Category: Liturgical Calendar

Lent 2019 | Day 13: The Simplicity of Obedience

Obedience is simple, but it is rarely easy.

I want to make sure that I make this distinction right from the beginning. To say something is simple does not mean it is easy. Obedience is simple, but it is rarely easy.

As we have seen over the last couple of days, the call and difficulty of obedience are related to the problem we have to submit to what we have been told to do by God. The more we seek to know and do God’s will, the greater our chance of confronting the greatest obstacle of our faith: We do not want to do things God’s way. We wonder quietly (and sometimes openly) if God really wanted to he could make it easier for us to obey.

Let me answer this simply: NO! God will not make it easier.

Obedience will always be a challenge because it will always ask us to actions that challenge our comfort. I don’t know why we want to make obedience to God easy. It is not easy. It’s not supposed to be because God is working to remove the vestiges of sin from our lives. That means that until all God sees is Christ in us, there is a continued need for obedience.

The miracle is that God has not left us powerless. When Jesus ascended into heaven, he promised to send another. One who would be both our comforter and our source of strength. When I say this I mean two specific things. First, the Holy Spirit comforts us not in our sinning. No, the Spirit of God comforts us by reminding us that in spite of our sin, we have been forgiven; that in spite of our tendency toward failure, Christ’s success on the cross cannot be revoked or rescinded.

Second, the Holy Spirit is our strength. What I mean by this is that we are not going to win the battle for obedience against sin in our own ability. It is divine enablement that makes the life of a born-again believer of Jesus possible to live until we see Jesus face-to-face. The Holy Spirit pokes and prods our conscience, letting us know we are moving away from God’s will and purpose. When we heed this prompting we are drawn away from danger and reset on our journey.

Obedience is hard, but not because God has made it hard. It is hard because we make it hard. When we fail to obey, it is not an indictment on God, but on us. We have failed to obey because we found something of lesser value than God more worthy of our time and efforts.

Obedience is simple. We just want to make it complicated. And this is what makes it hard.

Lent 2019 | Day 12: The Power of Obedience

The soldier does not need to know why the given task is important. The soldier is only responsible to doing everything within their power to see it done.

One of my favorite stories in the entire Bible tells about a soldier who came asking Jesus to heal one of his servants. It is found in the seventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel. What is interesting to me is how the Centurion captures in just a few words the essence of faithful obedience. It is one of the most important events in Jesus’ earthly ministry because of how Jesus characterizes the Centurion’s understanding of faith and obedience.

6 And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. 7 Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. 8 For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” 9 When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” (Luke 7:6-9 ESV)

The Centurion, as a soldier, had been trained to follow orders. To hear the commands given by his superiors in the chain of command and to follow them. He had also been trained to give orders and expect them to be obeyed. There are several implicit realities here.

  • The personal cost of the soldier was not a consideration when given a task to complete.
  • The task to be accomplished was to become the most important reality for the soldier, and nothing else should deter the soldier from completing the objective.
  • The soldier does not need to know why the given task is important. The soldier is only responsible to doing everything within their power to see it done.

The Centurion was speaking in military terms. He was making a reference to the fact that in the same that he was a soldier who would give and take orders and expect them to be done, he expected Jesus’s words to have the same power over disease! Jesus was a man both under and with authority. And Jesus responds to this by describing a soldiers obedience to commands and faith. It truly is an amazing story.

What makes this exchange even more impressive is that it is, as far as I can remember, the only place where Jesus commends the faith of a Gentile as being greater than all those who were a part of Israel. This is high praise indeed for this man.

What this means is that God is looking for a people who learn and know how to obey. In our obedience there is power because it is one of the simplest and greatest evidences of our faith. Without obedience, any discussion of faith is mere lip service.

Lent 2019 | Day 11: The Difficulty of Obedience

The great difficulty about obedience is that it is runs counter to our instincts to do what we think is best.

The great difficulty about obedience is that it is runs counter to our instincts to do what we think is best. We don’t like the idea of substituting our judgment for that of others. Whether we realize it or not, our tendency is to trust our emotional responses to the circumstances we find ourselves in and the decisions we have to make. This can be a dangerous method to making important decisions in life.

The irony is that the season of Lent calls us to forsake our own impulses and tendency and intentionally do one of two things. We can set something we value aside or we can add something we know we need to do that is of spiritual value.

In the Christian faith, obedience is vital if we are going to see anything resembling maturity. If we cannot control our tendencies, insecurities, impulses, or whims we will find it difficult to make progress. This is why obedience is such an important aspect of maturity.

The greater our obedience the easier it becomes to know that we are living in a manner worthy of the Gospel. Our obedience is the expression of our inward  convictions and understanding of God’s character and his commands.

The apostle John said as much when he said in his first letter.

3For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:3 ESV)

Not only does the apostle equate our love for God with our obedience to his commandments, he adds this extra reminder. John lets the reader know that for those who are children of God, obedience should not feel like a burden! That is a remarkable thing to say. And it is an even more remarkable thing to experience. But, it all begins with a commitment to obey.

Lent 2019 | Day 10: The Call to Obedience

Obedience is the greatest challenge of the Christian life because we are called to put aside our judgment of what is best and submitting to God’s judgment of what we should do.

We have spent some time looking at the reality of God’s grace in the life of believers. I would like to turn our attention for a few days to the call of obedience. What I mean by this is that now that we have been born again to a new life in Christ, we must submit ourselves to live in a manner of life “worthy of the Gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:27).

This idea—live in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ—is something I have encountered in several places in the New Testament (Eph. 4:1, Col. 1:10, 1 Thes. 2:12). It is interesting because every single time I read it, I intuitively know what it means. It is a call to conform all of my life so it reflects the person of Jesus. If this is what Paul is asking of believers (and I believe he is), we have to confront our tendency to buck at what it entails for our lives.

There is another passage that I find horribly inconvenient. It is found in 1 Samuel 15:22-23. The context is Samuel’s admonition to King Saul about how he had disobeyed the command of God to destroy the Amalekites and all their possessions. Saul did not do this, he saw the spoils of war before him but failed to control the people. Then to make matters worse, Saul tries to “make things right” with God by saying that what was kept was going to be sacrificed to God as an act of worship!

It is in this context that the prophet tells the disobedient king,

22And Samuel said, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. 23For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king.” (1 Samuel 15:22-23 ESV)

Obedience is better than sacrifice.

Obedience is the greatest challenge of the Christian life because we are called to put aside our judgment of what is best and submitting to God’s judgment of what we should do. Every time we fail to obey, we guarantee displeasing God. Every time. There are no exceptions here. We struggle to see God at work, we miss seeing God’s favor in our lives, we falter in our labors because we are not obedient.

In this season of Lent, I want to challenge you to consider where you are not being obedient to God. Once you have identified it, the proper response is to repent and begin to obey. God is faithful and just to forgive. His word has promised that he will (1 John 1:9).

Lent 2019 | Day 9: The Power of Grace

Only God had the requisite authority and power to forgive sinners and restore our fellowship with him.

God’s grace is an incredibly difficult concept to describe. The main reason is that as recipients of this grace we are not in a position to fully appreciate the cost of it. We are the experiencers of grace and not the dispensers of it. God extends and applies his grace to us and we can rejoice in its effects in and on our lives.

The world does not always understand why the Church speaks of grace as often as it does. The world does not rightly understand why we talk about God’s grace in the way we do (or should!). The reason for this failure is that until you experience God’s grace it is difficult, if not impossible, to make any sense of what God has done for us.

The power of God’s grace is that we are no longer lost and separated from God. Only God had the requisite authority and power to forgive sinners and restore our fellowship with him. There is nothing that we can do or say that would convince God to accept us. The reason is that there is nothing that we can offer to God that he would find acceptable. God, by the power of his grace, transforms us from what who we were born as to these new creations in Christ’s image.

Grace is powerful because the one who offers it and applies has the power to accomplish what he purposes. For this I give thanks. And for this I am grateful.

Lent 2019 | Day 8: The Patience of Grace

God’s loving-kindness is better than we realize, when we realize what could have been!

There is a quality of God’s grace that is often overlooked. Grace is a multifaceted diamond. Each face reveals a new wonder of God and the grace he gives to us. There are a couple of passages that highlight this attribute and expose a beauty in God that we do not rejoice in enough. I know that I don’t.

Let’s look at them both. The first is Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome.

21But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26 ESV, emphasis added)

The second is found in the books of Acts.

30The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30-31 ESV, emphasis added)

What makes both of these passages so remarkable is that it explicitly makes the claim that God “passed over” and “overlooked” the sins of fallen men and women because it was not yet time to judge them. Now, I know that this time of overlooking culminated in Jesus. That the reason God did not execute justice on sinners was because God was waiting until he could unleash his wrath for all sin, for all time at the cross. So, I am not trying to split a hair or make a theological point contrary to the implications of the text.

My hope is to highlight that God has revealed that, in his grace, he does not smite sinners instantaneously for their sin so that they might come to know repentance and might have an opportunity for a restored relationship with God the Father. That God’s loving-kindness is better than we realize, when we realize what could have been!

As each day draws us closer to the celebration of God’s miraculous salvation of lost souls in Jesus, I hope we spend a little more time thinking about how good God’s grace really is.

Lent 2019 | Day 7: The Heart of Grace

The heart of God is on full display in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

The God of all the things. The one who spoke the universe into existence and who sustains the worlds in their orbits. This God has shown his love for sinners in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

There is nothing that can capture the magnitude of this kind of love. How could there be? Even as a father, my love for our children pales in comparison to the love of God for those he sent Jesus to save.

We see grace in Christ, but what drives this grace to express itself in our fallen and sin-sick world? It is the heart of God to redeem and to save. The heart of God is on full display in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The heart of God is heard in the simple proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus.

A holy God has stepped out of heaven and called all sinners to repentance. And, if we put our faith, hope, and trust in Jesus, the Messiah of God, we will be adopted and saved from the just penalty of our sin! Our trajectory will have been diverted from hello and eternal separation from God and set toward heaven and eternal joy in God.

I will probably never know what motivates the God described in the Scriptures. But I have no doubts about his love. I have no doubts about his mercy. I have no doubts about his grace. I have seen too much. Experienced too much. Learned too much to turn my back on him.

Lent 2019 | Day 6: The Joy of Grace

The grace of God is a reason for joy.

There is a wonderful hymn I remember from growing up. It is called Grace Greater than our Sin [Source]. It was written by Julia H. Johnston. What I love about this hymn is that it captures some powerful truths about God’s grace and our longing for the redemption that same grace offers and promises.

Just take a few moments and read through it.

  1. Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,
    Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt!
    Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured,
    There where the blood of the Lamb was spilled.
    • Refrain
      Grace, grace, God’s grace,
      Grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
      Grace, grace, God’s grace,
      Grace that is greater than all our sin!
  2. Sin and despair, like the sea waves cold,
    Threaten the soul with infinite loss;
    Grace that is greater, yes, grace untold,
    Points to the refuge, the mighty cross.
  3. Dark is the stain that we cannot hide;
    What can we do to wash it away?
    Look! There is flowing a crimson tide,
    Brighter than snow you may be today.
  4. Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace,
    Freely bestowed on all who believe!
    You that are longing to see His face,
    Will you this moment His grace receive?

The question I ask myself when I think about these words is this: How could I not rejoice at God’s grace in my life? 

The grace of God is a reason for joy. It is a fountain of neverending joy. And we are invited to swim in it. To soak in it. To allow its power and wonder and glory to wash over us and to wash us.

While there are things that can produce joy, they are there to point us to the greatest joy to be had in life, a joy that is found in God’s goodness toward us. Nothing in this world can provide or produce the quantity and quality of joy that Grace does.

Lent 2019 | Day 5: The Price of Grace

The price of God’s grace is something the human mind cannot calculate.

Grace is an idea, a reality that takes time to appreciate. It cannot be fully understood, and it cannot be entirely explained. Grace is a gift of such proportions that only God is capable of giving it. Grace is one of the few realities in the universe that could be truly described as being wonderful and it is awesome. Grace is full of wonder because it causes us to be in a state of wonder. But grace is also awesome because when we think about it, it should cause us to awe at God’s goodness.

A second reason grace takes time to appreciate God’s grace is because the price of it is something the human mind cannot calculate. An image from my childhood just came to mind. I remember the cartoon Duck Tales. It was the funny stories of an ultra-rich duck named Scrooge McDuck. You don’t have know to get this, but I wanted to provide some context. McDuck did not trust anybody to watch over his money, so he built a huge money bin where he kept his fortune. Every time I watched the cartoon I wondered how much he had in there. How much did it cost to protect all this money? And how much money was actually in there?!

The point is this. As wealthy as this fictional character was, and as wealthy as the wealthiest people are in the real world, all of the wealth of the world would not even begin to come close to matching the worth of God’s grace.

God’s grace is priceless on a scale that would make the greatest paintings every created seem like stick figures drawn on napkins.

The majesty of God’s grace puts to shame all of the beauty that exists in this world making it look deformed and ugly.

The quality of God’s grace reveals how utterly cheap and worthless the best inventions and advances in every field truly are.

If we are going to appreciate the price of God’s grace we have to begin to see the chasm that exists between what we value and what is truly valuable.

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