I Could Not Bring Myself to Write It

A Storyblocks Image

Malachi 3: 16-18:  

“¹⁶Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.

^“17They will be mine,” says the Lord Almighty, “in the day when I make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him. ¹⁶And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.” (NIV)

I sat down this morning to write judgement on certain people who lead us on a path of destruction. Matthew quotes Jesus about them in his Gospel in the 24^th chapter, verse 4 and again in verses 10-11. I cannot even quote it. I cannot write the judgement. I am weak and I fear. I’m well aware of the hypocrisy strewn about within my person and I know that to write it is to bring the judgement upon myself. Even to think it now and avert my fingers from the task brings a level of conviction I can scarcely stand.

See how the font follows my line of thought? I love to write posts in Comic Sans because it has style and there is some part of me that enjoys the whimsy of using a font with such a name. I cannot do it here. Someone must pay.

I confess to praying judgement. I have a young friend I made at VBS who should be entering her middle school years carefree; free to be creative and funny, smart and witty, cute and sassy. She carries the burden of abuse. I’m pissed off that I didn’t see it happening and have castigated myself that I allowed it. I’ve prayed for judgement on the perpetrators and know that it will not rest upon solely one person. I remember Jesus quote in Luke 17: 1-3.

I confess to praying judgement when I read my own daughter’s ‘Me Too’ Facebook post. I railed at whomever it could have been. It was by the thinnest of margins that I held back from trashing the office where I sit to write this. I wanted my own hands round their necks, my own fists to pummel the ba-jesus out of them. I feared that I could have contributed in any way.

I am powerless in this but for one thing. Rereading our Men’s Group scripture from this past Wednesday, I was looking for one thing but found something else. A bit of hope. Some direction. And so it sits atop my post as the only scripture I’ve quoted though I’ve referred to a couple of others.

The children have it right. They gather in protest as victims of this latest mass shooting and they have it right, correct in thinking they must speak out so we’ll listen. The children brought to our country in the arms of their parents who thought it was an adventure, a trip to a better life, only to live in fear have it right and must speak up so we will listen.

And those of us who fear the Lord must listen to the children and talk with each other. The Lord will listen too. If we fear the Lord and honor his name, he will listen as we talk and wisdom will be found and we will be his.

And those who ‘listen’ and offer one thing to the children in exchange for their own hateful desires? Well, look back at Luke 17.

In fear and trembling at my own weakness but forever in His grip, 

jerry

Decisions, Decisions; the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Apostles cast lots to determine the replacement for Judas...

Decisions, decisions; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let me fix something right up front that I couldn’t bring myself to do in the title. There’s the Right Stuff. It’s the decision we need to make every time if it’s there for us to make.

The ugly decision is the easiest one to describe. We make them all of the time and yet they should be the easiest ones to avoid. We know the pending action is a sin or is bad for us and we make it anyway. We drink ourselves to drunkenness or we take those office supplies. We drive under rage screaming at the doofus words we’d never utter anywhere near the front steps to the church. We smoke anyway, we flirt and carry it too far, or deny our faith. We tell our children, our spouses, our friends, pastors, and ourselves lies. And sometimes we boast about the ugly decisions we made while in certain company.

These are the classic sins, the deadly sins of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Why do we sometimes brag about them? Why do we make the decision to sin like this at all? I’m hoping by the end of this post I’ll shed some light on it. That’s what I’m trying to do here, figure it out by writing it out and end up with a little better grasp of the issue to get myself to the right stuff more often.

The bad decision does not necessarily lead to the commission of a sin. Sometimes it is just a stupid mistake we’ve made like telling ourselves we have plenty of time to step off the curb and jog-walk across the street as the signal turns yellow - surely the car speeding along the boulevard will stop for the yellow even as he accelerates. When we wake up and see the worry etched on the EMT’s face is when we accept that we’ve made a bad decision and we were just plain stooopid.

Wait a minute though. What led us to that decision? If we did a little root cause analysis we’d probably see a little seasoning of deadly sins mixed in our recipe for the bad decision. At least pride and sloth. If we make enough bad decisions they become habit. It we don’t learn from close calls, near calamities, and I-told-you-so moments, they could become deadly. And that would be wrong.

The good decision. Ah, some relief here. We’re Christians and we make plenty of good decisions like when we decide to record our favorite team and go church anyway even though we aren’t up front that morning and all the while we pray nobody says anything about the Saints’ game as if nobody has their handheld device out to watch scores for their fantasy football team. That gets us every time, doesn’t it? Still, it was the good option; who can control what’s said at the ‘party’ between services in the breezeway?

Good can be a subjective determination and in the process of decision making it’s usually made in our own mind and hopefully confirmed by others later. The big question I’m wrestling with is what makes a good decision the right decision?

Some of you may be tired of hearing about Mission Arizona when I talk about stuff. Sorry about that but for more than a quarter of a century I’ve made decisions around that yearly event and it’s something most of my friends who’ll read this are familiar with. I’ve been asked many times if I’ll be going on the upcoming MAZ. My response has been the same and now it will be true about the CASA trip replacing it. I tell them, and try to convince myself, that I’m a year to year contract with God on my involvement, just like Walter Alston was with the Dodgers. I give it careful thought and prayer and I’m trying to make the right decision which by my definition will include the right motivations. You should see what trips me up in that last sentence. It’s not ‘my definition’ that does it; it’s ‘right motivations’.

Over the years I’ve decided to go or not to go that, to me, have clearly been the Holy Spirit telling me to go while at other times it’s been habit and felt right, or it was the right thing but I was unhappy with it, or it was more me than the Holy Spirit saying to stay home but I’d convinced myself it was the spirit. There were a couple of times where I truly felt it would have been fine with God either way to go or not to go.

What’s a boy to do here? What’s the key? Waiting on the Lord. Learning His voice over your own and waiting on Him to decide. It seems that this would be simple for the event or occurrence that’s a year out, or even next week. It is not; it’s hard work separating our own desires to get down the kernel of truth that makes a right decision. It seems that it would be terribly difficult to wait on God to determine if you should cross a street or for that matter, if you should raise your hand and volunteer to serve for the request being made right then, right in front of you. It doesn’t have to be. Set yourself to walk the right path for the day, reinforce it by prayer when you awake, strengthen it with communication with Jesus through the day and when the time comes he will make it known to us.

Jesus lived this way, only doing what the Father told him, showed him. When Jesus leaned over and picked the kernel of wheat, shucked it and had a snack, the Father had shown him it was right even though the Pharisees were there to condemn the act. We can live like this. We are told we can do all that Jesus did and more. It’s a tall order, getting ourselves out of the way, and letting the Spirit lead. But it’s doable.

  

In His grip,

jerry