Christianity

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Unswerving Hope


19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. 25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10

When I taught the Middle School girls Sunday school class at Wake Cross Roads Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC, my girls committed to memorizing Scripture together. To help with the endeavor, my assistant teacher Katie made each of us a ring of note cards with the verses we were to memorize. They were each a different color with a different font and there was a matching 8.5×11 version of the card hanging in our classroom. This ring of verses became my lifeline of encouragement because they were all verses of hope and confidence, reasons to cling to faith in tough times. They had been selected to embolden teenage girls in the one of the hardest times of life– middle school– but they did as much for me as I’m sure they did for them.

I found my lifeline ring tonight, and Hebrews 10:23 was the first verse I read when I picked it up. “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.” Like the living and active Word that it is, this verse spoke to me as if it were the first time I had ever seen it. The Holy Spirit gently prompted my heart, saying, “See? Just hold on and watch. I’m the One who is faithful.”

What is the hope we profess? Paul says in Colossians 1:27 it is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Christ is our hope. Christ is the one who promises. Christ is the one who is faithful. I am beginning to see the pattern emerge here.

So often I want to hold onto the planner. I want to call the shots, see the future, solve the problems, save the world and still have time to make an amazingly tasty and healthy dinner, grade papers, write lectures, and play with my niece. I’m my favorite idol. I want to be messiah. I want to hold onto myself.

But have you ever seen someone hugging themselves? You just look funny. It’s not natural to hold unswervingly to yourself. We need to hold unswervingly to the Faithful One in whom we trust. We hang on to Him for dear life because he is holding on to us. We are told every promise in Him is “Yes.” He never fails. And Jesus was clear in His promises to us. He promises to never leave nor forsake us. He promises that nothing will separate us from His love. He promises nothing can snatch us from His hand. He promises that He does not change like the shifting shadows. He is not altered by the light; He IS the Light.

We can hold to our hope in Him unswervingly because He himself is unswerving. With a promise like that, why would we ever want to let go?

I know I usually let go when I forget to remember those promises, which is why I call my ring my Lifeline Ring. In those times when it’s easier to believe the lies in your head than the Truth in God’s Word, it’s good to have that Lifeline ready. Psalm 25:5 says, “guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.”

It’s impossible to trust something you don’t know. The more you allow the Lord to guide you in truth through learning the Word, the more you learn what He promises. The more you know His promises, the more opportunity you have to trust those promises. The more you trust, the more He proves He is faithful, and the more you can trust. It’s a beautiful cycle of redemption and sanctification. And it all begins with knowing His Word and knowing His promises.

So if you’re ready to stop a cycle of self-destruction and self-hope, get yourself connected to the only sure Lifeline of unswerving hope. Learn and live in the promises of Jesus. He will prove Himself faithful every single time.

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Idolizing the Ideal and Idealizing Idols


If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. CS Lewis

John Calvin stated in the Institutes that man’s heart is an idol factory. We spend our lives setting people, places, things, goals, jobs, whatever, on the pedestal of our hearts. We give them our time, our loyalty, our money and control of our actions and attitudes.

We then expect our idols to meet our needs. People should love us unconditionally, meet our every need and never fail us. Jobs should fulfill us and allow us to reach our financial goals. Homes should make us happy. Social circles should fill our every free moment. Food should comfort without creating unhealthy bodies. Because we have given these people or things our worship, we expect them to be worthy of our worship. We expect our gods to behave like God.

For a while that may occur. The person showers you with a rush of love and affection and attention. The job launches you into an adrenaline high and maybe even a new tax bracket. The friends are fun and make you feel like the life of the party. The smaller jeans make you feel confident. The extra helping of dinner or desert makes you feel comforted.

But then one day the person fails you. The job gets tough. The friends aren’t there in the hard time like they were in the good. The jeans get tight. The food doesn’t fill the hole in your heart. The idol doesn’t fulfill your expectation of meeting your need perfectly. So you work to get more of it. Surely more of a good thing is better, right? It doesn’t take long on the idol cycle to learn that no person, place or thing can stay on your pedestal without a lot of help from you. It takes a lot of excusing, overlooking and enabling to keep an idol in a place of worship. It takes a lot of work to keep an idol worthy of a position of worship.

Too bad we miss the fact that the God of the universe, the one our hearts were made to crave, does not need our help in the least to stay on that pedestal of worship. The Perfect One is worthy of our worship all on His own. We have no need of idealizing the Ideal.

When we place our focus of worship on the One True Object of worship, it frees us up to worship Him with reckless abandon. When we aren’t using our hands to tightly hold onto our idol, they are free to be raised in worship. When we aren’t using our mind to rationalize the pain and heartache caused by our idol, we are free to think well of Him and worship Him with our minds. When we aren’t spending our time chasing after relationships and things that are never fulfilling, we can spend our time drinking deeply from the well that never runs dry.

I find myself spending a lot of time and effort idealizing things I believe I am lacking. Keeping idols worthy of worship is exhausting. It’s unfair to place those expectations on those we place on our pedestals and unrealistic for any object. When I return my focus to what I have been given, I see that my true object of worship has supplied my every need in Christ Jesus. There is no need for multitasking when God alone is the object of our worship.

Worshiping God is easier because we do not have to work to idealize our object of worship. He is ideal in and of Himself, freeing us up to simply worship.

What idols are you exhausting yourself attempting to idealize? How can you free up your heart and mind to simply idolize the ideal instead of attempting to idealize your idols?

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All Alone?


It’s not often that I go looking for inspiration in 90’s Christian rap music. Ok, I don’t think it’s ever actually happened. But when you put the iPod on shuffle, you just never know what’s going fill your ears. This is what I got this morning from GRITS:

A servant of God must stand so…so very much alone that he never realizes he is alone. In the early stages of Christian life disappointments will come, people who used to be lights will flicker out, and those who used to stand with us will turn away. We have to get so used to it that we will not even realize we are standing alone. Paul said, “No one stood with me, but all forsook me…but the Lord stood with me and strengthened me.” We must build our faith, not on fading lights, but on the light that never fails. When important individuals go away we are sad until we see that they are meant to go. ‘Til there’s only one thing left for us to do: to look at the face of God for ourselves.

It’s from their 1999 album Grammatical Revolution. And it got me thinking. What do we do when we get to those points in life in which it feels like we have been completely abandoned?

Sounds like the Apostle Paul knew what that was like. Not too many people are willing to stick around when their ministry’s leader is in jail.

Paul understood abandonment.

Jesus knew what abandonment was like. He was abandoned on the cross, bearing the burden of our sin. Not too many people are willing to stick around when their leader is being executed.

Jesus understood abandonment.

There are times when we are abandoned by all the people we know. Whether by choice or by circumstance, we find that those we tend to lean on in hard times are unavailable. When we physically lean and the thing we expect to be there is not, gravity tends to drag us to the ground. The same thing can happen if we rely on people, things, habits, places to catch our fall in hard times.

That’s what I love about the reminder in that last line of “Count Bass D (A Reading From)”: …we are sad until we see that they are meant to go. ‘Til there’s only one thing left for us to do: to look at the face of God for ourselves.

Often when we look for support, encouragement, backup in the battle, we look to our right and to our left only. We want our fellow soldiers by our side, and when we find them missing, we are confused, hurt.

But in those times, we must remember the promise given in Isaiah 52:12: For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the LORD will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.

We are never alone. It may seem that we are fighting the battle alone because we feel we have little or no human support. But we have a God outside of time that goes before us, straightening and smoothing our path while still standing behind us, guarding our back in the heat of battle.

David Crowder Band sings “Only You”, a song written from the perspective of realizing and appreciating the experience of learning that He is all we need in the heat of battle:

Take my heart, I lay it down
At the feet of You who’s crowned
And take my life, I’m letting go
I lift it up, to You who’s throned

Chorus
And I will worship you, Lord
Only You, Lord
And I will bow down before You
Only You, Lord

Take my fret, take my fear
All I have I’m leaving here
Be all my hopes, be all my dreams
Be all my delights, be my everything

And it’s just You and me here now
Only You and me here now

You should see the view
When it’s only You

Have you ever seen the view, when it’s just you and the Lord? Or do you crowd your view with people, places, things? God has recently stripped some false supports from my life and shown me that, while painful, the result is beautiful– the opportunity to see Him and only Him.

Try it sometime; the view is spectacular.

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Now and Not Yet


“…for we walk by faith, not by sight.” 2 Corinthians 5:7

Some days, the clear vision of the “not yet” is blurred by the glaring reality of the “now”. Like the majesty of a distant mountain range blocked from view by your own hand, it can be difficult to maintain an eternal perspective when the temporal is so large in our view.

The Christian life is a walk, a way of life. Much like a journey through the woods, our walk is full of ups and downs, beautiful scenery and arduous treks. There are times, in the middle of those uphill climbs, that it’s hard to remember the end goal and it’s easier to stop the journey and just head back down the hill.

That’s why Paul reminds us in that phrase in 2 Corinthians that we walk based upon what we believe, not what we see. Sometimes all we can see is the here and now, the circumstances that are crowding around us, the situation that never seems to change, the pressure or pain from which we feel we will never get relief.

As believers, we know that there is hope beyond the here and now, but how do we move past the feelings to the faith? What do you do when the circumstances of life blur your vision so that you can’t see the eternal perspective? How do you remind yourself to walk by faith when you can’t trust what you see?

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Giving Jesus a Bad Name


“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Ghandi

Author Anne Rice recently announced that she is renouncing Christianity. I can understand her feelings. It is quite easy to look at the world today– full of legalistic, condemning statements, judgmental attitudes, hatred spewed publically in the name of Christ– and wonder why anyone in their right mind would want to be a Christian. Most of the air time dedicated to Christianity highlights the ranting of Pat Robertson or the alleged affair between Benny Hinn and Paula White or Ted Haggard proudly delcaring that he now says “hell” from the pulpit (and he isn’t referring to the place) or Westboro “Baptist Church” protesting at soldiers’ funerals. We see people teaching their children to protest by allowing 5 and 6 year olds to carry “God hates Fags” posters. It’s enough to make me want to tell them that the closest Jesus came to hating a group of people was his disgust not with sinners but with the Pharisees, the religious legalists who hated the sinners that He came to save.

Some have apparently already been quick to pass judgment on Rice’s announcement and on Rice herself, only further confirming that many in Christianity have bypassed Jesus and returned to a legalistic rule-keeping religion that couldn’t be further from the relationship Jesus died to provide for us. I wish that my friends who are not believers would have the opportunity to hear and see true faith in a widespread realm like social media or the evening news. Unfortunately, calm, rational, and loving but firm grace isn’t interesting enough to make the news. So I wanted to share this post from Russell Moore as an example of what “real” Christianity looks and sounds like. Not harsh, judgmental and self-righteous. But wise, forgiving, calm and humble. Real Christianity doesn’t lord over unbelievers (or the wayward brother or sister) as if we have done something to deserve the salvation we claim to be our own. Rather, true Christianity remembers daily, “Were but for the grace of God go I.”

If all you know of Christianity is the close minded, hateful rants of the self-righteous, read this, and know that most of us dislike them as much as you do. But we don’t rant against them. We try to follow our own advice. We pray for them. We encourage them to compare their lives to Scripture. We hope they meet Jesus and recognize (or at least remember) their own sin and need of a Savior. And we firmly hold to the faith that God is Sovereign and the loud screaming of a few will not so defame his glory as to derail His plans for his people.

Jesus didn’t condemn people into saving faith. He challenged them. He spoke truth, but he spoke it in love, with compassion. We would be wise to do the same if we wish to consider ourselves capable of carrying the title Christian, which means “Little Christ”. If your attitude and actions don’t make people see Jesus in you, either change your actions or change your title. The Gospel itself is offensive enough on its own; it doesn’t need our help.