Smile All The Way To Tears

Have you ever had the experience of being so overwhelmed with joy that you cannot help but begin to cry?

I am writing this post while at a funeral for a loved one.  As I am watching the people walk around and say their blessings to the bereaved I am awestruck at the emotional climate.  It is not sad nor is it dark. On the contrary, I find that I am surrounded by something else entirely: joy.

It is clear that this woman was loved and enjoyed by everyone that was blessed to know her.  And yet this funeral seems utterly drenched with joy.  There are most certainly tears but they are tears of glory, tears of exultation. To be quite honest, I find that I am overcome by this and sobbing with a smile so wide.

The woman, one of my wife's aunts, was a devout Christian.  It is this singular fact about her that is the cause for the emotional milieu.  Christians alone live a life based solely upon the hope of the glory of God found in Christ Jesus.  Hope of life eternal.  Hope in the promises of God made secure by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Amen!  Praise be to God!

Oh that my funeral is filled with those sacred tears of joy!

Colossians 4:5–Walk Wisely

Colossians 4:5–"Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time."

This is one of those concepts that can be so difficult for the Christian to understand–it has been for me at least.  The reality is that non-Christians and those that do not know God do watch the Christian with a critical eye, searching for hypocrisy or weakness of conviction.  It is for this reason (not to mention the other more devotional reasons) that we need to live our lives wisely at all times, but especially in front of non-believers who are watching.  

To be sure, this is no easy task.  But it is a matter of faith and focus more than it is a matter of show.  We are to live wisely for those who would be watching because we desire to be obedient to Christ in every aspect of our lives.  Let us then strive to live wisely and make the best use of the time, recognizing that we are being observed for our Christianity.

Ephesians 5:2–And...Walk in Love

Ephesians 5:2–"And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

This is, in many ways, one of the central tenets of the Christian lifestyle.  It would be a magnificent thing for Christians to take this exhortation as seriously as it is given.  But if we were being honest with ourselves, how many of us could agree that we actually do live and love like Christ?  Or even more severely, how many of us truly give ourselves up for those we love?

But this is precisely the sort of love that Paul is calling Christians to exhibit.  He is prescribing to us much more than a different perspective; he is putting forward another lifestyle, a distinctly Christian lifestyle.

This lifestyle can be reduced, as Paul so easily confers, is this:

Walk in love.

John 14:6–I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life

John 14:6–"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.'"

This is one of those foundational verses that that is more polemic and assertive.  Jesus is, in the very least, asserting a stiff statement about who He is and His position in relation to God.  Additionally, He is consciously objecting any system of philosophy that would claim to have an 'in' with the divine apart from through Him.  To be sure, this statement is both unequivocal and unambiguous, leaving no question as towards what Jesus knew to be the road to God the Father and salvation on the whole. Additionally, Jesus doesn't make this claim lightly, understanding fully the ramifications of such an outlandish assertion.  But it is upon this claim that rests the whole of Christianity.  Therefore, let us consider it and let us make it foundational for our framework for life and everything it includes.

Colossians 3:17–Whatever You Do, Give Thanks To God

Colossians 3:17–"And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, give thanks to God the Father through Him."

In case you, like I did, read over this verse without taking it in, let me point to the important part: whatever you do...do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Consider the ramifications of such a comprehensive proposition.  There is not supposed to be anything, not a single aspect of our lives that is not to be done for Jesus.  Additionally, this is to be done with thankfulness.  Let us make this verse foundational to our lives as we strive to live out our Christianity with sincerity and effort!

Colossians 2:6-7–Walking In Him

Colossians 2:6-7–"Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving."

This is a call for Christians live a life committed to Christ, and to always remember whose we are.  We belong to Christ; He has purchased us with His blood.  It is this singular truth which rests the whole of Christianity.  Because of this, not only is it vital that Christians would remember who we are as children of the heavenly Father but, even more so, we need to live a life that corresponds in faith to that lineage. This is what this passage is about, challenging us to actually be the children of God that He has called us to be.  Let us, then, make this foundational to how we would live and who we will be in Christ!

Much Will Be Required Of Those Who Have Been Given Much

Luke 12:48–"Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required..."

This is one of those distinctly Christian principles: that those who have been blessed are responsible to reflect that blessing unto others.  To be sure, this instills an immense responsibility to those who have been blessed.  In truth, though, every person has been blessed with immense riches beyond measure. Thus, by extension, everyone of us is to be held accountable for the gifts that God has given us. Keeping this perspective before us will go a long way to keeping our focus fixed and our feet from wandering.

Psalm 119:143–Delighting in the Lord's Commandments Amidst Strife

Psalm 119:143–"Trouble and anguish have found me out, but Your commandments are my delight."

Life is a sequence of undulations.  Waves of highs and lows can seem to pound our lives with such force and power that, if we are not grounded, we can easily fall into the undertow.  Because of all this, it is of vital importance that we continually reset ourselves.  After all, our lives are so naturally unstable that we need to frequently realign ourselves with something sure, something stable, and something eternal.  This is the point of this verse, that we would always find our peace and our delight amidst the undulations of life in God and in His Word.  O that we would!

1 Peter 2:15–A Statement Doing Good

1 Peter 2:15–"For this is the will of a God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people."

This is an interesting verse, as is most of Peter's epistle.  Peter is saying, quite plainly, that Christians are called to live a certain life, with a specific ethic.  We are commanded to live lives of character and of integrity, recognizing that we should give no reason(s) whatsoever for anyone to discredit Christ due to the flaws in our own lives and testimonies.  It could be said that this is one of the primary ways in which Christians are called to evangelize and minister to the world: by living lives of authenticity and character.  This is our task.  Let us pray for the strength and wisdom to fulfill this task with excellence and honesty.

Thoughts on Life

It is an all-too easy thing to think of life in ever-expansive terms, making one's own being seem larger and loftier while also making it less rooted in reality.  In this celebrity culture one's life tends to be distilled into bullet points of achievement and ownership as the fullness of a person is fragmented into pieces to be parsed into categories of merit, one pile of value and another of uselessness.  But as this process begins to take a human and turn them into mere components of an individualized narrative, the product of this fermentation is a counterfeit inebriation of how we perceive life.

What I mean to say, in a roundabout way, is that it is all the more vital today that we would take a moment to step out of ourselves to view the big picture.  I have countless encounters with people who are so engrossed and enameled with particular elements of their lives that they are always stuck wearing tunnel-vision goggles, undoubtedly running into the same walls simply because they've not taken the time to recognize the forest though they be surrounded by trees.

And having so overvalued the personal experience that we've lost sight of the real, the Truth, and the valuable; that is, if we ever had the vision to see these things before of course.  The point of this blog is to exhort us to live a life that takes time to breath in the world around us and that we would slow down and smell the proverbial roses.  For today, then, let us take a moment or two to take in the world around us and to praise God for it all!

Psalm 143:10–Teach Me to Do Your Will

Psalm 143:10–"Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God; may Your good Spirit lead me on level ground."

Asking for assistance is often the first necessary step in receiving it.  If we never ask, we may never receive.  Under this principle, we should be willing and eager to ask God for help in our aim at spiritual maturation.  In other words, it is always a good practice for us to come to God requesting that He would teach us and that He would lead us.

Because of this, it would be wise of us to make a verse like this our prayer that we would receive the grace to do His will and to walk with sure steps on level ground.

Psalm 119:64–The Earth Is Full of Him

Psalm 119:64–"The earth, O Lord, is full of Your steadfast love; teach me Your statutes!"

Amen!

The realization and reckoning that the earth truly is full of God's unfailing and steadfast love can be a remarkably profound recognition.  I can remember times of tears just from the thought that God is in control, that everything is right, and that He is right there.  It can be easy for us to forget this truth when we spend our days hurtled through the hustle and bending in the bustle.  Because of this, it is good to simply re-assert our focus and the truth: that the earth and its inhabitants are God's, and that we desire to know who He is!

Let us do just that!

Proverbs 29:11–Holding Back Wisely

Proverbs 29:11–"A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back."

When ready Proverbs today, I ran across this verse and stopped.  I had to read it again.  And again.  And again.  It convicted me.

It turns out that , according to this verse, I am most certainly a fool.  Now I do not desire to be a fool nor do I wish to continue to live life as a fool, however, I fear that my proclivities in this sector of my life have become so engrained that to become a wise man in this regard will truly take a miracle.

You see, I, like many members of my family, are opinionated.  And when I say opinionated, I mean that not only do I possess specific opinions on a wide array of topics but, and here's the downfall, I feel that it is my right, nay, my duty to inform the people around me my opinions. This is made all the more important when other's opinions happen to disagree or contradict my own.  In such a case as this, I have often been prone to fully venting my spirit in a excited display of opinionated portrayals.  In other words, I have exposed that I am both a fool and a jack@$$.

When I read this verse, I immediately tried to dismiss it under the presumption that I must be the wise man.  That facade, though, did not last long.  Midway into reading the next verse I had to go back and re-read verse 11 to make sure.  Yep, I thought to myself, I am a fool.

Therefore, my concluding prayer today is for myself and for all the opinionated fools like me:

May God grant that He would transform our foolish selves so that we would be content in holding back our opinions so that they could be shared quietly, effectively, and wisely.

John 6:28-29–What do we do?

John 6:28-29–"Then they asked Him, 'what must we do, to be doing the works of God?'  Jesus answered them, 'This is the work of God, that you would believe in the He whom He has sent.'"

It's so simple.  Jesus lays it out for us, defines what God asks for us in such straightforward and unequivocal terms: God desires for us to believe in the man that He has sent.  This statement, however, carries with it a secondary connotation.  To be sure, primarily it is referring to the Son, that we would believe in the Christ, Jesus of Nazarene.  Yet there is another sense in which Jesus makes this direct assertion.  We should not forget that He is also speaking of those people whom God has called and will call to speak His truth and to carry the message of Christ throughout history.  In this way not only is the work of God about believing in Jesus but it also infers that we would believe those in whom Jesus has imparted His Holy Spirit, aka. Christians.  So, in the end, our task is simple but it is also a challenge that we would commit to trust in Christ and the ones whom He has sent to preach the message of God!

Matt. 6:19-20–Right Treasures

Matthew 6:19-20: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal."

This passage comes in the middle of one of the greatest sermons of all time delivered by Jesus Himself on a hillside overlooking the sea of Galilee.  It speaks of differences in treasures and the vast contrast in value of these treasures.  In the most broad sense, there are two types of treasures: treasures eternal and treasures transient.  But in addition to outlining different treasures, Jesus also critiques them.  Jesus indicates that there is only one kind of treasure worthy of our attention, that is, eternal treasure.  Let us take this seriously and not waste our time, energy, and passion on treasures that will fail and fade away.

Proverbs 26:10–The Worst Kind of Fool

Proverbs 26:10: "Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes?  There is more hope for a fool than for him."

This verse and those like it have become sort of a rubric for me, a litmus test for gauging foolishness in both myself and the people around me.

It is a simple question: do I think I am wise?

The reality is that there are two kind of fools: the kind that do not know they are fools, and the other, far worse kind.  While it is not a good thing to be foolish, it is far worse to assume that one are not foolish when all the available data may, in fact, say that the person is foolish.  And what's worse, they not only do not know that they are foolish, but they even gloat about how wise they may be in face of their blatant foolishness.  After all, what could be worse than the fool that thinks he is wise?

Living Lives of Good Works to Glorify God

Matthew 5:16: "In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."

This is such an interesting verse.  It compels the believer to an understanding of life as an exhibition.  This is to say that we are ordained, as Christians, to live life as a light that glorifies God.  

Essentially, what Jesus is telling us is to do good works not from the perspective of meritorious salvation but instead, we are to live lives of good works for the expressed purpose of pointing people to God.

Jesus is calling us to live a certain way (good works) with a specific attitude (to glorify God).  This is, it turns out, the essence of the Christian life: that every thing we do would, ultimately, being glory to God.  

Let us then take seriously this call to do good works, not to be glorified ourselves but that in doing good works we may glorify God!

Matthew 24:35–Eternal Words

Matt. 24:35: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away."

I love this verse.  It is a prophecy and a promise made by Jesus Himself.  He is challenging His disciples and His critics, as well as the annals of history, that His words are, in fact, eternal.  Jesus is God incarnate, He is Immanuel, and because of this everything that comes from Him, being by nature God, is eternal.  That is why it is not a mere suggestion that Christ live inside of us as a measure of our eternal life.  To be sure, if Jesus' eternal nature is not in us then we must say that we do not yet possess eternal life because of that lacking of the eternal One within us.  Remember, we die to ourselves so that we may be made alive in Christ.  This is not a suggestion, it is a logical extension of the reality that we are, by nature, not eternal and so in order for us to be made eternal eternity must enter into us.  After all, non-eternal creatures cannot create eternal life; it can only be gifted from an eternal source who inputs His life into us.  So I say: "Amen! Thank You, Jesus, that Your words are eternal and that they rest within my heart!"

Rom. 6:23: The Free Gift of God

Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Death is certain for all humans.  It is a 1-to-1 ratio: 100% of all humans die.  It is the inescapable reality of life, that it ends in death.  All creation follows this same, seemingly intrinsic property and process of reality.  However, we should not begin to think that death is the way that life should be.  Sin and its effects should never be diminished in the equation.

It is sin that reckons all creation for death.  It is because of sin that we will die.  But in this death we find true love in Christ Jesus.  Because of Jesus' life, His death, and His resurrection has done for humanity what no man could do for himself: He saved us from sin.  Needless to say, there is far more to this than the scope of this blog but suffice to say that because Jesus has died, we have been blessed with life eternal through faith in Him.

Now the death we do die is but a shadow of death while the life we live is but a precursor for eternity.  But consider the contrary for those who do not come to Christ in faith: the life lived is but a shadow of life while the physical death is but a precursor for the death that will be eternal.  In the end, there is no greater gift to creation that Christ Jesus, for salvation from the reality of sin is found and made secure in no one else.

In Him we Live and Move and Have our Being

Paul, on his second missionary journey, came to the city of Athens.  A city heralded for its sophistry and its intellect, Athens was also an influential city in the mediterranean world.  In many ways, outside of Rome itself, Athens may have been the port of ideas that spread philosophy and education across the known world.  It proved to be a good place for Paul to preach a message to the Aeropogus on Mars Hill.

And while Paul's gospel message was met with varied apathy and sneering flippancy, there was a minority of listeners that were touched by God.  This message is recorded for us in Acts 17.  The message in its entirety is certainly worth reading and thinking through, however, it is the final words of the message that strike me to the heart today: "In Him we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28).

Perhaps no statement in Scripture outside of Deut 7:7-11 or John 3:16 rings more clearly about the nature of God and His relationship to man.  He made us, knitting us together with every strand of DNA and fiber of marrow or joint in the womb (Psa 139:13).  This fact alone is the fundamental truth of reality, the truth of humanity, and the primary description of the human life.

He made us.  He owns us.  Every breath we breathe is a gift from His sovereign hand of grace.  There is nothing, not one thing about humanity that cannot be boiled down to this: we are His.  He has it in His full rights to terminate our lives at any moment.  And we deserve that termination because of our disobedience and lovelessness (please read that sentence again).

But yet He shows us mercy.  He does give us breath, He does give us reason and intellect, He does give us relationships, and He does give us the ability to not choose to recognize those gifts of grace at all.  In fact, He loves humanity so much that He allows to spurn Him for our very beings!  And He still loves us!

Today, do not let this day pass without considering the graciousness of God.  I implore you to think about Him.  Dwell on His mercy, linger on His forgiveness as it relates to our faithlessness.  And when you feel that you have tired of that, think, at last, of what God Himself has done by sending His Son to be crushed and murdered for all our sin so that we would not have to meet that fate.  Think about that.  Pray about that.  Above all else: praise God!  For "In Him we live and move and have our being."