wesley was right.

[6 minutes]

Do all the good you can,

by all the means you can,

in all the ways you can,

in all the places you can,

at all the times you can,

to all the people you can,

as long as ever you can.

John Wesley

Years ago the New York Times ran a feature asking for people to share their Thanksgiving (horror) stories. There were a number of funny anecdotes along with the disaster stories, but in the mix came one tragic comment from somebody who called themselves “Sad Person”:

My Holiday horror story is that every year I am reminded that my family doesn’t want me and I don’t have any friends. I wish the world wouldn’t stop for eight weeks every year and I could just be in peace.

There were a good many responses to “Sad Person” but I thought this one captured the gist of my post today:

A note to sad person. What you say about your family may be true, but I certainly hope not. However, remember, if you want a friend you have to also be a friend to someone, too. It’s not a one-way street. Be kind to someone who is lonely, do a good deed for someone in need, do volunteer work at a hospital/charity, and smile at everyone you meet. You will make people feel very special and you will feel wonderful for doing it.

I got the idea for today’s blog piece from a recent rereading of Galatians. In chapter 6, Paul appeals to a congregation of tired, irritated, even selfish believers who had lost the plot. He even said, “Y’all got me SMH” (Gal 4:20). This whole section, from verse one on, could fall under the title: “CHURCH IS HARD” or “SAINTHOOD IS EXHAUSTING.”

People sin and break your heart. They can drag you down with their drama and be a royal burden. You and I can be a piece of work also, let’s not forget. The flesh is loud and whiny and arrogant and is always trying to kill you when you’re not looking. It won’t ever shut up, or let up, or give up. The struggle is real. Saints don’t happen overnight (Gal 4:19).

good advice

So, given all that, just do all the good you can to anyone and everyone as you have opportunity. Don’t complicate things. Don’t overanalyze. Don’t overthink it. Just do good (v10). You’ve got shortcomings, I’ve got shortcomings; we’re not going to have everything figured out. Just. Do. Good. In the name of Jesus. Don’t withhold it because you don’t think they deserve it (newsflash: you don’t either!). Do good anyway.

There’s so much drama, yes. On the daily there’s a never-ending pile of (pardon the French) doo-doo we have to deal with all the time. “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble,” Jesus said. True to all of that, but that means there’s never-ending possibilities to do good, to make someone’s day, to punch holes in the darkness, to right wrongs, to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

Sainting is hard. Loving is hard. Bearing one another’s burdens is hard. Bearing our own loads is hard. Fighting the flesh is hard. Getting up and being motivated to face another day is hard. But we do it for Jesus. We are kind for Jesus. We are patient with others for Jesus. We fight what we’d like to say for Jesus. We fight airing our grievances for Jesus. We fight jerking a knot in somebody’s tail for Jesus. We overcome evil with good…for Jesus.

There are some I’ve had to halt praying imprecatory prayers for because God told me “I want you to pray good for them. Leave that other stuff to me.” So I pray good on their day. I ask God to bless them. I pray for opportunities to serve them in little ways. What I can’t do is be around them because that’s not good for my mental and spiritual health, but the good I can do is to pray good for them…and leave the other stuff to God to work out. Lord knows I fail, but I’m starting to fail a little bit less these days.

due season

Another motivation to “do all the good we can” is that, one day, there’s going to be a reaping (v9). And the reaping is going to be epic. It’s going to be so good. “Every ounce of Christian suffering will be compensated for with millions of years of rest, and still more besides. This suffering will be merely a blip on the radar of an eternity of peace, a grain of sand compared to the global beaches of God’s comfort in the world to come” (Jared C. Wilson).

So keep doing good even if the only good you can do right now is to smile at someone or finally finish that chore you promised or pay for the person’s coffee behind you in the drive-thru line. Or text someone you’re on the outs with and just say, “I’m sorry. I love you.”

Hey brother- (or sister-) -in-Christ:

“You were running well”…..now you’re just going through the motions

You were “standing”……now you’re bowing in defeat

You were “walking in the Spirit”……now you’re wasting away in inertia.

You were “doing good”…..now you’re questioning whether your good is doing any good at all.

Anne Lamott tells of a friend who told her “‘I’m not suicidal, but sometimes I wish I was dead.’ This is the point beyond exhaustion, when you can’t see how you’ll ever fill up again. And then she does, through what she calls lunch-money faith: nothing dramatic, and just enough.”

Perhaps you don’t have the emotional currency right now to invest in something that will cost you dearly, but you have just enough coin in your pocket to buy someone a cup of cold water in Jesus’s name. Lunch-money faith, right? Your level of faith right now has you in the shallow end of the pool when you can distinctly remember a time when you swam in the deep end. It’s okay. You can make a splash there too.

Wesley was right. Do all the good you can, etc. But if “all the good you can” is only enough to fill a thimble, offer that thimble up to God and ask him to bless it, then give it to somebody in Jesus name. Then ask for him to give you a cup for next time. I hear Jesus really enjoys a cup of cold water now and again.

Selah, beloved.

i am a green olive tree

[7 minutes]

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.

Psalm 52:8

David wrote this only one chapter removed from his confession to God when a broken, sinful man. The chapters aren’t chronological, of course, but their arrangement seems to be — for me at least — by design.

Looking back over the arc of our lives, we can dredge up seasons when we wondered if we’d ever get past our failures. In other seasons, we’ve known the inestimable joy of intimacy with God we never wanted to end. Hello sanctification.

In Psalm 51 David is the guilty man. In Psalm 52 he is gutted by the crimes of another man — Doeg the Edomite. Doeg brazenly murdered 85 innocent people in cold blood. The slaughtered were priests, together with their wives and children. Their crime? They gave David sanctuary when he was on the run from King Saul. David was beside himself with fury.

“How dare you, Doeg! You will face the wrath of a just God, you dog! You think you’re a big man, all high and mighty, plotting my demise. But it is you who will go down. Me? I’m a green olive tree in God’s house, big boy. You, on the other hand, are kindling for the lake of fire.”

No doubt David was reeling from the news of the priests of Nob and their families. It wasn’t enough for the vile Edomite to kill the priests, he massacred their families too. They died because they all stood with David!

Talk about survivor’s guilt.

selah

In the middle of this painful psalm is a Selah. It’s a strange place for a Selah, sure, but David tacks one on.

You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking about what is right. Selah

(v3)

Selah.

Catch your breath.

Gather your wits.

Get quiet.

Be still.

John Andrew Bryant has battled mental illness his entire life. His brain never turns off; it is always noisy in there. His affliction is a daily surrender and his dependence upon God for the healing of his mind is evident in his words. John describes finding a “foothold” in those especially stormy times when his brain is firing in all directions.

“What I have in Christ is the simple, painful renunciation of the urges created by my brain, the ability to say no to desires and compulsions that will not just go away. I wish it was more. But that is all it’s been: a foothold in the storm of thought and feelings…that foothold, that boat, that kernel, is not a place where I do something to be okay. It is a place where I don’t. That patient, quiet understanding is the place where I stand with Christ and don’t do anything to make things right or win or be okay. It is the place where I don’t fix, the place where I don’t defend myself, the place where I don’t figure things out, and the place where I don’t know for sure. The place where it is somehow possible to not engage those compulsions. The place I stand with Christ and endure what it feels like to not do those things. The place where I’ve learned to stand with Christ by being quiet.”
A Quiet Mind To Suffer With, p17-18

That is David’s Selah here in the 52nd Psalm. He reminds himself with that Selah that however much evil swirls about him, he is not its victim. He must not surrender to it. Lady Macbeth told her husband to “screw his courage to the sticking place,” and this appears to be what David – albeit righteously – was telling himself to do.

I am tempted to substitute the name Jesus where I see a Selah in scripture. I don’t think it breaks any rules, personally.

My heart is broken. Jesus.

I’m hanging on by a thread. Jesus.

Lord, I don’t understand. Jesus.

My only hope is you. Jesus.

This too shall pass. Jesus.

Once upon a time, twelve men sat for an important gospel meal. The scene was humming with observable tension as it was the last Passover in which Jesus would take part. While he was speaking, John, we are told, leaned against his Messiah’s breast. Although the atmosphere was charged, the beloved disciple anchored himself to the Rock.

Think of Selah, then, as pressing into Jesus. Selah, where you don’t fix or defend or try to figure out. You listen. You wait. You trust. You are still.

Like a tree.

a green olive tree

David imagines himself in verse 8 as a tree, but not just any tree. He is God’s tree, a temple tree. He was a well-manicured olive tree, not some scrub tree out in the wild. His roots were resolutely screwed into the sticking place of holy soil.

David, consummate lover of nature, appreciated the beautiful trees in Jerusalem. Adorning the temple grounds, no doubt, were flowering olive trees whose aroma misted the air. He knew they provided the oil for worship in the holy place and said “I’m one of those trees.”

Before I’m anything, I’m a worshipper of God. The Lord made me to love him and enjoy him forever. Doegs and Sauls and Goliaths come and go, but I’m rooted in the faithfulness of God.

The thing about olive trees: they are capable of surviving the worst that life can dish out. There’s an olive tree in Crete that is close to 3,000 years old. Believe me, it’s seen some stuff. Paul was shipwrecked by a horrible storm that drove him into the sands of Crete in Acts 27. That tree is still producing olives today.

I’m one of those trees. I’m precious to God. He is invested in protecting me, so I will not be defeated by those who wish ill upon me. The times I’m living in will not get the best of me. I’m living in the Land of Selah.

Let that cruel dog Doeg and his ilk be who they are, they won’t affect me. They can choose evil but I will stay planted here in the garden of the Lord.

What are you going through right now, beloved? What’s got your goat? Who’s oppressing you? That hard thing in your life may be a person, it may be a condition, it may be a situation. Your hardship hurts even more because it’s out of your control and it’s not letting up. I get it.

Step back like David did and see the bigger picture. See a Land called Selah. Can you see it? Now look closer and see a City in that Land called Peace. Picture yourself there, planted in its soil, loved and cherished and protected by God. You may not think so, but you are thriving. It may feel like you’re losing, but God sees olives in you.

Let them cancel you. Let the situation play out. Ignore the lying voices inside your head. Screw your courage to the sticking place and hang your hope on the sure peg of Selah. Hollywood is going to be what it is. Politicians will be who they are. The world and its pleasures are passing away; let them go the way of the dust. Stand your ground, Olive Tree. It’s okay. He’s got this. He’s got you. You’re safe. Just be still, stay rooted, and “trust in his unfailing love” (v8).

Selah, beloved. Jesus.

who told you?

“Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

Genesis 3:11

[7 minutes]

There is a crisis of information today. No, not the lack of it, because, as we all well know, there are no limits to where we can find whatever we’re looking for whenever we need it. Alexa, how long does it take to boil an egg in the microwave? Hey Siri, what was the primary reason for the downfall of the Roman Empire?

Our appetite for knowledge is appeased through Google, ChatGPT, X, Apple News, Wikipedia, YouTube, Waze, Food Network, Zillow, and a thousand other sources as close to us as our devices. We are glutted with real-time data from every direction.

Suffering from the tyranny of FOMO, we bathe ourselves in digital light, robotically taking in whatever it feeds us — good or bad — for hours on end. Like junkies, our habit is fixed by mainlining content that is killing our souls. The Matrix is changing us from being made in God’s image to beings who slither around on our bellies like snakes.

In the beginning, God was the only source of information. So when the Lord asked Adam, “Who told you?” the latter had to sheepishly admit to going off-script and getting hoodwinked by misinformation.

It all falls apart in Genesis 3. The First Man on planet earth had barely gotten his feet under him before he believed the lie and, tragically, became the lie itself.

who told you God can’t be trusted?

The sin underneath all our sins is to trust the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ.
—Martin Luther

Thanks to the Original Couple, we have embedded inside us the default mechanism to accuse God of being spartanly unfair or cruel. It’s a constant battle for many to quell the urge to instinctively blame God for their misfortunes.

I find it telling that the first book in our Bibles — chronologically, that is — is not Genesis, but Job. Of course Adam and Eve walked the earth long before he did, but Job preceded the writer of Genesis by a long shot. If we can trust the dating of Job, and I believe we can, then it asks the oldest question of all: If God is so good then why do I hurt so badly?

Now you can see why Moses opened the canon with Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. Each of those first five books provides a master class for people who have a background of suffering and struggling to “not go there” when they are tempted to believe the lie that God cannot be trusted:

This is God. This is who he is. This is how he is to be worshiped. This is how he is to be trusted. Yes, bad things happen. We know this all too well! But God is not the villain in our story; he is fighting for us and faithfully planning our blessed future.”

Job fought that same urge and won. Moses had to do battle against the devil’s lie in Midian no doubt, but he overcame and led the people of Israel to leave Egypt and overcome in the wilderness. Those who didn’t make it were those who never got the taste of Egypt’s fruit out of their mouths.

One of my daily follows on X (Twitter) posted this recently and I thought it captured quite well the common struggle of mankind:

What good is the apple when one bite makes your life a living hell?

who told you God made you inferior?

In the first page of Holy writ we are told that humans are made in God’s image, in His likeness. By page two, Adam and Eve are no longer satisfied with that and looking for an upgrade.

The present culture has bullied impressionable minds to think they are not enough. Social media influencers, cultural icons, and even medical professionals have convinced an entire generation they are born wrong, look wrong, or believe wrong.

None of it is new. The satan has been using the same tactics to mar the imago dei in us since the beginning. He laughs at our gullibility. He loves to see us stripped of glory and dressed in fig leaves.

Babies are blobs of cells.

Children are an inconvenience.

Old people are a nuisance.

All men are misogynists.

Women are sex objects.

Gender is fluid.

Fathers aren’t necessary.

Families are a capitalistic construct.

We love our labels. Many of our labels serve no other purpose but to depersonalize others and erase the imago dei from their beingness. And the devil laughs.

who told you God was finished with you?

Did you think your shame defined you?

Did you think it was over for you?

Did you think you were beyond saving?

Adam and Eve were painfully aware they were now defective. The shine wore off. The original pair were like those brand new cars you drive off the lot that depreciate immediately.

This is why humans “cover” themselves with things that hide their weaknesses.

We become defensive.

We have learned how to hide our wounds to avoid the proper remedy.

We become deceptive.

We have learned to lie and, by so doing, have become the lie itself.

We become destructive.

We will burn down the whole house before admitting we are wrong and coming home.

From that point, once the die is cast, Adam and Eve no longer see the supernatural. They can’t see God, they can only hear him coming. Their souls weren’t the only thing that went dark; their eyes went dark too.

But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10

But God, in grace, made sure they knew his approach. We are told the very first words after the Fall were spoken by God:

“Where are you?”

He came seeking us. There’s grace in those words! Where are you? They imply they were somewhere they should not be but they still mattered enough for God to come looking for them. It’s the same for every human since.

You’ve messed up but you’re not irredeemable.

Your situation is not the end of the story.

We can’t hide too long without having to come out and face the music. It will catch up with us. We will eventually be outed. Better to come forward than die in the dark.

In Christ, we are not pursued like wanted criminals, but like wanted children, or like wanted lovers, because wrath is replaced by desire.
— Rachel Gilson

Don’t allow the voices and narratives of culture shape who you are. It’s fake news. Some of it has just enough truth to make it sound authentic, but it’s still a lie.

Beloved, God is not done with you. Wherever you’re hiding, whatever you’re trying to cover yourself up with to impersonate the imago dei, just stop. You may not see him, but he sees you.

I’m willing to bet you’re hearing his approach in these words. Why are you here? Who told you these lies? Come out, come back, come home. He’s calling you back to truer things than you’ll ever hear out there.

Selah, beloved.