Hey everybody,
Just a reminder that we won’t be gathering together this coming Sunday. And though we won’t be coming together, we can still be the church, worshiping Him by collectively taking the time to listen to and obey Him.
Enjoy your Labor Day weekend!
Do we live in such a way that reflects that the Lord’s opinion of us is all that matters? Will it be enough to here those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come and share your master’s happiness”? Or do we want more than that? Do we also need the approval of others as well? Or will we play only to the audience of One?
Personally, I’ve found the the most accurate test for this, to see if we play only to the audience of One, is when we’re falsely accused. I’ve been going to church long enough to know that in difficult times, I’m supposed to pray. And most often I do. I’ll usually switch between praying the abject “why is this happening to me?” prayer and the “protect me, save me” prayer.
But my action rarely stops there. I don’t just take it up to God in prayer. I take it up to other people too. I want God and a bunch of someone elses to understand. And so, I try to get other people on my side. I scramble around, trying to get anybody to listen to my side of the story. Often I’ll paint a picture where my accusers look like the bad guys with the hope that I’d look like the good guy.
Now, contrast that with what David did in our reading last week when he was also falsely accused in 1 Samuel 24:1-9. David falls from favor because Saul sees him as a threat to his throne. In response, Saul chases after David with several thousand men. All the while, Saul’s told that David is “bent on harming” him. An outright lie. David then has the opportunity to kill Saul in a cave. But he only cuts a piece of Saul’s robe and spares Saul’s life.
If we simply look at the story in 1 Samuel we’d know the facts, the events in history that occurred but we wouldn’t know what David was thinking, what he was feeling at the time. And that’s where the Psalms come in. It’s believed that David wrote songs, Psalms during this time. I’ll highlight a couple.
In Psalm 140, up to the first three Selahs from verse 1 to 8, it sounds familiar to us. They’re “protect me, save me” prayers. But starting from verse 9, the tone shifts significantly. Suddenly, David wields prayer less like a shield and more like a sword. He goes on the offensive in his prayer. And while this doesn’t sound all that great character-wise, let me put this in perspective. When I go on the offensive, I try to right the wrongs done to me myself. I go around trying to set the record straight. I make the rounds bad mouthing my accusers. When David goes on the offensive, he goes to the Lord to right the wrongs on his behalf. It’s not that time healed all wounds for David. It’s not that David came to the place where we didn’t care if Saul got his in the end. It’s that David trusted that the Lord would act as the judge and dole out the consequences for the wrong done.
And that goes into the other Psalm, Psalm 56. We see a lot of the same themes that we saw in Psalm 140, but what we see even more clearly in Psalm 56 is that theme of trusting in the Lord. In this particular Psalm we see that the opinion that the Lord has of David is sufficient for him. David lives for the audience of only One. While word spreads that David is guilty of treason, seeking after the king’s life, David doesn’t feel the compulsion to go around the country on a campaign setting the record straight. “In God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” David only has eyes for the Lord. David came to the place where all that mattered was what the Lord thought of him and he carried that with him for the rest of his life.
Is what He thinks of you all that matters? Because it’s true, He is more than enough. As David later wrote, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” and “Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.”
So this past Sunday we talked about how the Christian faith is markedly supernatural; it is comfortable with the supernatural, assumes the supernatural, and teaches that we live in that supernatural reality as well. And the best one-word response it asks of us is the word, FAITH.
Faith is defined in Hebrews 11:1 as “1 Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see” (N.L.T.). The N.I.V. translation has “the certainty of things unseen.” As children of the Enlightenment still stuck in the assumptions and paradigms of Western Modernity, this sounds like a paradox: “certain of things unseen.”
Faith’s opposite, Hebrews 11 maintains, is sight — using the natural faculties to see and assess the visible world as opposed to faith’s courageous reliance on the supernatural faculties to comprehend what is revealed. Observation and analysis is behind one; and discernment of revelation and risk-taking obedience is behind the other. I think of Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade; using his natural eyes and common sense, all he saw between him and the cave with the Holy Grail was a deep chasm. But trusting in Scripture, he uses it as the key: “the just shall live by faith.” Then, he closes his eyes and takes a giant step onto an unseen stone bridge. A great illustration, Steven Spielberg, of Faith vs. Sight.
That’s an example from Hollywood, but the list of people that the author of Hebrews gives us in chapter 11 is filled with examples of every day people who — by employing faith in the revealed — did things that do not make sense if our world view does not make room for the supernatural. My case in point Sunday was that Joshua’s encircling strategy would never be found in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War or in a SWAT team manual!
What I assumed but did not say aloud on Sunday was this: we will never experience the kind of intimate relationship God designed us for or the powerful living-out of our Kingdom calling unless we are able to discover this simple and foundational truth that Abraham realized when he left all that was comfortable to follow only a command and a promise from God, that Noah realized when he was mocked for months while creating something that the natural faculties told him was crazy, that Joshua realized when he listened to God’s instructions for walking around Jericho as his military strategy, and the list continues on.
And so I issued a challenge to exercise our faith muscles: this week do something — privately or preferably publicly — that puts yourself in a situation where God must intervene and do what He says He will do. Then, pray and watch. And when God comes through, do it again… and tell people for their encouragement and so that experiential truth gets reinforced inside your heart by its re-telling. And if you wanted to go whole hog out there, I put another challenge out there: this week, assume that everything you’re reading in the bible is REALLY true and REALLY relevant to where you are now; then, obey and respond accordingly. And you will see God move.
The assumption behind these status-quo challenges is that God is REAL, and that he SO wants us to break out and truly live. This we get from the same chapter of Scripture, Hebrews 11:6: “And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.”
This verse is tremendously important for all of you who are moving forward in more and more trust. I didn’t share it Sunday, but it is a promise that speaks of a different and unseen reality. I wanted to make sure I passed that on to you before the week gets too far in.
In addition, I wanted to reiterate my encouragement that you will need prayer and community around you as you plan to move forward in this arena. Your life will never be the same when the veil between the natural and the supernatural begins to thin and tear.
The Lord is doing something in our midst. And I’m thankful to be journeying with you into this place of holy experimentation and rebellion. Lord, Jesus, build your church, so the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
SN – If any of you feel led to post any stories of how God has come through as you stuck your neck out in faith for Him, feel free to post them as replies in this thread. A lot of us would appreciate any additional encouragement.
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