2009-02-13
Good Morning God’s Treasures,
If the picture of a treasure trove comes to mind, then you will understand how God looks at his believing human creation. His greatest desire is to bring us back to Himself for a life of eternal bliss and fellowship with Him [EPH 1: 4-5]. That’s the reason He was willing to sacrifice His Son’s physical life on the cross, opening the way for our salvation. This doesn’t mean we are perfected yet, and thank God, I can say “yet!” There is hope for us, if we will cooperate with God’s efforts to make us a “new creation in union with Christ Jesus” [2 COR 5: 17], ones in which “He is constantly renewing in His own image, so that we might have a better knowledge of Him” [COL 3: 10]. With some of us, myself included, this is no easy job for our God to do. Yet He loves us enough to do it.
We’ve been comparing various passages with MT 7: 1-2 lately. Now, it’s time to look at the practical ways we can live up to God’s will for us in the matter of making judgments. Certainly a good first step is: 1) Go before the Lord’s throne of grace and examine our own hearts. We may not have taken the time to think about what our attitudes really are. If our attitudes are not in line with God’s will, then, we need to adjust them [not easy to do, but necessary] to conform to God’s will. Remember RO 12: 2, “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by the complete renewal of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of God-what is good and is pleasing to Him and is perfect.” You’ll remember the story I once shared with you about having a real fear of anyone speaking with a German accent. This was due to heavy-duty conditioning in my childhood. Our family had lost a large group of relatives in the Holocaust. Whenever we went to shul when I was young, a part of the Passover seder was a memorial to all the Jews mowed down by this cruel Nazi juggernaut. My fear was irrational, but it was real to me. I carried it with me into adulthood, because it had been too painful to admit. Then Rosemarie Claussen, Adolf Hitler’s goddaughter came to our congregation. Her father, once a high-ranking general in Hitler’s army refused to carry out an order he gave to send 1500 Jews to a concentration camp to be exterminated. The general was himself put to death by order of the Fuhrer. Rosemarie and her family left Germany, only to be persecuted by the Russians in Poland. They somehow escaped, making it out alive. Rosemarie met her husband, Tito Claussen [now deceased], and together they began JoshuaMission, an organization, now headquartered just outside of Stockholm, Sweden, directed at helping surviving Jews to find forgiveness and release from their misery in Jesus Christ. After Rosemarie spoke, the knot of anger and fear broke down in me with cleansing tears. Afterward, she prayed with me and several others about our need to forgive and move on without prejudice. All the years that I held that irrational fear and deep-seated anger inside me, I was not in conformity with God’s will. Moreover, I knew that. I found it hard and painful to finally expose it and walk away from it, but for me to go on maturing in Spirit, I had to do this. That is why my loving God sent Rosemarie to help me finally do that.
In the course of making judgments, we need to: 2) Ask if we are being self-righteous or if we are waking in love. Everything we do to conform with God’s will assumes that we are taking the time daily in His word to know His will or to seek Him out in prayer for it. We must remember that we have been asked to be “Christ’s ambassadors” in 2 COR 5: 20. An ambassador doesn’t jump to conclusions or come into a situation with pre-conceived opinions. He is a spokesman for God, in this case. What He says is said with genuine love. EPH 4: 15, “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him Who is the Head, that is, Christ.” What this kind of conformity to Christ’s standards does is to walk away from engaging in office politics, always interacting with others without preconceived and often wrongful attitudes. Duplicity and hidden agendas are thrown out the window in favor of fairness and genuineness. Even if another person isn’t our favorite, we treat him with kindness and the kind of behavior that Christ modeled for us. We are not full of ourselves and selfishly putting ourselves first in our lives. Being that way is an affront to God. We must remember PS 24: 1, “The world and all that is in it belongs to the Lord; the earth and all who live on it are His.” What is the truth is that He should be first in our lives, because everything we have, even what we are, is due to His goodness in providing it for us and for us to enjoy. There is no room for arrogant self-satisfaction. Humility is the order of the day, served up in big portions! We must also remember, RO 14: 13, “So then, we must stop judging one another. Instead, you should decide never to do anything that would make your brother stumble or fall into sin.” How can any of us forget how cruel little children in the play yard can be to each other? If it wasn’t the braces on your teeth, or your nose, or your corrective shoes, there would always be something about you that the others would use as a weapon in mean-spirited teasing.
These are only two out of a list that I will be sharing of ways we can pull ourselves, with God’s help, out of our old fleshly ways of thinking and alter our ideation to conform to God’s standards. Once our thoughts reflect submission to His way, then our behavior will follow.
PRAYER: O Lord, Your plan never includes making us feel we must wallow in guilt, as we learn from You ways to alter our thoughts and deeds to conform with Your will. There are many motivations that people have for the way they interact with others. Our task is to know Your will, so that we can recognize when the evil one is at the seat of our attitudes and/or actions. The devil is crafty, and is the “father of all lies” [JN 8: 44]. He knows where we are most vulnerable and does His best to establish strongholds in us. However, there is an important message we must all remember in EPH 1: 18-20, “ I ask that your minds may be opened to see His light, so that you will know what is the hope to which He has called you, how rich are the wonderful blessings he promises His people, and how very great is His power at work in us who believe. This power working in us is the same as the mighty strength which He used when He raised Christ from death and seated Him at His right side in the heavenly world.” We are so blessed that You have given us that kind of strength to battle the evil one and come out victors in Your name! The only time the adversary can establish a stronghold in Your human creation is if we allow it. We have the power not to do that, and we thank and praise You for giving it to us. Changing old, well-worn habits is tough, and You know that. That is why You have such great patience for your believing human creation that are really trying to conform to Your standard. We are reminded that Your patience for us is not without reason. 2 PET 3: 9, “The Lord is not slow to do what He has promised, as son think. Instead, He is patient with you, because He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants all to turn away from their sins.” Your patience, compassion, wisdom, and love are a wonderful model for us to follow. We offer You praise and thanks, in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
As I mentioned above, there are more practical steps we can take to conform to God’s standards in the matter of making judgments. If we adopt the attitude that there is no such word as “can’t,” we can deal with whatever old feelings and attitudes we have to carry out God’s wishes. We must ask where would the world be, if Christ, when given His most important assignment from God, had said, “I can’t.” Only He didn’t do that. Instead He said in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before He was arrested what we find in LK 22: 42. “’Father,’ He said, ‘if You will, take this cup of suffering away from Me. Not My will, however, but Your will be done.’” When He was dying on the cross for all our sins, He still showed His amazing love. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” [LK 23: 34, the first utterance]. His obedience to God in the sacrifice of His physical life on the cross made it possible for us to be released from the sins of the past and inherited sin. It opened the way to salvation and eternal peace for God’s human creation. The love that God shows for us every day- in the way He sanctifies us, the way He wants us back to His side in heaven, in the blessings He heaps on us every day-is unparalleled anywhere else in the universe. Christ’s Atonement, appreciated for what it means to us, is motivation enough to study His word daily, pray often, and live our lives without arrogance, greed, or any of Satan’s favorite tools of evil in them. Take great comfort in knowing that our Lord has equipped us to live lives of righteousness, to “be holy because I am holy” [LV 11: 44-45, LV 19: 2; 1 PET 1: 16]. Know that when we do this, the blessings keep on coming our way from our God, Who loves each of us with all His Being. Praise be to Him!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn