Physical Analogies & Truth
Someone reading "Hole-ier Than Thou" could easily conclude, if they don't know me, that I'm more interested in turning a phrase or sounding like I have it together (in spite of the list of sins/holes that I've listed.) It is very difficult to write in a way that communicates to someone how deeply you feel about something.
If you critically read others' writing that moves you, you will find that the writer usually spends a lot of effort setting you up to think a certain thought or to feel a certain way. The best spend tremendous time crafting something until it is "just so", I've been told.
Jesus had a knack for using the common, the everyday to teach. He often used stories and analogies to make points first to his immediate group of 12 followers and then to the evershifting audience that surrounded them. The New Testament pictures Jesus as being in demand every day and getting very little time to himself.
In a situation like that, you consume ideas more quickly than you create new ones. You begin to have a sense of why he spent 30 years of life prior to his 3 years of public ministry.
You also almost feel like he chose his immediate audience to challenge himself. His disciples (learners)--specifically the 12 men that follow him that we later refer to as apostles (sent ones)--sometimes seem to be pretty dense.
I appreciate that the Bible presents them warts and all. Peter's denial and his desire to set up tabernacles rather than come down from the Mount of Transfiguration. The recurring events that demonstrated a lack of faith in dealing with spiritual issues (think inability to cast out demons, grumbling about the perfume.) The mom of the Sons of Thunder (James and John) wanting them to be on the right hand and the left hand of Jesus in heaven. The in-fighting that followed that.
Not only do you get a sense that these were real men of the more usual kind--providing a clear distinction from the one they are following--but it helps us identify with them to see those stories. They didn't get what Jesus taught in all cases. Sometimes it seemed like he was being intentionally obscure. The Bible records that he often explained things.
For some of you, the explanation of the flashlight and the holes probably makes sense, but you may not have thought through how the analogy relates to reality. I woke up this morning thinking about that.
In my memory there is one very vivid picture of this principle. My friends Chris and Randy took in a young, homeless man named Joe the year I was repairing typewriters in San Bernardino. They witnessed to him and he accepted Christ and then they had to figure out what to "do" with him.
He wasn't very clean at that point. He didn't have a job. He was in his late teens or early 20s. He was very difficult to get along with. With patience and enormous love, they worked through the things we learned in Problems of Democracy at San Gorgonio.
That "civics" class also included tons of practical instruction. How to plan a budget, how to make a weekly food menu, how to avoid the traps marketers/advertisers use to sell their products. It was scary stuff.
Their budget planning exercise was brilliant. They asked us to work off of the premise that we were paid minimum wage and to design a budget that would work. This included trips to the grocery store to find items that we could live off of and researching rental costs in the San Bernardino Sun.
I left that class with a healthy appreciation for how very minimal minimum wage was. I understood that education mattered. And I gained the ability to plan things out in advance to a deep level of detail. Both things have served me very well.
These were things that this young man had to be re-taught. Not just the spiritual things, but the everyday things.
This friend also came to our Singles department that met at the Bobbitt Funeral Home during the 11 o'clock Sunday School time period. Immanuel Baptist had THREE worship services and THREE Sunday Schools at the time. I attended my own class at 8 o'clock, worship at 9:45, and taught at 11. I recently looked at a department/class list for Immanuel and the person that taught me during that time is still teaching Sunday School at Immanuel. What enormous faithfulness and dedication!!
I had a hard time with Joe. He didn't always smell nice and his clothes were kind of ratty. I was used to that from living in Indonesia, but I wasn't used to his sullenness and bickering. There were times that he seemed to be biting the hardest at the people that wanted to help him the most. As it turns out, that is fairly common among the homeless...their spiritual need and isolation is so great that they will lash out at those trying to help.
As he grew to trust those around him that were helping him, he perceptibly softened. You could see God working on his heart on almost a weekly basis. It was grace in action...mercy flowing. What God could see with grace-colored glasses from the very beginning, we began actually seeing at the end.
Towards the end of that year...as I was dealing with God sending me on a new adventure and heading back to A&M to finish my B.S. so I could go on to seminary...I had the great privilege to hear Joe speak. I don't remember the subject. But I do remember vividly the poise, confidence, and meekness of this saved-and-changed-by-grace young man. I was awed at the work God had already accomplished in him. And because I knew Joe at the beginning of that time and saw him at the end of that time, I knew who to worship and glorify because of it.
Joe is my practical example when someone asks me to prove to them that God exists. He had no ability to "do that to himself." Even with the help of my friends, they didn't all accomplish that together. God working in his heart did that. And because of the holes in his heart that were there at the beginning, God's glory UNDENIABLY shined from Joe's life.
Some of that glory can be seen in Chris and Randy's mercy and love and evangelism. Some of it can be seen in the patience and love everyone extended to Joe in Sunday School. But most of it can be seen in the change IN Joe.
That's what I mean by God's light shining through the holes. When God redeems our sin, the certainty of his glory becomes undeniable in our lives. It should humble us. And it should draw others to us. If it doesn't, it might be because our own unloveliness is occluding God's loveliness...still.
Whether you've accepted Jesus as your leader and rescuer or not, if you are reading this you KNOW what I'm talking about when I talk about sin. You know that your sin is a sign of enmity with God. You KNOW that God will eventually deal with those signs of being his enemy.
Why not deal with him right here...right now over them. Ask him to reveal to you the sin of your life and then agree with him about it. And then turn away from the sin (that so easily ensnares us!!) and turn back to him. Ask for forgiveness and put your trust in him to restore you to himself. Right here...right now.
If the picture of Joe's transformation appeals to you--and I hope it does--ask God to visibly shine his glory through you...and to do whatever it takes to get you prepared for that. God can do amazing things when we submit to his quiet, careful, thoughtful leadership.
God can do amazing things in our lives if....
...we ask him to.
If you critically read others' writing that moves you, you will find that the writer usually spends a lot of effort setting you up to think a certain thought or to feel a certain way. The best spend tremendous time crafting something until it is "just so", I've been told.
Jesus had a knack for using the common, the everyday to teach. He often used stories and analogies to make points first to his immediate group of 12 followers and then to the evershifting audience that surrounded them. The New Testament pictures Jesus as being in demand every day and getting very little time to himself.
In a situation like that, you consume ideas more quickly than you create new ones. You begin to have a sense of why he spent 30 years of life prior to his 3 years of public ministry.
You also almost feel like he chose his immediate audience to challenge himself. His disciples (learners)--specifically the 12 men that follow him that we later refer to as apostles (sent ones)--sometimes seem to be pretty dense.
I appreciate that the Bible presents them warts and all. Peter's denial and his desire to set up tabernacles rather than come down from the Mount of Transfiguration. The recurring events that demonstrated a lack of faith in dealing with spiritual issues (think inability to cast out demons, grumbling about the perfume.) The mom of the Sons of Thunder (James and John) wanting them to be on the right hand and the left hand of Jesus in heaven. The in-fighting that followed that.
Not only do you get a sense that these were real men of the more usual kind--providing a clear distinction from the one they are following--but it helps us identify with them to see those stories. They didn't get what Jesus taught in all cases. Sometimes it seemed like he was being intentionally obscure. The Bible records that he often explained things.
For some of you, the explanation of the flashlight and the holes probably makes sense, but you may not have thought through how the analogy relates to reality. I woke up this morning thinking about that.
In my memory there is one very vivid picture of this principle. My friends Chris and Randy took in a young, homeless man named Joe the year I was repairing typewriters in San Bernardino. They witnessed to him and he accepted Christ and then they had to figure out what to "do" with him.
He wasn't very clean at that point. He didn't have a job. He was in his late teens or early 20s. He was very difficult to get along with. With patience and enormous love, they worked through the things we learned in Problems of Democracy at San Gorgonio.
That "civics" class also included tons of practical instruction. How to plan a budget, how to make a weekly food menu, how to avoid the traps marketers/advertisers use to sell their products. It was scary stuff.
Their budget planning exercise was brilliant. They asked us to work off of the premise that we were paid minimum wage and to design a budget that would work. This included trips to the grocery store to find items that we could live off of and researching rental costs in the San Bernardino Sun.
I left that class with a healthy appreciation for how very minimal minimum wage was. I understood that education mattered. And I gained the ability to plan things out in advance to a deep level of detail. Both things have served me very well.
These were things that this young man had to be re-taught. Not just the spiritual things, but the everyday things.
This friend also came to our Singles department that met at the Bobbitt Funeral Home during the 11 o'clock Sunday School time period. Immanuel Baptist had THREE worship services and THREE Sunday Schools at the time. I attended my own class at 8 o'clock, worship at 9:45, and taught at 11. I recently looked at a department/class list for Immanuel and the person that taught me during that time is still teaching Sunday School at Immanuel. What enormous faithfulness and dedication!!
I had a hard time with Joe. He didn't always smell nice and his clothes were kind of ratty. I was used to that from living in Indonesia, but I wasn't used to his sullenness and bickering. There were times that he seemed to be biting the hardest at the people that wanted to help him the most. As it turns out, that is fairly common among the homeless...their spiritual need and isolation is so great that they will lash out at those trying to help.
As he grew to trust those around him that were helping him, he perceptibly softened. You could see God working on his heart on almost a weekly basis. It was grace in action...mercy flowing. What God could see with grace-colored glasses from the very beginning, we began actually seeing at the end.
Towards the end of that year...as I was dealing with God sending me on a new adventure and heading back to A&M to finish my B.S. so I could go on to seminary...I had the great privilege to hear Joe speak. I don't remember the subject. But I do remember vividly the poise, confidence, and meekness of this saved-and-changed-by-grace young man. I was awed at the work God had already accomplished in him. And because I knew Joe at the beginning of that time and saw him at the end of that time, I knew who to worship and glorify because of it.
Joe is my practical example when someone asks me to prove to them that God exists. He had no ability to "do that to himself." Even with the help of my friends, they didn't all accomplish that together. God working in his heart did that. And because of the holes in his heart that were there at the beginning, God's glory UNDENIABLY shined from Joe's life.
Some of that glory can be seen in Chris and Randy's mercy and love and evangelism. Some of it can be seen in the patience and love everyone extended to Joe in Sunday School. But most of it can be seen in the change IN Joe.
That's what I mean by God's light shining through the holes. When God redeems our sin, the certainty of his glory becomes undeniable in our lives. It should humble us. And it should draw others to us. If it doesn't, it might be because our own unloveliness is occluding God's loveliness...still.
Whether you've accepted Jesus as your leader and rescuer or not, if you are reading this you KNOW what I'm talking about when I talk about sin. You know that your sin is a sign of enmity with God. You KNOW that God will eventually deal with those signs of being his enemy.
Why not deal with him right here...right now over them. Ask him to reveal to you the sin of your life and then agree with him about it. And then turn away from the sin (that so easily ensnares us!!) and turn back to him. Ask for forgiveness and put your trust in him to restore you to himself. Right here...right now.
If the picture of Joe's transformation appeals to you--and I hope it does--ask God to visibly shine his glory through you...and to do whatever it takes to get you prepared for that. God can do amazing things when we submit to his quiet, careful, thoughtful leadership.
God can do amazing things in our lives if....
...we ask him to.
posted by greg.w.h@7:28 AM link-to-post
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