Tell-Tale Marks

 

“Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

—1 Peter 2:12

One day after teaching all day, I stopped at the local supermarket where I saw a woman in the bread aisle. She seemed smartly dressed, with comfortable shoes, looking intelligent, and collecting her groceries quickly. I wondered if she might be a teacher, too.

Not until I pulled my cart up behind her in the check-out line did I know. There on her back side stretched the all-too-visible line of chalk. I knew it! No one but a teacher would have that tell-tale mark.

Christians should have tell-tale marks, too. Do you have identifying signs—tell-tale marks—that reveal a family likeness to Christ?

Do people recognize the presence of Christ in you by the purity of your speech? By your respectful treatment of others? By your submission to authority? By your refraining from gossip? By your reputation for loving others?

When you sit down to lunch, do you bow and quietly thank God for it? Do you show compassion and caring? Do you live a holy life?

In some settings, governmental law may prohibit us from preaching Christ. But, no law anywhere can prevent us from showing the Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (see Galatians 5:22-23)—even in a public school, or in the public square!

Wherever God has placed us in this world, He expects us to reveal the tell-tale marks He has placed on our life.

 

 

Endurance

 

“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

—Hebrews 12:1

“Life is not a sprint. It is a marathon.” You’ve no doubt heard that quotation. I would like to think that “Oftentimes, trials are not a sprint, but a marathon.” Some trials God gives us in our lives last a day or two. Others go on far longer than we could ever imagine and demand much more of us than we could have ever thought.

In fact, some troubles take far more strength and endurance than we would naturally have available. Don’t believe the idea that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle—by ourselves, alone. In fact, He often gives us more than we can handle just for the purposes He has of causing us to rely totally on Him to carry us beyond our own strength.

We can find comfort in the Sovereignty of God: His supreme, unlimited, wise authority over everything that happens to us gives us assurance that we are in His hands. Yet, does that mean we have no responsibility at all? Whereas some people think they have to manage everything in their lives, others think that submitting to, and waiting on, God alone, getting out of His way, allows Him to perform His will in us and through us.

I love the way that Carolyn Curtis James writes about this subject: ¹

[The writer of the Hebrews] put both ideas side by side without diluting either of them when he charged his readers to “run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” God marks out our race, and we are commanded to run. If we follow logic, sovereignty doesn’t remove human responsibility. It actually increases it. Human responsibility depends on an ordered world in which God is sovereign. You can’t be responsible in a world of chaos, chance and blind fate. Sovereignty frees us to act because we know God has a plan. We are part of that plan, for we are the agents through whom he accomplished his purposes… God calls us to full-throttled, active, and creative living.

Sometimes, God allows us to feel exhausted, to press us beyond our limits. As anyone who has taken athletic training, or even physical therapy, knows—if you have invested yourself fully in this experience—you will feel exhausted and pressed beyond your limits. But, the payoff comes from that pressing forward in strengthening your own self.

God wants to make us into marathon runners and warriors for His glory. In the end, we will not celebrate our great skill, but our great God. Only by our cooperation with His power and His loving wisdom, will the race be run. All glory to Him!

______________________

1 James, Carolyn Curtis. When Life and Beliefs Collide. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 2001. (Amazon Kindle) Pp. 128-129.

 

 

Refresh

 

“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 “rain in the springtime” before we dry up and blow away. Let us ask God for showers of refreshing and a renewal of life, so that we can serve Him effectively.

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.

 

 

The Sting

 

“Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

—1 Corinthians 15:55-56

Whether you have an allergy to bee stings or not, the experience of being stung causes a pain that you will not easily forget. Two aspects of a bee sting cause the pain. First, the stinger itself, like a tiny sword, contains a sharp barbed point that stays in the skin until you remove it. Secondly, the venom causes a chemical reaction within one’s body producing pain and swelling.

The Apostle Paul used the “sting” to illustrate the experience of sin and death in the passage of Scripture quoted at the beginning of this blog post. Then, Paul continues with this theme, offering the ultimate resolution in Romans 6:23, when he wrote:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We can easily see how death carries a “sting.” No one can dispute that this ending point comes to us as the ultimate battle that we face. As believers in the Lord Jesus, however, we are assured of the absence of the “sting” of this tool of the enemy.

If you have experienced the death of a loved one who lived as a follower of, and believer in, the Lord Jesus Christ, you know that the terror, no matter how terrible the death, has been softened as a result of the sacrifice Christ made for us on the cross. Jesus dealt with the victory over death when He died on the cross and rose again from the dead.

We, as humans, experience many other kinds of “stinging” events in our lives. We know the pain of scary medical diagnoses, the loss of jobs, difficult financial straits, legal battles, broken relationships, and numerous other kinds of disappointments.

Sometimes, we have faith to believe all that God has told us in His written Word concerning our experience with death. But, in the midst of our particular trials, we fail to realize that He has also removed the “stinger” from these lesser struggles, too.

Reason with me: that the God who has power over death, also has power over all other events in our lives. In response, let us resolve today to face all of life and death by trusting our God to remove the venom from each powerful heartbreak. We must remember that God has removed the sting!

 

 

Accomplished

 

“Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; For she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”

—Isaiah 40:1-2 NKJV

“Hold on,” you say. “That’s a Scripture passage that we heard preached during Advent!” Or even, “Isn’t that passage referring to the exiled Jews in Babylon? Are you saying they could now come home to Israel? And, are you saying this is an Easter passage?”

Think about it. Couldn’t this announcement refer even more to the work Christ accomplished on the cross? And, couldn’t this be the rightful message He could proclaim to His disciples on that Resurrection Sunday? Jesus ended the warfare that has come against us because of our sin. He died in our place and God brought Him back to life.

Jesus’ last words from the cross can be heard in this passage when He spoke, “It is finished.” To respond, we need only to accept that pronouncement over our sins and accept the work that He has already accomplished for us. We can stand in the wonderful position of peace with God through Jesus. Romans 5:1-2 tells us:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

This Easter, may we bask in the glory of the accomplished work of Christ, and sing with thanksgiving this now-accomplished Advent hymn:¹

Comfort, comfort ye my people,
  speak ye peace, thus saith our God.
Comfort those who sit in darkness,
  mourning ’neath their sorrow’s load.
Speak ye to Jerusalem
  of the peace that waits for them;
Tell her that her sins I cover,
  and her warfare now is over.

Yea, her sins our God will pardon,
  blotting out each dark misdeed.
All that well deserved his anger
  he no more will see or heed.
She hath suffered many a day,
  now her griefs have passed away;
God will change her pining sadness
  into ever-springing gladness.

______________________

1 Olearius, Johannes (1671). Tr. by Winkworth, Catherine. Comfort, Comfort Ye My People. Public Domain.