Scriptures: Acts 20:24, Jeremiah 17:9

Legacy

The world tells me I am Somebody with a capital S, that I have to be Somebody. I must be somebody. We live our lives to build a résumé. We tell people who we are by giving them a job title. We talk about making names and leaving legacies, all of it for our own benefit and glory, and we wonder why it leaves our lives shallower than our graves.

We all are tempted to chase the world’s definitions of success and meaning. God knows this, so His first instruction to us is to not have any gods before Him. He knows that without Him the biggest god in our lives will look a lot like the image we see in a mirror. Only when I open God’s Word am I refocused. 

I can try to chase my heart’s desire and make a name the world remembers as long as I forget that my heart is so deceitfully wicked that no one can truly know it. (Jeremiah 17:9)

I’m convinced that no hero in the Bible got up in the morning and thought, “I want to be a hero.” No real hero ever sets out to be one. Not only was it not their goal, the thought never entered their minds because most heroic actions involve life-changing pain or danger. Mary had no idea that she was preparing to be the mother of Jesus. She was just living life and loving God. She wasn’t thinking, “I want to be awesome and known around the world for all time.”

David had no idea when he was taking lunch to his brothers on the battlefield that he also was going to save Israel. He was just going through his day and doing what his dad told him to do.

Trace the life of Abraham: He told lies and took shortcuts to achieve what he thought was best, and all along God worked around and through his shortcomings to bless the world. It seems like all the true heroes were reluctant in some way. For even those who launched upon what they knew were gigantic endeavors, it’s like they still innately knew the secret, and the secret is this:

I’ve got nothing. What in the world am I doing here?

That level of humility is the difference in life lived for today and one that redounds to eternity.

Humbled

Philippians 2:3-11

I learned something while recording the album “Only Jesus.” Even after nearly three decades of teaching Scripture, it never hit me until I was writing the song “Nobody” that we are constantly telling ourselves to stay humble. We memorize humility verses like Philippians 2:3-11 and remind ourselves to consider others more important than ourselves and not to look after our own interests but to look to the interests of others. Have the mind of Christ. Let our attitudes be like that of Jesus.

As I considered the lyrics of the song, it hit me: All these years I’ve been praying for God to help me stay humble, but that prayer is never prayed by anybody who encountered Jesus after the Resurrection. Think about how Mary Magdalene, Peter, Thomas, James, Jude, and Paul responded to the risen Lord. James and Jude were His half-brothers who thought He was crazy during His ministry. Yet after His resurrection, they wrote epistles in which they called themselves His bondservants (slaves). The people who walked around with the risen Jesus never had to humble themselves. They were humbled. They got it. In His presence, they felt His glory and their inadequacy.

When religious leaders walked up to John the Baptist in a huff, the thought of humbling himself never crossed John’s mind. He was already humbled because he knew who had invaded his world. His response couldn’t help but drip humility: “No, no, no, you don’t understand. I am nobody. I have absolutely nothing to offer you. Jesus, though? You need to meet Him. He’s the one. There’s nothing I can give you.”

I hope you listen to “Only Jesus.” I hope you find encouragement and inspiration in it. But it won’t remove one trace of your sin.  When our eyes open to who Jesus is, our eyes then open to who we are, and we’re sinners. Everybody in the Bible who came to that realization hit the ground every time. Their response was, “You, you, you, oh Lord. Only you. I’m so sorry. Don’t even look at me. I don’t even deserve to be in the same room with you.”

Yet even after a humbling event, it’s amazing how quickly we get up after a few days and puff out our chests again and think, “Well all right, what are we going to do today, Jesus?” The more time you spend with Jesus, the less you have to humble yourself because the more you’re just humbled.

Feel It In Your Bones

Luke 15:11-19

One of life’s big temptations is to not hurt, to not take the hard route or the narrow way or the suffering. Why persevere when you can escape? Why work for something when you can have it right now?

This is exactly what happens with the prodigal son in Luke 15. He’s out working in the field. He’s drenched in sweat and has a cramp in his back. He’s filthy. He lifts his head to feel a cool breeze and notices that none of the laborers in the next field is working. Everyone is milling around, drinking cold water, and eating fruit. Everything looks better over there, and they’re only hired workers….

If I’m a son and all this is really mine, why do I have to do all of this hard work? It would be so freeing to have my inheritance now. That’s what I want. I want what is rightfully mine, and I want it now.

That’s the lie the son fell for, and that’s a lie we’ve all fallen for.

So the prodigal son runs. Life is good at first. But he soon squanders all his possessions on wanton living. He discovers that the boundaries and the life that his father had given him were as good as it gets. Back home, he had been in the middle of everything he ever needed only to assume he was missing out on something better. When you drill down into his motives, he wanted freedom. That’s code for he wanted control.

The prodigal has all the blessings of a loving and even wealthy family. He knows what’s coming to him, but it’s not enough that his future is secure. He’s more concerned about his now. The son wants his share of the inheritance without submitting to the authority that would be in place until his father died. In other words, when he asked his dad for his inheritance, he communicated, “I wish you were dead.”

Too often we want what comes along with God but we don’t really want God. We want the peace and comfort and joy, but more than anything we want control. The way we live shows that we don’t want God to control our lives, and yet we still have the audacity to wonder, “How can I get all of that peace stuff too?”

The giant lie at the end of all of our own plans is that they’re still not going to take us far enough to satisfy. Usually when we’re running from God, the end game is not in mind. The now is in mind. It’s like watching the Epic Fail videos on social media. You see the teenager on the roof and the trampoline below him, you watch the horror unfold after he jumps, and you wonder, “What did he think was going to happen when he jumped? There is a place you have to go after hitting a trampoline from so high above, and that place can’t be good.”

Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son so we can see ourselves in it. The prodigal wanted the stuff of God. He just didn’t want God. He wanted the stuff of family, but he didn’t want family. He felt that the walls around his world were there to keep him in. He didn’t realize what those walls were keeping out.

Lord, What Were You Saying?

Ephesians 5:14; Isaiah 6:1-6

Only the power of God’s Holy Spirit can give us new life when we’re lost or awaken us when we’re already His but running from Him. Ephesians 5:13-14 compares God’s truth to a bright light. Imagine being asleep in a dark room when a stark light shines directly into your eyes.

“But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Christ, the only righteous one, does all the work. He jars us from our apathy, and the contrast of His light against our dark ways ushers us through conviction and into repentance. When the prophet Isaiah saw a vision of heaven and felt the searing realization of God’s holiness against his own depravity, he cried, “‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5)!

That Scripture inspired a lyric in the bridge of “Awaken Me:”

“Come let your fire make holy these lips unclean. Shine down with all your glory. Awaken me.”

It is the prayer of someone once again awakened by God to the truth that we all sin and fall short of His glory. Anytime people come close to God in the Bible and understand they are in the presence of the Almighty, their reaction is always similar: “Woe is me. Just leave me. I don’t deserve to be here.”

The awakening moment is a convicting moment, and it’s a beautiful thing. Yet we must learn to distinguish between guilt and conviction. Guilt drives you back to slumber. Guilt says, “Just take something and roll over and go back to sleep. It’s not going to get any better.”

Conversely, the Holy Spirit’s grace and kindness leads us to repentance in Him. His conviction actually draws us to Him. It doesn’t chase us away. God doesn’t say, “Let Me get on to you for being bad.” God says, “Let Me wake you up so you can come back to Me.”

When we do, we are blessed when we take refuge in Him, when we taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 34:8) He takes us to a place where we join with the psalmist to beg, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:10, 12). Notice that God is still the one doing the upholding even when our spirits are finally willing to obey again.

Isaiah suffered through his aforementioned stark moment in his blinding vision of a holy God, but he also tasted God and saw that He is good. We know this because of the promise God personally left Isaiah—and all of us:

“For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the (human) spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made…. He went on backsliding in the way of his own heart. I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him” (Isaiah 57:16–18, parenthesis added).

God is Love

Luke 15:20-24; Romans 5:8

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is found in the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. After the prodigal comes to himself, he returns toward home to beg his father to forgive him and take him back as a hired servant. That’s when love moved first.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). The picture is that of a loving, doting father who not only didn’t turn away from his wayward son but also didn’t even pause to ask a word about where the son had been or what he had done. He simply fell on his neck and kissed him.

His boy was home.

Even when the prodigal was thinking of possibly coming home, it never entered his mind that he would be anything more than slave. That’s strange. Did his dad ever do something to communicate that message? Certainly not, but the prodigal knew what he deserved and knew what he probably would do if the roles were reversed.

“Well, if I was dad I’d tell you what I’d do. I’d tell my son, ‘You get out there and maybe, just maybe, you can just hang around outside of the gate for a few weeks. I’ll let you know if I’m going to let you in.’”

We think the same way. We assume God is like us. We assume God loves like we love. We assume His anger is like ours. We assume His patience is like ours, and there ain’t nothing more dangerous than a Christian who’s right. We have power when we’re right, and we show people who we would be if we were in control. We would rain down fire, man, and people who wronged us would be toast.

The prodigal based his picture of God upon what he would do himself and what he knew he deserved. He didn’t see any way back to the father because the father owed him nothing. The son already had taken everything coming to him. He even may have put his dad in debt just to go off and do his thing. He figured his father could never forgive him and take him back without severe retribution.

When you’re not in the Word for yourself, you have to figure out God by yourself. In my darkest times, I thought, “There’s no way to really get back to Him. Everything I ever learned that you’re not supposed to do, I’ve already done most of that. I’m only 19. Good grief. It just doesn’t seem like there’s a way.” And that’s when hopelessness comes.

At those times, we have to remember the runaway’s father. When he was a long way off, the father came running. It was socially unacceptable and unmanly for men to run in Palestine. The father’s actions would’ve left Jesus’ hearers stunned and even offended as He told this story. But love doesn’t care. Love always moves first.

Scriptures: John 14:15-31, Malachi 2:17, Malachi 3:1-6, 1 Corinthians 10:13

The Gentleman

John 14:15-31

The song, “The Change in Me” begins with this line:

“Your Spirit is a gentleman, standing at my hidden doors within, where you wait for me to let you in, so you can set me free.”

Sometimes lyrics wind up on my journal page and all I can think is, “Wow, that’s a little more than I can pull off on my own.” We all know that God does big things through little people, and this line sticks out to me. The Holy Spirit is our escort through life, and He is kind enough to wade into the cesspool of our lives and stand at all of the doors to our hidden rooms. God refines us through His Holy Spirit who is jealous for His glory and the hearts of His people. (Malachi 2:17-3:6)

That the Holy Spirit stands at our hidden doors and waits for us to let Him in so He can set us free is a mind-blowing paradox. We’re already God’s children forever, but this pictures show how we decide whether or not we want to let God into our prison. We’re deciding whether we want the sanctifying fire of the holiness and purity of a holy God. The walls we’ve built, the world we’ve created so we can have control, are cages of our own device. God’s Spirit stands on the outside of our cell doors and longs to set us free. 

The prodigal son’s spiritual awakening when “he came to himself” was prompted by God’s Spirit, not by the prodigal. The prodigal didn’t have the ability to wake from his slumber. God alone, through the resurrection power of his Holy Spirit, can bring new life. Only Jesus.

When I fight God and run from Him, it’s because He’s trying to set me free of bondage. When God reveals our sin to us, we think He’s coming down on us hard and we’re in big trouble. More accurately, when the Holy Spirit lights up a sin that is taking us in the wrong direction, He’s really saying, “Let me free you from this.” It’s like when mom says to the toddler, “Don’t touch the iron.” That is a rule, yes. But she’s really saying, “Let me free you from being burned.” We should understand all of God’s commandments and precepts in this light.

God shows us the way of escape (1 Corinthians 10:13), but we often look for it way too late. For instance, I tell teenagers who are making decisions about their friends and about drinking that the way of escape isn’t, “Do you want to try this at the party?” The way of escape came earlier. It was, “Do you want to come to the party?”

When the Holy Spirit shows us, “This is not for you. This is not the way I’m going,” and we step beyond that, we are now living in our own strength and making our own decisions. We’re doing life on our own. If Jesus is getting in our way, we’re going the wrong way.