Current historic events

Days before the war began in Israel, the book of Esther began to pull at my heart. Little did I know how modern the threat of Jewish annihilation would feel or how visual Haman’s plot would become. Immersed in Esther, it seemed to me that the appalling violence was 2500 years in the making, fulfilling a long-delayed scheme.  

Whenever current struggles or current events converge with what I’m currently studying, I embrace God’s Word as sovereignly meeting me in that moment with necessary truth and perspective.  So, through the filter of 500 B.C., I pray with hope for this tragedy in 2023:

God of Jacob, 

When rage, drunkenness, racism, and sexism, control politics, 

I trust that you’re still on your throne.  

Esther 1:10-22; 5:9-13

You change history through those who refuse to comply. 

Give courage.

Esther 1:12; 3:2; 4:16

You alter the trajectory through insignificant “coincidences”. 

Align each moment.

Esther 6 

You elevate the underdog. 

Raise leaders.

Esther 8

You turn mourning to joy when you intervene. 

Spare the suffering.

Esther 8:16-17; 9:20-28

You preserve the legacy of the ones who stand for the welfare of humanity. 

Reverse these events.

Esther 10:3

May it be so.

“The Lord of Heaven’s Armies is here among us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” Psalm 46:7

A resource for the committed

On Necessary Endings, by Dr. Henry Cloud

I love green lights. The difference between arriving 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late hinges on traffic signals, and, when not even a brake tap gets in my way, there’s a sense of satisfaction for my perfectly-timed excursion. I must have done something right; I got all the greens!

Yellow lights, though, send me into quick, calculated arguments. Does this really mean I’ll have to stop? Can I accelerate? Can I just cross the white line before the light turns red?  Whenever I cruise through the yellow, I glance with pity at the car in the rearview mirror that failed to make it and has no choice but to stop. 

To keep driving like this could be disastrous, and it’s most definitely disastrous if it’s the way I progress through life itself.

But we are much more accustomed to noticing and interpreting road signs on our daily commute than we are to looking out for warning signs along our life's journey. I think it’s because if we heed the yellows to stop at the red, we experience a sense of failure, instead of commitment. Stopping is certainly failure to continue as before, but stopping is also commitment to follow the signals and recognize them as good. When the light changes, the real failure is to ignore it.

Dr. Cloud sheds light on how to follow the signs toward the end of a job, relationship, or any previous commitment and how to see endings as an essential step toward true and healthy progress in life.

“Make the concept of endings a normal occurance and a normal part of business and life, so you expect and look for them instead of seeing them as a problem.” 

-Dr. Henry Cloud, Necessary Endings

Tenacity and commitment - traits praised for their ability to keep going, stay, and persevere - are also traits that enable a stop, a departure, or a pivot.  Sometimes, you’ll need these traits even more for the red light than you needed them for the green.  

A resource for the restless

On Starting Something New, by Beth Booram

Uncertain. Analytical. Restless.

That’s not exactly how I imagined I would feel when a dream signaled its presence. 

The box I put dreams into was labeled: big picture thinking, dramatic visions for life, and clouds with silver linings. Spurred on by the wind in their sails, dreams always gave quick answers for a ten-year plan and the resources (real or imagined) to match. Dreams lived at a pace that was unstoppable and had sticky note stacks to prove that their ideas wouldn’t be topped. 

If that’s what dreams were, there were none in my box. Although I had interests, desires, skills, gifts, hobbies, frustrations, responsibilities, convictions, and burdens, those didn’t seem like ingredients for any specific dream recipe.  

Dreams, in my mind, were imposters, brushed off with a smirk and without a second thought. 

What a joke. 

Dreams were subject to quick dismissal, like a puppy wandering into my backyard. 

You’re cute, but you belong to someone else. 

Dreams also risked failure, and that didn’t sound necessary - or dreamy. 

I think I’ll pass.

I had it all wrong, and I almost missed out.

“I have a growing sense that many people live with creative, Spirit-inspired ideas stirring inside them, but have little to no clue (and sometimes courage) how to pay attention to and nurture those dreams.”

-Beth A. Booram, Starting Something New

It’s always difficult to summarize a book in which I’ve highlighted paragraph after paragraph, so I’ll confine my takeaways to the words of the title:

Starting: Beginnings are usually small. Small things are fragile and easily ignored or crushed, but if they’re nourished little by little, they may grow into an oak tree.

Something: It’s hard to explain. A dream begins more like a longing than a defined goal. 

New: One step brings you to the next, which leads to the next, and that’s how God takes you where you’ve never been before. “Way leads to way”.

If you’re restlessly trying to discern God’s prompting in your heart, try Starting Something New.

Two books for your road trip, roadblock, or rough road ahead

On The Red Sea Rules & The Jordan River Rules, by Robert J. Morgan

I was living in a high rise apartment in a Brazilian city of 1.5 million people when I took the plunge into The Red Sea Rules; I was settled in suburbia surrounded by corn fields in the state of Indiana when I dove into The Jordan River Rules.  A decade of time and a continent of space separated the two occasions, and, from the outside, the surroundings couldn’t have been more distinct from one another. But, on the inside, I was asking the same questions:

Did we take a wrong turn? Will we make it through?

Brazil was definitively foreign, presenting monumental hurdles I’d never faced before, but Indiana felt unexpectedly foreign, challenging lessons I thought I’d already passed.  Although I knew God had called us, that was my only anchor in the uncertainty of following Him in each place. 

Robert J. Morgan’s books are short and simply written, perhaps intentionally approachable for the one who feels overwhelmed by life’s twists and turns. Morgan follows the storyline and draws out principles from Israel’s most historic moment crossing the Red Sea and then from their lesser-known journey through the Jordan River. 

Both books highlight ten “rules” about walking by faith, and #6 in each list was clarifying for me. One translates faith into small movements forward, and the other points to the expectation that each step forward carries with it:

Red Sea Rule #6: When unsure, just take the next logical step by faith.

Jordan River Rule # 6: Prepare today for tomorrow’s wonders.

Physical moves happen to play a major role in my particular walk of faith, but tests of faith are never really about the apparent obstacle; they’re about the faith beneath the surface. Whether your faith is being challenged by a catastrophic impasse (Red Sea), or you’re surprised by the challenge of a secondary barrier in a new phase of life (Jordan River), Morgan’s "rules" can bridge the gap by building your faith.  

The Conclusion, 1 John 5:11-21

You know the feeling when you’re not really sure how to bring everything you’ve been saying to the finish line so you can stop talking? You’ve made all the points you were hoping to make, and you find yourself in a mental scramble to reach the conclusion. For me, that attempt often sounds like mumbled phrases, disconnected from the main points, and it comes out as, “So… yeah… that’s what I’m thinking”. 

1 John ends exactly opposite of that. Instead of slowly trailing off into the sunset, it’s more like approaching a mountain summit, only to realize that as the end comes into sight, it demands greater focus. The final stretch includes the toughest hurdles. Confidence in answered prayers, sin leading to death, and avoiding idolatry are major themes, jutting out like jagged rocks at the peak of this conclusion. Let’s navigate them briefly.

Since God hears our individual prayers, we have confidence that if we’ve asked for something He has promised, like eternal life through His Son, He will give it to us (2:25; 3:23; 4:9; 5:11,12). Assurance that He answered this foundational prayer allows for certainty that God will answer other requests; doubts about God giving eternal life will break down confidence that He’ll respond to any additional prayers.  

Have I experienced uncertainty in prayer because I doubt whether God responded to my request for eternal life?

We’ve already learned in 1 John that we can pray confidently if we’re living obediently (3:21,22), and now we learn that we can pray confidently if we’re asking submissively, deferring to God’s will being done (5:14,15). There is mystery in prayer, but if our lives and requests align with God’s will, we will have what we’ve asked for if it is God’s will. Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane is the primary example I cling to when I long for something in prayer.  Although Jesus aligned perfectly with God’s will, His request to be spared suffering the Father’s judgment against sin, was not God’s will (Matthew 26:39). Even Jesus had a desire which God didn’t grant, but that does not mean it was wrong to have that desire or that it was wrong to ask for it. He ultimately asked for the Father’s will above His own desire, and in this way, His prayer was answered. 

Have I been too afraid to pray because I’ll doubt God if my desire is not His will?

Have I been too afraid to put my desire in a secondary position to God’s will, because I imagine that my will would turn out better than His will?  

As an extension of living life in fellowship with God, we live in relationship to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Members in God’s family share a proximity like members of a body, called to be lovingly concerned for each other’s well-being and prayerfully aware of the other’s struggles. Physical sickness and spiritual wandering are both cases where believers in the church body are to come alongside in prayer (James 5:13-20). Before we get caught up in defining “sin leading to death”, we ask ourselves a bigger-picture question: 

Do I have close enough relationships that others can recognize and pray about sin in my life? 

Sin can cause two kinds of death: physical and/or spiritual. Spiritual death is a result of denying who Jesus is, and it’s evident in a lifestyle of disobedience and a perpetual lack of love (1 John 2:3, 3:14, 5:11,12,18). True believers in Christ cannot commit sin that indicates or leads to spiritual death, as taught in 1 John and elsewhere (John 10:28; Ephesians 1:13,14, 4:30; 2 Corinthians 1:22).

Physical death exists in the world because of sin’s presence in it (Romans 5:12). Scripture does include occasional cases where believers were disciplined by God for the severity of their sin through sickness or premature physical death (note the reasons for discipline in Acts 5:1-10 & 1 Corinthians 11:28-32). Not all physical suffering is because of a specific sin, but, as difficult as it may be for us to understand, sometimes this is how God corrects His child. 

Sin in our lives as believers disrupts fellowship with God and limits the power of Jesus’ life flowing through us, like pressure on a garden hose slows the supply of life for the plants. When we pray for our brother or sister whose life is hindered because of “sin not leading to death”, our desire is that their repentance would allow them to fully experience the life God offers. The kind of life God promises is abundant life in Christ (1 John 1:3,4,7,9; John 10:10), so we pray for and expect God to give what He promises.

Do I pray for my brothers and sisters in Christ to experience abundant life in Him?

My prayer for you as we conclude 1 John, is that since Jesus is the true God and eternal life, you would run from whatever threatens to become a substitute god or a substitute life. As you do, may you fully experience your eternal life, filled with God’s light and His love in real life.

So… yeah… that’s what I’m thinking.