Bible Verses

A Love Renewed

I GOT the call at 3:00 A.M. My daughter was taking her one-year-old son, Justin, to the emergency room. His raging fever had turned to hysteria, and he was screaming uncontrollably.

As I raced to the hospital, my drowsy mind filled with fearful thoughts of dreaded childhood diseases.

I had regularly confronted such fears while raising my own children, and now I did so again with the first of my grandchildren. My love and concern for this little guy were so intense that I couldn’t imagine my feelings could be any stronger.

I finally pulled into the hospital parking lot and dashed inside. There stood my daughter, Justin draped over her shoulder like a worn-out rag doll.

He saw me and reached out for me. I lifted him onto my own shoulder. The smell of fever and heat from his little body brought tears to my eyes.

Antibiotics soothed Justin’s infected ears and restored calm to a frazzled family, but as I drove back home, I thought about the pain involved in loving anyone deeply.

I would gladly suffer for Justin, but would I allow him to suffer for anyone else? Never! My love for him is so great that I could never allow this.

As the streetlights sped by my window in the morning darkness, the words of John 3:16 came to mind: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. . . .”

These are the words children learn in their earliest Sunday school lessons. These are the words sin-sick sinners hear at Billy Graham’s crusades.

These are the words I myself have turned to for comfort so many times.

Millions of Christians can recite these words from memory, but has such familiarity bred indifference? Have we grown complacent about God’s revolutionary good news?

“For God so loved the world” is more than six words in a book. It’s an earthquake shaking our foundations. It’s a reminder that God loves us more than I love my grandson.

Such love is incomprehensible. It’s like a fish trying to grasp the concept of water.

But if we are willing to take an occasional break from life’s incessant busyness, words grown dull with familiarity can become living truths once again.

For me, it was an early morning drive to the hospital that renewed my spiritual passion. For you, perhaps something less dismaying can shed new light on old truths.

Thank you, God, for loving this world and everyone in it, including me. I don’t always understand such love, but helps me to experience it in my life.

Made In God’s Image

Our world is full of dozens of high-tech gadgets that are supposed to simplify our hectic lives.

It’s clear that cars are faster than chariots, and that microwave ovens cook more quickly than traditional ovens.

But have you ever tried to debug your computer when it goes haywire? Or have you ever tried to program your videocassette recorder to tape one of your favorite TV programs while you’re out of the house?

If you’re like me, you’ve had more than your share of frustrating moments with machines and appliances that don’t respond to foot stomping, grumbling, or frantic searches through owners’ manuals full of indecipherable mumbo jumbo.

One way to understand the purpose of the Bible is to see it as a divinely inspired owner’s manual for the operation and maintenance of human life. And while parts of the Bible are complex and hard to understand, passages like this one in Genesis are both straightforward and powerful.

Though the passage contains only thirty-two words, it delivers three important lessons: First, God is not a me but an us.

Our God is a union consisting of three persons: heavenly Father, Holy Spirit, and only begotten Son. For centuries theologians have called this concept the Trinity or the Godhead.

Second, when God created humanity he made us in his own image. As the first two chapters of Genesis show, God created everything that exists, and nothing exists that he did not create.

He gave all of these things his loving attention, but when it came to creating humanity, the Bible tells us that this was a special occasion. When God created us, he gave birth to something truly unique.

So what does it mean when the Bible says God created us in his image? For one thing, it means that humans are creative.

Some of us use our God-given creativity to make music, design Web pages, write love poems, or arrange flowers for others to see. Though some may forget it, this ability to create comes directly from God.

Third, God created humans in two distinct types: male and female. Although men and women are different, they are alike in many essential ways. In addition, God loves both sexes equally. There’s no gender superiority in creation.

Owner’s manuals may not help us understand how to work our VCRs, but God’s owner’s manual will help us understand who we are and how God intends us to live.

God, life often seems hectic and complex, and technology seems to make things even crazier. But I thank you for creating men and women as you did and for caring about us as much as you do.

Vanishing Fears

I can’t do this,” I whispered to the pastor leading the teams of people going out to share the gospel.

“Of course, you can,” he said in a matter-of-fact way.

He doesn’t get it, I thought. He doesn’t understand that I am really afraid to knock on the doors of perfect strangers and ask them about God.

I had been in a witnessing program at my church for several months and had overcome my initial fear of calling on church visitors.

These people were predisposed to talk about spiritual things. They had attended a worship service and signed a visitor’s card.

But now we were to go out and knock on doors in apartment buildings near the church and ask the residents to answer some questions about their belief in God.

“It isn’t you doing this anyway,” the pastor said to me. “You know it is the power of God in you.”

It sure didn’t feel like the power of God was anywhere near me as

I headed out the door with two visiting pastors. They were attending a training program at our church to see how laypeople could learn to share effectively their faith and lead others to Christ.

I didn’t reveal my misgivings to them but offered up a fervent, silent prayer for the courage I really couldn’t feel.

I agreed with Paul in Romans 1:16 when he said that he was not ashamed of the gospel.

I could also affirm that the gospel has the power to bring salvation to those who believe it. But it seemed impossible that I could express God’s power in any meaningful way.

No one answered our knocking at the first few doors, but then a middle-aged woman invited us in. She told us that she had attended church all of her life, so I was certain that we would have nothing new to share.

As I started to talk with her about her understanding of who Jesus is and what he did, my fear began to disappear. She was interested and eager to talk about a new faith that wasn’t based on her good deeds in order to please God.

An hour or so later she prayed and invited Jesus into her life. All of us—the woman, the two pastors, and I—were excited to be present when the power of the gospel transformed the thinking of this dear lady.

On another occasion, I was part of a group of Christians who went out on the beaches of Ft. Lauderdale to talk to college kids from all over the United States who had descended on South Florida for spring break.

I began talking with one young man who listened to me for a few minutes and then said, “You couldn’t possibly understand why I hate God.”

“Try me,” I responded.

He went on to tell me that his fiancee was killed the previous Christmas when a motorist drove up on a curb and ran over her.

It was amazing to me as I listened to him to think that, of all the people on the beach, God had led me to this young man.

I went on to tell him how my own husband had been killed just ten days before Christmas two years before.

He was very interested in how I could love God in spite of what happened. When we parted ways, he said he was willing to think more about God and pray that God would change him.

I witnessed so many encounters similar to these over the years where people’s hearts and minds were changed.

It was especially obvious to me that the power came from God and not any persuasive words from me. When God is at work, information one has learned in a classroom becomes infused with supernatural meaning. And anyone can be God’s tool of salvation!

Father, thank you that you choose to use us as vessels through which your Holy Spirit works.

Innocence In God’s Garden

BRITISH novelist and essayist C. S. Lewis once described the problem of runaway sexual appetites in his uniquely witty style:

Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theater by simply bringing a covered plate onto the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?

And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?

When God created Adam and Eve, he lavished special care on human sexuality.

Sex was to be the means by which humans reproduced—just as in the animal kingdom. But with humans, whom God created uniquely in his own image, there was more to sex than breeding.

In the divine drama, God designed sex as a means for a man and a woman to experience deeper intimacy with each other than would be possible in any other way. That’s why Adam and Eve were naked but unashamed.

Shame came later. By C. S. Lewis’s day, sex had become popular in stage shows, magazines, and movies.

Today, sexually explicit material is available on video, DVD, and the Internet, where people need only a computer, a modem, and a phone line to view images that would have been illegal or not readily available only a decade or two ago.

Are we better today in our so-called sexually liberated age than earlier generations of men and women? Lewis wouldn’t think so. Though God gave us our appetites, we must control them.

Without control, we become enslaved by our appetites. People enslaved by food are guilty of the biblical sin of gluttony and reap the consequences of obesity and health problems.

Those who are enslaved by sex are guilty of lust and find themselves among a growing number of sex addicts.

Lewis said: There is a story about a schoolboy who was asked what he thought God was like. He replied that, as far as he could make out, God was “the sort of person who is always snooping round to see if anyone is enjoying himself and then trying to stop it.”2

That’s not it at all. God’s no heavenly killjoy. He wants us to know the innocence and intimacy Adam and Eve knew in the Garden of Eden. He desires for us to know what it means to be naked and unashamed.

Father, thank you for the gift of sex. Help me to use it wisely.

The Benefit Of Trials

Ron and Cathy, dear friends of my daughter and her husband, just welcomed their fourth child into their family Colton was born about four weeks early, but all seemed well. For a while, that is.

A few hours after he was born, the trial began. A nurse expressed concern that Colton might have Down’s syndrome and the doctor ordered tests to confirm or deny her suspicions.

For three days, differing opinions from doctors and nurses held Ron and Cathy in the sway of emotions between fear and hope.

When the results came in, their dread became reality. Their pre-cious new baby did have Down’s.

“Consider it pure joy” seems a cruel command in the face of such pain. What can it mean?

I don’t think that God expects us to feel joyful when difficulties occur. Our natural and automatic response to the pain of trials is to feel sad or shocked, fearful, confused, disappointed, or a combination of these emotions.

But after some time has passed and understanding of the challenges we face has sunk in, then we may be able to step back and view our situation from God’s perspective.

Pain is still present, and we still entreat God to intervene in ways that make life right again. But we are willing to reflect on what James meant when he began his letter with this command.

One of the most comforting truths about our relationship with God is that he is with us. We do not face our trials alone but walk with the Creator of the universe, who can supernaturally change our perspective. Awareness of his presence can begin to move us from fear to godly peace.

Once we are aware of his presence, we find our belief strengthened. We do not demand that our circumstances change, but we believe that God’s love will infuse our sadness.

God’s touch will soften the blow we have endured and move us from questioning Why? to asking How?

Little Colton is six months old now and each day brings new challenges mixed with hopeful progress. Ron and Cathy explain their feelings this way:

“When we were given Colton’s diagnosis, of course, we went through the gamut of negative emotions: anger, grief, sadness, depression, fear, resentment, disbelief, and helplessness.

We cried out to God. ‘Lord we love you, how can you do this to our son?’ We accused God of being mean and cruel.

“But through all of our tears, God was faithful to whisper to us in his still, small voice. ‘I did this that I might be glorified.’ His Holy Spirit soon redirected our grief into faith.

Faith that He was in control. Faith that He loved Colton even more than we did. Faith that He can and indeed would heal our son.”

I know that many tears still fall and many tough times lie ahead for this family, but I know also that their faith prevails.

They have had little time to adjust to the shock of this baby’s condition and have moved from panic to awareness of God’s goodness.

They are learning how God wants them to live instead of focusing on why this happened.

Friends and pastors visit, people offer prayers, and God’s Spirit weaves mysteriously within Ron and Cathy and the family of faith who surround them. And joy surfaces.

Father, we are so grateful that your Spirit invades our lives and touches our most painful emotions with your peace. Help us to be receptive to your transforming presence.

The Doorway To The Heart

Perhaps one of God’s most amazing creations is the human mind.

This verse vividly declares how vulnerable the mind can be to temptations that turn its power in ungodly directions. What a person can imagine can impact his or her heart.

Our culture is full of lustful ploys that taunt and tease. Modest dress is an idea that seems provincial in a day and age when exposing a lot of skin is the norm. “Low-cut” and “short” describe many of the clothing options for women of all ages.

Why would Jesus consider lusting after a sexy woman on television or relishing a long look at an attractive woman walking down the street adultery in the heart?

I think it is because the mind, the heart, and the soul are connected. What we think impacts how we feel and that impacts how we act.

A mere glance can turn the wonder of sex as God intended it into a damaging force if the person glancing isn’t aware of the mind’s power.

People with good intentions can find themselves in the middle of illicit relationships and wonder how they got there.

How did something God wonderfully created become an instrument of pain, confusion, disappointment, and distrust? People don’t generally fall into sexually immoral situations easily.

There is a process that begins in the mind and ends in physical entanglement. The first part of that process is mental. When a man looks lustfully at a woman he has a choice to make.

Will he entertain that thought and keep that image in his mind, or will he replace it with a pure thought? If the lustful thought lingers, it can soon turn into an emotional attachment.

Thoughts can become feelings that have a powerful pull on him. He can become emotionally dependent on the woman without any physical touch.

And if the emotions grow, the man may finally express them to the woman. If she is vulnerable and chooses unwisely, a relationship may develop that leads to physical adultery, with all its damage, pain, and broken trust.

In the passage from Matthew, we can also see Jesus making it clear that he did not come to earth to do away with God’s law. If anything, he emphasized God’s law in new and even more demanding ways.

When Jesus told his disciples that there was more to lust than sexual behavior, he wasn’t downplaying the sinful destructiveness of adultery. Rather, he was showing that if we focus on sin when it has already been committed, we are starting too late.

Each of the acts prohibited in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) starts with an offense of the heart. Idolatry begins with a lack of faith in God and a desire to turn elsewhere for supernatural help.

Murder begins with anger. Robbery begins with greed and jealousy for other people’s possessions.

Jesus isn’t telling us to ignore sin. What he’s trying to do is get us to look within our hearts, examine our souls, and be sensitive to the roots of sinful attitudes that, if permitted to grow unhindered, will undoubtedly blossom into future sinful acts.

He’s also trying to challenge us to discipline our minds so that they think godly thoughts. For it is with our thoughts that we often sow the seeds of future sins.

Father, help me to clean out the roots of sin before they grow into sinful acts.

Life Is a Learning Adventure

A Young woman asked me to help her decide if she or her husband was right about an issue. Both were sure that God had told them the answer to their dilemma, but their “words from God” were different.

We talked and concluded that it is often difficult to be really clear about what God is saying. The way we see God is obscured, in part, because he doesn’t reveal all of himself to us this side of heaven.

The mirror 1 Corinthians 13:12 mentions would have been made of metal, probably bronze.

The people of New Testament times polished the metal until they could see their reflections, but even then they would have been blurry and discolored.

God tells us that we see him with the same lack of clarity that using such a mirror would produce. We are limited in our knowledge of him.

This reminds me of the early years of my marriage to Steve. We met, fell in love, spent lots of time together, and married after being pretty sure we knew each other very well.

As our day-to-day life unfolded, though, I was so often surprised at Steve’s reactions, responses, and ideas. I’m sure he felt the same way. We had seen each other as a poor reflection in a polished metal mirror.

Our marriage is not unusual. Couples learn new and wonderful (sometimes, not so wonderful) things about their mates for many years as they grow together.

And as they learn, they can enjoy each other more and more. Even now some of the new things we discover about each other after thirteen years of marriage still surprise us.

This continual revelation makes life an adventure.

Our adventure with God through the years reveals more and more about him also. We grow closer to him and understand more of his Word.

And then, when he comes back we will experience knowing him and being fully known. We will see God face-to-face. How amazing to contemplate that God is willing to reveal all of himself to us.

Sometimes when he seems distant or his Word seems hard to understand, it may be helpful to look with a long view to the time when the reflection of God that we see now will be crystal clear. Any confusion we have about who is hearing him more accurately will be gone.

In the meantime, we do the best we can to reason together, pray, seek counsel, and make decisions with open hearts toward one another—rather than debating who is right and who is wrong!

Father, we look forward to the day when we will be fully in your presence. Thank you for the glimpses now that give us a taste of the future.

Grace Or Cuilt?

How do you picture God? Loving or punishing? Forgiving or judgmental? Mark Twain was a leading humorist of his day, but he also had his dark, pessimistic side.

In one of his angry essays on religion, Twain described the biblical God as a malevolent monster who made people blind by poking out their eyes, made people deformed by making one leg shorter than the other, and then laughed about all the cruel hardships he had inflicted.

Painters have also added their unique visions to our perceptions of God.

Michelangelo’s The Creation of Man, a huge fresco that adorns the ceiling of Rome’s Sistine Chapel, shows God as a bearded, muscular elderly man who, surrounded by angels, extends his hand toward a reclining nude Adam.

Centuries later, William Blake’s work The Ancient of Days shows

God is a bearded, muscular young man who uses an engineering device to measure the world he is making.

From what did your image of God come?

If your earthly father was warm and loving, that may help you have a positive image of God. But for people who have suffered through parental abuse, picturing God as a loving heavenly father can often be difficult.

None of us will ever have a complete picture of God until we get to heaven. Even Moses, who had a direct encounter with God, never saw the Creator in all his glory.

In this life, the best way for us to gain an accurate picture of God is by studying the clues the Bible provides for us. And as the two verses in Deuteronomy show, this process isn’t always easy.

Before Moses left the people he had led for four decades, he once again explained the laws of God to them. It was during this instruction that he called God both “a consuming fire” and “a merciful God.”

How could both of these things be true? A review of the preceding books of the Bible repeatedly answers this question. When God’s people turned against him and his commands, his anger and judgment were fierce.

But when his people recognized the errors of their ways, repented, and returned to God in sincerity and submission, his grace and forgiveness knew no limits.

It’s the same for us today. It’s not God who is changing, it’s us.

God, you are both a consuming fire and a merciful father Help me live my life in such a way that it’s your mercy I see.

A Big Command From A Small Place

Steve and I were able to visit Israel before an eruption of violence almost stopped tourism to this fascinating country.

In ten days we traveled the length and breadth of that historic region, visiting most of the places where Jesus had lived and ministered.

We recalled Old Testament stories of David and his time in the Judean Desert as he fled from Saul, and we drove by Jericho near the land the Israelites claimed when they crossed the Jordan after wandering in the desert for forty years.

Jesus spoke the famous command of Matthew 28:19, which is known as the Great Commission, on a mountain in Galilee.

The Sea of Galilee is really a lake and the mountains surrounding it seem like large hills to this Colorado resident. But the surprising size didn’t di¬minish the impact of walking where Jesus walked.

The hillside was grass-covered and lush. Tropical bushes and flowers bloomed and the Sea of Galilee sparkled in the sunshine at the base of the hill.

While there I reflected that when Jesus spoke the words of the Great Commission in this same spot or a similar one nearby, he spoke only to the remaining eleven disciples.

I’ve often wondered if they could even begin to grasp the power he was bestowing on them to carry out this task. Their own world was small.

Israel today is only 256 miles north to south and 81 miles east to west, with a 143-mile coastline.

The disciples would have been primarily in the regions where Jesus ministered, and it wasn’t until after the persecution of the church (Acts 8) that other believers scattered from the communities in Israel where they lived.

As Steve and I traveled around in our tour bus I certainly understood that Jesus and the disciples had covered ground on foot.

But in light of the words of the Great Commission I was, and am, still amazed at the small number of people and the relatively puny geographic size of their country.

The Roman Empire completely dwarfed them, and yet they became the world’s most populous religion.

These men had none of the trappings of power that would be associated with world movements; no numbers, no wealth, no political influence, no prestige, and no troops.

All they had was their firsthand witness to the miracle of God incarnate and the promise of the Holy Spirit to come and reside in each of them.

The disciples of ancient Israel received this verse and obeyed it. And now we are a part of their heritage.

Father, thank you for the obedience of those eleven men who sat with Jesus on a hillside in Galilee. We marvel at what is still unfolding as a result of their faith. Help us to believe that even we can impact the world for Christ.

Passing The Buck

One warm spring day—when you would have rather been anywhere than in math class—your teacher looked you straight in the eyes and asked you where your assignment was.

You squirmed uncomfortably in your seat, ransacking your mental library for a plausible alibi, until you came up with the following excuse: “My dog ate it.”

You didn’t have a dog. And even more important, you didn’t have a finished assignment for an imaginary canine companion to consume.

Still, you offered up your lame excuse. And as you did so, you prayed to whatever God you could imagine that your teacher would not hear your heart beating like a bass drum or see the rivers of sweat rolling down your face.

“Well,” she said, “I expect you to do the assignment over and bring it in with you tomorrow.”

Twenty-five years later you found yourself on the hot seat again, only this time it was your boss demanding to see the quarterly sales report for the next day’s meeting.

For a split second, you considered resurrecting the dog excuse but thought better of it.

“I’m just waiting for a final number from our Hong Kong office,” you said, hoping your boss would believe you this time.

U.S. President Harry Truman had a handwritten sign on his desk that read: “The buck stops here.” But for many of us, passing the buck is more our style.

After all, passing the buck is a popular human pastime that traces its origins to the dawn of human history Adam, the first man God created, was also the first man to avoid taking responsibility for his failures.

After God created the earth, he told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden. “You must not touch it, or you will die,” said God (Gen. 2:17).

But the serpent tricked Eve into eating. Then Eve persuaded Adam to eat. This was the beginning of sin—a tragedy theologians call the fall of humanity.

When God asked Adam and Eve what had happened, they tried to fool the Creator of the cosmos with a flimsy con job.

“Eve gave it to me,” said Adam.

“The serpent deceived me,” said Eve.

Things might be much different today if Adam had said, “God, I confess. I messed up. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t, and he paid the price. So do we.

God, help me own up to my mistakes and apologize to those I may have hurt.

Help me take responsibility for my sin instead of endlessly passing the buck.