God's File

            I'm amazed at the lessons God continues to teach me through my children.  A couple weeks ago when I was at home with my son Aaron, he walked up with a pointed, rough object in his hand. He looked up curiously and asked, "Dadda, what's this?"  I told him it was one of mommy's fingernail files.  As you know, kids are seldom content with one answer - especially when it doesn't make sense to them.  A fingernail file?  He stood there, rubbing his fingers over the rough surface, his curious look unabated.  So, I decided to venture further explanation.  "Mommy uses these files to make the rough parts of her fingernails smooth."  My explanation was short and sweet, but rather than appeasing Aaron's curiosity, it actually increased it.  He peered up at me with a doubtful expression, and I knew exactly what he was thinking: "Daddy, how can something so rough possibly make fingernails smooth??"  In my mind's eye, I saw a picture of a man looking up to God with a doubtful look, wondering how his trials could ever produce anything good. Logic tells us that rough experiences make rough people, and this is often true.  For instance, if you rub a file on your hand, it will leave your skin bloody and chafed.  But if you use the file on your fingernails, somehow it leaves them smoother. So, just as it depends on the surface, so it depends on the person.

            For His children, God has ordained trials and suffering for the filing down of prideful resistance and the leveling of sinful tendencies.  Yes it hurts.  How could it not?  I was recently asked to remove a sliver from a friend's foot, and he asked, "Can you make it painless?"  "Sure," I replied.  "...if you don't mind the sliver staying in your foot."  It's like trying to completely remodel your house without tearing out any flooring or walls.  I grew up fishing the East Gallatin river in Bozeman, and over the 25 years I lived there, I saw great changes in the course of the river.  After rainy season, I wouldn't even be able to recognize my old fishing spots!  The mighty force of the water would beat against the banks and erode dirt and rocks, every year forcing its way into new channels.  I thought, "If such force is required to displace mud and stone, what kind of effort must be required to confront greed, pride and selfishness?"  It shouldn't surprise us that the entire angelic and demonic realms are enrolled in the battle for human souls.  Are you aware of this battle?  As a child of God, you should feel the pressure of living for God in a "crooked and depraved generation."  As a pursuer of Christ and his righteousness, you should feel the raging current of immorality, selfishness, greed and laziness pounding against your chest.  If you don't, maybe you're going the wrong way, floating downstream with the course and pattern of this world.  The way to avoid conformity to this world is to sit still when you feel God's file oscillating over your heart.  Don't pull away. Don't complain. Realize that your loving Father is also the sculptor who's forming you for his use.  Trust him. He knows what he's doing.  He knows what he's making.  The end result will be good!

Go Hard!

            Mediocrity is the great malaise of our modern culture.  Whether man twiddles his thumbs or scurries about, the great potential of his intellect often lies dormant.  We embrace "hustle and bustle," equating busyness with importance, but busyness is quite often the product of laziness.  As Eugene Peterson says, rather than taking the time to decide and direct our lives in accordance with God's will and plan for us, we let other people do it for us.  "Then we find ourselves frantically, at the last minute, trying to satisfy a half dozen different demands on our time, none of which are essential, to stave off the disaster of disappointing someone."  The solution to our problem lies not in doing more but in slowing down.  Moving is easy.  Being still is difficult. 

Look around.  The world is teeming with half-hearted people.  Romantics boast of their willingness to die, but few are willing to live.  It's easy to speak of dying when it's hypothetical.  That is, no one really expects to die. It just sounds good. But the true test of devotion is what we're willing to live for.  Find a man who will really die for a cause and he'll undoubtedly be living for it with singleness of purpose.  In Revelation 3, Jesus rebuked the Laodicean Christians for their lukewarm, middle-ground living.  These people had no shocking secrets, no scandalous sins, nothing that would make the news or embarrass the religious community.  No, they were only guilty of the greatest sin of all – mediocrity -  and God reveals a critical piece of his character when he threatens to spit them out of his mouth.  It seems that a Holy God takes more delight in sinful, wicked people then in those who shuffle along in the middle ground of mediocrity, faking their way through life. 

My little brother recently gave me a Lecrae CD, and I have to admit that I had long ago ruled out the possibility of "good rap."  But I must say that this stuff is dynamite!  I've never heard music with such clear gospel teaching and persistent calls to passionate, Christ-centered living.  Each song runs like a sermon, all at once pulling at my heart, kicking me in the butt, and wrapping me up with arms of grace.  Their song "Go Hard" really hit home for me:

"Aw man, we ain't focused on the war, we're just kickin' it.

Worried 'bout our image and our space up on the internet.

Take me outta the game coach, I don't wanna play no more

If can't give it all I got and leave it out there on the court.

Thank you for the Grace, for the will and the desire,

Got me living for your glory instead of living to retire."

So what are we waiting for? The seconds of our lives tick away like a tragedy when they’re meant to be seized in a romantic adventure.  It won't do to surrender some to Jesus, or even most. No, we must "Go Hard" after Christ and live with all we've got.  This is not some new idea.  No, it's the song that God-followers have been singing for hundreds of years. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6:5).  Lord, may it be!

Question3: How can I achieve stability and security?

It's been said that "nothing good ever lasts."  In fact, apart from God, His Word and human souls, nothing lasts.  The circumstances of our lives are like flashes of lightning.  As soon as we fix our eyes on them and try to preserve them, they're gone, leaving behind only the rumbling thunder of our nostalgic memories.  John Mayer sings a song called "Stop This Train" wherein he laments the speed of life and the uncertainty of his future:

Stop this train, I want to get off and go home again. 

I can't take the speed it's moving in. 

I know I can't, but honestly, won't someone stop this train?

 Later in the song, John asks his dad about slowing life down, to which his father wisely replies, "John, honestly, we'll never stop this train."  Life charges on like a speeding freight train, its twists and turns often unpredictable and disappointing.  Our family recently visited Universal Studios, and I must say that the 4-D King Kong ride was very realistic!  Children were crying, but I couldn't help but notice that no adults were crying.  This was because the adults knew something the children didn't:  First, we were in a controlled environment, and second, the ride would soon be over.  Rides are only fun because no matter how crazy it gets, we know we're not going to get hurt and that the ride will be over in a matter of minutes.  But life is not a carnival ride.  It has its ups and downs, yes, but there's no way of knowing how bad it will get or how long it will last.  Life has been known to throw people terrible trials and unbearable pain that never seem to let up.

It's not hard to understand why people can adopt a pessimistic, nihilistic outlook on life, despairing at the perceived pointlessness of their existence.  But life need not be discouraging, frustrating or pointless. The truth is that we all desire security and stability.  We all want to know that "everything's gonna be okay."  But it's only in Jesus that we can know this.  Isaiah wrote of Jesus, "He will be the stability of your times." Christ has a stabilizing effect on the lives of his people: "The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings." (Isaiah 32:17-18).  Those who chase after the treasures of this world will only be plagued by uncertainty concerning their future and hopelessness regarding their existence.  "When the wicked dies, his hope will perish, and the expectation of wealth perishes too" (Proverbs 11:7).  Not much room for optimism.  But those who run after Christ discover the indescribable blessings of security, stability and peace. 

Only in Christ can you be like an adult on the King Kong ride.  Concerning your environment, you'll know that nothing can harm you or separate you from God's love. "The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them" (Psalm 34:7).  And regarding the course and outcome of your life, you'll have a stability with the Lord that no man can counterfeit and no trial can upset.   David's prayer from Psalm 143:10 truly becomes a blessed reality for the child of God:  "Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground" (Ps 143:10).  After all, what could be more stable than level ground?

Question2: "Who will satisfy my desire for happiness?"

            John Mayer is one of the most successful singer-songwriters of my generation, and in one of his songs, he goes through a checklist of things that should be satisfying him: Friends, money, girls, guitars, microphones.  And yet, with all his fortune and fame, he sings in the chorus, "Something's missing and I don't know how to fix it. Something's missing and I don't know what it is at all."

            The Bible tells us that "He who loves money will not be satisfied with money." (Ecclesiastes 5:10).  You'd be hard-pressed to find a more timely statement for our culture and generation.  Verses like this describe exactly what we see people like John Mayer experiencing apart from Christ - a lack of satisfaction. Mayer later sings,

I'm dizzy from the shopping malls,

I searched for joy, but I bought it all.

It doesn't help the hunger pains.

            This sounds more a Chuck Swindoll sermon than a secular song!  But this sentiment didn't originate with Mayer.  It's what Mic Jagger shouted repeatedly in "I can't get no satisfaction." It's the message of Sugarland's "There's gotta be something more than this."  It's the advice Bob Dylan gives a woman who's seeking "Someone who's never weak but always strong... who'll promise never to part, someone who will die for me." To this, Dylan responds, "I'm not the one you want, babe. I'm not the one you need."  So who is "the one?"  Who can meet Jagger's need for satisfaction, address Sugarland's longing for something more, satisfy Mayer's hunger pains? 

            Well, Jesus is the answer, not as some vague generality, but specifically for the universal human need to be happy. Jesus is the one whom David (a man who discovered the answer!) addressed in one of his songs: "In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11).  Jesus is "the Fountain of Living Water" spoken of by the prophet Jeremiah.  And it's no surprise when Jesus testifies of himself to the woman at the well, "Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." Who wouldn't want this?! Who would dismiss such an offer?! I heard a statement on the radio a couple weeks ago and it's been with me ever since: "The Samaritan woman thought she was standing next to a well, talking to a man, but in reality she was standing next to a hole in the ground talking to The Well.  Oh Jesus, grant that we would drink deeply of YOU today and not give our affections to the things of this world, which can never satisfy."