GOD SEES US AS WE CAN BE!

“And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, and said unto him, The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!” (Judges 6:12). The angel uttered these words and for a moment the earth stopped in its orbit, the wind died, and birds stopped chirping . . . the world went silent and still. This was the angel of heaven talking to the wimp in the hole in the ground and calling him a “mighty man of valor.” All of nature knew that something was going on here, because in the natural Gideon was about as far removed from being a man of valor as one could be.

The year was about 1256 BC and the Midianites were making life miserable for the Jewish nation. In the roughly 200 years since Joshua had led the victorious nation into the Promised Land, Israel had turned from their wholehearted devotion to Jehovah and become stubborn, rebellious and compromised. Israel was given opportunity after opportunity to make things rights and like a pig, they returned to the mud and grime of disobedient living. Out of the desert came a raiding tribe of nomads, the Midianites. They were cruel, relentless raiders so persistent in devastating the Jews that they finally drove them into hiding. The Jews lived in constant fear of the Midianite raiders.

Gideon was in a winepress, in this case essentially a large hole in the ground, trying to thresh enough wheat to feed his family. Threshing by hand requires a little wind so that as the kernels of wheat are separated from the stock, they fall to the ground, and the breeze blows away the chaff. A simple lesson of life is that you do not thresh wheat in a hole in the ground, and that is what Gideon was trying to do. There was no wind down there, threshing is hot work, there is lots of dust and chaff, and Gideon was a mess.

I think when the angel uttered these words to Gideon he had to stifle a laugh, because the scene before him was not that of Davy Crockett at the Alamo or General George Patton charging up his troops for the push into Germany in WWII. It was more like Pee Wee Herman playing in a sandbox. The incongruity of the depiction of Gideon as a “mighty man of valor” and the obvious timidity and fright of the man in the hole in the ground was startling.

When I graduated from college I had no idea where I would fit in God’s kingdom. It seemed like I learned to find where God wanted me to be by listening to the no’s that came from heaven. Several churches extended invitations for us to join their staff but as we prayed, heaven would say, “No, that’s not for you.” To make a long story even longer (I jest), we have always followed the doors that were open. And as the Lord said to go or at least didn’t say no, one thing has led to another and to another and to another.

One of the things I have learned over the years is that it is often easier for others to see your potential than it is for you to see it in yourself. David Wilkerson gave me much encouragement in this area. David saw where my gifts were when I couldn’t see them for myself and graciously moved me into areas of  leadership and administration that I didn’t think I would ever be good at.

When the angel stood on the edge of the hole and looked down at Pee Wee threshing wheat, covered in dust, dirt and sweat, that is not what he saw. Yes, that was what was standing there but what the angel saw by faith was the man God would use to lead Israel out of the pit and into freedom. God didn’t need a John Wayne who had his act so together that he didn’t really need anyone but himself. God wanted a man who had no confidence in his flesh and simply wanted to please the Lord. That was the man the angel saw in the hole.

 God sees us not as we are but as we can be!

When the Apostle Peter first met Jesus, he was a vacillating, impetuous, lying fisherman with little hope for the future. Jesus looked at him and said, “So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas (which means Peter)” (John 1:42, ESV). Both names in their original language mean “rock.”

Jesus did not see Peter as he was, He saw his potential and what he could and would become. I do not believe the Lord was saying that Peter would be the rock upon which the church would be built but that it would be built by men and women who, in the natural, did not seem to have the potential to do anything great. Men and women who would make themselves available to God for His service. Peter would be one of those "rocks" upon which would become the foundation of His church.

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29, NIV).

HE DIDN'T FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS AND HE LOST HIS WAY!

On three different occasions while wandering through the wilderness, Moses and the children of Israel had to deal with the issue of there being no water. Being in the desert with no water is definitely an issue! Actually, Moses had to deal with it — while the children of Israel grumbled and complained.

The first time was right after the Red Sea crossing (Exodus 15:22-26). Three days into the wilderness they came to an oasis called Marah, but they could not drink the water there because it was bitter — and the people got upset. Moses cried out to the Lord God showed him what to do. After Moses did it, the water became drinkable (see verse 25). Then the Lord spoke again to Moses and said, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in His eyes, and give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer” (verse 26) and God was not just talking about physical healing!

The second time is later that year when the whole Jewish nation was deeper into the journey and arrived at Rephidim (Exodus 17:1-7). There was no water of any kind to drink and this time the people argued with Moses and demanded that he “give us water to drink” (verse 2). The people were grumbling, complaining, and questioning if God was really with them in their journey. Does that sound familiar to questions you have had when things have not gone as you hoped and you have asked, “God, where are you?” Again Moses cried out to God saying, “What shall I do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me” (verse 4). God told Moses to strike the rock with the rod and water would come. Moses did as God instructed him and the water gushed forth.

The third time was about 38 years later at Kadesh. The children of Israel were still not in the Promised Land and when they arrived at Kadesh, there was no water and, yes, they began to grumble and complain about why Moses had brought them out of Egypt. Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before the Lord and God told Moses to speak to the rock (Numbers 20: 2-13).  God’s answer and instructions were explicit but instead of speaking to the rock, Moses took it upon himself to take his rod and strike the rock, not once but twice, in anger. Moses had an unresolved anger issue but I will write about that at another time.

Moses did not follow God’s directions and it cost him dearly. Water did come out of the rock in abundance and that is a wonderful picture of grace — but Moses was in error. God said to him, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them” (Numbers 20:12).

Moses never got to go into the Promised Land — he never crossed the Jordan to set foot in the land God had spoken to Him about. Why was God so severe with Moses and what does that have to do with us today?

While we are not supposed to sin, false teaching on grace says it does not really matter if believers behave badly. The prostituted teaching on grace says that adultery, or stealing, or whatever you might do that is not right,  simply do not do it again and grace has you covered. It is true that our bad behavior, as children of God, will not cost us our salvation but there will be consequences — because God demands it.

 

God does not wink at bad behavior in His children and say, “Oh, they are just kids and you know how kids are, they’ll grow out of this stage in their life!” God is a loving Father who is teaching His children how to triumph and He will teach us not to do those things again. In Moses’ case, however, it cost him the fulfillment of the promise (Hebrews 12:5-6).

God’s message to Moses after he struck the rock helps us to see why He responded to Moses as He did. This is the way He responds to us when we do not follow His directions. Here’s what God laid out for Moses — and what we should understand.

     1.   Moses’ bad behavior, his failure to follow instructions, stemmed from unbelief. “Because you did not     believe in me” (Numbers 20:12). When Moses disregarded God’s clear instructions and did things his own way, he was expressing unbelief. Moses was elevating himself and his disregard, his disrespect, was a form of unbelief.

     2.   Unbelief diminishes God’s glory; it diminishes God in the eyes of others. “You did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel.” What a terrible thing to have God say to you. “You did not think highly enough of Me and of My instructions, so you showed your disrespect publicly by doing things your own way. You diminished Me in the eyes of the people of Israel.”

     3. There are consequences to not following directions. “Therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”

We ask the Lord for clear direction on how to achieve the best for Him and He gives it to us. We get our direction through His Word, or it comes in prayer or through the counsel of trusted friends whose counsel is in harmony with His Word. Or God may order the circumstances of our life to show us His path. He speaks clearly to us but when we put our own spin on it, we are left wondering why we do not quite get where we thought we would.

If we do not follow the directions, we will not get where we are supposed to!

IS CHRISTIANITY DYING IN AMERICA?

“For the first time in its history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority, according to a new study. One reason: The     

number of Americans with no religious affiliation is on the rise. The percentage of Protestant adults in the U.S. has reached a low of 48 percent, the first time that Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has reported” (Associated Press, 10/9/2012).

This study goes on to say that the fastest growing segment of adult Americans is those who have no religious affiliation of any kind. Approximately 20 percent identify with this group, which is currently growing at an amazing one percent per year.

During the first week of April 2009, two significant events spoke to this issue. First was the cover story of Newsweek magazine, “The Decline of Christian America,” a well-written and thought-provoking piece. The second was a statement that President Obama made while speaking in Turkey: “America is not a Christian nation.” What an interesting place the President chose to make this statement. Turkey is a predominately Muslim nation.

Frankly, I don’t have an argument with either the Newsweek article or the President’s statement because I think they are simply confirming the obvious. We live in a post-Christian nation and the quicker we awaken to this fact and embrace it, the better off we will be. In the three years since the Newsweek article and the President’s statement, the number of people claiming to be Christians in America has continued to decline. Currently, less than 19 percent of Americans attend church regularly and that percentage grows smaller every year. While we rejoice in the growth of a few mega-churches, the hard fact is that Christianity is declining — it’s dying in America!

More than once in the last few years I have written that we are in a critical time in the Church and that stormy weather is ahead. The dark clouds now gathering on the horizon are more significant than any we have previously experienced. 

You may think I’m crazy, but stormy weather actually can have a positive effect on the Church and its future. Harsh attacks on the Church that threaten its existence can have a cleansing and refocusing effect. Rodents that have been a nuisance, that have brought filth into the ship of faith, and have fed on food that was not theirs, will clear out or be washed away. Everything that is not tied down will get blown away and many believers will find their voices in witness and new power in prayer.

When the early Church had difficulty fulfilling the Great Commission and simply wanted to hang out in Jerusalem, God put an end to their unwillingness by permitting the hammer of persecution to fall. God took a missionary in pre-training and used him to scatter the Church (see Acts 8:1). Before his conversion, Paul (then called Saul) was used of God to pressure the Church and cause them to spread throughout the Roman Empire. They did not go willingly — they only stepped out because they feared for their lives. Will God allow the hammer of persecution to fall on America? Just how arrogant are we?

In China today, the Church is spreading more rapidly than just about anywhere else on earth.  The more the Communists try to stamp out Christianity, the more it spreads. The more persecution falls on the Church, the greater the purity of the believers; the greater the purity of the believers, the more they are available to the Holy Spirit; the more they are Spirit-led, the more the Church spreads, resulting in more evangelism.

I hope what I just wrote causes some of you to be uncomfortable, maybe even angry. We call ourselves here in the West a Spirit-filled community and yet the persecuted Church around the world is more powerfully alive and well than we are, even though they have almost nothing in comparison to our freedom and affluence. Our Church in the West is shrinking and losing what little influence we had. The persecuted Church, living under tyranny, is thriving, growing, and no matter what the oppressors do, they cannot shut it down. When the heavy boot of persecution stomps on the Church, the remnants squirt out the sides and start all over. What began as one body of believers and was persecuted suddenly becomes several, and all of them have the life of Jesus flowing in and through them.

I think the best thing that could happen to the Church in North America right now would be a good slap of persecution. Maybe a hard head-slap would knock some of the silliness out of the Pentecostal/charismatic Church. Maybe throwing a few evangelical pastors in jail would cause contemporary thinking to get reoriented to what is really important instead of what is cool and culturally relevant. Maybe the blows of the persecutor would cause some of the pastors of historic denominations to get up off their padded chairs and walk the streets ministering the life of Jesus to the lost, lonely and broken. Maybe a good punch in the nose would cause the sleepy Church of 2012 to wake up and act like the Church was destined to be. Maybe taking away the tax incentives for charitable giving and taking away the tax-free status of churches would get us back to the basics of why we worship through giving!

“The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you. Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you” (John 15:19-20, New Living Translation).

THE ALMIGHTY

 Abraham was in a crisis! At ninety-nine years of age, he had no son, no heir to pass his wealth to. At his advanced age he was incapable of fathering children and his wife, Sarah, was barren. The crisis was compounded in Abraham’s mind by the fact that God had promised that if he would follow His direction, He would make him “the father of many nations.” Abraham had done what God had asked but there had been no fulfillment of the promise.

Twenty-four years earlier God had spoken to Abraham, “Go from your country . . . to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation” (Genesis 12:1-2, ESV). In obedience Abraham took his wife Sarah, his nephew Lot and everything they owned and stepped out in faith to follow God’s leading. They came to the land of the Canaanites and God appeared to Abraham, saying, “To your offspring I will give this land” (Genesis 12:7, ESV). Abraham responded positively to God’s word and settled down to live and worship Him in this new land.  Expectation filled his heart, for God’s word was that he would be a father and the patriarch of a great nation.

Eleven years passed and still there was no son. Sarah bore no children and both Abraham and Sarah were frustrated by the unfulfilled promise. I am sure that more than once Abraham consoled his wife, saying, “Sarah, God promised we would have a son.” But then another year would go by and still Sarah was barren, Abraham was not a father, and frustration and doubt found a place to take hold.

The frustration burst forth when Abraham said to the Lord, “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son? Since you’ve given me no children, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household, will inherit all my wealth. You have given me no descendants of my own, so one of my servants will be my heir” (Genesis 15:2-3, NLT).

Not long after this Sarah had an idea. She conceived a plan to “assist” God’s promise in being fulfilled and in so doing, she made a tragic mistake. She took it upon herself to try to manipulate the promise of God coming to fruition. Sarah’s misguided idea was that Abraham would father a child by one of her servants, Hagar. Sarah seemed to think this would fulfill her desire to be a mother and would answer the apparent lack of God fulfilling His promise — but what happened is an endless tragedy. 

There is no indication that Abraham resisted the idea at all and he fathered a child by the Egyptian servant Hagar. Hagar’s pregnancy brought strife into the home and eventually Sarah persuaded Abraham to put Hagar out of the family, on her own in the wilderness. While Abraham’s impregnating Hagar was a mistake, God would have none of the disgraceful behavior of Abraham and Sarah and He caused Hagar to humbly return to Sarah and ask for forgiveness. Abraham and Hagar’s son Ishmael would become the father of the Arab nations and would be a continuing thorn and problem for the Jewish nation and the world to this day (see Genesis 16:11-12).  Such is the danger of our trying to manipulate the promises of God.

Abraham’s body was past the point of fathering children and Sarah was barren — but was the promise of God dead, as well? It was at least twenty-four years since God had initially made His promise to Abraham and there was still no fulfillment in sight. In the natural no fulfillment was possible, so it would be safe to say, “The dream, the promise, the anticipation is dead! Turn out the lights, the party’s over!”

It’s at this point of despair that God reveals Himself to Abraham in a way not seen before in Scripture. God speaks to Abraham and says, “I am Almighty God (El Shaddai); walk before me and be blameless.  And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly . . . and you shall be a father of many nations” (Genesis 17:1, 2, 4, NKJV).

The names of God reveal His nature and character to us. This is not an accidental use of the word Almighty (El Shaddai), which means, “God, all powerful and all sufficient.” God is saying clearly to Abraham and to us, “When everything seems to be impossible and there is no apparent answer for the problem you face, I am still God! I am still the Sovereign of the Universe and My promises and My Word are sure! My power is not diminished — and I have not forgotten!”

How many of you are guilty, as I have been, of getting upset and discouraged because a promise that God quickened to your heart has not come to pass yet? We will never understand His timing. That is beyond our capabilities for He is sovereign and eternal and we are not! It is not over and God is not done with you just because a promise He quickened to your heart has not yet been fulfilled! He is still God Almighty and there is no power in hell or on earth that can withstand the fulfillment of God’s Word and His promises. It will happen because the Sovereign of the Universe, El Shaddai, has said it would!

About one year after Abraham’s crisis, Isaac was born (Genesis 21:1-3). Time had passed by Abraham and Sarah but the promise of God had not!

^“You need to persevere [patient endurance] so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised” (Hebrews 10:36, NIV).