Believing is Everything?

Minnows flee the froth while they tumble out of the boats and splash ashore, this exuberant rabble.
They've been looking for the miracle worker that baked 25,000 barley loaves (not including what wife and kids ate) without an oven yesterday, and they've just found Him.

He doesn't answer their first question at all, rather gently reminds them what alone is really worth pursuing.

"Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you."

(John 6:27 KJV)

Whether or not they actually understand what He's saying, they are plainly intrigued. So they ask another question. The answer to which has me positively intrigued...

"Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe..."

(John 6:28-29 KJV emphasis added)

Belief changes everything.

Because if Christ really came, then God is really good, and self-love is really a lie, and sin is really a destroyer, and who wants to die anyway?

I have some news for you.
Christ came. (Matchless condescension.)
And He comes again, every time a dark heart opens its door. (Again, matchless condescension.)
What more proof do we need of His benevolence?

And if He is benevolent, then where's the controversy?

Believing is everything.

We only ever hesitate to serve a God whose character we question.

Jesus Knows

I wonder if you, like me, have ever stood in the doorway of the tabernacle* and felt like you were totally out of place there...

-  -  -  -

I stand on the threshold. This is God's home. And it's a place that feels as though it has been at times more familiar to me than it is at this moment. 

His eyes hold only love. 

My head is bowed though, because my mind cradles memories fresh of petty wanderings I'd like to forget.

"Welcome home."

"Thank You, Sir.

       

But-- [with trembling, and wonder, and a bit of incredulity, and still a bowed head] 

Does Your Lordship know what it feels like to be a betrayer and a murderer?"

I know. The inane questions I ask sometimes.

He just looks at me, lets me stand there a minute. And His face is kind, and grave, and silent. But suddenly His Spirit leads me back to truth 2,000 years old. I hear, I remember. I look up at His face. 

"Yes, actually... I died carrying the sins of Judas too."

Oh. That's right. (and so horribly wrong.)

You Who knew no sin, accepted the sin of the betrayer. 

And it killed You, so I could live.

And this is why you can welcome me home.

Let me never hesitate.

Jesus knows. 

*metaphorically speaking, you understand.

No Substitute

I'm as sure as the sunrise. This is the secret...

I stand at my front door and watch Africa stir, listen to the jungle morning. But my thoughts are far away. I cry and He answers. And though we better our acquaintance daily, most days He still catches me off guard. And some days when I'm only half done with my rant he silences me with one word, burned in silence across the wall of my soul.


"... And say I not well that I am 'a Samaritan'?
Say I not well that Thou deservest more and better?--"

"Say I not well that there is only one of you in the world, and in My heart you're irreplaceable?"


There is one thing that binds me to the cross. One thing that is to be thanked for any progress, any strength, any accomplishment.
And that one thing is not my commitment, my abandonment, my faith, my hope, my experience, my choice, my will, my power, or my surrender.

It is the mercy of Christ.

The love that doesn't want "more and better" as a substitute for broken me.

The Stuff of the Brave

Consumed as I've been of late with strategies to arm next generation's young heroes with this generation's arsenal of lessons learned, I think I'm justified in my excitement.

Aren't you? Maybe you didn't read what I read this morning.

...About the way stone walls can either make us slaves, or make us like themselves. Invincible.

"It is written of Joseph in the dungeon that 'the iron entered into his soul.'" - (Streams in the Desert, September 8)

The let us neither bemoan the ruggedness of the way, nor the apparent strength of the enemy.

Let us rather gather always strength from our surroundings. And let the battlements we break through become in us the stuff of steel that the brave men and women of the cross are made of.

We can't lose.

Plenty Full

I esteem that audacity which leads brave men to "crave the fire's embrace," if only through it they might come to know God...

(For it is true that a day of hardship imparts more strength to the soul than a month of sunshine.)

But after today, I've had a change of mind as concerns just how men (and women) should pursue the treasure imparted by tears. Once, that is, faith has made them steel enough to do so.

Pray not for pain or hardship.
The world is plenty full of both.

Pray you'll have the heart to suffer with another's.

When their hardship becomes my pain, then God can heal the both of us.