How Many "Pinocchios" Does Your Pastor Deserve?

Remember those lies we were told as kids?  Babies are delivered by storks (we know better now).  Santa Claus flies around the world in a sleigh delivering toys to good kids on Christmas Eve (everyone knows Santa uses a teleporter like on Star Trek to get the job done).  But perhaps the most hurtful to us now as adults was the lie that when Jesus was dying on the cross, God turned his back on Him.  You know the story.  Jesus was suffering and cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)  I was taught, and the lie continues to be told, that at that very moment, Jesus took on Himself the sins of the world so our Perfect God (who can’t look on sin) had to turn His face away.

How does that sit with you?  If you understand what the Bible teaches, we are ALL sinful and deserve to be rejected by God.  (Romans 3:23)  How would it make you feel if you really believed that every day when you mess up, or miss the mark, or even intentionally do something that you know displeases God, that He can’t stand to look at you?  Here’s the truth that I’ll explain in a moment – you are the object of God’s affection; you are the apple of His eye; you are precious to Him – you rotten, sinful, defective thing.  You are loved deeply by the Creator God of the universe because He made you to be His.  You are FORGIVEN by the Creator God of the universe because Jesus bore the penalty for your mess-ups and unkindness and selfishness and hypocrisy and…well, you get the idea.

So what about Jesus being forsaken by God?  When you hear, “I pledge allegiance…” or “For God so loved the world…”, don’t you immediately know what follows?  When Jesus spoke the words, “…why have you forsaken me?” on the cross, He wasn’t complaining, He was PROCLAIMING!  You see, the words were written by King David about 1,000 years before Jesus repeated them.  You can find the whole story in Psalm 22 in the Bible.  David was struggling with feeling rejected by God, but by the end of the Psalm, David acknowledged “He (God) has not despised me…nor has He hidden His face from me, but when I cried to Him, He heard.”  (Psalm 22:24)  David got it right.  No matter how we feel, God always knows what’s going on.  You are never abandoned.  Never alone.

So why did Jesus say those words?  Well, no doubt He was feeling pretty bad – He had been abandoned by most of his disciples and had suffered unspeakable pain for the sins of every person who would ever be born – including you and me.  But when the self-righteous religious leaders of the day who were standing around watching Jesus suffer and gloating that they had finally silenced Him, when they heard those words, they were shaken to their toes.  They recognized the words because they had them memorized, “My God, my God…”, and they understood what came after.  “Those who see me ridicule me…They pierced My hands and My feet…They divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots…”  Those things didn’t happen to David who wrote them, but the Holy Spirit led David to write of things that were still to come.  From one king to the One King.

So why does all that matter to us?  Psalm 22:27-31 goes on to say:

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You.  For the kingdom is the Lord’s, and He rules over the nations… A posterity (His heirs) shall serve Him.  It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation. They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has done this.

That’s us.  Heirs of Christ serving and declaring His righteousness to the next generation.  Keep your chin up and realize it’s OK to get frustrated with your circumstance and complain that you feel abandoned.  Just don’t ever believe that God would turn His back on you.  Or Jesus.  And that’s no lie.

Jacob

Would You Rather DO or BE? That is the question....

As Shakespeare famously wrote, “To be, or not to be, that is the question.”  In our 21st century life of busyness, our question is more likely, “To do, or not to do?”  In our culture, WHAT you DO carries more weight in most circles than WHO you ARE.  I know there are exceptions to that rule, but isn’t part of the American dream to be able to find success and value through our efforts?

It is precisely that struggle – that striving – to DO more that challenges us in our walk of faith.  Those who consider themselves followers of Jesus lay claim to that relationship based on trust (faith) that Jesus has already done everything necessary for us to BE who He wants us to be.  Christ has saved us based on our faith in Him alone, not based on what we DO - our works.  (For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.  Ephesians 2:8-9)  But we become His so we can live a life full of good works.  (For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.  Ephesians 2:10)  

So is BEING good enough for a follower of Jesus, or must we be concerned with DOING as well?  James, the brother of Jesus, muddied the water even more for us by reminding us that our faith in Christ without our “doing” is just dead faith - not worth anything.  (James 2:14-26)  So then, shouldn’t we be focusing on DOING more than BEING? 

Just when I think I’ve excused my “Type A” focus on DOING as God-honoring, I’m reminded of the story of Mary and her sister, Martha.  Jesus came to visit their home and Martha, apparently the eldest, was VERY busy working to make the visit wonderful for Jesus.  Mary, the younger sister, just sat and listened to Jesus share about the things of God.  How many of us, especially those of us who are first-born, would have complained to Jesus just as Martha did?  (Luke 10:38-42)  

Did Christ excoriate Mary and urge her to get busy helping her sister?  Did He pat Martha on the back saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”?  Nope.  Jesus told Martha that Mary had it right.  The best thing that Martha could have been doing right then was just what Mary was doing.  Nothing.  Just learning how to listen to the voice of Jesus.  Finding comfort and direction and encouragement in that voice.  Was Martha’s desire to DO wrong?  No, work needs to be done.  But it needs to be done with perspective.  Martha’s efforts were WAY over the top, considering the circumstance (that’s clear from the Bible text).  

Apparently, Martha found it easier to work harder than everyone else and found that it usually brought her the greatest satisfaction and praise from others.  Does that sound like anyone you know?  Don’t we often equate our production with our value, even in the Church?  Apparently, Jesus doesn’t.  When what we DO becomes more important than who we ARE as believers, WE are the ones who lose.  That's because we’ve wrongly determined that the work of our hands is more vital to the Kingdom of God than the condition of our hearts.  Believe me, it’s not.  It is the condition of our hearts that drives the success of our efforts for Jesus, not the other way around.  That was Martha’s mistake, and is often my own.

Jacob