The Staff in Your Hands

As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (Exodus 14:10-14)

photo credit: AMBOO WHO?/FLICKR

The gospel
        sings from the pages
        of the Bible
        even in the Exodus:
"The Lord will fight for you;
you need only be still."

Why can I not
be still?

Be still, my child
         my beloved,
         my joy.
Be still and know
     that all you need is already there,
     that the battle's already won,
     that your life is a victory,
                          not a defeat.
Be still and know that I am God:
      I intend what is good

                    to be done in great ways.

      Your salvation today

               is part of my masterpiece

               as well as my master plan.

      Your enemies are real -

               they oppose you and me

               but you will overcome them.

               My wind is at your back,

               my staff is in your hands,

               their trap will become my path

               their army will become my triumph.

Lord, why can I not

          be still?

Your war has taken your peace.

Your fear has taken your hope.

Your doubt has taken your trust.

Your worry has displaced your prayer.

Surrender to the peace only I can give.

    Remember your hope.

        Build your trust.

            Come near in prayer.

And your stillness

                will lead you forward

                                      into victory.

Now Is the Time

We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As God's fellow workers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain. For he says,

"In the time of my favor I heard you,

  and in the day of salvation I helped you."

I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation. (2 Corinthians 6:1-2)

Implore. Urge. Now is the time. Is there a better time? What could keep us waiting? It is clear that God has not changed. His heart has always been for each of us and all of us. So what are we waiting for?

Maybe all we want is forgiveness. All we want is to be let off the hook. Really at the heart of that "forgiveness" is the desire to be rid of God, just to get him off our backs. The forgiveness that God offers is for reconciliation. It is to make things right between us. As a lexicon puts it: "to reestablish proper friendly interpersonal relations after these have been disrupted or broken." God does not want to just make us right and merely obedient; he wants to live with each and every one of us in a paradise where we can work and walk with him in the "cool of the day," just like old times.

This reconciliation goes even further. God would have us become his very own righteousness. He wants to re-form us into all that is so right and so good about God: becoming like Christ, full of love, joy, peace, hope, and faith. He wants to be with us and in us so that we might enter into "an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands," be "clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." (2 Corinthians 5:1,4) We will become all that we are supposed to be.

The day of salvation is today, not only after we leave these bodies ("tents"). Eternal life is a conversational relationship with the only true God and with Jesus Christ whom he sent. (John 17:3) Eternal life is the same thing as the abundant life promised by Jesus (John 10:10). Eternal life can start now and continue on forever. . . or not. Salvation is not merely an experience, but a whole string of experiences stretching into eternity. Salvation is a life or it is nothing at all.

What is it like to receive something in vain? It would be like taking a gift that someone gave you and putting it into permanent storage or even throwing it away. It would be like receiving an education and forgetting all that you learned or even undermining it in all you do. It would be like finding a treasure and keeping safe, but never investing or spending it. Is it possible for God's reconciliation to be shelved, forgotten, and left unspent? Tragically, it happens all the time.

Put simply, we may just not really want God or a relationship with him. We may want his favor and his gifts, but what Jesus really came to give was reconciliation. A relationship put right. Those who work with God try to make this opportunity known, as God has always been doing, holding open his arms, holding out his hands. He calls out to you, "Come home from that distant land. Follow me and learn me. Be filled with the kind of Spirit and life I have." "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17) What are you waiting for?

The Wells of Salvation

 In that day you will say,

  "Surely the Lord is my salvation

    I will trust and not be afraid.

  The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song,

    he has become my salvation.."

  With joy you will draw water

    from the wells of salvation.  (Isaiah 12:3-3)

"That day" is today. During Jesus's earthly ministry, there was a problem. As he proclaimed and taught about the kingdom of God, the people were looking forward to a time when God would come and set all things right through judgment and complete renewal. This was not wrong, but it is not the good news that Jesus brought. He was talking about the opportunity of access to the kingdom of God now. 

We face the same misunderstanding today. People talk about the kingdom of God in terms of building it and waiting for it, but not in terms of its presence and immanence. Jesus talked about seeing and entering the kingdom of God, not building it or making it happen. When he said, "The kingdom of God is near," he did not mean it was about to happen, but that it was entirely accessible. (For further information about this, you can read this blog entry: What Is the Kingdom of God?)

Isaiah was talking about the day that God would bring deliverance to his people. Complete deliverance. That day is happening now in Jesus. He says "If anyone is thristy, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will now flow from within him." (John 7:37-38) The complete deliverance is in Jesus and life with him through his Spirit. That life will not change in the future, but come to fruition. Perhaps another way of saying it is that life we can find now in Jesus will not change in kind, but in its intensity. When he returns it will not be so much something different as something more.

The "wells of salvation" are not just forgiveness to get us out of this life into the next. These wells are where we go each moment to draw living water for the days and years of sojourn in this time of exile. This water is the same, but the setting is different. In substance, simply living with Jesus is the eternal, abundant water we need. However, we often get obsessed with just wishing for a change of setting instead. For those whose joy comes from pulling water out of the well day in and day out, the Lord is their song and their salvation. He is their daily companion on the road through life. We do not seek escape, but joyful, obedient living.

The only well we can go to is the life that we have before us. Living water is accessible from within by the Spirit, but it is available only from within us. From our lives lived deeply and truly. We cannot access water from someone else's well, someone else's life, as much as we might want to. This desire is what keeps most of us from enjoying God's deliverance. We want another life. What we need is another God. We do not trust God in our lives, but are afraid of our life and the God Who has given it to us. Jesus has come to redeem, renew, reframe our lives, not give us another escape.

Only in the power and reality of Jesus's redemption will the wells of salvation open for us. Only then will it be a joy to access that living water, the kingdom of God in King Jesus. We will find our confidence. And we will discover what it is to not live in fear. We will truly be saved.

Restore the Joy

THE JOY OF SALVATION

Let's say that joy can be understood as a deep sense of well-being.  Such a feeling cannot be merely a feeling, but is also an persistent thought as well as a recurrent choice.  It is not merely cosmetic, like the seed in shallow soil that showed joy at the message of God's kingdom, but quickly withered when trouble and persecution came in Jesus's parable of the seed and the sower.  Like a house built on rock instead of sand, the storms blow over it and by it, but do not blow it down.

Let's say that salvation can be understood as deliverance.  Being delivered implies slavery or captivity or prison.  I am caught with no way of escape.  I am locked away with no hope of freedom.  Then my freedom is purchased, my debt is paid, or my sentence removed.  I am moved from the realm of darkness and hopelessness into a bright, new place of hope.  My prospects are open.  My life stands before me.  I am saved.  I am delivered.

The joy of deliverance then is the sense of well-being that comes from or belongs to life that is free, open, and safe.  This is where forgiveness leads.  This is the resting place of each person who is redeemed or bought back by God.  The prayer for restoration is a prayer for continued fellowship with God when I have left him.  The return of the prodigal son is a picture of such restoration.  It is not merely a recognition of some transaction that takes place on my account to "pay for my sin."  It is coming home to the Father.

THE ROAD HOME

The road home has some landmarks that are familiar to those who travel in this way.  "Hide your face from my sin" (Psalm 51:9) is the request for relief from guilt.  The NET Bible notes that this means, "Do not hold me accountable for my sin."  Take no notice of it.  Do not bring it up before me.  Can God really do that?  Yes, he can.  Yes, he must.  Forgiveness must be freely given to be forgiveness at all.  God is fully willing to forgive.

The barriers belong to me.  Guilt and shame make it impossible to receive forgiveness.  I'm too busy beating myself up to lift my face up for mercy.  Guilt and shame lead to a warped picture of God as one who is tight-fisted and "reaps where he does not sow."  The first hill on the road to forgiveness is releasing my sin to God for him to hide and blot out.

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10)  A clean heart and a right spirit come from forgiveness.  God must not only forgive, but enable me to receive such forgiveness.  A clean heart is one that has one pure motive.  A right spirit is pointed in the right direction.  Such intention comes from God.  I cannot merely make it happen; I must humbly receive it.  The gate is small, but God can bring me through it.

"Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me." (Psalm 51:11)  The creation of a new heart comes from God's grace present in his Spirit.  He grants that I can remain with him and be drawn to him through his Spirit.  The means by which God renews my spirit is by his Spirit.  A right spirit is aligned with his Spirit.  Apart from him I can do nothing.  Again, I ask, I wait, I receive.   The road is narrow, but his leading is sure.

SIN LEFT BEHIND

"Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me." (Psalm 51:12)  I am never merely saved from guilt and shame even though they are the front door of my salvation.  Salvation is about a new creation, a clean heart and a right spirit.  Salvation is about living in the presence of God, indwelt and guided by his Holy Spirit.  Such a salvation makes war on more that guilt.  I am saved from my sin.  The joy of salvation is sin left behind.  The joy of salvation is a heart that does not want sin.  The joy of salvation is a spirit that chooses the right way.  The joy of salvation creates a willing spirit that sustains me through trial and temptation.

What does this all look like?  It is hard work, but not the kind I expect.  I am not asked to make up for my sin.  I am not asked to forgive so I will be forgiven.  I am asked to let go of guilt and shame through trust.  I am asked to seek out the God who forgives, strengthens, and leads through prayer and discipline.  I am asked to exchange my heart for a new one that beats with God's, the heart of Jesus.  I lay aside the work of trying to make up for my sins and accept the work of being with God every moment or every day.

Lord, I deviate easily.  I find myself trying to manage my sin instead of giving it up and following you.  Give me the will to let go.  Give me the love to run after you.  Amen.

Salvation Is a Life: Character Transformed

I believe there are probably many ways to explain how salvation is a life. I have a tried to write out a few of them and they seem to dissolve into abstractions. I guess in order to explain this idea, I would start with my own experience.

Salvation became a life for me when I realized that if I am not being saved from my sins in this life, why should I expect that I would be saved later? It sounds strange, I imagine, but when I read Romans 5:4 several years ago and realized that from character comes hope, I saw why I had felt so much despair. My character was essentially unchanged. There had been some shuffling around of habits and thoughts, but essentially I saw that I was not much different than I had been ten years before.

The process that God led me through was essential to my understanding that salvation is a life, but the beginning came from this fairly simply idea: "A gospel that does not change my character now is not really good news to me." I see that as another way of communicating that salvation is a life because character will not change without a life change.

I believe that salvation must begin now if it's to being at all. Salvation for a whole life is made up of many little "salvations" or deliverances. I feel that if my character remains static, it should make me wonder whether my salvation is effective instead of questioning the nature of salvation. The changes (deliverances) may be small, but over time they should be noticeable. Desires, feelings and thoughts change as well as facial expressions, habits, and bodily actions. I have had the painful experience of seeing and hearing myself on videos from ten to fifteen years ago. My anger and worry was so apparent!

I guess that the message of salvation is a life comes down to locating salvation in general with the little "salvations" of life. Also, if salvation is the coming of God's kingdom into this world, the first place I would come to realize that his kingdom comes is in my life, in my body in particular, since it is the primary realm I rule. When God's rule breaks in, it would have to be in my body, in my character. If God's rule does not come into and through my body, then I can see why I worried it might not come at all.

So talking about this with crowds of people may being with questions of character followed by the message that we can see salvation as a life in the transformation of character. It is God's kingdom coming into a person's life.

Rambling on, I see that the message of the resurrection is the message of transformation. It begins small and invisibly. The rebellions and uprisings in my character against God are quelled one by one. As they are quieted, my very body begins to change in habit, expression, strength, and rest. Resurrection will be the end of it, not because I can foresee such changes in myself, but because it is promised.

Certainly I will not "work" my way to resurrection, but since resurrection is the ultimate transformation of myself, I suspect that salvation presently would be transforming in its nature. With my body as it is currently, I don't anticipate my transformation can go very far, but if salvation has a lot to do with transformation, then my body will certainly feel the effects and react to it. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is active in the transformation of my life, including my body (Ephesians 1:18-21).

Salvation, then, comes through the body. Christ showed this in his incarnation and resurrection. We cannot be saved without our bodies being part of it in action as well as in effect. We cannot be saved merely spiritually - as unbodied - but always as embodied. Jesus came to show us this very fact. Salvation is found nowhere else because there is no one else who saves the body. Resurrection recognizes and blesses our bodily existence and gives us hope for transformation even now, in these corruptible bodies. Ignoring the body ignores the incarnation and the resurrection and leads to empty religion. Christ brought the body into the Godhead so it might become eternal.

Without this, our bodies would have no destiny other than destruction apart from God. Without our bodies, we do not exist. We are embodied spirits. I do not know how we could exist otherwise. Apparently we can't because Christ's saving action has to do with saving the body as well as the spirit.

Lord, I sense something big here. Lead me and open my eyes to your wonderful plan of salvation that included our bodies. Amen.