Micah 6:8 "Do Justice"

Micah 6:8

He has told you, O man, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?

 

If we are going to be God’s people –if we are going to be the kind of people that God desires us to be, it all boils down to three things.  Regardless of personal theological bent, whether Reformed, Charismatic pr anything in between, this is God’s bottom line –this is what God says is truly important –this is the way God says we can please Him.  It all comes down to these three things: Our outward conduct (do justice), Our inner character (love mercy), and our personal devotion to the Lord (walk humbly with God).

Over the next few posts, I will give a few thoughts on what I believe this means, taking it a thought at a time.  Today, we look at doing justice.

 
The first requirement that God has for us is to do justice.  As Believers, we are be the standard bearers for society.  It is not enough for us to avoid doing injustice.  I think that for the main part, the Church, the Body of Christ, has been marginalized in our society –we have been pushed to sidelines and no longer have any significant impact on our culture because we have bought into the lie that religion ought to be a private personal thing.

We have agreed with our culture that we are entitled to our own religious opinions so long as we don’t let those opinions out of the closet.  We can believe whatever we want to believe as long as we do not use our religious convictions to change society.  We have accepted the mandate of our culture to not force our beliefs on others. 

So, we have come to a place where we try not to do injustice ourselves, but we do very little to change the injustice we see all around us.  But that is not what God requires.  God does not simply require that we avoid injustice on a personal level and look the other way when we see it in society.  God calls us to be actively involved in doing justice and working to change our society.  Our country is, at least in part, in this awful state of moral decay because we as Christians have defaulted on our moral obligation to do justice.  We have chosen to hide rather than to confront.   

When it comes to politics we have chosen to vote based on economics and secular politics, rather than spiritual principles.  We have left the political arena open to the ungodly, and then we sit and wonder why these godless people have failed to provide us with a godly nation.  

I hope that we truly understand that as Christians, as God’s people, we are to be actively involved in our culture, working for justice.  But it’s possible that we don’t exactly understand what justice is.  True to his nature as the Father of lies and perversion, Satan is always working to pervert truth.  So, there are those who are political activists working for some perverted standard of justice that has nothing to do at all with what God is talking about.  There are those working to keep abortion legal in the name of justice.  There are those who value animal rights above human rights and animal life above human life in the name of justice.  There are those who defend human cloning and partial birth abortion and stem cell research and all kinds of horrific things in the name of justice.  So, I do want us to be clear on what our Biblical mandate is about.

In Zechariah 7:9-10 we are told, "This is what the LORD Almighty says: `Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.  Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.'”

In Psalm 82:3,4 it tells us, “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.  Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

This, then, is God’s bottom line.  His people are to be actively involved in defending the weak, the poor and the innocent.  It must be our concern as both Christians and as citizens of this country and as participants in society to see that true justice is dispensed.  Where we see injustice, we must work to correct it.  And it is only through God’s truth that justice can ultimately be accomplished.  So if we do not want society to quit dispensing justice, we must not allow them to easily dispense with truth.  We have a divine mandate to make our voices heard and make God’s love known through the way we live.  This is what God requires:  do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. 
 

 

Luke 19:41 "And Jesus Wept"

When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, it caused quite a stir- in fact, it broke into an impromptu parade, with people lining the streets cheering. Some laid their cloaks and garments on the ground in front of Jesus –some waved palm branches –most sang and shouted and cheered. Jerusalem was welcoming Jesus as their long awaited Messiah –the Deliverer promised to them by God. Jerusalem was ready to make Jesus their King.

If the disciples had been reluctant and a little fearful about coming to Jerusalem, that all changed. Now, it was clear that the time was right. Now was the time for the Messiah to reveal Himself, and raise an army and liberate Israel from Rome’s iron fist. Now, Jesus was finally coming into His own –and, of course, when Jesus assumed power, His 12 faithful companions would, naturally, be recognized and honored and given positions of authority in the new kingdom. I can imagine what these 12 guys were thinking. Remember who they were and where they came from? They were an unlikely lot of commercial fishermen and tax-collectors and other unnotable people. These were not the kind of people that normally had any possibility of entering the ranks of nobility –but Jesus had hand selected them, and personally trained them for three years –and now, the time had arrived, and people were cheering, and it seemed like it was really going to happen.

But with all of the cheering and carrying on, and all of the excitement, and each disciple lost in his own thoughts and daydreams, almost nobody noticed what Jesus was doing –in Luke 19:41, we read, “As they came closer to Jerusalem and Jesus saw the city ahead, he began to cry.”

The exact word used here for cry is the same word used to describe Mary, Martha’s sister at the tomb of their brother Lazarus –and it’s the same word used later to describe Peter when he realized that he had betrayed and denied Jesus –and it’s the same word used later yet to describe Mary the Magdalene at the Tomb of Jesus. We’re not talking about a little tear trickling down Jesus’ cheek. What the Bible says is that when Jesus saw the city of Jerusalem ahead –while everybody was cheering and hailing Him as King, Jesus was wracked with grief and sobbed uncontrollably. And the Bible goes on to explain that Jesus was grieving, not for Himself –not because of the torment and pain He was about to suffer –but for Jerusalem –for the people –for these very people that were hailing Him as King –He knew that before the week was through they would shouting –“Crucify” instead of “Hosanna.” And He knew what was going to happen, spiritually to these people as a result of crucifying their Messiah –and He knew what was in store for the Jewish people in the years ahead. He wept for these people because they didn’t get it. They didn’t understand. The problem was that even though people longed for a Messiah, even though they accepted Jesus as the Messiah and praised God and worshiped and sang and danced and shouted and cheered, they actually had no idea, no clue about what God’s plan for the Messiah was. They were so focused on their own wishes and desires and hopes and dreams and agendas, that God’s agenda was ignored.

I wonder if maybe we are guilty of the same basic sin that they were. How often do we get caught up in the emotion of worship on Sunday, and then get anxious or depressed or angry or filled with fears and doubts if God doesn’t behave like we want, or if He doesn’t answer our prayers in the way we want during the week? How often do we come to church on Sunday and sing the songs and pray the prayers and worship God, and then during the week go about trying to make our own agendas and plans succeed? You know what –I don’t actually wonder if we are guilty of this at all, I know that we are. We all are.

And that is part of why what Jesus did later in the week as He and the disciples were eating their Passover meal so important. Because we are so prone to try and make God fit into our little box, and try to make the Kingdom fit into our agendas –because we are so quick to forget what is truly important, Jesus, during that final meal on the night He was betrayed –just before He was arrested and falsely accused, and unfairly sentenced, and brutally tortured and executed, Jesus took a piece of bread and held it up for His disciples to see and He broke it and gave some to each one of the disciples and said to them, “Take this and eat it –this is my body given for you –as you eat it, remember me.” And later in the same meal, Jesus took a cup of wine and held it up for the disciples to see –the He passed to each of them and told them to drink, and He told them, “This cup is a new covenant in my blood which is poured out for the forgiveness of many.”

And before the next day, what Jesus said happened. He was arrested. His body was tortured and torn –for us. His blood was shed establishing a new covenant, a new agreement between God and man. The agreement is this –If we confess our sins, and don’t try to cover them up or hide them, and we admit that our sins have separated us from God and caused us to turn away from God –and if we accept the tortured body and shed blood of Jesus as the punishment that we deserve, God will forgive our sins. This isn’t the agreement that we came up with trying somehow to appease God –this was God’s agreement with us.

This is why the Bible teaches that we “can't be saved by believing in anyone else. God has given us no other name under heaven that will save us." (Acts 4:12) This is why Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father accept through me.” (John 14:6) This is why the Bible asks, “How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?” (Hebrews 2:3) This is why the Scriptures tell us, “The one who turns away from this teaching does not turn away from man, but from God.” (1Thess. 4:8)

This is God’s new agreement with us –our sins are forgiven through the shed blood of Jesus. That’s what this week is all about –beginning on Palm Sunday –and continuing through the week with Christ’s arrest, the mockery of a trial, and His brutal execution -then ending up on Easter Sunday morning as we celebrate His resurrection from the dead as He proved that our sins are, indeed, forgiven.

Psalm 19:8, Ephesians 1:18, Romans 1:28 "Rebellion, Blindness, and Foolishness"

Psalm 19:8
The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.

 Ephesians 1:18
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.

Romans 1:28  
Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking.


Demanding autonomy from God –demanding to live our own lives without the benefit of His wisdom and goodness and blessing is foolish. Yet we do this very thing all the time. Even those of us who have trusted Jesus for forgiveness of sin still often have little areas, little compartments of our lives that we have closed off from God. We have little areas that we have refused to surrender. It is our sinful human nature to want to hide things from God –to want to retain power and control.

The problem is that to whatever degree we deny the authority and sovereignty and wisdom and goodness of God –we are in rebellion against Him. Rebellion against God is not a matter of any specific sin –it is a heart attitude. It is the opposite of loyalty –it is the opposite of surrender, it is the opposite of brokenness before God. Rebellion is the little voice inside of us that says, “Why can’t I do it my way? What about what I want? I just want to live how it seems right to me. I trust only myself.”

Choosing to live by any other agenda other God’s Kingdom is rebellion. Rebellion against God –living as if God has no say, is a dangerous and hurtful way to live. Bad things happen.

Whether we make a conscious choice to reject God’s Kingdom, or the more passive choice to ignore God’s Kingdom, the end result is the same. Rebellion leads to spiritual blindness and ultimately to spiritual death.

Rebellion leads to spiritual blindness. The problem with blindness is that if we are blind we can’t see. The problem with spiritual blindness is that we can’t see truth –we can’t see reality. And if we insist on living by our own agenda instead of God’s agenda, but we can’t actually see reality –we are always going to be in worse condition than we realize. We don’t realize how bad off we are because our perceptions are clouded by spiritual blindness –we don’t realize the danger we are in.

One night a long time ago when my children were very young, Luke must have been about 5 or 6 and Lee was a year or two old, I was suffering from allergies. We had just gone to bed, but my eyes began itching so badly I couldn’t stand it. So I asked Sarah where the eye drops were. She told me that she thought they were in the living room on top of the computer monitor. So I got up out of bed and groped my way to the living room–all of the lights in the house were out, and it was very dark. But I found my way to the living room, and located the computer monitor, and found the little plastic bottle sitting on top –all in the dark. And I tipped my head back and let a drop fall into my itchy eye. And I quickly realized that what I had was not a bottle of eye drops. As it turned out, what I had actually picked up in the dark was a little plastic bottle of tape recorder head cleaning fluid –mostly alcohol. And it did not sooth my eye –it burned my eye more than I can even describe. It was horrible. My eye felt like it was on fire. And I yelped, and I started jumping around in the dark yelling. And while I was jumping around, I managed to bang my shin into a chair, which caused me stumble, which wrenched my back. All the commotion got Sarah out of bed to see what the problem was. And as I remember it, when she turned on the light and saw what had happened, she thought it was kind of funny.  I, of course, did not.

Basically, I had burning eyes, a wounded shin, a wrenched back and a bruised ego –all because I was trying to operate blindly. This is a perfect metaphor for a spiritual reality.  Just as my physical blindness caused all sorts of problems for me –problems that I had not anticipated, spiritual blindness also causes repercussions and consequences all throughout life that we don't anticipate.  The only way to see reality is to see life from a Kingdom perspective. We only gain a Kingdom perspective as we live in surrender and submission to Jesus, our King.

Luke 4:40(ff) To Be Continued

If you've ever watched television, you've probably noticed that TV dramas follow a formula.  Almost every drama -whether a crime drama, a medical drama, a family in crisis drama -they all follow this same formula  Here’s the formula:  There is a nice person that you like.  There is a villain or a bad person that you dislike.  And there is the hero or the star that you like a whole lot.  The villain causes problems for the nice person you like.  And the problems being caused seem to be insurmountable.  There is a particularly terrible crisis that occurs about 5 minutes before the show gets over.  That’s when the star or the hero that you like a whole lot comes to the rescue and the crisis is taken care of and everyone is happy.  Every once in a while, the crisis just seems to keep getting more and more serious and it gets to within the five minute final warning and the hero has somehow been detained and disaster seems imminent.  So, what happens then?  Well, then three words pop up on the screen.  They say, “To be continued…”  Although it seems that everything is going badly and that’s where the show gets left for a whole week, we all know that in the next show everything is somehow going to turn out all right, and the hero wins after all.  That’s how the formula for a television drama works.  But, of course, that’s just on television.  Real life isn’t like that, is it? 

I want to tell you the story of Jairus.  This story is found in Luke chapter four, in the middle of the chapter, beginning at verse 40.  If you don’t mind, I’ll tell the story in my own words.

Jairus had a problem. He had a dilemma. Jairus was an official at the synagogue. As such, he had talked often with other Elders and leaders about Jesus. Jesus was a troublemaker. That was their official position. Jesus was a troublemaker who had the annoying habit of interpreting Scriptures is such a way that, on the one hand made sense, but on the other hand contradicted all of the long standing interpretations. The common people seemed to like Jesus. They considered Him to be a Rabbi, a teacher. And more than once Jairus, himself had seen Jesus do miracles and had listened, mesmerized by Jesus’ teaching. That Jesus healed people was undoubtable. Everywhere Jesus went, he healed people. But what did the healings mean? That was the question. Was Jesus a Savior, or was He possessed by an evil spirit? Jairus was caught in a bind. He liked Jesus; he was impressed with Jesus. Although Jesus interpretations of Scripture were unorthodox, they made Jairus think. In fact, Jairus thought that just maybe Jesus was a Savior. But as an official at the synagogue, Jairus could not tell anyone what he was thinking. So when others said that Jesus was a troublemaker, Jairus remained quiet. 

But then Jairus’ daughter got sick. She was very sick. The doctors that examined her did not offer much hope. They didn’t know how to cure her. They said she would die. Jairus loved his daughter, and would do almost anything to save her. But the only thing he could think of was to go to Jesus the troublemaker and beg Jesus to come and heal his daughter. He had seen Jesus heal others; he knew that Jesus could heal his daughter. The dilemma was, you see, that if he went to Jesus, he would certainly lose his credibility in the synagogue and maybe lose his job as well. 

But it didn’t take Jairus long to decide. He went to Jesus. He fell at Jesus’ feet weeping. He begged Jesus to come to his house and heal his daughter. People stopped and stared. People whispered. Weeping at Jesus’ feet was not where the townspeople expected to see an important person like Jairus. But Jairus didn’t care about that, as long as Jesus healed his daughter. And Jesus looked down at the man weeping on the ground before Him, and had compassion, and said, “take me to your daughter.” And Jairus got up and began leading the way. 

As Jesus followed, the crowd came along, pushing and shoving. It was slowing Jesus down. Jairus was getting nervous. His daughter was very sick and might not make it if Jesus didn’t hurry. But Jesus didn’t hurry. In fact, Jesus turned around in the crowd and asked, “who touched me?” Even Jesus’ disciples thought the question was absurd. They told him, “Look around, Jesus, nearly everyone in the crowd has touched you.” But Jesus insisted that someone specific had touched him, and he wasn’t moving until he found out. 

Can you see that if this was a television drama, we have just entered into the crisis leading up to end of the show? Would Jesus make it to Jairus’ house in time to save his daughter or not? Would this delay be fatal? 

Then a lady came forward though the crowd and admitted that she had touched Jesus and been healed of a hemorrhage that had been bleeding for years. Jesus told her that her faith had healed her, and Jesus began once again to follow Jairus toward his home. The crisis was averted. All was going to end well. But just when we are ready to begin rolling the credits, a messenger appears. The messenger is a servant from Jairus’ home. “You’re daughter is dead,” he says. “You’re too late.” 

If we stopped the story right here, it’s a sad story –things didn’t exactly work out as hoped. If we stop the story right here, we are left with a whole lot of pain and misery and frustration. And it could be that this is where you are in your life. If you stopped right now, it would be a disaster. From where you sit right now, things don’t look so great. From where you sit, help doesn’t appear to be on the way. In fact, maybe you’ve already gone to Jesus, like Jairus did, and you’ve asked for divine intervention, and things have only gotten worse, not better. It’s painful and it’s frustrating, and we are beginning to feel all kinds of doubts and regrets and bad thoughts that we don’t even want to acknowledge because our thoughts frighten us. That’s where some of us are right now. But I want to assure you that if you love Jesus, the story is not over. Maybe things look bad. Maybe they look desperate. Maybe they look impossible. But our God is a God who specializes in the impossible. And God says that the story isn’t over. The tag at the end of the show doesn’t say, “the end,” it says, “to be continued.” 

So, let’s continue. Jairus was, of course, crushed. His shoulders sagged, his head bowed, tears welled up in his eyes. Jesus came along side of him and said quietly in his ear, so quietly the crowd didn’t hear, “don’t worry, don’t be afraid, everything is going to be alright. Just take me to see your daughter.” Jesus followed Jairus to his home where his now dead daughter was lying. Mourners were already gathering. People were weeping and crying. It was a sad, sad scene. As Jesus made his way through the crowd of mourners, he said to the family of Jairus, “no need to cry –she isn’t really dead –she’s just sleeping.” Some people in the crowd began to mock Jesus. They thought He was a fool. They thought He was a moron. Of course the girl was dead. Everyone knew she was dead. Did this guy think he was going to comfort grieving parents by simply saying, “let’s just pretend she’s asleep?” What did this guy think? Did he think he was going to awaken her? Did he think he could raise her from the dead? 

Well, as it turns out, that’s exactly what Jesus thought. He went to her bedside and took her by the hand and called out, “Get up, child –rise up and live.” And you know what happened –the child got up. 

God, you see, knows more than we do.  Even in bad circumstances, God is at work redeeming the bad and causing good to come of it.  And even when for a time, we can’t see the good, if we understand that God is, indeed, good, and that He loves us, and that He is still in the process of working for the good, we can trust God.  We only see things from our little perspective –and sometimes we misunderstand, and sometimes we don’t even have all of the right information.

There is a lot that I don’t understand –there’s a lot that I don’t know. But here is what I know for sure. Our God is the great and mighty God. He is a good God, a compassionate God. He is a God who specializes in the impossible.

And I don’t know about you, but that’s important to me. When I’m up against the wall –when things look grim –when things look hopeless and impossible –I’m glad that I’m a child of the God of the impossible. And I’m glad that He loves me enough that He will always be working for my good. And I’m glad that even when I don’t see the bigger picture and I don’t understand, God does.. And I’m glad that I can trust that even when things look the bleakest, God doesn’t say, “the end.” Instead, He says, “to be continued…”

Ezekiel 36:25, John10:10 "So, Now I Have A New Heart"

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  Ezekiel 36:25

“The thief has come only to rob, kill, and destroy, but I have come so that you can have life, and have it abundantly.”   John 10:10

John 10:10 explains that we have an enemy, but it creates a real dilemma for most of us. There’s no question that Satan does the job when it comes to robbing, killing and destroying –but what about the other part of that verse. Jesus said that He came so that we could have abundant life, the fullest lives possible, lives lived to maximum potential. Can you see the dilemma? Many of us believe in Jesus and have trusted Him for forgiveness and salvation. But this verse implies a lot more than just forgiveness –it says that we can have lives lived to the fullest. And, frankly, that’s not the experience most of us have.

If Jesus had said, “I came to make lives better,” I would feel like my experience bears out what Jesus says. If Jesus had said, “I came to forgive sin and make life more meaningful,” I would be saying “that’s exactly my experience.” I know that my sins are forgiven, and my life is more meaningful now than it ever was before –and there is no doubt that my life is better than it used to be. Yet, despite all of that, my life is nowhere near maximum potential. There is obviously something else still going on. And to understand what is really going on, we have to go back to the fact that we are constantly under spiritual attack. We have an enemy.

You might wonder why Satan hates us so much –why does he even care? What difference do we make to him? The answer is found way back in the book of Genesis. In Genesis 1:27 we’re told, “God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them.” Satan would love to destroy God’s glory –in fact, to destroy God -but that isn’t possible, so he has made it his mission to destroy those created in God’s image. What difference do we make to Satan? None. The only reason he cares about us is because God cares about us. Satan is seeking to hurt us in an attempt to hurt God.

So, whether we like it or not –and I don’t, but my not liking it doesn’t change the reality –whether we like it or not, and whether we even acknowledge it or not, there is an epic spiritual battle raging around us, and we are caught in the middle of it. In fact, we are the prize that is being fought for –this epic battle between the angels of God and fallen angels –the demons that follow Satan, is being fought over our hearts. The heart is central to everything. That’s because of why were created. We were created to love. I think that somewhere down inside we all understand this –love is the whole point. Without love, life is meaningless.

But, you see, loving requires a heart that is fully alive and free. And this is where we have problems. Our enemy knows how important our hearts are –and that’s why he is so intent on destroying them –that’s why he is intent on breaking our hearts –on twisting our hearts –on deadening our hearts. If he can disable and deaden our hearts, he has effectively foiled God’s plan for us –God’s plan that our hearts be fully alive and free to love God with all of our hearts –to worship with all of our hearts.

The promise of the Father to replace our wounded hearts of stone with hearts of flesh -the promise of Jesus to give us abundant life, means at least this: Jesus can take that heart that Satan has brutalized and broken and crushed, and heal it and restore it and give it back to us fully alive and free –free to love again. Free to accept God’s love.

Before I had a new heart, I could never quite grasp the extent of God’s love –my damaged heart was incapable of grasping it. My new heart, though, understands that God is very fond of me. My new heart knows that Jesus truly loves me.

Of course, as I begin to understand that Jesus loves me, I also begin to realize that He knows me. How can He love me in a personal way if He doesn’t know me in a personal way. Jesus knows me. That’s a thought that is comforting and frightening all at once, isn’t it? I’m sure we all have a few things in our past that we’d rather not parade out in public. I used to think that I’d be more comfortable with God if He didn’t know all about my failures and faults. It’s embarrassing to think that God knows everything about me –even my secrets. But then I realized that He loves me. That changes everything –doesn’t it? I mean, if God said that He loves me, but didn’t know the worst about me, I’d always have to hope that He didn’t find out. I’d always have to worry that if He really knew me that maybe He wouldn’t love me. But the fact that He loves me even knowing the worst about me means that I never have to worry about it. He already knows that I’m worse than any of you think I am –in fact, He knows that I’m worse than I think I am. And He loves me.

Now, if God knows the worst about me and loves me anyway, that means that my sins are, indeed, forgiven. He knows me, and through the shed blood of Jesus, He has forgiven me. Because I have a new heart I am aware of God’s personal love for me –and that leads to a deep seated awareness of God’s forgiveness. When I prayed and asked Jesus to forgive my sins, and asked Him to restore my damaged heart, He already knew about my sins –He knew about sins that I’d forgotten I’d committed. He knew about sins that I didn’t understand were all that horrible –but he knew exactly how horrible they were. He knew everything there was to know about me, and He loved me, and forgave me. Until Jesus gave me a new, healed, restored heart, I wasn’t able to grasp the depth of God’s love and the completeness of His forgiveness.

But, now with a new heart, I can understand that God loves me, and I can grasp that my sins are truly forgiven –and that leads to one other thing I begin to be aware of. I begin to be aware of my freedom. We often talk about the freedom we have in Christ. We sing songs about freedom. We acknowledge our freedom with our lips –and maybe even with our minds –but until we have new hearts we are incapable of actually grasping what it means to be free in Christ. If we don’t really get it about the depth of God’s love and the completeness of His forgiveness, how could we possibly realize what His freedom means to us? But now think about this. If God really does know every possible thing about me –and if He knows not only the sins I’ve already committed, but even the ones I will commit in the future –and He says that He loves me, and that all of my sin is forgiven, that means I’m free. I'm free to respond to His love without worry, regret, guilt, shame or fear of failure. All of that has already been dealt with.

There is no greater bondage than going through all the religious motions in a desperate attempt to be forgiven and loved. But, you see, we don’t have to do that, do we? We don’t have to try and earn God’s love, because now we know for certain that God already loves us –and with our new hearts we are able to respond to God’s love. That’s relationship –receiving God’s love, and loving God in return. Relationship is better than religion. And that’s what allowing God to heal our hearts is all about. And, I think, that is what abundant life is all about.

Ezekiel 36:25, Isaiah 61:1, John 10:10 "Matter of the Heart"

John 10:10. “The thief has come only to rob, kill, and destroy, but I have come so that you can have life, and have it abundantly.”  

Isaiah 61:1 "He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted."  

Ezekiel 36:25 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit in you and make you eager to obey my laws and teachings.”  

Life is brutal. More for some than for others, but all of us have faced difficulties and hardships and hurtful things. Because we have all been hurt, there is a sense in which we have all, to one degree or another, lost heart. To some extent, all of our hearts have been broken and damaged. Our enemy knows how important our hearts are –and that’s why he is so intent on destroying them –that’s why he is intent on breaking our hearts –on twisting our hearts –on deadening our hearts. If he can disable and deaden our hearts, he has effectively foiled God’s plan for us –God’s plan that our hearts be fully alive and free to love God with all of our hearts –to worship God with all of our hearts. If the enemy can break our hearts, he has broken us. 

I know that some of us have had some serious heart-ache in our lives. Some of us have been hurt by family, by people we thought were friends, by people we work with, by disappointment, by sickness or trauma. And some of us have been severely damaged by our own poor choices. Whoever and whatever has hurt us, the one thing that seems to be a common denominator is that we have all been hurt –we’ve been wounded. We have been hurt so deeply that we have walled off our hearts –just to keep them from hurting so badly. We’ve allowed our hearts to harden and become like stone, because stone hearts aren’t tender –stone hearts can’t be easily broken again. But the problem is, you see, that our hearts can only become hard and stony when they are already damaged and broken.
 
Since there isn't much we can do about that, we learn to cope. We adjust. We compensate. But often in the process something gets lost. Many of us now seem to drift through life, going through the motions, but never truly understanding how very much God loves us. And just as bad, incapable because of our damaged hearts, of truly loving God. The thief, Satan, our enemy, has done the job of stealing, killing and destroying when it comes to matters of the heart, hasn’t he. Boy, do we need some help. We don’t need hearts of stone –we need brand new hearts –restored hearts –healed hearts.
 
This is what the relationship with Jesus is all about –getting our hearts back. The thief robs and kills and destroys –but Jesus gives life. The enemy twists our hearts and deadens and breaks our hearts, but Jesus binds up the brokenhearted. We deaden our hearts to protect ourselves from pain, but Jesus restores our hearts. He came to take away the damaged, unresponsive, broken heart –the heart of stone, and replace it with a new heart –a heart capable of loving God. Jesus claims to give us back our hearts.

What if what Jesus promised is true? What if his claims to be able to restore and heal and forgive and give us clean, new, undamaged hearts is a reality? What would happen if we believed it? Our lives would never be the same –would they? If we really believed that Jesus was able and willing to give us new hearts –I don’t mean just to forgive our sin, as awesome as that is, but to actually give us new hearts -to replace our broken, damaged hearts of stone with hearts truly capable of accepting and returning love –even God’s love, we would follow Him anywhere –we would do anything, wouldn’t we? People, this is the last thing the enemy wants us to understand –Jesus can take that heart that Satan has brutalized and broken and crushed, and heal it and restore it and give it back to you fully alive and free –free to love again. Free to accept God’s love. Some of you have already gotten back your hearts know exactly what I mean. And some of you aren’t quite there yet. If you are not quite there yet, I’d like to ask you to affirm a short prayer with me –use this prayer to quietly call out to God. 

“Jesus, I’m tired of living with a broken, damaged heart. I’ve been going through motions, keeping busy, trying to keep my heart from being hurt more than it already is, but I’d rather have a heart that is truly alive and free. So, I’m turning to You and purposefully giving You my whole being –my mind –my body –my soul –and my heart. Cleanse me and give me a new heart. Please give me a new heart. Amen.”

1 John 1:7-9 "I Fell In A Hole"

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.  If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.  1 John 1:7-9


When we choose to trust (believe in our hearts vs. believing with our minds) that Jesus died for our sin and rose again from the dead, and trust that His blood has spiritually purified us and that as a result we are forgiven and made right with God, something begins to happen on the inside.  We become spiritually alive and spiritually sensitive.  We actually become more aware of our sinful condition. 

Unfortunately, having our sin forgiven, does not translate into immediate perfection -we still struggle with sin.  The difference is that before knowing Jesus we did not care much about sin or understand the harm of sin.  Sin has always caused us harm, but before knowing Jesus and being made spiritually aware, we had no understanding of the connection between our wrong thinking and wrong choices (sin) and the hurt we were experiencing -the sadness, lack of peace, lack of contentment, and lack of intimacy, etc..  Sin was killing us, but we didn't even know it.

Now that we are spiritually alive, we still sin and sin still harms us, but since we are aware of this, we can deal with it.  And as we walk with Jesus and grow in grace and knowledge and wisdom, we are gradually become more and more like Jesus.  The Bible assures us that we are actually being transformed into His likeness.  We are increasingly able to make better choices and sin less.  But always, until we are home with Jesus, sin is an issue.  So we need to understand what to do with our sin issues in the meantime.

There are two ways for us to deal with our ongoing sin and failures.  The first is spiritual and the second is pragmatic.  Spiritually, if we confess (admit rather than hide) our sins, He continues to forgive our sin and cleanse us from unrighteousness and the defiling, corrupting spiritual consequences of sin.  That is God's promise.  Second, we seek wisdom and increased understanding and work with God to make better choices.  We actually choose to make better choices.  There is an old story that illustrates this.

There are several versions of this little story -I don't know where it originated, certainly not with me -but I like this particular telling of it:

I was walking down the street, and I fell into a hole. It was dark, and uncomfortable –I didn’t like being in the hole, but I wasn’t sure what to do, so for a long time, I didn’t do anything –I just sat in the hole and felt sorry for myself. But eventually, I decided to try to get out of the hole. I couldn’t see any way out, so I began to yell. I began calling for help. And after a while, a man passing by heard my cries and reached a hand down into the hole and helped me out –and I was grateful –I didn’t like being in the hole.

The next day, I was walking down the same street, and I fell into a hole –the same hole –and I didn’t like it. I remembered the day before, and this time, I didn’t wait so long –I started yelling and calling for help. And after a while a man passing by heard me and reached a hand down into the hole and helped me out and then he pointed out something you could see from above that you couldn’t see from inside the hole. There were a few rocks and crevices in the side of hole, that if used, might provide handholds and footholds –and maybe a person could actually climb out of the hole–and I was grateful because I didn’t like being in the hole.

The next day, I was walking down the same street and, you guessed it, I fell in the hole. But then I remembered about the rocks and crevices that might be used as handholds and footholds –and I began feeling around in the dark, and found one –then another –then another. It was a slow painful process, but I eventually climbed out of the hole –and I was grateful because I didn’t like being in that hole.

The next day I was walking down the same street–and I remembered the hole, and I remembered how much I didn’t like being in the hole, so I very carefully began to kind of skirt the edge of the hole –maybe just peeking over the edge –and my foot slipped, and there I was in the same old hole. I didn’t like it. But now I knew where the handholds and footholds were, and it didn’t take me nearly as long to climb out of the hole. And I was grateful because I didn’t like being in that hole.

The next day –I remembered the hole –and I walked down a different street.

That actually kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? While we are still in this process, and our minds are not yet fully transformed, and we so easily fall –sometimes it’s best to simply avoid the streets that cause us to fall into the hole.