One Day at a Time

July 12, 2014

“Give us this day our daily bread.” (Matthew 6:11)

When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray He gave them a principle that has many applications.  At the end of this chapter in the Gospel of Matthew, which records the central part of His great Sermon on the Mount, Jesus stated that we should not worry about tomorrow.  Many have made that obvious application to this prayer petition.  People with tragic challenges like addictions or overwhelming suffering are only able to get their heads and hearts around the concept of coping one day at a time.

Another application of this principle applies to divine guidance.  In the third chapter of his letter to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul wrote that one way to discern the will of God for our lives is to live up to the light we now have.  He promises that as we do, God will give us more light.  Someone once said, “If you want to see further ahead into the will of God for your life, then move ahead into the will of God just as far as you can see.”

As a college student I drove across the United States several times, mainly at night because there was less traffic.  My headlights only illuminated about 100 yards at a time.  I discovered that if I kept driving into the light the headlights gave me, I eventually traveled from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles.

It is easier for God to steer a moving vehicle than one that is stationary.  As we respond to the light God is giving us He adds more light to our path.  The application of that principle leads us into His will one day at a time.

Dick Woodward, 17 August 2010

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Eternal Values: Inner vs. Outer

July 8, 2014

“…This priceless treasure we hold, so to speak, in common earthenware – to show that the splendid power of it belongs to God and not to us.”  2Corinthians 4:7 (J.B. Phillips)

Many years ago the famous American statesman, John Quincy Adams, was crossing a street.  Due to his poor health it took him five minutes to reach the other side. A friend passing that way asked, “How is John Quincy Adams this morning?”  He replied, “John Quincy Adams is doing just fine.  The house he lives in is in sad disrepair. In fact, it is so dilapidated, John Quincy Adams may have to move soon, but John Quincy Adams is doing just fine, thank you!”

John Quincy Adams had good theology.  To make a clear distinction between the inward man, (our spiritual man who is eternal), and the outward man, (our body which is temporal), and clearly value the inward man above the outward man, is a vital dimension the Apostle Paul shares with us in II Corinthians chapters 4 and 5.

According to Paul, the outward man does not always know why things happen the way they do. Therefore, the outward, physical man is often perplexed. However, Paul tells us that in our inward man, there is a continuous persuasion because Christ lives in us. Paul writes that the outward man is persecuted and suffers, but in the inward man there is a Person Who is continuously assuring us, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

Speaking from his own experiences of suffering, illness and persecution, Paul acknowledges that sometimes our outward man gets knocked flat. Sometimes our little clay pot gets knocked down, but never knocked out. Because there is a Great Treasure living in our clay plot, we always get up and keep going.

Dick Woodward, In Step with Eternal Values

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Power and Purpose

July 5, 2014

“For… through Him… are all things…” (Romans 11:36)

The Apostle Paul concludes Romans with a profound benediction that God is the power behind all things.  This claim is preceded by his declaration that God is the Source of all things and it is followed by his announcement that the glory of God is the purpose for all things.

I resonate in a special way with the middle part of his benediction because I have been experiencing chronic fatigue since 1978.  As a bed fast quadriplegic I now have no strength of my own, so it is impossible for me to be involved in the work of God unless God is the Power behind all the work He wants me to do for Him in this world.

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. The Bible is filled with stories that illustrate this proposition.  To this end we continuously read that God delights in doing extraordinary things through very ordinary people while He uses His power in them to accomplish His purposes.

Sadly, many people think God cannot use them because they are just ordinary people.  But the more ordinary we are increases the glory God receives when He works through us.  God can anoint our tool kit and our skill set when we surrender our will to His.  He can also add spiritual gifts to our lives we do not have before we bring our ordinariness to Him and lay it at His feet.

Are you willing to do that and prove that God is the power behind all things?

Dick Woodward,  12 October 2010

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Prayer Partnering with God

July 1, 2014

“Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven...”  Matthew 6:9-13)

The message of the Bible frequently sifts down to just two words: God first. From Genesis to Revelation, the bottom line interpretation and application of the commandments, character studies, allegories, parables, psalms, sermons, Gospels, Epistles and teachings of Jesus is simply “God first.”  The prayer Jesus taught us begins with that God-first emphasis when He instructs us to begin by asking God that His name, the essence of Who and what He is, might be honored and reverenced…

Prayer is not a matter of us persuading God to do our will. The very essence of prayer is an alignment between our wills and the will of God. Prayer is not a matter of us making God our partner and taking God into our plans.  Prayer is a matter of God making us His partners and taking us into His plans…

We are not to come into our prayer closets, or corporate worship, with a ‘shopping list’ and send God on errands for us.  When we pray, we should come into the presence of God with a blank sheet of paper and ask God to send us on errands for Him.  We should be like soldiers reporting for duty to their Commander in Chief.

Dick Woodward, A Prescription for Prayer

 

 

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Prejudice vs. faithfulness

June 24, 2014

“…The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”  (Jonah 3:1)

In the story Jonah tells us, he is not the hero. God is. What does the fact that Jonah wrote this story, which makes him look foolish, tell us about his values and motivations for telling it on himself? A paraphrased summary of Jonah’s truth looks something like this:

‘When I went Nineveh, I was not agape love, but God was.  I told the Lord, ‘I can’t love Ninevites, Lord,’  But God said to me,’I can, Jonah, so let’s go to Nineveh!’  I told the Lord, ‘I don’t want to go and I don’t want to love Ninevites, Lord!’  The Lord said to me, ‘I know that, Jonah. But, you see, I want to love Ninevites, so let’s go to Nineveh!’  When I went to Nineveh and while I was in the city of Nineveh, I did not love Ninevites.  When I was in the city of Nineveh, however,  God loved the entire population of Nineveh through me. Miracle of miracles, God saved the entire population of Nineveh through the preaching of this prophet who hated the people God wanted to save.’

…To be “prejudiced” means to “pre-judge.”  Prejudice comes in many sizes, shapes and forms. Is the work of God in this world through you being blocked because of your prejudice? Are there people with whom you do not share the Gospel because you have animosity toward them? Or because they are above or below your level of education, wealth or social status? Do you fear apathy, ridicule, hostility or embarrassment?

When you experience God’s call are you joining Jonah and saying, “I will not?”  When are you going to let the love and power of the Spirit of Christ cut through all your conscious and unconscious prejudice and say to God, “I will?” …It’s not a matter of what you can do, but of what God can do.

Faithfulness is your responsibility; fruitfulness is God’s responsibility.

Dick Woodward,

Jonah Coming & Going: True Confessions of a Prophet

 

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ABOUNDING GRACE

June 20, 2014

“… God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound unto every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:8 KJV)

I once heard Dr. A.W. Tozer preach on this text. After he read the verse with much inflection, he paused, shook his head and said, “Sometimes you cannot help but allow the thought that God oversold the product in the New Testament!” Of course, he went on to explain that God has not oversold the product. We tend to undersell the product because our access into God’s abounding grace is flawed.

Think of this with me for a moment. God is able to make all grace, (not just some grace), abound toward us, (not just trickle in our direction), that we, (he repeats that for emphasis meaning it’s not just for pastors or missionaries, but for every believer), always, (not just sometimes), may have all sufficiency, (not just some sufficiency), in all things, (not just some things), may abound, (not just go limping), unto every good work, (not just the ones we like.)

Once you have meditated on this verse a few times ask yourself this question, “True or false?”

If we answer that question as we should by saying it’s true, should that not give us the courage to tackle the things God is leading us to do that we know we cannot do? Are you doing anything that can only be explained by the supernatural reality that He is, only He can, and He did because you accessed His abounding grace?

Dick Woodward, 16 March 2010

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Patience & Peace

June 17, 2014

“…for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and i know what it is to have plenty…” (Philippians 4:11-12)

Throughout the history of the church, patience has always been considered a great virtue by spiritual heavyweights like Augustine, Thomas a Kempis and Francis of Assisi.  Why is patience such an important virtue? For starters, patience is one of the nine fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23.)

In our relationship with God, we might call patience “faith-waiting.”  In the Bible we are exhorted to “wait on the Lord” (Psalm 27:14.) It takes more faith to wait than most of the real life situations that challenge our walk with God. There are few spiritual disciplines that will focus our faith like those times when all we can do is wait on the Lord.  When we are praying for something and receiving no answer, God may be teaching us that there are times when faith waits.

In our relationships with people, patience could be called, “love-waiting.”  I had no idea how selfish I am until I got married. I had no idea how impatient I am until I became a father and found myself waiting for teenage children to grow up. The Lord wants to grow two dimensions of patience in my life: vertical patience by teaching me to have a faith that waits on Him; and horizontal patience by teaching me that in relationships, love waits…

We all eventually find ourselves facing circumstances which are beyond our control. Imagine Paul chained in that awful prison in Rome.  Would he find and maintain the peace of God if his formula for peace was to rattle his chains and ‘force it?’  Patience is the supernatural fruit of the Holy Spirit that gives us the grace to accept the things we cannot control.

Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Peace

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When you don’t know what to do….

June 13, 2014

“We don’t know what to do but our eyes are on You.”  (2 Chronicles 20:12)

No matter how gifted we may be, sooner or later we will hit a wall of crisis where we simply do not know what to do.  The Scripture from Chronicles is taken from an historical context when the people of God were overwhelmingly outnumbered and they simply did not know what to do.

James later wrote that when we do not know what to do we should ask God for the wisdom we confess we do not have (James 1:5).  He promises us that God will not hold back but dump a truckload of wisdom on us.

Years ago I received a telephone call from my youngest daughter when she was a first year student at the University of Virginia.  With many tears she informed me that she had fallen down a flight of stairs and was sure she had broken her back.  At the hospital they had discovered mononucleosis and seriously infected tonsils that needed to be removed.  She concluded her “organ recital” litany: “Finals begin tomorrow and I just don’t know what to do, Daddy!”

Frankly, I was touched that my very intelligent young daughter believed that if she could just share her litany of woes and tap into the vast resources of my wisdom I could tell her what to do when she did not know what to do.

According to James that is the way we make our heavenly Father feel when we come to Him overwhelmed with problems and tell Him we just don’t know what to do.  That’s why a good way to begin some days is:

“Lord, I don’t know what to do, but my eyes are on YOU!”

Dick Woodward, 04 April 2013

Editors Note: Blessings to all the fathers out there as we in America celebrate Father’s Day this weekend. As that ‘young daughter’ who continued tapping into her Papa’s wisdom until the day he died, these words comforted my heart. Our Heavenly Father is always here when we don’t know what to do.

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Strategic salt & light: Zacchaeus

June 10, 2014

“…for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”  (Luke 19:10)

In Luke 19, verses 1 – 10, we encounter Jesus interacting with the tax collector, Zacchaeus. The beautiful part of the Zacchaeus story is when Jesus goes to spend His only day in Jericho with this little crook, and all the people are griping about it. It would make a great painting if an artist would paint Jesus who was a big man, according to Josephus, walking home with His arm around small Zacchaeus.

Here we see the strategy of Jesus.  He is passing through Jericho. He obviously wants to reach the man who can impact and reach Jericho for Him after he has passed through and beyond the city limits.  It must have made a big impact upon the city when Zacchaeus started calling in the people he had ‘ripped off.’  Imagine their surprise, joy, and awe when they, thinking he was going to get into their purses even deeper, discovered that he wanted to pay them back 400% because he had met Jesus!  This is an illustration and an application of what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) to the effect that the solution, the answer, the salt, the light – is something we are, and that we simply must hear His word and do it.

Dick Woodward, MBC New Testament Handbook (p.142-143)

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Getting our ‘but’ in the right place

June 6, 2014

“The Lord is my Shepherd…(Psalm 23)

These are some of the most familiar words in the Bible loved by devout people everywhere.  According to this Shepherd Psalm of David, the key to the real blessings of this life and the next is a relationship with God.  The green pastures, the still waters, the table of provision, the blessing of God described as anointing oil and the cup that runs over all the time are all conditioned on that relationship.  David tells us how that relationship is established in the second verse when he writes, “He makes me to lie down”.

However, the spirit in which these words are often recalled can be something like this: “The Lord is my Shepherd —but, I have a health problem.” Or, the Lord is my Shepherd — but, I have marriage problems!”  Or, “The Lord is my Shepherd — but, I cannot control my children.”

When we say “The Lord is my Shepherd — but” we are putting our “but” in the wrong place. We need to get our “but” in the right place and recall the precious promise of these words this way: “I have a health problem, BUT the Lord is my Shepherd! I have marriage problems, BUT the Lord is my Shepherd! I cannot control my children, BUT the Lord is my Shepherd!”

The Lord often makes us lie down by using problems with our health, marriage, children, finances, careers and all sorts of other challenges to teach us about the relationship which is the key to the blessings profiled in this beautiful Psalm.

Will you let the Great Shepherd use the problems and challenges you are currently facing to strengthen the relationship David described so beautifully three thousand years ago? Can you put your ‘but’ in the right place?

Dick Woodward,  14 August 2008

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