Where God's love is there is no fear, because God's perfect love drives out fear. 1 John 4:15
We fear rejection, so we follow the crowd.
We fear no fitting in, so we take the drugs.
For fear of standing out, we wear what everyone else wears.
For fear of blending in, we wear what no one else wears.
For fear of sleeping alone, we sleep with anyone.
For fear of not being loved, we search for love in all the wrong places.
But God flushes those fears.
Those saturated in God's love don't sell out to win the love of others.
They don't even sell out to win the love of God.
Do you think you need to? Do you think, If I cuss less, pray more, drink less, study more... if I try harder, God will love me more? Sniff and smell Satan's stench behind those words.
We all need improvement, but we don't need to wood God's love.
We change because we already have God's love.
God's perfect love.
Originally printed in Come Thirsty by Max Lucado
Friday, May 2, 2008
Saturated in Love
Monday, April 28, 2008
Thump-Thud, Thump-Thud
The character of a person is also checked by thumping.
Been thumped lately?
Late-night phone calls. Grouchy teacher. Grumpy moms. Burnt meals. Flat tires. You’ve-got-to-be-kidding deadlines. Those are thumps. Thumps are those irritating inconveniences that trigger the worst in us. They catch us off guard. Flat-footed. They aren’t big enough to be crises, but if you get enough of them, watch out! Traffic jams. Long lines. Empty mailboxes. Dirty clothes on the floor. Even as I write this, I’m being thumped. Because of interruptions, it has taken me almost two hours to write these two paragraphs. Thump. Thump. Thump.
How do I respond? Do I sing, or do I thud?
Jesus said that out of the nature of the heart a man speaks (Luke 6:45). There’s nothing like a good thump to reveal the nature of a heart. The true character of a person is seen not in momentary heroics but in the thump-packed humdrum of day-to-day living.
If you have a tendency to thud more than you sing, take heart.
There is hope for us “thudders”:
Begin by thanking God for thumps. I don’t mean a half-hearted thank-you. I mean a rejoicing, jumping-for-joy thank-you from the bottom of your heart (James 1:2). Chances are that God is doing the thumping. And he’s doing it for your own good. So every thump is a reminder that God is molding you (Hebrews 12:5-8).
Learn from each thump. Face up to the fact that you are not “thump-proof.” You are going to be tested from now on. You might as well learn from the thumps—you can’t avoid them. Look upon each inconvenience as an opportunity to develop patience and persistence. Each thump will help you or hurt you, depending on how you use it.
Be aware of “thump-slump” times. Know your pressure periods. For me, Mondays are infamous for causing thump-slumps. Fridays can be just as bad. For all of us, there are times during the week when we can anticipate an unusual amount of thumping. The best way to handle thump-slump times? Head on. Bolster yourself with extra prayer, and don’t give up.
Remember no thump is disastrous. All thumps work for good if we are loving and obeying God.
From On the Anvil:
Stories On Being Shaped Into God’s Image
This is a new edition of Max’s first book.
It contains an updated forward, written by him, as well as thoughtful questions for each chapter.
© (Tyndale House, 1985, 2008) Max Lucado
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
He Gives Us Himself
“I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:20 NIV
The story is told of a man on an African safari deep in the jungle. The guide before him had a machete and was whacking away the tall weeds and thick underbrush. The traveler, wearied and hot, asked in frustration, “Where are we? Do you know where you are taking me? Where is the path?” The seasoned guide stopped and looked back at the man and replied, “I am the path.”
We ask the same questions, don’t we? We ask God, “Where are you taking me? Where is the path?” And he, like the guide, doesn’t tell us. Oh, he may give us a hint or two, but that’s all. If he did, would we understand? Would we comprehend our location? No, like the traveler, we are unacquainted with this jungle.
So rather than give us an answer, Jesus gives us himself.
Originally printed in Traveling Light by Max Lucado
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Is This All There Is?
We feel the frustration I felt on Christmas morning, 1964. I assembled a nine-year-old’s dream gift: a genuine Santa Fe Railroad miniature train set, complete with battery-powered engine and flashing crossing lights. I placed the locomotive on the tracks and watched in sheer glee as three pounds of pure steel wound its way across my bedroom floor. Around and around and around and . . . around . . . and around . . . After some time I picked it up and turned it the other direction. It went around and around and around . . .
“Mom, what else did you get me for Christmas?”Similarly, our lives chug in long ovals, one lap after another.
First job. Promotion. Wedding day. Nursery beds. Kids. Grandkids. Around and around . . . Is there anything else? Our dissatisfaction mates with disappointment and gives birth to some unruly children: drunkenness, power plays, eighty-hour workweeks, nosedives into sexual perversions—all nothing more than poorly disguised longings for Eden. We long to restore what Adam lost. As someone once said, “The man who knocks on the door of a brothel is seeking God.”
Where and when the brothel fails, Jesus steps forth with a reconnection invitation. Though we be “dead in [our] transgressions and sins (Eph. 2:1) and separated from the life of God (Eph. 4:18), whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God (I John 5:1). Reborn! This is not a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan—this rebirth comes from God.” (John 1:13.)Don’t miss the invisible, inward miracle triggered by belief. God reinstates us to Garden-of-Eden status. What Adam and Eve did, we now do! The flagship family walked with God; we can too. They heard his voice; so can we. They were naked and unashamed; we can be transparent and unafraid. No more running or hiding.
“Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now!” (1 Pet. 1:3–4 MSG).
Monday, August 13, 2007
The God Who Listens to You
The God Who Listens to You
You’re at your best friend’s wedding reception. The two of you have talked about this day since you were kids, and now it’s here. The ceremony was great; the wedding was beautiful. The minister was flawless and the vows were honest. What a day!
“I’ll take care of the reception,” you volunteered. You planned the best party possible. You hired the band, rented the hall, catered the meal, decorated the room, and asked your Aunt Bertha to bake the cake. Now the band is playing and the guests are milling, but Aunt Bertha is nowhere to be seen.
Everything is here but the cake. You sneak over to the pay phone and dial her number. She’s been taking a nap. She thought the wedding was next week. Oh boy! Now what do you do? Talk about a problem! Everything is here but the cake…
Sound familiar?
It might. It’s exactly the dilemma Jesus’ mother, Mary, was facing. The wedding was moving. The guests were celebrating…but the wine was gone. Back then, wine was to a wedding what cake is to a wedding today. Can you imagine a wedding without cake? They couldn’t imagine a wedding without wine. To offer wine was to show respect to your guests. Not to offer wine at a wedding was an insult.
What Mary faced was a social problem. A foul-up. A snafu. A calamity on the common scale. No need to call 911, but no way to sweep the embarrassment under the rug, either.
When you think about it, most of the problems we face are of the same caliber. Seldom do we have to deal with dilemmas of national scale or world conflict. Seldom do our crises rock the Richter scale. Usually, the waves we ride are made by pebbles, not boulders. We’re late for a meeting. We leave something at the office. A coworker forgets a report. Mail gets lost. Traffic gets snarled. The waves rocking our lives are not life threatening yet. But they can be. A poor response to a simple problem can
light a fuse. What begins as a snowflake can snowball into an avalanche unless proper care is taken.
For that reason you might want to note how Mary reacted. Her solution poses a practical plan for untangling life’s knots. “They have no more wine,” she told Jesus (John 2:3). That’s it. That’s all she said. She didn’t go ballistic. She simply assessed the problem and gave it to Christ.
“A problem well stated is a problem half solved,” John Dewey said. Mary would have liked that, for that’s what she did. She defined the problem.
She could have exploded: “Why didn’t you plan better? There’s not enough wine! Whose fault is this anyway? You guys never do anything right. If anything is to be done right around here I have to do it myself!”
Or she could have imploded: “This is my fault, I failed. I’m to blame. I deserve it. If only I’d majored in culinary art. I’m a failure in life. Go ahead; do the world a favor. Tie me up and march me to the gallows. I deserve it.”
It’s so easy to focus on everything but the solution. Mary didn’t do that. She simply looked at the knot, assessed it, and took it to the right person. “I’ve got one here I can’t untie, Jesus.”
“When all the wine was gone Jesus’ mother said to him, ‘They have no more wine’” (John 2:3).
Please note, she took the problem to Jesus before she took it to anyone else. A friend told me about a tense deacons’ meeting he attended. Apparently there was more agitation than agreement, and after a lengthy discussion, someone suggested, “Why don’t we pray about it?” to which another questioned, “Has it come to that?”
What causes us to think of prayer as the last option rather than the first? I can think of two reasons: feelings of independence and feelings of insignificance.
Sometimes we’re independent. We begin to think we are big enough to solve our own
problems. At our house we have had a banner year. Our third daughter has learned how to swim. That means that three can walk. Three can swim. And two out of the three have the training wheels off their bikes. With each achievement they have delightedly pointed out, “Look, Dad, I can do it on my own.”
Denalyn and I have applauded and celebrated each accomplishment our daughters have made. Their maturity and mobility is good and necessary, but I hope they never get to the point where they are too grown up to call their daddy.
God feels the same way about us.
Other times we don’t feel independent; we feel insignificant. We think, “Sure, Mary can take her problems to Jesus. She’s his mother. He doesn’t want to hear my problems. Besides, he’s got famine and the Mafia to deal with. I don’t want to trouble him with my messes.”
If that is your thought, may I share with you a favorite verse of mine? I like it so much I wrote it on the first page of my Bible. “Because he delights in me, he saved me” (Ps. 18:19).
And you thought he saved you because of your decency. You thought he saved you because of your good works or good attitude or good looks. Sorry. If that were the case, your salvation would be lost when your voice went south or your works got weak. There are many reasons God saves you: to bring glory to himself, to appease his justice, to demonstrate his sovereignty. But one of the sweetest reasons God saved you is because he is fond of you. He likes having you around. He thinks you are the
best thing to come down the pike in quite awhile. “As a man rejoices over his new wife, so your God will rejoice over you.” (Isa. 62:5).
If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning. Whenever you want to talk, he’ll listen. He can live anywhere in the universe, and he chose your heart. And the Christmas gift he sent you in Bethlehem? Face it, friend. He’s crazy about you.
The last thing you should worry about is being a nuisance to God. All you need to concentrate on is doing what he tells you to do. Note the sequence of events in the next verse: “Jesus said to the servants, ‘fill the jars with water.’ So they filled the jars to the top. The he said to them, ‘Now take some out and give it to the master of the feast.’ So they took the water to the master. When he tasted it, the
water had become wine” (John 2:7-9).
Did you see the sequence? First the jars were filled with water. Then Jesus instructed the servants to take the water (not the wine) to the master.
Now, if I’m a servant, I don’t want to do that. How is that going to solve the problem? And what is the master going to say when I give him a cup of water? But these servants either had enough naivete or trust to do what or trust to do what Jesus said, and so the problem was solved. Note, the water became wine after they had obeyed, not before.
What if the servants had refused? What if they had said, “No way”? Or, to bring the pint closer to home, what if you refuse? What if you identify the problem, take it to Jesus, and then refuse to do what he says?
That’s possible. After all, God is asking you to take some pretty gutsy steps. Money is tight, but he still asks you to give. You’ve been offended, but he asks you to forgive your offender. Someone else blew the assignment, but he still asks you to be patient. You can’t see God’s face, but he still asks you to pray.
Not commands for the faint of faith. But then again, he wouldn’t ask you to do it if he thought you couldn’t. So go ahead. Next time you face a common calamity, follow the example of Mary at the wineless wedding:
Identify the problem. (You’ll half-solve it.)
Present it to Jesus. (He’s happy to help.)
Do what he says. (No matter how crazy.)
And buy your Aunt Bertha a new calendar.
