One of the prettiest views of our property is coming down the shady lane late in the afternoon as the western sun sets behind the tall pines.  The live oaks spread their arms over the house and carport and most of the yard, dripping with Spanish moss and providing an even deeper shade over the lush green grass.  It isn’t fancy by any means.  It isn’t the grandeur of mountains and valleys that dwarf the human spirit.  It isn’t the sculptured and manicured lawn of a great mansion.  But it’s homey and comfortable and inviting.
              All that moss is part of the charm.  We’ve had people try to tell us to remove it.  “It’s a parasite,” they tell us, a common misconception.  Actually, it’s a bromeliad, related to the pineapple.  According to the Sarasota County Forestry Division, Spanish moss, the beard of ancient live oaks, does not jeopardize the trees.  It does not steal nutrients.  It is an air plant that prefers to perch on horizontal limbs like those of live oaks, which provide more access to sunlight and water than vertical limbs.  It processes its food from the rainwater that runs off the leaves and limbs of the trees.  Nothing is stolen from the tree.  Just look around.  Moss even hangs from power lines and fences, and it seems to prefer dead trees to live ones.  So much for the myth that it’s a parasite.
              However, the moss can become so thick that it shades the leaves of the trees from the sunshine, the thing necessary for photosynthesis.  During the rainy season, thick moss can become so heavy that it breaks branches. 
              I think Spanish moss must be a little like worry.  Let’s dismiss the notion that any worry at all is a sin.  Paul talks about “the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches,” 2 Cor 11:28.  He may not use the word “worry,” but that is exactly what he is talking about—anxiety, care, concern, the “daily pressure.”  Sometimes that emotion is legitimate and we become petty when we start forbidding certain words while accepting the feelings as long as we call it something else.
              Yet worldly care and worry can rob us of our spirituality and our usefulness to God.  It can make us “unfruitful,” Mark 4:19.  It can “entangle” us in worldly pursuits, 2 Tim 2:4.  It can tell tales about our hearts with misplaced priorities, Luke 12:22,23, doubt, Luke 12:29, and lack of faith, Matt 6:30.  All of that can choke the word right out of us and when trials come, instead of trusting a God who loves us and provides our needs, we may break from the stress.
              If you have trouble with worry, camp awhile in Matthew 6.  Don’t you understand, Jesus asks, that life is more than food and clothing, v 25?  Don’t you know that God loves you even more than he loves the birds and the flowers, vv 26,30?  Are you so arrogant that you think your worry will fix anything, v 27?  Don’t you have more faith than the heathens, vv 30,32?  Jesus always has a way of laying it on the line, doesn’t he?
              While there may be legitimate concerns, things we pray about even in agony as Jesus did in Gethsemane, and there may be good things that occupy our minds, like our care for the spread of the gospel and the growth of the church and the spiritual progress of our children, don’t let the trivial things, the things of this life that you can’t do anything about anyway, become such a heavy burden that you break under its weight.  Rid yourself of the moss that robs you of the Light.  “Let not your hearts be troubled,” Jesus said, John 14:27.  He came to bring us peace instead.
 
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. John 14:27
 
Dene Ward

Nathan has done the impossible—he has turned me into a baseball fan.  Admittedly I don’t watch but one team, the Rays, but that’s still a lot more than I ever watched before. 

            Now that I know more about the game, the statistics mean more too.  I recently ran across this one:  On June 2, 1922, Stuffy (John Phelan) McInnis, a first baseman for the Indians, ended an errorless streak of 1700 chances.  That means 1700 times in a row he caught every ball or tagged every player or threw every ball straight to get a man out.  The streak began in 1921 when he was still with the Red Sox, and ended 163 games later.  I have watched games this year alone where a Gold Glove winner had two or more errors in a single game.

            All Stuffy McInnis had to rely on was himself and his own unaided ability.  Why is it that we can’t run rings around this statistic?  Why can’t we go more than a single day without a sin?  “But I’m only human,” I keep hearing, and yes, I understand the concept of being too sure of oneself (1 Cor 10:12).  But it isn’t me I am counting on, is it?

            No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Cor 10:13)  Tell me, don’t you think God is faithful?

            Who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.  (1 Pet 1:5)  For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.  (2 Cor 10:4)  Do you doubt the power of God?

            Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials… (2 Pe 2:9).  Do you think God doesn’t know what he is doing?

            Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, (Jude 24).  Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.  (Heb 7:25)  Are you questioning God’s ability?

            Yes, those passages speak of things we have to do too, but if you think what you do is the main ingredient in overcoming sin, you are already thinking too highly of yourself.  When we try to overcome sin, it isn’t our own skill we are counting on, it’s the power of God.  He has promised he will help us and that nothing will happen that we cannot handle.  He has promised us everything we need, every weapon available, to fight the adversary, and he has promised that those weapons are more than sufficient to get us through any ordeal.  If we don’t make it, it’s because we forgot to rely on him and his help.  We may never go 1700 chances without a sin, but surely we can do better than we have in the past.

            Stuffy McInnis got his nickname because every time he made an amazing defensive play people said, “That’s the stuff!”  God has all the “stuff” we need.  Now let’s get out there and use it.
 
For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 1 John 5:4-5
 
Dene Ward

On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education that “the doctrine of separate but equal has no place in public education.”  Do you know who “Brown” was?  She was Linda Brown, a black third-grader who had to walk a mile to the all-black elementary school, right through a railroad switching yard, instead of a much shorter seven blocks to an all-white school where she was not allowed.

            Although that decision was a giant step in desegregating American schools, it did not change things immediately.  It was over 11 years later when I had my first black classmate, a seventh grader named Diana White.  She was well-spoken, well-dressed, friendly, smart, and pretty, and I liked her instantly.  At that point, nothing about the Supreme Court ruling had affected me personally at all.  I still walked across the street to school every morning.

            The next year we moved from that small town where grades seven through twelve were all housed in a small school labeled “high school” to the biggest city I had ever lived in, a melting pot of cultures and beliefs that made me feel like I had moved to another country altogether.  Schoolyard fights were common and the bathrooms billowed with cigarette and marijuana smoke. 

            I hated those first two years of what they called junior high, more than twice the number of students I had been with the year before in one-third the number of grades—8th and 9th.  I had discovered that the school year consisted of 120 days and that first year I kept a small notebook in my desk in which every afternoon I marked off a day, from day one to day 120, four vertical lines and a crossbar every week.

            That was also my first experience with busing, which was how that city handled the new laws, and it was not a kind experience.  Instead of riding safely with a parent to the school near my house, I was hauled off five miles in the opposite direction. 

            Most of the upholstery on that old bus was dried out and cracked from the Florida heat, some of the foam padding spilling out, or torn out by bored students, the walls and seatbacks scratched with rusting graffiti, the floors scuffed and covered with gum wads and other sticky things I really didn’t want to contemplate.  The windows stuck either up or down, depending upon who sat there last and how strong he was.  I suppose the engine was in reasonable shape.  It certainly spewed out enough fumes, which then wafted back around the bus and in through the windows.  But that acted as a sort of buffer for the odors of adolescent sweat and far too much Brut and Tabu.

            The first morning I stepped on that bus was like something out of a nightmare.  Even though the county had tacked up a list of rules for all to see, rules that included, “No more than two people per seat,” and, “No standing on the bus,” most of the seats were crammed with three people and the unlucky few who had no friends to save them a seat, stood in the middle.  (It was deemed better to break bus safety rules than to break the federal law that required the busing in the first place.)  I was near the end of the pickup route and I knew no one else on board, so I stood.

            What a ride that was.  I always carried several thick textbooks stacked on the slanted top of a loose-leaf notebook—no backpacks back then.  It was either hold onto the books or hold myself up as we swung around corners and bounced over railroad tracks.  Somehow I managed to grab the metal back of a seat with my right hand while using my left arm to hold my notebook and books tightly up against me so they wouldn’t slide into the floor on the nearly thirty minute ride across town, made so much longer by the frequent stops for railroad crossings and the multitude of traffic lights and school zones we passed through. 

            Before a week was out, though, I had made a friend, another quiet girl as much a fish out of water as I.  She got on the bus three stops before me, when there were still seats available, and she started saving one for me.  That one little thing made the days bearable—I had a place, I belonged.  It meant so much that on the mornings she was absent and I discovered it when I climbed aboard that reeking bus, I nearly cried.

            God understands our longing for a place.  He knows we want to belong, we want to matter to someone.  Into a world where the best you could hope for from capricious, petty, spiteful gods was to go unnoticed, the apostles came preaching about a God who actually cared.  Jesus came preaching about a God who knew you so intimately that he could number the hairs on your head, and who willingly provided you the necessities of life.  The disciples spread the word about a God who sacrificed himself to save, who helped bear burdens, and who offered rest and refreshing from a world sometimes too difficult to bear alone.

            God is saving you a seat on the bus.  Sometimes the bus hits a bump in the road, just as it did for Job.  Sometimes the driver takes a detour you never planned on, just as happened with Joseph.  Sometimes the route is long and the day hot and stifling as you sit among people who reek of the stench of this world, just as has happened to so many who have taken the ride before you.  But you are not alone.  The Lord got on that bus before you.  He will always be there saving you a seat, and after you count off that last day of “school,” he will give you a place where you can “belong” forever.
           
I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. Acts 26:18
 
Dene Ward

We usually think of enablers in a negative sense—people who allow others to engage in destructive behaviors by their avoidance of the issues.  But enablers can be positive influences as well.  Teachers and coaches are enablers.

            I once had a student who, by the time she reached her high school years, had convinced herself that she could not memorize music.  We discussed the various types of memory—muscle memory, aural memory, visual memory, and intellectual memory, all of which are involved in memorizing music.  All of our competitions involved memorizing, and though I always gave my students a choice about participating, she wanted to do so, even though the process of memorizing seemed to elude her. 

            She would only attempt one type of memorizing—muscle memory.  “That’s the only way I can do it,” she said, over and over as if it were a mantra.  The problem with relying on muscle memory alone is that when you are nervous, you tense up and suddenly everything “feels” different.  She wouldn’t even try to work on the other methods.  So I took things into my own hands to prove to her she could.

            Every quarter we had a class instead of a private lesson.  For that quarter class I arranged learning stations.  The students moved from station to station, accomplishing tasks in the various areas of music, keeping track of their scores as they went.  As one student left a station, another took his place. 

            At one station I placed an eight bar piece from a beginner book on a music stand.  They were to sit and study the music making mental note of beginning notes, the way the music moved, and the rhythm pattern, then try to play it without the music, having made use of both visual and intellectual memory.  I stood at this station since I had to be the one to look at the music and tell them if they got it right.  If it was correct the first try, they got 10 points, the second try they got 5 and the third they got 3.  If they still did not play it correctly, they got 1 point for trying and then moved on.  This was a class of teenagers, students who performed at the moderately difficult level in the state competition, so playing this simple five finger melody with a two chord accompaniment was like asking a college math professor to do the multiplication tables.  Only one student took 2 tries and it was NOT the young lady in question.  She accomplished the task on her first attempt.

            “I know what you were trying to do,” she said afterward, “but you’re wrong.  I can’t memorize that way.”  I wanted to scream at her stubbornness.  I had just proven that she had the intellectual capacity for more than basic muscle memory and she was still arguing with me.

            I imagine God must feel the same way about us sometimes.

            May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, Col 1:12.

            To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, 2 Thes 1:11.

            For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. 2 Tim 1:7.

            Who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Pet 1:5.

            “Yes, but…” I hear you saying.  It isn’t me you are saying that to—it’s God.  It’s his power that has been granted to you, to endure, to overcome, to fulfill every good work, to last until the end.  It’s the same power, Paul says in Eph 1:20, which raised Christ from the dead.  That power will enlighten you, give you hope, wisdom, knowledge, and a rich inheritance; it is “immeasurable” (vv 14-19).  To deny it with a “yes but” is to call God a liar.

            Maybe the problem is that we want God’s power to do it for us, with no effort required on our parts.  It doesn’t work that way.  We must patiently endure.  We must do good and stay faithful no matter how difficult it becomes.  That is what God’s power, not our own, enables us to do.  And that means, “I can’t,” is no longer a valid excuse.
 
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Eph 3:20,21.
 
Dene Ward
 

             I will think I have it figured out. 

            I will say, “Yes, life is hard, but God never promised otherwise (despite Joel Osteen).  I can do this.” 

            Then suddenly something happens I did not expect, something that seems the opposite of everything I have prayed for, and I wilt.  That’s when it is all too easy to fall into the “Why me?” trap.  The “I’ve done all this for you and look what I get in return,” con.  Jeremiah fell too.

           The prophets never had easy lives.  Hosea, Ezekiel, Amos, and Jeremiah are prime examples, and maybe Jeremiah more than any of them.  Check out 15:10-21.  Because of the poetic and figurative language it can be difficult to get the full impact, so if you will allow, I am going to paraphrase for you.

              In many versions this is labeled “Jeremiah’s Complaint.”  That ought to give you a clue about what’s going on.

              Jeremiah says, “Everyone hates me [because of what I’ve preached on your behalf, which is implied not spoken] v 10.

              God says, “Haven’t I delivered you?” v 11.

              Jeremiah says, “I did just what you told me to and YOU have deceived me” vv15-18.

              Uh-oh, Jeremiah has gone a step too far.  God will always hear His children’s cries.  Elsewhere on this blog we studied the Psalms and discovered that there are far more lament psalms than any other kind (including praise psalms)!  But Jeremiah has accused God of sin against him.

              How do I know?  Because God tells him, “If you repent, I will restore you.  Do not become like the very people I have sent you to” v 19.

              There are two lessons in this conversation that we need to hear.  First, other people’s bad behavior never justifies bad behavior in us.  Somehow we think that we can get away with anything as long as we can say, “But look how he treated me.”  No, we can’t, and if we claim to be Jesus’ disciples, the one who When…reviled…did not revile in return; when he suffered…did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. (1Pet 2:23), then we should know that.

              And that last phrase, “entrusting himself” to God segues nicely into the second lesson.

              “I delivered you,” God told Jeremiah.  Somehow, Jeremiah missed it.  Maybe it’s because he kept winding up imprisoned or thrown into a muddy cistern and left to die, and threatened with death almost constantly.  But God did deliver him.  Someone always came to the rescue providentially, people who just happened to be there with memory and logic, or on one occasion a foreigner who somehow had influence over the king.

            Jeremiah’s problem was that God’s idea of deliverance didn’t match his.  Here I am up to my armpits in a filthy, dank well and this is deliverance?  Yes, it was.  Instead of being killed instantly, he was left to die, which gave his rescuer an opportunity to save him.  Eventually he was pulled out of that hole to relative safety so he could preach even more.  Do you see that?  He was delivered so he could continue a hard and dangerous mission, not so he could live in luxury.

            And for us, deliverance may not look like our version of deliverance.  It may not match what we have prayed for, but that’s because God’s version often involves things we haven’t even been spiritual enough to think of.

            Do you want an example?  If you know my eye story, you know it has been going on a long, long time.  Longer than any doctor thought possible.  No, my vision is not what it used to be, but I still have some!  And what has that done for me?  It has taken away a lot things that used to take up my time, and suddenly, I am able to write, to teach, and to speak.  I have done more of that in the past ten years than in the thirty years before combined.
 
           And even now, it appears that my remaining distance vision is dimming.  But with the aid of lenses and large print, I can still manage the close things.  I can still study.  I can still type.  I may not be able to see the individual features of the crowd of faces in front of me, but I can still see my notes and my mouth works just fine.

            God’s idea of deliverance cost me a few things, like a music studio and some independence.  But it also delivered me to do so much more.

            Don’t whine when your deliverance is not what you hoped.  Don’t mope when your plans don’t work out, when you feel used and abused, when you think all is lost.  You may be shoulder deep in the mire right now, but that will make the deliverance even more amazing when it comes.  Just stop expecting your version and look for God’s.  In the words of the old joke, “I sent a boat and I sent a helicopter.  It’s not my fault you didn’t take me up on it.”
 
Therefore thus says the LORD: “If you return, I will restore you, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth. They shall turn to you, but you shall not turn to them. ​And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you, declares the LORD. ​I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked, and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.” (Jer 15:19-21)
 
Dene Ward

I remember once when the boys came asking for something.  I don’t remember what it was, I just remember that the way they asked made it obvious they did not expect to receive a positive response from me.  It probably cost money, which was always in short supply in those years.  I vaguely remember that their father and I had already discussed this thing, and had decided it was worth it, that we would just sacrifice in another area.  So I thoroughly enjoyed answering in an offhanded way, “Sure.”

            Their hanging heads snapped back, their eyes widened, and their jaws dropped.  It was a moment before they could utter, “Reeeeeeally?”  Being able to give them what they wanted so much was a wonderful feeling.  Although I am certain that most children doubt this, most parents want to give their children everything their hearts desire.  They just have enough sense not to. 

            Sometimes I think we approach God in exactly the same way my boys came to me that day.  We have already decided what God will and won’t do.  Or maybe it’s that we have decided what God can and cannot do—a far more serious crime.  When we know the doctors have said the illness is terminal, for some reason we don’t think we can ask God to heal.  God can do whatever he wants to do, regardless of what the doctors say.  Don’t we believe that?

            Put yourself in the place of those Christians in Acts 12.  They were all in danger.  Herod had put Peter and James in prison, and had already killed James.  When he saw the public opinion polls swing in his direction, he planned to kill Peter too.  Yet those Christians risked life and limb to gather at Mary’s house and pray for him.  If it were us, I am afraid we would have prayed that his death be swift so he wouldn’t suffer.  We would have already given up on his life being spared. 

            After my first surgeries, the doctor told me it was the first time anyone had performed that operation on a nanophthalmic eye without losing the eye.  I am glad he didn’t tell me that beforehand.  It isn’t just the extra fear I would have felt.  I am afraid it would have changed my prayers because I, too, grew up with the idea that you must not ask God for the impossible.

            Mark records Jesus saying, Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that
you have received it and it will be yours, 11:24.  Did you catch that?  “Believe that you have received it.”  Your faith should be such that you know he has already said yes—asking for it is simply a formality. 

            Jesus died so we could boldly come before the throne of God (Heb 4:16).  Too many times we come before God with a hangdog expression, a forlorn hope that he will have any time to spare for us and that our requests will be too petty to catch his attention.  We remind him how many outs he has, we lower our expectations to something that won’t be too hard for him, and we always add a “Thy will be done,” not because of our humility and acceptance of his will, but because, like my boys that day, we really don’t expect to get a yes and our weak faith needs a prop.  Just exactly how much more insulting do we think we can be to our Divine Creator?

            When you pray today, pray “nothing doubting” (James 1:6), and remember that with God “all things are possible” (Matt 19:26).  Think about the gift he has already given you—his Son.  Why in the world do we think he would withhold anything else?
 
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him, 1 John 5:14,15.
 
Dene Ward                    

I think this might be something I am looking forward to most about Heaven—putting faces to names.  We have studied them so often and at such depth, that each of us has probably pictured Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Esther, Mary (all of them!), Peter, John, Paul and so many others in our minds.  Stuck as we are in our own culture and generation, we probably have erred in our portraits.  Jesus certainly was not the pale, brown-haired, blue-eyed, six foot man in the unstained white robes we see in practically every painting.   

            In fact, if you do as I do sometimes on Sunday mornings and picture him walking among us as our host, communing with us in the feast, you probably see him in robes then too, don’t you?  Yet Jesus came down as a man in a time when everyone wore robes.  The fact that he blended in so well and looked so ordinary was one of his problems—“Who does he think he is?  Isn’t this just the carpenter’s son?  Didn’t we watch him grow up among us?”  No, if Jesus had chosen this generation to make his appearance, he might very well have been in khakis, or even blue jeans, and some of us would have had just as much trouble accepting him as the scribes and Pharisees did.

            Putting faces to names in Heaven will be a revelation.  And we won’t have any problem talking with these great people.  I am sure you have had the experience of needing to speak with someone who is important, someone who is very busy—perhaps the preacher or one of the elders, or someone who is “popular” in whatever venue you happen to find yourself.  You stand in line waiting your turn, and if you are lucky you get 30 seconds before he or she is distracted by something or someone else.  You almost feel like a nuisance, and most of the time I find myself avoiding people like that just so I won’t be any trouble to them. 

            That will not happen in Heaven.  How do I know?  Because it’s Heaven.  Isn’t that the very definition of the word?  No more problems, no more trials, no more feelings of inadequacy.  We will know everyone and they will know us, and no one will need to wait in line for thirty seconds of token time.
Do you know what?  We have that now with God, a taste of Heaven whenever we pray.  He is instantly listening.  He is intent on our every word, even filling in the ones we can’t seem to get out right.  He knows our names and our faces, and with that he knows every problem or fear or anxiety, and we have his undivided attention for as long as we want it.  Our faith means we know him, not just his name, and because we trust him, he knows us too. 
           
            Putting faces to names in this life can be a lot of fun.  Putting a face on God will be amazing.
 
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!  And that is what we are!  The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.  But we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure, 1 John 3:1-3.
 
Dene Ward

Part 1 appeared yesterday.

When I was studying these women for a class, I found myself amazed by God’s providence and bemused by his methods yet again.  How many times have we said that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts and his ways higher than our ways?  His ways are not only different from ours, they often don’t make any sense to us.

            To keep his prophet safe from Jezebel, he sent him into the heart of Jezebel’s home country. To house him he sent him to a poor woman.  To feed him, he sent him to a starving widow.  To encourage him, he sent him to a Gentile.  Would we have even thought to do any of these things in these ways?

            Yet God demands that we accept the same sorts of contradictory things every day.  But many who are last shall be first, and the first last, Matt 19:30.  For whoever would save his life shall lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it, Matt 16:25.  The greatest among you shall be your servant, Matt 23:11.

            In that lies the test of faith.  It is not shown so much in great deeds of heroism as it is in accepting God’s way when it makes no sense.  It is shown when we follow a path that no longer seems to lead anywhere.  It is shown when, day after day, we live the principles his Son lived, not trusting in things of this world, but trusting that God’s way works no matter how it looks from our perspective.  How else could Gideon have gone to battle against an army “without number” with only 300 weaponless men?  How else could Mary have faced a skeptical village every day for the rest of her life when she had a healthy baby six months after marrying?  How else could Mark’s mother have opened her home to praying Christians when everyone knew they were in danger?  How else could Abraham have offered in sacrifice a son through whom God had made so many promises?

            How do we face another trying day today?  By realizing that God does not work like we do, but that his ways do work.  By understanding that we might not actually see here on earth exactly how they work, but trusting that they will anyway.  By knowing that his Spirit will give us the strength to continue, expecting God’s purposes to come to fruition, just as his promises always have.  Day after day after sometimes difficult day.

            God used a poor, starving, heathen woman, living in the middle of his enemies to save his prophet.  Don’t doubt what he can do for you.
 
You are my witnesses, says Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen; that you may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am Jehovah; and besides me there is no savior. I have declared, and I have saved, and I have showed; and there was no strange god among you: therefore you are my witnesses, says Jehovah, and I am God. Yea, since the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who can hinder it? Isa 43:10-13.
 
Dene Ward

The last in a continuing Monday morning series.  Please read it all in order before you make any judgments or even try to understand what is being said. 

              In order to make this a complete study, we have to look at a little history.  You will be surprised at what you learn, I promise.

              The Greek philosophers actually got a few things right about God, even while not really identifying Him as the one true God.  They taught that He is pure, one, immaterial (i.e., a Spirit), self-sufficient, imperturbable, and that He works merely by thought, among other things, but they did not truly understand God.  How could they without His Divine Revelation? 

              Xenophanes (d. 475 BC) broke away from the system of Greek gods.  “They are as wicked as men,” he said in explanation.  “God,” he noted, “is the greatest among the gods.”  Sounds a bit like Nebuchadnezzar’s understanding of God.

              Socrates (d. 399 BC) was forced to drink hemlock because he “did not accept the gods of the city.”  Plato (d. 348 BC) said, “God is the first cause…the prime mover.”  Aristotle (d. 322 BC) said that God is “the unmoved mover” who “knows all before it exists.”

              Yet the God they described was abstract, impersonal, unreachable, perfect, and unmoved.  If He is perfect, they reasoned, why would He change anything, especially His mind?  If He is perfect and has arranged things perfectly, any change would be for the worse.

              The philosophical thinking of the time involved three things:
1.  Fate—you are assigned a life that cannot be changed, in theological words, predestination.  What happens happens because it has to happen.
2.  Immutability of God—the perfect doesn’t change.  God is perfect, therefore God does not change.
3.  Timelessness of God—if God has no beginning or end, He will know both the past and the future as well as the present.  When taken with number one, this means He has your life planned and you have no choices.

              Alexander’s [Greek] empire included most of the known world, so this philosophy spread.  Greeks prevailed until Rome took over.  Roman technology and military thinking prevailed, but they lost the culture wars—Greek culture prevailed there and so all these ideas spread.

              The Stoics, whom the apostle Paul dealt with in Athens, lived by the principle of Fate, and had great influence in society.  “You cannot change anything.  Just accept it and don’t let it disturb you.”

              First century Christians did not buy into this.  They believed that the choices you make can make a difference in your life and even in the world.  It was yet another way they stood out from their neighbors, at least until Augustine came along.

              Augustine was Bishop of Hippo, in North Africa.  Even though his mother was a Christian he was not at first. He was a philosopher who still believed in the Greek “package.”  He could not accept a changeable God.  He called the God of the Scriptures “absurd” and “offensive.”  But eventually he was converted—sort of.

              He followed Ambrose in “allegorical interpretation” of the Scriptures, which means you can make scripture mean anything, just call it an allegory.  He looked for ways to incorporate his old philosophies into the Biblical teaching.  He decided that Fate = God.  The problem was he became the dominant voice in the early Roman Catholic Church.

              This infection of Greek philosophy into New Testament theology continued unabated.  Thomas Aquinas, who was called “the Doctor of the Church” actually wrote commentaries on Aristotle.  Aristotle was taught in the early universities—where only priests and church dignitaries studied.  Eventually Luther and Calvin came out of those schools.  They called Fate by the Biblical word “predestination,” but they are not the same thing at all, as any thorough study will show.  Still, those beliefs permeated all theology for centuries.  You know all those “heretics” who were executed in the Middle Ages?  They were the ones who rebelled against this unscriptural view of God and how He works.

              Don’t think it doesn’t seep into our thinking.  “It just wasn’t meant to be,” we sometimes say when we are struggling with a tragedy of life.

              “I’m only human,” and, “Once saved, always saved,” all come from those old Greek philosophies, which in turn affected our theology. 

              I wish you all could have sat in the class I sat in last summer.  Since you did not, here is the bottom line:  Remember your stop sign.  Stop trying to explain the unexplainable.  Stop trying to bring God down to a human level.  Just accept what His revelation says about Him, without trying to undo it or make it match your preconceived notions.  That is the only reverent way to approach Him.
 
​Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. Ps 147:5
 
Dene Ward

We discovered last month that Keith’s hearing has gotten much worse.  Before, when he was not wearing his two high-tech hearing aids, if I put my mouth right at his ear and spoke like I was talking to someone in the next room, he could hear enough to tell what I was saying.  He still couldn’t hear the phone ring in the same room, but at least we had a way to communicate if necessary.  Now we don’t.  No matter how loudly I speak, even with my mouth inside the curl of his ear, he can no longer hear me.  Without hearing aids, he is utterly deaf.

            So, I thought, maybe we should start learning to sign right now, just in case we need it sometime.   Then I thought, how long will I be able to see him signing?  When my sight goes, will he be totally lost to me?  My stomach did a little flip and I sat down quickly.  Panic set in for a moment before I calmed down enough to realize that would not be the case.  I would still have the sense of touch.  I have held those hands every day for nearly 37 years now and laid on that chest every night.  And though his speech patterns may deteriorate without his hearing, no one could ever mistake that voice.  I can sign to him and he can talk to me.  Whew!  What a relief.

            Col 1:15, 1 Tim 1:17 and Heb 11:27 tell us that God is invisible.  Jesus says in John 5:37 that no one has seen his form or heard his voice.  And because of that, people choose to believe he is not there.  Job mentions in 23:8,9 that when God is working, you cannot “perceive him.”  Don’t you sometimes get frustrated and wonder, “Why is it that Almighty God chooses to work in ways that do not make his existence obvious?”  Or doesn’t he?  Maybe it’s similar to Jesus choosing to speak in parables.  He said the ones who wanted to hear him could, and the ones who didn’t, wouldn’t, Matt 13:10-17.  He wants us to show a little desire and put in a little effort.

            People who want to see the hand of God, need only to stand on the seashore and look out at the endless waves, or look up in the night sky and try to count the stars. People with the right heart need only see the rebirth of plants and flowers in the spring, watch the flights of migrating birds, or experience the birth of their own children.  They need only to see the sun rise and set day after day, or understand the symbiotic relationships between species to comprehend the power of an Eternal Creator who still makes it all work, whether we can see him or not.

              Paul says in that famous passage in Romans that God did not leave the heathen nations without some sort of witness to his existence.  All they had to do was look around them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse, Rom 1:20. 

            Just like I will always know if Keith is there whether I can see him or not, we can always know that God is there.  Just as with Job, even when we cannot see him working, we can know that he is. And that assurance gives us hope that the things that happen here, no matter how bad they are, are being used as part of his plan.  We may not know the plan or how it will ultimately turn out in its specifics, but we can know he is working.  And that’s all we need to know.
 
Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him; on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him; he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him. But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold, Job 23:8-10.
 
Dene Ward