls “sin” what some people may want to label “failures”—and I’m just as confident that there may be people who want to label something “sin” in your life when it may merely be “failure” in the eyes of God.  The longer I live, the more I realize that I don’t have the full scoop on everyone’s lives—but God does, and that’s all that matters!

Psalm 32 actually uses three synonyms for sin, all of which connote something different.  Forgiveness is freely and graciously given, regardless of whether it be of a “transgression,” “sin” or “iniquity.”  A “transgression” is an act of rebellion and disloyalty.  “Sin” is an act that misses—often intentionally—God’s expressed and revealed will.  “Iniquity” is a crooked or wrong act, often associated with a conscious and intentional intent to do wrong.  Clearly the words overlap.  David’s point is that forgiveness of sin—however we define it—is to be found in God.

As I’ve been thinking about it, the distinction between sin and failure might be found in a puddle of grape juice on the living room carpet.  I would think that it would be “failure” if it was caused by a child who, as a pure gesture of kindness and respect, spilled the grape juice as he tried to bring a glass of it to his mom or dad.  But we’d see it altogether different if it was merely a matter that the child defiantly poured the grape juice on the carpet after he’d gotten angry over being told he couldn’t have the glass of grape juice in the living room.

And I think I’ve considered failure and sin together here because so often we can embrace the fact that God can forgive sin, but we still struggle to set ourselves free from the mostly personally-imposed stigma of failures.  If God can wipe clean the stain of sin, don’t you suppose He can and will also deal with the stains on the floor of our lives caused by failures?

The wonderful message of God’s Word is that He redeems lives!  He forgives sin and sees beyond our worst failures.  Let’s look closer at Psalm 32.

It begins—

Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.  Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (Psalm 32:1-2)

Please catch that David is saying that not only is the sin removed, but God pours out blessing upon those He has forgiven!  Three verbs express the absolute forgiveness God provides.  Sins are “forgiven”—in other words, they are carried away.  It’s the act of removal of sin, guilt, and the remembrance of sin on God’s part.  Sins are “covered”—referring to the gracious act of atonement by which the sinner is reconciled and the sin is a matter of the past so much so that the Lord does not bring it up anymore as grounds for His displeasure in us!  And when David said that God “does not count against him” his sins, He is referring to us being justified by God—as if we had never sinned at all.

When God catches us, exposes the sin in our lives, and forgives us when we repent, He also frees us from pretense.  There is great freedom in David’s words!  There is real blessing in coming clean with God—in being honest with Him.  There’s freedom in that!  I suppose that’s why people at AA meetings begin their sharing with the personal statement, “Hi, I’m Tim.  I’m an alcoholic.”  There’s something freeing in being honest!  It breaks down the stronghold that secrecy has upon us!

And, as David described in verses 3 and 4, until that openness and repentance happens, we waste away from the inside out.  Sin eats away at us.  David is speaking here of his own experience.

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of the summer. (Psalm 32:3-4)

David wasn’t having a good time, was he?  His sin was wearing on him—making him old before his time.  He was wasting away—angry at himself and angry with God.  And it was constant—night and day.  He felt God’s hand heavy upon Him—knowing but not wanting to admit that God was angry with him for what he had done and what he was doing.  As long as we try to hide our sin and excuse it away, our refusal to repent brings depression, emotional pain, alienation from God and even physical problems.  And the sad truth is that millions of people live in this condition.  They’ve accepted it as the norm for life.

But verse 5 is where David gets to his confession—

Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.  I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”—and you forgave the guilt of my sin. (Psalm 32:5)

David came clean before God—and the burden of his sin was lifted from him!  God forgave him!  Even though his sin was ugly and shameful, God forgave him!  Even though his actions wreaked havoc in the lives of others, God forgave David!  Even though David’s actions were deplorable and so out of character for the man David wanted to be, God forgave David!  He was set free!  David’s confession led to God’s forgiveness.  David gave up trying to hide his sin from God.  He got real with himself and with the Lord—and God forgave him, cleansing away the stain of sin upon his heart.

And then verses 6 and 7 describe the protection found in the God who forgives—

Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found; surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him.  You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. (Psalm 32:6-7)

Do you hear the words of inner healing here?  And part of what I’m hearing is that not only did David experience the cleansing of God’s forgiveness, but it opened the door for David to forgive himself!  The denial of sin is not the answer—it’s like an infection that eats us up inside.  But when David humbled himself before the Lord and acknowledged his sin for what it was, God forgave him and David experienced once again the peace and assurance that God was on his side.  David was relieved of the burden of trying to cover it up or even to make up for it.

And, in doing so, David was reminded of the grace and mercy of God—which is something every one of us needs to be reminded of daily.  We need the assurance that God is working for us—that we can rest in His protection.

David’s reference to God’s protection from the mighty waters—the flood waters—takes me back to our time in Nashville, Tennessee earlier this week.  I’m told that the flood that hit the area early in May did more damage than was done to New Orleans a few years ago—but we didn’t hear as much about it in the news because the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was dominating the news in those days.  My brother Steve and his wife live high on a hill directly above the Cumberland River that went way over its banks and flooded so much of the city.  While their home was safe because they sit so high above the river, Steve was showing us where they could look across the river and see cars floating out of apartment building parking lots—with water above the roofs of many buildings.  They say that flood waters are the most devastating natural disaster, because of the ongoing, relentless force of the water.

So David is saying that God’s forgiveness and God’s redemption is so thorough that not even the worst thing that can happen to us can remove us from the protection of His presence!  Wow!  David had the assurance that God would deliver him—and thus David turned his attention to praise and worship!  David had learned that the Lord is truly our hiding place, protecting us from trouble and surrounding us with songs of deliverance!

Aren’t you glad that our God is the God of the Second Chance?!  Sin and failure need never be the last word in our lives.  God forgives and restores and gives us the strength and the grace to get back on our feet to live lives that please and honor Him.  He promises to be our hiding place, our strength, our Great Deliverer.

Those of us who have been at Campmeeting services have been reminded that the need of the church today is not for slicker programs but rather a fresh breath of God’s Holy Spirit blowing through our lives, unleashing joy and power.  But to experience that, we need to come clean before God as David did.  And if you’re struggling with the asterisk you think is forever attached to your name today, I want to remind you that sin and failure need never be final in our lives.  The God who forgave and delivered David is the God who will meet you at your point of need today if you will humbly call upon Him.

GOD WILL PROVIDE

The Story of Ruth

Series: “What Do I Need to Know for Life?”
Lesson Six (Ruth)

July 18, 2010

 Many Christians never get beyond the elementary stage of prayer and remain there all the rest of their lives.  What a tragic commentary on a life that could otherwise be full of fresh miracles and a daily adventure with the Lord.

 Prayer was never designed to be a playground…it is rather a battleground.  Hard work and discipline are required, but the results are well worth the investment.    Talk to any prayer warrior about what prayer means to them and you will get an incredible response.  They know what happens when you spend time with God.  They have taken seriously those five powerful words: LORD TEACH US TO PRAY.

 I am thankful for Christian parents who had prayed that prayer and set an example before their children.  Yes, prayer is the key to power through the Holy Spirit.

Monday, July 12th

  7:00pm                                    Teen Movie Night - Teen Center

 Tuesday, July 13th

10:00am                                    Ladies Bible Study - Room 162

  1:00pm                                    Teen Back Yard Mission Week

  6:30pm                                    Women’s Ministries Presents: A Tuesday In July! Mosaic Tiles and Taco Bar

 Wednesday, July 14th

  1:00pm                                    Teen Back Yard Mission Week

  5:30pm                                    All Church BBQ & Concert featuring Homeland Harmony Quartet

Thursday, July 15th

  6:30am                                   Men’s Prayer—Chapel 

 1:00pm                                    Teen Back Yard Mission Week

  5:00pm                                    Part 5, The Moral of the Story is on location at Table Rock. We’ll return by 10:30

 Friday, July 16th

  1:00pm                                   Teen Back Yard Mission Week

                                                   Teen Camping Trip

  Saturday, July 17th

   9:00am                                  Garden Work Day

                                                   Teen Camping Trip 

Sunday, July 18th

  8:45am                                    Orchestra Practice

  9:30am                                    Sunday School

10:45am                                   Worship Service

                                                   Children’s Church

Job 19:25-27

Series: “What Do I Need to Know for Life?”
Lesson Five (Job)

July 11, 2010

[Start with video of people getting hurt]

I guess it’s the sadistic side of me, but those are incredibly funny, aren’t they?  My dad—who was a brutal football player in his high school days—can hardly stand watching America’s Funniest Home Videos because he feels bad for the people shown who got hurt!

But we understand, don’t we?  Because even though we laugh at such videos, we know that pain and suffering is no laughing matter at all!  I suppose sometimes we’d just assume laugh rather than cry!  And sometimes when Christians go through periods of great physical or emotional pain, we muse that we’re starting to feel a little like Job.  And Job’s story was anything but funny!

There’s a book in the Old Testament that bears his name and tells his story.  For those unfamiliar with the Old Testament, I might explain that his name looks like it should be pronounced “job”—it’s just j-o-b, but it’s pronounced like it’s j-o-b-e.  But with a name like “Pusey,” I don’t make fun of anybody’s name!  And I’m guessing that Job’s name was the least of his worries.

Let me tell you about Job.  Other than what we learn in the Old Testament book by his name, we don’t know anything more about him.  It’s unclear when he lived or when his story was written down.  And while he lived in the land of Uz, no one knows where Uz was.  When he was first introduced, it’s made clear that he was a wealthy herder with thousands of sheep and thousands of camels plus hundreds of oxen and donkeys.  Besides his livestock, Job had lots of servants.  He was one of the richest and most influential men in his corner of the world.

According to the first chapter of Job, the Lord had a conversation with Satan one day, affirming Job’s virtues, calling him the finest person on earth.  And Satan begs to differ with God, arguing that Job is a godly man only because God had blessed him so abundantly.  Satan said to the Lord, “But stretch out your hand and strike everything Job has, and he will surely curse you to your face” (Job 1:11).  So God allowed Satan put Job to the test.

And what a grueling test it was!—much of it happening in a single day!  Foreign raiders stole his oxen and donkeys and killed the farmhands.  Only one worker survived to deliver the news.  While he was still talking, in comes another messenger—telling that fire from the sky, maybe started by lightning, had incinerated Job’s sheep and his shepherds.  Only one worker survived to deliver the news, but while he’s still talking, in comes another.  He announced that another group of foreign raiders had stolen Job’s camels and killed his herders.  Only one worker survived to deliver the news, but while he’s still talking, in comes another.  He announced that a windstorm had blown down the home of Job’s oldest son, where all of Job’s 10 children were enjoying a meal together.  All of Job’s children had been killed, and only one servant survived to deliver the news.  And all this happened in one day!  And you think you’ve had a bad day!

But in his grief and despair, instead of cursing God, Job cried out,

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:21)

Unfortunately, Satan persisted in his attacks on Job.  On another day, he afflicted Job with painful sores all over his body.  We don’t know the exact nature of the sores, but there are those who suggest that it was shingles.  And those of you who have suffered with shingles know how painful and miserable shingles can be!  In Job’s physical pain, his dear wife comes alongside to encourage him, saying, “Are you still holding on to your integrity?  Curse God and die!”  But still, Job did not sin against God.

Then Job’s friends came from far away to comfort and console him.  And after some days of quiet comfort, they began to express their thoughts about what was happening.  They’re convinced that God is punishing Job for sin in his life from which he needed to repent.  Now Job’s suffering moves from the physical realm to the spiritual—as his friends impose upon him their warped theological understanding that whenever someone suffers it’s because God is punishing them.  And the rest of the book of Job records dialogue between Job and his friends and then between Job and the Lord.  And while Job complains to the Lord in brutally honest fashion, he does not turn his back on God, hanging onto a persistent thread of hope and faith that is best expressed in chapter 19.

Turn with me in your Bibles to that chapter, and let me read verses 25-27—

[Read Job 19:25-27, NIV]

In our series of sermons for these summer Sundays on lessons from the heroes of the Bible—“What Do I Need to Know for Life?”—we come to a great lesson through the life of the man named Job.  Here’s the lesson: God Is With Us—Even When We Suffer.

Let’s talk about the realities of human suffering.  Any way you come at it, you have to conclude that it is simply part of the human experience.  The book of Job reveals the depth of human suffering—much of which is simply circumstantial to life with no responsibility on the part of the one hurting.  As we learn from Job, human suffering includes physical pain, the emotional agony of grief and loss, and the devastating impact of spiritual isolation—feeling forgotten and abandoned by God and others.

I suppose one of the challenges for any pastor is what I consider both the privilege and the burden of seeing human suffering close up and personal.  I got such an indoctrination to human suffering in my first senior pastor role in Galion, Ohio.  I had nine funerals in my first year as pastor there—one of which was for the beautiful 18-year-old daughter of one of our key families—and, in that case, I had to identify her body and be the one who told the parents that she died in a tragic accident.  It was to the same parents that I later had to deliver the heartbreaking news that their adult son was arrested by the FBI on attempted murder charges.  My heart broke for them—and I watched them suffer in their agony.

I’ve stood by bedsides as people endured terrible physical pain.  I’ve watched as people worked incredibly hard for every breath in the final hours of their lives—and tried to offer love and support for family members whose hearts were breaking in those moments.  And I’ve fought unsuccessfully to hold back tears as I somehow shared in their suffering and, as a pastor or maybe just as a fellow Christian, willingly took on a bit of their suffering.  And while I can’t explain suffering to you, I can tell you that human suffering is part of life—that it’s out there and it’s real—and I suppose we can all find some consolation in the knowledge that even Jesus experienced real suffering in his human experience.

And part of the great challenge in the midst of human suffering is dealing with the lie of Satan that suggests that God has deserted us when we are suffering—that we’re in this all alone.  And while our emotions suggest in those dark hours that we’re all alone—we aren’t!  And even in those times when we may not be able to voice to anyone else the depth of hurt we’re experiencing, the truth is that God hears our heart cries and cares deeply about us!

Job felt so all alone in his devastating circumstances.  He had lost almost everything, and in his darkest hour his wife had no clue how to encourage him and only added to his pain!  For her to say, “Curse God and die!” was as if she was saying, “You may as well shoot yourself in the head and get this over with!”  What a sweetheart!  Actually, we can only imagine the pain she was going through too!  And though his friends came from far away to be with him in his sorrow, their unfair and unfounded accusations left him feeling so all alone!  And while Job felt so all alone, even feeling as if God had deserted him—he discovered that it was not true at all!  God had not deserted him!

Are we to think that Job’s feeling that he could not find God nor make sense of God in this time of personal crisis was unique to Job’s experience?  Oh, no!  Besides other biblical examples of people who went through similar experiences, it’s safe to say that most Christians at some time in life find themselves going through such a season of inner turmoil.  And certainly such times do test our faith!  No doubt about it! 

But as gold is refined in the crucible of fire, so most believers are permitted to go through emotional and spiritual valleys that are designed to test our faith.  Why?  Because faith ranks high on God’s priorities.  Scripture tells us that without faith, it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6).  And what is faith? 

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)

This determination to believe even when proof is not provided and when God doesn’t answer all of our questions is central to our relationship with God.  It’s the acceptance of His Lordship over our lives—the acknowledgement of the truth of the Word of God to us through the prophet Isaiah—

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9)

And yet, a theological answer doesn’t take away the pain and frustration we experience when we walk through the barren, lonely land of suffering.  Some really fine Christians have found themselves doubting the very presence of God—and certainly wondered where the grace and mercy of the Lord were in such times!  We ask questions like, “Where is God when I need Him most?  Doesn’t He know what’s happening to me?”  And “Lord, is this the way You treat Your own?  I thought you loved me!” 

We know that He could rescue, that He could make it all go away in a moment—but He does not always choose to do so.  And, as Job experienced, Satan will use our pain to make us feel victimized by God Himself—and it’s such a deadly trap!  Satan is such a liar!  And when we start to believe Satan’s lies, we distance ourselves from the One who loves us and promises to see us through the suffering and instead turn to the one who only desires our demise.  But these are times to depend upon the promises of God—that He will never leave us nor forsake us, that He is the faithful God, that He is the Mighty God and Everlasting Father!

And in Job’s cries to God, he was incredibly blunt with God, charging God with cruelty and demanding that God explain Himself—which is pretty audacious of Job, when you think of it!  But I’ve often said that “God is a Big Boy—He can handle our questions!”  And I believe that, but I don’t believe that God always chooses to give us answers—certainly not always the answers we’re seeking and certainly not always on our time-table!

Like Job, we get focused on the “why” questions.  And in Job’s case, God answered the “why” questions with “who” questions.  God was essentially saying to Job, “Who do you think you are?”  And God makes His point with some pretty curt questions, like—

• “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Tell me, if you know so much” (Job 38:4)
• “Can you direct the movement of the stars? (Job 38:31)
• “Is it your wisdom that makes the hawk soar and spread its wings toward the south?” (Job 39:26)

And, by the end of God’s questioning, Job humbly got the point, and determined to listen.  Job came to see that his deep-sounding philosophical questions about suffering were foolish, acknowledging that he could not begin to understand the ways of God Almighty.  And, most significantly, Job accepted the truth that God was with him—even when he suffered.  God’s presence isn’t measured by the blessings in life and the tough times don’t mean that God has deserted us!  Through good times and bad times, God is with us.

I had an opportunity to go four-wheeling with my friend Richard a week ago yesterday up in the mountains beyond Idaho City.  It was a blast!  We were in a side-by-side called a Razor—which at first reminded me of a dune buggy—but it sure could go!  We rode up to Wilson’s Peak and then on to Pilot’s Peak at an elevation of 8200 feet.  We rode about 45 miles altogether!  We were up and down some pretty significant trails—some pretty rough trails!  It was a great Idaho adventure! 

We experienced the exhilaration of the view from the mountaintops and also the rutty terrain of deep valleys and even the creeks and streams of the valley.  Now, did the heights of the mountains or the depths of the valleys impact my relationship with the friend I was with?  No—we were side by side the whole time.  He may have had a bit of white knuckles going when I drove, but he was my friend when we started and when we ended and all the way along!   

And so it is in our relationship with our Heavenly Father—whether we’re in the highs or the lows of life.  God wants us to have faith to be assured that, despite our feelings and despite the circumstances of life through which we may be going, He is the One who holds us steady.  He’s right beside us!

By the way, the end of the Book of Job tells us that God blessed the second half of Job’s life, as he had blessed the first half.  Job raised 10 more children, and he had herds and flocks double what he had owned before.  And he lived long enough to see four generations of children, including his great-great-grandchildren.  But what he had learned in the deepest valley of life was that God was with him—through it all.  God’s love and grace and care for Job had never wavered, despite Job’s despair in the darkest season of his life.  And it’s a lesson we all need to learn.  And the words recorded in Job 19 became a lifelong declaration of truth for Job—“I know that my redeemer lives!”

You see, what Job discovered was that God is the defender of the oppressed, the champion of suffering people.  He is the Redeemer God—and the use of the word “redeemer” here is so revealing.  The word had great meaning in the Old Testament world, with both judicial and civil dimensions to its usage.  On one hand, a “redeemer” had a responsibility to seek justice for a slain family member.  And in the civil realm, a redeemer was a vindicator, “buying back” and so redeeming the lost inheritance of a family member who was deceased.  It was the redeemer who defended the defenseless.  It was the redeemer who championed the cause of the one who could not champion their own cause.  Job was in a situation where he could not defend himself—he needed someone who could do that for him…and the only one who could was God.  God defended Job’s cause!

Sometimes we want to defend ourselves or bring rationale and reasoning to explain to others why things are going on in our lives as they are.  But we can’t always do that effectively.  The arguments only exist on the human plain—and, remember the words of the Lord?

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9)

God will ultimately get the last word in—and that’s His job, not ours.  God ultimately gave to Job a hope that in many ways was ahead of his time—a hope in the resurrection. 

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another.  How my hearts yearns within me! (Job 19:25-27)

Job had come to believe in God’s power to raise the dead and had a desire and hope that God would, in His time, raise Job up.  Job came to realize that even though he suffered in this life, that there would come a time when the suffering of this life would no longer matter.  Job came to see that though he suffered, God was not against him.

And God is not against you, either, friend.  And despite what you may be going through, He asks you to trust Him—to lean on Him and not on your own understandings.  In his book, When God Doesn’t Make Sense, James Dobson shares four insights regarding Who he has come to believe that God is and how God interacts with us.  Let me share those with you—

1. God is present and involved in our lives even when He seems deaf or on an extended leave of absence.
2. God’s timing is perfect, even when He appears catastrophically late.
3. For reasons that are impossible to explain, we human beings are incredibly precious to God.
4. Your arms are too short to box with God.  Don’t try it!  (James Dobson)

Let me explain the last one.  Our finite human minds are pitifully ill-equipped to argue with the Creator.  There are some things we couldn’t understand even if God tried to explain it to us.  We can ask God our questions, but it’s dangerous to arrogantly demand explanations from God.  It’s also just as futile to lean on our own understanding.  We need to humbly acknowledge Who He is and who we are—and let that understanding lead us once again to trust.  We can choose to trust Him, regardless of what goes on in our lives—and there are times when our only other alternative is despair.

Let me close with the heart cry found in one of the Psalms—Psalm 42—

As the deer pants for streams of water,

    so my soul pants for you, O God.

  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

    When can I go and meet with God?

  My tears have been my food

    day and night,

  while men say to me all day long,

    “Where is your God?”

  These things I remember

    as I pour out my soul:

  how I used to go with the multitude,

    leading the procession to the house of God,

  with shouts of joy and thanksgiving

    among the festive throng.

  Why are you downcast, O my soul?

    Why so disturbed within me?

  Put your hope in God,

    for I will yet praise him,

    my Savior and  my God…

  Deep calls to deep

    in the roar of your waterfalls;

  all your waves and breakers

    have swept over me.

  By day the LORD directs his love,

    at night his song is with me–

    a prayer to the God of my life.

  I say to God my Rock,

    “Why have you forgotten me?

  Why must I go about mourning,

    oppressed by the enemy?”

  My bones suffer mortal agony

    as my foes taunt me,

  saying to me all day long,

    “Where is your God?”

  Why are you downcast, O my soul?

    Why so disturbed within me?

  Put your hope in God,

    for I will yet praise him,

    my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42)

[Prayer]

Benediction: 1PE 5:10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11 To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

Last week my wife brought home an orphaned kitten that was found on the NNU campus.  She brought it home and since then we have been adjusting to raising this little guy without any knowledge of what we are doing.  We’ve gotten the necessary items to take care of it, a litter box, food, and of course the little toys that kittens love to chase after. 

We came to name our new family member Sader, in light of the fact he was rescued from NNU’s campus.  Sader is short for Crusader, and as we thought of a name, that’s the one that stuck. 

After a week now of caring for this little fur ball my wife made an interesting observation.  Our little kitten loves to play, but after playing for awhile he’ll start to bite and nibble at our hands.  He’ll start to whine and cry, and we know he does that because he’s hungry.  The interesting thing however is he has to be convinced to go eat.  The practice we have is when we are sure he’s hungry we put a little food on our finger and he will then lick it off.  It’s at that time that he’ll finally walk the rest of the way to his food dish to begin eating.

The observation that my wife made is that, this little kitten knows he is hungry and yet doesn’t really know what to do about it.  His instinct currently isn’t to go find his food dish, but to whine and cry and bite my wife and I who are trying to care for it.  We know what he needs, but is stubborn about allowing us to provide for that need.  Sound familiar?

Now I am not a cat person, but God through this new member of our family revealed to my wife and then to me the reality that there are times I’m hungry for Him, and yet I act as though I don’t know where to go to get fed.  I’m too busy playing and having fun with my toys to stop and go eat.  I then get cranky and whiny when I wonder where my food is.

Let me apply it in this way.  God watches us when we play, he keeps an eye on us hoping we don’t get ourselves caught in a tree or in trouble somewhere.  He hears us when we start to whine or when we start to cry out for help.  He then watches as we then resist or “bite” the very hand trying to reach down and take us to our food dish.  He knows what we need, we know what we need, and yet we sometimes are too stubborn or too distracted to let him direct us to the very thing He knows we need. 

It’s easy in our culture of busy living, hobbies, and comfort to neglect the thing our soul cries out for the most.  It’s natural for us to cry out for help when we’re in search of something to satisfy our longing.  It’s typical for us to try and find it in our own way, rather than let God pick us up and take us to the dish. 

God is so good at putting a little milk on his finger and giving us a taste of what He has to offer us, and how He wants to provide for us, yet there are many who expect God to feed us that way all the time.  God lays before us a food dish to satisfy our hunger…that dish…is His very word.  The truth of God’s word has the ability to feed us in a way that gives us strength, energy and excitement for Him.  It is the Bread we are to live by, yet we seem to forget where to go when we are hungry. 

My wife and I have made food available for our kitten whenever he wants it, and in a place he can easily access it.  God has done the same for us.  He has provided for our very need and made it accessible for us.  How loud is your soul groaning for food?  Are you satisfied with a few drops of milk from the Father’s finger, or do you crave something more?  May I encourage you today…let us all remember where are “food dish” is and make sure we never lose sight of where to go when we are hungry.  Let’s not wait until we’re so hungry we have to cry out for God to feed us, but let us get in the habit of feeding our spirit daily from what God has made available to us. 

So let me ask the question…how hungry are you today?

2 Chronicles 7:11-22 (esp. 14)

July 4, 2010

It’s the 4^th of July!—our nation’s birthday!  As a country, we’re 234 years old!  What’s strange about saying that is that I have vivid memories of our bicentennial celebration—our 200^th birthday in 1976, now 34 years ago!  There were all kinds of celebrations going on all over the United States, and, of all times, I was a college student serving out of the country that summer in our missionary endeavors in the Dominican Republic.  We were along the coast that evening, and I remember looking out over the waters that evening and wondering what all was going on in my homeland!  Actually, Ron Galloway and I were together for that July 4^th!  Amazing, huh?

Another July 4^th I recall took place 3 years ago when Cindy and Krista and I were all out of the country once again—this time in the Ukraine.  The volunteer missionaries who were coordinating our trip surprised us that evening with fireworks—which were pretty amazing, especially when you think of the fact that it’s a poor country in so many ways and the fireworks they set off would have been fairly expensive in the U.S.A.  Besides that, not too many years before that we’d have probably been arrested if we’d celebrated the U.S.’s birthday in what had been the old Soviet Union!

I suppose many of us can remember going to see fireworks displays on the 4^th of July with family and friends across the years.  When we lived in San Jose, we’d often go to a fireworks display just down the road from the home of our friends George and Carol.  We took all three kids when they were little, but had to take the girls—probably a year old at the time—back to the house because they were absolutely terrified with the noise!  In Kansas City, we’d often go to the home of one of my staff members who lived in a community that was incredibly tolerant of fireworks.  I’ve never seen anything like it before in a neighborhood!  It was like a war zone!  We knew people in the area who spent a couple thousand dollars each year on fireworks!

When we think of the United States of America, we think on one hand of our national heritage, steeped in sacrificial patriotism and of those who put their lives on the line in order that we might live in a land of great freedom.  In that sense, we are such a blessed group of people—particularly when you consider the oppression under which some people live in some countries.  On the other hand, I think that many Christians today, in thinking about our nation, are gravely disappointed that our nation seems to reflect Christian values less and less with every year.  We have real fears about where we’re heading as a country and as a culture.

No doubt, there are a lot of current land mines with which our country is dealing that have serious moral repercussions.  I think the thing that disturbs me the most right now is the move toward broadening the very definition of marriage to include same-gender unions, and the impact that would have upon our nation and our culture—seemingly thumbing our noses at God and the sacredness of His plan and design for marriage between a man and woman.  The political battles regarding this and other issues are fierce and seem endless and can be absolutely consuming.

Beyond the moral issues are concerns like our financial instability—which sure showed its ugly head once again this week, didn’t it?  There’s the constant undercurrent of fear of terrorist attacks, made forever real to us by the events of 9-11.  There are the realities of a seemingly endless war in the Middle East.  And then there are disasters like the Gulf Coast Oil Spill that threaten to change the lives of some people forever—they’re starting to say now that it’s the worst oil spill in history.  There are also the natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes which seem to come upon us one after another.

The truth is that we have a lot of hurting people in America right now.  Someone loaned me a movie a few weeks ago that they were encouraging me to watch—called “The Cinderella Man.”  It’s really quite a good story about a man who turned to boxing in the early 1930’s in order to feed his family during the Great Depression.  What really gripped me in the movie was the desperation in which people were living during the Great Depression—and the reality that we have people living with that same kind of desperation today.

All of this could just really be consuming to us if we let it.  It could be a dark cloud under which we live every day—and there are certainly people who live under that dark cloud!  The concerns about what’s happening in our country could destroy our peace of mind, and bring a spirit of despair and hopelessness upon us.

What are we to do?  Are we to give into despair?  Are we to lose hope?  How are we to respond to all these things? 

There are certainly times for Christians to get involved in the battle and “fight the good fight”!  I’m certainly appreciative of Christians who seem to be especially equipped to jump into the political arena to battle in ways few can do.  Honestly, I can’t imagine ever wanting to be a politician—it just sounds like a torturous way to spend your life!  But I bless those who help us in these ways!  Even still, what quickly becomes apparent is that these battles are bigger than we are.

Most of us here today are Americans—and those who aren’t are either living in this country now or have chosen to visit this country.  I’m proud to be an American and I don’t ever want to take for granted the blessings we have enjoyed in this country.  I’m grateful for those blessings.  However, I do not believe that “American” and “Christian” are synonymous terms.  Thus, our purpose in coming together this morning has been to worship the Lord—not to “worship” America in any way.  This day was ordained as a day of worship long before it became the birthday of our nation—so I don’t want us to confuse our purpose.  But since our context for worship today is in the United States on a day that our whole nation recognizes as a celebration of our independence, it seems appropriate for us to consider how we as Christians might appropriately respond to our national identity.

So, in thinking of this day, I’ve diverted from our summer sermon series on life lessons from the heroes of the Bible in order that we might center in on God’s words to another nation.  Turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Chronicles chapter 7—

[Read 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, NIV]

Let’s look at this passage in two ways this morning.  I want us to first get an understanding of what was intended by these words to its original audience, but then I want us to apply those truths to our situation today here in America.

To understand what these words meant to the Israelites who first heard them, you have to understand the special relationship that Israel had with the Lord God.  It was a sacred relationship.  It was based on the covenant God made with a man named Abraham many years before; and it was a covenant renewed over and over again with the generations that followed—among the people we know as Israelites or the Jewish people.  God’s promise was that He would bless them if they were obedient to Him.  The entire Old Testament tells the faith journey of the Israelites—and how they experienced times of blessing when they were faithful to the One true God and how they experienced deep despair in the times when they wandered away from God and embraced the gods of the pagan people around them.  In what seemed like a persistent way, the Israelites kept turning their back on God and experienced the punishment of God for their actions.  And yet, over and over again, God would forgive them and restore them once again—only to find that in their times of blessing they would once again turn away from the Lord.  Woven through the pages of the Old Testament was the hope that God would send a deliverer to them who would be their savior forever.

The New Testament reveals Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior.  And after His death and resurrection and His ascension into heaven, the Early Church was entrusted with Christ’s mission in this world.  In so many ways, the Jewish people had rejected their messiah—Jesus—and the hope God had sent to them through Him.  What God made clear to the Early Church leaders was that this Savior was for all people, Jews and Gentiles, all around the world.

But our context in this Chronicles passage is still in the Old Testament.  David’s son Solomon was now King of Israel.  He had built a royal palace and tremendous temple to the Lord in Jerusalem—and had just gathered the people for a great dedication ceremony, asking for God’s blessings upon the Temple and upon them as a people.  And what we read was God’s response to Solomon’s prayer.

One of the central themes of the Old Testament is that God blesses those who follow faithfully in His ways and brings devastation upon those who refuse to do so.  But too many times, the people had experienced the wrath of God because they kept falling into their old ways, sinning against the Lord.  The Lord’s words to the people through Solomon that day revealed again the promise of God’s redemption and restoration and blessing if the people would repent—

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

One thing was clear: God will not tolerate sin.  He forgives sin, but only when the sinner is repentant of their sins—“repentance” referring to turning away from our sins.  Too often the Israelites—like us—would ask God to forgive them from their sins and plead with Him to restore their relationship with Him, and yet they’d go right back to the sins that alienated them from God before.  It reminds me of the child who is forced by an adult to apologize to another child for taking their toys—who then grabs the toy back as soon as the adult leaves the room!  Repentance is a matter of heart and mind—a mental and spiritual realignment of our will with God’s will.

God’s word to the people through Solomon that day was a message of hope and restoration—if they would turn from their sin and truly seek the Lord.  They needed to hear that.  But they also needed to hear the rest of what the Lord said.  God minced no words in warning them that devastation would come upon them if they did not turn away from their sins to follow Him—it’s the other side of the coin.

And what God had warned against was exactly what ended up happening—Solomon and most of the kings who followed him bowed down to other gods and failed to keep their covenant with the One True Living God who had responded to them with such love and compassion.  The nation of Israel was severed in two.  Eventually both nations were destroyed, people were killed, and those who remained were uprooted and taken en masse to live in exile in a foreign country.  It was exactly what God had warned them of.

Do you believe that God punishes evil in people’s lives?  If you doubt that He does, read again verses 19-22 in this passage.  They’re pretty harsh words of warning—words that were realized as Israel failed to heed the warning.  Let me ask you another question: Do you believe that God punishes evil nations?  Scripture seems to say a definite “Yes” to that!  God made it clear that sinful people would eventually suffer the consequences of willful departure from God’s will.  In other words, we can’t ignore God’s ways and get away with it forever.  At some point, it will catch up with us!

And yet—when we look at the passage we’ve read as a whole—we find that where sin abounds, grace abounds even more!  Does that mean that God simply overlooks sin and blesses people despite it?  No—scripture doesn’t say that.  But God does promise that when the sinner becomes repentant—truly sorry for the sins and willing to turn from them—He will forgive the sin and bring healing and restoration!  And that’s how we have hope, friends!  We can’t deny the problem of sin in our lives—and yet God promises forgiveness and healing.

There’s a powerful description of the prayer of repentance in verse 14—

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Seeking God’s face is a spiritual attitude of turning to God and allowing His will to prevail in our lives.  You can’t truly look God in the face and not be genuine in what we’re saying—He knows us too well for it to be otherwise.  This is more than a glib reciting of some kind of prayer formula—and it’s more than saying the right words; it’s having the heart right in what we’re saying.

And God promises to honor such a prayer and wipe the slate clean.  He even promises to bring healing where there was failure and loss.  He promises to restore us—and it’s a powerful thing!

So what does this prayer from 2 Chronicles have to say to us today—to Americans on the 4^th of July?  First and foremost, I hear the promise of healing and redemption for the people of our nation if we will turn from our sins.  Verse 14 of this chapter is probably the best known and most loved verse in all the two books of Chronicles.  It expresses, as no other passage in the Bible, the stipulations that God lays down for a nation to experience His blessing, whether that nation be Solomon’s or our own.  To be blessed, we must be willing to acknowledge sin and turn from living proud, self-centered lives.  We must hear God’s Word and apply His truths to our lives.  We must yield our desires to the will of God.

And if we will, God honors the prayer of repentance and promises to bless us.  Here’s the hope for America!  And the hope is not found in a political party nor in a particular leader nor in economic development nor in power nor control.  Our hope as a nation is in the Lord—and may we never forget it!  His word to us is clear—

If I ever shut off the supply of rain from the skies or order the locusts to eat the crops or send a plague on my people, and my people, my God-defined people, respond by humbling themselves, praying, seeking my presence, and turning their backs on their wicked lives, I’ll be there ready for you: I’ll listen from heaven, forgive their sins, and restore their land to health. (2 Chronicles 7:13-14, The Message)

God is the One who can bless America or any other nation—but that blessing is not found in ourselves, but in submitting to His ways!

Herein lays the divinely imposed condition of faithful obedience.  God will bless us if and only if we walk in His ways.  If we fail to do so, we will face the devastation God promises to those who defy Him and ignore His ways.

I grew up in an era in America when fearing about our future as a nation was as All-American as baseball and apple pie!  My grandparents spoke often of their grave concerns of communism taking over our nation.  We did nuclear disaster drills at school—and I still remember the signs leading into the basement of the school which indicated it was a nuclear shelter.  We feared a nuclear attack on our country.  Today our fears are a bit different, but we certainly have fears in America.  And they’re real!

Do I believe that everything bad that happens is punishment from God?  No…but I do believe that there are times when God allows devastation to come upon people because of their disobedience.  All you have to do is read through scripture to verify that!  But I also believe that God brings blessings upon those who are obedient.  Does that mean that if a Christian experiences difficult times that God is punishing them for something they did wrong?  No, but certainly there are times when God allows people to experience devastation as a result of their sin.

Ultimately, our hope is in God—not in political parties or government agencies or political activism.  One of the things we must pick up from this passage is that God is in control—He’ll have the last word.  And we do well to align ourselves with Him—humbly submit to Him, and thus turn from sin, and pray that our nation will do the same.

My little Grandma Pusey—who stood all of 4’ 8 or 9”—reminded us often of an insightful verse of scripture.  It’s found in Galatians 6:7—

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. (Galatians 6:7, KJV)

I remember a time when Grandma had gone into her room to rest after fixing a meal for the whole family—something she loved to do.  We were all sitting around the big kitchen table talking, and evidently got to talking about something with moral ramifications.  She was listening to every word from her bed.  Quietly, we heard her door open, and she simply said,

“I still say, ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’”

And then she just as quietly closed the door and went back to laying down, having made her point.

But it’s true—and we do well to remember that as individuals and as a nation—

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked.  A man reaps what he sows.  The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. (Galatians 6:7-8, NIV)

And yet—when we do sin, if we turn back to the Lord, He promises forgiveness and healing.  Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more!  Where sin leads to suffering consequences, healing begins when the person or the nation turns to God for forgiveness and a fresh start.

So where does that leave us all today in regards to our nation?  I believe it leads us to prayer.  I’m praying this morning that our nation would repent of her sins and turn to God—in a way that would revolutionize life in America.  I’m not praying that being a Christian would be legislated, but that more and more would see their need for God and turn their hearts to Him, and in so doing turn away from sins of self-centeredness and moral impurity and ungodly rationalizations that are wreaking havoc among the people of our nation today.

And as I pray that, I realize that it must begin with me, so I humble myself before the Lord today and acknowledge my great need for Him, committing myself to turn from any sin that would take the attention or the affection of my heart away from Him as Lord of my life.

I pray for our nation with the same broken heart with which I pray for some family members who do not appear to be walking in fellowship with the Lord right now.  I pray that in all the turmoil and problems our nation is facing today that eyes would be opened to the Truth and people would genuinely turn to God.

I pray for our leaders—at the national level, but also statewide and locally—that they would turn their hearts to the Lord and allow Him to direct their ways.  And I pray that the Lord would protect us from leaders at any level who would resist the ways of the Lord.

I pray for our nation today, mindful that our hope is not in ourselves or in our government or in our politics or in our power.  Our hope is in God!—so it’s right and good that we call upon him in behalf of our nation!  The challenges before us are so much bigger than any of us—but they’re not too big for God.  I’m praying that God would truly bless America—knowing that His blessing comes when we humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways.  May our hearts be turned to Him today.