The Old Man in the Back of the Sanctuary

One book of the Bible that I have had trouble reading is Ecclesiastes. It is so depressing. Solomon, with all of his God-given wisdom, is searching for the meaning of life down one path after another and finding the same literal dead end – death.  I want to throw up my hands in despair and say with him, “All is vanity!”  However, when I finally made it to the end his final conclusion gives me hope. “That’s the whole story. Here now is my final conclusion. Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty. God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

Solomon’s gift was wisdom, not prophesy, so he couldn’t know that God’s mercy and grace would one day provide a way through that dead end into eternal life. Today, it is still our fear of God’s judgement, our need for His mercy and grace, and our desire to follow His teachings through His word and the promptings of the Holy Spirit within us that provide us with the true meaning of life. Solomon was right when he concluded the meaning of life is only found when we turn to the Creator of life and follow Him.

When we buy a new car or a new appliance if we are wise we read the owner’s manual from the manufacturer to learn all of the features and their uses. God, the Creator of all life, has provided us with a written manual for our human life – the Holy Bible. We would be foolish to put that manual in a drawer somewhere and try to learn the meaning of life through trial and error as we live it. His manual not only gives us instructions to get the very best out of our life; it gives us a history of human life that includes the mistakes others have made so we can avoid them. It even shows us that the wisest of men couldn’t find meaning in life without God.   

As a Christian, I have found true meaning in my life in my personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. That meaning comes as a result of God’s love. It is God’s unfailing love for me and my love for Him. It is through sharing God’s love with those around me and serving their needs that I have found meaning and purpose in my life. The Holy Spirit within us and our prayers to our heavenly Father through His Son provide us with a direct line to our Creator, but don’t be surprised when you are referred to His “manufacturer’s guide” for your answers. It is all there for us to read, understand and follow.   

Have you ever known a perfectionist? They spend so much time concentrating on every little detail they miss out on the joys of life. Perfection is a lofty goal that will never be achieved in this life. There has only been one human who is perfect. His Father is God. He gave His life as a perfect sacrifice for our sins, and then He was raised from the dead and leads His followers into eternal life.  As Christians, we strive to be like Him. When you and I are completely honest with ourselves, we know how far we are from perfection. Am I closer to Christ-like perfection now than I was sixty years ago? Absolutely! Do I still have a way to go? Absolutely! The key is to draw a little closer to God through His Holy Spirit and His word each and every day.

What confuses us is Satan’s favorite con game called comparison. We see someone else whose Christian life seems perfect. That is because we only see what they want us to see. If the grass is greener on their side of the fence, it is probably Astroturf. Or, as Irma Bombeck once wrote, “The grass is always greener over the septic tank.” I have mentioned before that our Christian life is not a competition with other believers. We are to help each other be the best we can be so that we all cross the finish line together and then celebrate our victory together.

Perfection won’t be found in relationships or groups of imperfect people. My definition of a perfect marriage is two imperfect people who love and support each other in spite of imperfections, while worshipping and following a perfect God together. My pastor once said that if you ever find a perfect church, don’t join it, because it won’t be perfect anymore. Being part of a group of imperfect people doesn’t hide our imperfections; it seems to magnify them instead.

Now, for the good news; the imperfections and sins of Christians are forgiven and covered by the blood of Jesus. When our heavenly Father looks at us He sees His Holy Spirit within us and the perfect blood of His Son covering us. When we finally enter His Kingdom, our transformation will be complete; no more physical imperfection or limitation, no more mental lapses or misconceptions, and no more spiritual temptation or sin. Perfect just as God has always intended us to be.        

I was hit hard with a reality check at our Saturday breakfast. A few weeks ago the sister-in-law of one of the men showed up unexpectedly at the restaurant during breakfast and sat at a table near our group. He said today that she told his wife, “They never mentioned God once”. She obviously wasn’t there for the very sincere prayer asking God to bless our food and our fellowship or for our conversations before we ordered and the food came. But it did call attention to the fact that during our fellowship we often spend more time discussing what is going on in the world around us than what God is doing in our lives and in the world,.

In a blog I posted three years ago, I quoted The Message translation of Colossians 3:1 which clearly points out how easy it is to lose our true Christian perspective. “So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it! Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ – that’s where the action is.”

Satan has always been active in the world, spreading his lies, sins and evil. It seems worse today than at any time in my long lifetime. That might be because he knows his time is short or because he no longer feels the need to hide his actions. If we don’t approach it all with a Christian perspective, we can be suckered into distraction or even become overly concerned, angry or fearful. We need to let the Holy Spirit keep us from being caught in Satan’s traps. Sometimes He prompts me to walk (or scroll) right past them. Other times He instructs me to confront them with His truth, but He never allows me to attack those who carry Satan’s message. Our battle is not against flesh and blood enemies (Ephesians 6:12), it is against evil and sin – not the sinner. God loves sinners (see John 3:16);   He loved you and me when we were still living in sin. Jesus instructs us to love them too.

So, my Christian brother or sister, don’t be distracted by Satan’s activity in this world. Concentrate instead on your personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ; your relationships with the people God has placed in your life; and the calling or mission God has given you. Pay close attention to the promptings of God’s Holy Spirit within you and always be ready to share the truth that is Jesus Christ. Above all, maintain your Christian perspective because Satan will not win. I have sneaked a peek at the last chapter of the Bible. Our Lord will be victorious over Satan in the end.         

I want to share two old sayings from my childhood.  The first one comes to mind because it has rained here for the last two days. “When it rains, it pours.” That describes the feeling we have when one problem after another start piling on us. Any farmer or gardener can tell you that rain can be a blessing – a very good thing that is needed by crops and flowers. But when it pours and floods – not so good. Encountering a problem once in a while in our life is normal and it can actually make us stronger as we work our way through it with God’s help. However, when we are overwhelmed by a seemingly endless flood of problems, we need an ark to climb into for safety. Our dependence on God becomes even stronger and that is all we need to eventually feel the sunshine again..

The second old saying from my childhood is, “It’s feast or famine.” That would be like Pharaoh’s dream that Joseph interpreted to mean seven years of great harvests followed by seven years of famine. (Genesis 41:1-49) Has my Christian life ever been totally feast or totally famine? No! In every time of great blessings, there have  always been a few problems to deal with; and in even the darkest time of pain and trouble there have always been blessings for which to give thanks. It only seems that way sometimes, when I concentrate so much on either the good or the bad that I don’t really notice anything else.

In this life we need contrasts. We can’t appreciate light without experiencing darkness. We can’t appreciate water without experiencing thirst; or appreciate food without a few hunger pangs. We appreciate God because we remember how empty our life was without Him. Whether you are going through a blessed time or a rough time right now, there are two things you can be sure of, my Christian reader. The first one is that our Lord is going through all of it with you. The second one is that your final destination with Jesus Christ will be trouble free. No contrast will be needed or possible in the full presence of God because there Is nothing to compare with that.      

The VA has ordered a power chair for me that should arrive before Christmas. It will improve the quality of my life in many ways. I still intend to use my walker at least once a day to keep my legs from becoming too weak. It is a top of the line model with a whole lot of features. When they brought one by to fit me for it, I tried it out. With all those controls, it felt like I was in the pilot seat ready for takeoff. It is battery powered and will travel 20 miles on a full charge. I will just have to be careful not to call it my “electric chair”. The chair I’m sitting in now is actually plugged into electricity, but it does not take me anywhere except up or down and until now it has not electrocuted me.

All of this leads me to think about power sources. Discussing power can be confusing at times. When we buy a car, the salesman tells us the horse power of the combustion engine. There are no horses involved, but the power is equivalent to that many horses pulling the vehicle. When we talk about atomic power, we usually refer to electric power produced by atomic energy. A noted atomic physicist once wrote that there is as much atomic energy in a pound of rose petals as there is in a pound of uranium. That is because when God created our Universe and everything in it the building material He used were tiny particles of energy we call atoms. No matter how solid my chair or the walls of my townhome seem to be, they are clumps of energy formed by craftsmen using the energy material God produced. You and I are also created from those same tiny particles of God’s creative energy.  

I have mentioned many times that I depend heavily on God’s power to get me from room to room on my walker, even though I’m doing my very best. That won’t change with the use of my new mobile chair. Looking back, I realize that God has been the source of power in my life since the moment I knelt before Him and prayed in Jesus’ name. It is His power that has brought me through life so far. It is by His power that I am writing this blog post. It is by His power that I will continue until my tour of duty on Earth is completed.  

As Christians, we are not only physically a product of God’s creative energy; we are filled with His Holy Spirit who is our spiritual power source.  

Well-known educator, Thomas Sowell, has said, “It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” By those criteria, I must be very knowledgeable, because the list of things I don’t know grows longer every day.  I’ve mentioned before that when I was in my early teens I thought I knew everything worth knowing and I was eager to share all of that knowledge with anyone who would listen. I think it is the experience and wisdom that has come with age that has led me to awareness of my ignorance.

How has this affected my Christian life and my relationship with God? Although I’ve learned to develop very strong relationships with other people, the closer I become to God through His word, His Son and His Spirit, the more I realize that I have barely scratched the surface of His love, mercy, grace and power.   At age 11, I became aware that God loved me while my sinful nature made me unlovable. He sent His Son to die in my place so I could be dead to sin and given new spiritual life by accepting that gift of salvation and following Jesus. He doesn’t just love me – He loves the whole world and doesn’t want anyone to perish, but he wants us to love Him and worship Him because that is what we choose to do. His love is unfailing and has sustained me all of these years. The love I feel here is just a tiny fraction of the love I will know and feel in His presence and kingdom.

His mercy and grace have been manifest in my life. His mercy has saved me from the punishment I deserve and His grace has blessed me with so much I don’t deserve. The protection God has provided me and the blessings He has lavished on me for the last 78 years (He knew while I was still in my mother’s womb that I would become His child) have been amazing. Although I experience God’s great mercy and grace every day, they are just a small sample of what lies ahead for those who follow Jesus Christ to the end.

God’s power is on display all around us. He spoke everything into existence. But I have also seen His power at work in answered prayer. Through the prayers of my brothers in Christ as they laid hands on me, God’s power healed me from chronic sciatic pain six years ago. Just recently, God’s power stopped the hemorrhaging of a friend in response to the prayers of family and friends (including me) hundreds of miles away. God’s power is not limited by time and distance. He created them and exists outside of them.

My finite mind cannot comprehend God’s full, infinite glory. Paul put it this way, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) When that day comes when I will know the full extent of God’s power and glory, I will drop to my sound knees and then prone on my face before Him in praise and worship, 

I was never a big fan of the Rolling Stones. By the time they came around I was no longer a teenage rock and roll fan. I was into gospel music and instrumentals by Mantovani, Percy Faith and the Tijuana Brass instead. However, you would have had to be living in a monastery not to have heard Mick Jagger belt out, “Can’t get no satisfaction”. I believe he must have been looking for it in all of the wrong places.

Real satisfaction doesn’t come from possessions. I mentioned in a recent blog that if we aren’t satisfied with what we have, why would we think more would do the trick for us? It doesn’t even come from our environment or situation. I’ve often quoted the Apostle Paul’s description of how he could be satisfied in any situation, (Philippians 4:11-12) No, satisfaction is not found externally, it is something created internally by our own attitude.  

As Christians, we have God’s help to find satisfaction within us. Satisfaction is not listed as one of the seven fruit produced by the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22), but I have found that it is a direct result of those fruit produced in me that I share with others.  Let’s compare the Rolling Stone song Satisfaction with the Christian song Satisfied. “Satisfied! Satisfied! No trouble can ever get me down. When my eyes are closed in death and my feet shall be at rest, then you’ll know I’m satisfied. I’ve got that old time religion; got that old time religion. That is why, I’m satisfied.”

I ran across a prayer recently that leads us to an attitude of satisfaction. “Oh Lord, when I grow weary please help me remember each and every day: to count my blessings and not my crosses; to count my gains and not my losses; to count my laughs and not my tears; to count my joys and not my fears; to count my health and not my wealth; and most of all; to count on You and not myself.” 

One of my favorite motivational speakers, Zig Ziglar, once said, “If you are unwilling to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.” The question is this; what is it we are determined to learn? It should be the truth, but the truth is getting harder and harder to find in today’s world and some people can’t handle it when they find it.

The enemy is a liar and the father of lies and they are proclaimed so loud and often that people have accepted them as true. The only time I have been unfriended on Face Book was over one such lie that my friend posted that has been repeated for the last 50 years. It was something his favorite college professor taught him. I told him I was part of the group that started that lie and that was one of the reasons I left the group and I could prove it wasn’t true. He could not believe his professor lied, so he unfriended me instead. He couldn’t handle the truth. The enemy is also great at cloaking his biggest lies in just a little truth to make them seem right.

A few years ago, I stopped sharing other people’s posts on social media. Even when the source is a person I trust I can’t tell if they have been fooled unless I do a lot of research. I am very honest about my own experiences as a Christian in this blog, but I want you to read the scripture references for yourself to verify my application of them.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) Jesus also said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-33) Jesus isn’t only the source of all truth, He is truth. The Holy Spirit will always guide you to the truth God has for you.

There is one warning. We must not let what is true for us be a stumbling block for other weaker believers. Paul could eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols because he knew those idols have no power, but he refrained because it was a problem for some other weaker believers.      (1 Corinthians chapter 8) One of my favorite books as a teenage Christian was A Man Called Peter about Peter Marshall. As chaplain of the U.S. Senate, he attended many state dinners at the White House. Often a person next to him would notice that he had not touched his wine. He told them, “I could drink that glass of wine and it wouldn’t bother me, but I have counselled so many people whose lives have been ruined by alcoholism that I don’t want to encourage someone with that problem to think it is OK for them because they saw me drink it.”

Good luck on your treasure hunt to learn truth.         

I’ve pointed out many times in my blog that I am not a prophet or even a student of end time prophesy, but the topic of the approaching rapture has come up at our Saturday morning  breakfasts lately as a result of some modern day prophetic videos. It brings to my mind a gospel song on a CD I purchased about twenty years ago by The Lesters. “Now a man named Joseph gave Jesus his tomb. He cared so much for Him it was the least he could do. Now he could have given Him so many other things instead, but this is what Joseph said, ‘He’ll only need it for the weekend. He won’t be there long. He’ll only need it for the weekend, then He’ll be up and He’ll be gone.’ Jesus needed that tomb for just one weekend. He didn’t stay there long. He only needed it for the weekend. Now He sits high upon His thrown. He’s coming back to claim His own. Soon we’ll be up and we’ll be gone!”

Is the rapture coming this evening, or tomorrow? I honestly don’t know. If you are reading this, the answer is obviously, “Not yet!” There are two things I do know for sure. The rapture is going to take place and it is two thousand years closer to taking place than it was when Jesus told his disciples about it. “However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows. When the Son of Man returns It will be like it was in Noah’s day. In those days before the flood the people were enjoying banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat. People didn’t realize what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them all away. That is the way it will be when the Son of Man comes. Two men will be working together in the field; one will be taken, the other left. Two women will be grinding flour at the mill; one will be taken and the other one left. So you, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know what day your Lord is coming. Understand this; if a homeowner knew exactly when a burglar was coming he would keep watch and not permit his house to be broken into. You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected.” (Matthew 24:36-44). Paul also wrote about it in his second letter to the church at Thessalonica. (2 Thesssalonians chapter 2)

Comparing current events with my study of scripture, it seems that the enemy is preparing for his reign during the tribulation and for the battle that will surely follow. At the same time, I sense that our Father in heaven is making wedding plans – when His Son will meet His bride, the true church of Christian believers, in the air. The most important question is not when these things will occur; the most important question is, “are you, my dear brother or sister in Christ, ready and waiting for them to happen?’ As for me, I’ll just look up to the heavens and say with John, “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20) 

I have seen confusion over the years about the place and importance of good works in the Christian life. I have always known that you can’t buy a ticket to heaven with good works. But it has been my experience that once you are put on the highway to heaven by believing and following Jesus, there will be plenty of work to be done for others along the way there. A good friend put it this way in a recent Face Book post, “God is in control, but He doesn’t expect you to lean on a shovel and pray for a hole.”  

We are expected, as adopted sons and daughters of God, to emulate God’s true Son. He demonstrated for us how to live life humbly, always looking for ways to serve the needs of others instead of demanding that they serve you. Though He was their teacher, mentor and spiritual leader, He knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples. With his usual brash manner, Simon Peter refused, saying that he should be washing Jesus’ feet instead. But when Jesus told him if he didn’t allow him to wash his feet, he was not a true follower. Then Simon told Jesus to wash all of him then. Jesus explained why that wasn’t necessary. By that act, Jesus taught them to never be too high and mighty to do even the most menial task to help others. It was an object lesson I’m sure none of them ever forgot (with the exception of Judas Iscariot).

Are we, as Christians, then to go through life looking for dirty feet to wash? Not exactly! Sometimes the task will be even more humbling than that. It isn’t the task itself that matters; it is our attitude about doing it that God looks at. If we expect something in return, even thanks or praise, that will be our only reward. We often hear that God loves a cheerful giver when the offering plate is passed around, but it applies to all of the assistance we give to others as well.

A friend once told me about something her father taught her that has stayed with her all of these years. A man approached them in a parking lot and asked for some money to buy medicine for his sick wife. Her father gave him twenty dollars and she told him, “He’ll probably just buy some liquor with that money. Her father  told her, ” If he does, that will say a lot about his character; but if I pass up someone in need when I have the means to help them, that would say a lot about me.” She has never forgotten that our acts of charity and kindness demonstrate who we are and not just the good works we do. We are blessed so we are able to bless others.  It is who we are as  God’s children and who He wants us to be.