“As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He is mindful that we are dust.” Psalm 103:13-14
I LOVE my wife… therefore a disclaimer… this is NOT a vent in our house! Now that said, it doesn’t mean that every vent in our house is perfectly pure and clean. IN fact, I get flustered that they are not! I make sure to change out our AC air filter twice a year with a high HEPA rated air filter. Regardless, dust enters and leaves and lays it’s presence.
Working over at the church house, one of the things we had to do was pull all the vents, clean, and then spray paint them. Over time, dust had left it’s mark. To make the place appear new and clean, we did the work of masking the problem. They look great now. Anyone coming in would never notice that there is a recurring problem. But there is!
This last week was Holy Week. Easter is always my favorite Holiday because of this very principle. There is no mistaking the point. Looking into the suffering, torture and horrific death of my savior, I am FORCED to remember that His perfection was marred because of MY imperfection. Though I have received His forgiveness, sanctification is a process.
I am SOO thankful for the reminder that God is my FATHER! He knows all about me… including my weakness. Last night while dining with family, the antics and discussed missteps of my grandson reminded me of today’s verse. At NO time did we consider kicking him out of the family! That makes me thankful and blessed to be a believer. YOU?
Are you dusty and in need of a little cleaning? Jesus Works!
“He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” Mark 16:15
It’s an old saying I picked up years ago. When someone asks me, “How are you doing?” One of my replies is “like Campbell’s soup… Mm! Mm! Good!” Another is.. “Like the man with the cape… SUPER… man!” It usually gets a chuckle. Jesus used the work GOOD when considering things too. One was in referring to the News of His death and resurrection!
Today is Good Friday. At least that’s what it’s been called seemingly forever! It is the day celebrated as being the day Jesus Christ died on the cross. But as strange as we might call a death day good, there’s controversy there too! Evidence suggests it could have been on a Wednesday or even a Thursday. But calling a tough bad day for Jesus, ‘Good?’ HUH?
Though math has nothing to do with it, accounting MAY be able to help account for what actually happened. Man was created in God’s image and meant to glorify God. When Adam and Eve CHOSE to sin, the JUST penalty, or cost for that sin… was eternal death and separation from God. Nothing could change that. The debt HAD to be paid. Enter Jesus.
The fact that Perfect Jesus came to pay the Perfect Price for my imperfection is like a math problem. When I CHOOSE to make Jesus my savior and substitute, God credits my life’s account with being Tetelestai… PAID IN FULL! And to me… AND God… that is a GOOD WORD! AND Good News! SO Happy Good Friday to YOU. Are YOU His?
A few years ago, Lutheran pastor Christoph Römhild emailed Chris Harrison, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, for help on coming up with a visual representation of the over 63,000 cross-references in the Bible. They produced the multi-colored arc diagram in the header of this post. The image, a digital rendering of all the cross-references in the Bible, has a bar graph along the bottom representing books, chapters, and verses. The various colors represent the distance between the verses in a particular cross-reference.
Let me just say, I love this image (and, in true Bible nerd fashion, I am planning on displaying it soon on a wall in my home or office!)! The arc diagram is beautiful, symmetrical, powerful, and wonderfully descriptive. So what does it tell us about how we should think about and engage Bible?
1. First, Scripture is beautifully unified.
The cross-references tell us that the Bible is a beautifully rendered tapestry rather than a chaotic patchwork quilt. Consider the fact that the books of the Bible were written in 3 languages (Hebrew, Greek, and a bit of Aramaic), over a millennium and a half, in a variety of types of literature, by about 40 different people, who lived in sometimes radically different cultures and across a geographical chunk of the world that spans about 2,500 miles. In the face of such diversity, the unity and flow of the Bible’s meta-narrative is breathtaking. In the image above, notice not only the comprehensiveness of touch-points for the references (they fill the whole span), but also the clear symmetry and balance. As Christians we believe in God’s superintending of the process. If the Bible’s development had been completely random, chaotic, purposeless in terms of going somewhere, I don’t think we would have the image before us.
2. Second, Scripture is authoritative.
The authors of Scripture received what had gone before them as foundational and as carrying authority. For instance, there are approximately 350 quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament and at least 2300 allusions, not to mention many places where an Old Testament person, place, or institution is mentioned without a particular passage in mind. Yet, as the image above makes clear, we also have extensive cross-references between books of the Old Testament (e.g., the Psalms or Prophets refer back to the Pentateuch or the Historical Books), as well as between books of the New Testament (e.g., at times there is an interrelationship between the Gospels and Acts and the rest of the New Testament, such as when the letters or Hebrews or Revelation refer to the events of Jesus’s life, ministry, passion, resurrection, and exaltation). Scriptures or biblical events often are appealed to in order to reinforce what a particular writer is communicating. So authoritative texts are in the very DNA of Judaism and Early Christianity. To be “Christian” is to embrace the authority of Scripture as foundational for life and our common existence in the church.
3. Third, Scripture often points us to other places in Scripture.
At any point in Bible reading or study, we do well to pay attention to the echoes of what has gone before and the impact on what comes after. Our texts were not given by God in isolation but in particular contexts, including the context of the canon of Scripture. This means that as we read the Bible, we receive great help by paying attention to the cross-references in the margins, or the footnotes in our study Bible. As we study the Bible, we need to be sensitive not only to the immediate context of our passage of study, but also to the broader context in a passage to which our passage points us. For instance, when you read Jesus’s words about the temple in Luke 19:46, you can’t really understand them well without considering the context of his allusions to Isa. 56:7 and Jer. 7:11. Go look those passages up, thinking about the context (hint: both in part deal with corrupt leaders, among other important topics). We also get light on earlier passages as revelation unfolds. So, we see Jesus appealing to Ps. 110:1 as messianic (Mark 12:35-37), but we don’t get the full picture of that text’s implications until it is fulfilled in the exaltation of Jesus to the right hand of God (Acts 2:34-36; Ps. 110:1 is the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New). Considering the cross- references in Scripture gives us a much rich, deeper, and more accurate understanding of the Bible.
4. Finally, Scripture is Story.
Many students of literature speak of stories having a “narrative arc,” moving from the beginning (or exposition, or “inciting event”), to a crisis, a climax, and a resolution, and this certainly is the case with the Bible’s big picture. Thus, the cross-references we find in the biblical literature very often make reference to other places in the biblical storyline, whether the Psalms, or the Prophets, or Paul referring to Creation, or the Wilderness Wanderings, or the Christ event (notice that this can work in terms of anticipation as well as remembering). We get a sense of profound narrative movement as we work our way through the whole of the Bible. Thus, one of the most helpful things we can do to grow as readers of Scripture, is to read Scripture chronologically, putting the pieces of that grand story together.
In short, let’s be thankful for Bible publishers and their various tools that alert us to cross-references—and let’s use those tools as we learn to read the Bible better.
George H Guthrie – Helping You Read the Bible Better
“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Philippians 2:4 ESV
Approaching the Aldi grocery store near me, quarter in hand, the lady coming out of the store pushed a cart in my direction and said, “Here you go!” When I went to hand her my quarter, she said… “that’s ok… pass it on!” I smiled because she sounded just like Jesus! I understood because I recognized the ministry value in doing the same thing!
Aldi grocery stores have a unique method of managing their shopping carts. One must pay a quarter to get one unlocked from the rest. The idea is to get people to return their carts back to the store without having to pay employees to go out to collect them. Gaining their invested quarter back, as simple as it sounds, provides interest enough to actually work.
In light of Holy Week, I was blessed by the thought of someone taking an interest enough to offer ME a free quarter! “Not much,” you say? Ahhh, but it worked! When I left, the Jesus model stuck with me and I absolutely ‘passed it on’ to the next person. Only this time I added, “Jesus wants you to have this! Happy Easter!” Their smile was the reward!
The last week of Jesus’ life, before the Savior of the universe was brutally killed for my sin, found Jesus… washing feet! He continually urged His disciples to do good to others and to look out for others best interest. Nothing is better than sharing the good Word of salvation with others. Nothing makes it more acceptable than to say it with an act of kindness!
Will YOU look out and pray for a divine appointment today to do something good for someone else’s interest… AND your own? Will you look out for Jesus’ interests today?
“Everyone will hate you because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” Mark 13:13
I had just been insulted! Kinda! The woman I was talking to was a nurse doing diagnostics on me. I don’t know quite how it happened, but somehow the subject became her anger at society that didn’t believe in God! My kinda girl… or so I thought! Telling her I was a Jesus guy didn’t help. Her response was, “I believe that all ‘God’s’ are the same! HUH???
My reaction of shock was brief, but wanting to get more information, I asked her about sin. “What do imperfect people have to do to stand before a perfect God?” I asked. She didn’t have a good answer. She was just upset that people were selfish and didn’t see the big picture that there are ways to treat each other that come from some deity somewhere!
The lady’s disgust was written all over her face. She hated people who hated! When I pressed her about Jesus’ claim that HE was the only God, she looked at me with those same kind of eyes! Hmmmm! I used this popular bumper sticker as a prop today to show that just because some folks believe something is possible… doesn’t make it so! Read the verse again!
I’ve often wanted to talk to the owner of one of those stickers to find out what they mean by it. All the founders of every religion, except Jesus, are dead and buried! Only Jesus was raised from the dead (historic FACT) and offers me a way to beat the grave myself. But many folks just like the idea of one big happy family under all gods. But even Jesus didn’t offer that!
So what do YOU believe about Jesus? Who hates YOU because you love Him?
“To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.” Deuteronomy 10:14
“Go get it!” The voice was distinctive and inaudible, but I heard it nonetheless. It was the voice of my Savior and LORD. And it was 10:10pm. I had been conjuring up excuses to NOT drive to the church to get something at that late hour, but His unction sealed the decision. All I could do was smile as I got my keys and got into the car.
The incident started earlier that morning when, realizing both the church, and we, were low on Half-n-Half. I promised myself to remember to stop later to pick some up for Katie. The stores weren’t open at that hour so I figured on taking what we had to the Church with me. Now, at 10:10pm, I realized I’d forgotten. That meant, “go to the church and get it!”
We like Half-n-Half in our coffee. When I’d mentioned to Katie that I’d forgotten to buy some, she said that the dry creamer was good enough. A sweet thing to say, but at that point Jesus was not considering her to be part of the equation. He was talking to ME! And He was telling me ‘I’ needed to go to the church to get the Half-n-Half.
This is NOT a lesson to show how much I love and care about my wife. It’s about obedience to the Lord. It is not about how nice of a guy I am either. Because I honestly didn’t want to go! But I had heard His still small voice, and the strangeness of the command was proof that it was indeed Jesus who was making a point. So the point was both corrective AND a test!
The lesson of what is mine and what is not seems to have been pushed on me lately. Being kind of slow, I’m sure it isn’t over. Truth is, I don’t own anything. It all belongs to Jesus. If He wants something done, He has every right to ask me to do it. Tests are to be expected. This Holy Week before Easter, I expect to get several. What about YOU?
“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” Romans 8:5
We have 2 areas where Katie has planted various plants over the years. Over those years, weeds have found those areas more appealing than the original plants… though I don’t understand why it’s harder to grow a tomato than a weed! Katie had mentioned she would like to replant the area with flowers. So I set my mind to uproot everything in those areas.
In order to uproot the weeds down to just dirt, I needed to employ a shovel, a rake, and some significant elbow grease. Getting started took gumption, but soon I was pulling weeds out by the roots. That is until the roots got really deep and hard to get out. Sweating profusely, I took a break. From my comfortable chair I saw reasons for changing my mind!
With muscles cramping, and legs and back in some agony, the thought came to mind that I could put off doing the rest of the work for another time. But I know me. Doing that would simply kick the job down the road and give me more reason not to get around to it at all. So I Thanked God for my wife, the land, and the ability to dig… and set my mind into action.
Today’s Bible verse is fact. It’s not opinion or dogma. It is fact. When I set my mind on making life easier, I can invent ways of getting around chores and responsibilities. Doing that often enough, I will develop a lifestyle of setting my mind on my own pleasures and NOT on pleasing God. The difference is in what I think about the most! What is YOUR mind set on?
Putting Jesus first in my thoughts ultimately makes my first thoughts on Jesus… FIRST!
“Therefore encourage and build one another up, just as you are already doing.” 1 Thess. 5:11
As I took hold of my phone this morning, it wasn’t warm and bright as it usually is after a night of charging. It was cold and dark. That could mean only 1 thing. While the charging cord was connected to the phone, the other end was NOT connected to any power! The indicator that SHOULD have been at 100% revealed it was only at 3%! And useless.
It wasn’t hard to get the problem fixed. I simply plugged the other end into the adapter and heard the distinctive ‘bo=boop’ sound, indicating the proper connection was made. Now, it became a simple matter of time before it would be back up to 100% again. As I pondered on the predicament, it reminded me of my own lack of power, just yesterday, before FLAP.
While I’ve had periods of low power and brain function before, each time it seems to be new all over again. When asked how I was doing, I was honest and said, “not real perky!” Their response was, “getting old is no fun is it?” They had found my ‘weak’ disconnection. Continuing on with Bible Study, the room actually filled full with fellow saints. I was blessed.
The Bible refers to the body of Believers as family, children, fellow citizens, a household, a body and even a building. There are over 100 Biblical references of connection to one another in Christ, it shouldn’t be hard to remember that staying powered up can be as simple as plugging in and staying connected. After last night, I was powered again.
What is YOUR source of strength and power? Are YOU connected and being used?
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23
“OH NO!!!” I said as I looked out at this site in the backyard. Katie had planted some sunflowers from seed, and had just transferred them. This one plant was doing very well. She even carefully thought to protect the small plant from our prolific rabbit population. I had cut some wire mesh and set it, with the sharp points up, to keep the rabbits out.
Let this picture be like a tombstone of defeat. It was taken 1 day before I saw a rabbit chomping it to death! Crying out “OH NO!!!” stopped everything. With several other plants out there, and just as vulnerable, something had to be done INSTANTLY! With plants all around, I couldn’t understand how a rabbit would climb jaggy wire to eat what isn’t usual!
In a way it proves God. There hasn’t been a sunflower out there for a rabbit to eat in its lifetime. Yet it somehow knew that, what was behind wire cage #2, was good eatin’! While it doesn’t matter what I didn’t know… the sunflower is now a gonner. Death by vegetarian! Who’d a thunk? But at the expense of 1 flower, I have learned something about guarding.
Yesterday at JYC we spoke with middle school kids who are just like that sunflower. Sweet and mostly innocent, some were moving on to High School next year. Having been a kid myself, and teaching them for years, I have learned that once an innocent heart breaks or gets broken, it is very difficult to mend. That is why God gave us this verse to live by.Are YOU living and learning what dangers to look out for when it comes to your own heart? Do you take steps to protect yourself from what you know, and may NOT know, about unseen enemies? For the enemy of your soul doesn’t care about you. And YOU are his dinner plan. Please be careful out there and ‘Guard your Heart’ by doing God’s Word.
