Obedience

After all, you have not yet given your lives in your struggle against sin. - Hebrews 12:4

Recently while getting ready for work I was captured by lyrics to a song I'd never heard before: 

How in the garden He persisted

I may never fully know

The fearful weight of true obedience

It was held by him alone

    ("Your Will Be Done" by CityAlight) 

I couldn't stop thinking about the truth of this fact: I'll never know the full weight of true obedience. As I sat down for my quiet time that day, Hebrews 12 immediately came to mind. I read the context and remembered afresh the truth the author is communicating: Jesus is better than what has come before. As part of that, we are called to live out our relationship with Him in specific ways - ways that can feel hard. This section (Hebrews 12:4-13) is primarily about discipline and obedience in the life of the believer. It is instructive that before getting into those exhortations that the author tells us we have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed.

What does that even mean? In the context of verses 1-3 exhorting us to keep our eyes on Jesus and the cross He endured, the author clearly is calling us to focus on HIS sacrifice for sin. We haven't given our lives to fight against sin - but HE did. This of course refers to the cross, but also brings to mind His suffering temptations. Many wiser than me have pointed out that Christ's deity and perfection doesn't mean His temptations were weaker than ours - they were stronger. He endured every temptation to the fullest extent possible, because the temptations do not get easier as we resist, they get harder.

As I reflected on all of this, I thought of the contrasts between my obedience and His. My best obedience is imperfect and mixed with impure motives; He was perfectly obedient with perfect motives. All of my obedience is carried out in God's presence; His ultimate obedience on the cross was carried out with the Father's face turned away. All of my obedience is covered with grace; His was covered in wrath. And as Hebrews 12:4 says, all my striving against sin doesn't reach the point of bloodshed - but His did.

This life of faith is not an easy one. Don't get me wrong, there are blessings and joys and happiness and incredible benefits of intimacy with God and others that come as we walk in faith. But if we are truly committed to growing and maturing as believers, we will find ourselves constantly challenged at various points to go deeper in our faith. Sometimes that might mean we face a crisis and have to decide how to deal with it. Other times it might mean a challenging ongoing relationship. At times God reveals something in us that is not in alignment with the image of God in which He created us, and challenges us to see things differently and live accordingly. All of these are hard things.

One of my favorite scriptures is Deuteronomy 29:29, "The secret things belong to the Lord our God,but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law." My faith is inextricably connected to the fact that God has revealed things that we can seek and know, that He does not hide Himself from us but that He makes Himself known to us, often to the degree that we seek Him (though being God, he does love to surprise us when we are not even seeking Him!)

This video captures some of what I've learned about leaning into the hard things of faith and obedience. We face a challenge or an obstacle and we have to choose whether to keep going or not. We have to choose whether to model our walk on someone ahead of us or pick out our own steps and only focus on what's immediately in front of us. We have to decide if it's worth the continued climb... If HE is worth the continued climb. We have to decide whether to keep going or give up. Ultimately, we have to decide how much we can know and how much we have to just trust into His hands, trusting his character in the "secret things." I can guarantee that there'll be surprises along the way, we will slip and sometimes fall, sometimes we will become strong enough to catch ourselves before we fall and sometimes we won't. The important thing is that we are continuing to walk it out with him, getting to the place where we can look at where we've come from and know that only He brought us from there, and that He is worth it all.

I don't get it right all the time - but I am increasingly learning what it means to walk in the Gospel and prioritize relationship with Him, to love Him and others well. This imperfect believer is falling more in love with Jesus every day. As a result, I'm learning to lean in to the hard beauty of obedience - and when I do, I find myself enjoying unexpectedly beautiful views.

Habakkuk 3:17-19

Though the fig tree does not bud

and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails

and the fields produce no food,

though there are no sheep in the pen

and no cattle in the stalls,

18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength;

he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,

he enables me to tread on the heights.

Lessons from Caregiving, #11: Enough. Already.

The call that changed everything came on April 7, 2016. My younger brother, my only sibling, had just died suddenly in the home he shared with our parents, due to heart failure. I entered a grief process, unaware of just how much was changing or how long that grief would last.

Soon, I would realize that part of my parents died that day too. I would see them decline rapidly, ultimately moving to live just down the road from us.

Soon, I would begin to see symptoms that would ultimately result in my husband's dementia diagnosis.

Soon, I would feel the gut-punch of realization that I am measurably close to being without any family of origin, or any close extended biological family.

Soon, the childlessness I didn't choose but worked through would again become a fresh wound as I faced the hard realities ahead.

The grief over all of this would become a constant companion. I've gone from being an even-keeled person with few ups and downs to living at some level of sadness all. the. time.

In the past 2 1/2 years, I've learned the language of grief - I can talk about ambiguous grief and anticipatory grief and sibling grief and stages of grief.

None of that knowledge prepares me for the physical pain that I still sometimes get in my stomach.

None of that knowledge holds me when I cry myself to sleep or wake up in tears.

None of that knowledge fixes it. 

There are days - lots of them - when I want to scream, "Enough already!" When I'm grieving at this level and for this length of time, why do I also have to have bad days in other areas? Why does my cell phone have to die and I wait for another replacement, feeling more isolated than ever in the meantime? Why does the paperwork for getting assistance for my husband and my parents have to take so long? Why can't the world stop while I deal with all of THIS?

On the good days, I seek God's face and try to learn what He wants me to learn. I keep a list of things that I sense He's teaching me and try to focus on some of those - presence, actions that touch the soul, hope.

On the bad days, I feel so over being in a wrecking season and just scream, "Enough already!"

It was on one of those awful days that He whispered back to me, "I Am."

I knew immediately, in the way that only the Holy Spirit can reveal, that He wasn't just reminding me of His holy name. He was saying to me, "I am enough. In this moment, on this day, with no circumstance changing - I am ALREADY enough."

From that day, I have in my mind the simple challenge when I scream, "Enough Already!" -- that is to remind myself that He is "Enough. Already." Not by fixing everything - but by His presence. Not down the road in some hazy, unknown future - but today, now, in this moment.

Thank You Jesus.

Matthew 3: God's gracious dealings

(Mat 3:1-17 NASB) - (1) Now in those days John the Baptist came,preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, (2) "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (3) For this is the one referred toby Isaiah the prophet when he said, "THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, 'MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT!'" (4) Now John himself had a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. (5) Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan; (6) and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins. (7) But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? (8) "Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; (9) and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our father'; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. (10) "The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (11) "As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. (12) "His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." (13) Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John, to be baptized by him. (14) But John tried to prevent Him, saying, "I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?" (15) But Jesus answering said to him, "Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he permitted Him. (16) After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, (17) and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased."

(Matthew 3 NASB)

The Hebrew for John means "God has dealt graciously."


As I study Matthew 3, I see how significant this name is for the forerunner of the Messiah. Coming as the first prophet to speak after 400 years of silence, John's message of repentance, the nearness of the kingdom of God, and a judgment to come might sound a lot like "tough love". Yet his very name was a reminder to his primarily Jewish audience that God has, indeed, dealt graciously.

For the Jewish people, it was also intended as a reminder that God's gracious dealings in the past were the best way to know His character - a heart of mercy. Everything that He commanded was for them. So the call through John to "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" was a call for a heart change that embraced a way of living that resulted in a change of mind, heart, and life. It was for their benefit, because God as their Maker knew what was best and what would only bring harm. He wanted shalom - peace and wholeness - for them, because His kingdom had come near them. Just as the priests purified themselves to enter the holy of holies, so His people needed God to purify them for the coming kingdom.

God also reminded them of His graciousness in not meeting their kingdom expectations. For Matthew, "Kingdom of heaven" is used to refer to the rule of God that transcends political nations. As A.T. Robertson notes, "it points fundamentally to God's rule, not to the realm over which He rules." Although this would prove to be one of the hardest teachings for them to swallow - even His closest apostles wouldn't get it until the Holy Spirit came upon them in Acts - it really was gracious. "It is too small a thing", God told the Messiah in Isaiah 49:6, "that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light of the nations so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth." Jesus didn't come to save Israel from Rome; He came to save all of us from the clutches of the enemy of our souls!

So how does one whose very name means "God has dealt graciously" approach ministry when he was bringing this "tough love" message to people with a quite different conception of the kingdom of heaven than God's? By preaching a message that I have summarized with the title "It's time for Authentic Faith." I always take notes in sermons, and so the "bullet points" I noted from John's message in Matthew 3 are:

• God's kingdom has come near - prepare for the Lord by repenting. 
• Live consistently with the repentance you claim- this is fruitfulness. 
• Reject the tendency to lean on a spiritual heritage instead of a personal faith. 
• God is looking for fruitful faith. 
• Baptism for repentance comes first, then baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire. 
• Jesus brings this baptism along with judgment. He will separate the real (wheat) from the fake (chaff). 

Many responded to this message - and like most in ministry, John had his detractors as well. But none of that mattered the day He showed up. The day Jesus came to John to be baptized. With all his understanding of Scripture and anointing by God for the ministry as a forerunner, John still didn't get why Jesus needed to be baptized. Face to face with the very One whose graciousness lended John his name, John became the first to try to stop Jesus from doing something that He simply had to do.

The words "tried to stop" literally mean "would have hindered" - involving strong protests on John's part. Later on Peter would try to stop Jesus from talking about the cross (Mark 8:27-33). The incarnation wasn't just about Jesus' birth - it was about Him entering into our lives, our world - about Him identifying with the people He came to save and following that identification all the way to the cross. From a human perspective, Jesus' actions were radical, maybe a bit eccentric, but ultimately honorable. To this day "holy" men and women in various religious traditions make sacrifices and some even die. But for the Messiah - God in the flesh, Jesus Himself - to not only step into our world but identify with sinners through a baptism of repentance -- that was almost incomprehensible. John rightly realized that the tables should be turned. Like Isaiah in the holy of holies (Isaiah 6), John's encounter with God left him humbled.

The shocking incomprehension of the incarnation - that God would bring Himself to our level and identify with His creation in very tangible ways - is also its beauty. Because when God took on flesh and came to walk with sinners and yet retain perfect holiness, He brought to earth the graciousness and mercy that were in God's heart all along. The Fall so corrupted man that even our view of God is skewed. Jesus came to set that right - all the way to the cross. As Adrian Rodgers has so aptly said, "The cross didn't change God's heart; it revealed it."

A.W. Tozer said that God is both "transcendentally personal" and "personally transcendent" - meaning that He is always separate from His creation, holy and uncorrupt, and yet unswervingly personal to each of His children. In the incarnation, transcendental met personal.

When we embrace that truth, we come face to face with who Jesus is. We see His holiness that certainly did not need to be baptized. And we see His heart of grace and mercy. We know that John's name reflected a deep truth - "God has dealt graciously."

Whatever you are facing today is subject to the character of this holy and gracious God. Like Job, we can bow in worship. Like David, we can pour out our hearts to Him in all the rawness of our emotions. And like John, we can know that He has dealt graciously with us, too.