Category Archives: Personal views & lessons

Everything means something

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caterpillar2There was a funny song years ago by Simon and Garfunkel which was called, “At the zoo”. It went through all the animals at the zoo and with things like “Zebras are reactionaries, antelopes are missionaries”, things like that.

But then, strangely, the Bible does say that everything means something. Paul said “The invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.” (Romans 1:20) Jesus is called in one place “the Sun of righteousness” (Malachi 4:2). Satan is called the Serpent and Dragon. We are God’s sheep. And on and on.

So this morning when I was out in the park, something happened and I knew that it probably was significant or had some meaning but I didn’t get it right away. I was sitting there on the bench and then right in front of me was this worm or caterpillar, seemingly suspended in the air. Then it moved downward a little. Then again. And I realized it had some kind of thread like a spider that was suspending it in the air that had been attached to a branch of a tree above me.

The caterpillar kept lowering itself to the ground and final reached it. I of course couldn’t see the thread that had been coming out of the caterpillar as it was so thin and transparent so that it was almost impossible to see. The caterpillar crawled off. So I was sitting there and I asked the Lord, “What does that all mean?”

Most people probably don’t have thoughts like that. But through experience I’ve learned that often you can get some significance from things like that. I wrote a story a while back about “Hawks and Doves” where these two birds almost flew into me on a walk. That happened about 100 yards away from where this did.

So I asked the Lord to please show me what, if any, significance could be there for this caterpillar with the invisible thread coming out of him as he lowered himself to the ground.

Here are the thoughts that came to me. We are like that caterpillar. Isaiah 41:14 talks about “you worm, Jacob”. That invisible thread that gets us across great gulfs, from the tree branch to the ground and seems to suspend us miraculously in thin air is the Lord. He’s in us and as we let Him out, we are swept along His thread. It’s strong to hold us but it’s also so tiny and mostly invisible. But also it’s sticky and it just kept coming out of that caterpillar effortlessly and enough till he got to his destination.

But then I thought, at the end of the caterpillar’s life on earth, eventually that same thread is what will be wrapped around the caterpillar and form it’s cocoon. It will be his casket, binding him to his death. But then, out of that cocoon which the caterpillar made from that thread that had helped him all his life, it will burst forth at the end of winter into a butterfly or a moth. From the death of being a caterpillar or wrapped within a cocoon, it will appear suddenly as a new and totally different life. But the silver thread that was there for the caterpillar during its life was also there at its death, to envelope it and provide a casket of darkness and protection where the miracle of transformation takes place and it comes out as a butterfly.

We who have the Lord have that thread within us, helping us bridge impossible gaps when we need it, helping us travel places we otherwise couldn’t. Or even seemingly suspending us in mid air.  It’s inside of us. We don’t understand it all, as certainly that caterpillar didn’t understand it. I wonder if that caterpillar had to do something like “yield” in order to continue to let itself descend lower and lower to the ground, by continuing to let out that magic thread within it?

Like Simon and Garfunkel said, “something tells me it’s all happening at the zoo.” Or at the park. Or anywhere you have your spiritual antenna up and your eyes opened to all the wonderful world of truth and beauty that’s all around us and in a sense speaking to us. “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day it utters truth and night unto night it shows knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.” (Psalm 19: 1-3)

Is there not a cause?

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david and brothers flat 2One of the most touching and stirring verses in the Bible to me is what David said when he was probably just a young teenager, “Is there not a cause?” (I Samuel 17:29) I’ve never read anything written about that verse by anyone so I’ll tell you about it.

You don’t have to believe in God to have heard about David and Goliath. David, a young teenage shepherd boy, killed the leading fighter of the enemies of David’s people. The 9 foot tall giant, Goliath, had a spear and armor; David just had some rocks and a simple sling. And in the power and will of God, David slew Goliath. But David had to fight a tremendous spiritual battle with his own family before he ever faced Goliath.

King-SaulGoliath’s people, the Philistines, had been overlords and oppressors of the Jewish people for generations. But changes were in the air. God had raised up a very devout and faithful high priest, Samuel. And God had led Samuel to anoint a king for the first time in Israel, Saul.

The Philistines and the Israelites were again about to clash. But when it came time for battle, the Israeli fighters were in fear and awe of the champion warrior of the Philistines, Goliath. In modern times the tallest any person has been known to be is around 8½ feet tall. But the Bible says that in those times 3000 years ago there were giants and they were taller than any people are today.

David, who later became Israel’s most famous and Godly king, was the youngest of 8 brothers. His father had him tending flocks of sheep on the countryside outside his hometown of Bethlehem while his three oldest brothers were away as combatants in Saul’s army which was facing Goliath and the Philistine army.

David goesDavid’s father told his son to go to the army camp of Saul to take food to his brothers and to see how things were going. So David left the sheep in the care of a servant and journeyed to Saul’s camp. While David was there, he heard the bellowing taunts of Goliath from across the battle lines, challenging any of the soldiers of Saul to meet him in single combat.

And this is where things get almost weird. Remember, David at that time was probably around the age of a modern day 7th grader or 8th grader. When David found that no fighter of Saul was ready to meet Goliath in battle, he told the ones there that he would face Goliath in combat. At length, King Saul gave David permission to go out to face Goliath.

But before David faced Goliath, he had to overcome an unexpected confrontation with his own brother. You’d think his brothers would rejoice to hear of David’s incredible faith and conviction. But sadly, as the human condition so often is, he was harassed vehemently. In I Samuel 17:28, when David’s oldest brother heard of his little brother’s faith and conviction, he had this to say to him:

“Why have you come here? Who did you leave the sheep with? I know your pride and the naughtiness of your heart! You’ve just come here to see the battle.”

So did David collapse under his big brother’s withering accusations and condemnations? Did he loose heart and head back home in defeat and confusion? No. Before he faced the physical battle with Goliath the giant, he had to first withstand the spiritual attacks from his own flesh and blood family and “the accuser of the saints” (Revelation 12:10), Satan speaking through his own brother. And David answered his brother,

“Is there not a cause?” ( I Samuel 17:29)

What vision, what conviction, what determination. “Is there not a cause?” Is there not an utterly valid reason? Isn’t this worth fighting for? So David had to stand alone, not only on the battlefield with Goliath but before that, with his own family and people. He had nothing but the hand of God on him and virtually crazy faith that gave him the courage to do the humanly impossible.

your cause is just merged down flatHave you ever had to make that kind of stand of faith? Have you had a vision or cause that burned in you so strongly that you not only were ready to risk your life for it, you were willing to suffer the mocking slanders of those you were closest to? It’s that kind of vision in a higher cause, a purpose and noble endeavor that’s captured men’s hearts and souls to go beyond the normal and mundane, to right wrongs, to champion the defeated, “to march into hell for a heavenly cause”.

david-and-goliathSometimes “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household” (Matthew 10:36). Jesus said so. In David’s case, he stood up to his brother and then went out to win the most unlikely victory in the history of all battles. Because of David’s faith and certainty in the faithfulness of God to help him win a just battle against all odds, he not only slew Goliath, he went on to be Israel’s greatest king. And his words in the Psalms in the Bible have given hope and courage to countless millions for 30 centuries.

Do you have a cause? Do you have a burning vision in your heart?  A glorious quest? A calling from God that you know is just and worth living your life for? If so, don’t let anyone dissuade you, even those you’re closest to. “Is there not a cause?”

Cannot come down

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RH-NehemiahOnWallNehemiah said to his sly enemies from the walls of Jerusalem. “I am doing a great work and cannot come down. Why should I come down to you and the work cease?” (Nehemiah 6:3) It probably sounded unreasonable, extreme, perhaps unsociable. But Nehemiah was not only filled with a vision and conviction about what he was called to do. He also knew how to recognize distractions and subtle attempts to get him away from God’s highest and best.

In approximately 440 BC, Jerusalem was in ruins, a virtual ghost town compared to the glory that it had been in the hundreds of years before its destruction. Nehemiah had received permission from the Persian king to go back to Jerusalem as the governor there with the specific vision to restore and build the walls of the city.

But then the local enemies of the Jews wanted Nehemiah to “Come down into the plain of Ono and talk to us.” (Nehemiah 6:2) Their cunning line of reasoning was, “Let’s talk this over, Nehemiah. Now be reasonable; we’re your friends and you need to listen to us.” Don’t get me wrong, there can certainly be a time to listen to people and discuss things. But in this case, Nehemiah knew that these enemies at the gate were utterly and totally “Wolves in sheep’s clothing.” (Matthew 7:15).

So Nehemiah boldly told them, “I’m doing a great work and cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I come down and talk to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3) Nehemiah was not tricked and duped by the deceit of the Devil. He wasn’t sidetracked and tripped off into a trap, lured by the lies of the Lucifer.

temptationWhere there is faith, reverence and obedience to God, the Devil is always going about in one form or the other to try to destroy God’s plan and His people. This is a constant throughout history and it’s shown in this amazing way in the book of Nehemiah. We often think of Satan “Going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” ( I Peter 5:8). But, believe it or not, more often the Devil will go about as a sly, slithering serpent, like his temptations at the beginning in Eden.

In the book of Nehemiah, the enemies of God never openly, physically attacked the fragile remnant of the Jews who were attempting to fortify their city. Instead, it was all with words; doubts, fears, questions, accusations, whatever might be thrown against their faith was tried by the local enemies of Israel in an attempt to defeat the faith and reborn convictions of the Jews.

Often this is the Devil’s first line of attack. If he can dissuade you from believing and obeying God through his words which sow fear, confusion, doubt or whatever it takes to turn you away from your faith and obedience, then he doesn’t need to try any kind of physical attack on you. Like with Eve in the garden, the devil can just lie to you. And if you believe the lie, rather than God’s Word, Satan has won.

While the book of Nehemiah is a history book and not considered especially spiritual in content, there are key verses which show that the returned Jews were a chastened, humbled, believing people, focused on living repentant lives in obedience to the God of Abraham. Even a little verse like Nehemiah 4:6 “For the people had a mind to work” is a short glimpse into the regenerated soul of the inhabitants of Jerusalem as they banded together in thankfulness that God had allowed them, as He had promised He would, to return to their homeland and rebuild their capital.

And those words, “I am doing a great work and cannot come down” are ones that we too can claim, remember and even quote back to the Devil if need be when we are being besieged by temptations, allurements, doubts, fears or confusion that the Enemy of God throws at us daily to try to get us to cast away our confidence, surrender our joy and lose our crown to the words of Satan and the wisdom that is not of God. Don’t come down from the wall of God’s will and high calling into the “plain of Ono”! God help us all to stay strong on the wall of God’s will.

Spiritual Habits: Humility

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Humility picture-flattenedHumility is a funny thing. When you think you have it, you probably don’t. But it’s easy to not think of humility as a good thing. Certainly in the secular world, humility is normally equated with weakness and even with being a loser. But this is one of the clearest places where the Lord’s ways are not our ways and certainly not the ways of the world. Jesus said of Himself that He was “meek and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29).

Today someone shared some needed correction with me. They did it very politely, they were totally right and I needed to hear what they said as I was in the wrong. Still, it was hard to take. It’s kind of destabilizing. Your inner self is offended and wants to answer back, defending and justifying yourself. And of course that’s what is the usual reaction for most people all over the world. Your pride is hurt, your self-esteem has been wounded and you just want to fight back.

I was getting feelings like that but then I remembered a Bible verse I memorized years ago, something Solomon said in Proverbs 9:8, “Rebuke a wise man and he will love you.” Only pride hurts, humility doesn’t really feel it. And if you are any student of Scriptures or of the great people of God in history, you’ll certainly know that they were all not only people of faith, but people of humility.

An obscure, fascinating verse,  Isaiah 57:15 says, “So says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and lofty place, with him that is of a humble and contrite heart, to revive the spirit of the humble, and revive the heart of the contrite ones.”   The great God on high dwells with the humble, not the proud. Peter in the Bible said, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” (I Peter 5:5)

But how do you get humility? Do you work really hard for it? Someone said one time, “That takes humility of the kind only God can give you, because your own self is always trying to justify itself, exalt itself and protect itself.” Like Job said, “If I justify myself, my own mouth shall condemn me.” (Job 9:20) Sadly that’s so true. But the good news there is that God can give you the humility you need and that He wants you to have. We are to “humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.” (I Peter 5:6) We should cultivate humility in our heart, just like a precious little plant, while we try to recognize and root out the sins of pride and arrogance.

Today it was a humbling experience for me to have my faults and errors pointed out, even if it was done nicely. It was almost like when I’ve had to go to the dentist. I don’t like it but I have to just tell myself rather strongly, “This is for your good. You need this; this is doing something good for you, even if it hurts a little right now.”

But I did have an encouraging thought at the time it was happening, “At least I can recognize this as something good and for my good. I can try to get a grip on this pride that is trying to rear its head right now and make me offended and discouraged by being exposed like this.” I basically ended up putting off what I’d planned to do today and just got quiet before the Lord to try to let Him work in my soul and to take to heart what had rather surprisingly been shared with me.

Honestly, it’s taken a lifetime of similar situations and experiences from time to time (many of them not as easily acceptable as what happened today) to get me to where I can try to let the Lord do the work in my heart of teaching me some things about myself that are a bit unpleasant or discouraging. Some people think the solution is to continue to keep their head, “bloody but unbowed”, as it says in an old poem. But that’s really not what the Lord wants. He wants to teach us and help us grow in our hearts and spirits. Jesus said, “Every branch that bears fruit, he purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” (John 15:2) Purgings, humiliations, corrections from Godly brethren, even exposures are not easy to take. But if you are to be clay in the master’s hand, if you are to be purified gold, then embracing the humility that God wants us to grow in is utterly essential.

If you are a little uncertain about humility and honestly don’t even know if you like the whole idea, I suggest you make a Bible study on the subject. Humility is one of the most essential essences we need to have if we want to stay alive in the Lord and grow in His presence. Jesus said, “Whoever humbles himself as a little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:4)

Spiritual habits (Part 4) Memorizing God’s Word

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memorization art-flattenedI’d been a Christian for about a year when I was at a meeting of young people on a Saturday night. A friend of mine called me up in front of these 100 people, put his hand on my shoulder and looking out at everyone, said, “I just want you to see the results of memorizing Scripture.” And I guess he was right.

One of the habits I developed at the beginning of my Christian life was memorizing God’s Word. What happened was this. I’d been a Christian for around 3 days when a brother who was instrumental in my becoming a Christian said something to me that changed my life. He told me, “You know, if you’ll just memorize 3 verses every day, God will really bless you.” Somehow that really stood out to me and I said in my heart right then, “I’m going to do that.” Basically I did that for a long time and it’s probably been the most significant spiritual habit that I’ve had as a Christian.

Now I know this is probably not what you are hearing from the pulpit in your church on Sunday morning. But if you look at the people of the New Testament, you can certainly see that they memorized Scripture. It is written flatIn the famous story of when Jesus was tempted by the Devil in the wilderness, when the Devil came and spoke to Jesus, the Lord didn’t begin flaying his arms wildly and start screaming at the Devil. No, He just quoted Scriptures at him, Three times the Lord began His sentence with “It is written…”  and went on to quote Scripture in answer to the Devil’s temptations. (Luke 4:1-13) The Lord knew the Scriptures of His day and could quote them verbatim when He needed to. And He often did.

Then when Jesus had gone to Heaven and the early church was beginning, the Apostles certainly knew their Scriptures by heart. On the day of Pentecost, when Peter needed to explain things to the huge crowd that gathered, he didn’t start spewing out his own ideas. He told them, “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel” and he went on to quote from that Old Testament prophet, as well as other places in the Hebrew scriptures, to explain to the crowd from the Word what was happening. (Acts 2:14-36)

Even all the way back in Job, what is considered to be the oldest book in the Bible, Job said to “lay up His words in your heart.” (Job 22:22) King David said, “The law of his God is in his heart, none of his steps shall slide” (Psalms 37:31). Actually there’s a lot in the writings of David about this, like Psalm 119:11 where David prayed,  “Your word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against You.”

But maybe this may all make you just groan and you think, “Oh, no! I can’t memorize anything!” Let me make this a little personal because it is. Before I came to the Lord, I didn’t have any special ability to memorize things. But with the Word of God, it was like certain verses were just so clear and simple, they stood out to me so much that it was almost like the Lord just placed them in my mind and there wasn’t really a lot of effort on my part. In other words, the truths in the Words of the Lord were so strong and important that memorizing it wasn’t a lot of hard work. It was like grabbing something that was really good for me or tasted good or was worth a lot.

we should memorze flatYou may have already found that some Bible verses are almost already there in your memory. Or when you read them, they just jump out as strikingly significant. It’s those ones that mean so much to you, or that you know are timeless pillars within the Word of God, those are the ones you could make an effort to commit to memory.

For me, as soon as I found or recognized that a verse was of special significance, I’d make an effort to immediately write the reference somewhere. After a while, I built up a lot of verses like that and I ended up writing them on 3X5 cards, according to the books in the Bible they were from. I did that for around 3 years and it got to be a lot of verses. Believe it or not, I still have those cards with those verses and they’re still a part of my daily devotions.

In many ways I think of the verses I’ve memorized as my best friends. These are verses I’ve quoted to the Lord in times of desperate need, verses that have been boundaries for me to keep me from going astray, they’ve been wisdom for me in my dealings with others, they’ve been the comfort of God’s love speaking to my heart in some of my darkest hours.

Memorizing Scripture can be work and it can seem like something you can’t do. But the Word I’ve hidden in my heart through memorizing Scriptures has probably been more of a marking of my character than any other single thing in my Christian walk. Yes, it does take effort. But the people of the Bible did this and the returns on your investment of effort are immeasurable.