August 3, 2012
“… what does He receive from your hand?” (Job 35:7)
Not many devout people are disillusioned when they see wicked people suffer; however, the people of God are often faith-challenged when the godly suffer. For thousands of years devout souls have been asking God, “Why do the righteous suffer?”
The book of Job is the longest, most profound and comprehensive answer to that question in the Bible. If this is the oldest book in the Bible, then the very first truth God wanted to teach us is His answer to this primary ‘why question’ of His hurting people.
The way this ancient “Saga of Suffering” answers that question turns on a question Job asked his wife. God had given Satan permission to take every possession he had, including his ten children (Job 2:3). Then God permitted Satan to take Job’s health. When he lost his health and was suffering from a dreadful disease, his wife told him he should curse God and die. He responded to her cheerful counsel by asking, “Shall we accept good from the hand of God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10 NIV)
The essence of Job’s question was, “What should a righteous man expect God to put in his hand because he is living a righteous life?” The answer to Job’s question is found in a discourse of a young man named, Elihu. He told Job he was asking the wrong question. He should be asking, “What is He receiving from your hand?” (Job 35: 7 NIV)
If you are hurting, or when you do, ask God the right question. What have you done for Him lately? What are you putting in His hand?
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Posted by Dick Woodward
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?
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: available for God, faith, God's plans, Jesus Christ, John 15:5, religion, spiritual fruit, the Apostles, Vine & branches | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward
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
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.
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: Deuteronomy 8:12, facing crises, faith, God's Word, Moses, religion, Scriptures, spirituality, Studying the Scriptures, The Bible, Word of God | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward
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.
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: 2 corinthians 6, communication challenges, faith, faith-based communication, healthy relationships, heart to heart, heart to heart communication, open communication, open hearts, Saint Paul, spirituality | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward
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
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.
2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: faith, Genesis 3, God the Creator, spiritual dialogue, Spiritual Discernment, spiritual questions, spirituality, the Creation, where are you? | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward
June 27, 2012
“Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy…” (Psalm 107: 1, 2)
Redemption means to get something back that has been lost. It is similar in meaning to the word “rehabilitation” which essentially means “to invest again with dignity.” I have quoted the first words of a marvelous hymn of redemption. A thought that is repeated at the end of each of the five stanzas in this psalm is that those who have been redeemed by the Lord should step up and say so – gratefully giving thanks for the various ways in which they have been redeemed.
Levels or dimensions of redemption are profiled and each description ends with the charge that we thank the Lord for His goodness in redeeming us in this way. God redeems us from our chaos when He finds us. He then redeems us from our chains when He sets us free from our sins.
This is followed by the way He redeems us from our foolish and sinful choices. He emphasizes our responsibility for bringing on the consequences of our sins.
He then describes the way God redeems us from our complacency by meeting us in our crises from which He redeems us when we are at our wits end and don’t know what to do. He agrees with Isaiah that God creates these crises (Isaiah 45:7).
Meditate on all these levels of redemption. Ask God to continuously redeem you in all these ways. As you reflect on each individual dimension of redemption step up and join the redeemed of the Lord in grateful worship.
And say so…
2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Giving Thanks, Grateful hearts, mercy of God, oh give thanks, Psalm 107, redeemed by God, Redemption, Rehabilitation, religion, thanks to the lord, theology | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward
June 20, 2012
“Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.” (1 Corinthians 4:2)
Paul declared that the greatest virtue of a servant of the Lord is faithfulness.
The story is told of a man who was told by God to push against a huge rock as his primary work for a lifetime. The man did that and exhausted, burned out and discouraged told the Lord that rock had not moved a centimeter. The Lord responded that He had not told the man to move the rock, but to push against it. He made the observation that pushing against the rock had given him a strong healthy and muscular body. God knew all along that only He could move that rock.
This leads to an acrostic based on the word push. It goes like this:
P- Pray
U– Until
S– Something
H– Happens
I am now living in by 82nd year of life. One of the observations I have made in my long life is that God is our Mentor. He is always teaching us and He is fiercely committed to the proposition that we are going to grow spiritually and in every other way. He deliberately assigns us tasks that are not only difficult but impossible knowing that those tasks will grow and mature us into a faithful servant He can use to do through us what only He can do in this world.
Another observation without which I could not function as a human being or especially as a pastor is what I call four spiritual secrets. They are that I’m not, I can’t, I don’t even want to but He is He can He wants to and He does.
So push and pray until He does work through you.
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: 1 corinthians 4, faith, Faithfulness, Four Spiritual Secrets, God's faithfulness, Jesus, moving rocks, P.U.S.H., prayer, religion, Trusting God | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward
June 15, 2012
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7: 3-5 NIV)
Jesus had a great sense of humor; I have long imagined He spoke these words with a smile on His face. They are, however, very wise and profound words. The way we perceive other people has everything to do with our relationships with them.
The story is told of two psychiatrists who rode the same subway every day to their office building. Every morning one got off the elevator at the sixth floor and the other at the tenth floor. One morning before the sixth floor psychiatrist got off the elevator he spit in the face of the other psychiatrist. This happened every morning that week. On Friday the elevator operator asked the tenth floor psychiatrist, “Aren’t you going to do something about this?” He responded, “That’s not my problem. That’s his problem. He has a problem. He spits on people. But that’s not my problem. He needs to get his head read.”
Very few of us are that secure. But if we were we would know that it takes a strong person to not retaliate. If we have a wholesome and positive evaluation of ourselves, and others with whom we have relationships, we would not play games like specks and planks.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: 2-way relationships, faith-based relationships, Jesus, judging others, managing relationships, Matthew 7, mental-health | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward
4SpiritualSecrets 