Real Good Fruit - Luke 6

We can all agree that the power struggle of a bully is most always rooted in their own weakness. So it is that criticism and judgment of others is typically a byproduct of personal faults and an overwhelming fear of being judged. Luke 6 speaks to this fear with definitive reason. "Judge not, and you will not be judged." Have you ever felt the heaviness that comes with passing judgment. If judging others truly took the focus off of your own faults and built you up, why does it feel like an additional weight to carry? While having personal faults is bad enough, calling out the shortcomings of others, the Bible promises, will seal our fate to be judge. So the enemy's once empty threat becomes fear of the certain and you're behind the eight ball. You've been sharked! So stop the criticism, right? But this passage shines light on the source. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." So from an abundance of dark cynicism, selfishness, greed, jealousy and pride come negative thoughts that destroy us from the inside and words, that spoken, plant seeds of bitterness in others. "Bad fruit." But from a heart inclined toward "the true, honorable, just, pure, lovely commendable, excellent and praise-worthy" [GOD] flow thoughts that build us up and words that strengthen others. "Good fruit." So let's nourish our hearts with such things that produce in us real "good fruit."

Satisfied - Psalm 23:1-2

Have you ever noticed how easily we can be convinced that we’re lacking? Even when we’re far more resourced than at least 99% of the world, we somehow decide that even that’s good enough. It’s par for the course for mankind. The Israelites, the chosen people of God, were freed from slavery, which took numerous signs and miracles, and they crossed the Red Sea on dry ground, just to look back and watch the pursuing army destroyed by it’s vicious waters. But even after seeing the mighty hand of God go to bat for them over and over again, would stand on the safe side of that sea grumbling and complaining about “I’m hungry! Where’s my snack?” and such. How easily we, just the same, are convinced that we’re lacking. Their perspective was off and my perspective often suffers from a bipolar condition as well. I have to lean into Psalm 23:1-2 on a regular basis to remind myself to be satisfied, and to practice being content. “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.” Why? Because I’m so satisfied, lacking nothing, that when he leads me into lush green pastures where most flocks would desperately graze, I lie down and take a nap in the cool grass. Get that picture in your head for a minute. Adjust your perspective and rediscover how satisfied you really can be in Him! 

Love was the reason - Genesis 3

So it took me a while to understand why God needed to separate sinful man from the tree of life. I mean, there's this tree that, as long as we eat fruit from it, we'll live, like forever. Then there's this man and woman who have found themselves cursed and in excruciating misery. They ate from the bad tree and now they're more than sick about the whole thing. My first though might have been, "Quick! Eat from the good tree! Surely it will fix everything!" Wrong! It's the Tree of Life not the Healing Tree. It wouldn't have made things better. It would only have made them last. Bad combination! Love was the reason God separated these two from the Tree of Life. He loved them too much to allow them to live never-ending lives in this miserable state. Instead they would be given an opportunity to have their wrongs righted, to redeem their purity and to once again live forever with him on the other side of the curses climax, death. The effects of sin and it's curse, the path back to God and ultimately God's overwhelming love for humanity haven't changed and, in fact, apply to every area of our lives today. Just the same way that God desired and planned a way to redeem the lives that Adam and Eve threw away that day in the garden, He sees our lives today, our careers, our finances, our kids and our marriages and his heart is moved. He loves us so much that the last thing He wants to do is stand aside and let us go on living with it all the way that it is. That would be the epitome of hopelessness. But he has a hope and a plan for our future and we can rest assured that it's good, perfect and better than we could possible dream! The truth is that without Him, like Adam and Eve, we would simply look to whatever would sustain things even if things are completely pathetic. But instead we must turn to Him and allow His spirit to permeate all of these areas of our lives, working redemption in them in ways only He can. Then we overcome the curse, defeat the things that are killing our hope and truly receive new and abundant life in Him!

Weakness is a lie! - 2 Corinthians 12:9

Funny thing about power tools… They allow you to do what you don’t have the power to do and often with a measure of precision you may be lacking as well. But if a power tool must be used, and if there’s a man around at the time, it’s best you hand the tool over, right? ‘Cause power tools are for men and all of us men are all the more manly for using them. Disclaimer [lest I be exiled from man-land]: I do love me some power tools. But it’s the power tools themselves, not my ginormous muscles, that make many of these tough jobs manageable. In fact, it’s my weakness that necessitates the use of the power tools. So I can’t turn the wrench on that nut by myself but, with the help of a Speedaire Industrial Duty Impact Wrench, I’m pretty much the man! Moses didn’t have what it took to free an entire nation from the grip of a stubborn Pharaoh with unmatched military power. Peter didn’t have what it took to adjust his molecular density or command buoyancy from the water in order to step out of the boat and join his Rabbi. And so I choose to join the ranks of countless weaklings throughout the scriptures, who allowed God’s power to be made perfect in their weakness. Here are two things He’s been whispering into my spirit:

In me, you have what it takes to do what I’m calling you to do.

For you, weakness is a lie as MY power in you makes you strong.

What is he whispering to you? Will you choose, as the Apostle Paul did, to  boast all the more gladly in your weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest upon you?

Activated - Hebrews 4:12

Last week I had a touch of food poisoning. A quick search for what to do to lessen the effects and shorten the length of my misery lead to a substance referred to as activated charcoal. The promise on the label said that it would remove toxins and poisons. Now I’m not one to believe a claim until it’s proven. I naturally come out of the gate with the "Why?" and/or "How?" angle and start digging. I discovered that activated charcoal is basically carbon that has been processed with gas and/or high heat to have small, low-volume pores which increases the surface area available for absorption. A single gram of activated charcoal has a combined surface area of over 32,000 square feet! I could live in that. Our intestines work similarly to absorb nutrients from our food in the digestive process. Tiny hair-like microvilli on small finger-like projections protrude form the mucosal lining to increase the surface area of our intestines for optimal absorption. Bottom line: Absorption can be life or death on either end of this spectrum. It’s vitally important. 

The same is true for the absorption of the Word of God, the Bible, into the hearts and minds of anyone who considers themselves a follower of Jesus. Have you ever attended a church service and felt as though the message was literally just for you, like the pastor had been reading your mail? Do you chalk this up like this “Living Word” deal is just for pastors? Like this divine revelation that appears to happens when a ordained minister reads the Bible is essentially the polar opposite of your own experiences with scripture? Let me tell you that this was certainly not meant to be this way! God’s Word is alive and it is for EVERYONE! The problem is that we often approach the Bible with hearts that aren’t activated to absorb it… In order to activate our hearts for optimal absorption of the Word of God, we must fully accept that it’s true, that it’s alive today, and that it will do what God intended it to do in our lives. That’s the practical side. When we address this deficiency and humbly ask the Spirit of God, living within us, to interpret the scriptures to us as He did the common, uneducated apostles of the early church, we’ll experience a breakthrough like many of us have never thought possible. God love’s you. He desires to speak to you. And He will activate your heart to receive His Word! 

Over & Under 2 Kings 4

I’m coming to the realization that I tend to maintain two rather unhealthy tensions. I torture myself with the constant battle of what I think God’s asking of me vs what I think I’m capable of.  And then, on the flip side, I’m torn between the vast reality of what God’s capable of and even wills and the puny portion I’m willing to ask Him for. A family member of mine was recently sitting in the lobby of the hospital where her husband was in the throws of battling stage-four brain cancer. On this much-needed break, she was nervously approached by an apologetic young stranger who politely suggested that God had prompted her to stop and offer encouragement. The young lady’s demeanor was evidence enough that she wasn’t oblivious to how peculiar this encounter would appear. With only a general nudge, no context to go on, and certainly lacking the specific words of encouragement she would speak, the young lady conceded and made her fearful approach. She was completely dumbfounded to discover that this sorrowful soul was one of His own. No words were needed and in fact, her obedience alone was enough to remind this dearly treasured child of The King that her heavenly Father would carry her through this valley of darkest shadows. Mission complete. And to think: God could use this girl without a thorough understanding of the circumstances, no past experience with the terminally ill, and overflowing with apprehension and timidity… Who are we to decide what He requires, right? But while I over overestimate His prerequisites I often underestimate His aptitude. Aptitude being: One’s natural ability to do something. But He’s not confined to the natural. He’s supernatural. Take the widow woman and the bottomless jar of oil. She was told by the prophet Elisha to borrow empty jars for the miracle God was about to do with her last bit of oil. Elisha said and “not too few.” In other words, no matter how many jars you borrow, when you see this, you’re gonna wish you’d borrowed more. Because, as she was pouring and God was multiplying her oil, it never ran out until she ran out of empty jars. Yet with thousands of years worth of accounts like this one available to inform my faith, I’m all, “Could I trouble you for half a jar please, if it’s not too much trouble..?” And He’s all, “I don’t do crumbs. I do feasts!” The bottom line is that the omniscient Creator God of the universe who calls us sons and daughters isn’t going commission us beyond our capability. His prerequisite is our obedience. And these sons and daughters of His can’t even begin to conceive of anything beyond His ability. So let’s stop letting our deficient assessment of His aptitude diminish our hopes, dreams, vision and goals. If you can imagine it, and even [if not especially] when you can’t, He’s more than capable, and He longs to see the faith in your asks. 

Romans 8 - YOU ARE HIS!

I’m sometimes critical of the fact that I, so often in my teachings and writing, use my kids to convey truths about God. Like maybe I’m not creative enough to employ as wide of variety of illustrations as many of the modern teachers and master story tellers of the faith do so well. But then I remember that God Himself chose to use His own Son to reveal to humanity virtually all we know about the character of God. So with that said… A few weeks back I decided to give my eight year old his first try at mowing the lawn. That day it took all the strength he could muster and half the day  to push that massive machine over [most of] our yard. Tall patches of grass stood as a testament that an able-bodied eight year old had mowed here. As proud as I was, there was a nagging temptation to go back over it all and make it look like it always looks when I do it myself. I managed to leave it be and even came to appreciate it’s imperfection over the next couple of days, being drawn to the reality that my son, who was once a tiny little peanut, is now cutting our grass. So proud! Now when the time came to cut it again, he and I grabbed some sidewalk chalk and sketched out a map of our yard on the driveway. I showed my boy how to carefully follow a pattern to fill the whole area with chalk and made the application with our yard and my desire to see it manicured completely. Over the next few cuts, I’ve seen four things in particular that have brought me true joy. 1.) I’ve seen my son’s heart to please me and likewise his drive to get better at what I’m teaching him. 2.) I’ve seen my lawn looking so much better than when he first cut it. His ability improves every time he get’s out there with the mower. 3.) I’ve seen a neighbor take a picture of him to hopefully inspire her eight year old to do the same. 4.) I still see minor imperfections/evidences that my grass has been cut by my young son which still makes me so proud! And this is God’s heart toward us today. He takes great joy as our desire to serve Him grows, as we work to improve our lives and our fruitfulness and as what He’s doing in us flow’s over to impact the lives of those around us. While we’re all our own worst critics, just remember that your Heavenly Father knows your heart, sees your effort and, despite your shortcomings, takes great pride in the real you because, above all, YOU ARE HIS!