Month: May 2020

“Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:16-17)

There is a pretty widespread belief out there that Christians can’t and don’t have any fun. The typical picture of Christians is a group of people who live lives of do nots and go through each and every day like they are sucking on lemons.

But that perception is wrong and if there are Christians who live that way, they would be hard pressed to find Biblical evidence that justifies their lack of enjoyment. There is nothing in the Bible that suggests that God does not want us to enjoy our lives. If we read the Bible objectively, thoroughly, consistently, that is not the picture we will get. Jesus did not say “follow me and I will make you miserable, you will hate getting up in the morning, you will never laugh or have fun, and your entire existence will be being unhappy and I want you to make sure that those who know you are unhappy as well.”  I am pretty sure that is not what the Bible says and it is frustrating to see it interpreted that way. To put all the verses together in one verse, God actually tells that He will “give us life and give it to us more abundantly.”  That sounds like fun to me.

Look at our verse for today in James, it doesn’t say that God

is trying to keep us from good things. He is actually the source of all good things. According to the dictionary, fun is “a source of enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure.”  There is a misnomer out there about what fun is.

There is the idea that fun is a static thing that remains the same throughout our life.  But our view of what is enjoyable changes as we change regardless whether we are Christians or not. Take the partying college student who sees fun as getting blasted, throwing water balloons off the dorm roof, while mooning passers-by. He may not think that is as fun when he is thirty years old with his own business and is raising two children.  Does that mean he doesn’t have fun anymore?  It means that the definition of fun for him has changed.

People try to paint a singular picture of fun that often includes activities that they think Christians wouldn’t be involved in, so thus, Christians don’t have fun. The opposite is actually true.  God created friendship and smiling and laughter.  Why would he not want us to enjoy them? People like people who seem to enjoy themselves, so does God want us to be people that no one wants to be around? Holiday Inn, when looking for 500 people to fill positions for a new facility, interviewed 5,000 candidates. The interviewers automatically excluded all candidates who smiled fewer than four times during the interview. If Holiday Inn wants to see smiling people, why wouldn’t God want that!

When we become Christians we change and our viewpoint of enjoyment, amusement, and pleasure will change. We no longer have to accept the world’s definition of fun.  For the first time, we can have real enjoyment in our lives, the way it was created to be experienced. Recently a big time celebrity excused his very public affair by saying God wanted him to be happy. This man purports to be a Christian so has brought God in as a co-conspirator in the affair. Our fun does not need to be outside God’s perimeters.  There is plenty of fun to be had within God’s framework.  God never wants to steal our fun, He wants us to experience the real thing, not the vaporous fun the world often supplies.  When we become Christians, we won’t stay the same. Like the middle-aged man who is living his life to the fullest and looks back on his escapades of the past and just shakes his head, we will often do that when we start truly living the Christian life.

David tells us, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forever more.” (Psalm 16:11)  That sounds like fun to me.  Pleasures forever more doesn’t sound like a life full of lemon-sucking and blah, blah, blah every day.

I have never been accused by anyone of never having fun, but I have been accused of not having their kind of fun. That is a different thing. When we let others define what our happiness, enjoyment, and satisfaction should look like, we are letting them define us as people. Six weeks before he died, a reporter asked Elvis Presley, “Elvis, when you first started playing music, you said you wanted to be rich, famous and happy. Are you happy?”

He replied with a line from one of his songs, “I’m so lonely I could die.”   He had lived the good life, according to the world.  He should have been happy, yet he was not. People look for happiness, when they should be looking for contentment. They look for fun in sin rather than fun in holiness. I know a lot of Christians and a lot of them have a lot of fun. They do cool activities, they goof around, they tell great jokes, and they enjoy life. Are there activities that would be hard to justify as Christians? Are there endeavors that we probably can’t tweak to fit the Christian life?  Sure, but if our idea of fun is snorting cocaine or running around with the neighbors wife, our definition of fun needs to be reexamined.

Many do not know what constitutes happiness but are killing themselves to reach it.  If our goal is happiness, we will never reach it.  But if our goal is to “strive first for the kingdom of God, then all things (happiness and fun included) will be added… unto us.”  A minnow flopping on a flat rock cannot be happy because it is outside where it should be.  We cannot be happy flopping around on the flat rock of this world when we should be in the deep waters of God’s love.  Fun is being free to be who we can be, not in the eyes of the world, but in the eyes of God. Believe me, if we think our cup is full but it is of the world’s happiness, satan will surely jog our elbow.  If our cup is full of God’s contentment, He will steady us and we won’t spill a drop.

“So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God . . . “  2 Timothy 1:8

In this verse Paul is speaking to his young co-worker in the faith, Timothy. Timothy was ministering in the very pagan city of Ephesus. He was young and surrounded by hosts of non-believers. Paul is writing Timothy from prison and is asking him not be ashamed of Jesus, Paul himself, or the gospel. It seems harsh to use the word ashamed since Timothy was the Paul’s “son in the faith” and had faced persecution with Paul many times for the sake of Christ.  How could Timothy be ashamed of the faith that he so stubbornly defended?

Many of us are surrounded by unbelievers in our daily lives.  Some of the people are more than unbelievers; they may be anti-believers. Some may be indifferent and others may be hostile.  Some might be complacent and others might be combative.  Regardless, it might be difficult to make our spiritual beliefs known to those around us due to the perceived or real responses we might receive. Being outspoken about our faith can lead to all kinds of reactions, good and bad, and sometimes silence seems to be the most prudent policy.

Timothy might have been tempted to be ashamed of his position in Christ for the sake of comfort. Being ashamed does not necessarily mean that he actively

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

rejected his faith, but that he remained incognito in the faith. Sometimes what is left unsaid is as much a statement about the place Christ plays in our life as what is said.  In Timothy’s case (and ours) he was defending a man who was dead, yet was said to be alive. He said (as we do) that this same man wanted to have a relationship with everyone on earth. He described this invisible man (again, like we must) as the forgiver of sins and the giver of life.  Paul may have known that Timothy was wondering if it was best expose himself with this incredible story to the ridicule and incredulity of many. Paul knew that thousands (including us) would face this same dilemma down through the ages.  That is why Paul wrote to Timothy (and us) to stay strong in the faith.

Timothy may have also been tempted to be ashamed of Paul because he was sitting in prison and was on the outs with the higher-ups of Roman Empire.  It is easier to sometimes ignore the plights of our fellow believers than to recognize and support them, thus giving away our position. Paul urges Timothy to understand that

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

anyone who stands on the promises of God will face discomfort.  If we believe that we might face discomfort by identifying with the persecuted, we might stay silent about our faith.  Paul instructs against shamed silence when we see others who are being ridiculed or persecuted for their faith in Christ.

Lastly,  Paul warns Timothy not to be ashamed of the gospel. The gospel of the Bible is offensive to the world. First of all, it is exclusive and that is a concept that is not accepted today. To say that there is only one way to be saved is contrary to the all-important tolerance of today’s world. Secondly, it flies in the face of the belief that we can earn our salvation. Finally, it exposes our sinful condition and need for forgiveness. The gospel is a touchy subject and many feel it is  better to avoid it completely than to experience derision and ridicule from others.

If we are not willing to stand up for Jesus, our fellow believers,

and the gospel of Christ, it may mean we are ashamed of the gospel. Total silence may indicate, at the least, partial shame. If we believe that the Bible holds the keys to eternal life and vast blessings here on earth, why be reluctant to share it?  Around the world right now many are being lined up and killed for their faith; here we might be fired upon with insults.  That is a big difference.

We need to ask ourselves this.  If someone we knew suddenly wanted to know who Jesus was, would they think of asking us?  If we have remained in the shadows with our faith, probably not. If we have made our love for Him known, probably so.

Fear not, be not silent, be not ashamed, “for if God is with us, who can be against us.”

“Indeed, my plans are not like your plans, and my deeds are not like your deeds, for just as the sky is higher than the earth, so my deeds are superior to your deeds and my plans superior to your plans.”  Isaiah 55:8,9

I like to think of myself as okay. Not great, but at least okay. I am probably not the only one who likes to think that way. It is comforting, I guess, to look around and believe that there are a lot of people worse than we are. But today I was looking at these verses in Isaiah and I realize that the word “your”  in these verses was talking about me. Not the other guy, but me. My deeds are not like God’s deeds. My ways are not God’s ways. In all ways, His ways are superior to my ways.

This reality can be fairly depressing if we ponder it. We fall short in all ways. Not just some of us, but all of us! Well, it would be depressing if the story stopped there. But God does not stop there and leave us with no hope.  Almost every part of the Bible is about hope. It tells us how we can triumph in spite of our misguided ways. The Bible gives us hope in a world of hopelessness. Psalm 46:1 says that “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble,” which is so much more comforting than “I am my own refuge and strength and I can rely on myself in times of trouble.” Since my ways are not God’s ways, to rely on myself is a losing proposition.

A while backI took back a couple of inferior rafts that I had bought for camping. I upgraded to one (not two cheap ones, but one good one) that actually floats. I thought it would be a good investment, especially for whoever is in the middle of the river in it. (Never go cheap on eye surgeons or rafts.) Our ways are like those rafts. They are inferior and regardless of how fast or slow the leak is, our ways will eventually “leak.”  Like the rafts, we cannot patch them on our own. We can try to fix things up, but it will never work. I had to get a new raft, just like we have to become new creatures. We can’t patch up the old, we must become new. That can only be done through Christ.

I like to think some of my ways are good. But no matter how good I think they are, if they are mine, they are not the ways of God. What I need to do is to know God well enough to know His ways. When I start becoming more like Him, my ways will start to come in line with His ways. Some of us will go through life trying to patch one thing up after another. We leave God sitting over to the side, waiting for us, while we patch hole after hole, only to have the next one spring up. When we do that, we are just kicking the can down the road. The fix will be temporary. The only permanent fix is to give ourselves over to Christ and allow Him to make things new. By the time some of us are old we are floating in a pathetic raft barely staying afloat made up of more patches than original raft.  We paddle around wondering why we are so stressed, while a brand new one with our name awaits just in reach.

Many people want to try to do their own thing and try to align God with them. That would be like coming back to camp and instead of pulling ourselves to shore, we try to pull the shore to us. The shore, like God, is fixed. We must be the ones that move. If God’s ways are superior to ours, why should He come to us. It is logical that we go to Him. Unfortunately, the common practice is for us to do our own thing and then try to say that is God’s way as well.

On one of our camping trips with the kids and grandkids was out in the river and my raft started sinking. I realized that I was probably going to go down with both ends of the raft above my head closing  like a giant clam.  Between screams for help,  I thought how much better it would have been to have a raft that holds air. Now I have one because I purchased one. The good news is that if we want to get rid of our inferior ways, we don’t have to make a purchase.  Our new ways have been paid for in full, and all we need to do is pick them up. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians was the same prayer we should pray for ourselves. “(I) am asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give (me) spiritual wisdom and insight so that (I) might grow in (my) knowledge of (Him).  (I) pray that (my) heart will be flooded with light so that (I) can understand the confident hope He has given to those He has called—His holy people who are His rich and glorious inheritance.”  Now that’s how you fix a leaky raft.