Think It Not Strange

What do you look like when life happens?  Are you bewildered?  Are you shocked, dumbfounded, distraught?  I’ve been there too and I have found that asking “Why” questions like, “Why is this happening?” is not very helpful.

One of the ways that I have found helpful in getting out of the bottomless pit of “Whys” is to ask the question, “Is God surprised by what is happening to me?”  This question helps me remember that God is involved in my life.

This is why Peter reminds us, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happing to you.”  But Peter doesn’t stop there, he goes on to say, “But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed.” (I Peter 4:12-13)

In its context, Peter seems to be speaking to persecuted Christians.  In a larger sense, I think God is telling us that life is a test and everything that happened to Jesus could happen to us (Hebrews 4:15).  But we will receive joy as we acknowledge that we are walking with Jesus.

This life is a journey that we’re on and it is not the destination.  If we don’t remember this, life can be catastrophic or tragic.  Walking with Jesus makes us realize that we have a destiny and a destination and unbelievably, it will produce joy.

Fickle God

One of the accusations about the God of the Bible is that He is a capricious and temperamental God.  At times He seems overly severe, very unfair, and that He randomly takes life.  Some people have said that the God of the Bible is volatile and they have pointed out how He has destroyed civilizations—women, children, and animals included.  These accusations can be disturbing.   However, if we were to take our eyes off of the Bible for a moment, and consider life, we can observe a couple of things.

First, life is random and unfair.  Sometimes we see good people penalized, but evil people get away with murder.  Young, innocent lives can be difficult and cut short, while wicked people live long and comfortable lives.  Good planning doesn’t always pay off, yet careless and carefree lives sometimes reap great rewards.

Secondly, life is fragile because we are mortal; it has been proven that we will all die.  Some of us will die young, while others will live a ripe, old age.  Some of us will die of natural causes, but others will die because of natural disasters, accidents, or by the hand of an evil perpetrator.  We are terminal and our days are numbered.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Bible believer or not; this is a sobering thought.  This makes everyone “equal” in the context of eternity.  It should also cause us to wonder whether life is an accident or if there is some purpose to life.

It is in this context we are introduced to the God of the Bible.  We are told, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” (Genesis 1:1).  None of us, no, I take that back; nothing would exist if God did not create the universe.

In Genesis 2:7, the writer goes on to say, “ the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).  This tells me that if God did not breathe life into us, we’d be like play dough, a stuffed toy, or anything that is manufactured.  My conclusion is that life is a gift and it comes from the hand of God.

Abraham came to this same conclusion.  In a nutshell, God promised to give Abraham a son.  After many years of waiting, God delivered on His promise.  Then God did the unthinkable.  He told Abraham to sacrifice son (Genesis 12-22).  Faced with this dilemma, the Bible tells us, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from the dead” (Hebrews 11:19).

The Bible claims that God is loving, faithful, and just.  Yet sometimes His actions seem to contradict this claim.  Can we reconcile this difference?  Can we truly know the mind of God?  Perhaps the answer is in the One who said, “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.”  I imagine that after a brief pause, Jesus asks a question that echoes throughout the ages, “Do you believe this?” (John 11: 25).

Fellowship in Suffering

I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. –Philippians 3:10-11

When you read what Paul is saying in the above quote, what do you hear?  Is Paul saying that he wants to be in an abusive or dysfunctional relationship?  Is Paul saying that he’s masochistic or suicidal?  I think not.  What I hear Paul saying that apart from suffering, he could not know the heart of God.

Has someone ever said to you, “Don’t pray for patience—you might get it!”  We laugh after the warning because we know that there’s truth in the statement.  What they are saying is we learn patience by being put in a place of discomfort or suffering.  However, if we ponder this advice as Christians, what we are really hearing is “don’t pray for fruits of the Holy Spirit in our lives.”

In our fast-paced, self servicing world, we are being told that we can have anything we want right now.  Even commercial farmers are using GMO’s to bring about rapid results.  Anyone who is a purist would tell you that quick and unnatural is not the best way to go.

Growing up in the LORD is an intentional choice.  There are no shortcuts.  Jesus warned His disciples that, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33).  In that same conversation, Jesus also said that if you want the fruit of the spirit, you must grow in, or be connected to Me.  This is where I hear Paul responding to Jesus.  I hear Paul saying, if I must suffer, I want to be attached to Jesus.

Since I am a bottom line kind of guy, this is what I hear: do I want a life of ease and comfort without God or do I want a life of trouble with God?  I want my cake and eat it, too.  However, if I had to make a choice…

Derogatory!

I’ve been known by many names.  I’ve been called Dick Doitski, Mishimoo, Dooduh, Idiot, Ugly, and Loser.  I’ve been called many other names, but some of them are R-rated, so I choose not to mention them.  Most of the time I just shrug it off, but sometimes I answer the person that is speaking at me.

However, there is one name that is highly offensive to me and I felt like I was being called that name by someone I regard highly.  While he was describing the behavior of a certain group of people, he identified them, “the pagans run after all these things…”

When He said this, I was cut to the heart.  Even though He was talking to a group of people at a different time and place, I felt like He was singling me out.  After a short outburst that began with, “How dare You…!” I cooled down and thought about what He said and asked myself a couple of questions.  “Am I seeking earthly desires and giving God the rest or am I pursing God first and leaving the results up to Him?”  The second question is, “Do I still look like a pagan?”

Walk As Jesus Walked

Did Jesus have long or short strides?  Did He limp?  Did He skip?  Did Jesus have a swagger?  If you’ve asked yourself these questions after you read, “Whoever claims to live in Him, must walk as Jesus did” (I John 2:6), you’re asking the wrong questions.  But not only that, you are misunderstanding scripture and your view of God is off the mark.  However, I suspect that most, if not all of us do not read this text in this manner and I suspect that most people who read this text understand the words in I John to mean, “…must live as Jesus did.”

Most of us are not Greek or Biblical Scholars, but we naturally “interpret” the words of Scripture.  What we may not realize is that we are following what some scholars say are the first three rules of Biblical interpretation: Context, context, and context.

I remember in one class, Junhao challenged my statement of, “God is a Person without a body.”  He then pointed to Genesis 3:8 which says that Adam and Eve heard God walking in the garden.  Junhao said that if God was walking, He must have had a body.  I was delighted that he had engaged me in conversation and I asked him, “Does God have wings” showing him Psalms 36.7.  Then I asked, “Do you know any person who has wings” since people were made in the image of God (Genesis 1:7).

I then pulled out a globe of the world and held it up before the class.  While I was looking at North America, the class was looking at Asia.  As we all looked at the globe, not one of us could see the other side.  We then turned to I Peter 3:12, which says that God sees all the godly people.  We all agreed that there were godly people in China as well as the United States.  I then asked, “What does God’s face look like” since He sees both sides of the globe at the same time.  As the class pondered this, Robin spoke to the class about metaphors.

The Bible is not only filled with metaphors, but it uses other many other literary devices like allusions, symbolism, shadows, comparisons, and contrasts.  Interestingly, the Bible does not take the time to explain or inform us about which literary device it is using; this is why looking at its context is so important.

Consequently, sometimes the word, “walk” in scripture does mean putting one foot in front of the other to get to a destination.  Sometimes it means a relationship (Genesis 5:24) and still other times it means a behavior or a lifestyle—good or bad (Ephesians 4:17).  The Bible was given to us so that we can walk with God.  But not only that, but scripture was given to us so that we can see God in all of life.  It is shocking to me that the people in Jesus’ day could not see that He was God (John 1: 10-11, 14:9-10).  On the other hand, the people’s blindness in scripture serves as a warning to me.  It tells me that scripture is spiritually discerned (I Corinthians 2:14) and unless our God opens our eyes (Matthew 16:17), I cannot understand Scripture, or see Jesus in His glory (Hebrews 1:3), or see how God is working in my life (II Peter 1:3-4).

This is why Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:18-21 is so personal to me.  I hear Paul interceding for me as he prays, “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know…”

Hence, this has not only become a prayer for me, but I’ve joined Paul in his prayer for others...