Quick to Listen

Read Proverbs 16:20

James 1:19-20

God is good.

God created everything good and when he was finished he pronounced everything very good.

God has good plans for us.

God gives good gifts.

We sing that he is a good, good Father.

Should we not be eager to listen to him.  Most of the time when I consider these two short verses, I think of relationships between and among people.  Consider the words.  Nowhere do we see that these words are restricted to person-to-person use.  They are immensely valuable in that way, but not restricted just to conversations among humanity.

What if I was quick to listen to God.  What if when I felt God’s Spirit or his word speaking to me, I just closed my mouth and opened my heart and mind and listened—listened intently.  What if I was quick to listen?

What if I was quick to listen to God?

What if I listened without interruption?  What if I permitted only God’s thoughts to have a voice—the only voice when he is speaking.  What if my own counter-thoughts and arguments and excuses fell silent for this time.  I became slow to speak.  I became slow to formulate the thought.

I knew God was communicating with me, so I became quick to listen and slow to speak.  I was absorbing everything that he had to say through his word or Spirit-to-spirit. 

To get into this mode, we should remember that:

God is good.

God created everything good and when he was finished he pronounced everything very good.

God has good plans for us.

God gives good gifts.

Maybe we should sing Good, Good Father a little more often between Sundays to make us more receptive to what God is saying to us.

When it comes to God having something to say to us, we should be quick to listen and slow to speak, and we should be slow to anger.  The anger that our human nature generates will not get us to the right standing with God that we think it will.

Most of the time, anger is a problem.  Anger is not prohibited, but we are cautioned that anger does not get the upper hand on us.  It must not give the devil a foothold.  The sun should not set on our anger between us and others.  Reconciliation is our goal.

Retaining our anger can adversely affect our health.   There are many adverse effects that go with anger, but the counsel here is constraint not restraint.  We are to be slow to anger.

Why?  Human anger cannot produce the right standing that God desires.

So, is this counsel on anger about our relationship with God as well?  Yes!  We are not entitled to become angry with God.  When we do, he understands us, but he knows that our anger does not produce the desired results.

If you are angry with God, tell him.  It’s not like he doesn’t already know.  Then, be still and listen to him.

Our anger has no efficacy.  Efficacy is the power to produce desired results.  Self-efficacy is the power to produce desired results in ourselves.

If we are totally tuned into God and his direction, we must not rely on our own human understanding.  We are trusting God.  Our own nature and understanding may want to argue with God or reject his counsel, but we are to trust in him completely.

We are to be slow to anger when we don’t like what God is telling us or we don’t like what is happening in our lives.  In fact, we should be so slow that we just never seem to get there.  The Lord will direct our paths.

When we trust him completely—yes, that is with all of our hearts—and when we acknowledge him as we implement his counsel over our own understanding, God puts us on the right path and we continue in right relationship with him.

This counsel from James is also for our person-to-person communication.  That’s the way that we study it most often.   Be quick to listen to the other person.  Listen first, talk later, and listen intently.  That means listen to understand not to formulate your rebuttal while the other person is speaking.

Listen, really listen to what someone is telling you.  Understand what they are saying.  Do your best to understand it in their own words.  Don’t rephrase it to fit a pattern that already exists in your own mind.  Try your very best to fully understand what they are saying.

If you have questions, they should be questions that advance the understanding, not those that counter it.  Understand that understanding does not mean agreement.  It means understanding.

At some point, you will want a turn to be understood.  The counsel from James is don’t rush that part.  Let the other person speak until they feel understood.  Then take your turn.

Let us understand that we are talking about our most important conversations.  This is not Cowboys and Sooners banter.  This is husband-wife, mother-daughter, coworker to coworker, believer and believer.  There is a relationship in place and a greater relationship to be desired, even and perhaps especially, when the relationship is on the brink of dissolving.

It is time to be the one who listens first—to be quick to listen.  Perhaps, it is best to have an agreement to listen before you even begin.  I will listen to you until you tell me that you are completely understood.  After that, I ask that you extend to me the same measure of listening to understand.

This is a big agreement.  It is not an agreement to reach agreement.  It is an agreement to understand each other.

If people do this, they have each met a basic human need to be understood.  Our nature is to have others understand us.  We want to talk first, be heard first, and be understood first so that others will see our perspective.  Our nature says, if only they could see things my way, then we would surely agree.

Our human nature is to be understood and when both parties to a conversation insist on being understood first, we have what Steven Covey calls the dialogue of the deaf.  Everyone talking and nobody listening.

I ask you to understand that we don’t always get to agreement, but we can get to understanding.  If we can get to understanding in our conversations, the need to have agreement lessens.  I understand the way you see this.  I think you understand the way I see this.  I think that we understand each other.  We might not agree on whatever this thing or issue or discussion point is, but now that we understand each other, it seems like agreement is not as important as it once was.  The desire to have to be right about this thing has lessened.

Respect for each other grows.  Conversations are easier and other areas are open to be explored.  Quick to listen and slow to speak is a good model. 

But the words say “everyone” should be quick to listen and slow to speak.  Everyone who is seeking to please God.  This letter was written to Hebrews who believed that Jesus was both Savior and Lord. 

Would this counsel benefit everyone?  Of course, but few who do not seek to please the Lord are going to comprehend this whole love you neighbor business to the extent the believer does.  They are surely not ready to go beyond the theoretical to application mode.

Now let’s get to the motivation for quick to listen and slow to speak.  Letting lose on someone to satisfy that hunger in us to get even or go one up on another person is a temporary fix.  Anger is a temporary fix for a junkie who needs to feel like he or she has imposed justice on the world, or at least on another human. 

Once again, I am not talking banter which should be done in good spirits and never truly be hurtful.  I am talking seeking anger when we really need to seek reconciliation.  I am talking about loving anger when we should love understanding.  I am talking about living as if we desire sacrifice (to us) over mercy (to others). 

Let’s return to efficacy—the power to achieve desired results.  If we are living in anger and we desire right standing with God, Siri says, “You can’t get there from here.  Here are some things that I can help you with:  Find a good restaurant, calculate travel time, regurgitate useless facts.”

Our anger can never do what the blood of Jesus has already done for us—put us in right relationship with God. 

Understand that the counsel is slow to anger.  This is a constraint not a restraint.  We can become angry but it is never our first calling or something that we permit to take control of us in the moment.

Slow to anger means that only when we have exhausted all of our other directives from God, do we give our human anger a voice.  It is not a means to achieve righteousness. 

I can personally feel angry about killing half a million babies a year. That anger doesn’t make me right with God.  That anger doesn’t get me extra rewards in heaven.  I have to make sure that such anger does not supplant my calling to love one another and proclaim good news.

God permits you to be angry about some things.  Perhaps you are angry about how we litter this earth.  God did charge us to be good stewards of the planet.  Maybe it is how our media seem to slant everything one way or the other depending on where you set the dial.  God did tell us to speak the truth and use honest scales and standards.

There are plenty of things in our world that we could get angry about with some justification, but we do not get to right standing with God by any of these.  Only the blood of Jesus puts us in right standing with God.

From the perspective of achieving the desired results—efficacy—anger does not get us to being in right standing with God. 

Love is the operating verb for the disciple.  Love grows relationships.  Love leads us to this verse to better receive what God is telling us and to get along with each other more and more.

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

We are permitted some anger.  It is a natural human emotion.  In the new creation that we are, anger does not govern.  Love governs, and peace is the fruit that we enjoy so much.  There are other benefits of living a life of love, but peace in a world that does not know peace is ever so valuable.

Let’s learn to listen to God and absorb everything he tells us.

Let’s learn to communicate with each other and enjoy the peace that comes just from being understood.

Let’s be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

The blood of Jesus has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. 

Now that God has made us right with him, let’s work at listening to God without distractions and getting along with each other by listening to understand more.

Quick to listen.

Slow to speak.

Slow to become angry.

Amen.

The Alien in the Land

Read Leviticus 19:9-10

Leviticus 19:33-34

Matthew 22:15-22

Hey!  You guys did a great job of staying with me through some interesting chapters that I pretty much read to you with a few inserted comments—that hopefully provided some manner of explanation.  Some of Leviticus just presents itself and all I can do is say, “That’s what God told them.”  

We try to understand what it was like to come out of 420 years of slavery and suddenly be a people unto themselves.

We can’t.  There are things that God directed that applied only to the priests.  There are directions to the people as a whole.  There are some that are just agricultural.  There are some that tell the people and the priest how to make temporary atonement for sin.  We are to understand that every command and decree that God gave his people was for their own good.

We may not comprehend all of that in our time.  We are blessed to live in a time of grace.  We are blessed to understand the central message in Leviticus:  Be holy as God is holy.  The message transcends Testaments.

This morning I want to pick out one verse that you have already heard.  We touched on it briefly, but let’s take a hard look at it.

The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

Let’s talk about something a little controversial.  Let’s talk about aliens in our land.  Let’s look at the directives from God on how to treat aliens.

First note, that there was no such thing as an illegal alien in this time.  The word did not make sense.  If you went into a country that was not your own, you obeyed its laws or you became a slave or were put to death or sometimes both.  You just didn’t get to break the law and still be free.

Understand that for most of the ancient world, being in a country except as a spy or invader did not violate the law.  Even spying was not so much illegal as it was lethal if you were caught.

There were no borders like today.  Crossing back and forth between and among nations was just something you did at your own risk.  Entry into a walled city might have been a different story, but crossing a border didn’t amount to much in most places.

Unless you were a high muckety-muck, you didn’t need papers.

Think about Namaan going to see Elisha (2 Kings 5), he needed some king-to-king correspondence, so it wasn’t perceived as an invasion or Namaan was not taken for purposes of ransom.

Now, if you brought an army with you, that was a different matter. 

But if you or your family came into another country, you were subject to their laws.  Those laws could change at any time, especially if the king made them or canceled them at a whim.

These aliens were subject to the laws of the land, but for the most part it was never illegal just to be an alien in a land.  The whole illegal alien concept was not a thing.  If you were an alien in the land, you were subject to the laws of the land.

God told his people that these aliens were also subject to your mercy and generosity.  When it was time for a Sabbath, they were also entitled to a Sabbath.  Remember when we come to Jesus confronting religious leaders about the Sabbath, he said:  The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. 

Those who obeyed God’s law couldn’t just say, get two of my pagan servants and have them run down to Chick-Fil-A and pick up something.  The Sabbath was for everyone.

When it was time for harvest, not everything was harvested.  Some was left for the poor and the alien.  God always included provision for those who were not blessed to own land or business in the Promised Land.  God always looked out for the less fortunate.  God’s commands directed his people to look out for the less fortunate and the stranger.

Think back in time from the giving of the law to Sodom and Gomorrah.  Most people think that God destroyed these cities because of homosexuality and bestiality and just general unholy living.  Those were surely in the mix, but what sin was prevalent when the angels came to visit Lot?

The people did not only fail to receive the aliens—the strangers—and provide hospitality to them.  They tried to abuse the strangers.

God reminded his people frequently that they were slaves and aliens in Egypt.  Your ancestors lived with the shoe on the other foot.  God’s chosen people entered Egypt at Joseph’s invitation and those few Hebrew people survived a regional famine that Joseph had prepared for as the most powerful man next to the Pharaoh. 

And then came a Pharaoh who did not remember Joseph and these people who were flourishing in the hill country of Goshen were perceived as the threat to the government and enslaved.  For over 400 years God’s Chosen People lived as slaves and aliens in Egypt.

God reminds his people that they too were the strangers once.  That nation made them slaves.  You are to show compassion.

The foreigners who came into Israel had to obey the law.  There could have been no such thing as an illegal alien.  Entering the country was not a crime then or there.  Failing to obey the law would not be tolerated.

Entry into Israel did not make one an illegal alien.  There was just no such term.  There was no law against such entry.

So we look at our country today.  This is the time and place where we live and we are trying to make sense out of God’s decrees. We have laws and regulations out the wazoo.  Some of them make it illegal for some people to enter our nation.  Entry by itself puts them in conflict with our nation—with our laws.

Here’s the theological term.  It’s a big mess.  But it is not a big mess for us—for the disciple of Christ.

You can have whatever opinion you want on the national law and policy regarding immigration, but our direction is at the personal level.  We are people of compassion.

The people who are here and their presence here violates the law will be dealt with or ignored by those commissioned to enforce the law.  As God’s people, we are to respect those in authority, pray for them, abide by the law—written authority, and we are even told to pay our taxes.

For us, we show compassion.  We show mercy.  If people are here legally or illegally, and they are hungry; we feed them.  Which is the governing condition?  Legal or illegal?   Neither, the hunger governs.  They have a need and we feed them.  If they have no clothing, we clothe them.  We know this.  We have done this.

I have talked with some who have come to see me for help who by the nature of the answers they gave me as I was trying to help with some long-term solution to their problems, revealed they were not in this country legally.  I counseled them that they would not have peace with this issue that they did not bring up, until this issue was resolved, but we wouldn’t let them go hungry.

We understand just how blessed that we are, and we do what we can to help those that we know need help.  We are not called to violate the law of this land and hide them from authorities.  We are called to abide by the law.

We can encourage these people to obtain citizenship.

We can pray for them.

We can challenge our lawmakers to come up with something better.  We should hold their feet to the fire to fix the problem.  They are supposed to be working for us.

But God has called us to have empathy for the alien among us.  The life of God’s Chosen People in the Promised Land and our life in the USA are vastly different, the laws are different, borders are different, manner and means of enforcement are different, but what is the same is this.

We love the alien as we do our native-born neighbor.  The instructions to the God-fearing people are to love your neighbor as yourself without qualification.

The government—and yes you have a voice in that government—will do what it must do, but you are always to be people of mercy and compassion in your direct dealings with those who are considered aliens in our land.

We are to be people of mercy and compassion.

We are learning to be holy as God is holy.

There is a whole big spectrum of things that our nation may or may not do with regard to immigration.  I am not going to get political here, but I think if I took 535 God fearing people to Washington and sent the entire Congress—Senate and House members—home for a week, we could fix this immigration mess and still have 5 days left to go to the monuments and Smithsonian Museums.

That’s not likely to happen.  Until the kingdom of the world gives way to the Kingdom of God, things will never be quite right.  Except that the Kingdom of God lives within us and we are called to be holy as God is holy.

In our personal relations, we are called to love all of our neighbors as we love ourselves without regard to citizenship and nationality or any factor of race or nationality or those things that seem so important in the secular world that pretends to have an ethical compass.

We who belong to the Christ are to love one another.

Amen.

With all of your heart...

Read Colossians 3:18-25

If I can just pay off this one bill…

If I can just make it through my senior year…

If I can just get through work today…

If I can just lose 10 more pounds…

If I can just get a better phone…

If I can just make it to retirement…

How many times have we been in the “if only I can” mode of thinking.  I’m not talking about the desperation “if only I can’s.”  You know, if only I can make it to the next exit and there is a gas station with a restroom.

I am talking about the mindset that says, “I can’t really start living until this thing—whatever it is—is done or arrives or is over.” Something is intervening as far as me living to the full goes.  I can’t wait until I can really live.

I don’t need some first things first poster.  I don’t need a better day planner when I have more ball games than kids in more locations that I can physically be, and be only one person. 

I don’t need career counseling when I get called into work unexpectedly three times this week and it looks like next week is go on—stay on, on into the next week.

I don’t need the flavor of the month get your life together program to reorganize my most recently reorganized disorganization.

I just need to get through all of these things that consume my life so that I can really live.  Anyone ever been in that boat?  I just have to get through this, and the next this, and the next…

What if I told you I can’t find that part in the Bible.  What if I told you the Bible said something else.  What if I told you that God’s plan for you included you to live, work, and play as if you were doing it all for him.

What if that one more bill that you need to pay off before you can get to living was something that you could do for the Lord.  What if you could work at it together.

What if making it through your senior year was walking with the Lord more than you ever had before and you lived your senior year like never before.  Maybe it’s your junior year or your fifth-grade year or a year in college or tech school, do it as if the Lord had the same schedule as you.

What if getting through work today was working as if you were working directly for the Lord, not for that knucklehead who is your boss.  This includes the self-employed.

What if your weight loss or health regimen was not something you did to hit a magic number but you did it to take care of the temple that God gave you.  What if you got a little Levitical about it.

What if you did the best you could with the phone you have until the Lord’s Spirit affirmed, it’s time to get a new one.

What if instead of waiting until retirement to live, you started living now and retirement became only a word attached to you job and not your life.

What if we traded our frustration for forgiveness.

What if we kicked our anger to the curb and replaced it with love.

What if we replaced the foul words in our lexicon with words more descriptive but less vulgar.

What if we traded living by the patterns of the world for living with the mind of Christ.

What if, everything became about living for the Lord.  Sometimes we affirm, “It’s not all about me,” but we do it in our best Eeyore voice.  What if we turned those words around and said, “It’s all about God!” and did it with the enthusiasm that we support the Sooners of the Cowboys.

What if we really made it all about God?  Make what about God?

The diaper change, the dentist appointment, the grocery shopping, going back for the one thing we went for and didn’t get, the heat of the day, the cool of the evening, the ball games, the snacks for the team, the hip replacement, rotating the tires, weed eating the sidewalk, loading cattle, the sunrise and the sunset, the thunderstorm, and summer reruns—what if these were all about God.

What if we never went through the motions or operated solely out of human motivation in anything.

What if God was in the big picture and in the minuteness of every detail of our lives.  What if nothing was ever ordinary.  What if everything became a holy thing!

Paul is writing about a wholesale exchange of one way of life for another.  The old died with Christ.  The new lives with him in everything.

Old ways were of the world.  New ways as a new creation are of God, rooted in love, seeking his approval in all things.

God’s peace rules in our hearts.  Think about what Jesus said about our hearts and our treasure.  Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  What if one of our greatest treasures is God’s peace. 

It is a peace that goes beyond our understanding.  It is a peace that can grant us rest in the middle of the world’s turmoil.  How can I rest in the midst of turmoil?  Don’t let turmoil into your heart.  Love and peace govern there.

Consider these words once again.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

What are the verbs here?  Clothe, bear with, forgive, put on are the action words.  Salvation is a gift all from God.  Discipleship comes with verbs.

Dress with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.  We need to understand that when we profess Jesus is Lord and we are saved, compassion doesn’t always come instantly.  As disciples, we must take action.

Be patient with each other.

Forgive—that’s a verb that should count as a hundred simple verbs.  Forgive as Christ forgave us.

Put on love.  Understand that love is a powerful verb all by itself, but to put on love means that we have to break away from who we used to be and take action to be this person that God has called us to be.  Love is the binding agent for everything we are and everything we do.

These are action words for us.  They are a key part of our discipleship.  They help us live out our salvation.

Salvation is all from God.  Discipleship is walking with God and learning his ways.  This is typically not debilitating work.  Jesus said that his yoke was easy and his burden was light.  Take his yoke and learn from him.  There is action in our learning.

Husbands, wives, children, parents, even slaves are told to do everything they do not for human favor but to please the Lord.  We live in reverence for the Lord.  We work at whatever we do as if we are working for the Lord not for human masters or favor or status. 

We belong to the Lord.  We are his.  Our identity is completely in the Christ.  I think I might have noted once or twice that I was stubborn about this.

We are known by this identity—that we belong to the Christ.  Christ is all and he is in all.

In all that we are now—a new creation, people belonging completely to the Christ, Spirit-filled people—we give thanks to God the Father.

But there is a catch…

Are we to trust in the Lord?  No!  We are to trust in the Lord with all our hearts.  There is no half-measure or partial trust.  It’s an all or nothing sort of deal when it comes to trust, especially with God.  You trust him, or you don’t.  Well, I sort of trust him…

Are we to love the Lord our God?  No!  We are to Love the Lord, our God, with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength.  It’s an everything that we are sort of commitment.

Are we to put on God’s armor?  No!  We are to put on the full armor of God!

God does want half-hearted, lukewarm commitments.  We are not known by our Christian tee shirts and membership cards.  We are known by our love.  It is not a casual love.  It is an unconditional love.

As you go into your week, consider memorizing and bringing this verse to your heart and mind and across your lips for the days to come.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

It is the Lord Christ whom we serve!

Let’s not wait on anything before we live.  Let’s live this life with God and for God and seeking God’s approval in all that we do.

It is the Lord Christ whom we serve!

Amen.

Our Stubborn Nature

Read Isaiah 48:1-11

The trouble with our generation is that it doesn’t take any work to make your own god.  At least in millennia past, you had to carve something out of wood or chisel it out of stone or smelt it and shape it into the graven image of your choice.  If you didn’t want to do this, you could take your hard-earned money and pay an artisan to make your god.  If you weren’t too picky, you could just buy one off the shelf.  It was sort of like prescription gods and over the counter gods.

Today you don’t even need a graven image to have a false god.  You decide what your god does and does not like, would or would not do, and just how close all of his opinions happen to match yours. If you must have a graven image, you can make a Facebook post with color and emojis. 

Now if you worship the twin gods of apathy and ambivalence, they don’t really care if they have an emoji or not.

The good thing about making your own god is that if your thinking or feelings change later on, your god changes with them.  That’s the way we roll.

The bad thing is—and you know this all along when you make your own god—is that a god made in your own image is not the one true God.

The one true God is not obliged to agree with you on everything.  If fact he is not required to agree with you on anything.  He is sovereign.  He is holy.  He is righteous.  He is your Creator.  He is your Judge.  And in spite of ourselves, he is our Savior, Redeemer, and the Atoning Sacrifice for our sins.

In spite of our stubborn nature, he still loves us. His blood was spilled on a cross for a stubborn, stiff-necked people.  I am not just talking about the Jews.

Here’s a news flash.  The past 2000 years did not really make us more enlightened, receptive, or conducive to hearing the truth.   In fact, our advances in society have made is very easy to construct our own gods.

Of all the sins of God’s Chosen People, the one that would lead them into exile in Babylon was this tendency to worship other gods.  They turned away from the one true God in favor of those made by human hands.

Let’s turn back the calendar a bit from Isaiah’s time.

Even when God’s Chosen People entered the Promised Land, they were not truly right with God. Their hearts and minds would wander again and again. 

Even among God’s first people in a world begging for human life, Cain would bring death by murder.  Well brother, I guess this world is just not big enough for the both of us. 

Sometimes when we are in a contemplative mood, we might wonder:  God what were you thinking?  Knowing our tendencies if we were given a free will, how could you make us in this way?  How could you give us a free will?  Surely, you knew that we would make a mess of it.

In the time before the captivity, God’s Chosen People were saying all the religiously-correct words.  We are God’s People.  We live in the Holy City.  We take our oaths in God’s name.  None of these were done in truth or righteousness.  What was done in God’s name was perfunctory.  It was going through the motions. 

God’s corrective action was severe and came at the hands of the Babylonians, and it was not like it was some kind of surprise.  It’s not like one day, God just said:  Surprise, I’m letting these pagans have their way with you.

Again and again, God had warned his people.  The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah were prominent during this time.  It’s not like the people had not been repeatedly warned, but they were a stubborn people.

God would refine them not as silver, but in the furnace of affliction.  God disciplines those that he loves.  We are not talking wrath, but discipline.  Now, when the Babylonians destroyed the temple and the holy city, the people who were left probably thought that this looks a lot like wrath, but it was discipline.

Of all the things that I could have brought into this discussion of love, love and action, love and rest and peace, God disciplines those whom he loves could have been left for another time.  Or not!

To skip over this would be to deny that we do have trouble in the world.  If it is because we follow the Christ and the world persecutes us for it, count yourself blessed.  If it is because you have decided to redact your Bibles and take out the parts about God that you don’t like, your trouble might be God’s discipline. 

Actions have consequences.  You drink too much, you might just have a hangover.  You don’t work, you might not pay your bills.  You satisfy your every selfish need, you might be making a god in your own image and losing sight of the one true God.

This sounds like a lead-in to law-based salvation.  It is not. It is simple optometry.  It is about having eyes to see.

From creation to the present, humankind has never truly accepted God’s divine guidance for how to live.  Some periods might have been better than others but this one unique characteristic kept resurfacing—stubbornness.

Here is the definition of stubborn from the Oxford Dictionary.

Having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, especially in spite of good arguments or reasons to do so.

In spite of knowing better…  Think about it.  Stubbornness is doing what we have decided to do in spite of knowing better.

In every age, it’s not that God’s people did not know, they chose their way over God’s way.  That continues today.  It is very much present today.  If you are going to do things God’s way, you will be the oddball and sometimes the outcast from the mainstream.

If you profess one true living God who sent his Son into this world to take away your sin, you will be dismissed as archaic and out of touch with modern times.

If you insist on speaking the truth in a spirit of love, you will be called a radical and your life will be a free-fire zone for hateful comments.

James told his fellow Hebrew believers, that if this sort of stuff happens to you, count it as pure joy.  Count it as a blessing.  You are not being confused with the world and its ways.  You have not signed up for the flavor of the month god.

If you have a hangover because you drank too much last night, do not count that as a blessing.  Take it as an admonishment. 

If you got fired, again, because you told your boss what he could do with his policies, do not count that as a blessing.  Take it as a warning sign.

If you got a speeding ticket for going way over the limit and it’s going to take a week’s pay to cover it, do not count that as a blessing.  It is a wakeup call.

We are a stubborn people.  Left to our own inclinations, we can make a mess out of anything.  But in our stubbornness, God still loves us.

He loves us when the world persecutes us for his namesake.  He loves us when we abide in our own stubborn nature. His love is manifested in different ways for each.  Blessing for the former and discipline for the latter.

Does God send bad things into the world to discipline us?  No.  But what about the Babylonians?

The Babylonians were on a course to conquer the known world.  Jerusalem was beyond their reach until God stood back and let his people deal with the consequences of their stubbornness.  But it did not have to be that way.

Consider what the prophet said in the second part of this chapter.

This is what the Lord says—

    your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:

“I am the Lord your God,

    who teaches you what is best for you,

    who directs you in the way you should go.

If only you had paid attention to my commands,

    your peace would have been like a river,

    your well-being like the waves of the sea.

 Your descendants would have been like the sand,

    your children like its numberless grains;

their name would never be blotted out

    nor destroyed from before me.”

So what are we to take from all of this?

We are stubborn.  Don’t take this as always being a bad thing.  We are equipped to be stubborn for the Lord.  We can stubbornly follow the Lord and his ways even when the world does everything it can to convinces us otherwise.

Historically, we are often stubborn in the ways of the world even when God has been clear in his commands and decrees that he gave us for our own good.

God loved his people and loves us even in our stubbornness.  He does not discipline those whom he does not love.  He is not pleased when we stray, but he does not cast us aside.  God sends wake up calls on alarms that we did not set.  His Spirit is at work in our lives.

If we don’t like what the Spirit is telling us, we had better examine if we are being stubborn in God’s ways or stubborn in our own ways.  Are we seeking the one true God or living by the rules of the god that we made in our own image?

When we hit a bump in the road of life, is it the world trying to throw us off course; or is it God sending us a wakeup call?  How can you know?

Several years ago, I published an article titled, Can a Democrat be a Christian?  I posted the link to the article on Facebook and it got a lot of likes and almost as many hateful remarks.  Realize this was before you could select the heart or the angry face emojis.

I didn’t accidently happen upon that title.  It was meant to be provocative.  Titles are hooks to get readers to read, except in this century when reading an entire title is just so exhausting that you can never make it to the article.

For those who did make it to the article, I answered the provocative question, Can a Democrat be a Christian?  And the answer was, of course, no.  No!

Now for those who completed the entire article, I also posed the question, Can a Republican be a Christian?  The Republicans got the same answer. 

What? Do I think only Libertarians or Tea Partians or is it (Tea Partiers) can be Christians? No.  I am sure that somebody is going to be upset that I did not equally abuse the Independents. 

The question itself is not a matter of party affiliation but of identity.  My identity is in Christ alone. I am a Christian.  I belong to the Christ and I am stubborn about that.  There is no argument to sway me from that stance.

I register in accordance with my political leanings, but that is not my identity. I agree with some things the party stands for and disagree with others.

I am not the party with which I am registered. I belong to Christ alone. I follow Christ. My allegiance is to him. I love America and cherish the very liberty that we enjoy every day, register as I choose, and vote my convictions.

But my identity is as a Christian.  I am stubborn about that.  I belong to the Christ.

I am not permitted a second and third and fourth identity. I live as a Christian and fulfill many roles.  Many of them have a great impact upon who I am.

Son

Husband

Father

Brother

Grandfather

Pastor

American

Oklahoman

Writer

Marine

And surely some others.

Some of these are callings. I know without any doubt that I was called to be a Marine officer. I know with even greater certainty that God called me to ordained ministry. But I have only one identity. I am a child of God. I am a Christian—by definition committed to following Jesus wherever he leads me.  I belong to him.

I am not following any political party wherever they lead me. On any given day I can change my political affiliation. I follow Christ forever. He is Lord. He is King. He called me servant, trusted servant, and even friend. My identity is in him.

That identity gives me incredible freedom. I can live fully. My future is not in the hands of the next president. My identity does not come from a political party. I belong to Christ. I am a Christian.  I am stubborn about that.

The articles that I wrote made subtle title twists to get people to read them, but my point is as unchanging as it can be.  I belong to the Christ and that is not going to change.  I am stubborn when it comes to this.

So, back to the bumps in the road.  Am I stubborn in the ways of God or am I stubborn in the ways of the world?  That’s how you know what the bumps in the road are all about.

My challenge to us this day is to be stubborn in the ways of God.  He showed us his way for our own good.  His plans are not to harm us but to prosper us. He gives us hope and a future.  He has never stopped loving us and never will.

Our salvation is all from him.  Let’s respond by being disciples of Jesus who stubbornly follow in the ways of our Lord.

God loved humankind when we were stubborn in the ways of the world.  Let’s love him back by being stubborn in the ways of the Christ.

Amen.