Safety and Risk

As I've gotten older, I recognized more my propensity toward safe bets and sure things.  Words like "let's just stay in tonight, honey" or "I'm not sure I can commit to that with my schedule being as busy as it is" to some might appear like healthy boundaries and balance.  But as these words become the default and the norm, they become symptomatic to a greater issue...the illusion of personal safety.

Today, as I'm entering back into a new semester, the chapel speaker focused in on Numbers 13.  As he unpacked the report from the spies as they came back from the land which the LORD promised, I recognize the same default of safety.  "Let's stay in tonight, Moses" and "I'm not sure I can commit to that considering the size differential" become their words.  Their safety lie in milk and honey.  Their safety lie in predictable circumstances of slavery in Egypt.  Their safety was not found in the LORD Himself. 

For the past three semesters, and thirty-some-odd years, I have built for myself safe houses.  Conversations centered on course work and theological abstractions.  Relationships consisting of casual exchanges and one another's basic needs.  A cup of sugar from a neighbor here, help with a tough translation there, advice about future ministry placement anywhere but little which asks me to step outside of my doorway or extend a hand from an open window.  I want to answer the phone without a glance at the caller ID but what if it's so and so?  I want to initiate a conversation with a stranger who appears lost or lonely but how much investment will it ask of me?  I want to risk but I want to risk to be on my terms.

My prayer is that the LORD would continue to remind me of His promises to provide, His providing the means toward the promise and His being the only way in which the promises were fulfilled.  The land was promised.  The enemy's defeat was promised.  Caleb, who took the risk to speak against the safe-seekers, remembered the ways of the LORD.  May I take the risk do the same.  Step out of comfortable places into uncharted lands within the shelter of the LORD.

Co-habitating with the Gospel

Those drives home from church are fairly typical. You talk through the sermon discussing those finer points of the message that you can sprinkle through your week like "love my kids more," "spend more time in devotions" or "doing more to serve those in need." But all of these mores usually disintegrate Monday morning on the drive to work. Today though, our drive home was different. The more I talked, the more passionate I became. The pastor today was talking about the explosive power of the Gospel and how regardless of whether the response is positive or negative, the explosion prompts a response. For some its fear, for some its joy and for some its opposition. I was thinking about fence-sitters like myself who find themselves often not responding as quickly or as strongly to the Gospel as I'd hope. And I was prompted to mind a modern-day metaphor to the "luke-warmedness" we read about in Revelation. It may sound strange but the reality is this: you cannot co-habitate with the Gospel. Either you're all in or you're all out.

Co-habitation involves reaping the benefits of marriage without the commitment of marriage. Its a lifestyle that has become more and more commonplace. It's a fence-sitting situation. Some might argue that it is about testing the waters of a relationship but the more I counsel people who participate in this lifestyle the more I see it being primarily a commitment issue. Basically, "I'll take the fruit of relationship without a commitment of caring for the tree."

The reality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that He asks for our lives by laying down His own first. By communicating to us, He's all in and inviting us to the same. "Take up a cross because I am fully committed to you." The Gospel reality, Christ's unfailing and unwavering commitment to us, has the potential to explode in us a response of "I do! I will! I'm yours!" I pray that God would move me out of a mindset and lifestyle where I reap the fruits of forgiveness without remembering the tree on which He hung. May the Gospel explode in my life and cause me to respond with utter joy and full devotion.

Protection from Exposure

I was spending some time this morning reflecting on a familiar passage - Psalm 121. "I lift my eyes to the mountains from where does my help come from?" And what specifically came to light today was my understanding of God as Protector. Often when I would read this Psalm I would find myself confused by the question "How in the world can the moon do any harm to us?" I get how the sun can harm or smite us but when we're out enjoying the light of the full moon, we're not dousing ourselves with SPF 30. The moon cannot do any harm to us unless...unless we're in hiding.

Darkness has the ability to protect us from being seen or discovered. Hiding keeps us in the darkness from an enemy pursuing us. Or hiding keeps our sin from the exposing light of God's truth and holiness. In the garden the first response to the enemy and to the sin was to cover up not only skin but our location as well. God asks the question "where are you?" knowing we are taking flight from Him seeing us in our true condition. The moon has just as much the ability as the sun to expose us to our enemies and reveal our sin. Day or night, our sin and our state as enemies of God has the potential to be exposed. Enter God as protector. We were his enemies. He protected us from himself through the covering of His Son Jesus' blood, from the judgment which was ours to deserve for ignoring Him and walking rebelliously away from Him.

Therefore we can say with confidence "The LORD will protect our comings and our goings both now and forevermore" because we are saved from God's wrath by God's covering for God's glory. No longer afraid of exposure, because we are shaded by His Son.