Courage

When our children were younger, it was my custom to pray with them before tucking them in to bed.  One night when Sarah was very young, she prayed for courage.  When she did this, I was very surprised because I thought she was too young to know what courage meant.

As a good father, I did not want her to grow up to be a Phariseea who was long winded and used big words (Matthew 6:7).  I wanted her to “pray with understanding” (I Corinthians 14:15), so I asked her, “What is courage?”

Being the dad that I am, I knew what this word represented.  I thought it represented a concept beyond her ability to understand.  So I was ready to explain to her the difference between courage and fear.

As it turned out, it took her but a moment to reply that courage meant: “Not turning away.” 

I was dumb founded.  Not only did she understand it, but she defined it better than I would have.  If I wasn’t so proud, I would have admitted that she understood courage better than I did.  Instead, I wanted to redeem myself and started to say, “You know Sarah, I was going to tell you that courage meant not being afraid…”

However, she cut me off and didn’t let me finish my sentence.  She looked at me so knowingly and said, “Dad, you can be afraid and still have courage.  Courage just means that you face something and not run away from it.”

I should have been very upset because I’m the daddy.  I am the wise and knowledgeable one.  I’m supposed to be the one to teach, not her.

Yep, I should have been upset, except when Sarah said what she said, I pictured God in my mind.  He was nodding His head and grinning from ear to ear.  I could picture Him turning to His Heavenly Hosts, as He was saying, “Another Pharisee has been put in his place tonight.”

He was right.

Followers of Jesus

Followers of Jesus Christ have many things in common.  But there are two things that really stand out.  The first thing that we share is the keen awareness of our guilt.  It is not uncommon for our prayers to be filled with, “Lord, forgive me!”  “Lord, have mercy on me!”  “Lord, I’m sorry!”  “Lord, I’m sorry for my life.”

As we cry out to the Lord, we often find our selves in the position or posture of kneeling or laying flat on our faces before Him.  I think that this is normal because we are in fact, guilty.  When we follow Jesus we fail.  When we try to keep in step with Jesus we stumble and fall.  When we try to imitate Jesus, we fall short of God’s expectations.  Our feelings of guilt and sorrow are justified.

However, if this is the sum total of our Christian experience, we’ve either taken our eyes off of Jesus or stopped following Him.  In either case, we need to take our eyes off of ourselves and look up to Jesus on the cross and behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world.

The result of following Jesus is fullness of joy which overflows out of a heart of gratitude.  Our lips should shout of His goodness and our hearts should be filled with Thanksgiving.  Our voices should declare and sing with the hymnist who writes:

I stand amazed in the Presence

Of Jesus the Nazarene,

And wonder how He could love me,

A sinner, condemned unclean.

O how marvelous!

O how wonderful!

And my song shall ever be:

O how marvelous!

O how wonderful!

Is my Savior’s love for me!

Prophecy

There are so many people that claim that “God spoke to me,” “I was visited by God,” or “God gave me a dream.”  I don’t have a problem with this.  God has done this in the past, and I don’t see why God would not continue to communicate with us like this today.  There are at least a couple of Scriptures that suggest that God still works in this way, one of them being, “do not treat prophecies with contempt” (I Thessalonians 5:20).

This is not to suggest that I accept all prophetic claims as being from God, but in the verses that surround I Thessalonians 5:20, Paul says, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire” and “Test everything.  Hold on to the good.”

With these verses in mind, I listen to the prophet’s assertion.  Ironically, there are times when I come to the conclusion that the “prophet’s” experience may be true, but their emphasis or their interpretation of their experience is wrong.

The reason why I come to this conclusion is because I ask myself a couple of questions about the prophet’s testimony.  They are, “Where did their experience lead them?” and “Does the experience lead to the foot of the cross or does it lead somewhere else?”

Jesus said, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32).  In its context, Jesus was speaking of His resurrection from the dead.  However, in a larger sense, God is telling us that Jesus will be the focus and foundation of our relationship with Him and should lead us to ask another question.  And that is, “If He is not raised up, who or what is being exalted?”