Naked and Exposed

A devotional presented at my local community Lenten Services.

Hebrews 4:13 (New Living Translation)
Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable.

I have been reading this week Timothy Keller’s recent book on marriage. One of the things that he points out, which anyone who has ever been married already knows, is that one of the deepest challenges of marriage is having to live in such close proximity to someone for perpetuity.

The challenge of that arrangement is that the individual’s spouse sees them for all that they really are. When we are friends or even dating someone, we can put on our best. We can be for that person what they want us to be to them. But once the freedom to walk away for the night or for the weekend and go to our own space is taken away, when we are in such close proximity to another person for such a long duration, our best façades fall apart.

 

Psalm 17

I have mentioned Powered by 4 before, here.

I’m not up to a daily reading yet, but I have been reading most days of the week, especially when I go int othe office at church. The whole goal of Powerd by 4 is to get people to read the Bible 4 times a week. Of course, the ideal is daily, but it gives us who struggle with maintaining a consistency in Bible reading a starting point. If you find yourself struggling in the discipling of Bible reading, I encourage you to check out their plan. They send out a daily e-mail. It’s great for me, because there is not a day that goes by that I don’t check my e-mail. Why I can be so faithful with checking e-mail and reading blogs but not sitting down for even 10 minutes to read and reflect on Scripture without a gimmick I cannot explain.

Anyway, after reading through Genesis 12-50, the daily readings have moved on to Psalms. We read the first ten Psalms before diving into Genesis, and we picked up with Psalm 11 after finishing the story of Joseph. Today’s reading is Psalm 17.

What a psalm! David is praying to God, and tells God that he knows that God can examine him and find nothing to fault David for. There is absolutely no way that I could say such a thing, and that is painful to admit. Old struggles rear their heads, things that I have fought in the past and am tired of fighting, so I just give in. And I justify them as “normal,” because I see so much of it around me, so many people who condone the things that I know are wrong. I look out and find comfort that I am not alone in my struggle. I find comfort by those who would find value in what in my heart of hearts I know is wrong. And I rely on the blood of Jesus to recover old sins that I succumb to again.

Not quite an example of Christian virtue.

David goes on in the psalm to ask God to save him from his enemies, and David speaks of his enemies as those who have looked to the world for their wealth and riches. They spend all of their energy in the here and now, looking to the next generation to “carry their legacy.” Do we not do the same thing?

David calls us to a higher standard: “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” (Psalm 17:15)

I love the hymn “Face to Face,” where we sing about that day when we shall meet Jesus face to face after this world is through and we are part of the new creation. It will be a glorious day. I should be living for that, not for the good of the next generation. Not dwelling on the pleasures of the here and now that are fleeting. Eternity looms. God awaits.

And I’m too busy succumbing to old passions.

 

Core Values

I just finished reading Being Leaders by Aubrey Malphurs. I may reflect more on the book as I process it, but I want to get one particular set down tonight. I have been using another of Malphurs’ books, Advanced Strategic Planning, to help walk our church through the establishing of core values, a mission statement, and a vision statement. In Being Leaders, Malphurs throws out the idea of personal core values. He mentions it in Advanced Strategic Planning, but I never actually thought about setting out my own core values.

One of the appendices in Being Leaders is a personal core values audit. It’s actually the same audit he gives for churches to use in both books. So I took it, and here’s what I discovered about myself, in the order of priority that I established for them:

1. Worship and Prayer
2. Bible Knowledge
3. Evangelism/Lost People/Missions
4. Community/Relevance
5. Mobilized Laity

The order is significant, as I perceive this is a process that someone would walk through. First, people should worship God and engage Him in prayer. This would be naturally followed by a desire to know Him more, which would happen through Bible study. While I don’t think Bible knowledge is necessarily a prerequisite for evangelism, I believe we become better evangelists the more we know about God, which is why I have it third. As we pursue evangelism, we will likely realize that we need to understand the people we are trying to reach: the people of our community (either where we were born or where we have chosen to live for work, family, or ministry). We will need to understand the community and make our message relevant, that is in the vernacular of the community so that the message can be heard and understood.  And I firmly believe that this is a task of everyone in the church, not just the lead pastor, the staff, or the church leaders (be they deacons, elders, Sunday school teachers, or some other unnamed group).

 

Bethel

Today’s Scripture is from Genesis 28, when God introduces himself to Jacob for the first time and promises to fulfill the covenant He made with Abraham and Isaac through Jacob. The devotional thought that came with the text suggested that this is Jacob’s first encounter with God. I don’t know that I buy that – probably the first encounter with God of this kind, but probably not his first encounter, having grown up as the grandson of Abraham and son of Isaac. Perhaps the first personal encounter? Maybe that’s what the editor meant.

In any event, the thought went on to ask the question about the reader’s own first encounter with God. What was it like? Jacob set up conditions (“If God does this, then I will do this”), but also set up the altar that he called Bethel (“House or Dwelling Place of God”).

I don’t know if I remember my first encounter with God. In fact, I’m sure that I do not. I remember when a tropical storm (or minimal hurricane, not sure which) went over the house we were living in on the Gulf Coast, and Mom gathered us in her bedroom and prayed to God to protect us. I was young then, maybe four or five. We were fine, as was our house. Is that an encounter with God? I remember flickers of what I call my salvation experience…being in my parents’ bedroom, talking with our church’s pastor, being baptized. Is that my first encounter? I can look back and clearly see places and times where God guided me, protected me, steered me, put me in the precisely right place at the precisely right time. Are any of these my first encounter? I remember as a senior in high school, ten years after that time in my parents’ bedroom, pacing up and down the street in front of our house, trying to figure out what to do with my life (so that I could finish my college application – singular – by writing down a major), and having the assurance that I would be in full time ministry. Without a doubt. Though I had no clue what that looked like (pastor? missionary? professor?). Just that ministry was it. Because I was 18, it’s probably the most vivid encounter with God that I can remember. But I wouldn’t call it my first encounter.

I guess my first encounter came before memories started sticking in my brain. Probably my mother singing to me or praying over me (or for me, in another room). I do know that my life is different from the lives of others in the world who have not encountered God in a significant way. While I often take detours down the paths of consumerism and commercialism and materialism, I’m always drawn back. Jacob was a conniving liar who stole from his twin brother and spent the remainder of his life cowering from him, but God still chose him and always drew him back into His plan.

Sometimes I wish I had a dramatic instant-change testimony like I sometimes hear at meetings or conferences or read about in books. But then I count myself lucky that my encounter with God is lifelong, ever present. I have, at times, flirted with doubts about God’s existence or providence, but never for long. He is always with me. Just like God promised to always be with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob, with their descendants. He is always with me.

That’s my Bethel.

 

Jonah

Jonah 4:10-11

Today’s Powered by 4 reading was Jonah 4. Jonah and Whale is a familiar to story to most anyone who grew up with any kind of a connection to the church. It’s a classic kids story. I haven’t been so faithful this week with the daily readings, mostly because I believed the four chapters of Jonah to be very familiar – tired and well worn. Not something that I need to read again, at least not this week.

I know. I should know better.

I am struck by the last two verses of the book. Jonah has been nudged not-so-gently into Nineveh. He walked three days into the city, proclaiming his message. The word gets to the king, and he declares that the whole city should repent, both man and beast. What evangelist today would not rejoice at such a turn in a city of 120,000 people – especially one with the reputation of Nineveh! Yet chapter 4 finds Jonah sulking over God’s grace towards Nineveh. He declares that this was the very reason he did not want to go to Nineveh and fled west in the first place – so God would NOT spare the city.

Jonah, sulking, goes out into the desert and sits down, waiting for the destruction of the city. God raises a vine overnight to shade him, and Jonah rejoices at the provision of shade. The next night, however, the vine is eaten away by worms, and it withers and no longer provides shade to Jonah. So he becomes even more bitter and angry. And God asks him if he has reason to be so bitter about the plant. Jonah responds that he does. And God asks, “Why the vine and not the 120,000 people of Nineveh? What makes the vine so much more worthwhile than they?”

How often have we fallen into the same trap, caring more for the fleeting things of life – the iPod or iPhone or dinner out or seeing the movie that’s getting all of the buzz or not missing an episode of our favorite show or cleaning out the dirt under our nails rather than the world that is dying around us? Are the people around us not of more worth than those other things?

It is a trap into which I easily fall. I pray that I will become more attuned to the world around me. To see more with God’s eyes. To place my time, effort, and energy into things that are lasting and worthwhile rather than fleeting.