July 10, 2013
“Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You.” (Psalm 73: 25)
The author of Psalm 73 has a problem. He envies the wicked because they always seem to prosper while God is forever chastening him and putting him through hard times that grow his character. The Psalmist becomes a great model for us as he takes his problem into the sanctuary where the Lord shows him the end of the wicked. That changes his attitude toward the wicked from envy to pity and compassion.
How would it affect your outlook on life if God permitted you to spend five minutes in hell — or in heaven? Both experiences would probably make you an evangelist.
The Psalmist goes on to write: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength (reality) of my heart and my portion forever.” By this he means that God is the great Reality in this life. Jesus said the same thing when He prayed: “This is eternal life that they might know You the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)
When we have a revelation of eternal reality we will realize that the things we leave when the Lord calls us home are not worth living for while we are here. As Peter considered the great Day of the Lord in which every material thing will be dissolved he asked the question, “Since everything will be dissolved in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?” (2 Peter 3:11)
The answer to Peter’s question is that we should be people who know God and make Him known in every nation. This is how we hasten the coming of that great Day of the Lord.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 28, 2013
Oh, that we might know the LORD! Let us press on to know him! Then he will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring.” (Hosea 6:3 NLT)
When I first came to faith and for the first few years as a pastor I struggled with the concept of knowing God personally. I struggled until several spiritual heavyweights mentored me in this dimension of my faith journey. They helped me by shaking everything down to three simple propositions that were basic, yet absolute.
The three propositions are: God is there, God is real, and God is personal.
I have not struggled with the proposition that God is there. My mentors challenged me to think about all the ways God responds to our many prayers to Him. As proclaimed by Hosea I found that when I related myself to God He responded by relating Himself to me. That inspired me to believe that He is not only there but He is very real when I relate to Him and make contact with Him there.
Over time as I shared the intimate dimensions of my personal, private and even secret life with Him I affirmed the glorious reality that God is personal and I should believe Him when He tells me He knows the number of hairs on my head at any given moment. I should also believe Him when He tells me He has a plan for my life that when followed will make me an original person distinct from every other living person.
Are you pressing on to know the Lord? If you are, I offer you these three propositions that can help us all know the Lord when we believe them.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 20, 2013
“We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” (2 Chronicles 20:12)
A large convoy of ships was on elaborate maneuvers. The flagship at the center of the convoy signaled a hard right turn for the entire convoy. The commanding officer of a large cruiser missed the signal from the flagship. His cruiser was not in line with that right turn. The cruiser thrashed around, hopelessly out of formation. There was chaos on the bridge of the cruiser when the standard Navy signal came from the flagship: “What are your intentions?” The skipper of that cruiser flashed this return signal: “My intentions are to buy a farm!” (In the Navy, there is a fast track that makes admirals out of captains and there is a slow track that sends captains into retirement. When a captain makes a mistake like that one, he might as well make his retirement plans).
The cause of Christ is moving through this world like a convoy, in perfect formation, supernaturally synchronized by the Holy Spirit. The risen, living Christ is the Flagship at the heart of that convoy. Jesus Christ is sending signals to that convoy all the time. If you have your eye on the Flagship and you get your signals from Him, you will be in formation and part of His great work in this world. If you do not have your eye on the Flagship and you miss His signals, the work of Christ will move on without you, while you thrash around, out of formation, never a synchronized part this magnificent convoy.
Servants of the Lord must keep their eye on the Flagship and not get their signals from their culture, but from the risen, living Christ.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 12, 2013
“… work out your salvation… for it is God who works in you.” (Philippians 3: 12)
The Bible is filled with paradoxes. A paradox is something that appears to be a contradiction, but when examined closely, you discover there really is no contradiction. There are times when a paradox is not a contradiction because the two propositions stated by the paradox could both be true; they could be both complementary and supplementary. They are often resolved when you realize that it is not either/or but both/and.
THE ELEVENTH STEP: Keep moving.
The Scriptures tell us we can miss the will of God because we are in a hurry and God is not. When that is the case, we need to wait on the Lord (Selah). There are other times when we miss the will of God because we are sitting on our apathetic and indecisive immaturity, demonstrating our lack of faith and courage, and the Lord moves on without us. These two apparently opposite concepts are really not contradictory. It is not either/or, but both/and. The truth is we sometimes need to wait on the Lord and at other times need to keep moving.
We have an adversary who does not wish us well. His first strategy is to make us into lazy, indecisive, apathetic, spiritual wimps, who miss the will of God because we lack the faith and courage to follow the leading of the Lord. If that fails, he will turn us into obsessive, compulsive workaholic movers, shakers and doers who miss the will of God because we are out-reaching His will for our lives, running far ahead of the Lord.
Obviously, we all need balance to discern and do the will of the Lord.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 10, 2013
“Then he blessed him there.” (Genesis 32:29)
THE TENTH STEP: Learn to wait on the Lord.
It takes more faith to wait than it takes to be active. God’s guidance prescription for what we call Type A personalities like Jacob is to wait on the Lord. Jacob was missing God’s will for his life because he was always running ahead of God. He was a make-it-happen, mover, shaker and doer. Read the story of Jacob in Genesis, chapters 25 through 32, and Paul’s commentary on that story in chapter 9 of Romans. As you read how God crippled Jacob so he could crown him with His will for Jacob’s life, you will see what I call, “The Cripple Crown Blessing of Jacob.” When a man is crippled what else can he do but wait on the Lord?
Sometimes on our journeys of faith, God puts us in a holding pattern. We are like commercial airplanes when they are directed by the control tower to circle the field while waiting their turn to land. In the book of Psalms, the word Selah is found in 73 places. The Amplified Bible’s paraphrase for that word is, “Pause, and calmly think of that.”
As He leads us God frequently places Selahs in our lives. Sometimes what God does in our life while we’re waiting can be more important than what we’re waiting for. He may want us to pause and calmly think about our priorities, our vision statement and mission objectives and other issues as we experience His will for our lives. When you encounter one of the Lord’s Selahs and find yourself in one of His holding patterns, ask yourself what God wants you to pause and calmly think about. And, never put a question mark where God places a period in your walk of faith.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 8, 2013
“A person’s steps are confirmed by the Lord.” (Psalm 37:23 Berkeley)
THE NINTH STEP: Look for confirmation as you seek God’s will.
At times on our journeys of faith when we come to a fork in the road there is no verse of Scripture that tells us to go to the right or to the left and we have no prompting or leading of the Spirit. We do our best to make the proper choice, while acknowledging the hard reality that we simply do not know which direction is the will of the Lord. Having done everything we can to discern the will of God, we journey down one side or the other of that road.
The verse quoted above means we should sometimes move forward into what we perceive to be the will of God, praying and looking for a confirmation. That confirmation may be positive or negative. If everything works out and the direction we have chosen obviously has God’s stamp of approval on it, we can say God has given us a confirmation of His will. We have the conviction of God saying to us, “This is the way, walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21) We see evidence of the reality Jesus described, that when He calls His sheep to follow Him, He goes before them. (John 10:1-4) After we commit to a direction, we see evidence that the Living Christ has gone before us and prepared the way for us.
Sometimes, the confirmation is negative and the results are the opposite of those just described. When that happens, we should be humble enough to go back to that fork in the road and choose the other direction. We see an example of this in Acts chapter 16 when Paul wanted to go into Asia and was directed instead by illness into Philippi.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
May 7, 2013
“So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” (Exodus 32:24)
After the greatest miracle in the Old Testament delivered the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt they went around in circles of unbelief for nearly 40 years. Moses went up on Mount Sinai several times interceding for them with God. While he was there the people became so corrupt they made a golden calf, which was an Egyptian idol for God. They were going to return to Egypt behind this idol proclaiming that this God deserved the glory for bringing them through the Red Sea and out of Egypt!
Moses confronted Aaron who was the spiritual leader responsible for them. He asked Aaron, “What have these people done to you?” I quoted the reply of Aaron. While Exodus 32 tells us Aaron skillfully created the golden calf, his response to Moses was that he threw their gold in the fire and out came this calf!
Life is a banquet of consequences and every one of us must eventually sit down and eat the banquet we have accumulated. Our capacity for following the example of Aaron is almost infinite. We can rationalize until we convince ourselves that we put a lot of gold in the fire of life and somehow there came out this calf. Denial (‘de Nile’) is not just a river in Egypt. We often elect to swim in denial until we are far from reality.
We need to deny our denial, confess and be mature enough to accept the responsibility for what we have contributed to our personal banquet of consequences.
Will our choice be reality and responsibility or to swim in denial?
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Posted by Dick Woodward
April 16, 2013
“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 quoted above is taken from an historical context when the people of God were overwhelmingly outnumbered and they simply did not know what to do.
The earthly half-brother of Jesus 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 with me 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 on you!”
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Posted by Dick Woodward
April 8, 2013
“And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.” (1Timothy 6:8)
The Apostle Paul makes several observations about contentment as he writes to his son in the faith Timothy. He tells this young pastor that some believe godliness should lead to gain. We still have people in the church who believe that way. Those who preach what is known as the prosperity theology proclaim that if you are godly you should also be healthy and wealthy. Paul considers that a heresy and proclaims that godliness with contentment is great gain.
Paul also writes that some believe great gain will lead to great contentment. He warns that those who will to be rich can fall into temptations and harmful lusts that can lead to their spiritual destruction. He then observes that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Observe that he does not write that money itself is that root of evil.
It is not sinful or wrong to be wealthy. Believers can experience the blessing of God on them in the form of great wealth because they are faithful stewards and God can trust them with money. But Timothy is to flee a love of money and a will to be rich in pursuit of contentment and pursue the godliness that will bring contentment here and blessing hereafter.
What did it take to bring contentment to Paul? Paul drew the line at food and clothing. He did not even include shelter. (Perhaps that was because he spent so much time in prison.)
What does it take to bring you contentment? Are your ambitions and expectations Biblical expectations and ambitions?
We could paraphrase what Paul wrote here and in what may be his prescription for contentment: “He who lives content with little possesses everything!”
5 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: apostle paul, faith, faith & contentment, faithful stewards, loving God, Trusting God | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward
March 21, 2013
“Who is the man who desires life, and loves many days, that he may see the good?” (Psalm 34: 12)
When David was a fugitive from King Saul many other fugitives joined him hiding out in caves. About 400 who were in debt, in distress and discontent joined David (1 Samuel 22:2). Psalm 34 gives us little summaries of sermons David preached to those fugitives and failures that turned them into the mighty men of David.
He began by challenging them with questions like: “How many of you want to live? How long do you want to live? Do you want to live so you may see the good?” When we are asked how long we want to live we almost never give a precise answer like a specific number of years, months, weeks and days. We just answer, “Many!”
In that culture “seeing the good” was an expression that meant a person was convinced there was something good in this life and they were going to find it. David preached that the Lord was the good thing they were seeking.
After telling them about the most humiliating and frightening experience of his life, his great battle cry to them was: “Magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together!” (v. 3)
David identified with the weakness of these failures. He then preached that the greater their weakness the more they exalted the name of the God they served when He used them. Finding the strength of God in their weakness made them the mighty men God used in mighty ways.
Have you learned how to find God’s strength in your weakness? Have you discovered how the greater your weaknesses – the more you can magnify the Lord?
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Posted by Dick Woodward
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