Rich Kindness

“God’s kindness leads you toward repentance.”  Romans 2:4

I’m so glad God is rich.  He owns a lot of stuff.  He made the world and everything in it, so by default and design, all matter belongs to Him.  Because we need to remember this, He reminded the ancient Jews— who equated cows with cash—that the cattle on a thousand hills and, all the rest, too, were His(Psalm 50:10).  We money-obsessed Americans should know that God doesn’t even fool with fickle currency; instead, His resources are so overwhelmingly abundant that He can pave heaven’s streets with pure gold(Rev. 21:21).  And need we mention the eternal title He holds to all the galaxies and grandeur of the universe?

But it’s not God’s storehouses of stuff that make me happy and give me hope.  It’s the riches of His mercy(Eph 2:4), His glory(Rom 9:23),His wisdom and knowledge(Rom 11:33), His grace(Eph 2:7), and today, especially today, His kindness, tolerance, and patience(Rom 2:4).  We’re not (or at least, I’m not) always well-stocked in those areas and often find them in short supply in my attitudes toward others.  The Apostle Paul says such poverty shows up when we “as mere men, pass judgment on others for doing wrong while are doing the same things ourselves”(Rom 2:1-4). 

Remember the list from last time?  The list of evil, wickedness, immorality, envy, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, arrogance, pride, disobedience to parents, etc.?    We quickly spot those faults in others, and we loudly point them out and wait impatiently for God to bring judgment and justice upon the trespassers.  But in our haste, perhaps we “show contempt for the riches of God’s kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance”(Romans 2:4). To know something is a sin and to say so is not wrong, but to pretend that you’re better than the one being bad, is.  We all fail.  We all fall. We all are in desperate need of an affluent God who abundantly puts up with us, graciously lets us struggle in our weakness without slamming us, and gently applies the pressure of His holiness to bring us to a place of true sorrow for our sin and desire to turn to His truth.  “God’s kindness leads you toward repentance”(Rom 2:4).

Oh, the joy, the delight, the relief of knowing that our God is rich in kindness, tolerance, and patience!  Oh, the amazement that His blood-stained cross and empty-tomb have secured for us His righteousness and favor!  Oh, the humility in which we live before Him with our arms raised in praise to heaven and opened wide in love on earth to our “fellow-fallers” who are also being led to repentance in God’s time and in God’s way by His rich kindness.  We have no room for contempt of God’s grace—only astonishment and gratitude.

Be excited that God is rich.

Be ecstatic He isn’t stingy.

The Right Order

“Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal men.”  Romans 1:22-23

I spent last weekend with a group of fantastic middle school students at a winter youth retreat.  Our time was filled with much laughter, good music, great teaching, crazy pranks, a midnight Wal-Mart run, and many questions.  The one I was asked the most was simple but vital—“What comes next?”  The kids’ desire to be at the right place at the right time to do the right thing showed that they are learning a very important truth—if the order gets mixed up, life gets messed up.

Though some would disagree, our lives are not like the Legos of my childhood whose various shapes and sizes had no specific place or purpose but were simply available to be placed at any position by my will or want. Instead, the rhyme and reason of our existence mirrors the toys I purchased this past Christmas.   In each box, every Lego, big or small, is part of a definite design, and all the pieces must be placed in the proper order or what you’re making gets messed up.

In the grand design of life, the same holds true.  God and His glory must be first, or else all that follows will end in failure—moral failure, relational failure, and, eventually, eternal failure.  The Bible states that God’s existence is evident in creation, but though people knew that God is real, “they neither glorified him as God or gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened(Romans 1:21).  In arrogance, men (and women) chose (and choose) to “exchange the glory of the immortal God” for images of stuff He has made—flimsy and fleeting shadows which have no substance by themselves.  We mix the order up.

And life gets messed up.  Our vanity makes us think that putting who we are and what we want before who God is and what He desires will bring fulfillment, significance, and success, but to the contrary, this prideful pursuit of our own pleasure causes God to let us “have what we want” and we are given over to “shameful lusts, a depraved mind, and receive the due penalty for perversion”(Romans 1:26-27).  We “become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity…full of envy, murder, strife, decide, and malice…gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; we invent ways of doing evil; disobey parents; are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless”(Romans 1:29-31).      

This list is horrible and hard to read, but it accurately describes our individual lives and our collective culture when we refuse to submit to the rule of a sovereign God and when we live to make ourselves look and feel good—not show and share His glory.  Even as Christ-followers, when we mix the order up, life gets messed up. 

The essential question, “What comes next?” should always be preceded by the vital question, “Who comes first?”  And the only right answer—all the time, every time—is God.

 

Seeing Is Believing

“Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”  Romans 1:20

Evidence of God is everywhere—if only we will open our eyes.  Without pause or qualm, creation brashly proclaims that God exists and He’s involved.  In the mega and the minute, His signature is bold and beautiful.  Pictures from powerful telescopes reveal the vastness and grandeur of massive, far-flung, ever-growing galaxies, and in our own tiny, distinct double-twisting code of life, the abundance of “junk DNA,” considered by many as proof of a messy evolution, was recently discovered to be a complex system of switches which controls our genes.

 “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse”(Romans 1:20).  This verse plainly states that if someone believes God isn’t, he isn’t looking, but what about those of us who believe God is?  Are we looking?  And if we are, what do we see? 

We see a blazing sun set at just the right distance from earth’s orbit so that it provides warmth and energy without harm.  We see a shadowed moon reflecting light and affecting tides—its phases an unerring marker of time gone by.  We see twinkling stars tracking a path through the night—a guide for those on land and sea.   In these “heavens which declare the glory of God and skies which proclaim the work of his hands”(Ps 19:1), we sense God’s purpose and His precision. 

And earth shows the same.  The perfectly round hole bored by a woodpecker displays God’s exactness.  A dew-frosted spider’s web shimmers with His symmetry.  The teamwork of an ant colony reflects His unity.  A flower surrendering its nectar to the hummingbird’s kiss mirrors His sweet provision.   The red of a poppy, the stripes of a tiger, and the turquoise splashed on a peacock’s fan declare that our God is not a dull deity but is vibrant and expressive.  He is diverse.  He is dazzling.  He is gorgeous.

Atheists have no excuse for unbelief, and Christians have no excuse for small belief.  God has revealed Himself in His Word, but He has also revealed Himself in His world.

Open your eyes and see.  And say, “Wow!”

 

No-Fail Faith

“The righteous will live by faith.”  Romans 1:17

If my salvation depended on me, I would have lost it this morning when I was impatient with my daughter.  I would have negated it last night when I chose to worry instead of trust, and it would have sailed out of my soul yesterday afternoon when I “knew the good I ought to do and didn’t do it”(James 4:17).  I don’t know about you (though I’ve quite a sure guess), but I’m enormously glad that my eternal life doesn’t depend on my everyday choices.

Martin Luther thought his did, and spent years striving through personal piety to end his spiritual uneasiness and find peace with God.  Only when a verse in Romans catapulted off the page into his heart did he realize the truth—it’s all God, not our own goodness.  “The righteous will live by faith”(Romans 1:17).  And lest you think that this faith is something you are required to conjure up and then keep strong on your own, remember that it is “not from ourselves, but is the gift of God”(Ephesians 2:8).

I’m so glad.  I know I’ve already said that once, but I can’t say it enough.  Oh, the fear, the anxiousness, the uncertainty which would rule my life if being right with God was contingent in any way, shape, or form at any time on my being right.  How incredibly comforting to know that “in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, ‘The righteous will live by faith’”(Romans 1:17). 

We are made right by faith, and we stay right by faith.   From first to last—from the moment we believe until the glorious day when what we know to be true we see to be true—our right standing with God is securely bound by our belief in what our Savior did.  “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.  There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus”(Romans 3:22-24).  I’m so glad—so glad that we don’t have to do good to get saved, and so glad that we don’t have to do good to stay saved.  So glad that though such great grace generates lots of “good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do”(Ephesians 2:10), those are the result of our faith and not the reason for it.   

From first to last our salvation is by faith—a no-fail faith, for it is faith in a God who will never fail and faith from a God who will never fail.

And I’m so glad.

 

Unashamed

“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”  Romans 1:16

I’m an Auburn Tiger football fan. Have been since I can remember.  Will be till I die.  Quite honestly, this wasn’t the best year to root for the Tigers.  Our record was pathetic and a bit embarrassing, but each week I kept cheering loudly for my team and proudly wearing Auburn attire.  Win, lose, or draw (which, of course, is no longer an option in college football), I’m not ashamed to be shouting “War Eagle!”

Sadly, and seriously, sometimes it’s easier to be bold about football than faith.  I’m not saying you shouldn’t be a sports fan or that if you aren’t yelling in church, preaching to your co-workers, sporting Christian t-shirts, and displaying a silver fish on your car,  you aren’t proud to be a believer, I’m just wondering if maybe we aren’t a bit too shy about the good news that saved us.  Paul wasn’t, and he was sure to say so.  “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes”(Romans 1:16). 

In those days, believing that God became a man in Jesus Christ who lived and died and rose again as the only way for us to know God and be with Him now and forever was considered by the vast majority to be foolish, ignorant, and intolerant.  Sounds like those days are a lot like our days, so please don’t let the mere opinions of others cause you to downplay the most incredible reality of eternity.  Yes, such a God-story sounds crazy, but it’s crazy true! 

My team’s losing record would have been good reason this season to only mumble my allegiance, but, as Christians, we have no valid excuse for wimpy murmurs or half-hidden acknowledgements.  The good news of God’s grace will never be defeated.  It may be denounced, denied, disputed, debated, disallowed, and disdained, but the fact remains that only the gospel “is the power of God for salvation.”  

In your actions, never be ashamed to show so.

In your words, never be ashamed to say so.

The Messenger

“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ.”  Romans 1:1

Several weeks ago my sister received a text that simply and sweetly said, “Love ya.”  Not recognizing the senders’ number, she quickly replied, “I’m sure I’d love you too if I knew who this was!”  (Turns out it was my husband who thought he was texting me!)  We all had a good laugh, but their mix-up makes a point—for a message to make a difference, you need to know who sent it.

When Paul penned his letter to the Romans, he made sure an introduction preceded any instruction. He wanted his readers to know who he was and why he was sending these words their way, and so he began, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ”(Romans 1:1).  He continued on to say he was “called to be an apostle” and that he was “set apart for the gospel of God,” but this calling and commission flowed from the fact that first and foremost, Paul, the great saint and missionary whose resume of Jewish fanaticism and Christian devotion required several pages, was simply a servant of God.

The word “servant” sort of makes us balk, for being a servant means just what is says—one person does the wish and will of another just the way the other wants it to be done, without question and without hesitation.  Being forced or coerced to be a servant would be difficult, especially if the one you served was harsh and hard, but when one is servant of a Master who loves without fail, exists without fault, executes perfect justice, rules with complete power, abounds with care and compassion, and holds us close to His heart and securely in His hand, such a position is more than a privilege.  It is an astonishing gift of grace.

Our Lord is almighty, eternal, majestic, and glorious, and He left His heaven to become a servant.  “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”(Matthew 20:20).  Spending every moment of every day knowing, loving, and doing His wish and will without question and hesitation is our highest purpose and our highest joy.

“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ.”  The next 7108 words of Paul’s letter flowed from the overwhelming fact that he was the grateful servant of a great Savior.  May all we say and today spring from the same source.

Don’t leave people wondering who’s sending the message.

Let them know who you love and who you serve, so hopefully they will do the same.

 

Romans In Real Life

“To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints.”  Romans 1:7

Here’s the truth.  In high school, my brother and sister had a teacher so boring that to pass the time his students would watch the second hand of the classroom clock go round and round and round.

Here’s the sad truth.  Instead of changing his lectures to make them more interesting, the teacher covered the clock with construction paper and kept on talking.

Here’s the tragic truth.  The man was the Bible teacher at a Christian school, and his classes were studying the fascinating book of Romans!

Perhaps you sympathize with the situation, for in sermons, Sunday School, or your own study, you may have found Romans to be a bit tedious and tiresome.  Honestly, most of us have at some time, but I hope all that is about to change as we spend the next few weeks looking at what was written back then and how it applies to us now. The Apostle Paul did not intend for his letter penned to the Christians in the city of Rome to be doctrinally dissected in dry lectures by boring teachers to weary students.  No, he wrote his words to regular people who lived real lives, and he hoped that what he said what encourage them, challenge them, and comfort them as they went to work, washed the dishes, or paid their taxes.

After introducing himself and expressing gratitude for their faith and his desire to meet them in person, Paul states that he is not ashamed of the good news that God saves.  He then spends the next several chapters explaining our need for help (our sin) and the only way to receive hope (our faith).  He uses Jewish history (the Law, circumcision, Adam, and Abraham) to build his case, and he uses everyday illustrations like marriage and slavery to make his point.  Paul spends the latter part of his letter describing what our response to such an amazing reality should be—the practical application of divine principles.  Throughout all his writing, Paul is honest about his own struggles and is heartfelt in his desire for us to experience and extend God’s grace, and, at the end, he closes with a proclamation of God’s glory.

Romans really is a great book. To be truthful, I’m a bit intimidated to write about it, but I’m excited to see how God’s Spirit uses what’s going on in my life and yours to help us understand His timeless truths.  Let’s not watch the clock, but, instead, let’s look into our hearts, look up to God’s grace, and thank Him that He gave us Romans for real life.

 

The Ah Ha Moment

“I have come so that you might have life and have it to the full.”  John 10:10

This past Sunday was Three Kings Day—Epiphany on the liturgical calendar, if you follow such.  It was a day to commemorate the coming of the Magi to visit the Christ Child, but since I packed up my nativity scene several days ago, on Sunday I just sat and thought about them.  Probably a good thing to do—still consider Christmas, because for many folks, were it not for the credit card balance, the season would be an almost distant memory.  Life has quickly lulled back to normal.  Days off work or school are done, family and friends have gone home, and the holiday decorations are boxed and back in storage.  As the glorious strains of “peace on earth, goodwill to men” fade into the past, we are faced with the hurried and harried present.  Responsibilities resume, activities await, education continues, deadlines loom, the kitchen needs cleaning, the yard could use some work, and the phone is ringing.  Sounds like a perfect time for the Wise Men to show up.

The Magi arrived way past the marvel of the manger.  They didn’t make it to Bethlehem’s barn to see the newborn baby.  Though Joseph and Mary were still in town, the couple wasn’t sitting around awestruck with the freshness of glory.  By the time the camels turned into the driveway, Joseph was trying to support the wife and kid, and Mary had fed, burped, and changed the Holy One hundreds of times.  Life was real, raw, and repetitive. 

But in the midst of the mundane and monotonous, eternity’s greatest Miracle brought meaning and purpose to those who sought Him.    A star had shown the way, and when the Wise Men saw the child, “they bowed down and worshiped him”(Matt 2:11).  To this One so worthy, though so small and, to most, seemingly ordinary, they gave great gifts—gold to symbolize His royalty, frankincense to signify His divinity, and myrrh to indicate His sacrifice.  Because of His reality and their response—bended knees, humble hearts, and open hands—their lives were changed forever.  Their “ah ha” moment happened on a regular day, in a run-of-the-mill small town.

Don’t let the reason for the season grow stale in your soul.  Christ came so we could “take hold of the life that is truly life”(1 Tim 6:19).  His advent moves us beyond existence due to His power into enjoyment of His presence.  “I have come so that you might have life and have it to the full”(John 10:10).  Because of His royalty, divinity, and sacrifice, we can personally, intimately, and eternally know the Almighty God—even, no, especially on regular days in run-of-the-mill small towns.

Wikipedia, that bastion of hopefully accurate internet information, describes Epiphany as “a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation of God the Son as a human being in Jesus Christ,” but our merriment should not be confined to a single spot on the calendar. As life rolls into the real, raw, and repetitive, it’s always the right time to ponder the stunning truth the God came to both Jews (the shepherds) and Gentiles (the Wise Men) to be with us and to be for us.

Sounds like every day should be an epiphany.