Joy for my sadness

 Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon. Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Philippians 4:4-6

These times can truly be so sad. Every day it seems that all we are confronted with are sad stories that dominate the news. Whether it is another group of children taken hostage by terrorists, the shooting in Colorado, the spring break incidents in Miami, the violence we see and hear in our own communities, the more still being infected and dying from COVID, political upheaval here and around the world. Or, the friends I know who seem to be stuck in sorrow. My heart like yours I would guess is heavy hurting for those who hurt and for my own ongoing challenges of living in this present season of life. One thing that has been my continual help is steadily leaning into the Lord’s love that lifts us up through joyful trust. Christ’s love and comfort moves us from sadness to gladness when we lean into Him.

The apostle Paul knew sad circumstances first hand: chronic physical limitations (his thorn in the flesh), rejection from political and religious authorities, and time in prison. Yet, drawing on his own experiences, he reminds other followers of Jesus who are sad in spirit: focus your hope in the Lord, He is coming soon. Paul continues, release your worries, and instead pray about everything. How? Tell God what you need and thank Him for what He has done. The Lord God has a track record of faithfulness that is 100% trustworthy. His love converts sadness to gladness.

When we humble ourselves and confess our desperate need for Christ’s love and the love of His followers we move from staying sad, stewing in our self-pity to a revival of joy in our Lord Jesus. He saved us and gave us His abundant life full of hope and joy overflowing. A humble heart accesses heaven’s resources. In his book, "The Problem of Pain," C.S. Lewis clarifies the relationship of humility to being cheerful: "Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue: it is the high-minded unbeliever desperately trying in the teeth of repeated disillusions to retain his “faith in human nature” who is really sad. Sadness loses its grip when we go to God in humble dependence. His love gladdens our heart!"

How do you move from staying sad to being glad? Recognize the reality of grief. God made you to grieve. Without a healthy process of mourning loss, we will miss the comfort of Christ and His followers, sadly, ever stuck in a cycle of pain, anger and discomfort. Humble yourself before the Lord and use words to describe your broken heart: Lord I am mad, I miss her/him, I am ashamed, I hurt, I feel alone, help me to have hope in You. Restore the joy of my salvation. And, once you have been generously loved by the Lord's perfect love, make sure to be empathetic toward those struggling to smile. Love them as God loves you. Mourn together, so you can rejoice together.

“Even though the fig trees have no blossoms, and there are no grapes on the vines; even though the olive crop fails, and the fields lie empty and barren; even though the flocks die in the fields, and the cattle barns are empty, yet I will rejoice in the Lord! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation! The Sovereign Lord is my strength! He makes me as surefooted as a deer, able to tread upon the heights” (Habakkuk 3:17-19, 

Moral failure

 Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Galatians 6:1

 

With the recent events with Kirk Franklin, I got to thinking on the following: What happens when someone we really respect fails morally in our eyes? They fall hard because they were perceived as super spiritual, having walked with the Lord for a long time. We may feel betrayed, angry, saddened and surely we grieve. Private sins exposed by the confession of a public figure jolts our faith. However, it's the Lord’s reminder that we look to Him, not man, as our standard of behavior. 

By God’s grace we pray healing and restoration for our fallen brother or sister in the faith. We who are spiritual are to repent of any latent sin, lest it bring us down in public shame. We pick them up, hold them up, and build them up. Restoration is a long process that requires patience, forgiveness and accountability. Yes, the friend who has failed morally must want help for healing to happen. A humble and contrite heart is what the Holy Spirit uses to bring about spiritual and emotional wholeness. Like the place of protection provided by the city of refuge in the Old Testament (Numbers 35:25), those in moral recovery need a safe environment. Bad habits created over the years by secret sins take time to change. Let the Spirit rebuild their soul.

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).

What if we are the one who has been caught in a sin or sins? Our texts, posts on social media, or being caught on camera are found out to be inappropriate. Our moral and financial compromises are discovered after months or years of business travel. The attention of our girlfriend or boyfriend gets the attention of our spouse. We are ensnared by the trap and illusion of pornography and our prayers don’t seem to help. No one is beyond the restoring grace of God. But, the Lord’s discipline may very well precede working through the pain, guilt and shame. Since He loves us so much, He keeps us honest and accountable.

If the Lord can restore and use the imperfect lives of Abraham, David,  Mary Magdalene, and the rest of imperfect people in the Bible for His glory, He can do the same work of grace in us. We are all a work in process and we will stumble, fall, make mistakes, and even fail along the way of life. It's the righteous response to failure that leads us to success. We learn to say I was wrong, I was foolish and I need loving accountability in my life. Humiliation that leads to healing is a trophy of God’s grace. Lift up the fallen, hold up the hurting, build up the broken.

“For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes” (Proverbs 24:16).

Make today a day of influence for the Kingdom

Self Love

 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:28-31

We are reminded in the church regularly to Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. With these two commands, Jesus offers a complete vision for the life of the believer. The whole of life oriented towards God in worship and praise, and sleeves that are daily rolled up and ready to serve a world in need. Daily as we breathe in the life of God, we then exhale His love towards others.

We have likely heard these words many times over the years, yet as I reflect upon them today, I’m struck by the small but significant qualifier Jesus gives when telling us to love our neighbor. How are we meant to love them? As we love ourselves.

What does it mean to love yourself? Increasingly, we live in a society that is drunk on celebration of self and on self-love. Virtually every decision we make, or are encouraged to make, is in some way directed towards the betterment of our own lives, whether that is our personal health, social standing, or financial position. We don’t have to be convinced of the merit of this way of life. No one has to sit you down and tell you self-love and self-preservation is worthy of your time or passion. No, it’s hardwired into your nature.  Simply we do it instinctively. Yet what if we took every ounce of that desire for affluence, adoration, comfort, and pleasure, and turned it outward in love for someone other than our self? I believe that would be nothing short of an act of God.

Jesus loves to make the impossible possible in our life, and I believe this begins with the ability to truly love your neighbor as yourself. Notice He does not simply say serve your neighbor, or volunteer an hour of your time and then go back to a self-consumed life. No, here’s the real kicker: Jesus expects us to be just as concerned with our neighbor’s well-being as our own. If our life were in disarray and falling apart, we would spend every waking moment trying to steady the ship and secure a future for our self. Yet how easily we dismiss a neighbor in this situation, offering a passing thought of sympathy while quickly moving on with our own concerns?

To love your neighbor is to be entangled in the messiness of their lives. It will cost us time, convenience, money, and emotional capacity. It is not easy, but it is essential to our obedience to Christ, and is the only path to freedom and true healing.

Fruitful

 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. John 15:4 

When Jesus speaks of abiding, He means dwelling with Him but also dwelling in the company of those you love. This is very much in line with this extended entry Webster’s dictionary once offered for the word abide: abide by signifies to adhere to, maintain, defend, or stand to, as to abide by a promise, or by a friend; or to suffer the consequences, as to abide by the event, that is, to be fixed or permanent in a particular condition. How well those definitions capture the many meanings of abiding. It means to stay close, to stay loyal, and to stay true.

In his book Abiding in Christ, Andrew Murray reminds his readers that the work of God’s grace places believers in a position of abiding in Christ and remaining in Christ. He writes:

“Oh, that you would come and begin simply to listen to His Word and to ask the one question: Does He really mean that I should abide in Him? The answer His Word gives is so simple and so sure: By His almighty grace you now are in Him; that same almighty grace will indeed enable you to abide in Him. By faith you became partakers of the initial grace; by that same faith you can enjoy the continuous grace of abiding in Him. To have a flourishing spiritual life is not to merely ascribe to a set of doctrines and beliefs but to experience the indwelling power of abiding in Christ. Just as fruit won’t grow if removed from the tree that gives it life, so we gain strength by remaining attached to Christ.”

In John 15:4, Jesus told His disciples, “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”

What does it mean to “remain” in Jesus? For starters, it means you should keep pace with Him, not run ahead of Him or lag behind. Unbridled zeal can send us sideways with what the Spirit wants to accomplish in our life. On the other hand, an unwillingness to make our relationship with Him a priority will cause us to be out of step with His plans for us. We need to abide with Him and remain in Him. God’s presence is pregnant with possibilities for the focused and unhurried heart.

To abide is to be present in His presence, or as the great spiritual writer Brother Lawrence spoke of, to “practice the presence of God.” Learning to practice the presence of God will make all the difference in our spiritual lives, giving us a source of strength, power, and wisdom for our spiritual journeys. In humility, we stand in awe of the One who gave us His all. When we remain at the feet of Jesus, we position ourselves to listen and learn from Him. And through abiding, through practicing His presence, we are changed. We become more like the One we’re inviting to be present in every moment of our lives. Abide in God and He will abide in you.

As 1 John 2:24 instructs us, “See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father.”

Renewed thinking

He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:29

The Lord wants to strengthen our thinking. In the book of Isaiah, we find these beautiful and poetic lines that are known and loved by every generation. Yet rarely, if ever, do we think of them as applying to the life of our minds. We know our bodies need strength, and even understand the necessity of overcoming difficulty in life, however we all too easily miss the ways in which our minds must be fortified and strengthened by the life of the Spirit of God.

The renewal of our thinking is not the absence of thought, as is commonly believed by some, when we speak of meditation or similar disciplines. No, mindfulness needs a direction. We must have clarity on where we are headed, and then take on practices that bring our minds and thoughts into greater alignment with that goal. Joshua 1:8 says, “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night.”

The commands, laws, and instructions of God are and should be the object of our meditation. We turn our hearts and minds towards the Lord so we can learn to think His thoughts as our own. As we do, we are confronted with the inescapable reality that God wants to renew within us our love for Him, and our love for our neighbor (Greatest commandment). the Apostle Paul emphatically drives this home, saying, “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal 5:14).

If our mindfulness and meditation, even meditation on the Word of God, does not result in a greater love for our neighbor, we have failed to hear the Lord’s word spoken to us.

We may have heard a part or portion of His truth, but if we hear His love and mercy and grace simply in reference to ourselves and personal peace and fulfillment, instead of setting our minds on the Lord and His kingdom, we in a sense are asking the Lord to set His thoughts on the kingdoms of self that we are building.

Isaiah promises that those who wait on the Lord, those who pay attention to His ways and set their thoughts on His kingdom, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. This strength that He gives is not for ourselves, but is given so we can be His hands and feet in love to our neighbor. We run in self-giving love and service, and we do not grow weary in doing good. We walk with those who need us to slow down and come alongside them, and we will not faint, for the Lord gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

Simple life

 Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. 1 Corinthians 8:6

Gift is the word spoken over creation by the very breath of God. Life is given and sustained as a precious gift given by the Father, from whom and for whom all things exist. We are invited to receive this gift from God, and then through our words and deeds offer it back to God in heartfelt devotion, praise, worship, service and righteous living (doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord).

Every breath that we take is an invitation to live our lives in full alignment with the rhythms, steps, and path of the life of God. We have a daily choice to live on accord with the Lord and respect and cherish this gift, or to exploit it and distort its intended use. This my beloved friends is the reality of freedom. We are free to receive this gift and speak the same words of hope and peace into the world, or we can reject the gift and speak our own words into being as life and death is in the power of our tongue and choices.

The Lord speaks life, yet we often speak death. He speaks freedom, and we instead choose bondage. He speaks simplicity, and we live lives of excess. He calls us to generosity, and we instead speak scarcity or greed.

Today, we are invited to look at the small and often unnoticed parts of our life and reflect on the ways they honor the gift of life, or the ways they reject it through distorted habits of living, buying, consuming, and relating to others.

One of the most helpful ways to cultivate a lifestyle of gift-receiving and gift-giving is to intentionally choose a life of simplicity. We spend far too much time consumed by our consumption. The way we spend our time, money, and resources can either set us free or deepen our bondage. One simply cannot be overrun by our own passions and pursuits and retain the margin to care for those we love and are meant to serve. Let's simplify our relationship to our stuff, not as an end in and of itself, but so we can be free to love our neighbor and share the gift of life that we have been given by the Lord to enjoy and live to the full.

Isolation pain

 A man with leprosy came to Jesus, imploring Him and kneeling down, and saying to Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean. Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out with His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed. Mark 1:40-41

Jesus encounters the sad site of a precious man, inflicted with incurable leprosy, and quarantined for a lifetime of isolation. Saddled with the shameful task of daily declaring himself unclean to anyone and everyone who might venture too close, can you imagine the pain of not just his body, but his spirit? as if seeing his wretched condition was not warning enough. But his desperate situation caused his tortured soul to seek out the only One who could free his mind and body from this isolation prison of pain. A life of solitary confinement as a result of disease, not a crime against society. Hopeful, he implored his the Creator of heaven and earth to make right this wrong, and He did. Jesus, as He does so often, was moved with compassion to touch the untouchable, the vaccine of compassion cleansed Him. The inoculation to isolation’s pain is to first totally trust the loving touch of Jesus.

“Why are you in despair, my soul? And why are you restless within me? Wait for God, for I will again praise Him For the help of His presence, my God” (Psalm 42:5, NASB).

Are you weary? Exhausted from the emotional fatigue of hearing of another one whose life is being quietly swept away? Anonymous to most, isolated, maybe with loved ones around, grateful for the courageous medical staff to ease the pain during their last days. It seems like the Lord is absent, if not, why doesn’t He do something to make things better? When our global community writhes in pain, matters seem worse, more pronounced, no doubt a pandemic compounds the pain. This overwhelming plague shouts out for relief, a touch from the Divine’s healing love.

I have to remind myself daily of my need for a touch from Christ’s compassion to heal my heart and soul. Otherwise, I can read the negative newsfeeds and all they do is reinforce and create fear. Maybe, instead of venting my frustrations over social media, like tossing hot grease on a scolded dog, I’m better off to bear my soul with my Savior. Have a little talk with Jesus, and invite His love and mercy to mend my grieving heart. When I isolate my pain, I feed my judgmental self to incite angry reactions. But when I verbalize hurt, Lord I feel alone, insignificant and unsure. It’s here in my vulnerable confession of uncleanliness, that Jesus’ generous compassion cleanses me.

“Be gracious to me, God, according to Your faithfulness; According to the greatness of Your compassion, wipe out my wrongdoings. Wash me thoroughly from my guilt and cleanse me from my sin” (Psalm 51:1-2)