R3: radical, revolutionary, different

In the last post, I spoke about David’s belief that God would be with him when he faced Goliath.  He didn’t need any more evidence. He didn’t have to wait for “just one more reassurance.”  He just took past experiences and applied them to his life.

Yet so often we don’t act with that same assurance.  Sometimes we want to wait for absolutes before we act.  We play it safe and ask, “God, should I do this, or should I do that?”  Waiting until God gives us some kind of definitive answer. 

Now on the one hand, this is a very valid and legitimate question to ask.  It can be a very bad idea to act without knowing God is there to support you.  But in many cases God has already told us to act, he doesn’t need to repeat himself.  For instance, Jesus already told us to love our enemies.  We don’t need to pray about whether we should love them, we just need to do it.

No matter what decisions we make, or what actions we decide to take, we must always move with God.  As bold as David was, he never would have survived without God’s help.  In fact, that’s the whole point of the story.  David was much smaller than many of the Israelite soldiers.  He was the youngest child (which Israelites viewed as ‘inferior’).  If David had come up to you or I, we would have laughed at him, and said, “sure whatever kid.”  He didn’t fit the mold of manly man, let alone hero.

Which is exactly why God chose him to act.  No one could confuse God’s action as something David did on his own.  Casting Crowns sums up David’s attitude saying, “I’ll go, but I cannot go alone.”  This was David’s life philosophy.  He was aware that it wasn’t his own abilities that would take down Goliath (or the bear, or the lion) but it was God.  He went, but he didn’t go alone.

In Me

If you ask me to leap
Out of my boat on the crashing waves
If You ask me to go
Preach to the lost world that Jesus saves
I’ll go, but I cannot go alone
Cause I know I’m nothing on my own
But the power of Christ in me makes me strong
Makes me strong

Cause when I’m weak, You make me strong
When I’m blind, You shine Your light on me
Cause I’ll never get by living on my own ability
How refreshing to know You don’t need me
How amazing to find that you want me
So I’ll stand on Your truth, and I’ll fight with Your strength
Until You bring the victory, by the power of Christ in me

If You ask me to run
And carry Your light into foreign land
If You ask me to fight
Deliver Your people from Satan’s hand

To reach out with Your hands
To learn through Your eyes
To love with the love of a savior
To feel with Your heart
And to think with Your mind
I’d give my last breath for Your glory

With God’s backing, we can accomplish anything.  As David found out even giants are no match for God.  Or as Peter discovered, even walking on water is possible when we live out a life of faith.  What can God do with our lives, if we choose not to walk alone?

“The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”  (1 Samuel 17: 37)

This was David’s response when Saul asked him why he thought he could beat Goliath, a man that every other Israelite feared.  Sometimes all we need is to apply the things that God has already taught us.  David didn’t need more proof that God would help him - he already had two examples.  And for David, that was enough.

R3 has been in existence for almost 1.5 years.  And during that time I’ve never taken a leave of absence.  The most time I’ve taken off is over the weekends, or occasionally a day or two when I’ve been sick.  But all that’s about to change!  For the first time since R3 started I plan on taking a few days off.  Two weeks to be exact.  But don’t worry.  You’ll get regularly scheduled posts over the next two weeks.  I have lots of content pre-written. 

I’ve never been very good at taking time off from anything.  Because I get bored easily, I look to keep myself occupied.  Which means I tend to ignore the idea of a Sabbath.  But there’s a reason God tells us to rest.  Nothing was made to always work.  Not even a website. 

For me this rest will allow me to catch up on some reading.  It will also let me refill my “creative well” so to speak.  Those are important reasons to rest.  But perhaps the most important reason is to simply see that the world goes on even if we don’t.  We often talk ourselves into believing that if we stop working, the world (or perhaps just your house) will fall apart.  It doesn’t.  The world always goes on.

It’s comforting knowing that when I come back in two weeks, R3 will be chugging along, even without my direct supervision.

Have you ever wanted to read the Bible but just didn’t have the time?  Well today you are in luck.  Because you can now watch the Bible in a minute. 

A significant part of Jesus’ ministry was spent in an area known as Galilee.  This was a region filled mostly with non-Jews, which meant much of traditional Judaism was diluted.  This posed a problem because Jews looked at Jewish culture as “what God demanded,” anything less was seen as inferior. 

In many ways this made Galilee one of the “worst” parts of Israel.   

My study Bible suggests it’s this brokenness that made Jesus spend so much time here.  Which, to be honest, is something I hadn’t considered.  But it makes sense.  Jesus even said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Matthew 9: 12). 

It seems to me that the closer we get to disaster the more likely we are to take notice of our lives.  And it’s usually here that we begin to realize there’s something wrong.  I’m sure it wasn’t any different 2,000 years ago. 

As Galilee struggled economically, and was looked down upon by the rest of Israel, is it any wonder why they responded so strongly to Jesus?  The people of Galilee saw the problems in their world, and recognized that Jesus was presenting another option.  He was giving them a new way to live.  He was offering hope. 

Sometimes in our prosperity we view God as a convenience (or inconvenience, I suppose, depending on your point of view).  We think of him as something that we can add onto our lives.  But that’s not how we were designed to live.  God is supposed to be an integral part of our lives.

Greg Koukl, of Stand to Reason fame, describes Jesus role in our life as a cure not a band-aid.  Jesus doesn’t “cover up” sin, he takes it from us.  This makes all the difference.  We can’t just choose to apply God to our lives when it’s convenient or when we’re feeling sick. 

That’s what the people of Galilee recognized.  They saw their need for God and responded.  I think it’s entirely possible that if Jesus had started in the most prosperous parts of Israel, with the healthiest people, they never would have recognized their own need for God.  They would have fooled themselves into believing they needed a band-aid instead of a cure.

Sometimes the best thing for us can be a difficult life.  Sometimes it pays to be Galilee.

Last week I wrote about something that really struck me: God has given us a big enough responsibility in just being obedient, we don’t need to worry about “making something” of our lives.  It’s easy to think we need to do more to become successful, but how do we define that success?  

More often than not by the world’s standards.

God defines success so much differently, which is why we’re just asked to be obedient.  This thought hasn’t left my mind all weekend, so I wanted to focus on it again.  But instead of me trying to find words to for my thoughts, I think I’ll just let Building 429’s song Amazed do it for me. 

Where did it go
33 and it’s gone so fast
Thought I knew who I was
I thought that You were leading me

But this depression is
Crashing in on me
And I’m not half the man
I hoped I’d be

But I won’t question in the dark
What is true out in the light
I will follow after You
Through the storm and through the fight

Cause You’ve got me
Right where You want me
Yeah You’ve got me
Right where I need to be
And I’m standing amazed

Not to sound melodramatic but I think there’s a moment (possibly several) in a person’s life where they question if what they are doing is worthwhile.  Is the project you’re working on meaningful?  Is the business you’ve started going to be relevant.  Are you making a difference in people’s lives? 

It’s easy to fall into the idea that we’re somehow not doing “enough.”  And that’s where I’ve been the last few days.  I was wondering if I was doing enough professionally.  Was I reaching everyone I could with R3?  Should I do more? 

I expressed these concerns to a friend, and she said something that froze me in my tracks:

I think you’ve got something backwards here :o].  It’s not you that needs to make something out of your life, it’s God.  That I know of, nowhere in the bible does God tell us that we have to make something out of ourselves.  That’s His job…our job is to listen to what He says and act on what we hear, whether that’s physically doing something, or waiting on God to do something.

Ouch.

She’s right though.  I can’t think of a single example where God said, “why don’t you make something out of yourself?  What are you waiting for?”  God always says, be obedient, and let me do the rest.

All I need to worry about is listening to God, then obeying. 

What a relief!

Sometimes I get caught up in my life.  I get wrapped up in the details as they say.  I worry about the little things and because of that I stop focusing on what God is doing in my life.  Third Day has a song called “Blind” that captures this thought nicely. 

How could I have been so blind to not see you
The more that I look the more I find
You’ve led me to the truth
That I am nothing if I’m without you
You opened my eyes and helped me to find
How could I have been so blind

 focusing on God

God, all too often I spend my time worrying about all the mistakes I’ve made instead of focusing on you.  Help me not to do that.  Remind me that you’ve already forgiven my past, and I can’t control the future, so help me to just focus on the present.  Help me to always keep my eyes fixed on you.  So even if it doesn’t feel like I’m accomplishing anything, as long as I’m following you let that be enough.  Amen.

 <comments are open, feel free to add your own prayer asking to remain focused on God>

I don’t know who came up with the idea that “seeing is believing” but they couldn’t have been more wrong.  Trusting what you see is one of the fastest ways to get you into trouble!  I think we all recognize that we can’t trust our eyes.  That’s why it’s so fun to play with optical illusions. 

Yet the truth is, we live in a world that is visually manipulated.  Like optical illusions sometimes it’s for fun.  But other times it’s done intentionally, with the goal of manipulating us.  Our advertisements are manipulated.  Our television images are manipulated.  Even the “truth” is manipulated.  We are surrounded by distortions of what “real” is. 

Now I get what some of you are thinking.  ”Sure, we get that the news portrays current events for ratings not news.”  Or, “I know Hollywood is full of it, I’ve seen Mythbusters!”  The sentiment is that manipulating what we see just isn’t that big of a deal.  “It’s only TV.” 

But is it? 

Sins like greed and lust work on this exact principle.  They tell us that what we don’t have is more appealing that what we do have.  Lust plants the idea that what we need, no, what we deserve, is another woman (or man).  While greed whispers that we owe it to ourselves to get a “little more” money no matter the cost. 

Consistently the world tells us that if only we would go after those things will we be satisfied.   We just need to consume more things and then we’ll be happy.  Just one more drink.  Just one more cigarette.  Just one more purchase. 

Can you feel it?  Can you feel those desires tugging at your heart?

I can.  And the truth is, sometimes they win.

What we see is a lie.  What we see is not reality.  It’s a myth.  It’s something the world desperately wants to be true, but is so far from God’s Kingdom.  Think about your own life, and then compare it to what we see.  Hollywood portrays sex and drugs as ways to live your life.  But when you have sex and do drugs does your life improve?  Or do you feel more empty than when you began?  Hollywood never shows us the consequences.  Because that would show that their world doesn’t exist.

Advertisements tell us that we’ll be happy if only we have a new set of furniture, or a new game, or a nice vacation.  But do you feel satisfied after that purchase?  Or do you feel stress, fear, and worry because you don’t know how you’ll pay for it.  Advertisements show us a great life - but they don’t tell us that the happy couple doesn’t exist.

Only God offers us a clear image into reality.  Everything else is photoshopped.

Sometimes people don’t always see how their faith impacts their life.  “It’s a personal thing” or “it’s between myself and God” are expressions of this idea.  But faith, and the way you live your life, can never be separated.  What you believe impacts how you behave.

Just look at the financial mess the world is facing.  While there are so many factors, perhaps too many to understand, that have triggered these events there is one thing we can look at: human behavior.  We see executives taking huge amounts of money while their companies go under.  Is there anything wrong with this?  Maybe not.  But can you imagine Jesus doing this?  The point of being a Kingdom person is that we are willing to sacrifice everything for our brothers and sisters. 

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends (John 15: 13)

The same should be true of the people we place in government.  Unfortunately it’s not.  By the time this is all said and done we will find politicians on both sides of the aisle (and other world leaders) who knowingly acted for their own welfare, sacrificing the welfare of their countries.  God warned Israel that the minute they put a king over them instead of God, the best of everything they had would belong to the state. 

But Christians can change this.  Not by forcing non-Christians to live by God’s rules, but by living out those rules for ourselves.  There is nothing more powerful than witnessing a life lived out in faith.  Nothing more convincing that God exists.

So in the midst of all of this, remember that faith applies to your life, just as much as it does to CEO’s and Senators.