- Details
- Written by: Don Goulding
Since all these things are to melt away in this manner, what sort of people must we be, conducting our lives in holiness and godliness, while waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God? Because of this day, the heavens will be burned up and dissolve, and the celestial bodies will melt away in a blaze! But, according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness truly resides. (2 Peter 3:11-13)
I’m angry. The Garden of Eden was snatched out of my hands and I’m left in a sick, broken world. God created me to live in paradise, to see his face and to dance with angels. Instead, my brothers fight, my body hurts and I’m not at home. I’m not where I’m supposed to be. An heir of the Most High King trapped behind enemy lines in a foreign land, that’s what I am.
I can’t direct my outrage at God. He’s not the one who ruptured the world. Fellow humans aren’t my targets either, because I, too, chose sin. Satan might bear the guilt but he only aided and abetted what my wicked nature wanted. Mostly, I’m mad at me, mad at sin, mad at rebellion against Father God.
This place isn’t any kind of permanent home and I won’t accept its dysfunction. I was not made for this fallen existence just as I was not made for hell. I’m angry enough to slap away the sticky paws of temptation and walk out the gate. Jesus said he is the gate and whoever enters through him will be saved. Jesus Christ is the way out of this clinging darkness. I’m running through him and straight for home.
This life is proof enough for me, I don’t need to go to hell for conversion. I’m convinced that self-rule is disastrous, both now and eternally. So I’m committed to the holiness of God and ready for the fire of his wrath against everything that causes sin and all who do evil. The wickedness in my own heart needs to be the first to go and the burning has already begun.
I can’t take life sitting down. I am driven to action. I’m up, shaking off the darkness, rushing toward the gate.
Prayer: Saving Lord Jesus, get me out of here.
- Details
- Written by: Don Goulding
Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive it, so that your joy may be complete. (John 16:24)
I needed a sermon illustration for how God answers prayer. At the same time our phone required service. I reported the trouble, then asked the Lord to cause the usually sluggish repair service to handle the matter in a timely way. This would be the perfect example for my sermon on trusting God. I wasn’t going to take matters into my own hands and pester the phone company.
Two days went by and I was tempted to make a follow-up call. Soon four days lapsed, then five. I was squirming to know if my service order had been deleted by accident, yet I wanted to hold out so the Lord could provide a living illustration.
“Okay God, I can give you until three o’clock tomorrow, then my sermon has to go forward.”
The deadline came and went, and the phone wasn’t fixed. I was out of an illustration, a telephone, and confidence in prayer.
I asked God why my experiment failed and he reminded me I often mislabel my requests as kingdom necessities. It’s silly to think I can manipulate God by declaring that my agenda is on his behalf. The relationship works the other way around. To ask in Jesus’s name is to pray in harmony with his desire. It’s not the magic utterance tacked on the end that will force the genie to perform.
When we were children my siblings and I bought our father an Easter present—a live, fluffy chick. It was a thinly veiled ploy to obtain something he’d probably not allow. As children, we lacked the foresight that a chick would grow into a rooster who crowed in the city at five in the morning. Dad named the bird No No and sent it away after the first screeching attempts at cock-a-doodle-do.
Rather than manipulating our father, we might have simply asked, “Is there a pet that would be good for us?” What loving parent could refuse such a request? That’s the kind of humble dependance I need in my prayers so my joy will be complete.
Prayer: Patient Father, show me what you want me to ask.
- Details
- Written by: Don Goulding
Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4:2-3) (NIV)
In the Winnie the Pooh story by A. A. Milne, Rabbit suggests they cure Tigger of his bouncing by losing him in the woods overnight.
“Oh, we'll find him again next morning, and mark my words, he'll be a humble Tigger, a sad and small Tigger, an ‘Oh, Rabbit, am I glad to see you’ Tigger. And it'll take the bounces out of him, that's what!”
The misguided plan backfires and it’s Rabbit himself who gets lost. His friends rescue him and he comes out of the long night humbled from his pride.
When it comes to nonessential doctrines, I feel like Rabbit. I used to be confident of my beliefs and critical of those who differed. I reveled in debates to prove my points but what came out of my mouth was often intended to make me win rather than magnify Jesus.
Students of theology are soon faced with a bramble of opinions and the thorny disagreements that have plagued church history. They learn how wholly inadequate human speech is for heavenly truths and feel the prickliness of wordy debates. They realize navigation by human intellect without direction from the Holy Spirit leaves us thrashing in circles far removed from God’s path.
It’s time to stop pretending I or any human can fully elucidate subjects like predestination or eschatology. I must admit I’m Rabbit, lost in the dark woods, afraid and confused. I can’t get myself free of the tangle of nonessential doctrines.
From outside the forest I hear voices. Jesus and my truest friends are searching for me. They’re calling me out of the maelstrom. I no longer have to systematize biblical conundrums. I need only follow the voice of Jesus, return to his simple gospel, and let him bring me past the doctrinal thickets into the full light of grace.
I went into the bramble of secondary doctrines with an attitude of “I have answers that will unbounce others.” I’m coming out of those same woods a broken Rabbit, an “Oh, Jesus, am I glad to see you” Rabbit.
Prayer: King Jesus, may humility close my mouth except to glorify you.