Month: June 2020

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But That’s Not How I Do It…

I have my routines.

I really do need this hat!

The older I get, the more entrenched I get in these routines and the more annoyed I become when said routines are interrupted.

I get up and make a pot of coffee at a particular time and in a certain way every morning.

I have a particular place I sit and have my quiet time in the morning with my coffee that I fixed a particular way. This then continues into my method of getting ready for the day – laying out my clothes (the night before), showering, brushing my teeth, mouthwash, etc. It is all done in……..you guessed it, a particular order and in a particular way.

When this routine gets derailed in any manner, I quickly become unraveled, crawl under the kitchen table, and am simply unable to function as a sane human being for the remainder of the day. Okay, it’s not quite that bad…but close.

You may be the same way. Maybe you can’t relate at all. But there’s a passage in the Gospel of John that comes to mind as I reflect upon my excessive routine.

A Divine Encounter with a Samaritan Woman

In John chapter four, Jesus, passing through Samaria, happens upon a Samaritan woman drawing water from a well. Perhaps you know the story well. If not, I encourage you to read the whole story. In short, Jesus introduces her to His living water, as opposed to the temporary water of the well she was drawing from.

Convicted, and realizing His spiritual authority, she immediately changes the subject and tries to engage Jesus in an argument about Samaritan worship versus Jewish worship. The Samaritans had their routine – a particular place and way to worship God. Don’t mess with it. The Jews, too had their particular routine and place of worship.

But, in so many words, Jesus minimizes this dispute and focuses the attention on a much deeper issue. He tells her, “True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him” (John 4:23). Since Jesus had arrived and consequently ushered in the kingdom and the New Covenant, worship would now be done differently.

Something Entirely New

Mark 2:22: No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.

This was a new concept Jesus was presenting to this Samaritan woman. She (and pretty much everyone else at the time – Jew and Samaritan alike) was accustomed to worship that was performed at a particular location at specific times and in a prescribed manner.

This of course is best exemplified in the Old Testament passages describing and prescribing Tabernacle, and later Temple worship, employing mediator-priests, offering a multitude of specific sacrifices on fiery altars, and keeping a calendar full of various feasts.

So, it must have been downright hard to grasp, to say the least, when Jesus said, “You won’t worship on “this mountain (where the Samaritans worshiped) or in Jerusalem (where the Jews worshiped).” I feel sure Jesus could have argued with this woman for hours about the correctness of Jewish worship (He was a Jew!). But instead, He honed in on a much larger reality.

What Is Spirit?

He went on to say that God is Spirit (He has no form, no locale, He’s not bound by time) and therefore seeks worshipers who will worship Him in spirit (no particular form, no particular place, no particular time).

Just one chapter earlier in John’s gospel Jesus said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6, italics mine). So, since God is Spirit, we must worship Him accordingly.

What Is Truth?

But what about truth? What is truth? It’s the age-old question that even Pontius Pilate posed to Jesus. As Christians we believe that truth comes from scripture, which is the inspired Word of God. But here, more specifically, John is speaking of The Truth!

Later in this same gospel, John records Jesus’ own words that He Himself is, “The way, and the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6, italics mine). In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Edwin Blum writes, “True worshipers are those who realize that Jesus is the Truth of God and the one and only Way to the Father. To worship in truth is to worship God through Jesus.” (The Bible Knowledge Commentary, 286).

Additionally, the author of Hebrews wrote, “Therefore through (Jesus), let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God” (Hebrews 13:15, italics mine). So, when we worship in truth, we worship in and through Jesus Christ!

Take Away for Today

So much from this passage can still be unpacked, and gallons upon gallons of rich theology can be squeezed from these verses, but I’d like to wrap up this brief devotion by offering you just one refreshing cup.

Here’s a beautiful truth: Jesus is putting to one side the many issues that divide worshipers, and is nudging us altogether to a powerfully unifying spirit-and-truth kind of worship. Despite the theological, doctrinal, methodological, and even stylistic differences we adhere to, we are nevertheless unified at the very core of our worship, which is simply spirit and truth.

We, as brothers and sisters in Christ (Methodist, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God, Baptists, Hispanic, African, Caucasian, Asian, Contemporary, Traditional, and so on) equally redeemed by His precious blood and presented before the throne of God as righteous and holy, can worship the One who has purchased us and made us one, in spirit and in truth.

Please leave a comment below and let me know how this passage in John 4 has spoken to you about worship!

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Extraterrestrials, Sharpies, and…What Was that Other Thing?

I’m a big Doctor Who fan (Doctor Who is a long-running British Sci-Fi show). Some of my favorite episodes of Doctor Who were about a race of ugly, creepy extra-terrestrials known as The Silence, that, if encountered, you could see and hear them, but once you looked away you couldn’t remember them or what they might have told you to do. That was their big advantage for taking over the world.

THIS is an ugly, creepy Silent…..I told you!

Once the Doctor and his companions figured this out (it’s a long story), they had the ingenious idea to mark a tally on themselves with a Sharpie the moment they saw a Silent so they could later recall that they’d seen one. Eventually they invented these tiny audio recorders and embedded them in their hands which was a really cool idea that worked quite effectively……..but I digress.

The Silence episodes, though fictional, entirely portray the very real drama of my own ever-aging mind! I painfully admit there are times I have absolutely no recollection of particular events or conversations, as if they had been completely erased from my mind! As if I had encountered a Silent and looked away.

I’m sure in part there is some kind of psychological reason to blame, some deep-seated suppression of a childhood traumatic experience (I can’t think of any, but…then again, I do completely forget things), but more than likely it’s just age coupled with a severe lack of concentration. Can anyone relate? I really hope so!

Why Can’t I Remember?

Aging is undoubtedly a nuisance to the memory, but, if you think about it, age has an accomplice in the assault on our minds. The unrelenting busyness of our times and its onslaught of technology-overload – computers, smartphones and smartwatches, tablets, gaming, smart TV’s, streaming on any device, etc. – occupies so much of our minds, I believe, that some things – even important things – tend to get buried.

Add to that a pinch of stress. Throw in a half-cup of overwhelming circumstances. Toss in whatever else you can imagine and, voila! What was it I was making again?

Whatever the cause, the unfortunate fact is…we forget.

True. We can decide to work harder on remembering things. We can practice memorization skills. We can try and simplify our lives. We can even perform stress-relieving exercises. Of course, this should help some. But as humans we will still forget.

God Understands This

You know how I know? Throughout scripture God is persistently telling people (both directly and through His servants), “Don’t forget!” “Remember!” “Do this lest you forget!” “Do this in remembrance of Me!” This is an enormous theme throughout Scripture, but particularly in the Book of Deuteronomy.

One moment that sticks out to me is when Moses was giving what was possibly the most epic speech of his life. At one point in the speech he instructed the people of Israel:

These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:6-9).

God obviously knew how helplessly forgetful people are so He explicitly stressed through Moses the incredible importance of reminders.

We need reminders!

You know this. We remind ourselves about little things all the time.

Reminders to pick something up at the grocery store.

Reminders to pick someone up.

Reminders to do tasks at work.

Reminders for meetings, appointments, and phone calls.

We do this because there are so many menial tasks that have just got be done! Who can keep track of all that stuff? But, think about this…

(Rhetorical question alert!) How much more important is it that we use reminders to keep fresh in our minds what Jesus has done for us? Our forgetfulness of His love, grace, mercy, great salvation, power, etc., will not only foster ingratitude and spiritual deficiency, but the next generation and those that follow will suffer tremendously. This is apparently very important to God. So He says:

Talk of His mighty works when you wake up and when you go to bed.

Teach these words to your kids.

Tie a string around your finger (or get out that Sharpie!).

Write them down where you’ll see them wherever you walk in and out every day!

Memorial Stones

I love the book of Joshua. I love the story of the crossing of the Jordan River on dry ground (God parted these waters like He did the Red Sea years earlier) as they were heading toward the Promised Land.

After everyone had crossed over, God told Joshua to have the priests take twelve stones from the bed of the river (one for each tribe) and build a memorial. Why? Because He knew they’d forget!

Why was it so important that they not forget? Well, honestly, there are many reasons, but here it’s expressly for the sake of the next generation. After receiving instructions from the Lord, here’s the explanation Joshua gave to the priests about why they were building the memorial:

When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ 7 then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever (Joshua 4:6-7).

Oh My Toes!

This is personally so convicting. This forces me to ask myself what “memorial stones” have I set up for the sake of my own kids and grandkids that tell the story of the mighty hand of God. How am I demonstrating to them and teaching them to fear, serve, and love the Lord with all their heart, soul, and strength?

The author of Psalm 44, a psalm of the Sons of Korah, revealed the impact of this in his own life. “O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us, what deeds You have performed in their days, in the days of old…”

Because of this, he could later declare in verse four, “You are MY King, O God,” and in verse six could proclaim, “I do not trust in my bow nor could my sword save me, but YOU have saved us from our foes.”

As it did for the faith of this psalmist, the faith of our next generation rests on whether or not we remember and tell them all about it!

So, how has God brought about salvation in your life? Do you remember? In what ways has He parted a Red Sea or Jordan River for you? From what enemies has He saved you? How has He performed miracles?

How has He fed you?

Clothed you?

Sheltered you?

Kept you?

Take time to remember these things. Like me, you may need to create some reminders. Then, go tell it to your kids and your grandkids. You may have some great ideas for this! If you do, please comment below. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Need a Sharpie?