Cleaning House

I finally realized why I hate cleaning my house so much.  It’s not the actual work involved.  It’s not even gathering up all the materials I need or moving objects out of the way so I can get to all the surfaces that I need to sweep or mop or dust or scrub.  It’s the fact that no matter how hard I work to get each area clean, I can never get it perfectly spotless.

This major revelation came to me yesterday as I was doing my “you’re on summer vacation from school so you have no excuse” cleaning. I had swept and mopped a floor and still, I kept finding small blades of grass and bits of dust in corners and next to baseboards and thresholds.  No matter how many fancy cleaning tools and products I buy, my house will never, ever, be perfectly clean.

Our lives are like houses.  We want to “straighten up” our lives – for them to be beautiful and clean. We make promises to ourselves to start doing certain things or stop doing others, but our willpower isn’t enough to make all those necessary changes in our lives.  The sin that is in our lives is like those pesky blades of grass and dust bunnies.  No matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to eradicate all of them.  The good news is that God knows that we don’t have the power to be perfect and He has made provision to wash our sin away through the blood of Jesus. We all know that our own righteousness is “as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6) and we are thankful for a Savior who gave His all to make us clean.

I’m thankful for that as well, but this “clean house/clean life” analogy got me thinking.  Just because I can never clean this house to perfection doesn’t mean that I should put down the brooms and mops and dust rags and just declare defeat.  Not having the ability to make my home spotless does not give me a license to just let the filth pile up around me.  I am responsible to do what I can, to the best of my ability, to care for this house that God has given me – to make it a clean, attractive, and healthy place for my family to spend time together.

In the same way, we should not just throw up our hands at the state of our lives and say, “I can never be perfect in this life, so I’ll just live any way I want because Jesus is the one that makes my life clean anyway”.  We are responsible to live lives that are pleasing to God to the best of our ability – to make our “house” a place where His love and life are shown to others. I know there are two extremes of doctrine in the Christian world.  One says, “anything goes because grace covers sin” and the other says “one little slip and God will send you straight to hell”.  I believe it’s a balance.  We don’t have to walk around constantly in fear that we are on the edge of slipping up, but we need to go after God in such a way that our moral lives reflect who we are serving.  Living lives free of sin is not a matter of picking up tools to clean up after ourselves but is a natural outgrowth of letting God change us from the inside out.

Lessons from a Baby #5: Learning the Language

Bella, my 16 month old granddaughter, is learning language the way we all do.  We talk to her all the time and many simple daily things are repeated - eat, bath, night-night, bye-bye, hi, etc.  She is beginning to repeat many words and is constantly adding to her vocabulary.

She has Ma-ma and Da-da down pat.  Next came Papaw (or PaulPaul - since my husband's name is Paul). Her maternal grandfather is Pappy. However,  I have no earthly idea who I am.  She has not yet settled on a name for me.  We've used the name "Gran" for me - short for "Granny", which is what I called my grandmother, but evidently that's a much harder sound to produce.  We're trying Mimi and Nana and Mamaw to see what sticks, but for now, I am "she who must not be named"!

She really does know and love me.  She reaches for me, hugs me, gives me an occasional kiss.  I have kept her in my home many times while her parents were busy with other things.  We have a relationship, but she is just not too sure of what to call me.  I dearly love her, in spite of the fact that she hasn't yet mastered this concept.

We learn the language of the kingdom the same way.  Words, thoughts and principles that are part of our daily spiritual lives are repeated often by our Christian friends, our pastor, our daily Bible reading, songs we enjoy and writers we follow.  Still, in spite of that daily repetition, there are some concepts we still don't acquire easily.  A common theme that you'll see in my blog posts is maintaining communication with God in prayer and Bible study.  That theme isn't repeating because I am so accomplished at keeping it a priority; it's repeating because I struggle so much with being consistent with it myself.  Without letting myself off the hook for this discipline, I do realize that God dearly loves me, even when I am not mastering the lessons that He keeps trying to teach.

Bella can only learn what we can teach her.  If she was put in a situation where she had no human contact and no more exposure to language, her language learning would cease.  If we live in an environment where the Word is not spoken, where people are not sharing what God is leading them to say, where all the media we take in is focused on the things of the world, we won't learn any more kingdom language ourselves. We as adult Christians have control of what language we are learning.  Let's make sure that we are learning it from the right source.

"In" and "Amen"

Sometimes, when I’m not in serious Bible study, I just flip through the pages of my Bible, looking at words or verses I have highlighted or underlined in the past.  I was doing that the other night when I thought about the fact that the Old and New Testament are one continuous story of the love of God and His plan to reach us and bring us into relationship with Himself.

As I thought more along those lines, I considered beginnings and endings.  I knew the first word of Genesis 1:1 was “In”, but I wasn’t sure about the last word of Revelation.  I looked up Revelation 22:21 and confirmed that it was “Amen”!

 I am quite aware that there are 66 books in the Bible and that 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”  I am in no way saying that we shouldn’t read and learn from every word, but really, the first word and the last word sum up the whole theme of the Bible.

Throughout the Old Testament, God was trying to establish relationship with His people – to be IN their midst, for them to live IN His ways and according to His laws.  That system of the law showed men how impossible it was to live in holiness in their own strength – how much they needed a Savior.  The New Testament reveals the sacrifice of Jesus which made a way for us to be IN Him and He IN us.  His Holy Spirit lives and works IN us.  From “IN the beginning” to the Holy Spirit IN us – that was the plan of God.

“Amen” means “so be it”. 2 Corinthians 1:20 says, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.” That final Amen in Revelation 22:21 goes like this, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”

The grace that John is referring to there is that same grace that causes us to be IN Him. Acts 17:28 says that, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being…..”  The most important decision we will ever make is choosing to be in Him.  Everything else in our lives flows from our relationship with Jesus.  What about it?  Are you IN? Amen!

78 and 29

I recently attended a wedding shower where one of the party games was to guess the number of candies in a jar. I have been historically terrible with this activity, always underestimating the number by quite a bit.  So, attempting to apply that experience to my guess this time, I estimated as usual, then added about 20 more to my guess and chose a number that was not a multiple of 5, thinking that whoever filled the jar probably wanted to make it trickier. My educated guess was 78. To my amazement, the bride-to-be announced that the winner, who had guessed the number exactly, was me! The prize for this feat was to take home the jar of candy.

At home later, I told the story to my husband, but I did not divulge the number or any hint of the amount.  He walked by the jar, barely taking a glance, and said, very nonchalantly, “78”.  My jaw dropped!  Not only had I done the practically impossible by guessing the exact amount, but he had just matched my answer without even taking time to examine the jar! What in the world????

Then, just yesterday, we visited a large flea market in search of an elusive item we needed for a project. We had walked through all the buildings by the upper parking lot and walked down a set of concrete stairs to the rest of the buildings.  After a fruitless search of those buildings, we headed back to our van by way of those same concrete steps.  We walked side by side up the steps with no conversation, but when we reached the top, we both spontaneously looked at each other and said, “29!”  That was the number of steps on the staircase. We had both been mentally counting, for whatever reason, and decided at the same moment to make that big announcement.

What is my point? When people have been married for a long time, it is said they can finish each other’s sentences.  How does that happen?  It’s not because they once stood at an altar and made promises to each other.  It’s because they have talked together day after day, year after year. They have seen each other react to many situations.  They have listened to each other tell the same stories to other people over and over.  A serious investment of time together makes it possible for two to become one. The knowing is in the life together – not in the vows.

I believe it’s like that in our relationship with God.  We begin to talk the way He talks, know His heart, and think like He thinks only when we spend time with Him.   It doesn’t happen automatically the day we go to an altar and repeat a prayer, vowing to follow Him.  The knowing is in the life together – not in the vows.

Answers at My Fingertips

One of the things I do as a special education teacher is to read tests aloud to my students, so they can be tested on their knowledge of a subject instead of their reading ability.  Just the other day I was reading a math test to a sweet little third-grade girl.  Many of my students are allowed other accommodations, such as using a calculator to solve problems. She was one of the students who was permitted to do this.

Throughout the test, she was trying her best on each problem.  Many only required her to do things like identify the names of various shapes or match vocabulary words to the corresponding pictures.  However, others did require actual calculations.  She dutifully copied one difficult problem on a dry erase board and began working on it, but she was having trouble solving it.  The calculator lay only inches away from her on the table, but due to the rules of the test, I could not remind her it was there. For several minutes, she struggled with the calculation, erased, and wrote it again, and tried to talk herself through the steps. She even reached over the calculator once to pick up a number line to assist her.  Finally, as I held my tongue (and my breath!), she noticed the calculator, looked at me wide-eyed with a big smile and picked it up to complete the problem successfully.

Sometimes I am a lot like this third grader.  I take a problem in my life and try to work it out myself.  I struggle with the complexities of it, backtrack and try to do it another way, and then I get frustrated.  All along, the means to solve my problem is just at my fingertips.  Why do we sometimes look at prayer as a last resort instead of the first impulse?

I’m not suggesting prayer always gives us the instant solutions a calculator does, but I do know God’s answers to life’s problems are always better than ours, even if we don’t always understand them.  I’m learning the first thing I should do is to take a situation to Him and then step out in faith with the wisdom He gives me – to take actions based on what He has promised.  I imagine when I’m struggling with something on my own, God is patiently waiting for me to notice and remember what is available to me right at that moment and to use the tool of prayer to begin to put things right.

Walking with no Applause

Our granddaughter, who just a month ago was taking only a few tentative steps before falling on her well-diapered bottom, is now toddling around everywhere.  After every long trek she makes, the family will clap and cheer for her.  My husband will then loudly complain (with tongue firmly in cheek) that he has been walking for years and nobody is making a fuss over him!

While he’s not really expecting any kudos for his ability to walk from point A to point B, his joke made me think about how we can sometimes be as Christians.

When you were first converted, you took lots of tentative steps as you learned and grew.  Sometimes you fell, but if you are still serving God today, that means you stood back up and tried again.  In those early days, in your own mind, success may have been measured by those things that you stopped doing. No longer were you living in the sin that held you captive before.  If you were always out partying the world’s way, you found yourself celebrating in the house of God.  Instead of engaging in a string of illicit relationships, you began cultivating a relationship with Jesus.  If you were struggling with substance abuse, you started partaking of what the Bible calls the “new wine”.  Everything was different. People saw the changes in your life and were drawn to the God who transformed your life so radically.  Those who were close to you constantly encouraged you to stay strong and continue walking this new path.

Then some time passes.  People become accustomed to you living a “moral” life.  Those you have met while you have been on this spiritual journey have never seen the person you were before.  There are no cheerleaders celebrating the fact that you are still walking.  What do you do then?  You do what you should have done all along.  It was never about the praise and approval of others.  It was always about pleasing the God who gave you new life in the first place.

Colossians 1:9-10  For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; ¹⁰ that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God…

When nobody is noticing your growth in the Lord, keep growing.  In a few months, Bella’s walking will not be a new thing in our household.  I doubt we will still be commenting every time she walks across a room.  Instead, we’ll be celebrating each new milestone she reaches.  Even that will stop after a while.  She will grow to be an adult and she will set goals for herself and reach them.  Some of those goals will not even be things we know about.  She will achieve them, and she will grow and change on her own.  She won’t need our constant approval, and neither should we need the approval of man.  We should move on from glory to glory, always desiring to please God and become the instrument in His hands that He will use to do Kingdom business.

Altered at the Altar

     I have been a special education teacher for over 30 years. I have mastered the art of reading upside down when I am sitting across the table from a student who is reading a text right side up. I have deciphered more convoluted spelling than you have probably ever seen and made sense of the ideas my kiddos were trying to write.  I’ve also edited the work of adult writers and found all the small errors that some people wouldn’t even notice.  I’m not a perfect writer myself and I’m sure others could find fault in my writing, but I do think that my spelling and word usage is fairly accurate. 

     Several weeks ago, I saw someone’s Facebook post talking about the wonderful things that God had done that morning in their church at the alter.  The teacher in me mentally took out my red pen to mark the incorrect usage of the homonym for altar, but then the Holy Spirit stopped that train of thought in its proverbial tracks.  It may have been a technical error, but spiritually, it was very accurate.

     In the Old Covenant sacrificial system, an altar was a place where animals were sacrificed to cover the sins of men.  The animals were a substitute so that people did not have to give up their own lives for the wrong they had done.  Rather than getting what they deserved, they offered the blood of the sacrifice.

     The New Covenant is built on Jesus being the sacrifice – once for all.  The cross becomes our altar – the place where He became the ultimate, perfect sacrifice and took away the sin of the world. We don’t get what we deserve because Jesus took on Himself the penalty of the death we deserved. 

     When my friend talked about the “alter”, it struck me that his word choice was a picture of what should really happen at the “altar”.  In the Old Covenant, in the formality of the sacrificial system, sin was covered, but I’m not sure the ritual ever changed many individual lives.  In the New Covenant, we are told that we are new creatures in Christ. When an encounter with God happens at the altar today, our lives can and should change. 

Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

     I know that sometimes I have been guilty of going to the altar to make some whispered promises to God that I have not kept.  Real transformation means allowing the Holy Spirit access into the deepest places in our hearts and being obedient as He directs us.

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 observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. (James 1:22-24)

     This morning my church had a baptismal service that was more than just a religious ritual.  It was a celebration of all the amazing things that God has been doing there.  It was a demonstration that the lives of people had been “altered at the altar”.  I heard stories of bondage broken, marriages and families restored, lives transformed, and purpose given.  That’s what is supposed to happen.  I hope it is happening in your life and in your church.  As it does, the church at large can begin to truly touch the world with the power of God.