Connecting Points

Monday, January 09, 2012

Today’s Topic: Inoculate Me!

Today’s Text:  Isaiah 56:6-7 And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD to serve him, to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant—⁷ these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.

Prior to my trip to the Philippines in October I met twice with the travel nurse at my medical clinic. It was necessary to review my inoculation records so that I would be sufficiently protected from any potential tropical disease to which I might be exposed. We looked at maps that displayed the regional diseases and discussed the exact itinerary of my trip. After careful consideration of the risks, two vaccines were chosen of the possible four, and I was inoculated. One of them required a second dose, and I’m still waiting for the third dose in a few weeks. Not to worry, I was protected after two doses but the third dose makes it permanent.

There is much debate in our day about the value of vaccines, especially for children. Are the risks of inoculation worth the benefits? If I stretch my mind way out I can see where that same debate takes place in my spiritual life. Let me explain in just one area of our lives that is addressed in Isaiah 56:6-7.

In this encouraging chapter of hope, God is informing those who are on the outside that they will be fully accepted into the Kingdom of the Messiah with full benefits. Those who had been excluded will now be included. In the past they had felt like sub-standard people who weren’t good enough to be invited to an exclusive club. They saw the power and provision of the One True God, but had no access to Him. They had been left without hope and without joy.

Suddenly word comes down from the CEO that the membership policy has been revised so that now anyone was welcome. My mind is visualizing a scenario like this in America at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. If you know anything about that place and its history, you know that if word got out that they were making the course public, there would be lines starting at every airport in America as men and women raced to get there to play just one round of golf. I would be in one of those lines.

I imagine that when God invited all the excluded to be included in His Kingdom with full benefits that there was an equal amount of enthusiasm. The house of God was being opened to everyone, regardless of race, creed, nationality, political preference, financial status, or physical disability. The weak, the hurting, the guilty, and the untouchable would have equal access to the altar of God. Their hopelessness would be replaced with joy.

Joy. In case you were wondering about the tangents I was taking, that’s where I was going. JOY! That inner peace and contentment of knowing that regardless of our circumstances or feelings, our Sovereign God is working out His eternal purpose independent of us, yet beneficial to us. JOY! That inexpressible quality that supersedes the feeling of happiness because it is not based on what is happening but rather on what has happened when we were welcomed into the House of God. JOY! It is “peace dancing in our lives.” (F.B. Meyer)

But here’s the hard part – at least it’s hard from the standpoint of maintaining the dedication needed to experiencing joy. God connects joy with prayer. Outsiders will be granted joy not just by having access to the House of God, but to the house of prayer. God declares that His house will be a house of prayer. That’s the vaccine. If we want to be inoculated against hopelessness and despair, we must be determined to pray. If we will avoid the downfalls of discouragement, we must pray. If we are to overcome the deepening feelings of fear based on the political and social condition of the world, we must pray. Prayer is the vaccine against all the diseases of the heart and mind that destroy joy.

But in our minds we debate the need for prayer. We turn to our own remedies first. We consider the risks of prayer and let them influence us: risks like time commitment that will affect our schedule of events, or the hurtful words of others who will accuse us of being overly spiritual when they see the power of God being lived out in our lives. So powerful are those arguments in the hands of our enemy that we dare to even consider not being inoculated. We even ask why joy is really all that big of a deal. Really?

Today, I cry out to my Lord – “Inoculate Me!” In response, God says “Come into my clinic. You will recognize it by the sign out front. It says, House of Prayer.”

Pastor John

Connecting Points

Thursday, January 05, 2012

Today’s Topic: Identify Me!

Today’s Text:  Isaiah 56:4-5 For this is what the LORD says: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant—⁵to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.

Who am I?

That question plagues people. We have tried to answer it in a variety of humanistic ways, none of which has succeeded nor satisfies. We may think that educational success will identify us as a genius. We may believe that advancement in the work sector will identify us as professionals. We have been led to believe that financial security identifies us as successful. We try to be humorous believing that will identify us as popular. We labor intensely to become accepted by others so that we might identify ourselves as worthy. We spend hours developing our skill at a sport so that we might be identified as a hero. We have granted permission to people and to our performance to identify us as valuable.

That, my friend, is why our lives are broken. But God has a wonderful plan for the restoration of broken lives. It is pictured in Isaiah 56 as God proclaims His promises to the broken down nation of Israel.

• First we are changed in verses 1-2 (https://lifelinkdevo.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/humanistic-faith/).
• Then we are included in verse 3 (https://lifelinkdevo.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/include-me/).
• Then we are given an identity in verses 4-5

Here’s some background information. God is speaking directly to eunuchs. A eunuch was a slave or captive that had been castrated for two primary reasons. First, it would make them less manly, thereby making them more manageable servants. Second, it would keep them from ever procreating and becoming a threat.

The practice was so detestable to God that there were laws implements in the Jewish nation concerning it. The law excluded eunuchs from public worship, partly because mutilation was often performed in honor of a heathen god, and partly because a maimed creature of any sort was deemed unfit for the service of Yahweh. Yet during the reign of the kings of Israel there were eunuchs in the nation that served in the palace. However, no eunuch was ever able to worship in the temple, nor were they allowed to own land or inherit property. They had no identity with the nation in which they served.

It is to these men of no importance or identity that God comes in Isaiah 56 and says, “I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.” WOW! That overwhelms me. Not only does God give these broken down men a name, but He elevates them to a position that is better than a son or a daughter. He gives them an eternal identity that will never be cut off (Note the play on words).

Doesn’t that restore your hope? Can you now see what grace does? No matter how broken your life; no matter how mutilated your name is; no matter how cut off you seem to be from the rest of humanity; God will give you an eternal identity.

No longer will you have to depend on people or performance to identify you. No longer will you need to ask the question, “Who am I?” Let God tell you who you are. And if you want to know who God says you are if you are in Christ, check out these links –

• http://www.sw-mins.org/identity.html
• http://www.persevering.org/perceiv.html
• http://www.ficm.org/index.php?command=textwhoamiinchrist

Pastor John

Connecting Points

Thursday, January 05, 2012

Today’s Topic: Include Me!

Today’s Text:  Isaiah 56:3 Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely exclude me from his people.” And let not any eunuch complain, “I am only a dry tree.”

My story is not unique. It’s painful for me, just as yours is for you, and it is a pain that must be resolved because ultimately it’s a lie. The pain comes from the belief that we never fit in. That pain is magnified by combining it with circumstances that we choose to validate the feeling. My circumstances easily validated my pain. I never had a town that I called home. I never had a friendship that lasted more than 5 years because we moved that often. Every time we moved I had to try to fit into a new culture and social context. I chose to believe that I was unaccepted and worthy of it. I chose strange behaviors to compensate, which only made it worse. My wife can verify the reality of my self-destructive behavior. I really believed I didn’t fit in.

We long for someone to accept us. We crave being included. We fear being told we are not welcome. It is so powerful in us that we begin to perceive every word and action of others as a statement of their unwillingness to make us their equal. It becomes a destructive thought pattern.

God knows that about us. When He created Adam and Eve He perfectly accepted them. But then the Enemy of God and of all God created entered the scene and convinced those first two humans that God didn’t really accept them because He was holding out on them. There was something He didn’t want them to know, and if that was true then they weren’t fully accepted. They believed the lie, and we do too. We believe it about our friends. We believe it about our family. We believe it about our boss or our co-workers. We even believe it about our church family and our pastor. Pastors even believe it about their congregations. We believe that we don’t fit in and will never really be accepted.

In the days of Isaiah, God was declaring that when the salvation of God appears and His righteousness is revealed, all the people of the world could find a place of acceptance. It would not matter if someone was a foreigner or a slave, they would be given an equal place in the Kingdom. Acceptance in God’s Kingdom would not be based on one’s nationality, one’s gender, one’s abilities, or one’s heritage, but rather on one’s acceptance of God’s covenant.

If you are feeling like you don’t fit in anywhere, then the truth of Isaiah 56 is for you. It is time to stop living your life as a response to a lie, and time to start living in response to God’s love. If you read the following Scripture carefully and honestly, you just may discover, as I have, the great truth of God’s grace – we are accepted. When we cry out to God and say, “Include me!”, He does. Hallelujah.

Isaiah 56:3-8 (NLT)

“And my blessings are for Gentiles, too, when they commit themselves to the LORD. Do not let them think that I consider them second-class citizens. And my blessings are also for the eunuchs. They are as much mine as anyone else. ⁴For I say this to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath days holy, who choose to do what pleases me and commit their lives to me: ⁵I will give them—in my house, within my walls—a memorial and a name far greater than the honor they would have received by having sons and daughters. For the name I give them is an everlasting one. It will never disappear! ⁶“I will also bless the Gentiles who commit themselves to the LORD and serve him and love his name, who worship him and do not desecrate the Sabbath day of rest, and who have accepted his covenant. ⁷I will bring them also to my holy mountain of Jerusalem and will fill them with joy in my house of prayer. I will accept their burnt offerings and sacrifices, because my Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations. ⁸For the Sovereign LORD, who brings back the outcasts of Israel, says: I will bring others, too, besides my people Israel.”

Pastor John

Connecting Points

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Today’s Topic: Change Me!

Today’s Text:  Isaiah 56:1 “This is what the LORD says: “Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed.”

I saw it again. I saw a lot of it. I didn’t like seeing it. Seeing it in others made me realize how much of it is in me as well, and that scares me. It will change me. I pray that it will change in others also, but that is not really up to me. I must participate with God to change me. I desire to be less humanistic about my faith.

Vacations are good for a lot of reasons, but for me the greatest benefit to a trip away from normal life is that the Lord gets more of my attention. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. Busyness with all our stuff and our agendas is one of the symptoms of the disease that has invaded our spiritual lives. We know the symptoms exist, and we can even identify them, but we are in denial about the disease that causes them. The disease is humanism.

That’s right, we Christians, who are to be followers of Christ, are much of the time followers of self. We have chosen a humanistic approach to life, to goals, to success, to decision-making, to everything, and then to attempt to satisfy the longing of our soul we have wrongly added what we call faith in God to it all. We have made a religious choice that we think complements our humanistic choices, when we should be destroying all dependence upon the flesh and living continually in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

What do we think Jesus meant when He said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life  will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?

Deny yourself. Lose your life. Those are the things that mark a follower. But for some reason we have assumed a right of leadership not granted by God. We have arrogantly and probably ignorantly decided to ask God to fulfill our wishes and desires. We have become the leader of God rather than the follower of Christ.

What we don’t understand is that God will not be led. Instead, He lets us go ahead, but all on our own. Oh, He never forsakes us, and never really leaves us, but He stops listening to our demands for what we want. He stops providing fixes for our failures. In His jealous love for us He allows us to fall on our humanistic faces so we are in the proper position to pick up a cross.

But even when we are on our faces, we tend to justify how we got there, and we develop plans for how we are going to get up. We make resolutions to save more, spend less, eat less, and exercise more. We make commitments to watch television less, study more, pray more, and sin less. But far too often those resolutions are prescriptions we choose to take to relieve the symptoms when we have done nothing to cure the disease.

The only cure for the disease of humanism is death. Now before you get carried away and jump to a conclusion not intended, I am speaking in spiritual terms. The right to self-government of our lives must die. The right to fleshly fulfillment must die. The right to social success must die. The right to financial security must die. In other words, the right to our own rights must die.

Only in death can there be life. We have done our best to try to prove that wrong. We have tried to add life to death. We have attempted to bring eternal life into the context of our humanism and call it salvation, which denies the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. How can we know His resurrection power if we do not die? But we have tried, and we are in denial of how badly it is turning out. To admit it doesn’t work is to admit human failure and to de-value our lives, neither of which is acceptable to modern man’s philosophy of self-worth.

But it is only at the point of death to self that the life of Jesus can be experienced. Many of you know that, and have lived that way. But maybe we have lost or minimized our first love for God’s incredible grace. We have, whether in a few or in many areas, replaced it with love for humanistic pursuits. I know I have. It must change.

Today begins a new adventure of denial of self. I will need help from God. I want help from you. When I am guilty of exalting self rather than denying self, tell me. Do it with love and a humble heart that recognizes that you may be doing the same thing in some area of your life. Together we will die to self and be transformed by the renewing of our minds so we can prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. (Romans 12:1-2)

Pastor John