Life Lessons

Usually when I get a phone call from a stranger who is asking spiritual questions it will end up with asking for money. I do not mean to sound cynical, but that is how things usually happen. Not this time. This time she started with question that I had difficulty understanding. She seemed incoherent and confused. She finally got to her real question, “How can a God who loves us allow such terrible things to happen in our lives?” Her question went way beyond this, but that was the heart of her question. She even quoted a Scripture, Jeremiah 29:11

“I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

After quoting the verse, she lamented her troubles. Homeless, abused, neglected and rejected, she questioned how she could possibly believe in a God who says He loves her and then allowed all of those circumstances.

She really did not want to listen to anything I had to say. She saw herself as a victim and just wanted to rant. I listened for a while, never learned her real story. She might really be a victim of many terrible events, but seeing oneself as a victim never leads to a solution. Here are the truths that lead to solutions:

• God is on your side.
  
• God does have wonderful plans for you.
  
• Whether you live in a mansion or a cardboard box. For those who love Him, God can give you a joyful ending. (See the story of Lazarus – Luke 16).
  

Like so many people, the lady on the phone had pulled out a part of a text and left the other unread. Listen to the rest of the verse that she quoted:

“‘Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord.” (vs 12-14)

It is not enough to just believe that He has great plans for us. We must read the rest of the story. We must call upon Him. We must seek Him with all our heart. Then, and only then, do we have the promise that we will find Him.

Lonnie Davis

Balcony People

It was in the 1970s that Baylor University in Waco, Texas hired a new football coach. They had a long history of failure. It seemed they could not win their conference or even really compete. Grant Teaff took over a team that had won less than two games a year for the previous five years. He hit town and so did the folks who were ready to tell him how to run things. The story goes that he listened to the critics and then told them that he did not respond to criticism and worked a lot better with encouragement. He was right and within two years he took that pitiful program and won the conference championship.

All of us work better with encouragement. I like to call them "the balcony people." At a successful Broadway play, when the play is over the balcony people stand and cheer. Everyone needs balcony people in their life. We need people who bless us and give us courage and encouragement.

We need our family to be our balcony people. They know our strengths and weaknesses. They can easily boo our flops, but we need them to clap at our successes. Knowing us as well as they do, surely they can find something to clap about.

We need our church family to be our balcony people. All week long we live in a world that is not friendly to our Christian values. When we walk through the church doors on Sunday morning we need to be lifted up. We need to leave with encouragement that will help us go back and face the world. When Paul wrote to his Christian family he almost always started with words of encouragement.

We need God to be in our balcony. Thankfully, He is always there for us. When God spoke to Jeremiah He promised him, "’I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD." (Jeremiah 29:10-14). The promise God made to Jeremiah is a promise to us also. For us that promise is found in the words of Jesus, "I am with you always." (Matt 28:20).

Lonnie

Sometimes life tumbles in. Sometimes you really are on a bed of affliction. Sometimes the wolf is at the door. Sometimes your child is missing or sick or near death’s door. All of us have struggles and when they happen it is hard to imagine that anyone else has ever been so lost or felt so helpless.

600 years before Christ was a time when life was tumbling in for God’s people. A powerful army was bearing down upon them and would soon burn their homes, steal their property, and lead them away as slaves. Most of them would never be free again. Many of them would be killed. In times like that Habakkuk uttered these words:

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, will be joyful in God my Savior.” (Habakkuk 3:17-18).

If the power of this verse is lost on us, maybe it is because we do not care if the fig tree buds or whether there are grapes on the vines. Most of us never grow food in our fields, nor have any sheep or cattle. Because those things are not a part of our experiences, we may not feel the pain in this verse. It might feel different if this verse were written in modern times and said, “though every grocery stores and restaurant closes down and every factory in America is empty, though the stock market drops to zero, ‘Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, will be joyful in God my savior.’”

Habakkuk is saying that his joy does not come from things and stuff and junk. His joy comes from God. His joy is not circumstantial, but is founded in the One who can change the circumstances.

When life tumbles in, when you are on the bed of affliction, when the wolf is at the door, find your joy in the Lord. He is the only source of joy that will not change.

Lonnie Davis

Haircuts are no big deal to me. I prefer to get them wherever I happen to be. I have two rules that keep me okay with this: (1) Don’t cut it too short. If I follow this rule a bad cut grows out quickly. (2) Blow the cut hairs out of my hair. If this rule is done then I do not have to go wash my hair immediately.

At hair cut time I went to the closest place. The lady cutting my hair followed rule one okay. As she was winding up, I had to remind her about rule two. She picked up her hair dryer and started using it on my hair. Half through she got distracted and left the scalding wind blowing in one spot against the grain. It got hotter and hotter. Just before I could yelp, she moved it away.

Finally she tried to comb my hair. I had one patch of hair that stuck straight up no matter what she did. You can guess that the unruly spot was exactly where she kept the hot wind blowing. Finally, she said, “Your hair has a mind of its own.” I did not respond.

I thanked her, paid the bill, and left a tip. I knew that eventually my hair would be okay. Later I thought about that patch of unruly hair. The stress of the heat and force of the wind left it abnormal. I thought about how the heat and the winds o life do the same thing to us.

A storm of life beats on us and we get bent out of shape. The storm passes, but we stay damaged.

“A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a
wise man keeps himself under control. “
                                          – Proverbs 29:11

Jesus got angry, or so every angry person would have you believe. Usually folks who make this statement are trying to justify their own anger. After all if Jesus got angry, then no one can blame me for being angry. The problem is that this statement is grossly overstated.

To prove their point, angry people use the story of Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple (Mark 11, Matthew 21, Luke 19, John 2). Before anyone accuses Jesus of anger in that story, he or she ought to read the story again. Nowhere do the Scriptures say that Jesus was angry. Jesus was bothered. Jesus was troubled. Jesus was determined to stop unrighteousness. Jesus was not angry.

This is easy to understand when a person looks at what anger does. Anger puts a person into an impaired mental state and reduces one’s ability to grasp ambiguity or see any nuance in a situation. Anger gives us an adrenalin rush which clouds our ability to make judgments.  This is not the emotion that Jesus was experiencing when he drove the crooked merchants out of the temple. Jesus did not “lose it.” With a clear mind, Jesus removed scam artists from the temple area.

There is one time in the Bible that says Jesus experienced anger. In Mark 3, the Bible says that Jesus “look around…in anger.” Read the text and you will find that the only way you know Jesus was angry is that the Scriptures tells us so. He did not hit anyone. He did not call anyone a name. He did not shout at anyone. He did not get red-faced. He was angry, but he dealt with it quietly and then he helped a man.

If you want to be angry like Jesus, then that is your example.