In the Master’s Hand

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?

Friend of God

Have you ever felt like sometimes we (Christians) are too chummy with God?

Now, I’m the first to confess that I need more intimacy with Jesus, not less. I want more of Him, a deeper relationship, stronger faith. I want to know His thoughts and His heart for me and for the world.

But allow me to play “you know who’s” advocate for a moment. Sometimes, I feel like our focus on intimacy with God as our friend overshadows our understanding of God as King and Master. Like all things, it’s easier to go all in one way or the other, instead of having a balance.

What do you think? Is it hard for you to view God both as your friend and as your King? How do we seek intimacy with Him, while at the same time, revering Him?

Following in the Footsteps of Father God

Happy Father’s Day!

Today, I’d like to share a writing from James Gilliland. James is the Pastor of Worship Arts at Sheboygan eFree Church in Sheboygan, WI. He is the father of two little girls, Abby (19 months) and Kaylee (5 months). James, his wife Christina, and his daughters live in Sheboygan Falls, WI. You can follow his new blog at http://psalmistandcolumnist.blogspot.com.

As a child, I was particularly jealous of every mother on each Mother’s Day and every father on each Father’s Day. They seemed to get the royal treatment: breakfast in bed, special recognition in the morning sermon, lots of nods and applause on the TV, big time discounts in retail stores and local restaurants, and, of course, generous gifts and affirmations from friends and family. Certainly not that they were undeserving, but  perhaps I envied that different style of celebration. In response, I invented my own holiday, Brother’s Day, held on the second Sunday of each August, where myself and my two little brothers would buy gifts for each other. (As for getting the rest of the aforementioned royal treatment, I was working on that.) It started out well, as my little brothers were too young at the time to have gainful employment, so the task of buying gifts for me was naturally given to my parents.

Here I am, fifteen years later. I’m a father, already slowly turning into the hard-to-buy-for dad I tried not to be. If one of my little girls followed in my footsteps and proposed the existence of a Sister’s Day, I’m not sure what my reaction would be. (Sadly, Brother’s Day never got off the ground, and I never heard back from Hallmark on it, either.)

I would think that the biggest thing that fatherhood contributes to your relationship with God the Father is perspective. Now, you might think that my purporting such an analogy in which I represent God is nothing short of prideful. On the contrary.

It’s very humbling.

Once I knew that I was, in part, responsible for the upbringing of a clean-slate human being, all my flaws, hypocrisies and my potential future mistakes surfaced in my mind. How can I be a dad? I wouldn’t wish my mistakes and some of my experiences on anyone, and now it could happen to the very people I’m called, both by God and by state law, to nurture, through my bad example and influence. Though I felt ill-equipped and even hazardous, I was a role model to a human being.

As my first daughter learned to crawl, I could at least comfort myself in what I knew I could teach her: the basics of not to touch the stove, knives, electrical sockets, etc. Beyond the normal desire to explore, our daughter is like her parents in her self-driven independence, for better or for worse. And it’s amounted to a few daughter-parent conflicts and episodes of tough love where we have to remove her from reaching a potentially harmful toy or leave her in her crib to “cry it out.” She really doesn’t understand that we know better than she does what’s better for her.

And then there’s rebellion. Last night, in fact, she refused to go to bed. She stood up at the end of her crib for almost an hour, shouting, almost waking up her younger sister. Our occasional scolding visits seemed futile, as she just smiled and giggled after we forcibly laid her back down. It can be hard to keep your love for a child unchanging when they’re defying, inconveniencing or even hurting you, but your obligation to them is unchanging as well.

But, oh, do I love to brag about her. My oldest is only nineteen months old, but she can already sing songs, dance and count to ten. You will never (aside from her younger sister) find a more intelligent, artistic or beautiful little girl. You can’t ever persuade me otherwise. Maybe I’m biased, but she’s my little girl.

God the Father, on the other hand, given His holiness and purity, is quite the sufficient role model. God the Father, given His knowledge, experience and perspective, knows a lot better than we do what’s better for us (I tend to have trouble with that one). God better tolerates and unconditionally loves us despite our most disrespectful rebellion. And, oh, does He love to brag about us.

This regularly gives me some proper perspective.

Photo by Kevin Shorter (flickr.com). Read Kevin’s blog post about What Kids’ Prayers Can Teach Us.

Keep Fighting

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings (1 Peter 5:8-9).

Sometimes spiritual life feels like this, doesn’t it? We think we’re doing things right – we’re sticking to the “water” where we don’t think the enemy can reach us. Then, the next thing we know, in the midst of our church-going, Bible-studying, and prayer, the enemy has got us on dangerous land by the throat.

Fortunately, the analogy changes there. Unlike a real lion’s prey, Christians, the “prey” of the devil, have a lot of weapons available to fight back.

When the enemy has you by the neck, it’s very tempting to forget the good stuff you filled up on when things seemed to be going well. It’s easy to turn away from those things, in fact. It’s easy to say, “Well, God said He would protect me, but I don’t see Him anywhere now, so whatever. I guess I’ll just do what I want to do anyway. I guess I’ll fall back into temptations I had been running from. He doesn’t seem to care what happens to me.”

But when we have a reaction to suffering that rejects the good things we’ve put into our spirit, we stay in the enemy’s jaws. Eventually, we can be eaten up entirely – given over to depression and spiritual death.

If, on the other hand, we have a fighting attitude in the enemy’s jaws, he cannot stay locked on us forever. We can resist him, and it will work. It may not work exactly when and how we want, but if we persevere in our faith, if we take heart in knowing that we’re not alone, if we continue to trust God when it isn’t easy, we will overcome.

Have you experienced times of great trials and suffering in your life? What was your response? Have you had times when you responded with defeat? Other times when you responded with perseverance? What are some Scriptures that have helped you in hard times?