A Vine Looking for Branches

July 31, 2012

“I am the vine, you are the branches.”   (John 15:5)

The apostles had been in awe of the profound words and miraculous works of Jesus.  In their last retreat with Him, Jesus essentially said that the key to His preaching, teaching, and supernatural ministry is that He and the Father are one.  The Word of the Father was spoken on earth and the work of the Father was accomplished on earth through Him because He is one with the Father.   He then taught them that after His death and resurrection, if they would be at one with Him His Word would be spoken and His work would be done on earth through them.

While they were in a garden, He pulled down a vine, which had many branches loaded with fruit, and said: “I am the Vine and you are the branches.”  In this metaphor the fruit does not grow on the vine.  The fruit grows out on the branches because they are properly aligned with the Vine.  The branches can bear no fruit without the Vine and the Vine can bear no fruit without the branches. If the Vine, Jesus, wants to see fruit produced, He must pass His life-giving power through the branches, the apostles.

Jesus wants to see this fruit produced far more than the apostles want to be fruitful.  By this inspired metaphor, He was actually teaching two propositions: “Without Me, you can do nothing” and, “Without you, I will do nothing.”

It is the plan of God to use the power of God in the people of God to accomplish the purposes of God according to the plan of God.  Jesus is a Vine looking for branches.

Are you willing to be one of His branches?

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Posted by Dick Woodward

The Secret Things

July 26, 2012

“The LORD our God has secrets known to no one. We are not accountable for them, but we and our children are accountable forever for all that He has revealed to us that we may obey…” (Deuteronomy 29:29 NLT)

According to Moses, there are secrets God has determined to keep secret.  (Perhaps these secrets are on a need to know basis.)  However, the things God wants us to do, He has made very plain through His Word, especially the Living Word, His beloved Son.  But, if God has willed to remain silent about His secrets, it would be pompous arrogance for us to say we can answer all the “why” questions regarding our suffering.

Where did we ever get the idea that we should expect to understand everything that happens to us?  Where did we ever get the absurd notion that God owes us an explanation for everything He has done and is doing in our world and in our lives?  If God gave us an explanation for everything and the answers to all of our “why” questions, the very essence of faith and the need for faith would be eliminated.

Almighty God has willed that without faith we cannot please Him, or come to Him (Hebrews 11:6).  God is pleased when we echo these words of Job: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15 NKJV).  In my own words, God is pleased when we come to Him in our crucibles of suffering and cry, “If you heal me, that’s all right.  But, if you don’t heal me, that’s all right, too, because You are all right!”

Can you say you are all right because He is all right? Can you leave the secret things with Him?

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Posted by Dick Woodward

A Prescription for Learning the Word of God

July 20, 2012

“… that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.”   (Deuteronomy 8:3)

These words are taken from one of the great sermons Moses preached after the children of Israel were delivered from Egypt just before they invaded the land of Canaan.  They had wandered in a terrible wilderness for 40 years in which they suffered every imaginable hardship.  In this sermon God tells them through Moses that He was using all that suffering to make them know every word that He has ever spoken.

By devotional and personal application we can realize that this is one of the ways we learn the Word of God today.  God is our Mentor and He does His most effective mentoring when we are in difficult places.  While facing crises and challenges that overwhelm us God makes us know His Word.  Every adversity God permits or directs into our lives is redemptive and is an opportunity for us to let God make us know His Word.

God is fiercely committed to the proposition that we are going to grow spiritually into perfection or completeness and maturity.  The first chapter of the letter of James informs us that God’s trials should not be treated like intruders but welcomed as friends because they are sent from God.  He does this because He wants us to be perfect or complete and lacking nothing.  Jesus told us to be perfect even as our Heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).

So when those tough times come sit up and pay attention.  God has come to the front of the classroom and He is about to teach us His Word.

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Posted by Dick Woodward

A Communication Prescription

July 12, 2012

“We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you…As a fair exchange – I speak as to my children – open wide your hearts also.” (2 Corinthians 6:11-13 NIV)

To paraphrase this passage, Paul is suggesting that each of us has a communication “flap” on our heart.  We should be face-to-face and heart-to-heart with our communication flaps open.  But, the hard reality is that we are often back-to-back with our communication flaps down and tightly closed.  The solution Paul prescribes here is that someone must say, “I am heart-to-heart with you, and my communication flap is open.  Be heart-to-heart with me and open your communication flap.”

We face communication challenges every day in our family, work life, and in our interactions with people.  When there is a communication problem it is so very important to realize that someone has to initiate a solution by saying, in spirit and in principle, to the person with whom they are having a communication conflict, “I am heart-to-heart with you, and my communication flap is open. Be heart to heart with me and open your communication flap.”

You may be totally amazed at how taking that stance can melt the obstacles between you and that person with whom you are having a difficult and challenging relationship.  This can be a communication “circuit breaker” that restores communication in a relationship.

Bacteria multiply in the dark but cannot live in the light.  If we do not have good communication in a relationship misunderstandings multiply like bacteria, but when communication is restored it is as if we have turned the light on our relationship.  Most of the bacteria will die and we can address that which doesn’t die with the light of our restored communication.

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Posted by Dick Woodward

Caution: God at Work

July 6, 2012

“Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough ways smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Isaiah 40: 4-5)

The essence of Isaiah’s great sermon is that when you build a highway you do four things: you level mountains, you fill valleys, you straighten crooked places, and you smooth out rough places.

Isaiah preached that God was coming into our world and when He did He was going to travel on the highway of the life of His Son.  In that life the mountains of pride would be leveled, the empty spaces would be one hundred percent filled with the Holy Spirit, the crooked ways of sin would be perfectly straight and His rough places would be made smooth by the way He responded to them.

Just before Jesus parted with His apostles He told them that in the same way the Father sent Him into the world He was sending them into the world.  If His life was to be a highway on which God traveled into this world, our life is also to be a highway for God.  I challenge you to ask God to make your life into a highway for Him to travel into this world.

If you pray that prayer when God’s bulldozers start leveling your mountains of pride, His Holy Spirit fills your empty spaces and straightens out your crooked ways of sin and then gives you the grace to smooth out the rough challenges that come into your life.

While all that is happening you can write “Caution: God at work” across your life.

I dare you to have the courage to pray this prayer.

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Posted by Dick Woodward

A Dialogue with God

July 1, 2012

“Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?… And He said, ‘Who told you?’”  (Genesis 3: 9, 11)

A police officer on a motorcycle noticed a large enclosed truck driven down Sixth Street, in Los Angeles, California.  The driver stopped every few blocks, got out of the truck, and beat around the sides of the truck with a large baseball bat. After observing this for some time, the officer turned on his siren, flashed his lights and with strong hand signals ordered the driver to pull over.  The policeman asked the driver, “Mister, as far as I can tell, you’re not breaking the law.  But I just gotta know, what are you doing?”

The truck driver explained, “Officer, this truck here has a capacity of five thousand pounds.  But, you see, I got six thousand pounds of canaries in this truck.  So, I gotta keep a thousand pounds of canaries up in the air all the time!”

When you begin reading the Bible it may surprise you to discover that the first four things God says to us are questions.  Why would the creator God ask questions of the man He has created?  I’m convinced God does this because He knows His creature is up in the air about life.  God loves us too much to leave us without a definition of life and some direction.  He wants to dialogue with us so He can bring what he calls salvation into our life.

Are you up in the air about your life?  Because He loves you God would like to greet you with that question “Where are you?” and follow it with the question “Who told you?” when you respond to Him.

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Posted by Dick Woodward