Painters, doctors, and ice cream truck drivers wear white. Brides wear white. Many nurses wear white. Even I wear white occaisionally in the summer.
So does God.
God doesn't really wear clothes, but when this metaphor is used in the Bible the color for His clothing is always said to be brilliant white, white as snow, white as the light, or dazzling white. In one passage Jesus' clothes are described as "whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them."
That's pretty white... better than my mom with her box of Tide could do!
Now the idea of whiteness here is that God's character is pure, spotless, and unblemished. God never messes up. God does not err or sin. God does not have any stains or blotches on his character. God is perfect.
We need to ponder this, especially as a contrast to our own spotted and blemished lives. We mess up every day. We say and do things we regret later. We sin. We stumble. When it comes to moral character God is Lance Armstrong and we are a bunch of knuckleheads on cheap bikes.
We are called to grow and become more like God. We are supposed to be wearing cleaner and cleaner clothes as we progress in the faith. In what ways do you need to be more pure and more like God this week?
Scripture references to look up: Daniel 7.9, Matthew 17.2, Mark 9, John 20.12, Acts 1.10, Acts 22.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Book Keeping
In Matthew 18 Jesus tells a fascinating little story about a guy who owes the king a rediculous sum of money that would take 4000 lifetimes to repay. In danger of being sent to debtor's prison and having his family sold into the slavery the man decides to grovel before the king and beg for mercy. And amazingly this longshot stategy pays off. The king decides to be "big hearted," forgives the debt, covers the cost himself, and lets the man go free.
This is amazing grace... undeserved and unmerited forgiveness.
But then that same man goes out and finds a poor soul who owes him a much smaller amount of money: about three month's wages. Determined to get what is his and feeling entitled to operate "by the book," he shakes down the debtor and nearly strangles him. When this second man grovels and begs for mercy he receives none, and is sent to prison in the most "small hearted" fashion.
The King is pretty ticked off by this whole scenario, hauls the original man back in, dresses him down, revokes his pardon, and send him to prison to be tortured.
Now here's the point. All of us have an account to settle with God. We have managed to sin enough in our lives to fill up a pretty big book. And, if God chose to operate "by the book," and punish us for our sins we would all be toast. But God grants us mercy and forgiveness and we are set free.
How ironic that we, like the man in the story, then go out and keep a close account of all the people who hurt, offend, or wrong us. We are surprizingly lacking in mercy ourselves. We want to maintain our hurt feelings and want all our offenders punished in strict fashion for the things they have done. Some of us keep a pretty detailed book of offenses committed against us. We hold on, refer back to them often, and never forget.
Jesus says that if you live by the book, you will die by the book. The way we treat others is the way God will treat us.
Give up your book keeping. Settle accounts. Be merciful. Quit torturing yourself by an attitude of unforgiveness.
I'd be interested in situations in your life where you have forgiven someone and erased an entry in your book of wrongs.
For more Bible reading on this subject check out the following passages: Matthew 6.14-15, Mark 11.24-26, Luke 6.37, and Colossians 3,13.
This is amazing grace... undeserved and unmerited forgiveness.
But then that same man goes out and finds a poor soul who owes him a much smaller amount of money: about three month's wages. Determined to get what is his and feeling entitled to operate "by the book," he shakes down the debtor and nearly strangles him. When this second man grovels and begs for mercy he receives none, and is sent to prison in the most "small hearted" fashion.
The King is pretty ticked off by this whole scenario, hauls the original man back in, dresses him down, revokes his pardon, and send him to prison to be tortured.
Now here's the point. All of us have an account to settle with God. We have managed to sin enough in our lives to fill up a pretty big book. And, if God chose to operate "by the book," and punish us for our sins we would all be toast. But God grants us mercy and forgiveness and we are set free.
How ironic that we, like the man in the story, then go out and keep a close account of all the people who hurt, offend, or wrong us. We are surprizingly lacking in mercy ourselves. We want to maintain our hurt feelings and want all our offenders punished in strict fashion for the things they have done. Some of us keep a pretty detailed book of offenses committed against us. We hold on, refer back to them often, and never forget.
Jesus says that if you live by the book, you will die by the book. The way we treat others is the way God will treat us.
Give up your book keeping. Settle accounts. Be merciful. Quit torturing yourself by an attitude of unforgiveness.
I'd be interested in situations in your life where you have forgiven someone and erased an entry in your book of wrongs.
For more Bible reading on this subject check out the following passages: Matthew 6.14-15, Mark 11.24-26, Luke 6.37, and Colossians 3,13.
Monday, November 16, 2009
One of the hardest things to do in life is to forgive someone who intentionally hurts you, especially if that person is a family member or a close friend or a church person or someone who should be loving and protecting you. Forgiveness is really hard in these cases.
It was hard for Joseph. Joseph had 11 crummy brothers who sold him into slavery and ruined the early years of his life. (Genesis 37-50)
It was also hard for Wess Stafford. Wess is the president of Compassion International. He spent five years of his childhood in a boarding school in Africa where the staff members abused him physically, emotionally, and sexually. These people traumatized and terrorized him from the age of 6-10.
Forgiveness is hard. Yet both of these men eventually forgave the evil people who had victimized them. They did not want to be defined by the hurt or victimized by a long standing bitter spirit. They wanted to move and and be free. So they forgave.
The best part is that God used the hurt in both cases for greater good. Joseph landed in Egypt and eventually became the food baron of the world: a role that enabled him to save the lives of many people. Wes Stafford's experiences as a child stirred a passion in his heart for defending vulnerable children. He now leads an organization that champions children living in poverty and oppression.
Creating good out of evil is one of God's specialties. In the words of Joseph: the evil people meant it for harm, but God used it for good. (Genesis 50.20)
It helps to know that God can transform any hurt in our lives for something good.
How might God use your pain?
PS... check out Wes Stafford's account of how he forgave his abusers at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbGnex_HJuk
It was hard for Joseph. Joseph had 11 crummy brothers who sold him into slavery and ruined the early years of his life. (Genesis 37-50)
It was also hard for Wess Stafford. Wess is the president of Compassion International. He spent five years of his childhood in a boarding school in Africa where the staff members abused him physically, emotionally, and sexually. These people traumatized and terrorized him from the age of 6-10.
Forgiveness is hard. Yet both of these men eventually forgave the evil people who had victimized them. They did not want to be defined by the hurt or victimized by a long standing bitter spirit. They wanted to move and and be free. So they forgave.
The best part is that God used the hurt in both cases for greater good. Joseph landed in Egypt and eventually became the food baron of the world: a role that enabled him to save the lives of many people. Wes Stafford's experiences as a child stirred a passion in his heart for defending vulnerable children. He now leads an organization that champions children living in poverty and oppression.
Creating good out of evil is one of God's specialties. In the words of Joseph: the evil people meant it for harm, but God used it for good. (Genesis 50.20)
It helps to know that God can transform any hurt in our lives for something good.
How might God use your pain?
PS... check out Wes Stafford's account of how he forgave his abusers at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbGnex_HJuk
Monday, November 9, 2009
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Drew Hill is a follower of Jesus. He is a friend from a church I used to serve. Recently his home was ransacked and bulglarized. I was inspired by these words he wrote on his Facebook page:
"The night we were robbed our whole family spontaneously came together to pray. We forgave the thieves and agreed in faith that Betsy's engagement ring would come back to her. Today, 14 days later, that ring is back on her finger."
Forgiveness and prayer are rooted deeply in the DNA of the Hill family. Their default reaction to a major life tragedy was to forgive and to pray, just as Jesus calls us to do.
This wasn't the case in the Sampson family. Judges 15 tells a bizarre story of hurt, revenge, and retaliation. Here is a brief summary of a strange story.
Sampson suffers the loss of the girl he has his eye on. This makes him mad, so he sets fire to the local crops. The crop owners respond by burning alive the girl and her father. Sampson is now incensed, so he ups the ante by visciously killing a number of the local population. This results in Sampson being hunted down by a huge posse, and in the end Sampson gets the final word by slaughtering 1000 men with the jawbone of a donkey.
As it turns out, revenge did not work so well for Sampson. Once the testosterone wore off, what remained were vast acres of charred land, a ruined economy, massive bloodshed, fields of dead bodies, and hundreds of widows attending funerals. Getting even turned out to be pretty messy.
And it all started with a girl and a broken heart.
Here are four truths that arise from this story:
1. Revenge is so intoxicating and so human
2. Revenge never works. It always escalates.
3. Revenge will ruin your soul
4. When revenge starts to cycle in destructive ways, someone must choose to end the cycle.
You may not be involved in Sampson's kind of arson and murder. But you might be involved in a downward cycle of "you hurt me, so I'll hurt you." This can happen in a marriage, in a family, at work, or in any arena of life.
If that's the case, you need to stop right now.
Where have you seen revenge cycling out of control? Where have you seen someone stop the insanity? I'd be interested in your stories.
Drew Hill is a follower of Jesus. He is a friend from a church I used to serve. Recently his home was ransacked and bulglarized. I was inspired by these words he wrote on his Facebook page:
"The night we were robbed our whole family spontaneously came together to pray. We forgave the thieves and agreed in faith that Betsy's engagement ring would come back to her. Today, 14 days later, that ring is back on her finger."
Forgiveness and prayer are rooted deeply in the DNA of the Hill family. Their default reaction to a major life tragedy was to forgive and to pray, just as Jesus calls us to do.
This wasn't the case in the Sampson family. Judges 15 tells a bizarre story of hurt, revenge, and retaliation. Here is a brief summary of a strange story.
Sampson suffers the loss of the girl he has his eye on. This makes him mad, so he sets fire to the local crops. The crop owners respond by burning alive the girl and her father. Sampson is now incensed, so he ups the ante by visciously killing a number of the local population. This results in Sampson being hunted down by a huge posse, and in the end Sampson gets the final word by slaughtering 1000 men with the jawbone of a donkey.
As it turns out, revenge did not work so well for Sampson. Once the testosterone wore off, what remained were vast acres of charred land, a ruined economy, massive bloodshed, fields of dead bodies, and hundreds of widows attending funerals. Getting even turned out to be pretty messy.
And it all started with a girl and a broken heart.
Here are four truths that arise from this story:
1. Revenge is so intoxicating and so human
2. Revenge never works. It always escalates.
3. Revenge will ruin your soul
4. When revenge starts to cycle in destructive ways, someone must choose to end the cycle.
You may not be involved in Sampson's kind of arson and murder. But you might be involved in a downward cycle of "you hurt me, so I'll hurt you." This can happen in a marriage, in a family, at work, or in any arena of life.
If that's the case, you need to stop right now.
Where have you seen revenge cycling out of control? Where have you seen someone stop the insanity? I'd be interested in your stories.
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