Several years ago, when I was at a small group meeting, one of the girls in our group was discussing some recent growth she had experienced in the midst of difficult family circumstances.
“I think God blesses us with families so that we learn to be humble and to grow in Him,” she said.
Another girl in the group responded with wry humor, “Or families are a curse from the Fall!”
Photo by SuziJane (flickr.com)
We’ve all experienced rough times with family members. Even those who come from supportive Christian families still have to deal with conflicts, as multiple people with their own ideas and wills have to co-exist daily. While I don’t think families themselves are a part of the Fall (after all, Adam and Eve were put into a family together before the Fall), I do believe that the tensions and frustrations many people associate with “family” are a result of sin and the Fall. Since we are all sinners, we all hurt each other – sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.
Where friends, co-workers, teachers, and strangers are concerned, we can ignore people we don’t like. We can create distance and remove regular opportunities for conflict. With family members, especially those who live in the same house, distance and escape aren’t as practical. Living in families requires us to face our sinful natures – to struggle with our own sin and to struggle with others’ sins toward us.
And yet, in this broken mess that is often “family,” God is working. He is growing us, shaping us to be more like Jesus. The key is that we have to let Him do it. We can’t resent our family situations so much that we stop listening for His voice. We have to expect God to meet us right where we are and to work on our behalf, even when He doesn’t do it in the time or the manner that we think He should.
Have you ever felt like you were “cursed” with a family, rather than “blessed”? How is God working in and through your family life? Even if you can’t see or think of anything right away, spend at least ten minutes today thinking and praying about the good works that God is doing. Pray until God brings something to mind. Then thank Him for His provision and His strength. Ask Him to sharpen your faith through your family.
Photo by happykatie (flickr.com)
Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides You,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for Him.
You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember Your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them,
You were angry.
How then can we be saved?
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
No one calls on Your name
or strives to lay hold of You;
for You have hidden Your face from us
and made us waste away because of our sins.
Yet, O LORD, You are our Father.
We are the clay, You are the potter;
we are all the work of Your hand.
Isaiah 64:4-8
Isn’t it comforting to know that in spite of all of our shortcomings, our failures, our sins, that God still cares for us? These past few weeks, we’ve been focusing on different aspects of the way God relates to us. Like a Father, He tenderly cares for us. He takes pride in us and desires our best. Even when we rebel against Him, He loves us. As a Friend, God wants to be intimate with us. He confides His plans to us, and asks that we meet with Him, face to face. This week, we think about God as our Master. He is more than a Father who desires our best; He is also a Master potter who forms us with His very hand. If we let Him, He will mold us into a new creation. Hallelujah!
How do you see yourself being molded today?
Photo by EssjayNZ (flickr.com)
When I was reading through Leviticus awhile ago, I came across some gruesome commandments about sacrifice. Here’s an example:
If he brings a lamb as his sin offering, he is to bring a female without defect. He is to lay his hand on its head and slaughter it for a sin offering at the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered. Then the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering and pour out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar. He shall remove all the fat, just as the fat is removed from the lamb of the fellowship offering, and the priest shall burn it on the altar on top of the offerings made to the LORD by fire. In this way the priest will make atonement for him for the sin he has committed, and he will be forgiven (Leviticus 4:32-5).
As I read passage after passage of God commanding the Israelites to sacrifice animals, I started to feel uncomfortable.
My world view was being tested.
I’ve always been an animal lover. I suppose it’s in my genes. Everyone in my family is a sucker for cute, cuddly pets who need a home.
And here I was reading (and actually taking it in, instead of glossing it over as I had done so many times before when reading the Old Testament sacrifice passages) that God – my gracious, loving, wonderful God – required the death of cute, cuddly animals to atone for sin.
In my discomfort, I was tempted to gloss it over once again. On the surface, I just don’t know how to reconcile these two things. A tender, loving God with a God who demands bloody death and sacrifice. But this time, instead of moving on, I asked God about it.
“Father, is this really who You are? How can this be? How can the God I know and love so intimately be this same God who requires blood and death?”
Immediately, I felt the Holy Spirit respond. “Yes, it is who I am. It is very much part of who I am. And this isn’t as incompatible with your view of Me as you think. Death in Me is life. You can’t have the one without the other. You can’t be alive in Me until you’ve died to yourself – a horrible, bloody, gruesome death. It doesn’t come easily. It feels uncomfortable, even painful. It doesn’t feel fair. But after you’ve done it, true life can begin. My life in you.”
Once more, I repented of holding on to my own idea of how life should be lived. I repented of needing to feel in control of my life. I surrendered to Him again, laying myself on His altar, believing that something much better was waiting on the other side.
“The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised” (Job 1:20).
I APPEAL to you therefore, brethren, and beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship.
Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you] (Romans 12:1-2 AMP).
Have you ever wrestled with incompatible views of God? What happened? Have you faced questions from others about how a loving God can ask for painful sacrifices? What did you tell them?
From this morning’s email newsletter, an article by Dr. Jerry Root. Dr. Root teaches several courses in evangelism at Wheaton College. To learn more about Dr. Root, visit his faculty biography page. To sign up for our free newsletter, click here.
God Works Through Flawed Men and Women
There are many things those who share the Gospel do well to remember. Certainly it is good for us to recall that the message we share is the Good News of God’s love and forgiveness. But, as we carry the Gospel to others it is also good if we remember it is mediated through we who are so flawed and fallen. Have you ever noticed how everyone in the Bible could have introduced himself, or herself, in some kind of recovery group? Imagine it:
“Hi. My name is Abraham. I am a coward and a liar. I would tell a lie to put my wife’s life at risk in order to save my own skin.”
“Hi. We are Isaac and Rebecca and we’re dysfunctional parents.”
“Hi. My name is Jacob and I’m a cheater and a scoundrel.”
“Hi. My name is Aaron. I’m a religious leader; but I cave in to peer pressure.”
“Hi. My name is Miriam. I’m jealous of my little brother Moses and I’m a racist; I’m upset about his inter-racial marriage.”
“Hi. My name is Moses and I’m a hot-head and a murderer.”
“Hi. My name is Naomi and I am bitter.”
“Hi. My name is Samson and I struggle with lust.”
“Hi. My name is David. I am an adulterer and a murderer.”
“Hi. My name is Elijah and I struggle with depression.”
“Hi. My name is Thomas. I struggle with doubts.”
“Hi. My name is Mary Magdalene and I’m a prostitute.”
“Hi. My name is Peter and I let down my best friend when he needed me most.”
“Hi. My name is Timothy. I struggle with paralyzing fears and insecurities.”
“Hi. My name is Paul. I am a Christian killer and I am very difficult to work with.”
As I read about these “heroes of the faith” I see that each one was flawed and yet each did significant Kingdom work. I do not believe that they were rewarded for the flaws; nor do I believe their flaws were unrelated to the good that occurred in their lives. The flaws became grace places; places of humility, which I believe is a synonym for honesty. They came to acknowledge in progressively deeper ways their need of God’s love and mercy. For, to each, in his or her specific need, God came because He loved them; as He loves us. He loves us! He loves us with a love that is not conditioned by our performance…
…In Francis Thompson’s poem “The Hound of Heaven” the hound, who represents God, asks the man who has been running from Him (the man whose live is spent in dissipation), “Human love demands human meriting; how hast thou merited? Of all man’s dingiest clay thou art the dingiest clot. Alas, thou knowest not how unworthy of love thou art. Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, save me? Save only me. Rise, clasp my hand and come….” The words are very powerful. God’s love is not conditioned by performance and, perhaps, all the men and women listed above, went on to accomplish their greatest work after their hour of crisis because each understood more deeply than they might have otherwise known that God’s love was deeper, richer, wider, and mightier than they ever could have imagined. Furthermore, His forgiveness can go deeper too.
I love C. S. Lewis’s work. But there is a point where I disagree with him. In “Mere Christianity” he wrote that he thought pride was the greatest sin. I disagree. It is certainly bad; and, perhaps we can legitimately say it is at the apex of all sin. But an apex, like that in a pyramid, is always supported by that which is much more substantive at its base. In other words, pride is at the end of a process. When I think about what precedes pride, I come up with insecurity or fear. In pride or pretense, the tendency is to make myself look better than I am because I fear if folks really and truly knew me as I am they would reject me. Fear precedes pride. And this fear is often insipid in most human subcultures; perhaps because it is so deeply embedded in our fallen sense of self. If we marginalize the strugglers in our midst with words like: “Out of fellowship”; “Carnal”; “Backslider”; though nobody would say it explicitly, implied in this is the expectation that everyone should be perfect in our subculture. Since nobody is perfect, this false expectation breeds pretense. Everybody goes about trying to make themselves look better than they are. This behavior is so contrary to real life that it seeks to be rationalized and validated and can only be done so pharisaically. The community moves into grace-denying constructs. Pride as I mentioned above is preceded by fear and insecurity.
The Bible says that the antidote to fear is the love of God. “Perfect love casts out fear” (I John 4:18). I think a corollary to that verse is that imperfect love breeds anxiety. You and me, we’ve never been loved perfectly by anybody. Remember: “Human love demands human meriting.” We are saddled with the burden of anxiety by well-meaning folks who loved us as well as they might but were incapable of loving us perfectly. Of course it gets worse before it gets better; nobody we’ve ever loved has been loved perfectly by us as well. We have also burdened others with the anxiety of our well-intended but deficient love. Only God, from whom we can hide nothing, God, who fully knows us, can love us thoroughly with the transformational love that casts out fear. So, if my analogy is correct, and pride is at the apex of the pyramid, than the greatest sin at the very base of the pyramid is the unwillingness to receive the love of God unto ourselves. He comes to us with Incarnate grace as He came to each of those heroes listed above in their darkest hours to restore them. The true Kingdom of God is made up of broken men and women mended by the love and mercy of God. I do not know much; but I do know this is true. And I know that it is these kinds of people He deploys into the world to spread the Gospel. They are the only kind He has to work with. Andrew’s offering of five loaves and two fish to feed the 5,000 wasn’t much for the work that had to be done. But Jesus took what was offered and did something great with it! So too, with the offering to tell others about Jesus – it is mediated through flawed men and women, eager to tell others of His love and forgiveness which is free for the taking.
Jerry Root Ph.D.
Wheaton College
