Loving God

When you made the decision to love God, was that an easy choice or a hard one? Did you come to it after years of prayer and searching or was it an instant love affair? Have you "accepted" Christ, but you're not sure yet if that was really a decision of love or something else?

What about...this morning? What about today when you made the decision to love God again? Or still. Or have you made a decision today to love God?

Do you only make decisions to love God on days when you're actively engaged with Him? You know, like Sundays. Or days when you have to pray. Or days when you need Him for something. Or those rare days when you're just thankful? 

It's complicated, right? This whole Christian life we live is rather difficult, when you think about it. First, we have to figure out how to love God. Then, we have to figure out how to love Him again. And again. And again. And still. Until every day, we love Him, but only, you know, when we're actively thinking about Him, which means that the first thing that we have to figure out when we try to bring God into our lives in a new moment is whether we love Him or not. It's like we have to ask ourselves over and over again; we don't just wake up loving Him. 

If we did, we'd spend all day every day with Him. Thinking about Him. Talking to Him. Texting Him. Smiling at all the little reminders of Him. 

So let's just be honest with ourselves: we don't just "automatically" love God, even when we love Him. Even when we're Christians. We love the idea of God, but put us face-to-face with our need for Him, and we have to decide all over again, it seems, if we love Him. 

What if it weren't that hard? What if it wasn't supposed to be? 

Because, you see, there's a cheat code wired into your very DNA for this exact thing. God Himself has done it. 

He has put it on your heart to love Him (Jeremiah 32).

Think about that for a second. When God created you, when He knit you together in your mother's womb, when He started counting the hairs on your head before you even grew them, He built into your very being an inclination to love Him. 

Which means that all this hesitation we have, all these catch-your-breath moments, all this time we spend trying to figure out if we love Him or not...it's mess. It's distraction. It's the things of this world, the trials of this life, casting shadows in the way. Of course we love Him. 

We love Him in the same way that our hair is brown or our eyes are green or our eyebrows are straight across. Sure, we can dye our hair or get colored contact lenses or pluck and tweeze our brows into some kind of shape - sure, we can choose not to love Him, but our default setting...is love. It's just natural. 

And if it's natural, is it really as hard as we're making it? If God has given us to love Him, built it into our very beings, wired it into our circuitry...why do we act like we have to do it out of our own volition? Why do we act like we have to make ourselves love God?

No, no. We just have to let ourselves love Him. 

Although, sometimes, I think that's harder.... 

Thrive

It's one of the most oft-quoted verses in all of Scripture: Jeremiah 29:11. "For I know the plans I have for you...plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future." I've written before about how the "you" in this verse is most properly actually translated "ya'll" - a collective for God's people - but there's something else you can't afford to miss about this verse. 

God speaks it in Babylon. 

In fact, when you read this verse in the context of its passage, you see that the theme of the whole section is basically this: "live and thrive wherever God has you, even if it's not where you want to be."

God tells His people He has a plan in a place where there doesn't seem to be a plan. He tells them He has a hope in a place where there doesn't seem to be a hope. He tells them He has a future in a place where they cannot fathom a future. Most of us would look right back at God and say, "Yeah, I'm not seeing it."

Or, more holy-sounding, "Lord, I cannot see Your plan right now, and I don't know what You're up to. Get me out of this place so that I can see You again. Get me out of here so that I know You are good."

But this passage says God is good right here. There's a plan right here. This is part of it. This place is part of it. If you want to be part of the plan, you have to be part of this place because the plan. starts. now. 

Without today, there is no tomorrow. Without now, there is no later. Without the present, there is no future. Everything that's going to happen starts right here, right now. It has to.

And that means that if you want to live and thrive in a land of your own, start right now by living and thriving here. It means if you want to go home, make home right where you are. It means if you want God to move you, you have to let Him into the place you're living now. He's got to be where you are so that you can get to where He's taking you. 

The plan. starts. now. 

It's hard to hear. I get it. My life is not where I thought it would be at this point, not where I hope it's going to be five years from now. But it's here, and there's a lot of blessed work that I can do right here and a lot of hope that I can have and a lot of lessons that I can learn, and if I spend all of today waiting for tomorrow, then I'm going to miss out on both of them. Live and thrive wherever God has you, even if it's not where you want to be. 

Because tomorrow, it may not be where you are. But if you don't live and thrive today, you've got nothing.

Another Prophet

In the classic way that God works, when His people go astray and start listening to their false prophets because they cannot fathom a way to interpret their faith for themselves, God sends to them a man who can tell them the truth about everything...including their false prophets. 

In other words, when the people get hoodwinked by their false prophets, God sends them a...prophet. (As He does in Jeremiah 23, among other places.) 

This is the kind of thing that drives us absolutely crazy about God, isn't it? We're a people who live in a place with a lot of noise, and at a time when we realize just how much is going on around us, what we really want is for God to put an end to it all and make things clear. 

We want the loud, booming voice. We want the thunder and lightning. We want the smitings and the earth opening up to swallow sinners whole. We want God to just show up and make clear that it's Him and then tell us what's going on. 

But God doesn't work like that, not often. Rather, God often sends us something that looks awfully similar to what we already have. He sends a prophet among prophets, a blessing among blessings, an opportunity in the midst of opportunity. He sends it with a quiet sort of spirit, but a spirit of fire that burns with a passion that cannot be denied. It's the kind of thing we have to look and listen for, but once we're willing to hear it, we can never forget it. 

How do we come to listen to Jeremiah when he tells us to stop listening to the prophets? How do we know that this is the man to listen to when he tells us not to listen to all the men we've been listening to? How do we trust that this is the man who speaks for God when he tells us that these other men are not speaking for God? He looks just like them, and yet...

And yet.

And yet, there was something about Jeremiah that was fundamentally different than all of the false prophets. There was something about him that made him worth listening to. There was something about him that rang out above all of the noise. 

That's what we have to look for. In those times where we're looking for some sign of God that we can't miss, what we really ought to be looking for is that little something that we can't ignore. Yes, maybe it looks like all of the others, but there's something fundamentally different about it that makes it undeniable. That's God. 

Thunder and lightning. Loud, booming voice. Still, small something that tugs at the heart and doesn't let go. 

The Prophets

We know that God sent prophets to His people from time to time in order to give them messages about their unfaithfulness and His promise, based on the covenant that they already knew so well. But do you realize that the people had prophets even when God didn't send them?

The Old Testament talks quite a bit about false prophets, which means the people - even the people of God - were always looking for others to tell them what God wanted to say to them. They were always filtering their experience of God through the words of others, taking as authority what humans had to say and pretending that it was God all along. 

We're not that different, really. 

We are a people who filter our experience of God through what others have to say about Him. We listen to our pastors, our preachers, our teachers. We listen to our musicians, our artists, our writers. When we have questions or when we want to learn something or when we want to know more, we turn to those who seem to have more experience in the area or a more direct line or more authority, somehow, in their voice and we ask them to tell us what God says...or what God means. 

The problem, of course, is that even those who speak of what seems to be God can easily be false prophets. They can be men and women who are leading us astray, not because they have set out necessarily to deceive us, but because they understand that as human beings, we are constantly seeking that kind of understanding and insight into what God has to say to us. Many are earnestly trying to meet the needs of our flesh, though they consider not the longing of our hearts. 

That's the hallmark of a false prophet. He tells you what you want to hear, but not necessarily what you need to hear. He soothes your discomfort, but doesn't quiet your spirit. He convinces you that God is near and on the same page and everything's going well, but the only person you actually feel nearer to in that moment...is the prophet. 

There's a reason we see so much of this in the Old Testament. It's because the people of God had a faith that was set up to keep them at a distance. Everything about their faith ran through a mediator, so of course they depended upon their prophets - even false ones. They were cut off from the holy place, especially from the Most Holy Place. The priests offered their sacrifices for them. Time and again, we see that they require someone to step in for them. 

But in the New Covenant, there's no excuse for that. The moment that Jesus is born in a manger and these human hands have to - and get to - hold Him, all that need for a mediator is gone; Jesus is our mediator. Because of Him, we don't have to have someone tell us what it all means any more; He has told us what it means. 

What we need is to be a people who take Him at His Word and let Him speak it. Who turn to Him when we have questions or need understanding. Instead, what we've done is we have stopped asking our prophets about the Most Holy Place and started asking them about Jesus, as though we haven't got a clue or any way to figure out. We took the curtain that He tore in two and sewed it back together and then claimed that we needed a way in when we already have a way in - we just have to take it. 

We need to be a people who can interpret our own faith. Who can know what it means. Who can ask our questions and hear His answer. Who can trust in the threads that dangle between us and Him, frayed by love, torn by passion. We need to stop looking for mediators and realize that we already have One, the best one. For all of these others are false prophets. 

False prophets in the time of the New Covenant. Who ever could have fathomed it? Who ever could have thought...? 

To Follow

Now, if you know me at all, you know that I don't buy into all of the "leadership" emphasis that our world has, especially in the church. We talk about how to become a leader, what makes an effective leader, how to lead through crisis, and this and that and the other and we try to tell everyone what it takes to be a good leader, as though everyone is going to have an opportunity to lead and ought to be ready to take it. That's not the kind of leadership that I was talking about yesterday. 

Because if you notice, Jesus doesn't call any of us to be leaders; He calls us to be followers. 

The disciples, followers. When they become apostles, still followers. Pastors, followers. Preachers, followers. Elders, followers. Everyone in the Bible is a follower, and that's how God wants it - we are supposed to be His followers, taking after His steps and doing what He has taught us to do. We are supposed to sit at His feet and learn. Supposed to take up His cross and love. We do those things that Jesus has done, and yes, while they make us leaders sometimes in our world, let us not forget that we are first and foremost followers. 

Yet we must be honest about the fact that someone, somewhere is following us. Every one of us has someone watching, seeing what we do, trying to learn from our life. It might be a child or a brother or a neighbor or a parent or a coworker or whoever, but we all have someone watching us, hoping that we're going to show them the way. That makes us, whether we intended it or not, leaders. 

And that's what we're talking about. 

We're talking about living in two directions - with one eye in front of us on the Jesus we're following and one eye behind us on those who are coming after us. Always watching the steps that guide our way, but watching our steps because we know they are guiding someone else. Being a sheep in a fold, but knowing that there are other sheep who aren't listening to the shepherd but are just doing what we do. 

Ironically, when we lead, what we are really doing is teaching someone else to follow...someone who is already following us. And maybe you think they already know how to follow or they wouldn't be here, but they don't really. They're lost. If they weren't lost, they wouldn't be looking to us, thinking that we've found our way; they'd see plainly that the only way we have is His. 

So we teach our followers to become real followers, not of us, but of Him. And in doing so, we become leaders, though we never stop being followers ourselves. 

Clear as mud?

That's why this is so hard. The world talks so much about leadership that it's easy to get sucked into that vortex at the very moment that we realize that someone is following us, but the challenge for us is to not let ourselves fall for it. We're followers, first and foremost and forever. We lead only when we follow well.