WITS' END AS A MEANS OF GRACE

Psalm 107:23-32

Life can sometimes take you to your limits.  It takes you to places where you know you can't stand any more, only to discover there that somehow, some way, a spark of strength remains you never knew you had.  You discover that your limits are not your demise but that God in you enables you to keep on pressing on.  

 

Some days you want to retreat and throw-in-the-towel because you know you can't go on, that you have reached the end of your resources.  Some days you are tempted to call into question that awesome Biblical promise on which you have relied so often, "God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able..." (I Cor. 10:13).  Some days you fall, exhausted, into the dust, and know you have reached your wits' end. 

 

In that desert place, however, God is at work.   You can't always see Him and you don't always have a visible handle on how He is at work.  He is at work, though, because somehow, some way, you find yourself getting out of the dust, brushing yourself off, and continuing on the journey.  

 

There is a grace in being at wits' end.   Oswald Chambers has a wonderful word about this.  He says, " When a person is at his wits’ end, it no longer seems to be a cowardly thing to pray; in fact, it is the only way he can get in touch with the truth and the reality of God Himself. " (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, August 29).  Wits' end leads to “the reality of God Himself.”  What an interesting thought.   

 

The desert leads to truth.  The desert leads to reality.   The desert leads to God.  That which at certain times leads you to believe you are going to die, is actually leading you to your only true source of life.   Wits' end is not the moment to despair; rather, it is the place where one is invited to meet the One True God.  

 

At wits' end you recognize you are not self-sufficient and that the world does not revolve around you.   You recognize your limits and come to know that ultimately and finally, in so many areas, you are powerless.  At the moment of recognition one of two things can happen.  You can get bitter and withdraw deeper and deeper into your pain, or you can see, by faith, possibilities you never saw before.   At that moment Oswald Chambers helps up again.  He says,

Be yourself before God and present Him with your problems— the very things that have brought you to your wits’ end. But as long as you think you are self-sufficient, you do not need to ask God for anything…To say that “prayer changes things” is not as close to the truth as saying, “Prayer changes me and then I change things.” God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things. Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person’s inner nature.

It occurs to me that in this thing called life, I am the one who needs to be worked on.  God is not the problem here.  I am.  The desert wits' end, is my divine opportunity to "Give Jesus Christ the opportunity and the room to work" (Chambers).  I want to call being at wits' end of the devil.  Maybe, however, it is the place of grace where I meet, not the devil, but God, the place where  I am invited to invite God in, and in His presence, "to get into touch with the reality of God Himself" (Chambers). 

 

Suddenly, wits' end is the sacramental table where grace is extended into my life and where, being confronted by my lack of sufficiency, I discover the all-sufficiency of the God who meets me right where I am.   

 

 

 

Pentecost: LIKE A VIOLENT WIND

Acts 2:1-4

On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit broke into the midst of His gathered people, and He came in such power that Luke described it as being “like a violent wind” (vs. 2).  The Believers were enabled with a supernatural power to speak the Word of God so that people from at least fifteen language groups, represented at the Pentecost celebration, understood the Gospel so clearly that by the end of the day some three thousand people had come to faith in Jesus Christ.  

It all began with “a noise like a violent wind.”  Luke says the noise “came from heaven” (vs. 2).  This event was born of God.  In our language we might say this was a God-thing.  This event wasn’t worked up or even expected by the Believers. They had been waiting but they didn’t know exactly what they were waiting for except the fulfillment of the promise, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you”(Acts 1:8).  How this receiving would take place the Believers did not know but when it happened, they knew.  They knew God was on the move and that things had changed.  Under the influence of the Holy Spirit they came out of the upper room different than they were when they went into the upper room.  They were changed, under the influence of God’s Holy Spirit.  They would never be the same; neither would the world.

We are told that Dwight L. Moody was to have an evangelistic campaign in England. An elderly pastor protested, "Why do we need this 'Mr. Moody'? He's uneducated and inexperienced. Who does he think he is anyway? Does he think he has a monopoly on the Holy Spirit?" A younger, wiser pastor rose and responded, "No, but the Holy Spirit has a monopoly on Mr. Moody."

Perhaps this is what happened to those first Believers.  God showed up in a power that filled them with the very life of God so much so that it could rightly be said that God had a monopoly of them.  I don’t know if the event of Acts chapter two will ever be repeated in the exact same way but I am convinced that God can show up in a person’s life, baptize that person with the Holy Spirit, and fill that person to overflowing with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23), so that it can be said of that person, God had a monopoly on them and they wouldn’t change it for the world.

Does God have a life-transforming monopoly on my life?  On yours?  On the Church?  Years ago, author Jamie Buckingham visited a dam on the Columbia River. He'd always thought that the water spilling over the top provided the power, not realizing that it was just froth, and that deep within, turbines and generators transformed the power of tons and tons of water to electricity--quietly, without notice, not like the flashy froth on top.  

The presence of the Holy Spirit in a people takes their eyes off the froth and onto the source of the power of God.  Let’s not be people of the “froth,” but people of the turbines and generators of Almighty God.  “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Day 49: On The Road To Pentecost: AND IT SHALL BE

Acts 2:17-21

May I turn to John Henry Jowett again?  He writes of the experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit this way,

The Apostle Peter traces the stream of Pentecostal blessing to a tomb. This “river of water of life” has its “rise” in a death of transcendent sacrifice. And I must never forget these dark beginnings of my eternal hope. It is well that I should frequently visit the sources of my blessedness, and kneel on “the green hill far away.”      

It will save me from having a cheap religion. I shall never handle the gifts of grace as though they had cost nothing. There will always be the marks of blood upon them, the crimson stain of incomparable sacrifice.      

And it will save me from all flippancy in my religious life. When I visit the cross and the tomb, life is transformed from a picnic into a crusade. For that is ever my peril, to picnic on the banks of the river and to spend my days in emotional loitering.    

After all, my Pentecost is purposed to prepare me for my own Gethsemane and Calvary! Life is given me in order that I may spend it again in ready and fruitful sacrifice.  (My Daily Meditation, May 24)

We followers of Jesus are a people of His life, suffering, death, and resurrection.  We live with purpose and meaning.  The God of the universe has entered into His creation to set it free from the rages of sin and evil.  His community is a community in which the new life is practiced by bent and broken people.  His community is an oasis of hope in a sea of despair.  This is why we need the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in us.  This is a God thing.  The is a heaven-on-earth thing.  This is a miracle of love and grace and mercy.  This is a table at which there is a place for all of us. 

When the Church of Jesus is doing life right, it is a community of love, forgiveness, hope joy, peace, truth, justice, and righteousness.  Do you feel overwhelmed at the magnitude of God’s call on your life?  You should.  It is bigger than you or me.  We can never take it lightly or think we are stronger than we really are.  We need the Holy Spirit to be the dominating influence in our lives.   Furthermore, Jesus, knowing the depth of our bent and brokenness, but knowing too how much we are willing to do for our children, says, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him” (Luke 11:13).  

The Father is more willing to fill our lives with the marvelous reality of the Holy Spirit than we are to ask it of Him.  We live in a world that cares very little about the things of God but we live here embraced, filled, baptized, and equipped by the Holy Spirit.  May God help us to be a Spirit-filled people in word, truth, and deed.  May the light of Jesus shine bright in and through our lives.

Day 48, On The Road To Pentecost: WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT AND FIRE

Matthew 3:11-17

John the Baptist said, “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire…. After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.’”

We call John the Baptist the forerunner of the Christ.  It was said of him,

“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare His ways; to give to His people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:76-79)

Jesus said of John, “among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist!” (Matt. 11:11a).  Jesus said to all of us, however, “Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” (Matt. 11:11b) John said of himself, in relation to Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).  

In one of his devotional thoughts, John Henry Jowett wrote “The Holy Spirit…will create an atmosphere in my life which will quicken all sweet and beautiful growth. And this shall be my native air…And the Holy Spirit…will create a holy enthusiasm in my soul, an intense and sacred love, which will burn up all evil intruders, but in which all beautiful things shall walk unhurt….”   (My Daily Meditation, May 23)

God seeks to do acts of amazing grace and love in our world, and His Church is the vehicle of that grace.  We are not the story.  Jesus is the story, and the Holy Spirit is the fire in our bellies that moves us to say to the world that Jesus is God’s beloved Son, in whom God is  well-pleased.  Come to Him. Let the Life of His Life be in you.  Let Him draw you to Himself that you may know how much God loves you.  

“With the Holy Spirit and fire” Jesus lives in His people.  As the influence of His presence in us increases, we discover the magnificent reality of a love that will not let us go.  As we live in Him we discover that grace is extended to everyone, and that Jesus was incredibly and overwhelmingly truthful when He said, “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved…the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

Day 47, On The Road To Pentecost: A WITNESS WITH US

Acts 1:15-26

There came a point in the story of the church before the day of Pentecost when the small group of people had grown to “about one hundred and twenty” (vs. 15).  As they waited and prayed, Peter decided they needed to elect someone to replace the fallen Judas.  He turned to Psalm 109:8 to make his point, “Let another man take his office” (21).  With that, Peter concluded, “It is necessary that of the men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us -- beginning with the baptism of John until the day that He was taken up from us -- one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection” (vss. 21-22).  

At the point they had an election between two men they felt were qualified, and chose Matthias who was then added to the other eleven (see vs.26). After his election we never hear his name mentioned again in Scripture.  This raises a question or two.  Did Peter jump to a conclusion?  Did he misread Scripture.  Was it an irresponsible act on the part of those gathered in the upper room?  Why don’t we ever hear of Matthias again?  

I don’t want to make a bigger deal out of this than necessary, but I do wonder how it all fits into the narrative around the birth of the Church.  I believe, and take this with a grain of salt please, that the replacement for Judas was to be the one we best know as the apostle Paul.  In I Corinthians 15 Paul lists several people to whom Jesus appeared after His resurrection.  Of this Paul says, “last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also” (I Cor. 15:8).  On the road to Damascus, at the time of Paul’s conversion, Jesus said to Him, “get up and enter the city, and it will be told to you what you must do” (Acts 9:6).  In Damascus, there was “a disciple named Ananias” (Acts 9:10). Jesus chose him to be Paul’s first encounter as a Christian. To Ananias Jesus said of Paul, “He is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel” (vs. 15).  Paul saw this as a calling on his life, and said of the experience, “as to one untimely born, He (Jesus) appeared to me also.”  

I am aware that I may be engaged here with unimportant gibberish, but I actually do have a point.  You and I are not the apostle Paul.  We’re just followers of Jesus, committed to what He is doing in the world.  And it occurs to me that most Christians live lives of obscurity, except in their small circles of influence.  Two great saints who led me to Christ were my mom and dad.  They are gone now, and their names will not appear in any history of Christianity in America.  I contend, however, that they are people “of whom the world was not worthy” (Hebrews 11:38).  They showed up in their time and lived faithfully for Christ in their world.  Like Matthias, they served pretty much in obscurity; and the world is better for their having been here.

The truth is we do what we know to do, and always, we leave outcomes to God.

Day 46, On The Road To Pentecost: THEY DEVOTED THEMSELVES TO PRAYER

Acts 1: 9-14 

After the disciples watched Jesus ascend up into a cloud taking him “out of their sight” (Acts 1:9), two men dressed in “white clothing”, said to them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky?  This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven” (vs. 10-11).  And, that was that.  Jesus was gone.  The disciples gazed intently into the sky where they last saw Him.  Two men challenged them with a question and a promise.  That was that.  The question at that point might have been, “What do we do now?”

The eleven disciples returned to Jerusalem and went up into an upper room where they were joined by a group of people described as, “the women…Mary the mother of Jesus, and…His brothers” (vs. 13-14).  It was a small group of people who were probably still bewildered by all that they had experience over the past three years.  We don’t know how it all came together, we just know that “these all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer” (vs. 14).  

In his helpful book called, Quiet Talks On Prayer (First published in 1904), S. D. Gordon says, “You can do more than pray after you have prayed but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.”  Maybe these first Christians of Acts chapter two, instinctively knew this.  We can only speculate.  What we do know is that in this bewildering time, they gathered together, united their hearts into one, came before God, and opened their hearts in prayer.    

We know, too, that all throughout both the Old and New Testaments the people of God were praying people.  Prayer was at the heart of their relationship with God and of their faith.  So, these first Believers prayed.  They listened, they quieted their hearts.  They knew something was afoot, and as a people “with one mind” they prayed.

Years ago, I discovered the words of E. M. Bounds about prayer.  I believed them when I first read them, and I believe them now.  Bounds wrote,

What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but people whom the Holy Spirit can use -- people of prayer, people mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through people. He does not come on machinery, but on people. He does not anoint plans, but people – people of prayer. (Power Through Prayer, originally published in 1910).

Pentecost was fast approaching but first the disciples quieted their hearts before God and prayed, because it is people of prayer God uses to pour out His grace into the world.  May we be some of those people.

Day 45, On The Road To Pentecost: CALL TO BE WITNESSES

Acts 1:1-8 

In his Gospel, Luke had told the story of Jesus up to His suffering, crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension.  In the book of Acts, Luke tells the story of Jesus at work in the world through His Holy Spirit.  After the resurrection Jesus had “presented Himself alive…by many convincing proofs, appearing to the them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).  At the end of that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (Acts 1:5).  The disciples wondered if this would be the time when God would restore “the kingdom to Israel” (vs. 6).  Jesus then said something extremely important, something we need to remember today, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth”  (vs. 7-8).

Now the stage was set for what God was going to do next in the world.  Also, apparently all the disciples needed to know at that time was the fact that they were going to “receive power” when they would “be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”  This baptism, this power, would enable them to be “witnesses” of Jesus, and would set into motion a movement that is still underway in the twenty-first century.

Today, the realities that birthed the Church two thousand years ago are the same realties that breathe life into the Church today.  The resurrected and now living Lord Jesus Christ, still invites people into His beloved family, still baptizes them with the Holy Spirit, still enables them to be living witness of the Christ, and does it all around the world.  

Have you ever wondered about what it really means to live as a follower of Jesus in your world?  Jesus says it means that we are His witnesses.  Caught up into His grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness, we live them out. We tell the truth.  We witness to His life.  We take our lives, broken and fragile though they be, and we let God fill us with the Life of His Holy Spirit, and we let our “light shine before (people in our world) in such a way that that may see [our] good works, and glorify [our] Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).

Maybe the question that is ours to answer today is, “what are some practical, hands on, ways we can live out the grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness of Jesus?”  "Good works"  Think about this.  How can we live so that others may see in us the Jesus who loves us and whom we love?  

I’m not sure it’s rocket science.  It’s just giving ourselves to Jesus, and then letting Jesus be Himself in us.  How can I make God look good in a world where God is not getting very good press?  What can I do for my God today?

Day 44, On The Road To Pentecost: THE TRUTHFUL WITNESS

John 21:24-25 

The apostle John was convinced that he had faithfully and truthfully shared the story of Jesus.  He had witnessed the life of Jesus up close and in person, and what he saw convinced him that Jesus was, in fact, the Word of God that became flesh and dwelt among us (see John 1:14), and so, he shared what he saw, heard, and experienced.    

For three years Jesus had lived among his disciples and the people of Palestine.  John pretty much saw it all, and tells his version of the story in his Gospel.  When he gets to the end he knew that there were many things Jesus had done that didn’t get recorded, so John wrote as his last sentence, “And there are also many others things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

How does one tell the story of Jesus?  Perhaps by simply telling the truth.  And apparently, a lot of people for the past two thousand years have told the story; today the telling of the story comes down to us.  

On the day of Pentecost Jesus would fill His faithful followers with the Holy Spirit so that they would be empowered to tell the story of Jesus wherever they went.  They weren’t super men and women; they were simply men and women who had encountered the living God in Jesus.  It shook the core of their being, set their hearts on fire for God, and changed the trajectory of their lives.    

They couldn’t do it on the strength of their own lives.  They needed the Holy Spirit.  It was the Holy Spirit who was the driving force in them.  God worked so powerfully in the early church that on one occasion it was said, "These men who have upset the world have come here also” (Acts 17:6).

Church, let us live truthfully and faithfully, filled with Holy Spirit, as we seek to tell the story of Jesus in our day.  It is a complicated time in which we live but the church was born in complicated times.  We are built for complicated times.  We are created to tell the truth and to live the truth.  Like the early church, we don’t have a chance of success unless the Lord Jesus Christ fills us up with the Life of His Holy Spirit.  So, may we yield to the plan and purposes of God, and be the Church of which Jesus said, “the gates of Hades will not overpower it” (Matt. 16:18).

In these complicated times may we live uncomplicated lives, and live in the love, forgiveness, and grace of God.  “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).  He can handle the heat of the complicated times in which we live, and He is still Lord of lords and King of kings.

Day 43, On The Road To Pentecost:: WHAT IS THAT TO YOU? YOU FOLLOW ME.

John 21:15-23 

I must get my eyes off others.  What God is doing in their lives is between them and God.  The issue before me is to hear what God is saying to me, and how I might be faithful to His words.  Jesus does not invite me to say, “Lord, and what about that man?” (vs. 21).  Jesus says to me exactly what He said to Peter, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” (vs. 22).

Jesus speaks to the personal heart, “Do you love me?”. He asked Peter the question three times.  Why? Joseph Mayfield answers,

The barriers erected by personal denials of the Lord are not hastily broken down.  While warming himself at a fire made by the enemies of Jesus, Peter three times denied his Lord. Now, around a fire kindled by his Lord, who loves him, Peter must three times affirm his love (Beacon Bible Commentary, Beacon Hill Press: Kansas City, 1965, 240). 

Maybe Peter was still hurting by his denial, and maybe Jesus knew that pain of denial needed to be undone.  I speculate, of course, but whatever the reason when this conversation between Jesus and Peter concluded, Peter was changed.  The next stop for him was in an upper room in Jerusalem where he and several others would be filled with the Holy Spirit and their hearts set on fire for God (see Acts 1:12-2:4).

I believe Jesus is saying to His Church today, “You follow me.”  And, may the response to Jesus, when He asks us, “Do you love?” be “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You” (vs. 17).  May it be true of us that we, too, give our total lives to the claims of our Messiah. May our denials and failures, like Peter’s, be baptized in the life of our Lord, and filled to overflowing with the power of Almighty God.  Charles Swindoll speaks of restoration and renewal and redemption that Jesus brings to us. The story makes me think of Peter, but it makes me think, to of the amazing grace God has brought into my story.  It might be your story, too.  He writes,

J. Stuart Holden tells of an old Scottish mansion close to where he had his little summer home. The walls of one room were filled with sketches made by distinguished artists. The practice began after a pitcher of soda water was accidentally spilled on a freshly decorated wall and left an unsightly stain. At the time, a noted artist, Lord Landseer, was a guest in the house. With a few masterful strokes of a piece of charcoal, that ugly spot became the outline of a beautiful waterfall, bordered by trees and wildlife. He turned that disfigured wall into one of his most successful depictions of Highland life. (Charles Swindoll, The Quest For Character, Multnomah, p. 49, at https://www.family-times.net)

By God’s grace we, too, are made into something beautiful for God.  Church of Jesus, let us let God be God in us, and let God lead us to the future He has for us.

Day 42, On The Road To Pentecost: TAKE AND EAT

John 21:12-14 

On the beach the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ took bread and fish and shared breakfast with His disciples.  The disciples, somewhat still in shock, experienced the moment almost as worship.  They were just beginning to get their minds around the most remarkable event in all of human history.  Jesus really was alive.  Yet, on the beach they experienced a Jesus who just sat down with them to have breakfast.  It was almost as if Good Friday had never happened; but, make no mistake about it, it happened. They knew it happened.  Now they were having breakfast with Him.

Truth is that the meal along the beach that morning was a sacramental feast.  It was Jesus who took the bread.  It was Jesus who took the fish. It was Jesus who invited them to the campfire.  I suspect that breakfast was one they never forgot.  How could they?  For the third time after that fantastic Sunday morning, Jesus showed up. 

Deep down in my very own being Jesus has shown up a thousand times or more, and invited me to sit and have breakfast.  He sets the table.  He prepares the food.  He breaks the bread.  He prays the blessing.  He hands me a plate, and I feel like I’m doing all the receiving and He’s doing all the serving.  He says “take and eat,” and I do.  

Tucked away in my memory is a story by the late, Bob Benson.  He shares,

Do you remember when they had old-fashioned Sunday School picnic? It was before air-conditioning. They said, "We'll meet a Sycamore Lodge in Shelby Park at 4:30 Saturday. You bring your supper and we'll furnish the tea."

            But you came home at the last minute and when you got ready to pack your lunch, all you could find in the refrigerator was one dried up piece of baloney and just enough mustard in the bottom of the jar so that you got it all over your knuckles trying to get to it. And there were just two stale pieces of bread. So you made your baloney sandwich and wrapped it in some brown bag and went to the picnic. And when it came time to eat you sat at the end of a table and spread out your sandwich.

            But the folks next to you - the lady was a good cook and she had worked all day and she had fried chicken, and baked beans, and potato salad, and homemade rolls, and sliced tomatoes, and pickles, and olives, and celery, and topped it off with two big homemade chocolate pies. And they spread it all out beside you and there you were with your baloney sandwich.

But they said to you, "Why don't we put it all together?" "No, I couldn't do that, I just couldn't even think about it." you murmured embarrassedly. "Oh, come on, there's plenty of chicken and plenty of pie and plenty of everything - and we just love baloney sandwiches. Let's put it all together."

And so you did and there you sat - eating like a king when you came like a pauper. (Come Share the Being, by Bob Benson: Impact Books, 1974)

Day 41, On The Road To Pentecost: JESUS STOOD ON THE BEACH

John 21:1-11

It took time for the reality of Jesus’ resurrection to sink in.  The reality was simply overwhelming, so Jesus took His time, and manifested Himself to be alive over several encounters.  One of the encounters took place “on the beach…at the Sea of Tiberias (aka, Sea of Galilee)” (vs.1, 4-5) where Jesus stood, calling out to fishing disciples, “Children, you do not have any fish, do you?”  They didn’t, and he counseled them to “Cast the net on the right-hand side of the boat and you will find a catch” (vs. 6).  They did, and sure enough they found their nets filled with large fish, “a hundred and fifty-three” to be exact” (vs. 11).  When they got to shore they discovered that Jesus had started a fire and was frying up some fish of His own.  He invited them to add to the frying breakfast “some of the fish which they [had] caught” (vs. 10).  

I find it intriguing that Jesus just showed up and had breakfast with these disciples.  No fanfare, no trumpets blaring, no pomp and circumstance – just breakfast.  It was as if it were any other ordinary morning.  And, isn’t it true that this is where we need to see Jesus, in the everyday and ordinary?  We look for Him in the spectacular, and we find him on the beach making breakfast.  Others are wowed that Jesus worked a miracle of one hundred and fifty-three fish.  I’m wowed that He makes a campfire, puts some fish on it, and then invites these somewhat bewildered friends to add a few of their own fish and to join Him for breakfast.  

Do you see Jesus in the everyday and ordinary?  That’s where He is, you know.  John Henry Jowett has a marvelous devotional about this.  Written back in 1914, he writes,

     Our Lord delights to glorify the commonplace.  He loves to fill the common water-pots with His mysterious wine.  He chooses the earthen vessels into which to put His treasure.  He calls obscure fishermen to be the ambassadors of His grace.  He proclaims His great Gospel through provincial dialects, and He fills uncultured mouths with mighty arguments.  He turns common meals into sacraments, and while He breaks ordinary bread He relates it to the blessing of heaven.      

And “this same Jesus” is among us today, with the same choices and delights.  He will make a humdrum duty shine like the wayside bush that burned with fire and was not consumed.  He will make our daily business the channels of His grace.  He will take our disappointments and He will fill them with treasures of unspeakable consolation.  He will use our poor, broken, stammering speech to convey the wonders of His grace to the weary sinful souls of men.

                                 My Daily Meditation, October, 14

I am an ordinary and everyday person, and my heart is filled with great joy to know that Jesus comes to me right where I am.  The Jesus I have come to know takes you and me very seriously, and invites us to sit down with Him and have breakfast.  Who would have thought it?  

Day 40, On The Road To Pentecost: THAT YOU MAY BELIEVE

John 20:30-31

In The Message, John 20:30-31 is paraphrased to read, 

Jesus provided far more God-revealing signs than are written down in this book. These are written down so you will believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and in the act of believing, have real and eternal life in the way he personally revealed it.

This insightful thought from the apostle John reveals the very heart of who Jesus is and what He came to do.  We should not see Jesus as simply a wonderful teacher, though He was.  We should not see Jesus as one who simply reached out to the poor, though He did.  We should not see Jesus as one who simply made honest seekers feel better about themselves, though He did.  He came to live and teach the very truth of God.  He came to bring God right down into the midst of our stories.  He lived and died and rose again in such a way as to enable us to believe that He “is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing” we might “have life in His name.”

John posted these verses right in the middle of his telling of the post resurrection appearances of Jesus.  The fact of the matter is that had Jesus not been raised from the dead, we would never have heard of Him.  His story would have died right alongside Him and then it would have been tucked away in a grave.  However, Jesus came out of that grave alive, and His living presence demands that we take Him seriously.  He came to do something.  He came to be something.  He came to draw people to the Father, so that believing in Him they would have life, eternal and abundant life.  

Whatever we might think about Jesus, it falls short if it does not include a call to “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.”  If what we think about Jesus does not lead us to “have life in His name,” we miss the very point as to why He came to us.  “Come to Me,” Jesus said, “and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).  Jesus invites us to come to Him so that He can lead us home to the Father.  This is why Jesus speaks about love and rest and peace and joy.  At home in the Father these things are the very air we breathe.  The Holy Spirit opens us up to a reality in which we live in Jesus and Jesus lives in us (See John 15:4).  In that place we know we are at home in the life that is God’s life in us. 

Rejoice, rejoice, O Christian,  

Lift up your voice and sing 

Eternal hallelujahs  

To Jesus Christ the King! 

The Hope of all who seek Him, 

The Help of all who find, 

None other is so loving,  

So good and kind. 

                      Alfred H. Ackley, 1933

Day 39, On The Road To Pentecost: UNLESS I SEE

John 20:24-29

Thomas is a man for our times.  In his heart of hearts he simply could not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This kind of thing simply didn’t happen in the world, and even though some of his most trusted associates said they had seen Jesus alive, He just could not bring himself to believe.  It was not until Jesus personally revealed himself to Thomas that Thomas believed.

Upon Thomas’ confession of faith Jesus said something that we really do need to pay attention to in our day, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed?  Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” (vs. 29).  What are we to make of these words from the Savior?  

Thomas had to see before he could believe.  I get that.  I even appreciate the fact that he jumped to no conclusion.  However, his heart was such that when he saw Jesus he could not and would not deny the facts; and he believed.  Today, we don’t have the advantage of having a first-hand experience of the physical, post crucifixion, body of Christ.  We are dependent on Scripture and the truthfulness of the first generation of believers. Furthermore, we are dependent upon the Holy Spirit of God to bear witness in our hearts that Jesus lives.  So, Jesus said, “Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

Followers of Christ ask non-believers to believe something that may be too difficult for them to grasp, and when they baulk, we ought to be too hard on them.  Instead, we ought to pray that somehow, someway, God will work in their hearts so that they will come to believe.  After all, the Holy Spirit is at work in the world, and no one can come to the Father unless the Father draws them (see John 6:44).  So, don’t get discouraged.  Pray. Trust. Live the life of a true follower of Jesus.  Be a testimony that people simply can’t ignore.  The Holy Spirit uses His people in ways they will most likely never understand.  Trust Him.  He is trustworthy.  For over two thousand years now, He has drawn people into His heart.  Trust Him.

Never underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit to change the human heart.  Ask Saul of Tarsus or C. S. Lewis or Charles Colson.  They will tell you of what God can do.  Today, we are more blessed even than Thomas, says Jesus, because we believe even though we have never had the advantage of seeing Him in person.  

My faith has found a resting place 

not in device nor creed: 

I trust the ever-living One – 

His wounds for me shall plead. 

I need no other argument; 

I need no other plea. 

It is enough that Jesus died, 

and that He died for me 

                     Lidie H. Edmunds, ca. 1891

God is at work.  Trust the Holy Spirit.

Day 38, On The Road To Pentecost: SENT

John 20:19-23

Wise are the followers of Jesus who know they are not called into isolation but into the Great Commission.  Jesus said, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (vs. 21).   The straight truth about the Christian Faith is that her people are a sent people.  We simply can’t sit on the sideline and observe. We are called right smack dab into the messy matters concerning life in a broken world.  And we go there not as perfect people but as people who have our own issues, but who are living in the outpoured grace of the Living Christ.

In speaking of his own life, as well as the life of those who served with him, the apostle Paul said, “We are ambassadors of Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20).    He believed this because Jesus said, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”  He is sending us all.  Luke quoted Jesus as saying, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). 

A part of what Jesus calls us to do in the world is to offer forgiveness to those who know they need it.  “If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained” (John 20:23).   Apparently, followers of Jesus have a very serious responsibility to others.  We are the people of Jesus who enable true believers to know they are forgiven.  We are God’s spokespersons in a way.  Only God can forgive sins, and yet His followers are somehow a part of the way God communicates forgiveness.  When the Church embraces someone, who has turned to God, and receives them into the fellowship, the embrace of the community of faith is healing and restoring and renewing. God has entrusted to His people the glorious wonders of love, acceptance, forgiveness, cordiality and hospitality.

No other story will bear repeating 

As often as this is told; 

God’s glad good news 

Of His love to sinners 

Are tidings which never grow old. 

Tell it again and again, 

Tell it again and again, 

The Gospel story, of grace and glory, 

Bears telling again and again.

                          Ada R. Habershon, 1907.

By the power of the Holy Spirit in us, may we be faithful to our call to be ambassadors of Christ in our times.

Day 37, On The Road To Pentecost: WHY ARE YOU WEEPING?

John 20:11-18

                 

A weeping Mary, standing outside the tomb where Jesus’ body had been placed, “stooped and looked into the tomb” (vs. 11).  To her surprise, she “saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying” (vs. 12).  They initiated a conversation with Mary by asking, “Woman, why are you weeping?” (vs. 13). Her response was very human, expressing that she was sad because somebody had stolen Jesus’ body, and taken it to a place she didn’t know about.  

What took place then surprised her. Luke say “she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus” (vs. 14).  He asked her why she was weeping, and thinking he was the gardener she asked him if he knew where they had taken the body.  Then Jesus said one word that changed her life.  He said to her, “Mary” (vs. 16). There was something in His voice that touched her heart, and she knew who it was.  Apparently, she began to hug Jesus out of pure joy of seeing Him alive.  Jesus said to her, though, “Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father and My God and your God” (vs. 17).

Here we are, two thousand years later, living in a world that has been impacted by Jesus.  Can we believe that, perhaps, He knows our name like He knew Mary’s name?  Can you believe that Jesus knows your name, that He has something eternally important to say to you?  Can you believe that His Father is your Father and that His God is your God?  

The resurrection is God’s proof that He knows our name and that He is inviting us into a relationship with God whereby we have not just an awareness of the reality of God but that we are called into such an intimate relationship with God that we can call Him “Father” (vs. 17).  Jesus brings God out of the heavenlies right down into the reality of life in our world.  In Jesus, God knows our name, loves us, calls us to life, and fills us with His Holy Spirit so that through it all, God takes up residence in us.  

At Pentecost the full reality of what God is doing in the world is released into His faithful people.  He filled them with His Holy Spirit, set their hearts on fire for God, and enabled them to be ambassadors of grace in the world.  Timothy Keller says, 

If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead. (From, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism)

The first Church believed in the resurrection.  It was the one defining reality for all the people.  It is the reason the message of Jesus lives today.

Day 36, On The Road To Pentecost: YET

John 20:1-10

The resurrection is the crowning act in the story of Jesus.  After his death, his followers were almost in disbelief that he could really be dead.  Friday night and all-day Saturday, they grieved, questioned, and mourned.  It was the resurrection that got them out of their sorrow, sadness, and distress.  The way John tells the story leaves no doubt as to this truth.

When John and Peter heard that the tomb was empty they ran to it.  I’m not sure what they were expecting to see when they got there but they got there in a hurry.  John stopped outside the tomb and looked.  Peter, however, being Peter after all, rushed into the tomb without hesitation.  What they saw in the tomb is remarkable.  John says they, “saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself” (vs. 6-7).  Apparently, Jesus took the time to remove the clothing of death and burial, place them neatly to the side, dress himself in the clothing of victory and heaven, and walked away from the tomb alive.  

Over the next fifty days Jesus would revealed himself to be alive.  Until the resurrection the key word describing Jesus’ followers was the word, “yet.”  Death is a powerful word, indicating, to most people, an ending and conclusion.  So, when John and Peter went to the tomb it was said of them, “As yet they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead” (vs. 9).  After the empty tomb and self-revelation of Jesus to them, everything changed.  It would take a while for it all to soak in but make no mistake about it, what he saw (or didn’t see) in that tomb changed the disciple, John.  For him there was no longer a “yet.”  It would take Peter a bit longer to get it, but he got it, as well as the other disciples, and a myriad of people to whom Jesus revealed himself to be alive.  By His grace, people all over the world today are coming alive in the life of the resurrected and now living Lord, Jesus Christ. 

There is a hymn from the twentieth century that says it well. May it be our testimony.

I serve a risen Savior; He’s in the world today. 

I know that He is living, Whatever men may say. 

I see His hand of mercy; I hear His voice of cheer; 

And just the time I need Him He’s always near.  

Rejoice, rejoice, O Christian,  

Lift up your voice and sing  Eternal hallelujahs 

To Jesus Christ the King! 

The Hope of all who seek Him, 

The Help of all who find, 

None other is so loving, So good and kind.                  

                     (Alfred H. Ackley, 1933)

Day 35, On The Road To Pentecost: TO ALL THE NATIONS

Luke 24:44-53

When Jesus met up with His disciples after the resurrection He reminded them of the heart of who He was and what He was about, “that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (vs. 47).  Jesus was not a Jewish phenomenon.  Who Jesus was and what He did was for “all the nations.”  That’s why you and I are apart of the kingdom of God today.  We came on the scene two thousand years after the Christ event, and we live half a world a way for it.  Yet, here we are, alive in the very life of Jesus.  Forgiveness has come to us, and we find the heart of our lives in the very heart of Jesus.

How did it all come to us?  Jesus told His first followers, “You are witnesses of these things.  And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (vs. 48-49).  They stayed in the city, and the promise of the Father was given to them.  The Holy Spirit filled their lives with the power of God and they began to live in the power of God’s Spirit.  Wherever they went they took Jesus.  The witnessed.  They baptized.  They modeled life in Christ.  They went beyond Jerusalem and all throughout Judea.  They journeyed throughout the Middle East, all the way into Europe, and all the way to the Americas – all around the world.  They are still standing for Christ in the world.  The message of Jesus is alive and still changing lives.  

John Henry Jowett spoke of how God seems always to use “Commonplace People” to do His work in the world.  Commonplace people, filled with the Holy Spirit, become “ambassadors of His grace.”  Of God’s work in commonplace people Jowett writes, 

He will make a humdrum duty shine like the wayside bush that burned with fire and was not consumed. He will make our daily business the channel of His grace. He will take our disappointments, and, just as we sometimes put banknotes into black-edged envelopes, He will fill them with treasures of unspeakable consolation. He will use our poor, broken, stammering speech to convey the wonders of His grace to the weary sinful souls of men. (My Daily Meditation, 1914, October 14 devotional thought) 

“He will use our poor, broken, stammering speech to convey the wonders of His grace to the weary sinful souls of men.”  This is what the Holy Spirit did two thousand years ago, and it is what He does today.  And, there are weary folks all around us, people with great pains, with many questions, with deep disappointments, in broken relationships, and with shattered dreams.  The Good News of the Gospel is theirs.  May we be filled with the Holy Spirit so that God can use us to share that Good News.  Maybe, we need to hear that Good News for ourselves.  

“Father, fill us with Your Holy Spirit, and work the works of God in us and through us.  Use our “stammering speech to convey the wonders of [Your] grace.”  Amen.

Day 34, On The Road To Pentecost: HE STOOD IN THEIR MIDST

Luke 24:33-43

On the road to Pentecost, Jesus revealed Himself to be alive from the dead when He stood in the midst of the eleven remaining disciples.  His first words to them were, “Peace be to you” (vs. 36). Upon seeing Jesus and hearing His words, the disciples “were startled and frightened and thought they were seeing a spirit.” (vs. 37).  It had to be a shock to them.  They had seen him die.  They saw him dead.  They saw him placed into a tomb.  They saw the tomb sealed with a large stone. They realized it was all over; and it would have been except for one little detail.  It wasn’t over at all.  In fact, it was just getting under way.  Jesus was alive.  The ending became a beginning.

Little by little Jesus would prove to His followers that He really was alive.  His life didn’t end in failure.  Death would not be the final word concerning Jesus.  He was still here to say to His followers, “Peace be to you…See My hands and my feet, that it is I Myself” (vs. 36, 39).  What a greeting, one that Jesus has been speaking into the human heart from some two thousand years now.  

As Jesus moved His disciples forward to Pentecost, He shepherded them until they were ready for what would happen in their lives.  Jesus does that, doesn’t He?  He reveals to us that He is alive and then He works in our lives to make that reality a reality in us.  His Spirit in His followers would enable them literally to abide in Christ, to live in Him, and as a part of that He would make His home in them.  

May God help us to abide in Jesus this way.  May we know Him as the resurrected Lord.  May He make His home in us.  May we all be open and receptive to His dramatic words, “Peace be to you…See My hands and my feet, that it is I Myself.”  It is a holy relationship into which Jesus invites us.  May we come with open hearts and open minds to let Jesus be Jesus in us. 

There’s an old song we used to sing way back when I was a kid.  It’s prayer and I offer it today as a prayer for all of us who have somehow, some way, been caught up into the grace of God, and made alive in Jesus,

Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me— 

All His wonderful passion and purity! 

O Thou Spirit divine, all my nature refine, 

Till the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.

                                   Albert Orsborn, 1886-1967

“Blessed by the name of the LORD from this time forth and forever. From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised.” (Psalm 113:2-3)