Esperanza

I have always loved the Spanish word "esperanza". It means both hope and waiting, and I think it's important for us, as human beings, to tie those two words together. In fact, that's exactly what the Bible teaches us:

Wait for the LORD;

Be strong and let your heart take courage;

Yes, wait for the LORD. 

                                   - Psalm 27:14 

Psalm 27 is called 'A Psalm of Fearless Trust in God' and throughout it, David both pleads and affirms God's trustworthiness. Then, at the end of his prayer of trust, David says these words to himself - and us. Qavah, the Hebrew word translated 'wait', speaks to the crucial tie between waiting and hoping and stands for us as an important lesson in prayer.

We finite, weak, uni-present beings have a hard time grasping the magnitude and perfection of God's plan, so we often pray with urgency and trembling. When God's answers are slower in coming, we often become impatient and wonder if God understands our sense of urgency. While He does understand it, He doesn't share it. God has never panicked or worried that He wasn't going to get there in time or do the right thing. God's omniscience (see "Treasured Knowledge") allows Him to know the right thing to do and the right time to do it at all times.

Our prayers can be urgent, for we must be honest before God, but our waiting must never be impatient. God's perfect timing must become sufficient for us, so our waiting must be hopeful, and patient. After all, if we learned to sit and wait on God more, who knows what He would teach us in the waiting?

Lord, I find myself almost speechless at the moment, but I ask You - albeit a little nervously - to teach me patience and the fruit of waiting on You. Make me a hopeful waiter with regards to Your perfect answers. Amen.

Cleansing Agreement

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. - 1 John 1:9

In "Near and Dear" I talked about the static that sin causes in our communications with God that needs to be removed by forgiveness and cleansing. Then, with "Forgiv(en/ing)" I talked about the cleansing power of God's forgiveness and how we block it by not forgiving others. Today, we will finish that puzzle by talking about the "complete" route from sin to cleansing: open confession of our sins to God.

Now, we already know (see "Known as Needy") that God knows our requests before we bring them to Him, so He'll also know our confessions before we speak them, but it's our heart attitude not His knowledge base that needs work. See, to "confess" our sins doesn't mean we need to give God a long and accurate list of everything we've done wrong - again, this isn't about knowledge base. "Confess" comes from the Greek word homologeo, which really implies agreement. Agreement with who? God.

For God to cleanse us, we need to want cleansing. We need to understand that sin is harmful to us and contrary to God and must be removed. In other words, we need to move from a place of regarding sin to a place of reviling sin and wanting nothing to do with it. Confession is where we work out with God His perspective on sin and apply it to our own lives: "God you hate my tendency towards anger. I'm going to hate it too because I want to be in relationship with you, and stay as far away from it as possible."

Think about a human relationship. If a close friend or your significant other really hated something you did because it was contrary to everything they stood for, you have two choices: to stand with the action or to stand with the relationship.  You have to ask yourself which holds higher value for you. The same applies here. Sin is defiance towards God and God hates sin. You can choose one or the other - which will you side with?

Lord, I pray today that you'll show us how much sin pains you, grieves you, separates us, and angers you. Remind us of the work you did to free us from sin and to restore relationship. Teach us your perspective on sin and make it sink deep into us. Bring us to a place of confession, my God, to a place of agreement, and may we revel in the cleansing power it brings. Amen.

Forgiv(en/ing)

"I forgive you."

Those words ought to have astounding power when we hear them and when we say them. Why don't they? I think, like saying "God bless you" when someone sneezes, we assume that speaking forgiveness is a simple social custom without any depth or relevant meaning. I know I've felt that way at times - but check that stance against these verses:

For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will also not forgive you. - Matthew 6:14-15

In my last post, I talked about how sin affects our prayer life. When we become Christians, we are redeemed, but we continue to sin, and so the process of continuously confessing sin and coming for cleansing (1 John 1:9) keeps our relationship with God operational. But, look at what these verses tell us: if we can't forgive others for what they do against us, then God won't do those regular relationship 'cleanings' that we so desperately need. All of a sudden, forgiveness matters a lot!

Aphiemi, the Greek word "forgive", has two distinct and important meanings. The first is the removal of deserved punishment. In other words, when we don't cleanse our standing with God, He doesn't hear our prayers, the Holy Spirit is quenched in our lives, and our walk becomes dried up. His forgiveness erases the deeds and allows us to continue in relationship. Similarly, people often deserve certain reactions with us when they've hurt or offended us - forgiveness means we remove that deserved punishment. The second step is the erasing of the original debt or offense. God doesn't just stop the effects of sin, He erases the record of sin (Colossians 2:14). Similarly, if we're going to say the words "I forgive you" to someone, we'd best be ready to erase the record of their offenses and wrongdoings. In fact, doing so is part of the biblical definition of love (1 Corinthians 13:5). We cannot wait for revenge, remind them of what has happened, or throw things back in their faces should they mess up again. In fact, if we're as forgiving as these verses call us to be, we ought never be able to think 'Oh, they did that again'!

After all, would you want God thinking that way about you?

May we learn to fully forgive each other for wrongs done, and in so doing experience a deeper relationship with God. May we learn to love fully and to trust in the healing and growing power of the Gospel to keep us from unnecessary hurt. May bitterness and unfriendliness have no place among us, and may love truly conquer all in our lives. Amen.

Near and Dear

What do you hold closest to your heart? Do you cherish memories, good times with family and friends, wild adventures, good books, good food? Is your spouse or significant other closest to your heart? Is God? Is sin? The more I study Scripture the more I learn about God, obviously, but also the more I learn about myself. I had myself deluded for a long time that sin had no spot of importance in my life at all and that I wanted to get rid of it if I could. However, as I let Scripture shine its unflinching light into my life, I have realized just how near and dear to my heart my sins are. I haven't overcome them because I haven't wanted to let God remove them - and had additionally tricked myself into thinking this wasn't true! Then I came across this verse:

If I regard wickedness in my heart,

The Lord will not hear.

                                    - Psalm 66:18

The word 'regard' here comes from the Hebrew word raah meaning to see or perceive, as well as to get acquainted with, gain understanding of, examine, look after/see to, and choose. So, if sin has a spot to call home in my heart, if I examine and get acquainted with sin the way I ought to be with Scripture, if I regularly tolerate and even look for the presence of sin, then God will not hear what I have to say to Him.

Wow. Even as I write that it hits me all over again. The point here is that we humans, as intelligent and complex as we are, can only handle serving one master (Matthew 6:24). Sin leads us to one lifestyle, and God leads us to another. If we choose the sin road, we can kiss our prayer lives goodbye. God will not hear the prayers of someone who cherishes sin.

Catch what that last sentence says carefully before you despair, however. God doesn't say that the only prayers He'll hear are those of the sinless. He says that He won't hear prayers of those who intentionally choose and maintain sin. In other words, it's about heart attitude. God doesn't want us sinless, He wants us to feel repentant and humble. We need not be perfect, just striving for holiness. It's not about what we do, it's about what we cherish, and if we're cherishing the right thing, then eventually we'll do the right thing.

Lord, I pray that You'll teach us how to make You the sun of our solar system and not sin. Show us the sins we hold dear to our hearts and help us remove them from your place, your temple. Remind us of how much sin grieves you and teach us to be repentant people. May we come to covet prayer time above sin, and thereby reject the one in order to maintain the other. Amen.

Clueless

In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings to deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. - Romans 8:26-27

We just don't know what we're talking about. No offense, but we're all clueless.

An artistic genius decides to pain a mural the size of the Empire State Building and we go and watch her work. This artist, renowned for her extremely large mural knows exactly what she's doing. How arrogant would it be of us, after she makes a certain brush-stroke, to say 'I think you messed up' or 'Can you do this next' or 'That doesn't make sense to me at all'?

But that's what we do to God all the time! God, the master architect and chief designer of this project called Universe knows all, sees all, and is everywhere, and therefore is completely confident in His design for excellent reasons. We, on the other hand, are smaller than small, short-lived, and present in only one place at one time. So God's "brush-stroke" usually isn't going to make sense - I can't see the big picture.

I think it's important that this verse says that we don't know how to pray without any qualifiers like sometimes or once in a while or anything like that. We just don't know how to pray. We try, and God admires that and wants that, but I think most of us need an attitude adjustment about prayer. If I pray for a relative to be healed and they aren't healed, too many Christians would tell me I'm lacking boldness. It is indeed possible that had I enough faith to keep praying or boldness to keep asking that God may provide in light of my perseverance. However, that's not the only possible route. God has a purpose for the illness and it might be to test my faith a prayer life but it could be any number of other things. I might need more boldness but I also might need more humility. Maybe God isn't going to heal this time - after all, everyone dies eventually. Maybe God's waiting for something specific like that person's repentance before healing which means my energy is being spent in the wrong prayer. Maybe God's letting medicine, which He allowed us to develop, to do its job rather than sending a miraculous healing.

God isn't running this universe willy-nilly. It's high time we remembered that. When we pray, it's a conversation, which means I need to listen at least as much as I talk. I need to learn to let the Holy Spirit lead me into what to pray. And when I don't know what to pray - which should be more often than I think it is - I should really learn to just spend time in God's presence, trusting Him to act as He should. More boldness isn't a cure-all for unanswered prayer, but humility and patience just might be.

These two quotes from Jon Courson's commentary sum it all up brilliantly:

"Let us ever remember that while prayer is to be directed to God, it is not to be directing God."

"Prayer is not getting my will done in heaven, prayer is getting God's will done on earth."

Lord, forgive my impatience and self-centeredness in prayer. Teach me to wait on Your answers, to be still in Your presence, and trust in Your goodness. I do not always know exactly what to pray Lord, but You always know exactly what to do. Teach me to pray in a seeking way, seeking Your will rather than designing it. Remind me that I am on my knees before the Sovereign Lord. Amen.

Known as Needy

Welcome to the next series, a dialogue on prayer. I'm excited to explore this weighty core activity of Christian life and see what the Bible has to say about it! We say a lot of things about prayer, but how many of them find their roots in Scripture? What IS prayer? Why do we do it? What good does it do? Let's find out what Scripture has to say!

We start with a look at how we are supposed to pray, and what that tells about what prayer is. This lessen comes from Jesus Himself, speaking to His disciples. He has just finished talking about how the Gentiles of the day went to their temples and repeated chants to their gods - an exercise that Jesus calls "meaningless" (Matthew 6:7). He then says this to His disciples:

So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. - Matthew 6:8

 Jesus here implies that the Gentiles use repetition to get their needs heard by their gods, a principle that still makes it into our psyche. We often think that we need to fervently repeat our prayers in order for them to be heard and that if we only knew the 'right way' to pray, then we would get more answers. From our limited perspective, it makes sense.

But, Jesus says, God knows your chrego (needs in Greek). He knows what is necessary for your life, and He knows how and when to best give it to you. Think about it for a moment. The Bible tells us that God made us in His image. If God made us, then wouldn't He know what I need probably even better than I do? Yes. So, if God knows my needs, then why pray?

To move forward we need to put the two halves of the statement together with some other pieces of God we understand. God knows our needs before we come to Him, so giving Him a wishlist or a desperate plea isn't the sole point of prayer, since He already knows what we're asking for. Since He knows this, we're told not to use meaningless repetition in our prayer. Connecting the dots is hard until we think back to the fact that God is a triune being, full of love and finding joy in community and relationship. God wants us to talk with Him, to share with Him our needs and come to depend on Him for those needs. God wants us to confide in Him, trust in Him, and to talk with Him. We're not supposed to use meaningless repetition because meaningless is mindless, and if prayer is about relational conversation, then anything mindless is wasted time. No wonder, when Jesus lists the greatest commandments, He tells us that we must love the Lord our God with all our minds (Matthew 22:37)! God wants us to put our intellectual and mental energy into relationship with Him - a fact that should display itself clearly in our prayer lives. It also means that we need to learn to listen as much as we speak - another trait of the best conversationalists.

May we learn to pray as God intended - seeking not a captive audience but a conversation partner. May we revel in the chance to talk with God and never take it for granted. When we die and find ourselves in heaven, may the only change to our habits be that then we see God face to face as we talk about it all. Amen.

The Weight of Splendor

Who is this King of glory?

The LORD of hosts,

He is the king of glory. 

                           - Psalm 24:10

So, studying the attributes of God has revealed a lot about God in a lot more depth than I've ever thought about! Today, the last post on God's attributes, focuses on one of God's summary attributes - those characteristics which speak to the totality or sum of God's character.

Glory is one of those funny words that English-speakers of generations ago would cringe to know what we've done with it - like awesome. If earlier people knew that we talked about hamburgers and parties and people as awesome, they'd cry. Awesome once worked for only truly awe-some things, like powerful acts of nature, God, mountain views, and other things truly meriting awe. Similarly, we speak of the glory of winning...a football game, and the glory of being...a movie star.

Kabod is the Hebrew word we translate 'glory' in Psalm 24:10 above and through much of the Old Testament. For a proper understanding of Kabod glory, let's look at a list of other words we translate it to: honor, great quantity, multitude, wealth, reputation (majesty), and splendor. Glory is honor, as we often ascribe it, but it's also so much more! Glory is big, it's heavy, it's a majestic reputation, it has a great value of its own, and it is a literal splendor. Verses in the Bible talk about how we cannot look upon the glory of God because it would kill us and in Revelations we are told that the Glory of God will be the literal light that we live by. God's glory is a weighty thing - it's the accumulation and earning of all the honor due to Him.

Kabod reminds me that my picture of God is too small. We want to understand God, to be able to explain and present Him, and to a certain extent, we can. But, like a naive child meeting the Queen of England and walking away as if nothing is happened, we cannot and will not (in this life) grasp the glory of God. He is too great, too awesome, too majestic for our minds to conceive, and we must stop pretending that this isn't true. To make God less than fully glorious cheapens Him, to claim to understand and know His glory is to lessen it.

The kabod of God Almighty deserves but one response: humble, awe-filled adoration. May we learn to give it to Him. Someday, when all has been fulfilled, may we dwell together in the bask of His radiant glow and, for the first full time, feel the weight of splendor all around us.

Hunting for Happiness

One of my least favorite concepts in modern society is self-esteem. I know this is odd, but think about it: we tell ourselves and each other that the only way we can get through life and achieve and feel good about our selves is to have self-esteem. Isn't this backwards? We give esteem when someone has earned our esteem - esteem is high praise and honor. so, rather, based on esteem's definition, oughtn't my self-esteem match the level of esteem I deserve, rather than my success matching the level of esteem I'm already getting? Why and when did we become so hungry for praise?

I honestly think we became hungry for praise in the Garden. Let me explain:

Which He will bring about at the proper time - He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. - 1 Timothy 6:15

Blessed. God is blessed. What does this mean? We translate makarios as blessed here, but the word that might resonate more for you with makarios' meaning is 'happy'. Did you catch that? God is happy - and not just in some "stay positive even when things get tough" kind of way, God is content. With Himself. He's happily in relationship with Himself (remember He's a triune God) and pleased with His lifestyle. He has achieved much - in fact everything He has wanted to so far. He doesn't think lowly of Himself but not overly highly either. God knows Himself fully and is happy with Himself. Ooh what we wouldn't do for a slice of that self-esteem!

Now think about it: a perfectly happy God designs the whole universe - including human beings. He sets the humans up in the paradisaical Garden of Eden and then walks with them there. Adam and Eve spent time with this happy God, and were thus happy themselves. Then comes the tragedy: we walked away from God and decided to do things our own way. Adam and Eve ate the apple and it all went downhill from there.

There's just one problem with us going our way: God's way is the happy way, and He designed us to work the same way. So our way, being not the happy way, is the UNhappy way. We walked away from a God who loved us unconditionally and in so doing forgot our own value. We spurned a God who taught us happiness and in so doing found discontent. We need "self-esteem" but all the value we need God sees, and He's waiting to tell us just how valuable we are to Him. So next time you're feeling low, remember you serve a perfectly happy God who thinks you're valuable and shake off the self-centered, godlessly low self-esteem.

Balancing Views

He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him. - Ephesians 1:9

God's will. We talk about it a lot. We wonder whether or not God's will made something happen, whether or not a certain life choice would be according to His will. We talk about His revealed will and His moral will, and talk about His will and things He allows to happen - questioning whether or not there's a difference.

We don't often stop, however, to think about the fact that God has a will. He isn't just some mystical energy or divine force that acts without intention. God intends things, means to do things, has a purpose - and all of this is connected to His will. Thelema  - the Greek word translated as "will" in the verse above - has 2 meanings. The first is a determined resolve to accomplish what you wish to accomplish. Think of phrases such as "I'll _______ if it's the last thing I do" or "I'll _______ unless it kills me" - such expressions are expressions of thelema, that determined resolve to achieve one's ends. God has His own plan in mind, and He has the thelema to see those ends accomplished. Based on what else we know about God (omnipotence, sovereignty, etc.) we know that this determined resolved comes backed by the power punch to see anything through. This should give us great comfort regarding the promises and predictions of God. He has a purpose which He intends to carry out according to His will and He has the authority and power to see His will done, which means His promises and predictions are never in vain. God always gets a "10" on the follow through.

However, there's a second meaning to thelema that unpacks more about God's will. Thelema also implies a gracious design regarding everything one's will affects. In other words, God is not a tyrant. His will always looks graciously on all that it includes - which, by the way, is everything God created (see Genesis 1 for a full list). God the Authority, God the Power, God the Will behind all - these names often frighten us into thinking about a vengeful, powerful, wrathful dictator using His subjects as means to selfish and terrible ends, but this is not what thelema implies.

We need a balanced view of God in light of these two definitions. A dictator as described earlier is a terrible and awful use of power and will. However, just as terrible is a naively just dictator who has not the power or the will to keep evil and injustice at bay and who has to watch enemies mutilate his unsuspecting citizens who have been trained only for peace. The dictator and the foolish bleeding heart have one thing in common - an imbalance between determined resolve and gracious design. God does not fall into this shortcoming on either side: He has a determined resolve that is not challenged or interrupted by the schemes of His enemy and a gracious design that makes sure all involved in His plan are granted a gracious chance.

"Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created." - Revelation 4:11

Intentional Reflection

So, all this time we've looked together at the attributes of God and managed to derive two things every time: 1) what that attribute says about God and, 2) what that attribute means for us and our lifestyle. While the first bit is always exciting and interesting to me, the second half always varies from something easy (like treasuring knowledge) to something extremely difficult (like granting grace to others). While you may rank them differently, I think we can all rank them along that scale. Well, I think today's attribute may just shatter the scale in what it means for us.

For God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. - 1 Corinthians 14:33

God is a God of peace. This statement doesn't seem like such a staggering one: Paul's word here, eirene, pulls in threads of harmony, friendliness, order, rest, fulfillment, and wholeness. The idea of God being all of these things doesn't surprise us. Of course an all-knowing being who also was all-powerful would act in an orderly, harmonic, fulfilling way. God also loves us, so of course He would act in harmony and friendliness. God's peace - all of these things wrapped up into one - doesn't surprise us for being so total, so wonderful, so powerful. In fact, when verses like Philippians 4:7 promise us the peace of God, we get excited to experience this totality for ourselves, so even the fact that this is a communicable attribute isn't startling.

What IS startling is how Paul uses this attribute in context. Paul has been giving the Corinthians (and all of us) advice on how to structure a worship service.  This statement comes at the end, like a conclusion. Paul's meaning reads something like this: 'If God is a God of peace and the whole purpose of your service is to worship Him for who He is, then peace ought to be reflected in the very structure of your service'. Starting to catch my drift on the difficult part? Paul's implication is that the order and eirene present in our worship service is an act of worship itself - and one that God appreciates. Now, people have quibbled over what this means we can and can't do but I'm not here to establish legalistic rules. What I do want to explore is the heart attitude and intent Paul calls us to have here. Do you honestly think that everything that happens in your church's service reflects God's total eirene? I'll be honest - I don't. Paul is calling us to be intentional in structuring our time together, intentionally reflecting God's peace and order in how we run things.

But we can't stop there. If the message behind all of this is that we worship God powerfully by designing the service to reflect Him, then it's not just His peace that we need to reflect or revere, but all of His character. Can you imagine a church service that reflects God's joy, goodness, peace, justice, holiness, wrath, patience, and all of His other character traits? It might not be as hard as it seems, but it's certainly a daunting idea. The larger point of Paul's verse is a powerful charge to intentionally reflect God's character in our worship services. Are we up to the challenge?

God, I cannot in my own strength do what You call me to do, and this certainly counts as an example of that. Help me, Lord, to have an attitude and a frame of heart that reflects You when I am in a place of worship - and all the time for that matter. Grant me the wisdom to do what I can to shape our corporate worship into a time that not only praises You but reflects You. Be the center again, my God; show us how to maintain that spot for You alone. Amen.

UnDebtedness

When I jump in the air, propulsion generated by my efforts pushes me upwards. Gravity, by the infinite wisdom of God, pulls me downwards. We call these opposing or opposite forces. Not all forces come in opposing pairs, but those that do fascinate us. Motion and friction make another example pair. However, do we ever think about the fact that in the spiritual world debt and grace are opposing forces?

After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. - 1 Peter 5:10

We often think of God's grace, and a good working definition of it I have always known is 'unmerited favor'. But what's a good working definition of unmerited favor? Reflect for a moment on where we were before salvation. Sin is anything done in disobedience of God's moral will. The wage of sin is death (Romans 6:23). The death referred to here is eternity in hell, which means eternal suffering and torment separated from the presence of God. The debt we owe God because of sin mars us (Romans 3:23), denies us a connection with God (Ephesians 4:30 - it literally pains Him), kills us spiritually (James 1:15), and removes us from God's presence in the end.

But, in this verse from Peter, we see grace doing the opposite. If we wait on the God of all grace - charis, by the way (we'll get to that in a second) - then He will perfect us (according to His design), confirm us (Galatians 4:6 - God becomes our Father), strengthen us (Isaiah 40:31), and establish us as members of his people (Philippians 3:20). Literally grace takes us in the opposite direction of debt. Additionally, grace is the very opposite of death. Charis isn't itself an act, it's an attitude: a person or being of charis acts joyfully and takes pleasure in acting this way towards others. God sent His only son because He would have it that none would perish because of the debt of sin (2 Peter 3:9), but He lavishes His grace on us, should we choose it, freely and joyfully.

We often think of grace as God's response to our grace, but that wouldn't be unmerited. Then our debt would merit a response other than punishment and grace would count as that merited response. That's not God's system. Grace, given joyfully and to His pleasure, opposes the power of our spiritual debt and brings us in the opposite direction.

May God remind you of His astounding grace today. May you realize that grace is moving you further and further out of darkness into light. As time passes, may we all learn to grant grace instead of demanding debt of others. May we learn how to help others out of the dark of debt and into the joyful place of grace. Amen.

Visceral Reaction

The more I learn about God, the more I feel awed with respect for Him, and the more joyfully I think and crave to learn more about Him. Correcting weak or faulty perceptions of God in my life gives me a fuller picture, a deeper love, and a stronger bond. For instance, when I used to think about God's mercy, I thought of something He had to do. After all, when given the option to be merciful or vengeful, I typically crave vengeance a lot faster than I crave the chance to act mercifully, and if I act mercifully, then there's a constant reminder that I am doing this because I should. In frequent human fashion, I assigned the same logic to God's thinking patterns; since He's a much better being than I, He does as He should more often, but it's still because it's what He should do.

Then David said to Gad, 'I am in great distress. Let us now fall into the hand of the LORD for His mercies are great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.' - 2 Samuel 24:14

David, in sinful mis-focus, took a census of how many fighting men he had. God got mad at David's mis-focus and gave him three excruciating options for punishment. David decides to let God decide since His mercies are great. The indication is clear that God has designed to punish David, and that David deserves it. God picks the shortest punishment and stops it short of hitting Jerusalem (v. 16). Why? Doesn't David deserve punishment?

Enter the Hebrew word for "mercies": rahamim. We translate this word as mercy or compassion, but it has a third meaning - bowels. Why connect these? The implication that arises is that God's mercy isn't something He drags His feet to do, it's a gut reaction. When God looks upon His people and they are in distress, He has a visceral feeling of mercy, it's His natural response. God isn't a God begging for vengeance and retribution, He's instinctively merciful, inherently compassionate. From the very depths of His being He wants to act mercifully towards us, and will so long as we show a repentant heart and a willingness to obey.

Now, it's one good thing to sit here and praise God for His beneficial gut reaction that saves us. However, mercy is one of the communicable attributes. So, while it's true that God has rahamim mercy, it is also true (and very convicting) that God wants me, as His child, to enact rahamim mercy. I need to learn to love people enough that seeing their distress or misfortune enacts a visceral mercy from me. Now, instead of me placing my flaws on God, God is convicting me to have His character, quite the turnaround! But, perhaps that's exactly why rahamim is possible, because God had it first.

I pray God will show you His instinctive, deep-rooted mercy in your times of trouble. When the sun breaks through the clouds, may you remember that God is the one who brightened your day. And - in time - may we all come to grant the same mercy to others that God has so generously granted us. Amen.

Masterfully Executed

O LORD, how many are your works! In wisdom You have made them all; the earth is full of Your possessions. - Psalm 104:24

Wisdom - as a concept - has fascinated our societies for a long time. What IS wisdom? Does it make you a good ruler, or just a good philosopher? Is it tied to knowledge or intuition? Can we obtain it only at a great age or length of study, or are some of us born with it? Most importantly we wonder: where did it come from? What is it trying to accomplish?

As Christians we affirm and believe that wisdom comes from God - the Wisest. Many people can spit out the well-known saying that "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). But these basic affirmations answer so few of the questions above and trace only the faintest picture.

The Hebrew word for wisdom used above - hokmah - gives us a much stronger picture of wisdom. Hokmah refers to the capacity to design an object and the technical skill to execute the design. Let's break this down: I love art and images and often design remarkable pictures expressing my feelings or ideas in my head. Sometimes I'm so moved by the mental image that I decide to draw (luckily this part is happening less and less frequently). Regrettably, I have no skill or patience in the field of actually producing artwork, so the result is catastrophic and far below the quality I had conceived in my mind. Although it seems odd to say in this example, the implication is that I have no wisdom to accomplish my own designs in this area.

This verse, on the other hand, reveals that the very opposite is true for God. God has many works, according to the first phrase, and then the second phrase tells us that He made all of these works with hokmah, wisdom. God had and has a design for the universe, a purpose for all of this stunning stuff - and so far He has perfectly executed His design. Think about Genesis 1: God never deletes a finished work or thinks anything needs editing, but always remarks "It is Good" (I'd love to say that about just one of my drawings someday!). God has never faltered or worried, and the Bible is rife with moments where God declares future events and then, against all odds from our perspective, brings about His purposed design and His declarations come true.

Take encouragement today from the fact that God has perfect wisdom in regards to guiding and directing not only the vastness of the universe but also the details of your life. God knows what you need, when you need, and the best way to get it to you or you to it. God's wisdom will not fail, and when you feel a little bewildered by life, take your cue from James: "But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him" (James 1:5).

Lord, may you grant us your astounding, skillful wisdom, as we have need. Show us how to live life in your wisdom and the success and victory it will provide. May we not be swayed by the hollow philosophies of this world but instead be awed by the elegant beauty of your divine wisdom. Amen.

Treasured Knowledge

The first series of reflections will stem from a study of God's attributes I'm currently doing, specifically those attributes theology calls "communicable" - those attributes God shares with us in some significant capacity.

God's knowledge astounds me. It can neither grow nor diminish, expand or shrink, or become in any way. Omniscient. God has always known everything there is or ever will be to know - quite the position of authority from an intellectual perspective! However, my new favorite verse about God's knowledge reveals something highly personal about God's knowledge - and particularly how it gets relayed to us.

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. - II Corinthians 2:11

The Spirit of God - the Holy Spirit - knows the thoughts of God. He's always taking them in, searching them Scripture tells us ( I Cor. 2:10). But we know things too, like who the first President was and where the Nile River is and why water turns to ice. We aren't talking about this basic form of knowing. Ginosko, the word Paul uses here for 'knows', has a much richer meaning. The word implies a thrill, a sense of enjoyment or pleasure experience by the being who knows when He looks upon the object of his knowing. Plain and simple: the Holy Spirit here relishes and enjoys knowing the thoughts of God. He treasures what He knows and rejoices over it. The Holy Spirit is a total scholar - a lover of knowledge. Since the Holy Spirit is a member of the Triune God, all three members of which share the same nature, then God as a whole treasures knowledge and rejoices over it. God's omniscience isn't a "been there, done that" kind of deal, it's a valued possession worth searching continuously, which we've already said the Spirit does.

How the Spirit works with us on this causes even more awe! The Spirit guides us into all Truth (John 16:13), but life experience shows us that this process does not happen immediately, continuously, or even in the same order from person to person. The Spirit reveals to us over time, and when we're ready, what we need to know. I always thought of this kind of like security clearance levels in the CIA - the further up you are, the more you get to know. However, this sounds cultist and hierarchical. More accurately, this beautiful word and verse reveal to us that the Holy Spirit wants us to share in the joy of the knowledge of God. He shares with us what will lead us to glorify and worship God, what will drive us to rejoice over Him. The Holy Spirit teaches us the methods that will make us into God-scholars, but more importantly, God-lovers. For some of us (nerds like me), this will mean a love of the language of Scripture. For others, it will mean other means of study. There's no one way to study Scripture, but there is one goal: a knowledge body that enhances and drives our love and worship of the Awesome God.

May God meet each of us in His Word today, and may we learn something that blows us away. May we each come to relish in our knowledge of God, and thereby hunger for it all the more. Amen.