Train Up vs Train Down

 

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. Prov.22:6.

If our children see us putting other things ahead of God, they will become discouraged and disillusioned, like a young Jewish boy, Karl, who once lived in Germany.

Karl’s father was a successful retailer, and the family practiced their Jewish faith. But then they moved to another city, and the boy’s father announced that they would no longer attend synagogue, no more Sabbath keeping. They were going to join the Lutheran church.

The boy was very surprised and asked his father why the family was joining the Lutheran church. His father’s answer was something like, “For business reasons. There are so many Lutherans in this town that I can make good business contacts at the Lutheran church. It will be good for business.”

That boy, who had a deep interest in religion, became so disillusioned with his father that something died within him. He said to himself, ‘My father has no real convictions.” The incident helped to turn him against religion with a vengeance. That young boy was Karl Marx. He wrote the “Communist Manifesto,” in which he called religion “the opiate of the masses.” His ideas were pushed by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung and other communist dictators brining misery and death to millions of people. 

I wonder if world’s modern history would have been different had Karl Marx’s father hadn’t put other things ahead of God.

Our children and grandchildren know whether we love God with all our heart. They see it with every decision we make that minimizes God in favor of another gods. What they want to see is parents with such love and reverence for God that they bring Him into every area of their lives and put Him first in everything.

And by extension, this is not only what our families are looking for, but our neighbors, friends, coworkers… this is what people want to see when they are observing the life of a GC - Genuine Christian.

Are you a GC or a F(ake)C?  

My Lazarus

 

If you will, you can make me clean. (Mark 1:40) I hear my own heart in the words of this desperate leper. He knows that God can do anything, but He isn’t sure that He wants to. Jesus’ ability isn’t up for debate, but apparently His heart is. Is this true?

It’s likely years of shame which has this leper questioning whether Jesus would want to heal him. This leper knows that Jesus can heal him, but why would he want to? Not this is the line I love, v:41: Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed”

Jesus is moved with compassion and then He does the unthinkable…He touches the leper. And rather than Jesus getting leprosy and becoming unclean He heals the leper. That’s good gospel stuff right there. It doesn’t matter how much shame or darkness or dirtiness or brokenness you have, when you call Jesus, He is going to answer to you.

But then I think of Martha.“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

She, like the leper, isn’t questioning Jesus’ ability. She’s not even questioning His heart. If Jesus had been here, then He would have made sure Lazarus didn’t die. What she is questioning is Jesus’ timing, the goodness of God’s planning.

And that leads to where I occasionally wrestle with. I know that God is able. I know for a fact that He loves me, I’ve got story after story from my own life.

But what if His love means that Lazarus still dies? What if for the glory of God my Lazarus dies?

He is still good. He still loves me. He still is doing everything that is ultimately best for me. But it’s not what I would have chosen. Will I trust Him then? This is where those who question God’s existence get really frustrated with us.

We say God miraculously heals someone. We see the hand of God in someone’s cancer going into remission. We attribute this to God instead of medical science. Point for Team-Jesus.

Then when God doesn’t heal someone… we continue to believe that God is good and does us good. We say things like “He has a better plan” or “He decided to heal in His time”.

If God could heal someone, if God loves us, then why in the world would He not always heal? And if he doesn’t always heal doesn’t it mean that either He doesn’t exist or He isn’t good? Not at all! Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

It just means - the story isn’t over.

 

No-No Fling

 My wife was sleeping next to me – Joshua began telling me - and all of a sudden I got a Facebook notification, and a woman asked me to add her. So, I added her.

I accepted the friend request and sent a message asking, 'Do we know each other?’

She replied: ‘I heard you got married but I still love you.' 

She was a friend from the past. She looked very beautiful in the picture. I typed: ‘You look unchanged.’

Then I closed the chat and looked at my wife, she was sleeping soundly after her exhausting day of work.

Looking at her, I was thinking about how she feels so safe that she can sleep so comfortably in a completely different home with me.

She is far from her parents' house, where she spent 24 hours surrounded by her family. When she was upset or sad, her mother was there so she could cry in her lap. Her sister or brother would tell jokes and make her laugh. Her father would come home and bring her stuff she liked… And still, she placed so much trust in me.

All these thoughts came to mind, so I picked up the smartphone and pressed "BLOCK". Then I turned to my wife and slept next to her.

I am a man – says Joshua to me - not a child. I have sworn to be faithful to her and so it will be. I will fight forever to be a man who doesn't cheat and tear his family apart like some stupid guys who are falling into the trap.”

Giving Up or Letting Go?

 

In many situations in life, our instinct is to fight it, fix it, and seize control. But very often, the Lord is asking us to do the opposite. He’s asking us to let go.

 Letting Go and surrender is completely counterintuitive. But that’s the nature of life lived God’s way. It runs against our natural instincts. But letting go isn’t the same as giving up.

 Giving up is when the rope is torn out of your bleeding hands. It’s something you allow to happen by a choice of your will.

 God never wants us to give up. But He does want us to let go.

 1. Letting go is an act of acceptance and surrender. It’s also part of life. To let go is to accept those things we cannot change. It doesn’t mean we approve of those things or even like them. But we release them nonetheless.

2. Letting go is an act of love, not defeat. It’s a deliberate decision to place our trust in Jesus Christ.

3. Letting go is the path to freedom. It also opens the door for God to gain what He’s after without interrupting, interfering with, or intercepting the masterpiece He’s seeking to create in you.

The fact is life is a series of losses. We lose friends, relationships, jobs, churches, family members, even our favorite stores, restaurants, games, and preferential subscriptions. The only thing that’s guaranteed is our earthly existence, and even that will be gone one day.

 As difficult as it is to let go, keep this in mind: You’re not really letting go. You’re simply transferring the problem into God’s hands - hands that are far more capable than your own.

 As children bring their broken toys with tears for us to mend,

I brought my broken dreams to God, because He was my friend.

But then, instead of leaving Him, in peace, to work alone,

I hung around and tried to help, with ways that were my own.

 At last I snatched them back and cried, “How can You be so slow?”

“My child,” He said, “What could I do? You never did let go.”

Will you?

 

Breathing His Name

 

There was a moment when Moses had the nerve to ask God what his name is. God was gracious enough to answer, and the name he gave is recorded in the original Hebrew as YHWH.

 Over time translators arbitrarily added an “a” and an “e” in there to get YaHWeH, first of all because the original pronunciation was lost, and secondly because in English we have a preference for vowels.

 But scholars and Rabis have noted that the letters YHWH represent breathing sounds, or aspirated consonants. When pronounced without intervening vowels, it actually sounds like breathing.

 YH (inhale)… WH (exhale…)

So, a baby’s first cry, his first breath, speaks the name of God.  A deep sigh calls His name – or a groan or gasp that is too heavy for mere words.

Even an atheist would speak His name, unaware that their very breathe is giving constant acknowledgment to God. Likewise, a person leaves this life with their last breath when God’s name is no longer filing their lungs.

So, when I can’t utter anything else, is my cry calling out His name?

Being alive means I speak His name constantly. 

Is it heard the loudest when I’m the quietest?

In sadness, we breathe heavy sighs.

In joy, our lungs feel almost like they will burst.

In fear we hold our breath and have to be told to

breathe slowly to help us calm down.

When we’re about to do something hard, we take a deep breath to find our courage. 

When I think about it, breathing is giving him praise. Even in the hardest moments. 

This is so beautiful and fills me with emotion every time I grasp the thought - God chose to reveal himself through this Name that we can’t help but speak every moment we are alive.

Brave New World vs 1984

 

Two defining books - masterpieces and bestsellers at the time and ever since: Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World" and George Orwell’s "1984". Are you familiar with these books? They used to be part of the high-school curriculum. Two different lenses portraying the future for them, which is our present, today:

- Orwell feared that books would be banned; Huxley feared that there would be no reason to ban books because no one would want to read them anyway.

- Orwell feared those who want to ban the access to information; Huxley feared those who give us access to so much information that we became passive, bored and tired because of it.

- Orwell feared that the truth would be hidden from us, and Huxley of the fact that the truth would be drowned in an ocean of irrelevance.

- Orwell feared that people would be controlled through the threat of increasing pain (physical and mental); Huxley that people will be controlled by the temptation of a increasing and addictive emotional pleasure (see also Neil Postman's essay "Amusing Ourselves to Death")

Concluding. Orwell feared that what we hate the most would lead us to doom, but Huxley was rightly afraid that what would cripple us as society and individuals is what we love the most.

I realized that we’ve got people around who are looking up seeing the reality through the lenses of either George Orwell or Aldous Huxley. Are you one of them?

Mark 4:9 - “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

Different Kinds of Lies = 3

 

1. First kind: “I Swear to tell the truth” – Lies of Commission

If someone tells you something that is not a fact then we call this a lie of commission. This type of lie is telling someone something that is simply not true. You’re twisting the truth to create a (usually more favorable) version of something that happened.

Suppose I knew it was raining outside and you asked me about the weather. “Oh no problem, it’s perfectly sunny outside!” You would now be making a decision to dress for sunny weather based on the wrong information you were given.

2. Second kind: “The whole truth” – Lies of Omission

Another type of lie is one where you leave out an important part of information, hence the name lie of omission. In this lies, someone omits an important detail from a statement. These are nasty lies because they’re harder to spot and take less effort from the person who is lying.

Suppose you are buying a used car. You ask the car salesman about the state of the car you’re currently considering. “Oh, don’t worry about that! This car has had all of its scheduled maintenance done!” He fails to tell you, however, about the bottomless pit became in replacing parts and still not reliable. So yes, the car has had all of the scheduled maintenance done, but to sell the car to you, the salesman leaves out some crucial elements… 

3. Third kind: “And nothing but the truth” – Lies of Character

Sometimes people will tell you something completely unrelated to the truth to cover up a lie. This is what we call a character lie or a lie of influence. These lies are meant to make you believe the liar or to make the liar seem like such a great person that they are unlikely to be suspected of lying.

For example - you work at the local store and a colleague has been taking money from the cash registers. It’s your job to find out who it is. You interview Mary and ask her if she took the money. Her response is, “I’ve worked here for 15 years!” This is a typical character lie. By telling you how long she’s worked at this store, Mary is trying to make it seem highly unlikely that she took the money.

Different kinds of TRUTHS: just one kind - truth period.