Sleep

If you haven't traveled by plane over a twenty four hour period across fourteen time zones, you haven't lived! My brain doesn't seem to be functioning.

Sleep is a great gift from the LORD.

Proverbs 3:24 When you lie down, you will not be afraid;
    when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.

Having been deprived of sleep for the last day, it will be a great blessing to rest.

Nothing in Proverbs 3:24 promises that you will be comfortable when you lie down. Or even that you are promised a good place to lie down each day. I was neither comfortable, nor did I have a good place to lie down during the flights.

So what is this verse trying to say? When we are in right relationship with the LORD, we don't need to be afraid. The worst thing that can happen to us is that we die. And if we die we enter the LORD's presence. No more tears, or sorrow, or pain. All things will have become new. 

When we rest in Him, trusting that He will care for us, as He has promised, then we can breathe a sigh of relief that we made it through another day, and that a new day is coming. He will sustain us.

Well, time to catch a few winks in our new time zone.

Spiritual Rest

1 John 3:19

          Some today, and many in our culture, say that it is not possible to know the truth, because there is no such thing as truth. But then they get upset when their lives get ruffled by someone else's beliefs. If there is no truth, then your truth is no truer than anyone else's!

          But there is Truth! You may not like it, but it does exist. We usually don’t like someone’s version, and that is the rub. We see this in the news as religious freedom is being attacked in the name of tolerance. It seems as if tolerance and acceptance only works one direction for some people!

          John tells us that compassion requires that we love our fellow Believers. And when we do that, we are living the Truth. When our words and our actions match the Gospel, we are living in the light. And that is how we can KNOW that we belong to the truth. We can know for certain that Truth exists and that we are living it.

          For the Gospel to be effective in the world, it must be effective in our lives. When it is effective in our lives, then we can know our future is secure. The one hindrance to the Gospel reaching the world is us. When we don’t live the Gospel by loving each other, we let the World down. They need us to love each other.

          When we are obedient, we are at rest. When we disobey, our spirits are not at rest. I like rest. I’m not at rest all the time. There are times when I am not obeying, just like you. I too must repent. But in those moments when I am obedient, the rest is nice.

          Notice that John says that we set our hearts at rest. When we love as we are supposed to love, we can rest in the assurance of obedience. We set our hearts. We put them in a place of rest. We can be in the very presence of Almighty God and be at rest. Sin has no hold on us. I His presence there is only righteousness. Our sin is gone and Jesus’ righteousness takes its place. No shaming secrets will be exposed.

          We can rest because He laid down His life for us. We can love our brothers and sisters in Christ without fear. We can be generous and meet people’s needs. Our words can match our actions.

Sheep Without a Shepherd

Mark 6:32-34

      Sheep need to be led. They need a shepherd to protect them, guide them, lead them to food and water, and find them shelter. They are not resourceful. Left to their own devices they will starve to death. They need a shepherd.

      Despite our ultra-independence here in the West, we need each other and we need leaders. I know the popular politically correct beliefs teach that all beliefs are of equal value, but this is just dumb. How can opposite and exclusive beliefs both be true? You can’t believe the glass is full and empty at the same time. One of those beliefs is incorrect. We need an outside arbiter of Truth.

      There was something about Jesus that caused people to run to hear Him. This, in and of itself doesn’t make what He said true (the size of the following does not prove the truth of what is being taught), but Jesus tries to get away from the rush of the crowds and the rush follows him anyway. He takes a boat; they run on foot.

      When was the last time you rushed to hear someone speak? Maybe you sat overnight in a line outside the ticket booth to be sure you got the ticket. Or you clicked at one minute past midnight. Or stood outside the entrance to the store on Black Friday. Or were one of the first ten callers.

      Notice that Jesus doesn’t tell all the people who ran ahead to go home. He doesn’t turn His back those who are honestly seeking Him. Although His plan was to pull aside with His disciples and have some quiet and recuperation, He responds with compassion for the crowd that has gathered.

      We don’t know what Jesus taught that day. But from His actions, the multiplication of food to feed the crowd, I would be willing to bet the lesson was about spiritual hunger and the only way for that hunger to be truly satisfied. We don’t know if any were healed of physical illnesses that day, but it would not surprise me, since Jesus often spent time healing and casting out demons.

      But Jesus also taught a lesson to the disciples that day, perhaps the more important of the two lessons. They too were sheep without a shepherd, unless they stayed close to Jesus. Jesus’ has many things to teach each of us. The deeper the teaching, the more we need to pull aside, slow down, and find a place of rest in Him.

Shade on a Hot Day

Mark 4:32

      I have moved to God’s Waiting Room, Florida. The weather has been beautiful. Sunny, in the 70’s, slight breeze, perfect for sitting outside. I am told that this will not last into June, July and August. I believe what I am being told. But it is amazing how much cooler it is in the shade. If there is shade and a breeze, I think I can get used to it.

      In our day of mega-churches, size can be important. Many very large churches started with only a handful of members and grew explosively to large congregations. Unfortunately, much of the growth came from sheep stealing, the practice of the luring believers from other congregations to the fancy building and multiple programs, especially the gymnasium and kids’ programs. The growth was artificial with a few conversions.

      I love to watch swallows fly in a group. There will be hundreds of them swooping and swirling in a synchronized movement. They land in the tress and cover them, seemingly occupying every free space. Then for no apparent reason, they take off and swoop again. They appear as if they are one organism when they move. I came to appreciate their beauty when traveling in Italy. In the early evening they would be swooping across the dusky sky over the treetops and city roofs. It took my breath away in its beauty.

      Our lowly mustard seed has become a very large plant, a surprising thing for such a small seed. Looking at the seed you can never imagine that birds could rest in any branches that could grow from such a small seed. And yet they do.

      God takes something as small as words, simple words, and puts His power behind and in them and they change our lives in dramatic unexpected ways. He places His power in small words. The growth of this mustard seed is so explosive, so rapid, so unexpectedly out of proportion to the size of the seed that the growth has to be from God. This is like our spiritual life. When someone yields to the direction of the Holy Spirit, over time they grow to such a large extent that others can find rest in the shelter of the Gospel in them. It is the Gospel that provides the shade.

      The Gospel provides shade for anyone who will perch in its branches. It started in a seemingly insignificant manner, in a way very unexpected to the people of Jesus day. It happened contrary to their hopes and dreams. It grew rapidly, almost out of control. It provided a place for every language and nation and people and tribe to come and find rest. It had been primarily focused on the Jews, but that was not the intent. The Jews never became the beacon of hope that the LORD had intended. There was always space for Gentiles in the LORD’s plan, but access was often restricted by the Jews.

      Are we providing shelter for this range of people? Is your church active in opening its arms to those who are different than you? Is there an emphasis, and actions to follow, that demonstrate the far-reaching love of Jesus around the world today? Or do you tend to focus on those who happen to walk through the doors?

      The branches of the Gospel should be open to everyone.

Scattering Seed

Mark 4:26-29

      All growth must start somewhere. Human life begins when egg and sperm come together. Most plants start with some type of seed. But no matter which starting point you use, you can always back it up in time. You could say that the seed starts when pollen from the pistol reaches the stamen. Or you could say it is when the plant produces the flower, or the second set of leaves grows after the cotyledon (the first set of leave) has broken out of the seed. Or when the plant produces the seed, or when the plant buds in the spring preparing to produce flowers.

      Our description for this difficulty in naming the beginning of the process is call the cycle of life. Every step is an integral part of the process. You can’t skip a step and complete the cycle. You can’t rearrange the order. It can’t be done backward or out of sequence. God designed it to move in one direction in a particular order.

      We have an individual who starts the process by scattering grain seed in the field. That is the part that they do. They are responsible to begin this process. Without this step none of the others will happen. But they must do it. No one else will.

      But after they have scattered the seed the process is the work of someone else. Some people want to name this entity responsible “Nature” to keep from admitting that the LORD is at work, but changing the name doesn’t help the matter. They want to say that this non-personal, non-entity, non-rational thing guides and directs. But by their very definition of Nature it can’t do any of the things they need it to do. Seed needs someone with intelligence behind it to create the mechanism that causes growth to happen. No accumulation of accidents can create intelligence. And even if it could, this statistically impossible event would have had to happen innumerable times to complete even the simplest life.

      Think of it like this. If I could throw a basketball a mile and happened to get it through the hoop scoring a point, I would have to be able to drive a hole in one from the opposite side of the earth, and shoot a rifle from Mars and hit a quarter, and thread a needle by dropping a thread from the top of the World Trade Center building. Life involves so many complicated, statistically impossible events that random chance can’t accomplish the task.

      The person scattering the seed certainly doesn’t know or isn’t aware of the power behind the various developmental moments of a plant’s growth. And they really don’t care about the particulars. His job was to scatter the seed.

      What are you supposed to be doing? What parts of life are you not supposed to be concerned about? Where do your responsibilities end and someone else’s begin? Rest happens when you know the line and stay behind it.

Relax and Enjoy

Mark 2:23-28

      That concept of having a Sabbath rest is something the LORD started. Work and rest are important. Most of us have forgotten how to rest, or perhaps never learned the joy of resting. We are a pretty driven people. Even when we “rest” we are usually doing something. But as I read the original establishment of the Sabbath Day as part of the LORD’s covenant with Israel, one thing jumped out at me. When we take a day of rest, others also enjoy the benefit. The text in Exodus speaks about the household help and the working animals getting the benefit of our taking a day of rest. I had never thought about the benefit others receive when I rest.

      The example of rest is of course the LORD. He worked for six days and then rested the seventh. This pattern of work and rest is given to Israel for their benefit, and a way to remember how important rest is. It is a way of demonstrating faith in the LORD to provide. We don’t work during that seventh day, and the seventh year as a demonstration of the LORD’s faithfulness and our dependency.

      But we can get the application of this idea of rest all messed up, so that it loses its true meaning. The religious climate of Jesus’ day made keeping the Sabbath anything but restful. You had to ‘do’ all sorts of things on the Sabbath in order to not be working. There were multiple steps and complicated rules that must be followed in order to be a good Jew.

      Jesus is walking through a grain field. We don’t know where he was coming from or what His ultimate destination was. All we know is that Mark includes this section of teaching as part of this series of teaching and miracle to prove the teaching. Here Mark shows Jesus refocusing the Sabbath observations. The Sabbath is to benefit us, not the other way around.

      Jesus’ disciples were hungry and picked some grain to eat. This was a common custom, an accepted practice. They weren’t doing anything wrong. But the rules became what was important, not the observation of the LORD’s Sabbath, a demonstration of trust in Him.