Raw Power

A steam locomotive is the picture of raw power.  The way they spouted smoke and steam, hissing and chugging as though they were living creatures, they have been the things of legend and romance for a century and a half.  The power element probably comes from the fact that their moving parts are on the outside for all to see…

Yes, they just look powerful, a modern diesel just can’t compare with them for looking powerful… even though they are actually more powerful as a rule.

A locomotive is a very powerful thing, and yet when compared to God’s power they are nothing.  God is all-powerful, He can do anything He wants…

Even though God is all-powerful, to the ancient  Hebrew mind this is not what is notable about Him, for His restraint is what they were mindful of, and it is what we should take note of as well.  God did not simply smite Mankind for its continual rebellion against Him, He restrained Himself our of His love for Man.  The entire history of the Bible is a history of God working to re-establish relationship with His wayward creation through a series of covenants.  Simply by entering a covenant, God has restrained His use of His total power.

I realize that this is a little counterintuitive to the Western mind, but it is the fact nevertheless. As such, it is the very demonstration of God’s love and mercy, for it gives us the chance to be forgiven.

As a final though for today, consider the difference between power and strength:  God has restrained the use of His raw power by exercising even greater strength when He sent His Son to die for our sins, in our place taking upon Himself the weight of our guilt so that we might live in fellowship with Him again.  This is a point on which all of us should meditate and search our souls…

Humble Beginnings

There is nothing remarkable about this old house; it’s a typical “working man’s” home of the mid 19th century.  It has three rooms, a kitchen and parlor and a single bedroom.  The house isn’t located in a glamorous location, in fact it’s in a town you may never have heard of before, Galesburg, Illinois.  I doubt that most people would look at it and guess that a Pulitzer prize winner would have been born here, but in fact one of America’s greatest writers was born and grew up here; Carl Sandburg.

There are many stories about great people who come from humble beginnings, in fact America is rather famous for this sort of thing.  If you continue down the interstate, you’ll come upon the very humble place where the young Abraham Lincoln kept shop.  Three hours to the west is a very similar house where Herbert Hoover was born, and (more or less) in between is the humble home where Ronald Reagan was born.

These kinds of stories, while a hallmark of America, are hardly unique to this country.  God’s Son was born in a stable because there was no other place to stay.  He never had a home to call his own and yet he has changed the lives of hundreds of millions and provides the hope of eternal life to this day.  Those who followed him, his disciples, were largely of equally humble origins.  There was nothing in particular to recommend them, they were not educated and very young, and yet God used them in a mighty way.

You and I may not be from the most famous of families, we may not be the best educated or the greatest in the sight of men, and yet God can and will use us to do great things for His Kingdom.  It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from, for God is not interested in how this world views you, in fact for those who come from humble origins there is quite an advantage for serving God’s Kingdom: We aren’t caught up in the trap of riches and worldly position. For those of humble origin, greatness in God’s Kingdom is awaiting.  The only question is: Will we answer His call?

Sunday Class Notes: July 29

Jesus Prays

 

Today’s Text               John 17

Introduction

 

This is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in the entire New Testament.  Jesus is clearly one who prays a great deal, and we can gain a great deal of insight into prayer in this chapter.  For the purpose of these notes, I will attempt to resist the temptation to engage in theological discussion or analysis of what the prayer consists of or what this or that “means” from a theological point of view, instead I hope to focus more on what we can learn about prayer itself.  A good point of beginning is to take notice of Jesus’ posture as he prays; note that he is not sitting quietly with bowed head and closed eyes but rather is looking heavenward with eyes wide open.  In fact, he is most likely standing with the disciples, and if you take note of his language, it might seem that he is not speaking in a very quiet voice at all.  Of course we might say that our traditional posture results in a contrast because Jesus is the second person of the godhead while we are not.  Might not this view overlook the fact that we are his co-heirs?  Well, it’s food for thought anyway…

Points of Interest

 

17:1-5               Jesus opens this prayer by praying for God’s purpose to be fulfilled; this is and has been the principle focus of Jesus throughout his ministry.  Praying for God’s purpose to be fulfilled in entirely consistent with the idea that the fulfillment of God’s purpose is the reason for his being on the earth in the first place, and by extension is also consistent with the idea that this same purpose is our reason for being his disciples.  Throughout this Gospel, Jesus has used the expression “glorify” to refer to his death and resurrection, his work of atonement on the cross, and this is not different here.  Being thus “glorified” is God’s ultimate purpose for Jesus. Returning to the glory of heaven as he was before coming to this world is indicative of his having completed his work (purpose) in the world.

17:6-19             In this section, Jesus is interceding for his disciples.  He will complete his work of “glorification” very shortly and return to the Father, but they will remain in this world and they will have a rough time of it here. In a way, this section reads almost like a report, for Jesus repeats three of the things that he has just taught the disciples in chapters 14-16.  Keep in mind, that while we have been looking at these things over a period of weeks, and they cover the last few chapters, chapters 14-17 all occur in one place in one evening over a short span of time; a dinner.  Those three things that he repeats here are: 1) the belief that Jesus came from God (16:30); 2) the promise of complete joy (16:24); and 3) the coming hate of the world (15:18).  Then he prays for God to protect them as Jesus has protected them.  It is instructive for us to note that this “protection” was not always to protect them from the harm that the world might inflict upon them, and the book of Acts records quite a bit of that harm.  Indeed nearly all of them would be killed by the world eventually.  The “protection” that was provided for them was a protection of their faith and their message, the two things that enabled them to serve God’s purpose.

17:20-26            This section is broken into two smaller sections, the first of which is vv. 20-23).  In these verses, Jesus is praying for the unity of all believers so that the world may see it and believe their message.  The message is the point, for it is trough their message that they have received that the gospel will be spread and the commission he left them with (Matt. 28:18-20) will be accomplished; it is the purpose of God again. The second section within these verses is vv. 24-26 where Jesus prays for all believers in their ultimate destination: eternity with him.  Note that there is a comparison in all of this:  Jesus is in the world to accomplish the purpose for which God sent him, and then he returns to God’s heavenly presence.  The believer is in the world to accomplish the purpose for which God has placed him there and then goes to God’s heavenly presence with Christ.  This is our purpose, our challenge and our destiny.  Jesus has taken this seriously enough to die on the cross, the Apostles took it seriously enough to suffer and die for their message: How seriously do we take it?

Conclusion

 

Jesus has taught the disciples that they will have a powerful prayer life; that anything they ask for in his name will be given them.  Each time he has spoken on this point, the context has been doing God’s work; serving God’s purpose.  You will have noticed by now that every aspect of this prayer is in this same context: God’s eternal purpose.  Our prayers are powerful things, how much more powerful they could be if they were for God’s purpose to be accomplished rather than that we get the things we want!

Are we moving forward in life?

I took these photos the other day when we had to stop at a railroad crossing… I’ve always been fascinated by trains!  I jumped out of the car and started snapping pictures and here are four of them.

When you think about it, a train can be a metaphor for life as a Christian.  We must always be growing in our faith so that we can walk through our life with Jesus Christ.  He leads us toward the goal of heaven and eternal life, and just like a train, we must keep on moving toward our destination…

Sometimes people become distracted and their faith falters; sometimes we seem to be off track.

A train shows us how to keep plugging along, and so we must…  You know, when you think about it, we can keep plugging along our way through life with Christ, we can become distracted and falter… and we can even do an about-face and start travelling in the wrong direction.  If we were all honest with ourselves, we might have to admit that at various times in our lives we’ve all done the about-face at at some point.  Maybe we’ve even done an about-face when other people thought we had it all together and were moving forward…

Yes, it’s true; we can actually be going the wrong direction in our lives for a while and people will think we are going in the right direction.  Sometimes we may even be able to fool ourselves!  That’s why it is so important to keep up our prayer life, to be at our Master’s feet in prayer every single day.

Yes indeed, we can learn a lot from a train.  This train is going in the right direction, right?

Hint: I posted these photos in reverse order here… The train is moving backwards!  Fooled ya!

Oh, how important it is to spend time every day with our Lord and in His Word! It is so easy to drift off into confusion and not realize how far off track we’ve roamed when we try to navigate on our own.

Another Tree

A ways back I posted about what we can learn from a tree; well here’s another one.  I snapped this scene about six weeks ago, when the grass was still green in Illinois.  This tree grabbed my attention because it was unusual…

The unusual thing about the tree isn’t the scar, but how well it has done in spite of the injury it sustained.  I’m not sure exactly what happened to the tree, my first thought was a lightning strike, but who knows.  It seems likely that what ever happened was storm related in some form…

We all deal with storms in our lives, sometimes literally, other times the storms are of a different sort.  Many of these are caused by our own actions and choices, many are not..  More important than anything else is how we respond to them.

When times are tough, do we let the circumstances keep us down; do we let circumstances defeat us?  When we are hurt by life’s storms will we dwell in our pain or rise again from it?  One of the most difficult lessons in life, at least in my life, was learning that we do have this choice.

Even more important than learning that we have a choice in how we respond to damaging storms in life is learning that we need not try to recover all on our own.  It may sound overly simplistic to some, but we can turn much of this over to our Lord, for His strength is greater than ours. We can rely on Him, we can lean on Him, we can trust in Him.   Living a Christian life is a life of setting self aside and serving the Lord Jesus Christ, and dealing with times of trouble is no different, so it stands to reason that He will sustain us all the more when we put our trust in Him and keep on serving others instead of serving ourselves.

Some may question all of this, but all I can say to them is “Come and see”

Incidentally, isn’t it interesting that medical science has noticed that people of faith have much greater survival rates from injuries and traumas than those who are not of faith?  It seems the same is true for heart attacks and strokes; I wonder why that is…?

A Long Hot Summer

I love hot weather, in fact I love to annoy the people around me by calling it “nice and warm” when they are complaining about how they are about to die  from it…

The last few summers have been unusually cool in my area, and we aren’t used to warm summers… and what do we have this year?  Hot.

For all of my friends and neighbors who think they are about to die because we are having a lot of nice warm weather, I provide a little bit of relief in today’s photo.  It is a Christmas Eve snow storm from last year: Burrrr! (yuk, actually)

The winter snows and freezing winds will be along soon enough.  I’ll enjoy the nice summer weather while I can, and  thank God for summer!

Signs of the Times

The Red Oak was a restaurant located in rural Illinois, from what I’ve been told it was a real nice place; good food and service and all the rest.  When I stopped by it was closed up and the locals said they were out of business.

What a shame…

There are many places just like this all over the country; hopes and  dreams… gone. The economic situation is quite disappointing, to say the least. I hope that America is taking notice, and will remember on election day!

This is not a post about politics, however; it is a post about hope.  The real question is where do we place our hope?  The frequent visitor to this blog will note that this is a question I ask every so often here, but I don’t think it’s over done.  In fact it’s a question we should ask ourselves every day: Where am I placing my hope?  Is it in economics, politics, money? If these are where we place our hopes, we’re in trouble, for they aren’t coming through very well.

There is only one place for us to put our hopes and dreams, and that is in God’s hands.  God is faithful, God is merciful, God cares about us and God can be relied upon no matter what else is going on;  God is the One in whom we should rely.

Quote of the Week

“You can do more than pray, after you have prayed, but you cannot do more

than pray until you have prayed.”

John Bunyan

Praise Where Praise is Due

Credit and praise are tossed around quite a bit; people thank their teachers, parents, coaches… and “the Academy.”  People often thank others for something they have said or done; all of this is a good thing.

Usually missing from the lists of those who are thanked and praised is the name of the One from whom all good things and blessings come.

God is the source of our blessings, for He has blessed us in so many ways; even in ways we might not know about.  No one deserves our praise more; let’s give Him praise this week!

Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord
    who minister by night in the house of the Lord.
Lift up your hands in the sanctuary 
    and praise the Lord.

May the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth,
    bless you from Zion.

(Psalm 134)

I hope that all of us will pause this week to recall all that He has done for us, all of the ways that He has blessed us, all of the things that we have to be thankful for, and give Him thanks and praise.  No, there is nothing special about this week; it’s just a week like any other, and that makes it the perfect time to think about these things, for being blessed by our God is not any unusual event; it happens every day of the year.  Thus, it seems like giving our thanks and singing His praise is something that is due on any and every given day.

Can We Forgive?

It isn’t always easy to forgive people who have hurt us; it isn’t always easy to forgive ourselves for that matter.

Our Lord told us to forgive, can we just skip it?  I used to say that I believe strongly in forgiveness… as soon as massive retaliation had been achieved.  I was only joking of course…

Forgiving others is an essential part of the Christian life.  It is necessary for several reasons, first because our refusal to obey the command of our Lord is sin.  Second, because we would be utterly hypocritical if we expected God to forgive us while we refuse to forgive others; God will not be mocked.  Third, if we don’t forgive others when they hurt us, we carry the scars of those hurts with us through life, and if we are overloaded with baggage of emotional hurts, we can’t follow Jesus very far for we are carrying too heavy a load.

Over the years I have had quite a few couples ask to speak with me when they had  difficulties in their marriages.  I am not a counselor and always make that clear, but it seems that they ask anyway because I am their teacher and because they believe that I will not take sides, and this is true.  In the course of this, many of the couples were reconciled, and some were not.  Bear in mind, none were cases of addiction, violence or crime… just “everyday problems” you might say.

In every single case, the whole thing came down to one single point:  Could the couple agree to set self aside and forgive one another?  That is always the bottom line in my experience.The couples who could forgive were reconciled, and they are still going strong both in the Lord and in their marriages.  The couples that could not forgive tore their families apart to the detriment of all concerned.

Is there any wonder why we must be willing to forgive?