Misconception of God #4,897

I once thought I had a better understanding of God than all the rest of the humans. Today I know I am as blind as the rest of the race, perceiving only a small portion of that which the Divine has determined to reveal of Himself. One misconception that I am learning is fairly common, and for which I had long blamed the Creator, was the idea that He is all finished creating. I took Bible references to the Sabbath to mean that all was complete, and Christ’s quote on the cross, “It is finished!” to mean that God’s involvement in building what is to be built was pretty much concluded.

What I didn’t understand was that the One who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, has presented me with the option of deciding what my middle will be, and to what master I will present it. Will I spend my middle serving my cares, concerns, and cravings, or will I make God the god of my whole life: beginning, middle, and end? If I can serve but one master, and the cravings of the greedy rob a person of life, than the choice seems simple. Serving God actually benefits me. But if I choose to serve God for my own benefit, aren’t I really just serving myself in a back-handed way? It turns out that God invites the burdened, the hungry, the brokenhearted, the spiritually impoverished, and all those who recognize their unmet need for Him to return to the Manufacturer for counsel, companionship, and conformity to their original design and purpose. No matter how far removed we become from the pattern in which all things work like they were supposed to, we are under warranty, welcome to come back for an overhaul.

“…he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6, NIV)

Dear Father, today, I give you my middle. Be the Master of my whole alphabet, from beginning to end. Make every part of me work according to Your will and design, and take pleasure in employing me to Your purpose. Thank You for continuing to construct me into something new. I am happy to be a tool in Your service, for a tool in the hand of his Master is of value while a tool standing in front of a mirror is just shelved scrap.

Scripture References:

Genesis 2:2
John 19:30
Revelation 1:8, 21:6, 22:13
Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13
Proverbs 1:19
Isaiah 55:1, Matthew 5:3-12

Without Him I Can Do Nothing

Last night while I was trying to sleep after a day filled with failures and character defects in full bloom, it occurred to me that maybe my Tenth Step work needs some help. I opened Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the original AA one.

Before I turned to Step Ten, I finished reading the rest of Step Seven, the chapter my home meeting group didn’t quite get through last week.There I found the one statement in the book to which I was introduced years before my coming to program, and which I still see as the book’s primary highlight (although I am infinitely grateful for the rest of it too):

The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear – primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration. Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing those demands. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, “Step Seven”)

That passage was originally introduced to me by a marriage counselor in session. Maybe he sensed I was an addicted person and maybe this trouble is just common to all humans, but my unsatisfied demands were a chain around my neck then and perhaps they still are. My closest relationships are where they most readily reveal that they remain cinched around my throat. The links of anger, hurt feelings, disappointment, and inadequacy pinch and tear away flesh under the weight of fear, and I am powerless, by myself, to cast them off.

Step Ten told me, however, that

…no one can make much of his life until self-searching becomes a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, “Step Ten”

The Our Daily Bread devotional today, written by Julie Ackerman Link, was based on a reference to Isaiah 17:1 and 11, and said in part:

Apart from God, the work of our hands will become a pile of ruins. But when we join with God in the work of His hands, God multiplies our effort and provides spiritual nourishment for many.

The devotion closed with a quote from Jesus Christ:

“Without Me you can do nothing.” —Jesus (John 15:5)

Dear Father, today, I confess that I have been running along on my own way without enjoying my fulfilling relationship with You. As I wandered, I began to feel the grip of Self and it’s defective character choking me and my other relationships. Thank You for the reminder. Forgive my selfish ways, Lord, and deliver me from them. I am so helpless without You. Please lead me in Your Way, so I don’t run ahead of myself again. I willingly submit to Your guidance.

Continued to take moral inventory…

Dear God,

My relationships with other people are not going according to the grace with which you bought me and established relationship with me. I want what I do and say to be an overflow of the joy I have in You, and yet bitterness keeps coming out. My feelings still get hurt though I recognize that those around me are spiritually sick. I have a tendency to forget that I am still sick too, recovering from the spiritual disease of Self, and that others need my patience rather than my dictates about how to get well.

Help me to remember there is nothing I can do to right anyone’s wrongs, neither those of my own nor those of others. Keep me humble and mold me into a representation of the grace You offer to all mankind. Instead of making me attractive, let the way I live be an attractant to You. I confess I am still dragging around old defective character traits, which I offer again to You to remove in Your timing. Help me loosen my hold on them so they are at Your disposal. Self still swims about in the soup of my emotions. Please filter it out and keep it from factoring in my decisions. Help me treat people the way You would have me rather than the way that best serves me.

I am grateful for the restoration You have accomplished, but I know that my sanity still bears the cracks and holes of its once shattered condition. I know its leaks are manifestations of my own reluctance to surrender all to You. Please remedy my leakiness. I want to be a trustworthy vessel for You. Please take all the broken pieces and mend me the way that only You can. I am unable to repair myself on my own. Just to think I might is another defect of prideful selfishness.

Give me an undivided heart, that I may honor Your name. I long for the integrity that can only come from working with and in You. Make Your purposes my only motive, Your call my only mission, Your love my only resource. Make me more like You.

In the name of Christ Jesus who was broken for my wholeness, Amen!

 

Psalm 86:11 (NIV)

Teach me your way, Lord,

   that I may rely on your faithfulness;

give me an undivided heart,

   that I may fear your name.

Did you read what I wrote today?

I write three blogs, two anonymously. In them I journal some of my deepest thoughts, and most stirring insights, as well as some ramblings that probably help no one but me as I sort through the emotional soup that stirs in my head. Most of the time, I am content to know that I have poured myself onto a page and released it with the Enter key. Other times, I wonder if my close friends or family members will see what I wrote, understand it, relate to it, or see any evidence that God was in it. On earlier occasions when I experienced the real sensation of God speaking through my keyboard, I often rushed to share the experience with my wife, and I would beg to know, “Did you read what I wrote today?” I am ashamed to admit that it took me a lot longer than it should have for me to learn this was unhealthy for me, and came across as critical of her. To me, it was a sharing of an intimacy, but it threatened to inflate my ego. To her, it was an obligation, one which she could never fulfill fast enough or with enough enthusiasm to suit me. My queries were a lose-lose proposal every time, so I stopped asking. Sooner or later I stopped caring whether anyone else read what I wrote or not. It took a lot of work and energy to transcribe my spiritual struggles onto a page, and even more to muster up the willingness to broadcast it publicly, but I was content knowing two things: I was strengthened by the exercise, and God will do what He wants with the seeds I sow.

This week my Bible study small group was encouraged to candidly expose their devotional habits, and I had to confess I had fallen behind on my Scripture readings even so as to be unprepared for our weekly study. As I mulled over the significance of my confession, I was stirred to recall that God has painstakingly transcribed His very heart onto the pages of the Bible. He has inspired men over centuries to pen His Word, and rallied all manner of spiritual forces and political circumstances to preserve, translate and duplicate it at the cost of many lives. He has orchestrated history to ensure that the Bible is the number one best-seller in all-time and is readily available to most cultures today. Yet He asks, with perhaps a broken heart, “Did you read what I wrote today?”

Holy Father, I thank You for loving me enough to write to me about it. I celebrate the ease with which I may read Your Word and get a glimpse of Your heart. Make mine more like Yours, and keep it from pride. Deliver me from self-seeking, self-pity, and selfish fear. You gave me my life and patiently bought it back when I took it up; now I offer it back to You to do with it as You wish. You are a good and holy Father, and Your love for me is complete. I am content to love You and be loved by You. Your will be done, in Christ’s name I pray. Amen!

¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the servant of God^{[Or that you, a man of God,]} may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17, NIV)

Personal, Life-Giving Knowledge; Not Academic

In this morning’s New Testament in a Year text (John 5:25-47, NRSV), I found a passage that well describes me before coming to a spiritual awakening, which happened to me as a result of living the Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous:

³⁹ “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. ⁴⁰ Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

This is a reminder that, without relationship, religion is futile. Bible knowledge that astounds my fellows will not impress the Father. Kingdom work that rescues wounded and inspires multitudes will not endure. Casting out demons and performing miracles may still be answered, “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23). What matters is my answer to God’s loving call, which seems to say, “I demonstrated by my life, death and resurrection that you are worth dying for. Will you love me by living with, by and for me forevermore? Will you follow me instead of your cares and concerns and make me the charge of your past, present and future? Will you return to me, to be in and of me, as I intended when I created you?”

Today’s meditation from Our Daily Bread related a whale’s surfacing for air before living in its habitat below the surface to a human’s need for spiritual refreshment – no, sustenance – before being able to go about our routines of daily ministry. Without this “spiritual air” we cannot survive as we get along with our business below. Still, we cannot rest forever at the surface or we do not fulfill our purpose. Neither can we suspend ourselves more than a moment in the light and wind of our spiritual Father’s embrace as we breach the surface in worship. Our lives, for this brief existence, are predominantly lived in the depths. It is there we find our purpose and provision, though we return even hourly to kiss our maker with great repetition or die to the murky depths below.

Dear Father, today, keep me connected with you and breathe into me Your divine breath of life, that I may live out Your will for me, here on Earth as it is in Heaven.