4SpiritualSecrets

“…  And what does the LORD require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

The great prophet Micah asked a very important question.  In effect, his question was what are the divine requirements of God? What does God expect, require, demand, and command from me?  He gave three answers to his question.

His first answer was that we should do justly.  In other words, we should be a conduit of justice. We should stand up against injustice anytime and anywhere we see injustice.  Since we live in a world that is filled with injustice this could be very dangerous.  Jesus Christ did this perfectly and it got Him crucified.

Micah’s second answer is that we should love mercy.  Mercy is unconditional love.  This is the chief characteristic of the love of God.  David believed that the mercy or unconditional love of God would follow or pursue him all the days of his life.

Micah’s final answer to his profound question was that we are to walk humbly with our God. Humility has consistently been a characteristic of the great old souls we have known in this life.  C.S. Lewis wrote that pride is the mother of all sins and we read in the Proverbs that God hates pride.  If Lewis was right we can see why God would hate pride because He hates sin.

Are you willing to be the person Micah profiled?  There is a sense in which we cannot become that just, merciful and humble person through our own efforts.  But these three answers do give us a profile of the person God wants us to be.  Are you willing to let God give you the grace to be that person?

“…  But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with perseverance…So pay attention to how you hear. To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given.” (Luke 8:15, 18)

In one of the greatest teachings of Jesus He taught a parable about four ways people hear the Word of God.  We might call it: “Four Men in a Pew – Which One are You?”

According to this parable the first man is wearing a hard hat because he doesn’t understand what he hears.  The second man has a hard heart. His volition or will is not penetrated.  The third man has what we might call the hard choices.  He understands and he wants to apply the Word.  The weeds are things like riches, pleasures, work and worry.  He has to choose. We might say he loses the Word in the weeds because he makes the wrong choices.

The fourth man is described above.  When he hears the Word of God he keeps it and obeys it.  The first three do not hear the Word correctly and they bring forth no fruit.  In other words, nothing happens.  So, the bottom line conclusion is that we must pay very close attention to how we hear the Word of God.

Think of the challenge this presents to all those who teach the Word.  When you teach, seventy five percent of the time nothing happens unless you penetrate the understanding, the will, and the priorities of those you teach.  This means we must pay very close attention to the way we teach and hear the Word of God.

“Again, the kingdom…is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Again, the kingdom…is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” (Matthew 13: 44-46)

These short parables present a beautiful picture of joyful, total commitment to King Jesus and to His kingdom.  They say to us, “If Jesus is anything to you then He is everything to you, because until Jesus is everything to you, He isn’t really anything to you.” 

 They also say to us that we have not really seen the kingdom of which Jesus is teaching until we see that this kingdom is the greatest thing we have ever seen.  The kingdom for which Jesus is recruiting subjects, is worthy of a joyful total commitment from those who follow Him.  These parables teach that we will never really understand or appreciate the kingdom until we are joyfully willing to surrender everything we have, and everything we are, to the King Who leads this kingdom.

 Decades ago, a group of nuns made recordings when they were on leave from their sacrificial work as medical missionaries in Africa.  “The Singing Nuns” as they were called sang, “A man found a treasure, it was hidden in a field.  He bought the whole field for joy.  He bought the whole wide field for joy!” They obviously knew by real life experience the meaning of these parables.

 The application of these parables is not just for singing nuns – it is for me and for you.

“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18).

 In this verse the Apostle Paul is informing us that we have boundaries of responsibility.  The J.B. Phillips translation puts it this way: “In as far as your own responsibility goes, live at peace with every man.” In all our relationships we have a responsibility.  That responsibility has a point at which it begins and there is a terminus where our responsibility ends.  We can’t control what the other person in that relationship does or does not do.  We can control, and we are responsible for, what we do in every relationship.

This is not only true in our relationships but in every other area of our life.  There is a hymn which laments, “Oh what needless pain we bear…” I often think of that phrase.  We bear so much needless pain because we do not accept the boundaries of our responsibility.  Into each life some pain must fall.  I have my share and I’m sure you have your share.  But nobody should tolerate the thought of needless pain!

There is so much needless pain in our life because we do not accept the limits of our limitations in that dimension for which we are responsible in our relationships.  This truth can set us free from so much pain in difficult relationships.  Paul is prescribing that we must acknowledge and accept our responsibility boundaries.

Someone has written that all nature is red in tooth and claw.  If we will fill and take Paul’s prescription we will be saying to the one in relationship with us, “Life is not a rat race or a dogfight because I am not a dog or a rat.”

“But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6)

The author of what is called the faith chapter of the Bible presents what we might call “The Hall of Faith.”  He parades by heroes of faith who showed us by the way they lived what faith is.  Before he exhibits these walking definitions of faith, the author writes some introductory thoughts about faith.  He writes that without faith it is impossible to please God or come to God.  He adds that if we want to come to God or please God we must believe two things about God: We must believe that He is, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him.

In two places (in Matthew 7 and Luke 11), Jesus taught that we should continuously – and with perseverance – ask, seek, and knock.  He gives a great promise with this exhortation.  He promises that everyone who asks in this way will receive, and everyone who seeks in this way will find, and the one who knocks in this way will discover that the door on which they are knocking will open to them.  Seeking is intense asking and knocking is intense seeking.

Jesus was not talking about salvation when He gave this exhortation.  He was teaching us how to diligently seek God. According to the author quoted above this is a prerequisite to pleasing God and coming to God.  Can there be such a thing as an authentic believer who does not want to come to God and please God?

If you want to come to and please God find out what it means to diligently seek God.

He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit. (John 19:30)

The Roman Empire used the word “Tetelesti” when they crucified someone, or when a prison sentence had been completed.

Crucifixion was one of the favorite methods of execution by the Romans.  They crucified whole villages that did not pay their taxes.  Almost any act of what they considered a refusal to obey them could be punished by crucifixion.  They left the naked crucified bodies on crosses for weeks until the vultures picked the bodies clean to inspire terror in the lives of those they had conquered.

Jesus was obsessed with the work the Father had given Him to do.  He told His apostles that His meat was to do the will of His Father and to finish His work.  He said that He must do the works of His Father while it was day because the night was coming when no man could work.  When He was about to be arrested and taken to His death by crucifixion, in prayer to His Father He told the Father that He had glorified Him because He had finished the works He was given to do.

When He was convinced that His suffering on the cross was a sufficient sacrifice to forgive the sins of the world, He announced that glorious reality with a loud cry which in English translates “It is finished!” By providential irony for this glorious reality He chose that word “Tetelesti.”

By devotional application this means that there are no works we can add to what He finished for us on that cross.  Another application would be to ask, “What has begun in our life because of what He finished for us on that cross?”

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer …let your requests be made known to God.” (Philippians 4:6)

Have you ever heard any one confess,“I guess I’m a control freak?” My response to that confession is “Welcome to the human family!” The truth is we’re all control freaks.  Both Jesus and Paul taught that we should not be anxious.  What they both meant was don’t worry.  They also both taught us not to worry about the things we cannot control – like the height of our body or the lives of other people.

Speaking as one control freak to another, the thing that really freaks us out is what we cannot control.  In what the Alcoholics Anonymous people call the “Big Book,” there is an illustration with which all of us control freaks can resonate.  We think that life is a stage on which we are directing a play.  The people in our life are characters in that play.  As the play director we give them their scripts and their cues but when they don’t respond to our direction, our frustration drives us into a bottle or some other addiction.

When I was a student I had a mentor who wrote a poem with these lines: “You can’t control the weather or rainy days, but you can control the emotional climate that surrounds you.  You can’t control the height your head will be from the sidewalk, but you can control the height of the contents of your head.”

After quite a few of those his punch line was “Why worry about the things you cannot control? Accept the responsibility for the things that do depend on you.”

Follow the advice of Jesus and Paul and don’t worry about what you can’t control.

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption … What counts is a new creation.” (Galatians 6: 7, 8, 15)

The Apostle Paul wrote these words to the Galatians.  The first part of this passage is often preached to unbelievers, but Paul was addressing professing believers.  As believers this is a spiritual law of our life in Christ.  Every day we can sow spiritual seeds in the garden of our life, or we can sow seeds of our flesh in that garden.  William Barclay, a professor of Bible at Edinburgh University for forty years, wrote that when the Bible refers to our flesh it means “human nature unaided by God.” According to Paul, human nature unaided by God is a seed that produces corruption.

We have the option to sow spiritual seeds in our life every day.  Paul writes that these spiritual seeds produce a continuous creation.  David prayed “Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit in me” (Psalm 51:10). In the New Testament the apostles refer to being born again as a miracle of creation.  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God…” (2Corinthians 5:17, 18).

This means we have two awesome options before us every day: creation or corruption.  We can sow spiritual seeds in the garden of our life which continue the act of creation God is miraculously performing in us, or we can sow seeds that produce corruption.

What seeds are you sowing in the garden of your life every day?

“Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.” (Numbers 13:30)

In the book of Numbers we read that twelve Hebrew spies were sent into Canaan to determine the strength of the enemies they would face as they invaded that land.  Ten of the spies reported that, “The people in that land were such big and fierce looking giants they made us feel like grasshoppers.  And the cities are mightily fortified with walls so thick they build houses on them!”

However, two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, reported that they had never seen such fruitful soil in their lives.  They described how two men had to carry on a thick pole one cluster of grapes from a vineyard in Canaan.  Furthermore, they proclaimed that since they had the Lord with them they were well able to conquer the land of Canaan.

We might say the ten spies with the negative report were experts in “giantology” because they saw the giants, while Caleb and Joshua saw the Lord – they had a vision that their Lord was well able to give them that exceedingly fruitful land of Canaan.

When we “committee our way unto the Lord” and are challenged to take on a project that has great potential for being exceptionally fruitful and there are many obstacles and risks involved, we often have a split committee on a ten and two basis.  Ten are experts on the obstacles and the risks involved in that project and two are like Caleb and Joshua.

When you are faced with challenges that involve risks, but great potential for God to bring great glory to Himself, are you an expert in “giantology” or do you see the Lord?”

“For if I make you sorrowful, then who is he who makes me glad but the one who is made sorrowful by me?” (2 Corinthians 2:2)

Every relationship we have is a two-way street. According to the Apostle Paul whatever we send down that street comes back up that street and has a dynamic impact on that relationship.  Jesus states this same truth with a positive spin on it when He teaches hypercritical people, “With the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” (Matthew 7:2)

This was a marketplace metaphor in the culture to which Jesus came.  If you were selling oats and a fellow merchant in that marketplace was selling wheat, when you bought from each other you could request them to use their bushel standard of measurement.  Paraphrased, this was saying that whatever standard you use when you give to the other person in a relationship, they will use when they give to you. All of this means that we cannot control the weather or rainy days, but we can control the emotional climate that surrounds us in a relationship.

Communication is not only what is said but what is heard.  It is not only what is said but what is felt.  How does the communication you are contributing in a relationship make the other person in that relationship feel?  If you’re sending negative waves into that other person’s life, is that likely to inspire them to send positive waves in your direction?

Paul gave us another great teaching on this subject when he wrote, “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for the building up of others, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Ephesians 4:29)

I challenge you to apply these teachings of Jesus and Paul in your relationships.