The Stuff that makes Faith Grow

A thought has haunted me for as long as I have been a Christian:  what is required of me to have more faith?  I find that in moments I have had faith that was truly unshakable, and at other points I have questioned what the Lord was doing in my life at the time, usually during tough times.  But how does one develop faith that is deep and unshakable all of the time?

The Bible defines faith this way:

Hebrews 11:1  Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.

So faith is not something tangible.  As such it is tied to hope, and its evidence is not something we can see.  We have faith in many things on a day to day basis.  Every morning I have faith that my alarm clock will go off on time.  When I get into my car, I have faith that it will start.   At the end of the month I have faith  that my employer will pay me on time.  When I get home I have faith that I will be able to have something to eat.  At times I have been disappointed that these things haven't happened when I expected them to and my faith in that thing or event was shaken, but I didn't give up.

But having faith in the Lord is a different kind of thing entirely.  I had and still have faith that the Lord called our family to adopt kids.  I didn't receive certified letter in the mail from the Lord directing me to do that, but I'm certain He did tell me to do that.  I had faith that the Lord was calling my family to the Pacific Northwest for His name's sake, but I didn't get a text on my phone from Him saying "go now."  I believe the Lord exists although I've never seen Him and have never heard His voice.  I have faith that when I die I will actually live on with Him because He covered me once and for all for all of my sins.  I can't see that though, and I won't until it is time for me to leave this planet.

And while "faith" in earthly things is developed usually by seeing, faith in things of God's kingdom isn't developed that way, and only deepens in times of difficulty when things don't make sense.  Many so called teachers these days will incorrectly proclaim that the life of a Christian is easier or made better in an earthly sense.  That isn't true.  The further I go down the road as a Christian, the harder it gets.  When I was in college, my trials usually consisted of taking a simple stance for my faith.  As I became an adult, my faith was stretched when one of my kids made it into the hospital right after birth with a serious illness.  When I got older, my faith was stretched in adopting and is tested daily in the trials related to that obedience.  And when I thought I had it made in life, my faith was stretched further by willfully leaving my dream job, family, and friends to come to a part of the world where I knew nobody, just because Jesus asked me to do so.  And 5 years later, by faith I had our family move back to where we came from to serve at our church, and leave my career altogether.  The trials, if anything, get more and more difficult as you walk through life as someone who pursues the Lord.  In fact, many days I feel weaker and less able to do the things the Lord asks than I did even a few years ago!

The Apostle Paul knew about this more than you and I do.  In 2 Corinthians 6 we get a window into his world.

⁸ We serve God whether people honor us or despise us, whether they slander us or praise us. We are honest, but they call us impostors. ⁹ We are ignored, even though we are well known. We live close to death, but we are still alive. We have been beaten, but we have not been killed. ¹⁰ Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything.

So it's not difficult to read between the lines and see that Paul was, at times, despised by other Christians.  He was slandered, ignored, weak, scarred, destitute (by world standards) and experienced sadness.  Yet he kept going.  His faith seemed to be unwavering.

James, another apostle, put it in this context.  I believe we can see Paul's example in his words, too.

² Dear brothers and sisters,^[a] when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. ³ For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. ⁴ So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

So the hardships Paul experienced, and probably James too, deepened their faith because it developed their endurance more fully.

Endurance is a great word, but it isn't a fun word.  I think of that word when I think of running.  If you are a runner you know what I'm talking about.  When you decide to start running you likely were not able to just jump out there and go 4 miles.  It took you a long time to work your way up to that level.  During the time in which you worked your way up to that level, it hurt a lot.  You were sore later and tired.  You probably faced many times in which you didn't want to go out ever again.  Hopefully you got over that and went out there, but some of you may not have.  

Faith is like that too.  It is strengthened in difficulty, in things that aren't fun, in things that don't make sense, and in things that may look foolish to someone who is watching you.  And situations requiring faith are more than a bad day.  Everybody has those and many of them have nothing to do with developing faith or endurance.  Instead, the trials Paul went through and the ones you go through will likely be things you simply have to trust God on.  Paul had to believe that his difficulties had to do with opposition to his message, and his faith made him keep going.  Your trials of faith probably look different, but they are always things you are having to trust God for.

I don't know what you are being called to have faith on right now.  Perhaps it is just finding a job after a long time of not working.  Perhaps it is reconciliation in your marriage or in a broken friendship.  It might be having faith that your child who is in active rebellion against the Lord finally comes to know Jesus.  Maybe you have to have faith to get through depression or anxiety, just believing that Jesus is with you in it and has purpose for it.  Whatever it is, know that the Lord is teaching you something.  These things give us a choice to desperately cling to our Lord or to push away.  If we cling to him we will know him better and see his deliverance in whatever form that eventually takes.  If we walk away, the trial has not taught us anything meaningful because we still think deliverance can come from us.

Only the Lord can turn a terrible circumstance and make it into something that would benefit you.  Only one can do that.  Only he can see the full scope of everything going on around you and can steer things for your ultimate good.  No one else can do that.  No one else knows how.

So whatever burden you carry today, get on your knees, be quiet, and hand it over to the Lord.  And in the moments when you want to take it back and carry the burden yourself, go back to that place of quiet before him, offering it up yet again.  In these still moments you will learn to know the Lord better than you ever have, and will rediscover hope.  And hope rests in him alone.

Dare to be Different

 

I am often troubled by how my own behavior is no different from that of people who don't follow Jesus.  I get irritated by something someone says or writes and feel like I have to respond.  I spend most of my day thinking on things of myself and not things of the Lord.  I criticize others in private when I should either be silent or offer to help.  My list of failings in this area is quite long, with recent examples.

Christians need to be interested in what it means every day to be "in the world but not of the world (Romans 12:2).  When we allow God to move in us like this, we are naturally different from everyone else we encounter.  It should be that way!  Scripture says that our home is not here.  We are literally foreigners in this land, and foreigners do not follow the customs of the local culture.  All they know are their own, and even when they learn the local ways, they do not often adopt those ways.  

What, instead do we see in these days in America?  We see far too many supposed followers of Jesus Christ who are indistinguishable from those around them.  These folks listen to the teachings of Jesus and agree with them, but then don't follow them at all Monday through Saturday.  Too many are quick to argue, quick to judge even when the "plank" hasn't been removed from their eye, quick to fight, quick to get angry, and quick to use harsh or insulting language against someone who disagrees with them.  And on top of that, they support public figures who do these things and even defend their actions.  

When the world sees Christians behaving that way, why would they want that?  The apparent difference is in words only, with no actions to back it up.  

In contrast, the Apostle Peter wrote some wonderful words describing what daily life of a true follower of Jesus looks like.  These days it seems that many who call themselves Christians have forgotten them, or feel they don't apply in all contexts.  And yet the words are timeless and are spoken as commands!  Let's have a look.

1 Peter 3:8-9 (NLT) Finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters.[a] Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude. 9 Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will grant you his blessing. 

There is a lot here.  Let's start with "be of one mind."  Peter is speaking here to Christians being of one mind, which means we agree on the important things.  We agree that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that he died for our sins and was resurrected and seen by many, and then ascended to Heaven.  These are the foundational things that we must agree on.  And being of one mind means that there are secondary things that we may feel a little differently about but can move past.  There's a huge list of those things, depending on the local church and circumstances.  Being of one mind means we will let it go when someone says one of those secondary items and we don't die on that hill.  We maintain peace between us because Jesus Christ is the only thing that matters.

Sympathizing with each other means we care for each other.  We know what is happening in each other's lives because we care, and we work to share those burdens.  That means when another is hurting, we hurt with them.  When another person is joyful, we rejoice with them.  We are in their lives and they are in ours.  We have sympathy for them because we know what has been going on with them and have been down that road too.  We are the good Samaritan who stops to help the man who has been beaten and robbed so that we can bandage the wounds and nurse them to health.  We are the one who sees someone without enough food or who has lost a loved one and we sit there with them in that mess.  We are Job's friends in the first few chapters of the book of Job who simply sat in silence as Job mourned his countless losses.  We don't avoid the trouble others are having because we ourselves have experienced trouble and hurt and hardship and were helped by Jesus.  I am thankful he never abandons us or walks by when he sees us in a tough spot.

We also love each others as brothers and sisters.  Brothers and sisters don't always agree and they don't have to.  But brothers and sisters never give up on each other because they are family.  Brothers and sisters apologize when they have offended the other.  Brothers and sisters step up when the other is in hardship or hard times so that they can help.  That all comes from love, which is a bond that isn't meant to be broken between siblings.  In fact, Jesus himself said that Christians will be known by their love for each other (John 13:35).

Being tenderhearted and maintaining a humble attitude means we know we are not always right, and we don't have to be right.  We listen before we speak, and when we don't agree we just let it go as long as it doesn't have to do with the main thing, which is who Jesus is and what he did.

And perhaps the words that cut the deepest in our society are from verse 9.

9 Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will grant you his blessing. 

In our society loaded with public figures and social media posts which regularly label others as idiots, liars, totally evil, etc, we need to remember these words.  If you share your opinion, particularly on spiritual matters, and are called by one of these names or worse, you are to do nothing in return but bless the person.  That's right.  Nothing.  No words need to be said in anger or otherwise.  Even if you share your opinions on other matters and are insulted, do nothing.  You don't need to respond!  That's what the rest of the world does, and you are not part of this world, Christian!  Jesus went so far as to say if someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn your head so they can slap the left one too (Matthew 5:38-42).

And what about those around you who engage in such behavior and profess to be Christians?  Here we find an interesting statement from the Apostle Paul that runs completely counter to the way many churchgoers today feel.  Many today believe that they should isolate themselves from the world and do everything they can to insulate from nonchristians.  This affects the friends they have, the schools their kids attend, and the neighborhoods they live in.  And yet the Apostle Paul said these words:

1 Corinthians 5:11  I meant that you are not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believerj yet indulges in sexual sin, or is greedy, or worships idols, or is abusive, or is a drunkard, or cheats people. Don’t even eat with such people.

If you have read the New Testament you see a picture of Jesus living this out.  He spent all of his times with society's outcasts and the worst of the worst sinners, even eating dinner with them.  And his most harsh words were for the ones who supposedly were the religious leaders.  Let's follow his example in our day to day life!

Now let's wrap this up by making it practical in your life.

• If we aren't supposed to repay evil for evil, why do we tolerate public figures and politicians who do the same with their words?
• Why do we give our attention to podcasts and talk radio hosts and TV personalities who frequently call people names because they have a belief different from their own?
• Why do we pay attention to friends and family members on social media, and even respond, when they have posted things that are inflammatory towards other people?
• Why do we entertain ourselves by watching TV shows or YouTube clips of people who tear others down or deliberately get into arguments?

Just.  Stop.  Paying attention to media like this is a choice.  Defending the evil, cutting words of others because they happen to agree with you on a matter is also a choice.  It isn't something you are forced to do.  And consider this:  has paying attention to any of those things actually improved your life?  Do you feel better about things or worse when you spend your time on the items above?

The danger is that we get into the mindset that we must follow these things as rules.  It becomes a Christian checklist.  What Peter is actually describing, though, is the outcome of having Jesus in your life.  Having him in your life is different from praying some prayer to "ask him in your heart" and then going back to life as it was.  His description is what it looks like for someone who has surrendered themselves to the Holy Spirit and allows him to work everyday in their behaviors and speech.  That makes all of the things that Peter listed become indicators of the work that happened in the heart.

Think of it this way.  How do you tell when a piece of fruit is ripe?  You look at the color and the smell and the feel of it.  An apple that is red on the outside should be sweet on the inside.  

In the same way, the outward actions and words of a Christian should reflect what has happened on the inside.  It is impossible to fake this for very long.  Either the change has occurred inside or it has not.  To do this right, I think we need to be silent before the Lord and allow him to work to change us.  We should read the words in the Bible and ask the Lord to help us work these things out in our lives.  We should submit our mouths, and our keyboards, to the Lord before we say anything.

Let's dare to be different.

Be Quiet!

 

Have you spoken or typed words recently that you later regretted?  I think we all have.  I know I have, and the Lord has been working on me ever since.  That silly phrase we were taught as kids is just an absolute lie:  "sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me."  I wish that were true, but often I have wished for a broken bone instead of a cutting word from someone else.  To me, words can inflict the most pain.  And there are too many times when my own words have brought hurt to someone else.

Our words have quite a lot of power behind them.  With our words we are able to set our plans in motion, start a war or end one, divide people or unite them, multiply hate or extinguish it, tear others down or build them up.  With our words we can rally people around us to good, or motivate them into evil.  And these days it isn't just what comes from our mouths but the words we type which can have such a dramatic effect.  Our words truly are powerful.

The Bible indicates that mankind is made in the "image of God."  An image is a representation of the actual thing.  An image of a mountain, for example, tells us what colors are on the mountain, perhaps what kind of rock it is made of, its general slope, its location relative to other mountains, and possibly a path to climb it.  Yet the image of a mountain is not the mountain itself.  Certain characteristics of the mountain are not translated to the image because ultimately the image is not the real thing.  I can't, for example, tell how heavy the mountain is by seeing its image.  I also can't tell what minerals it contains, or where the multiple pathways up the mountain are, how big it actually is, or its altitude.  It is just an image.

We are made in the image of God.  I believe that means that if we were to somehow see God we would think we were looking at a man.  What we know from scripture is that God has hands and feet and a backside and a face (Exodus 33:19-23).  He has the appearance of a man sitting on a throne (Isaiah 6), so much so that Isaiah spent more time talking about the weird creatures around the throne than he did describing God.  It seems that God's appearance was somewhat a familiar form, so Isaiah instead talked about the creatures the like of which he had never seen.  Jesus himself even appeared so ordinary that some in the crowd couldn't distinguish him from anyone else (Isaiah 53), and even the officials that came to arrest him had to have Judas hug and kiss him so they would know who he was.  Additionally throughout scripture we see that God has a voice.

So while we may have some form that is similar to God, we can't do all the things he does.  Sure, we can speak, but he can speak physical things into existence such as mountains, rivers, cattle, and people.  We can't do that.  Yet with our words we can speak with a lot of power, for both good or evil.

James 3 described our tongues as "a flame of fire" and "set on fire by the fires of hell" and "corrupting the entire body."  Jesus commented that "we are defiled by the words that come out of our mouth," not the food we eat (Matthew 15:11).  James later says of our mouths in chapter 3 that "sometimes it praises God the Father and other times it curses those who are made in his image."  So it seems that mankind, made in the image of God, can use its mouth for great evil if he chooses to do so.  We live in such times right now where many evil words are spoken, many of which by people who should know better.

How do your words over the last few days measure up?  If you had to classify them as either praising the Lord or cursing others, where would the majority of them fall?  Or if you REALLY want to be middle of the road here, look at it this way:  how many words have you used this week that praise God, versus all of the other words you have spoken?  Where do you fall now?

I think Christians live in times when we should speak less, and when we speak, speak only of things of eternal significance.  Which do you care more about?  Which political party is in office or whether your neighbor does not know God?  Do the laws being passed right now matter more to you than the kid down the street who has never been told about Jesus?  Does responding to the Facebook post that made you angry mean more to you than praying for that person and even asking God to bless them?

Over the last week or so I have found the words of Ephesians 4:29 to be a helpful filter for my own words, and maybe they will help my fellow Christians.

29 Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.

So here is your challenge.  If your words don't meet that standard, just don't say them.  Don't type them either.  Instead, lift others up by talking about all that God has done to bless you today.  Can't think of anything?  Look carefully.  

Did you wake up today?  That's a blessing.  

Did you sleep well?  That is a blessing that God allowed.  

Do you have food to eat?  That is from the hand of God.  

Do you have people in your life who care about you?  What a blessing!  

Do you have a past that is in the past because of what the Lord did for you?  Speak on that because you don't deserve that! 

Do you have a place to live?  You have been blessed.  

Do you have a Bible to read?  You are VERY blessed!  

Are you considered to be an adopted son or daughter of God?  This is the greatest blessing of all.  In adoption, the parent chooses, and he chose you.

I could go on and on.  The point is, the little things we sometimes think we have "earned" for ourselves are actually things that God has allowed in your life!  That's because he set things up a long time ago so you could have those things.  He is a good, good Father.  These things were not just handed to you or bought by you.  It goes much deeper than that.

Are you looking for ways to impact our broken world?  Start with the words you say and type.  Speaking words of encouragement, blessing, and praise to God distinguish you from the rest of this world.  That, friends, is a testimony in itself.  That makes you different from all of the rest of the world around us which is just speaking evil.  It will be noticed even if those around you don't comment on it or "like" it on social media.

So if you can't speak words like that, be quiet.

What your sin looks like to God

The smell was overpowering.  It was the smell of rot, of sickness, of death.  It was everywhere I walked and wouldn't leave my nose no matter what.  I was in a place of absolute despair, a hopeless, joyless, dark place where people and animals alike simply await death.  It could come today, tomorrow, or next week, and was the only thing to look forward to.  Overpowering death.

The average person who attends church, even semi-regularly, knows the right things to say about the tarnish that our personal sin brings to our life.  We will speak on the separation that it brings between us and God, the ugliness of it, the hopelessness it brings when we live our lives in it.  But there is a difference between repeating what we have heard in church and in seeing it with our own eyes.  When what we know goes from our head and transfers into our heart, we begin to see things differently.  We begin to see things as God sees them, and in that God can change the way we look at life.

I had such an experience recently in Iquitos, Peru that I will share with you in this post.  It was significant because it showed me what my sin looks like to the Lord, and it showed me what Jesus did to bring me out of it.  I share it with you in the hope that you will process these images as I did and will do something about it.  When you and I begin to see things as God sees them, we are changed, we are healed, and we are come alive for the first time.

Iquitos is a busy city of over 400,000 people situated on the Amazon river in Peru.  It can only be reached by airplane or via a very long boat trip.  This has given the city a unique history that unfortunately includes significant depravity.  Just as many sinful things are done in the dark, this city has thrived as a center of the sex-tourism industry for some time because it is so isolated from the rest of the world.  This industry, particularly as it manifests itself in Iquitos, involves terrible acts that I will not describe here.  Along with that, heavy drug use and debilitating poverty have followed closely behind this city's focus on sin.  In spite of this there is a lot of regular tourism in the city due to its proximity to the Amazon river and the jungle.  There are places where tourists go and there are places where tourists are encouraged to avoid going.  Our team went into one of those unvisitable places called Belen.

Belen is along the waterfront and consists of shacks built up high to stay mostly above the yearly flooding from the river.  Other "homes" are built on logs and are designed to float when the river rises.  Many of the homes have a floating outhouse built over the water.  Nearby the outhouses one will see people bathing in the same river water, washing their clothes in it, or gathering water for cooking and drinking.  The homes have no doors or windows.  They may have a table and a few chairs in them, but little else.  This part of the city is essentially a waterfront slum.

Into the worst part of the worst place

Our destination was near the waterfront into the worst part of the worst place.  We were going to minister to the drug addicts that lived in the slum below the raised houses.

We were transported down to Belen on a three wheeled cart referred to as a Motokar.  When we arrived, we stepped onto a wet, grimy street.  Vendors line the streets selling everything from bananas to raw meat, all out in the open.  Other vendors cook food and handle it without gloves or clean utensils.  Vultures circle overhead, occasionally bold enough to land and pick at a dead dog or cat on the street.  Huge numbers of discarded, rotting bananas are piled up near the waterfront.  The stench is powerful.

We began the journey by descending a large group of concrete stairs, covered in places by green slime.  One has to watch their step going down because the slime is slippery.  We paused under a house halfway down the steps to circle up and pray.  The missionary reminded us all that we were there to show love to those who are unloved, cast off, and forgotten.  We prayed to the Lord, the source of love, for help with this.  We prayed asking that we would be a blessing to the people there, and we prayed that the people would receive the good news about Jesus.

Shortly afterward we continued down the steps, each carrying sacks of sandwiches for the people.  We crossed a huge puddle in the filthy street that could only be crossed by walking on a wet board laid across it.  We then turned a corner.  Around the corner we saw people everywhere who were hanging around in shops and in the street.  They were dirty and had a dull look in their eyes that marked despair in their lives.  And then we reached the entrance to the worst part of the worst place.

It was an opening between the stilts of a house and it led down a dark corridor.  After passing under one house we found ourselves under a second house where we found a large group of people who were recovering from last night's drug binge.  They were dirty.  Some had slept on the ground or on a platform.  A man lit a cigarette containing a less pure and more dangerous version of crack cocaine.  Skinny dogs rummaged through the trash piled high everywhere.  A large pig was penned up in a corner away from any hope of sunlight.  The stench was overpowering.  Vultures rested on boards that had been nailed between house stilts and they picked through the trash, eyeing the people who had come into their realm.  An evil presence was tangible in this place.  And in the eyes of the men and women there I saw death.  They had given up and had nothing to live for.  Nobody had voiced that to me, but they didn't need to.

We passed out the sandwiches and were quickly mobbed by hungry people.  We poured drinks for them and talked to them as we could and as they would allow.  Beyond providing food, our plan was pretty simple.  We would share the good news about Jesus Christ to these men and ask them for a response.  We also planned to offer help to them out of their life of drug addiction.  If anyone would take us up on the offer, we would personally escort them to a safe house and rehabilitation clinic in the city.

Rejection

After feeding them our leader began preaching about Jesus.  Instantly about two-thirds of the people headed for the exits.  But he kept up, telling them in Spanish about Jesus and His great love for them.  He told them the story of his life, about how he had formerly been one of them.  And they knew he spoke the truth because many of them remember the way he used to be.  He was a legend in these parts, but not for the right reasons.

He finished and introduced Pastor Paul and I was thrown front and center with the reluctant audience.  I told them the story described in one of Jesus's parables from Matthew 13 about a man who planted a good crop only to later discover that weeds had grown up with the crop.  It was a story about God and how he knows which people are His followers, and which are not.  It is a story about what will happen at the end of time when He returns.

I explained to the men what the parable meant using words that Jesus used.  The farmer in the story represented Jesus, the farm workers were His angels, the good crop of wheat represented the followers of Jesus, and the weeds were the evil people who rejected God's ways and wouldn't follow Him.  I explained to them that Jesus shows compassion to the world by waiting until He is able to draw in the most people who will believe.  He could end it all right now, but He does not because He does not want anyone to choose a life forever separated from Him.

I asked them for a response.  Who would step forward to receive Jesus and leave this ugly life?  All that is required is belief!  God would do the rest, and He does not want them to continue in this type of living!

I was met with a response of silence.  Several men had listened intently to the story but none would acknowledge belief.  They remained seated among the death and despair, enslaved.

What our sin looks like to God

Our leader went back to speaking and I had a moment to take in the scene.  Around me were sitting men who were clearly under the influence.  Others were recovering from last night and appeared dazed.  The trash, the filth, the evil, the stench...everything was overwhelming in that moment.  A vulture sitting high above all of his peers opened his wings and turned his head sideways to look at me.  He seemed to say "this is my realm."  And so it was.  His was a realm of death and disease and despair, and there was no hope to be seen anywhere.  And I saw a picture, a visual representation at that moment, of my spiritual condition apart from Jesus.

The problem many Americans have is that they cannot relate to imagery like this.  Most have never lived in or even seen anything that even closely resembles a slum.  Worse yet, many churchgoing Americans seem to believe that sins can be ranked.  A murderer, for example, is much worse than someone who just drinks too heavily.  A child rapist is worse than someone who merely looks at pornography.  A thief is worse than someone who cannot bear to miss a meal or who eats too much.  But that just is not the case in God's eyes.  Sin is sin.  It is all vile and repulsive.  Our sin separates us hopelessly from God.  It is, all of it, a terminal disease that will eventually take the life of the one who holds onto it.

For you and your sins it looks no different to God.  Even if you go to church each week, you still sin each and every day.  It could be that you steal from your workplace by taking supplies or not working when you are on the clock.  Or your personal idol may be money.  You worship it by shopping all of the time, or by dreaming of getting the next big gadget, or by trusting it to bail you out of hardship or difficulty instead of relying on God.  You may be one of the countless Americans who look at pornography in private.  Nobody knows about it but you and God, so it is a secret, right?  Or maybe your work is your idol.  You sacrifice to it by giving all of your time to it, never leaving much to your family or loved ones.  Your entire significance comes from your work, and you wouldn't know what to do if your job evaporated.

All of these things and more are sins.  They separate you from God.  And to God, you are the one sitting in the middle of a slum with vultures eyeing you.  The garbage heap all around you is composed of the many sins you have committed all your life.  You can sweep them into piles and try to tidy them up, but they don't go away.  The pile just gets higher and smellier. 

For many churchgoers, you have added to the piles of garbage with all of the good things you have done to try to appease God and get Him on your side.  Yet you have never really believed and allowed God to change your life.  To a casual observer, your life is no different now than it was when you said that you decided to follow Jesus.  There is no life change;  no fruit. 

The prophet Isaiah once said that our righteous deeds, on their own as a vehicle to get us on God's side, are like menstrual rags. 

Isaiah 64:6
 ⁶ We are all infected and impure with sin.
    When we display our righteous deeds,
    they are nothing but filthy rags.
Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall,
    and our sins sweep us away like the wind.

If the good things you do to justify yourself to God are of that quality to the Lord, what must your sin look like?  Yet you continue with the mentality of doing a mission trip here, a good deed there, an act of service sporadically done, and these will surely appease God and put you on his good side.  You sit on the garbage heap, and you think everything is okay.  Your eyes show you a world that isn't that bad, and you don't know any differently.  God's eyes see a different story.  His eyes see things as they really are.

Jesus meets you in your personal slum

I quickly realized that what we did in going into this slum is the exact thing Jesus did when He came into each of our lives. 

At some time in everyone's life Jesus walks into the mess and the filth, walking among our piles of garbage.  This usually comes in the form of a friend who follows Jesus who cares enough to speak to you about faith.  Sometimes it may come in the form of a dream about a man who beckons you to follow.  For others, they first perceive that there may be a Creator by seeing the works of His hands all around them. 

Romans 1
¹⁹ They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. ²⁰ For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

He locks eyes with you and suddenly the darkness you were sitting in is filled with light from Him.  And He communicates truth and love and invites you out of the filth, offering to bandage the wounds life has provided, requiring a bath and offering us a change of clothes.  The only thing you have to do is stand up and follow Him out of the place of despair and death.  The past can really be in the past, and the future really can be different.  Following Him out of this place puts you on a narrow, difficult path, and the journey lasts a lifetime.  Often that path is more difficult than the path your life was on beforehand, but the end result is more than worth it.  He leads us to life and love.  And everyone gets to choose.  Some choose to follow;  others stay in the filth. 

I have long had appreciation for what Jesus did for me when He came into my life, but I have never seen it represented so vividly as I did on that day.  I, the one on the trash heap, hopeless and in despair but not really knowing it.  I, the one who is unable to get on God's good side by doing anything on my own.  And He, the One I waited for my whole life, the fulfillment of love and source of love.  The One who came into the mess of my life to invite me to a better one and to lead me.  The King who stooped to lift me up, not because He had to, but because He wanted to.  The leader who went the way and showed the way.  The King of all kings and Lord of all lords.

Some of you reading this have already chosen to leave the filth you were in.  Maybe it was drugs or sexual perversion or some other unnamed thing.  You all had your own personal slum that Jesus is leading you away from.  The path is tough and will likely have more difficult parts.  I encourage you to keep walking and keep surrendering more of your life to Him.  The end result is worth it.  He is the end result. 

Still others who are reading this still sit amid the piles of filth and grime and disease.  The vultures eye you greedily.  And you sit, sometimes proudly or perhaps in despair of life itself, and you won't get up.  It isn't so bad, you say.  Things may get better.  And in sitting you reject the one who calls out to you to leave the mess.  Life is ahead!  But you just won't get up because you won't believe or because the road ahead is uncertain.  I encourage you to get up and walk!  Find a friend who knows Jesus for real and talk to that person about what you need to do.  Your next steps of committing your life to Him are simple, but they are not easy.  A real Christian friend can show you the way.

I pray that these words will deeply impact those in the Church who need them as well as those outside of the Church.  You both sit on a trash pile, but there is a way out.

Coming Full Circle: A Teardown and Rebuild Job

John 12:24-25 New Living Translation (NLT)

John 12:24-25 New Living Translation (NLT)

²⁴ I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. ²⁵ Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. 

Over the last two weeks I have been transitioning back to Houston, my homeland and hometown.  I haven't often thought of it this way but I've spent most of my life right here.  I grew up in the elementary school years in Kingwood, them moved to Dallas and later to Lubbock for school.  After Lubbock I was intent on not going back to Houston, yet I wound up there after graduation so I could go to graduate school at the University of Houston.  In my wisdom at the time, I swore it would be just for a couple of years and then we would go somewhere else.  A full twelve years later, I followed God's call to Everett, Washington.  Now after 5 years, He has called us back to Houston.

It is so interesting to me that God would bring our family full-circle, coming right back to the city we left.  I remember telling numerous people who asked me over the last 5 years that I didn't see God ever taking us back to Texas.  I always described Seattle as the first step in God's journey and imagined other destinations, perhaps even outside of the United States in our future.  It seems God has His own plans.  And in a sense I was right at the time.  Seattle and the Pacific Northwest were just the first step in God's plan to tear down and completely rebuild me.  That is what He always seeks to do, to make things new in you and I.  It isn't a renovation.  It's a complete teardown and rebuild job.

God's Training Ground

I have begun to view Everett as a training ground, and it certainly was.  Language teachers will tell you that the most effective and fastest way to learn a new language is through immersion, where a person is in a culture and has to speak the language to communicate.  For those who want to learn Spanish, they move to Mexico and live there and interact with people on very basic things such as where things are located.  For those who want to learn how to relate to people who are different from them, they go live among those people.  Everett to me was this type of thing.

We faced many things in Everett that we had never seen before, many of them good and many bad.  And God used all of those to bring us to a place where we saw people through His eyes.  We lived in the middle of a vibrant and established city among families who had lived there for generations.  Making friends in such a situation is hard because no matter what, you are an outsider.  Relationships have been formed prior to you being there, so in many ways by many people we were seen as an oddity for quite some time.  I would say some there even viewed us with suspicion because they knew why we had moved up from Texas.  There have been many who have moved to the Northwest in an effort to "Christianize" it, so I think some felt we were just the latest wave.  Overall we were an unknown and might as well have been from another planet.  And in many ways I felt as though we were on another planet.  Things were so different.  Culture was so different.  Yet daily I woke up pinching myself and considered myself lucky to be there in Everett.

Our immersion experience in the new culture of Everett did not just end with merely forming new relationships with others.  We were forced to grasp with many things we had never seen before in our sheltered previous life.  We saw the effect that hard drugs have on people who you would never suspect of being users.  Certainly drugs were on the streets and the homeless population in Everett in large ways has been enslaved by them.  We regularly found used needles on the streets and in the parks where our kids played.  It was not unusual to see someone on the street who was completely gone, zombie-like, living only for the next high.  We saw it in neighbors and friends and watched drugs destroy families.  Witnessing these things has marked me deeply, so mush so that recently a friend made a joke about drug use and I found myself attacking him over it.  It was one of those moments where you take a step back and say "where did that come from?"  And I had to apologize.  Yet in that moment I recognized the deep effect it had on me.

Seeing God in a New Way

I saw God do something quite unexpected after we had lived there for several years.  He had made it to where we began to get connected in our community.  Amanda volunteered full-time at the local elementary school where my sons attended, and I worked as a principal in the same district.  We didn't really do these to find some way in with people.  This wasn't some strategy we cooked up.  It just happened naturally.  We made friends, learned how people thought and why they think that way and what gets them excited and what fires them up.  We shared their joys and their pain and walked through life together.  And we came to love them for who they are and where they are in life.  They became our people and we became their people.  Many did not know Jesus, some thought they did, and it mattered to us.  Yet even for those who wouldn't listen to the message, we loved them anyway.  And we enjoyed our time with them and thought that it would never end.

All along the way God was with us.  When He told us to go to the Northwest, we went with joy knowing that God was going ahead of us.  We relied heavily on Him in the first few months to provide for us, and He did.  We never were without food or shelter.  Even when I felt like a failure as a Dad as we met as a family in an aisle of Hobby Lobby in Everett, homeless, jumping from hotel to hotel, God intervened and showed me the way out of that.  We saw Him working in the churches we were a part of.  We saw what He was doing through kids and joined Him in creating Kid's Club, an after-school program intended to reach unchurched kids.  And we met with Him in the low times when things didn't make sense.  On dark days where we felt void of purpose or the energy to go on, God was there.  He met me many times on mountaintops and near rivers when I would go just to walk and sit with Him.  He was there to put an arm around me on my hard days when I cried out to Him, begging Him to provide relief from the pain I felt in ministry and in life.  He spoke clearly to me in so many quiet moments alone with Him, often reassuring me that I was never alone and that He loved me.  He listened as I would complain about circumstances I faced.  He stayed awake with me on the countless nights where I could not sleep due to high stress at work.  The God that I had known things about became the God that is Father to me.  And it was not He who changed;  it was me.

Kings and Queens of Narnia

Every time I passed our house in Everett or walked out the front door, I would consider the lamppost in our front yard which was imported some time ago from the great city of London.  Its image reminded me of the lamppost from the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  In the story, four kids discover a magical world by exploring deeply in an old forgotten wardrobe in their house.  The entry to this world was at a lamppost.  These four had many adventures in this new land, including being directly involved in defeating an evil queen who had ruled the land for a long time.  They grew up in the land and in adulthood eventually ruled as kings and queens.  They formed strong bonds with those around them and had a fulfilling life filled with purpose and meaning and liberty.  Much later in life while on a hunt they rediscovered the forgotten lamppost and found their way back into the wardrobe in their world.  They even went from being adults to becoming kids again, and they found the world they had left in the same place it had been when they had left it.  But they had changed.  They were children in body only, and mentally and emotionally had become something far different, and greater.

In much the same way our family has returned to Texas as changed people.  We are a little older and perhaps a little wiser.  I do not view the world the same way that I used to.  I do not look at people the same way either.  And I certainly do not think of God the same way.  God used the experience to change us and to make us new and to help us learn more about how to walk in relationship with Him.  We are different people than the ones who left Houston five years ago.

I expect the next adventure will have many of the same qualities that the first one had.  We will have ups and downs, will experience joy and pain, gain and loss.  And God will be there with us wherever we go.  He has promised me that and reminded me already many times that He is with me.  I now have the attitude that I would rather go through all of that, with Jesus, than to say no and miss what He has for me.  Jesus is worth it.

It has been hard to leave the Northwest, harder in fact than it was to leave Houston five years ago.  We have a deep emotional investment in that part of the world and particularly with its people.  Truly God has asked us to do a very hard thing in coming back.  And my heart breaks for those who do not know Jesus and who reject him with their lifestyle and actions.  Many, many people there have no relationship with God.  Many think they know Jesus yet there is no evidence in their lives.  Yet many are curious, which gives me hope.  And Jesus has not left the Northwest.  He has remained behind and continues to be quite active there, working through many dear and faithful servants on a daily basis.  The few Christians that are there are far more committed than many Christians in the south.  There is always hope where He is present and working through His servants who are surrendered to Him.

What about you?

I am hopeful that my reflections on the last five years have stirred something in you.  Many of us think too small when we look for God's work in our lives.  I still hear people say they are looking for God's leading on where they work, where they live, and in their financial lives.  None of those things are bad or wrong, but the context of it is very important. 

Are you looking for a new job because you are dissatisfied with your current one?  Are you not making the money you want to make or you are having trouble getting along with people there? 

With regard to where you live, do you want to move because you want a bigger house in "that" neighborhood? 

With finances, do you desire to see change because you are spending too much and want someone to save you from yourself? 

These difficulties often are not a sign that God wants you to change your context.  In fact, He may instead want to change you and keep you in your current circumstances.

I believe God is challenging us right now to truly throw caution to the wind.  He wants us to pray bold prayers that He would make us better followers, that we would have greater sensitivity to His Spirit, and that we would follow wherever He says to go.  He is looking for servants who will be filled with and follow His Spirit every hour of every day. If you and I achieve this type of relationship with Him, nothing will be the same.  He might take you to a different part of the world, but His real goal is to do a complete tear-down and rebuild.  He will do what needs to be done to make that happen whether it is moving you to a different place or keeping you where you are with a new focus on Him.  If we will just let God have complete control of everything, He will make us into people who will truly carry the Good News into this world in authentic ways.  He will cause us to live in such a way that people will look at us and recognize there is something different and better and God-sized.  He will turn you and I into people who LIVE the Good News.

I challenge you to turn your life over to God in that way today.  I don't pretend to have that all figured out, but I am certain that the Lord wants daily surrender from us, and that in that, we will see Him train us, change us, and will move in unexpected God-sized ways that are unmistakable to us and to those around us.  Will you make that commitment today?

The Terrifying Wildnerness: How God Teaches Us to Trust

 

The great and terrifying wilderness of Olympic National Park, where you can hike for days without seeing anyone.

¹⁹ “Then, just as the Lord our God commanded us, we left Mount Sinai and traveled through the great and terrifying wilderness, as you yourselves remember, and headed toward the hill country of the Amorites.  Deuteronomy 1:19 (NLT)

Walking through life as a follower of Jesus is very hard at times.  Some teachers out there would say that His deepest desire for you and me is that we be rich, or that we be successful, or that we have everything in life that we want.  In His goodness, often we do receive those things, but these are not the things that Jesus actually wants for us.  He has a larger goal for you and me that I will talk about here.  Prosperity in our lives could be seen as the icing on the cake, but it most certainly is not the cake.

Recently we have gone through a lot of emotional difficulty as a family as we prepare to move back to Texas to start full-time ministry.  The initial wave of good feelings about the future have given way to a long period of waiting, which has given way to an extended period of saying goodbye to a lot of people that we love and care about.  Daily it seems we have had to say goodbye to someone, answer more questions about why we are going, and then in the evening deal with the emotions as a family since each of us have had a similar experience.  The result has been a rising tide of sorrow and a sense of loss, with little time to grapple with it personally until waking up the next day to deal with it all over again.  That "why" question coming from others has gradually developed into a "why" question in my own heart.  Why, God, does it have to be so hard?  Why does it have to hurt so much?

On top of that we have dealt personally and emotionally with countless people coming to see our house yet not a demonstrate a shred of real interest.  We have had people come to see it multiple times who have indicated that they'd make an offer on it, yet they and the offer disappeared in the wind.  We've had numerous people come to see it who apparently just wanted to look at a pretty house, displacing our family over and over again so they could get a tour.  And still nothing happens, and inside of me the dad and husband screams that we still are seemingly unable to find a place of our own in Texas until this place is moved!  God, why are you doing this?  Why do we have to go through this?  Is there not an easier way?

Lately God has had me take a lot of walks around our neighborhood to just talk with Him.  And in the mornings He has had me read a lot from scripture that directly relates to our situation.  On our walks, I have started with very formal prayers to Him only to be interrupted by his gentle prompting of "just talk to me Paul."  In my reading, instead of going from chapter to chapter in the Bible, He has had me fixate on individual verses that have shown me that He is aware of my situation and that He is with us.  I'm discovering as I spend more time with God that that is His way.  While most of my life I have expected and deserved for him to come to me with a club, He instead comes to me with a whisper, an arm around my shoulder, and a listening ear.

What it looked like for Israel

When Israel was told to move on from Egypt, they had been in slavery for 400 years.  Conditions were not good and many of them were beaten and worked to death.  They were provided food and shelter, but life was about working for their slave masters who had developed a fearful attitude toward their people.  In steps Moses, who God had directed to go talk to Pharaoh, and when Moses obeyed things got tougher for the Israelites and for Moses.  Eventually Pharaoh relented and let the Israelites go, but they were then chased through the wilderness and had their backs to the sea and their fronts confronted by the world's most powerful army.  After they were improbably delivered through the sea, they wandered in the desert and eventually made it to the brink of the Promised Land.  Instead of taking immediate possession of it, they sent in spies, who discouraged the people about it instead of spurring them on, and they had to wander in the desert for 40 more years before they could actually enter the land.

Along the journey of Israel, I want you to see what they faced.  Their initial state in Egypt was bad, but when they obeyed God things got worse and worse and worse.  When they seemingly were released from it all, they were placed into an impossible and inescapable situation by the Red Sea and had gone from worse to...terrifying.  When they were delivered from that situation, they had to wander through the "great and terrifying wilderness."

Having spent a lot of time backcountry camping, the phrase "great and terrifying wilderness" has a lot of meaning for me.  When you are in the wilderness it can be a terrifying experience simply because you are there.  You bring in your own food in your pack but rely on the land for your water.  Last year, in fact, I went on an extended stretch of a hike where we could find no water, and dread grew so much that I eventually couldn't see anything around me except the lack of water.  The Israelites were crossing a desert land that had no water at all and certainly was a far cry from being farmland.  There was no food and no water, and they likely saw in all directions an arid landscape filled with scrubby plants, absolutely desolate.  There were not bubbling pools nearby.  Instead it is likely they had to walk by many dried up pools, sun-baked and cracked, providing the memory of water but not the refreshment of it.  An empty horizon in the wilderness can also drain you of hope.  Yet they were not alone during that time, although they seemingly forgot about that.

God had purpose in all of this for the Israelites just as He has purpose for you and me.  Since there was no food for the people, God had to provide it Himself, and provide He did.  But he only provided what they needed for that day in the form of Manna, which covered the ground like dew in the morning.  They could collect it when they woke up, but if they stored extra up it would rot.  At the end of each day they had nothing left.  When they needed water which was always unavailable, they were provided it from a rock.  The need was there, God provided in the moment, and then they would have to move on to another place that had no water.  

What's the point?

Jesus said that we are worth more than many sparrows, yet it is unlikely that even sparrows could last in the great and terrifying wilderness.  So when He leads us into this type of place, what does it all mean?  What is the point?  

In the wilderness places of life we are able to survive because God provides. We improbably make it through the land because of God's provision.  We live another day because He sustains us in the wilderness.  And in it all, we meet God on a whole new level.  We see that He cares deeply, so deeply in fact that He is willing to plunge us down an illogical path that is fraught with fear and danger and the scent of death so that we will know Him more.  That is what he wants.  Not prosperity, though He gives it, nor health, though He allows that, nor success, though He may provide even that.  He wants us to know Him as we would know a best friend or a spouse or someone we might call a "soul mate."  He is so deeply interested in us, so full of compassion for our condition and need of a Savior, so fully committed to our overall good, so full of love for us as if we were the only people on the entire earth.  And because of this, He knows that the path should lead through the wilderness.

His great purpose for us is this:  that we would walk in fellowship with Him and know Him and His ways and love him deeply.  That's it.  That's the thing.  And in knowing Him better we can follow Him better into deeper and darker paths where there is no light save the light He gives off in us.  His plan is that we would follow Him even if there is no path because walking with Him like this means we are wholly with Him.  In this, as He refines, whittles, and shapes you and me, His greatest work is done.  We are provided treatment for the incurable disease of sin, and are better prepared to "go make disciples of all men."

I'm not sure what "great and terrifying wilderness" God has you walking through right now.  You or someone you love may be dealing with health questions, or it could be something going on at work or in your church.  Perhaps your wilderness is a financial one that doesn't make sense or that God has asked you to do something that just doesn't make a lot of sense.  You can recognize your wilderness by its great and terrifying qualities, giving the appearance of something that could and should be avoided if there is a better way that God could simply provide.  Natural questions come up during those times of your life like "why this?" and "isn't there a different way you could take me, God?"  

You are not meant to deal with those things alone.  There is not some cosmic puzzle you are supposed to figure out that will make it all better.  Yes, God has given you an intellect for a reason, but He has also designed you with a God-sized hole in the middle, and the purpose of making you strike out into this wilderness has more to do with that hole in you than some unnamed or undiscovered strategy.  God wants you and me to rely, depend, and surrender to His ways during these times of our life.  That means you and I must spend more time with him just talking as friends, reading our Bible and considering what it is telling us, walking by ourselves and contemplating the situations, and maybe even talking to a mentor who has a deep relationship with the Lord.  

Instead of leaning away from the pain and the trials and desperately flailing our arms to try to save ourselves, we should be still and lean toward Jesus.  The wilderness we are in may not suddenly make sense, but as we relate to Jesus by spending more time with Him, we realize it doesn't have to make sense.  We realize that Jesus is absolutely trustworthy and is absolutely the greatest love we could ever have.   We then know Jesus better than we did before, which was the point all along.

Who is like the Lord?

 

Waiting: How Faith Grows

I absolutely, positively, do not like to wait.  If I am at a store and the line is long, I get impatient.  If I'm in traffic at a stoplight and can't make it through before it turns red again, I get frustrated.  If I am at a restaurant and my food doesn't come within 20 minutes, I begin looking at my watch.  If I'm warming food in the microwave I wonder why it isn't completely heated in a minute and a half!  If I order something from Amazon and have the option to get the item the same day for free, I click on that option, not because I need the item that day but because I don't want to wait!  Our society these days has made it to where we don't have to wait much for things anymore, and this has produced in me a silly tendency to get impatient every time I do have to wait for something. 

My experience since God called us back to Humble has been a lot of waiting.  Flash back to late March when He told me specifically to go back to the land of my father.  My astonishment at the call led to fear and eventually to peace and has developed into anticipation.  Yet I am in waiting mode.  I am waiting to complete my current work at Emerson, am waiting to start the new work, am waiting to pack up, waiting to end my time at Calvary Everett, and waiting to sell the house.  If you will allow me to be transparent with you, the last item on that list is the one that has bothered me the most.  The house hasn't sold yet!

When we moved up to Everett, we had a fairly quick turnaround on things in that situation too.  God called, I began applying for jobs in the Seattle area (and waiting), and when the job finally came through I had just a few weeks to wrap things up in Houston before moving here.  Had you asked me at the time I was just certain that we'd put the house on the market and that it would sell at exactly the right time.  Exactly the right time to me would have been to have the sale go through in enough time to get us a house in Everett without having any delay.  God had other plans.  We wound up in a two-bedroom apartment for several months while we waited for the house in Houston to sell.  We lived with about 10% of our possessions in the apartment and the other 90% in storage, making things work as best we could.  And it worked just fine.

My recent experience in attempting to sell the house has brought up old memories and fears that I faced the last time we went through a major cross-country move.  Where will we live?  I can't afford to pay two house payments every month, meaning we have to sell this house before we get into another one.  Will we have to move around?  Will we be in an apartment again?  Will it take a day, a week, a month, or a year or more to sell the house?  And what are we going to do if it takes a long time?  At times this type of thinking has been on my mind almost constantly and I have had to go to the Lord with it often.  And we still wait.

During my really stressed out times thinking about selling the house, the Lord has drawn me to several passages that I will share with you.

James 1

² Dear brothers and sisters,^[a] when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. ³ For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. ⁴ So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

⁵ If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. ⁶ But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

Psalm 27
Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.

Who had to wait in the Bible?

Waiting on God is a significant theme of the Bible.  Abraham had to wait on God to show him where he would eventually be living, and he waited on God to bring him the child that had been promised.  Noah waited on the rain for 100 years as he built the boat God told him to build.  Joseph had to wait at least 13 years before the dream God had given him came true.  The nation of Israel had to wait a few hundred years to get released from slavery in Egypt, then they had to wait 40 more years before they actually got to enter the promised land.  Moses had to wait for 40 years before God felt he was ready to lead the Israelites.  David waited to become king.  Paul was converted to Christianity and became a powerful proponent of it, but he had to wait 3 years alone in the desert so he could be trained up by the Lord.  The list goes on and on and on.

What does God do in making us wait?

Why does God make us wait for things?  Can't he just deliver immediately and be done with it?  Of course He can.  There is no doubt in my mind that He could have given everyone listed above an immediate answer to what He had promised them.  But instead God had them wait and He is having us wait.  What's the point?

Waiting produces several important things through waiting that develop us spiritually and bring us closer to God.  First and foremost, waiting develops a deeper desire to be with the Lord and understand Him better, which is THE goal God has for your life.  We have a choice in times of waiting to go our own way which is a path littered with anxiety, worry, lots of activity to try to solve things ourself, depression, and hopelessness, or to go God's way.  Going God's way means we deliberately turn to Him and release our cares to Him, waiting patiently for His response, His deliverance, and even His presence to overwhelm us.  That's why James said that "when troubles come our way, consider it an opportunity for great joy."  Joy comes in knowing God, being known by God, relating to God in prayer, and hearing from Him through scripture reading and meditation.  Waiting and faith go hand in hand.

Waiting also develops endurance.  When I first started running recreationally, I was not able to run multiple miles in the beginning.  I remember having my goal first to simply get to one mile, and after that mile I huffed and puffed!  But several weeks later I was able to do a mile and a half, then two miles, then three, and my distance continued to increase.  By running I prepared my body by strengthening muscles, and I also developed the mental capacity to keep going even when it was uncomfortable.  

Runners will tell you that a lot of what goes into running is mental, especially when running long distances.  Just as it is with running, so it is with faith.  You won't wake up one morning with more faith.  It is developed over time by being in situations that require faith, and as you see God deliver, your faith and endurance grow.  And your faith needs to grow because right now God is preparing you for future things that will require even more faith.  Just like with running, God is putting you out on the road and making you go one mile, then two, then three.  And the whole time He is running right next to you.  He never leaves us to our own devices.

And as your endurance grows, you eventually become "perfect and complete, needing nothing."  I actually think this statement is quite significant for you and I.  This tells me that God is always working on me.  God is always preparing me for the next thing.  God is always trying to work more of Himself into my life so I push more of myself out.  As I go through difficulty, uncertainty, and discomfort, I learn to allow more of Jesus in.  Since Jesus is "perfect and complete, needing nothing," I also begin to take on those attributes because the Lord lives in me.  Does this necessarily mean that I will be a perfect person who does not sin?  Not in this life I won't.  But just as a piece of metal becomes gradually more magnetized when it spends time around a strong magnet, so you and I will become more like Jesus as we spend time with Him.  And our faith will just keep growing, meaning we will understand the Lord more and more and more as we walk through life with him.

I won't pretend to any of you that I'm now some immovable rock of faith when it comes to our upcoming move and our attempts to sell the house.  At moments I am trusting God completely and at other moments I'm very nervous and "seeing the wind and the waves" like Peter did when he walked on water with Jesus.  I'm definitely not comfortable right now and many times if I could choose to be delivered from this situation, I'd choose that!  However, the Lord continues to emphasize that this all has purpose and that I should be coming to Him with it.

What about you?

You may be waiting on the Lord to deliver you through a season of life right now.  Perhaps it is a vision He has given you for future ministry that just hasn't come to pass yet.  Perhaps it is deliverance from a health condition you have or that a family member has.  It may be a financial concern or your living conditions that you are enduring.  Whatever it is, you and I must go to the Lord with those things.  This means we must pray when we feel like it and pray when we don't feel like it.  We must seek to understand the Lord and His ways as we pray.  We also must read God's word and stop to think about what it is saying to us right now.  And as our anxiety raises and we become bothered by waiting, we should pray some more.  And remember that God already knows how you feel about things, so be honest in your prayers to Him about it just like you would be honest with a friend when you are talking to them about something bothering you.  You will discover that God is right there with you.  

Getting no immediate deliverance from your situation does not mean He has abandoned you.  It may in fact mean He is right there with you, seeing the "you" that He intends to make you into and relentlessly working toward that end.  And the end He has in mind for you and me is Himself!