A few years ago my eyes went to Auckland, New Zealand.  Later they went to Singapore.  They have also traveled to Honolulu, Lisbon, Amsterdam, London, and Brandenburg, Germany.  I suppose it is ironic that although my eyes have been to all those places, I have never seen any of them, and never will.  The magic of digital photography, videotape, and DVDs have taken my eyes to far away, exotic places, and because of that, medical magic will help others.

            I have heard many speak badly of doctors whose conferences take them to places like these; things like, “I wish I could count my vacation as a business deduction.”  Have you ever seen one of the programs for these conferences?  Yes, there are sightseeing tours arranged for the doctors (which they pay for), but they are sandwiched in between seminars, lectures, demonstrations, and panel discussions that you and I could never make heads nor tails of because we did not sign what amounted to a mortgage in order to attend years of medical school, nor have to pay an annual six figure malpractice insurance premium to protect ourselves from those who think doctors should be perfect.

            For any who complain about their travels, I hope you never need to rely on two doctors who live a thousand miles apart having met one another by chance several thousands of miles away from their homes in order to save your sight, or worse, your life.  Let them sightsee a little.  It’s worth it, if not to you, then to some poor soul somewhere.

            That was extra.  Here is my point this morning.  I will never see those places, except in pictures.  Abraham did not even have pictures as evidence when he left his home at God’s command.  He had no deed in his hand when he believed God would give him the land of Canaan, nor did Isaac and Jacob, or their wives.  But we are told, These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, Heb 11:13.  Amazing faith, we think.  There was nothing that even hinted to them that they would inherit that land.  At times they were run off it, even threatened if they stayed, but they still believed God would keep his promise. 

            That’s what we do today, isn’t it?  Some might think we have it even harder.  At least the three patriarchs eventually stood on actual land--dirt and grass and watering holes, with trees growing and animals wandering about.  We must believe in something we can’t see or touch.  Oh, really.  Do you think they didn’t believe in that place too?  …and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on this earth…they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one, wherefore God is not ashamed…to be called their God, but he has prepared for them a city, Heb 11:13,16.

            Their faith went beyond the physical, just as ours should.  It may be a tall order, but look at all those who have gone before us and managed it.  Why is it we treat the faith requirement as some sort of burden?  “Don’t lose faith,” we say when someone has a problem, creating yet another problem for them.  Faith should be an asset.  It causes hope, and how many people have lived longer lives because a doctor gave them a little thing called hope?

              The hope we have is for something even better.  Unlike all those amazing places my eyes have been but I have never seen, this is one I will see, the most amazing place of all, forever.

For in hope were we saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for that which he sees?  But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it, Rom 8:24,25. 

Dene Ward

You can learn a lot about a word by looking at its Greek original, even if you aren’t a Greek scholar.  When you see that we are supposed to be “striving” for the faith (Phil 1:27), and you find out the word is sunathleo, how difficult is it to see the English word “athlete” there?  Immediately you know that striving involves hours of disciplined training, a ton of sweat, and a whole lot of determination.  How smart do you really have to be when you discover that “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6), which uses the word energeo, means that you are to work energetically, with an attitude of “do it or bust?”

So in our continuing study of faith I found this passage:  I made supplication for you that your faith fail not…Luke 22:32.  I looked up “fail” and found this Greek word, ekleipo. 

I’ll have to admit—I saw nothing at first.  Finally I looked up other uses of the word and found, just a page over in my Bible, Luke 23:45:  the sun’s light failing.  The context was the crucifixion when, according to the verse just above that one, darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour.      

“Aha!” my feeble brain said, “an eclipse,”--ekleipo.  The light of the sun failed because something overshadowed it.  Now how do I use that in my study of faith “failing?”

Eleven years ago I woke up with what I thought was an earache.  I called the doctor and he prescribed an antibiotic.  The next morning some of the ache was gone, but enough remained for me to discover the true source of the pain—it was a tooth.  I had developed an abscess and the pain had simply radiated to my ear, but the medication at least knocked it back to its original source. This time I called the dentist and left a message.  It was late on a Friday afternoon and I needed to see someone before the weekend. 

By that time, nearly 48 hours into this, I was moaning on the couch, totally unable to function.  I hadn’t even thought about dinner, much less started cooking it, even though I expected Keith home within the hour.  I hadn’t finished putting the clean sheets on the bed, or washed any dishes all day long.  I hadn’t accomplished any bookkeeping, or filled out the forms that were soon due for my students to enter State Contest.  Nothing mattered but that aching tooth and the sore lump now swelling on my jaw line.

A few minutes later the phone rang, and I eagerly snatched it up, expecting a dental assistant.  It was an ex-Little League coach of my sons’.  Keith had suffered something resembling a seizure while riding his bike the thirteen miles home from work, and was lying right in front of his house, in the middle of the rural highway. 

“The ambulance just arrived,” he said.  “I think if you hurry, you can be here before it leaves.”

What do you think I did?  Lie back down and moan some more?  I was out of that house in a flash and did indeed beat the ambulance’s departure for the hospital.  That “seizure” turned out to be a stroke, and I sat in the hospital for five days afterward. 

You can think your faith is important to you.  You can think you would never let anything “eclipse” it.  You can be positive that you are strong enough to handle the most intense trial or the most powerful temptation.  You can be absolutely wrong.

I have seen men who stood for the faith against the ridicule of false teachers commit adultery.  I have seen women who diligently withstood the long trial of caring for a sick mate become bitter against everyone who ever tried to help them, and ultimately against God himself.  I have seen families who were called “pillars of the church” leave that very group when one of their own fell and was chastised. 

Look to that passage I found:  I made supplication for you that your faith fail not.  Jesus was speaking to Peter, who subsequently declared, “I am ready to go both to prison and to death,” but not many hours later, he denied the Lord when those very things confronted him.  He was not prepared, and his faith was eclipsed by fear.

Just as surely as my worry over my husband’s health totally eclipsed a very real and intense pain in my physical body, just as certainly as fear eclipsed the faith of a man like Peter, the events of life can eclipse your faith, causing it to fail.  Carnal emotions can overshadow you—lust, bitterness, resentment, hurt feelings among them.  It’s up to us to keep those things in their proper place, to allow nothing to detract from our faith in a God who promises that none of those things really matter because of the spiritual nature of the life to come.  It is, in fact, up to us to be spiritually minded, instead of carnally minded, to put the physical in the shade and let the light of the Truth shine on the spiritual.

With a spiritual mind-set, nothing can eclipse your faith.  Your faith should, in fact, eclipse everything else.

 If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For you died, and your life is hid with Christ in God, Colossians 3:1-3.

Dene Ward

Nothing aggravates me much more than listening to someone claim to be religious, claim to love the Lord, claim to have the utmost faith in Him, and then live like the Devil. It is false advertising at its worst. Then our women’s Bible study reached James 2 in our study of faith and suddenly, it got a little personal.

Although I am grateful for the convenience of chapters and verses that the scholars have added, it is obvious that they sometimes had their minds on other things when they threw them in. And throw them it appears they did, like sprinkling salt on a plateful of food. So what if a verse is divided in the middle of a sentence or a chapter in the middle of a thought? The “what” is this—you forget to check the entire context because your eyes tell your mind that it started and ended right there, not on the page before or after.

So we backed up into chapter 1 and found this: “If anyone thinks he is religious…” in verse 26. Another two verses back we found, “If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer…” verse 23, which directly connects to the whole point of chapter 2: “Faith without works is dead.” Chapter 2 itself begins with, “Show no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So from all that we easily concluded that being a doer of the Word (1:23), being religious (1:26), and holding to the faith (2:1) were all synonymous, and that it was easy to tell if a person fit the bill.

Follow along with me. A person who merely thinks he is religious but in reality is not: does not bridle his tongue, 1:26; does not serve others, 1:27; lives a life of impurity, 1:27; does not love his neighbor as himself, 2:8; shows partiality, 2:9; does not show mercy, 2:13.

I am happy to point out that those celebrities who claim faith in the Lord hop from bed to bed, and carouse at every opportunity. Their language is foul and a criminal record of drugs, DUIs, and assaults follow them around like a noxious vapor trail.

But how about the rest of us, the ones who don’t have the paparazzi following us? Do we serve those in need or are we too busy? Do we love our neighbors, or only the friends we enjoy being with? Do we talk about “them,” whoever they might be in any conversation, as if they were somehow “other” than us because of their race, their nationality, their lifestyle, their politics, even the clothes they wear? If I do any of that am I any more “religious” than the Jesus-calling, promiscuous drunk I abhor?

This discussion also led us to another defining characteristic of a true faith. Look at those qualities again—someone who says the right thing at the right time, whose words are extremely important; someone who serves others; someone who is pure and holy; someone who loves as himself; someone who treats everyone the same, even the lowest of the low; someone who shows mercy—who does that best describe? Isn’t it the one we are supposed to have faith in, Jesus, and ultimately God?

Adoration equals imitation. If I am not trying to become like the one I have faith in, my faith is a sham. How can I claim to believe in a God who sends rain on the just and the unjust while holding back on my service to one I have deemed unworthy of it? How can I have faith in a merciful God and not forgive even the worst sin against me? How can I have faith in a God who is holy and pure and a Lord who remained sinless as the perfect example to me and make excuses for my own sins?

Do you think you are religious? Do your neighbors? Sometimes what we really are is a whole lot clearer to everyone else.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. James 1:22-25

Dene Ward

Florida has some strange weather. As a teenager in Tampa I remember
looking out the front door to sunshine and warm breezes, then out the backdoor to rain. Honestly--raining in the backyard and sunshine in the front. At our place now we can look up to the gate and see rain while the garden is still wilting in the sun. 
 
I thought about that recently when Lucas told us how his little strip of land two blocks from the beach seemed to be a dividing point in weather systems as they passed through the panhandle from the west. He could walk outside and look south to sunny blue skies, puffy cotton ball clouds and palm trees waving in the sea breeze. Yet if he looked north, he saw billowing black clouds lit up by lightning that occasionally streaked its way to the ground. Take your choice of weather: look north or look south; go out the front door or go out the back.
 
Which reminds me about the essential truth of happiness: it’s a choice you make regardless of the conditions you find yourself in. “I have learned in
whatever state I am in to be content,” Paul says in Phil 4:11. The disciples
rejoiced that they were “counted worthy to suffer,” Acts 5:41. If that doesn’t prove that happiness is a choice, what can?
 
That doesn’t mean I can face every day with a smile—I haven’t gotten there yet. But it does mean that when I am not in a good mood, I understand it’s
up to me to change myself not my circumstances. “I can do all things through him who strengthens me;” that old timeworn citation immediately follows Paul’s
assertion that contentment is a learned behavior. He understands that although
happiness may be a choice, it isn’t always an easy one—it takes some help to
manage when the outward man must face pain or illness or persecution or other suffering, whether physical or mental. If it takes the help of Christ, it must
be a difficult task.
 
But it can be done, and while the doing may be difficult, the how isn’t. All you have to do is face in the right direction, “looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith,” the Hebrew writer tells us in 12:2, and then goes on to tell us how our example did it: looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God, Hebrews 12:2. He looked ahead to the joy, not around him to the shame and pain, the hostility and the weariness. 
  
What do they teach us in our Lamaze classes, ladies? You focus on something besides the pain. How many of you took a picture with you that they tacked on the wall? Then you chose to look at it. Even then you needed a little help — that’s what those men of yours were there for. They helped you keep your focus and count your breaths. You chose to listen to them and follow their instructions (when you weren’t grabbing them by the collar and telling them through gritted teeth not to ever touch you again!), but yes, it worked and you got through it, and you even wanted it again before much longer because you remembered the joy when that precious little bundle was placed in your arms, John 16:21.
 
Do you want a happy marriage? Do you want a good relationship with your family and your brothers and sisters in Christ? Do you want to greet life every day with a smile instead of a sneer, laughter instead of tears? The weather you can’t change, but you can change which door you leave by and which direction you look.

We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal,. 2 Corinthians 4:18.
 
Dene Ward

“Do it myself!” What parent has not heard these words from his toddler with mixed feelings? Yes, he is learning to do things for himself, all by himself, without my help. Good for him! Yes, he is learning to do without me. Some day he won’t need my help at all. Some day he will experience his own Independence Day, and we will face it with pride in his accomplishment and tears for our own loss at the same time.

And don’t we prize that independent feeling ourselves? I have a good friend who is 93. She and I have often bemoaned the fact that people no longer seem to understand the word “need.” What they think they “need” is usually just
something they “want.” It worries us that we are becoming more and more
dependent on wealth and the technology it buys. We have said to one another, if someday there is a great catastrophe, most of the country won’t know how to
survive at all. She has a colorful way of putting it: “They won’t even know how
to go to the bathroom!”
 
We have lived in the country for a long time, and I have learned a lot about doing things myself. I don’t know when was the last time I bought a jar of
jelly at the store. Or pickles. Or canned tomatoes. Or salsa. Or any sort of
frozen vegetable at all. I do it myself.
 
For awhile we had chickens. Until we finally figured out that we were barely breaking even between the cost of feed and the “free” eggs, we gathered
jumbos every day, half a dozen or more. Keith milked a cow, and I often had a
sour cream pound cake sitting on the countertop, made with our eggs, our
homemade butter, and our homemade sour cream. I mashed potatoes we grew with our fresh cream and homemade butter. The ice cream we churned was so rich we often saw flecks of butter in it.  I think maybe we gave up the cow the day we actually started feeling our arteries clog as we looked across the table at one another.
 
A lot of people can and freeze vegetables, jams, and pickles, but it always gave me a little extra pride when I made things that most people never even thought about making, like ketchup from the tag ends of the tomato crop, and chili powder from the cayenne peppers I grew and dried. Lots of folks made applesauce, but not many can their own apple pie filling to use later in the year. Another friend I have makes her own laundry starch. If anything dire does happen in the next few years, my two special friends and I promise to share. I am sure the 93 year old will be happy to tell you how to dig an
outhouse.

 But that sort of pride and independence can get in the way of our salvation, can’t it? There really is nothing we can do to save ourselves. And we must learn to depend upon God—he demands it. He is to be the one we trust, the
one we rely on, the one we go to for every need we have, even if our definition
of need is really “want.” 
 
As long as I think I can manufacture my own salvation and experience a
spiritual Independence Day, I will never find myself in God’s good graces, or in
His grace. This is one case where self-reliance is disastrous. This is one case
where we celebrate Dependence Day instead. Have you celebrated yours yet?
 
By grace have you been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,  Eph 2:8
 
Dene Ward

Our study of faith on Tuesday mornings continues to amaze us.  When I first handed out this 68 page, 15 lesson study that had taken me an entire summer of toil and sweat to produce, the women looked at me a little dubiously.  Faith is supposed to be easy, a first principle, so to speak.  How could you possibly come up with this much?

Did you ever look up “faith” in a concordance?  All I did the first three days was write down scriptures.  I wound up with twenty pages.  I spent the next two weeks reading those scriptures and jotting notes about them that would jog my memory when it came time to organize them, which took another two weeks.  Then another week’s study gave me possible lesson titles, and in a few more days I sorted the scriptures I had found into those lessons.  Then I finally started writing lessons.

In the process things changed.  Some lessons were divided in two.  Shorter ones were merged to create one longer one.  Questions were constantly in flux, created, edited, sometimes deleted altogether, other times expanded to two or three. 

As I worked it became clear to me that we have shortchanged “faith” in our Bible studies.  It has become simply the first stairstep in the Plan of Salvation chart so many of us grew up memorizing.  When you really study it—I mean, twenty pages of scriptures, folks!—it is far more important.  In fact, I wound up calling our study, “Faith:  Stairstep or Staircase?” 

As we ended lesson 8, “Faith in Hebrews 11,” which I bet you have never in your life studied the way we did, something else became apparent to me.  I had inadvertently put these lessons in a good order.  “Inadvertent” is not really accurate though; I did think about the order and rearranged them more than once, but as we have continued, it has become clear that the sequence has worked out beautifully.  I was certainly not inspired, but God’s providence has worked in its usual wonderful way, and through no fault of my own, these things are fitting together like the pieces of a puzzle.

Can I share one “for instance?”  The lesson right before the Hebrews lesson was actually two, “Faith in the Book of Romans,” parts 1 and 2.  (Keith wrote those since Romans is one of his specialties.)  At the end of the lessons we drew this conclusion: our faith is not in a what but a who.  It is not in the promises of God, but in the God that made those promises.  Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness, Rom 4:3. 

Do you see how much better that is?  When you believe in the who, the what automatically follows.  Of course the promises will come true—God made them!  [Abraham was] fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised.  That is why his faith was counted to him for righteousness, 4:21.  Believing in the “Who” leaves no doubt at all about “what” you will believe.

Then as we moved on into Hebrews 11 we took it a step further.  Our faith in God must eventually become a personal faith—we don’t just believe God; He becomes “our God.”  That increased depth in our faith makes God not only proud of us, but willing to be “our God,” and to have that personal relationship with us.  Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, the writer says in 11:16. 

And what does that do for you?  It effects every action, every word, and every decision you make when the relationship between you and God is personal.  What did Joseph say to Potiphar’s wife?  “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” Gen 39:9.  He may not have said “sin against my God,” but you get the feeling nevertheless.  To sin against God would have been a personal affront.  You don’t get that motivation to stay pure if your faith has not reached that level of closeness with your Creator.

Instead of just ripping through the list in Hebrews, we really looked at the actions of those great heroes. “By faith” Enoch walked with God, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, Jacob blessed his sons, Joseph mentioned the exodus before he died.  Wait--those are courageous and daring feats of faith?  No, they are just the words and deeds of men who believed God when He made His promises, and whose belief imbued every part of their lives.  Isaac, in recognizing that God had been in control when he (blindly) wasn’t, refused to change his blessing.  Jacob in his blessings to his sons embraced the entire promised future of Israel, from the conquest of the Promised Land to the coming Messiah.  Joseph spoke assuredly of the future exodus and his desire to be laid in that Land.  And Enoch?  He just lived every day as his God wanted him to, walking with his God in a personal relationship that made every action and decision obvious instead of an internal struggle.  Faith is believing God; faith is believing my God.

And so we will continue on in our study.  It has become exciting to see each new aspect of an old and neglected issue. 

“Faith only?”  Well, that depends.  Is it one step in your life, one instant of “Now I am saved,” or even, “Now I can move on to the next step,” or is it, as it was for those ancient patriarchs, the entire staircase that lifts you to Eternity?

For all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever and ever. Micah 4:5

Dene Ward

I don’t know what we would have done without hand-me-downs.  
 
Lucas survived his infancy on borrowed baby clothes, but that young
mother soon needed them again so there were no tiny clothes to pass down to Nathan.  At that point we were   living by a children’s clothes factory and could go to the outlet store and buy seconds for as little as fifty cents each. Each summer and each winter I dug my way  through a mountain of irregulars and managed to find three shirts and three  pairs of either shorts or long pants, according to the season.  Sometimes the colors were a little odd, like the “dress” shoes I bought   for Lucas when he was two—maroon patent leather with a beige saddle—but they   covered his feet for $1 and no one was likely to mistake them for another child’s shoes.

 Then, just as they reached school age, we found ourselves in a church
with half a dozen little boys just three or four years older than they.  Suddenly my boys’ closet was  bursting.  They were far better dressed than I was, and they had even more waiting to be grown into. They didn’t mind hand-me-downs and neither did our scanty bank account. Keith and I have followed suit. Probably 75% of my clothes are hand-me-downs, and the rest I picked up at consignment shops and thrift stores, with only a handful of things I bought new, always off a clearance rack. Keith has more shirts than he could wear in a month—we didn’t buy a one of  them.

 When you get a hand-me-down, sometimes you can’t wear it as is. Sometimes it’s my own personal sense of taste, meager though that may be. Sometimes it’s a size issue. I have been known to take up hems or let them out if the giver was taller or shorter than I.  I almost always remove shoulder pads.  I have wide shoulders for a woman and shoulder pads make me look like a football player in full gear.  If the collar has a  bow, a scarf, or high buttons, those go too—I hate anything close around my neck and it makes my already full face look like a bowling ball. So while I gratefully accept those second hand clothes, I do something to make them my own.

 Which brings me to handed-down faith.  Being raised in the church can be both a blessing and a curse.  Being taught from before you can remember means doing right becomes second nature. There is never any question where I will be on Sunday morning because I have always been there.  There is never any question what I will do when it’s time to make a choice that involves morals or doctrine.  There is never any question about my priorities—my parents taught those to me every day of my childhood, both in word and deed.

 Yet God will not accept any faith that is not my own. Yes, He was with Ishmael for Abraham’s sake, Gen 17:20; 21:13.  To those who are dear to His children, but who are not believers, God will sometimes send material lessings, 39:5, and physical salvation, 19:29, but He will not take a hand-me-down faith until it becomes personal, Ezek 18:1-4.  I have to reach a point where I know not only what I believe, but why, and that faith must permeate my life as I lead it, in every situation I find myself in, in every decision I must make, but at the same time come from my heart not habit. If I have not reached that  point, what will I do when my parents are gone?  Will my faith stand then? Or will I be like Joash, who did just fine as long as his mentor Jehoiada the priest was alive, but fell to the point of killing his cousin Zechariah, a prophet of God, when he was finally left on his own? (2 Chron 24)  
 
Pass your faith on to your children, but your job doesn’t end  there.  Help them make it their  own.  Let them tear out those  shoulder pads and lengthen those hems.  It really isn’t a compliment to your parenting skills if all they can do is mimic you while you are still alive to keep tabs on them. You might in fact be limiting them by demanding exact conformity to every nuance of your own faith.  Their  faith could very well soar farther than you ever thought about if you let them  fly.

 But the real test comes when you are gone. Can you rest well with the job you have done?

 I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know  that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made  clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things. For… we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts -- 2 Peter 1:13-15, 19.

 Dene  Ward

We had a pleasant surprise this year.  Besides the usual wrens’ nest in every odd place you can imagine, we had two hawks’ nests.  Two!  Hawks are very territorial, but they had set up their nests on opposite sides of the property, one just inside the east fence, and one just inside the west fence, as far from each other as they could possibly be and still be in our property.

We have learned a lot about these birds and knew when to start listening for baby hawk noises.  Finally one morning we realized the mother was no longer in the east nest.  We peered long with the binoculars and called up to the nest.  Nothing.  A few days later we finally saw the dirty white downy baby head and the big black eyes.           

After another week the baby sat up tall and we had a clear view for the first time.  It isn’t a hawk—it’s an owl!  A barred owl.  Although they usually have one or two siblings, this one appears to be an only child.  Its mother usually sits nearby on a low branch in a live oak arching over the creek, a two foot high chunky brown and gray bird with a round head and no ear tufts, horizontal bars across its shoulders and vertical streaks running down its chest.  In the evenings she flies to the garden and sits on a tomato post, just as the hawks have done for years now, occasionally swooping down to the ground to find dinner for the nestling. 

The hawks have hatched now as well, two downy white babies that sit in the nest and peer over at me when I make the trek to the west side of the property to talk with them.  Both of their parents sit nearby when they aren’t out hunting up food, circling above and screaming their distinctive cry.

We could talk about those parents and the care they give—in fact, I have done that before.  We could talk about the way the father watches over the mother as she sets, bringing her food, then taking his turn to set when she needs a break.  We’ve done that too.  Today, I want to talk about this:  I can’t possibly watch both nests at once.  I have to walk the entire long side of the property to see one, and then back to see the other.  I have often seen the hawks as they first learn to fly.  I may miss that this time around if I am watching the owl learn to fly on the same day.  So?

Have you ever heard someone say, “I know God has more important things to deal with than my little problems?”  Is this supposed to be an excuse for a poor prayer life?  Is it supposed to be a proclamation of humility?  What it winds up being, if you think about it, is a lack of faith in the ability of God.  I can’t watch two nests, but God can.  Of the sparrows Jesus says, “Not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight,” (Luke 12:10).  Then he adds, “Fear not.  You are of more value than many sparrows.”  Not only does God consider my small problems important, He wants me to tell Him about them.

The pagans of the world create gods they can understand based upon their own feelings.  The ancient Greek gods were the height of pettiness, malice, and cruelty.  Why?  Because the humans who created them imputed those far too human characteristics to their personalities.   We do exactly the same thing to God when we put Him in the box of our own human understanding.  “I know God has/does/thinks/feels…” is the height of presumptuousness.

It is not for us to be describing God in any manner in which He does not describe Himself.  “I just know God would never…” may be the most obvious way we limit God, but it is not even the most common.  Even in our zealous attempts to be reverent by inventing words like “omniscient,” we are guilty of limiting Him to our own ability to understand.  God is Eternal—you cannot quantify an Eternal Being because you cannot even comprehend Infinity.  He is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” Eph 3:20.

Simply let His Word describe Him and our (in)ability to comprehend Him.

Behold God is great and we know him not, Job 36:26.

"Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty? It is higher than heaven--what can you do? Deeper than Sheol--what can you know? Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea, Job 11:7-9.

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable [immeasurable], Isaiah 40:28.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts, Isaiah 55:8-9.

God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things we cannot comprehend, Job 37:5.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! "For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?" Romans 11:33-34.

It is not my place to figure out what God is doing or why, or even the possibilities of His power—He says it’s impossible to do so.  It’s not my business to decide whether my problems are big enough to bother Him with—He says to bother Him.  It’s not my business to decide what He might say or not say, do or not do, think or not think.  To do that is to limit Him to my understanding and to be a disrespectful child who thinks he deserves an explanation from a Sovereign Creator.  He has told me everything I need to know.  Reverence means I just accept that.

When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one's eyes see sleep, then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out, Ecclesiastes 8:16-17.

Dene Ward

Because of my membership in three professional organizations and their local branches, my students were able to participate in several piano and voice competitions a year.  By far their favorite was the Florida Federation’s Junior State Convention and Competition.

We discovered this event by accident when I overheard two teachers talking about it at our District Festival, a ratings-only non-competitive event.  So I asked, and after being told about this competition for district-rated superiors, was also advised not to bother taking any students.  “There are as many as 70-80 in each category, and the winners are always students of some retired concert artist or college professor.  You’ll never win.”

My students, despite being from the smallest county in Florida, and a rural one at that, took it as a challenge, and every year after that “going to state” was the goal for them all.  And guess what?  We did win, several times, in several events.  My students had come up with their own little uniforms—white shirt, black pants or skirt, and Looney Tunes tie—and it got to the point that I heard people in the audience say things like, “Uh-oh.  It’s one of the kids with the ties!” when they approached the piano or stood up to sing.  We were not only recognized, but actually feared!

When you make a superior in a group event, like piano duet or piano trio, all parties must attend State in order for that group to compete.  Imagine my surprise when a parent called me a few weeks before the competition telling me that her daughter, who had made a superior in piano duet, would not be attending State Contest.  I knew the partner would be very disappointed.  Then the mother really burst my tea bag when she said, “It’s not like they have any chance of winning anyway.”

What?  As a matter of fact, piano duet was one of our best categories.  And the partner had already won a second place the year before with another partner.  If my students had gone to State feeling like they could never win anything, they never would have.  They won because they believed they could, and worked toward that goal. 

I have heard Christians say some things that sound just like that mother.

“I don’t know if I’m going to Heaven or not, but I sure hope so.” 

“I don’t know if I sinned Lord, but forgive me if I did.”

“We’re only human.  We all sin every day.”

Just what kind of God do these people think we serve?  A capricious, malicious God who toys with us like a cat with a mouse, or a loving, faithful God who helps us in every way He can, including giving us clear instructions for life, the means to overcome sin, and promises that are real?

Do you think Paul went at Christianity with such a defeatist attitude?  Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified, 1 Corinthians 9:25-27.  It sounds to me like he expected to win.

Do you need a little help getting over that defeatist attitude?  Just look at these passages this morning:

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 Corinthians 10:13

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1:3-5

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 1:10-11

In case you didn’t notice, when we have a defeatist attitude, it isn’t so much ourselves we doubt as it is God.  Satan is making inroads in our hearts and calling it “humility.”  It isn’t humility to wonder about my salvation; it’s a lack of faith and trust in a God who has furnished everything I need to know that I am saved. 

Who are you listening to this morning?

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 2 Corinthians 3:4-5

Dene Ward

I was driving back from Bible class, coming down the last hill before the river, rolling green fields dotted with black cattle on the right, and a couple of old trailer houses perched on the left, their yards littered with rusty old farm equipment, screens hanging loose on porches covered with peeling paint, and black and brown frosted-off weeds standing knee high.  It may surprise you that I was driving.  I have reached that point where the doctor is the one who decides if I can have a driver’s license, and it seems the general consensus is that it doesn’t matter if you can tell if that thing by the side of the road is a garbage can, a mailbox, or a midget, as long you know it’s there and don’t hit it.

But I was really tired.  Most of my medications are beta blockers of one sort or another, or poisons that affect my heartbeat.  Sometimes I am lucky to have a pulse rate of 52 and blood pressure just scraping the bottom side of 100, the top number that is.  The bottom one might be half that. 

I had just bought groceries for the week, picked up a prescription and some dry cleaning, stood in line at the post office for twenty minutes and taught a Bible class, not to mention driving the hour and a half round trip back and forth to town.  I was ready to sit out the rest of the day, after I got home and unloaded.

But my weary mind forgot that I was driving and told me to lean back and relax.  I know my eyes weren’t closed longer than half a second, but when my brain caught up with what I was doing and I snapped to, my pulse was racing along just fine.  Good thing I was only five miles from home. 

And that’s when I forgot that these medications are a blessing, that without them I wouldn’t see at all, and wouldn’t have for several years now.  That’s when I railed against a gift of God.  It’s not enough that I have no energy.  I must also put up with the discomfort of follicular conjunctivitis every minute of every day as a side effect, and nearly constant headaches from the blurry vision that accompanies it.  How can this be a blessing?

Down days happen, usually when things pile up.  Once again we needed something we couldn’t afford.  Once again we had received bad news about a parent’s health.  Once again something broke down.  My vision had decreased another line at my last checkup.  Keith’s RA had broken through the latest, the third, layer of medication and we weren’t sure it could be knocked down without another layer.  And now I come dangerously close to an accident that could have hurt not just me but an innocent bystander.

So down I spiraled.  When even blessings—like the medications that keep you seeing—become something you want to curse because all you can focus on are the side effects, you are too far down, and it’s time to find your way out.

Down days aren’t so much about a lack of faith as they are about a moment’s forgetfulness.  They are about looking for the wrong things, or looking at the right things the wrong way.  This wretched medicine makes me feel horrible, I sometimes think on a down day.  On an up day I remember, this wonderful medicine has kept me seeing long enough to see my grandchildren.

I don’t for a minute compare myself to John, and I certainly have no idea what his feelings were, but if I had been in his shoes—or in his cell—I might have needed a reminder too.  He had given up so much to fulfill his role in God’s plan as the forerunner of the Messiah.  Yet now, when he has done all that was expected of him, he is cast into prison for speaking the truth.  Surely God would save this righteous man, the one of whom the Messiah himself would say, “Of those born of women, none is greater than John,” Luke 7:28.  But no, day after day he languishes in a prison cell at the mercy of a wicked woman and her weak husband. 

I would have had a down day or two as I came to realize that my work was finished, that perhaps I, too, was finished, at the completely un-ripe young age of 31 or so.  I don’t know if that is why or not, but he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one, or should we look for another?” (7:20) 

The Lord sent him what he needed to hear.

"Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me." Luke 7:22-23.

John already knew those things; he had probably seen many of them.  He just needed to be reminded, and there is no shame in that. 

God can remind each one of us too.  He does it by the providential words and actions of your brethren.  He does it when a hymn suddenly wafts through your mind.  He does it by giving us His Word, a resource of constant refreshment when we need it.  How many of us don’t have verses we go to in difficult moments?  If you don’t, then you need to make some time today to find one.  Find it before you need it.  Find it, and let the Lord remind you about all of your blessings, both now and to come. 

You can come up from a down day, but only if you reach out and take hold of the help that is offered.

They who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31.

Dene Ward