How Do You Spell Relief?

S - PSALM 143:1-12 (NIV): "O LORD, hear my prayer, listen to my cry for mercy; in your faithfulness and righteousness come to my relief. Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one living is righteous before you. The enemy pursues me, he crushes me to the ground; he makes me dwell in darkness like those long dead. So my spirit grows faint within me; my heart within me is dismayed. I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done. I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah Answer me quickly, O LORD; my spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me or I will be like those who go down to the pit. Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Rescue me from my enemies, O LORD, for I hide myself in you. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground. For your name's sake, O LORD, preserve my life; in your righteousness, bring me out of trouble. In your unfailing love, silence my enemies; destroy all my foes, for I am your servant."

O - Relief does not, DOES NOT, come to us because of our faithfulness or righteous activities.  It's not that we shouldn't engage our best to be faithful or to do the right thing, but these expressions are NOT what gains our hearing before God nor those which garner his favor.  He's glad when we so engage but these actions are not the basis for his help.  The reason(s) we make our appeal is our desperate need and the reasons he answers are his mercy, righteousness, faithfulness and unfailing love.  He loves us because he loves us.  He helps us, engages us, provides for us and protects us for the same reason.  This truth is awesome in reality and hard in the unreality of our religious selves.  We want to think that we're earning help or proving trustworthy to receive it; and the problem with this is that not only can we never qualify but this same deception becomes our "reasons" to judge others (e.g. Job's companions).  While we do live in a world which produces some consequence to our actions … our actions are not the basis for the Lord's steadfast love and the help he brings to those who ask. He is the basis for his is love and help.  We are not loved because we perform.  We are loved because we belong. Any other conclusion denies him and deceives us.

 

A - Fear based, failure based, living isn't living at all. It's performing and ultimately self-centered because it becomes all about self-protection and self-promotion.  The Scriptures tell me that when fear and judgment are present in me I am not receiving the full measure of the love he is permanently giving.  Why? Because these are very realities which love drives out and repels (1 John 4). Today my primary assignment is to love and to live in the love God has for me, unqualified and unquantified. 

P - Lord who is love,

Thank you for confronting my religious self, even my well-intended religious self and for insisting that it be put to death with the rest of my fallen self.  I admit that I can be thinking logically but not rightly. I am asking for relief, for help, for reprieve, for rescue according to your mercy, faithfulness, righteousness and unfailing love.  I welcome the full measure of your love and pray for power to apprehend it.  I love you back and want to love others out loud according to your love. 

Yielding to you,

Steve

The Truth is Always more than Telling

S - 3 John 2-4 (NLT): "Dear friend, I am praying that all is well with you and that your body is as healthy as I know your soul is. Some of the brothers recently returned and made me very happy by telling me about your faithfulness and that you are living in the truth. I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children live in the truth."

O - Is there a difference between living in the truth and knowing it? Certainly to live in it one must know it but does knowing it always equate to living in it? The Greek verb (the same in both verses) is peripatevw: to tread all around, that is, walk at large (especially as proof of ability); figuratively to live, deport oneself, follow (as a companion or votary): - go, be occupied with, walk (about). This compound word expresses a word picture of something thoroughly trampled, completely traversed, fully occupying one's life. The truth is not something we merely handle, it must handle us.  The truth is not merely information, it is a person.  The truth is Jesus and there is a marked difference between intellectual recognition and a daily and full expression of living in him.  There is no greater joy for the "hearer" and those being heard about than to be living in the truth.

A - Today (and every day) my primary focus is Jesus … to think, act, talk and love like him; to completely traverse and to be completely immersed in him … for him to handle me and my entire day.  He is life, vibrant, refreshing, irrepressible and unmistakable life.  There is no greater joy because he is the greatest joy.  Living in the truth will not mean never making a mistake.  It does mean never failing to recognize and turn into Jesus who is the truth.

P - Lord who is life and truth and joy,

My day is varied in meetings, focus, importance (from my perspective) and expectations.  My life is varied by my human nature and all the humans around me.  You are not only ever present around me but in me and I want to be ever present with you/ to you.  Lord, let me be a life giving fountain today, a garden which any and all can receive nourishment from without cost and without apprehension.   Jesus, I don't just want to handle the facts about you and the truth which comes from/in you but I desperately want to be handled by you:).  Lead me, shape me, enable me to bring you joy and glory in all circumstances and expressions which today will hold.  I welcome you and your will and I ask for (agree with) new wineskins, mulberry trees in the ocean and for that which is too wonderful for me.

In them,

Steve

Working in Clay

S - Isaiah 29:16; James 1:2-5 (NIV): "You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, "He did not make me"? Can the pot say of the potter, "He knows nothing"?  … Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him."

O - God's way to 'not lacking anything' is very different from ours.  God's view of trials is also very different from ours.  Isaiah helps us see that our view is the view of clay not of the potter.  Because we're made in God's image we share so many similarities; love, logic, relationship, emotions, joy, anger, etc.  The risk is for us to bring him down to our clay level which is always upside down to reality. He created us in his image not for us to bring him down to our clay but that he would lift us up into his reality shaping us into those who know him and his ways.  This unflinching dynamic means that we will often be without the needed wisdom.  His equally unflinching faithfulness guarantees that all who ask will receive. 

A - This is perpetually my problem … God considers things one way and I see them differently.  The world presents me with its "time tested" logic and Jesus presents me with eternally designed instructions for life on earth.  One says save yourself and the other give yourself away.  One defines God's love and wrath according to its own understanding and the other calls me to be lifted up by divine power to grasp his love which passes knowledge; and to understand that his wrath is not like mine at all.  I am clay.  I am not the Potter of anyone or anything.  I must choose to refuse/resist the very natural inclinations to try to pull him down to my upside down understanding.  I get to choose to turn in, come near, ask for wisdom and say lift me up Papa … I'm just frail as breath and dust; I am little and weak and can't see from down here.  Take me up, Lord, and shape me according to your awesome brilliance, limitless power and extreme goodness.  This is my assignment today and every day.

P - Lord who loves to work in clay,

How wonderful you are.  Thank you for wanting to work in us and work us into that which we would never be on our own.  Thank you for wanting us to work with you and for your unfailing promise to always be working everything for good.  Lord, I consider it pure joy and refuse my inclinations to pull you down to my upside down world.  Lord, keep revealing the Father so that the love he has for you will be in me and that you yourself will be in me (John 17:26).  I believe, help my unbelief.

In them,

Steve

The Truth about Sin

S - Jeremiah 3:3-5, 9-10, 21-22, 24-25 (NLT): "That is why even the spring rains have failed. For you are a prostitute and are completely unashamed.  Yet you say to me, `Father, you have been my guide since the days of my youth. Surely you won't be angry about such a little thing! Surely you can forget it!' So you talk, and keep right on doing all the evil you can." … Israel treated it all so lightly--she thought nothing of committing adultery by worshiping idols made of wood and stone. So now the land has been greatly defiled. But in spite of all this, her faithless sister Judah has never sincerely returned to me. She has only pretended to be sorry," says the LORD. … Voices are heard high on the windswept mountains, the weeping and pleading of Israel's people. For they have forgotten the LORD their God and wandered far from his ways. "My wayward children," says the LORD, "come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts." "Yes, we will come," the people reply, "for you are the LORD our God. … From childhood we have watched as everything our ancestors worked for--their flocks and herds, their sons and daughters--was squandered on a delusion. Let us now lie down in shame and dishonor, for we and our ancestors have always sinned against the LORD our God. We have never obeyed him.""

O - How do sinners (a status all of us share) deal with sin?  How do imperfect creatures address the dilemma of sin with the perfect One? When it comes to imperfection and sin the Lord has never made it about degrees, but culture/religion and deception do. The truth is all sin produces death and destruction.  The truth is the Lord wants to forgive and heal us, save and rescue us from our sin … not just the penalties and consequences of sin but from the sin itself.  This is a miracle and requires a miracle and the Lord's work in this miracle includes by his design a critical part for us as well.  The Lord calls us all to himself the same way … via the truth and our response to him, ourselves and our neighbors is to always be based on truth - no matter how bad it makes us look, feel or how impossible any way forward may appear.  The great trouble Jeremiah identifies is NOT that Israel sinned but her tragic response to her sin; a pretend sorrow and a compromise with it. Sinners are called to address sin as sin, to come to the truth where we always meet Jesus.  There, at the truth, he enables us to not only be forgiven but to engage the process of being healed.  Grace, mercy, forgiveness, love, hope, joy are all based on truth.  For us sinners on the front end, truth looks so very formidable.  Nevertheless, it is the place we always find Jesus and he is our healing, salvation, hope and forever life.  He always starts at love, leads with mercy and then addresses the facts. He has never insisted that we be faultless but blameless.  Faultless is all about never failing and blameless is all about never failing to turn into the truth.

A - Refuse or shy away from truth and we refuse or miss all the rest. Today, and every day while it is called today, I am to be one who turns to the truth and who encourages all others to do the same.  I am not to deceive myself with degrees but to come near and stay near unto forgiveness and the healing of my heart.  This is beautiful and another expression of the Lord's relentless love and tender brilliance.  He really is tender toward us and ruthless toward our enemies.

P - Sovereign, Perfect, Almighty and All Merciful,

You are awesome! Thank you for insisting that I/we come to truth so that we may experience you, the full release of forgiveness and the hope of a healing that fulfills your promise to us … the truth will set us free.  Lord, thank you for bearing my sins twice … once in the brutality of the cross - for all time and eternity; and over so many years and failures in time and in my life.  I always find you at truth and always beginning with me at love and leading me with mercy.  You really have, and do, make all condemnation irrelevant.  Thank you for the healing which is always in your intent through the relief of forgiveness. Jesus, I admit that forgiveness with you is always instantaneous but you most often engage a process (days, weeks, months and even years) for healing.  I am, we are, in need of both.  I also admit that I have often mistaken the relief of forgiveness for the joy (unutterable and exalted) of healing unto freedom.  Thank you for always calling us to you and to freedom, to more than a tenuous co-existence with our enemies.  I am so grateful to belong to you and to be living out loud the fierce personal loyalty you give to us and deserve from us.  Thank you for forgiving and for healing.  For wanting us at all times … especially at our worst.  You are holy … not like me, not like my world, not like this earth.  I worship you!

Steve

Are You Really Sure of the Answer?

S - Hebrews 6:17-20 (NIV): "Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek."

O - The Almighty and Invisible God has an unchanging purpose regarding the human race and he has expressed that purpose by confirming it with an oath.  The immutability of his purpose is not only confirmed by his unflinching character (it really is impossible for him to lie) but by the person of Jesus.  Jesus is the exact representation of his being and the visible demonstration and confirmation of this very purpose.  The purpose? To seriously and eternally bless us.  He really has set his affection upon us and refuses to change his mind.  How can we be sure that this is true and real?  The answer remains Jesus!

A - I grew up with the bumper sticker that over time became trite to my mind:  "Jesus is the answer".  It sounded too simplistic in our complicated world.  Yet, the more I live the more apparent this is to me.  In the big and sweeping events (wars and rumors of war), as well as the small and mundane (sparrows and hairs), the purpose and oath are not only in force but relentlessly working everything for good for those who will love God back and agree to be called to his purpose (unchanging and beautiful).  Today, my place of great privilege and confidence is to align myself with God's purposes and these are best understood and revealed in a person. He said "follow me and I will make you ...". Whatever is going on in and around me, the compass point, true north and true hope actually is a person which really does make him the answer to it all.

P - Lord who is love and the answer,

Thank you for this simple, profound, eternal and practical reality which is the fabric of life here and hereafter.  Today, crafted and shaped by your power and brilliance, comes to our planet as a gift and an opportunity to come near, to follow, to love.  It is my sincere desire to fulfill this primary component of your purpose … to love you back with all I am and to love my neighbor as myself.  Lord, my focus, emotions and thoughts can fade to fuzz but your vibrant life and spirit are changelessly working and moving across the whole earth.  Please cause your life and spirit to come into me and to come out of me (at least in some small way) which gives me the joy of working with you and others a refreshing from above.

I ask in Jesus' Name,

Steve