"Daddy Do It"

 

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

—2 Corinthians 12:9

We’ve all heard a toddler say, “Me do it!” Later on, when her arms don’t fit into the sleeves right, we often hear the toddler say, “Daddy do it!” Children learn by trying to do things by themselves. Then, they sometimes learn that they need help. We should learn the same kind of lesson, and often we do, over and over.

2 Corinthians 11:30, 32-33 records these words of the Apostle Paul, in the city of Damascus:

“If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness … the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me. But I was lowered in a basket from a window in the wall and slipped through his hands.”

The Apostle had learned that he needed God’s help. It’s a lesson we need to keep in mind at all times.

Whether persistent, or just stubborn, some of us learn the hard way that when we try to do things on our own, even when we’re trying to serve the Lord, we come up short and often fail to succeed. Remember Sarai and her solution to “help” God give Abram the son He had promised? In this story recorded through Genesis 16, we read how Sarai gave her slave girl, Hagar, to her husband Abram in order to try to fulfill God’s grand design. That plan certainly did not go well for her—or in fact for us, looking at the tumult for centuries in the Middle East.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, when the officers of the temple guard came to arrest Jesus, one of Jesus’ followers cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, thinking he was doing Jesus a favor. Instead, Jesus rebuked His follower, touched the servant, and healed the man! This is recorded in Luke 22:47-51.

We often get ourselves into irreversible trouble when we say, “Me do it!” Most often, our Heavenly Father would rather we let Him do it without our help. Or, God would have us agree to learn from Him in the work He wants us to accomplish with His help. What’s the expression? “When you have dug yourself into a hole, stop digging!”

I am reminded of an old Swedish hymn with these words: ¹

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.

Refrain:
His love has no limit; His grace has no measure;
His pow’r has no boundary known unto men.
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!

______________________

1 Flint, Annie Johnson. “He Giveth More Grace.” Dayton, Ohio: Lillenas Publishing Co., 1969. Verse 2.

 

 

I Wonder as I Wander

 

The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”

—Acts 23:11

As the events of their daily lives unfolded, even God’s choicest servants must have asked: “Who, What, Where, When, How?” Yet, God rarely answers these questions when He calls us to His service, or makes a promise to us, or places us in circumstances we don’t understand.

I wonder what Paul must have thought God wanted him to do in Rome? He certainly seemed driven to get there. Perhaps Paul looked back at the way God had used his preaching among Gentiles, but probably never considered that God intended him to spend years locked up and away from the crowds.

Paul did preach to a few individuals that were allowed to visit him. And, Paul also preached to the Roman leaders. During that time, Paul also wrote the letters we know as the Books of Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, First and Second Timothy, Titus and Philemon, encouraging and instructing all of us in God’s ways.

In the Old Testament, when Joseph, son of Jacob, had two dreams as a teen that his brothers would bow down to him, he got a verbal trouncing by his older siblings! The act of bragging, and his status with their father as favorite son, made the brothers intensely jealous and caused them to carry out a plot to sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt.

I wonder how many times Joseph thought of those long ago dreams and wondered if he had misread God’s promises. Now, he lived in Egypt, far from home and under the control of none other than Pharaoh himself. Even more confounding must have been his subsequent imprisonment because of a false accusation. He made a name for himself interpreting dreams for servants of Pharaoh, and of Pharaoh himself. But, what about his dreams?

But, after 22 years in Egypt, amazingly Joseph confessed to his brothers, in Genesis 45:7:

“But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.”

I wonder how many times the teen-age girl, Hadassah, questioned how and why she ended up in the harem of King Xerxes in Persia and eventually became known as Queen Esther. Certainly, she had heard the stories containing promises from God that He would take His people from the lands of their exile back to their home country. How did she fit into this plan, especially now as she held such a position of power and responsibility in this foreign country?

Only as her life played out did she realize that God had given her a unique place from which to save God’s people and literally change history. Not without personal danger did she agree to God’s plan. She heard God’s word through her faithful cousin, Mordecai, as recorded in Esther 4:14:

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?

I wonder sometimes about my own pathway, and you must wonder about your pathway, as well. “What, where, how, why, and who”—God is at work in order to play out His divine plan in us, but what lies ahead? We can all take heart with these words from Isaiah 55:8-9:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

 

 

Caught and Restored

 

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently.

—Galatians 6:1

Throughout every church in the United States of America and around the world, beautiful, even amazing, stories of forgiveness and restoration abound:

• Everyone would soon know! She slept with a man outside of her marriage and now carried his baby. Her husband, who was not a believer, immediately filed for divorce. At first, it caused shock and disappointment in the church. But, after the woman confessed to the sin, the women of the church presented her with a beautiful new robe to symbolize their love, forgiveness, and restoration. When her baby was born, the entire church celebrated this new gift of life.
  
  
• The man obviously had ruined his family with his alcoholism. But, once he confessed to his church family, they received him back and came alongside him to restore him. They facilitated his entry into a rehabilitation program and celebrated his release and each day, thereafter, that he remained sober.
  
  
• Another person had been imprisoned for a shameful crime. But, upon hearing the confession and repentance of this individual, and upon this one’s discharge from prison, the church joyfully received this one back among the church family and helped this one to get back into the community as a contributing and important member.
  
  

These instances of forgiveness and restoration should remind us of the story found in Luke 15:11-32, that tells of the man we know as the Prodigal Son. How surprised and loved he must have felt when his father not only welcomed him home, but called his friends and put on a lavish party for this wayward son, receiving and restoring him.

Do we seek to receive and restore those who have obviously “fallen,” but who have come back to us? Do we respond like the father in the story? Or, do we act like the jealous older brother, who complained that his father had never given him a party, even though he had long behaved faithfully? What a witness of grace the church can give to the world if it responds like the hurt and grieving father when the son finally returns.

“Older brothers” will always stand by and criticize rather than responding with grace and mercy. Not everyone will do the kind and merciful thing. But, God will use those who recognize the glory of redemption and forgiveness in the life of one who has been at the bottom and whom Christ has raised up. May we please our heavenly Father by lifting up others as He has lifted us up out of the miry clay of sin.

Praise to our King, who rescues and restores us, as this old hymn tells us: ¹

Praise, my soul, the King of heaven,
to his feet your tribute bring;
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
who, like me, his praise should sing?
Alleluia! Alleluia! Praise the everlasting King.

Father-like, he tends and spares us;
well our feeble frame he knows;
In his hands he gently bears us,
rescues us from all our foes.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Widely as his mercy goes.

______________________

1 Lyte, Henry. “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven. ” Hymn in the Public Domain.

 

 

Rain that Refreshes

 

“You gave abundant showers, O God; you refreshed your weary inheritance.”

—Psalm 68:9

“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”

—Acts 3:19

Without water, we would all die. We rely on God to supply the rain in order for us to live. I am amazed at how quickly my drooping indoor plants revive once I pour a little refreshing water on them.

We humans can live in a dehydrated condition for a while. But, without natural water and without God-given spiritual water, we cannot live with the vigor, joy, and beauty that God intended when He made us.

A deficiency in the electrolytes that keep our bodies’ electrical systems in balance shows up in lethargy, fatigue, heart rhythm problems, dry skin, and a host of other dire consequences that appear when we have not had enough water. Our bodies only become refreshed with a return to proper hydration.

Let me ask each of us this question: How are our “spiritual electrolytes”? Those of our churches? Can we detect a loss of spiritual hydration there? Sometimes, we hardly know when our spiritual posture sags from lack of the refreshment that God wants to provide for us.

In fact, Jesus addressed this problem with the Samaritan woman in John 4:1-45 and called Himself the “Living Water.” Once she drank of His life-giving spiritual water, she left her water jug, ran rejoicing, and called her neighbors to come at once to meet with Jesus.

In John 7:1-24, we read of Jesus preaching to the crowds at the Feast of Tabernacles, and calling them to come to Him for living water. Like those in that long-ago crowd who responded to Jesus, once we learn to rely on this “Water of Life,” we will need the refreshing and the life-giving health it gives in order to serve Him well.

When we fall into patterns of mundane worship, when we droop in our service to God, when our hearts do not beat with vigor for Christ, and when our tired service yields no fruit for others, we know that we need to stop and ask God for a refreshment of the “Living Water” that only He can give us through His precious Son. Fortunately, we only need to ask Him and He will surely supply us with this “Living Water.”

Let us pray that we will clearly see our weariness and, in response, ask God for “times of refreshing” before we dry up and blow away. Let us ask God for His living water, so that we can refresh others as He refreshes us.

I particularly like the way this hymn describes such a prayer:¹

Refresh Thy people on their toilsome way;
Lead us from night to never-ending day;
Fill all our lives with love and grace divine;
And glory, laud, and praise be ever Thine. Amen.

______________________

1 Roberts, Daniel C. God of Our Fathers. Public Domain.