My opened eyes and ears

Matthew 13.16-17
But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. (ESV)

How often and easily I forget how blessed I am! The words Jesus spoke to his disciples was in response to their question why he taught using parables -- allegories whose meaning was so obscured to human minds that even Jesus' closest disciples had to ask for explanation. Jesus used the question to show the disciples that they were recipients of God's undeserved favor. Unlike so many contemporaries and ancestors, they saw Jesus, the promised Savior who had been foretold for thousands of years! They even understood Jesus' teaching and were able to apply it, but only because God had acted on them to open the spiritual eyes and ears they had willfully shut!

Today, I was having a renewed struggle with myself, reflexively and angrily defending my ability (pretty near perfect, I'd say!) in the face of criticism. I am nowhere near perfect. Only my God and Savior can claim that. But when I am facing a challenge, my human nature wants to rise up with pride in my accomplishments. Of course, when that fails, that same pride is broken and I feel crushed.

What foolishness! When I read God's word like the passage above, I am at once laid low in utter humility and lifted up by confidence in the God who did not leave me in my self-sufficient, prideful rejection of him. My God became like me, but he succeeded in all the ways I have failed. Then he took on himself the death that was the penalty for my rebellion and credited his perfection to my account!

Lord Jesus, by your Spirit, help me to live in your life, not the dead ways from which you have rescued me. Remind me again and again of your perfection that you earned for me and my rottenness from which you ransomed me. Teach me to love others and accept humbly their criticism, because I know I am guilty of far worse than anything they can accuse me of, and because I know that in my weakness your strength shines more brightly.

Marva's life

Philippians 1.20-21
I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. (NIV)

Marva is whole and well again today, but not the way we had hoped and prayed for the last 10 years she lived with cancer. My temptation is to be disappointed that God did not act to heal her body -- I imagine how thankful we would have been, how amazed the doctors would have been, and wonder what could God have been thinking?!

But for Marva, to live was Christ. She bore her suffering and pain without complaining, because she was constantly reminded that that her strength did not come from her body but from the Spirit of God living in her. She knew that the worst disease she would ever face had already been cured. In his death on the cross, Jesus broke the hold that sin had on her. And in his resurrection from death, Jesus showed that the cure was complete and permanent.

Marva did not die yesterday. She died to sin and to this world the day she became a Christian, trusting in Jesus Christ's death on her behalf. Yesterday, when the doctors pronounced her dead, Marva became truly alive for all eternity at her Savior's side, to love and worship him without pain and without ceasing.

My Lord and my God, be exalted in my body whether by life or by death, as you have exalted yourself in Marva's life on Earth and her entry to eternal life with you!

Carry me!

Romans 8.10-11
But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (ESV)

I am so thankful for the words that pointed me freshly to the truth in Scriptures like this one. I was driving to work, alive to all outward appearances, when I realized I was listening to my theme song:

Carry me!
I'm just a dead man
lying on the carpet
can't find a heart beat.
Make me breathe!
I wanna be a new man
tired of the old one
off with the old plan

That morning I had been feeling especially dead -- mentally, physically, and spiritually -- until I found myself singing along with the chorus, tears in my eyes. I pray that God will continue to send me (and you!) encouragement like this. It still seems strange to me that being reminded of my inability to do anything good should be anything but depressing. I guess it's all just a part of the topsy-turvy (to our human eyes) Kingdom Jesus preached about.

The world (OK, American can-do culture) tels me I can do anything I want to, that I just need to find my inner strength, that my attitude is everything. The trouble is that even if they're pretty much right, I still wouldn't be able to do anything worthwhile on my own, outside of the precious grace Jesus Christ has bought and secured for my by his death and resurrection! So, I'm so glad that I am frequently reminded of my total inadequacy. It drives me to God, who alone can bring good out of my life that he created, purchased, and rightfully owns.

So, Lord my God, carry me! Make me breathe! You are the only One who can sustain the new man who you have planted in the old man's body.



Dead Man, by Jars of Clay, is on their Good Monsters album.