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You did not choose me. I chose you and sent you out to produce fruit, the kind of fruit that will last. Then my Father will give you whatever you ask for in my name. John 15:16 (CEV)
The man led us down to the shed where we could hear the excited barking of puppies. I could see the look of anticipation and excitement in my son’s eyes. We’d been looking for a Cocker Spaniel for months and the price on this one seemed right.
As we entered the shed the pups called home, we were met by five excited, jumping little puppies. “Price on all of them is the same,” the kindly old gentleman said.
While I was looking at the five that met us, my son’s attention was drawn to a smaller, quiet puppy in the corner.
“What’s up with the little one in the corner?” My son asked. I could see by the look in his eyes that his heart had made its decision. My son had always had a soft spot in his heart for the down-and-outers of the world.
“Oh him? He’s the runt. Lucky to be alive actually. Came down here one morning and he had managed to climb the fence and fall in the stock tank on the other side. I figured he was a goner, but he seems fine now.”
While I would have chosen any of the other five, you have probably already guessed which one we went home with that day. The pup became my son’s closest friend until it died a few years later of cancer.
There are times in each of our lives when we may feel like the ‘runt’ in our circles. It seems like everyone else we know seems to get the whole Christian life, get the jobs they want, have the families we long for, and the list goes on.
The heart is a cruel liar. It constantly reminds us of our weaknesses. It continually points out the successes of others and compares them to our failures. It reminds us of our faults on a daily basis.
When your heart rears up and points at all the ‘uglies’ of your life, remember this: You were Chosen by the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Creator of the universe. Not only did he choose you as a friend, he made you His Child!
And if that isn’t enough, he did all this knowing you would fail, rebel, stray, stumble and fall. That’s because he didn’t choose you on the basis of anything you could offer. He chose you simply because he loves you.
Just as my son chose that puppy based on compassion, he chose you. Rejoice!
PRAYER: Father God…Daddy. Thank you for choosing me even though I have nothing of real significance to offer you. Help to live as a son of the Most High God. Amen.
When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. Genesis 15:17
All of us, at one time or another have suffered from broken promises. It started when we were young with the promises of parents and other ‘trusted adults’ who promised to play with us, take us to the zoo, or go on that fishing trip.
As we grew older the promises became more complex, but no more secure.
“I’ll be your best friend forever.”
“I promise I won’t tell anyone your secret. You can trust me.”
“I promise I will never leave you. I will always be here for you.”
Broken promises break our hearts, wound our souls and cause us to doubt others as well as ourselves.
The problem with promises is that they are only as strong as the person making them. A common misconception we have is that some promises are conditional.
“I promise I’ll go to the dance with you if…”
“We’ll watch the ball game together if you promise you’ll clean your room.”
But promises are unconditional. Once you add a condition to a promise the promise and it’s accompanying obedience becomes a rule/wage situation. None of this is more true than with the story of Abram and Jehovah God.
Abram bursts onto the Old Testament scene rather abruptly and from out of nowhere. For no apparent reason, God promises him tremendous blessing both in wealth in this life and in a legacy that will last throughout history.
In Abram’s day, promises were covenants that were sealed with sacrifice. The ceremony involved cutting animals in half and laying them end to end. The participants in the sacrifice would walk together through the carcasses as a sign of their allegiance to the sacrifice. In a sense it would be like saying, ‘may I be like one of these animals if I break this promise.’
The interesting thing is, Abram didn’t walk down the path, only God did. The meaning is amazing. The promise of God’s love and blessing is entirely dependent on him alone, not Abram. The blazing torch symbolizes the Shekinah Glory, God himself in all his power and majesty. The smoking fire pot may symbolize despair and pain. To me, it symbolizes the pain Jesus bore on the cross for me.
God’s promise is not dependent on us in the least. There is nothing we can do to tear us away from his love and power and forgiveness. Without God’s love, our lives are full of pain and broken promises. With him we shine as lights in the darkness.
PRAYER: Father God, thank you for your promise of salvation. Thank you that there is nothing I can do to invalidate the covenant because it all rides on you. And thank you for the forgiveness that only comes through Jesus. Amen.
The Lord said: Forget what happened long ago! Don’t think about the past. Isaiah 43:18 (CEV)
I have a friend who was in a snowmobile accident that nearly took his life. His injuries were so severe that both of his legs had to be amputated. As he lay in a coma for six weeks, our community gathered around him and his family in prayer for physical healing as well as spiritual healing.
His wife tells me that the day they were planning on bringing him out of his medically induced coma was a day of apprehension. My friend was known for a foul mouth and extreme anger. Everyone prepared for the worst when he would wake up and find he had no legs.
The other day, I sat with this friend in a men’s Bible Study. You wouldn’t have known this new person beside me. Miraculously, he woke up from his sleep and entirely new man. There was no anger, no rage and no profanity. In its place were words of comfort, of love, of grace and forgiveness.
My friend owns a hardware store in the tiny community where I live. He sells all sorts of goods a hardware store would sell, but there’s one other commodity you can count on when you enter the doors of his store. You’ll find Jesus.
At the earlier mentioned Bible study our group as discussing the personal meaning of 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
Listening to him talk about the newness of life he received gave me a whole new meaning to that verse. Here he was, a man that had to learn to walk again. A man who, in many ways, had to learn an entirely new lifestyle. Ask anyone in town. They’ll tell you Bill isn’t the same as he used to be. He isn’t. He’s new. His life has been touched by the Savior.
It wasn’t easy. He stumbles on those new legs occasionally. The pressures of being a business man sometimes cause the ‘old man’ to start to surface. But he’s still not ‘the same old Bill.’
God’s word reminds us in Isaiah 43:18 that our past is just that. Past. Regardless of what happened back there. Regardless of whose fault it was. Regardless of who did what, or said what or did what to you, it’s past.
Jesus offers the only real solution to starting over and he does it with a whole new life.
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, there are times when I stumble. There are times when the pain in my heart, from the mistakes of my past, haunts me. During those times let me rest on the promise of your grace. Help me to set my past behind me and look forward to a new tomorrow. Amen.
So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”Romans 8:15
Psychology Today says of guilt, “Guilt and its handmaiden, shame, can paralyze––or catalyze one into action. Appropriate guilt can function as social glue, spurring one to make reparations for wrongs. Excessive rumination about one’s failures, however, is a surefire recipe for resentment and depression.”
Guilt almost always focuses on the negative, even though it can have positive outcomes. We’ve all been there. Dealing with feelings of regret, failure and fear over decisions we’ve made and choices from our past that haunt us daily. Those times when we’ve been awakened in the night by worry or come to a point during the day when we look around ourselves and ask the questions. How did I get here? How will I get out?
Guilt has been used for centuries to control behavior and to protect the status quo. “Wait until your father gets home!” too many of us remember hearing.
“If you don’t behave the police will come and take you away!” (I actually heard a young, frustrated mom say to her very two-year-old acting two-year-old. I shudder to think how that child grew up looking at law-enforcement.)
“If you don’t go to church and read your Bible you will go straight to hell!” (Okay, maybe it was never verbalized like that, but the message was clear.)
God hates divorced people and gay people and anyone that does wrong things. (One of my personal ‘UN’-favorites.)
The most unfortunate thing about guilt is that it has been used for centuries as a motivator by organized religion. I use the term ‘organized religion’ to clearly differentiate those systems from what we commonly refer to Christianity. Christianity can be a religion; in fact most people refer to it as a religion. In reality however, True Christianity is more about relationship than it is about rules and religion and…guilt. Every religion known to man speaks of personal responsibility and punishment. Only Christianity speaks of unmerited love and forgiveness.
The Apostle Paul, the Apostle of grace, writes in his letter to the believers in Rome, ‘We have not received a spirit of fear!’ (My paraphrase) That means fear motivated by guilt and remorse has no place in the heart of a repentant believer in Jesus Christ. The church may wield the sword of guilt to chastise us and keep us in line, but grace trumps that sword.
What a blessed truth. Guilt has no more hold on me, just as a child enjoys all the rights of being an heir. We no longer need to live under the oppressive hold of guilt in our lives. We are free. We are children of God and as such can address the creator of the universe as Daddy. What a blessed promise!
PRAYER: Father God, Daddy. I claim the forgiveness you have given me through your son, Jesus Christ. I will no longer allow guilt or shame to have control over me. I’m your child and eternally thankful for that. Amen.
So then, everything depends, not on what we humans want or do, but only on God’s mercy. Romans 9:16 (GNT)
This time there was no avoiding it. I was cornered with no way out. He’d been my friend since, well, since I can remember. We grew up together, fished together, played ball together and occasionally, got into childhood fights together.
During a particularly tough time in my life I was in dire need of financial help. Jim was the guy who’d come to my rescue. It was a significantly large amount of money, a loan with no interest and no payback date. At the time I saw no other options. I accepted the offer and eventually dug myself out of a hole I’d prepared for myself.
Lately, I’d been avoiding Jim. I didn’t even realize it until later, but every time our paths crossed I felt a twinge of guilt and apprehension. I’d fallen behind on some of the payments and felt guilty for it. He’d trusted me. He’d known my situation and was willing to take a chance on me. Now, I’d failed him and I wasn’t sure how to dig myself out of this new hole. That’s why his words dug so deeply and so quickly.
“Is there something wrong between us man? You seem distant.”
I had to come clean. “I’ve fallen behind on my payments and I feel terrible. I feel like I’ve really let you down, like I’ve failed you, like…”
That’s when he stepped back and looked at me with a look of confusion and shock.
“Is this all about that stupid money? Good grief man! Don’t worry about it. Debt forgiven.”
I was taken back, moved to the point of tears. I didn’t know what to say. Then I mumbled something like, “That’s very gracious of you. Thank you. I’ll try to pay it back somehow.”
I wish I could have grabbed that word bubble back. As soon as I said it I realized how stupid it sounded.
Jim smiled, “No Pastor, you don’t understand. I forgave you. There’s nothing you did to earn it. There’s nothing you can do to repay it. It’s forgiven.”
As we parted, closer than ever, I realized what had just happened. I’d been reminded of two things. One is that God’s grace and forgiveness is nothing we can earn. The second thing I learned is how silly we humans sound when we try to repay a debt we can never repay.
Jim taught me what grace really means that day, and I realized how often to make promises to a God that he knows I can’t fulfill, but he loves me anyway. Why do we try to repay him when the debt has already been paid?
PRAYER: Lord Jesus. There are some any times I fail you. So many times I make silly promises I know I can never fulfill. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your grace. I receive it willingly. Amen.
Mike Fisk & Built with Grace 