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.

the rock that is higher than i

*The Dolomites*, Photography by Sergio Anotoni

From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed:
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
Psalm 61:2, KJV

[5 minutes]

This time 43 years ago I was meditating on these very words. For days on end I agonized over how they’d become my lived experience.

My “end of the earth” was a college campus in Chattanooga, Tennessee and I was an “overwhelmed” college kid. My desperation owed to the fact I couldn’t find any reason to go on if something didn’t change. My miserable world ran late for an appointment with a giant fork in the road. Meanwhile, there I was, stuck in a mud hole on the side of the road.

Quite suddenly, from nowhere, this verse hit my ear drums like a percussive bomb. Everything shook and shifted. I memorized it. I quoted it. I gnawed on it. I wept over it. I fell asleep with it muttering on my lips. I visited it in my dreams.

It now strikes me as odd that in all of the decades of preaching, I’ve used that scripture as the main text of a sermon perhaps once or twice. And yet, it remains the sun in my existential solar system.

The climb

If you pray that God will move your mountain and he doesn’t, assume Christ wants you to climb it instead and see him transfigured.
— Beth Moore

Sometimes we see a mountain and pray that it gets moved. Other times we see one and say — in the spirit of 85-year old Caleb — “Take me there, Lord.” My weary heart was done with ‘making mud-pies in a slum.’* I was now after the Rock that was higher than i.

Since then, I’ve been tempted by lesser things, settled for them, repented of them, and raised my eyes again and again to that blessed Mount. I’m still climbing, thanks be to God.

Almost twenty years ago (I remember it well because it was my last hospitalization for pressure sores), a family friend told me she couldn’t shake an image of me from her mind. In that hard season I was as depressed in spirit as a body could be, fighting yet another pressure wound and facing more weeks and months of hospitalization. When the woman asked if she might share an encouraging word, I was only too happy to listen.

I see you as a mountain goat winding around a tall mountain on steady feet. I’m struck by how the feet stay planted even though the path is treacherous. And every time you go around the mountain, you go higher. The way is never easy, but as you keep moving, you keep climbing, climbing, ever higher.

Think what you will about visions and mental pictures, but I must say I found it gripping. She hadn’t known about Psalm 61 and its impact on my life, so the image had me transfixed, even more so because of its peculiar timing. My situation was redolent of a frightened Gideon hiding out in the wine-press, told by the Angel he was a mighty man of valor. A sure-footed mountain goat conquering the craggy cliffs? Me? Hospital-bed me?

Moving stones

The timing of God, beloved, is impeccable. Of course it seemed a bit too “peccable” for Mary and Martha when Jesus finally showed up for their departed brother’s funeral. Our Lord was only fashionably late, turns out. It seems the will of the Almighty was to let things play out. By doing so, our Lord showed them his heart (“Jesus wept”) and his awesome power.

Lazarus’s resurrection suddenly planted the idea in their heads that there was no obstacle greater than God’s power! Sickness? Come on, small potatoes. Quieting a storm? Childs play. Walking on water? He could do that in his sleep! But death? Even worse, a fourth-day-body-is-ripe-by-now death? Now we’re talking.

Let the reader understand: there’s nothing quite like a good old-fashioned resurrection to keep you climbing just to see what else God has in store. I needed a resurrection while I languished — overwhelmed — on that bed of misery…and God gave me one. He set my feet on a Rock, praise his Name. I’ve been the beneficiary of a thousand and one mercies and so have you. You’ve seen God do things that took your breath away, things that put you flat on your face in worship. So have I.

My sister told me once upon a time she wanted to see me reach heights that few have ever reached. There are countless others who have gone a fair sight higher than I can imagine for myself. By the grace of God, and with his help to give me sure feet, I’m going to keep climbing. I’m tired of pebbles and stones. I want the Rock that is higher than i.

Selah, beloved. Onward and upward!

_________________________________________

*Full quote by C. S. Lewis, “We do not want too much, but too little. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (The Weight of Glory)

put down your sword

[5 minutes]

Sandy and I had an argument on the way home from church recently. I know what you’re thinking: ‘What did she do now?’ Now, now. In her defense all she did was tell me something completely innocent and I responded in an argumentative way.

To bring you up to speed: I’m tired of waiting for a breakthrough. I keep thinking I could nudge it along by just taking the bull by the horns. Because I felt that Sandy was being much too passive (a better person than I would say gracious), I *might* have deposited my two cents’ worth about not doing the situation any favors by letting it fester. On the Lord’s Day, no less.

Question: Have you ever thought the Almighty needed a little extra help on being a better God and you just so happened to be the right person for the job?

No? Just me?

If there’s a Complaint Dept. in heaven, I’m sure I get the collective eye roll when my name comes up on Caller ID. My prickly side keeps showing up and I can’t seem to stop myself from butting my head against the concrete wall in front of me. Fortunately, there’s a Bible verse for pretty much any wall you’re butting up against. And, since I’m so hard-headed, the Lord saw fit to give me a pair of them the day after I reacted poorly to Sandy.

Aside: I’m pretty sure Jesus keeps certain scriptures holstered for me on just such occasions.

The first Bible verse with which the Lord got my attention is located near the end of Romans:

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
Rom. 15:4

Endurance.

What a powerful, necessary word.

Andrée Seu defines “endurance” as “faith with Nikes on.” William Barclay informs us that “endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.” That’s really good.

Paul is rounding out his letter with some holistic encouragement for the diverse gathering of saints in Rome. What’s most on his mind in those final strokes of his literary masterpiece? He tells them to endure. What’s even better, he lets them know in the very next verse (Rom 15:5) that God is a “God of endurance and encouragement.” IOW, we aren’t just counseled to endure, we’re told we get our endurance from God!

When we’ve been hit by the struggle bus, we are promised a bottomless pool of God’s grace from which to draw. Do you see how he puts “endurance” side-by-side with “encouragement” in verse 15? Write this down, beloved:

The Lord never calls us into any hardship without offering his comforting presence and strengthening grace in the midst of it.

Endure, Scott, Jesus told me. If you will trust my way and wait for all the pieces to fall together, you will see glory come from it.

I mentioned I have two scriptures to share with you. This one brought it all home for me.

And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?”

Matthew 26:51-54

Jesus’s rebuke of Peter in Gethsemane has more to do with recognizing a spirit of unbelief and rebellion in Peter rather than a righteous defense of an innocent victim. Jesus scolded Peter for trying to play the hero. For God! Such audacity! What nerve! Peter was clearly not happy with the turn of events, so he tried to rewrite the script (v54) all on his own.

Lord, deliver us — deliver me — from #SimonPeterSyndrome.

May we learn the lesson that trying to force God’s hand to move the process along never ends well. Such tactics, as Simon demonstrated, is not heroism, but a form of unbelief. Jesus had already prepared the Twelve three separate times that a night like this was going to happen. When God tells you what must take place, it isn’t up for discussion or a vote.

So, back to that unfortunate turn-of-events on the Sunday at hand. You’ve gotta know I pray over Sandy every day. There is a set prayer that I use, and I never deviate from the script I believe God prompted me to follow. It is very specific. Other prayers are added to it, depending on the day or situation, but the main prayers are ironclad. All of which makes this whole Sunday argument the stupidest thing on earth. I got mad at Sandy FOR DOING THE VERY THINGS I HAVE BEEN PRAYING FOR HER TO LIVE OUT.

Am I the just the dumbest?

I discovered something about that day I fussed at my wife. I learned while I’ve been surrendering ourselves to do and live God’s will in a very hard place, I’ve been holding a sword in my hand. This isn’t the way of Jesus.

When my Bible reading schedule took me to the Romans text, and then the Matthew passage, I heard Jesus, in no uncertain terms say: “Don’t you think I know what I’m doing and can handle matters without your help, thank you very much? Put your sword down.”

Lord, forgive me. Please. Deliver me from Simon Peter syndrome.

How will your will ever get done with me in the way?!?!?

Whew boy. Nailed once again by the Word of the Lord. This is getting to be a habit.

Put down your sword, whatever you’re up against. Endure in the hardship. And be encouraged. It’s a whole lot better — and less bloody — than lopping off ears.

Selah, beloved.