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Today I did something I'd never done before in my life. I ran out of gas. I was on my way to teach a Vacation Bible School at a church about 35 minutes away. I'd been going every morning this week. On Monday I glanced at the gas gauge and said: "Oh, plenty of gas." On Tuesday I looked at it again and said: "Still plenty of gas."
And then I never even thought about it for the rest of the week.
Pretty embarrassing to have to call someone to come with five gallons of gas to get me going again! :-/
But as I was sitting there by the side of the road, with the hazard lights blinking, waiting to be rescued, something occurred to me.
Despite the fact that I'd never done it before in my life, the fact is that running out of gas is one of the easiest things in the world to do. You know why? Because all you have to do is stop thinking about it. That's it. Just stop thinking about it.
If you stop thinking about it, the only way you can not run out of gas is to never go anywhere! But if you want to go places, and you never think about your gas, sooner or later, you run out.
That made me think of the verse in Romans 12 that says:
Spiritually, it is very easy for us to run out of gas also. All it requires is that we stop thinking about it! Paul says that we should be "renewing our minds." That's the same idea as keeping your gas tank full of gas. How do we renew our minds? Our minds are renewed as we spend time in the company of other believers, who prod us on to love and good works (Hebrews 10:24). Our minds are renewed as we spend time reading and meditating on God's word, which can keep us going, just like milk keeps a baby going (1 Peter 2:2). Our minds are renewed as we think on our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who should be at the center of our attention (Hebrews 12:2).
If we want to go anywhere spiritually, we must keep our gas tank full. And the moment we stop thinking about it, the moment we stop renewing, we begin an emptying process, and we're headed for trouble.
My parents have a very foolish dog. He's a boxer named Duke. They got him when he was more than a year old, which is unusual for them -- they like to train a dog from when he's just a puppy.
This dog has been a source of frustration for my parents. He's got a tongue about the size of the state of Rhode Island, and with one lick he can cover you with drool from your big toenail to your forehead.
He also enjoys chewing on things. Shoes. Jackets. Furniture. Electrical cords. Yeah, electrical cords.
He's even been known to chase after my father when he's trimming the lawn with a weedwacker. That's right, he chases the weedwacker. Remember how I said he has a tongue the size of Rhode Island? Now he has a tongue the size of Rhode Island with a notch in the side of it.
And still he chases the weedwacker. Not the brightest dog I've ever seen.
He does one thing which I find very interesting. When he's in trouble, he knows he's in trouble, because my mother puts on her "scolding voice" and says: "DUUUUKE!" It's a tone of voice that inspires consternation in the bravest of both dogs and boys.
But Duke has figured out an interesting way of dealing with this particular tone of voice -- the moment my mother starts to say "DUUUUKE!" before the word is even completely out of her mouth, Duke has turned his head to look the other way. He seems to think that if he's not looking at her, if he doesn't make eye contact with her, he can pretend he didn't hear her.
Of course, it doesn't fool anyone, particularly not my mother.
I remembered that in Psalms 95:7-8 we are told "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts."
And isn't that what we so often do to God? When we hear His voice, when we know what He expects of us, we act like Duke, pretending we don't hear. We harden our hearts toward God, and turn our faces away from Him.
But we don't fool Him, any more than Duke fools my mother. How much better to just simply listen, and not end up being the fool.
Whenever I go to camps, Sunday Schools, or Vacation Bible Schools, I always bring my puppet Jeffrey with me. Jeffrey is a timberwolf, and although he claims to be "fierce and ferocious," he's really "cute and cuddly." And children love to pet him. He's the only one of my puppets that I will let anyone touch.
And the children absolutely love being able to pet him!
Two weeks ago I was teaching a Vacation Bible School, and I had a group of young children (mostly under the age of six years old). As I got to know this group of children, I realized that for several of the children, if I brought Jeffrey out, it would be simply an opportunity to pull his tail, squish his head, and other things that I didn't want happening to Jeffrey. And that if I told them not to, this particular group of children might see it as an invitation to do so!
So Jeffrey, although he made several visits to the VBS, never came out where the children could touch and pet him.
They missed out on a very simple pleasure that would have made their evening very special, and they never even realized what they were missing out on.
I was thinking about this in relation to the Israelites going to the promised land -- God told them to go in and take it, and they said "No!" And because they would not listen to God (as Psalms 95:8 says, they "hardened their hearts") they never got to even see the land God had promised them.
And I wonder how often I'm like that group of children, that missed out on a simple pleasure and never knew what they missed. I wonder how often I'm like the Israelites, who missed out on an extraordinary blessing, and never knew what they missed.
I wonder how many times I've said "No" to God, said "No" to what is right, and I never even realized what blessing I was saying "No" to.
How much better for us, when God speaks, to say "Yes" to Him. To not risk missing out on the things God has in store for us.
A few years ago a group of fishermen from New Zealand were down in the Ross Sea (Antarctica) when they saw something rather unusual in the water -- something they had never seen before. It was like a squid, but much larger. And it was chowing down on Patagonian toothfish, which are about six feet in length.
These brave fishermen decided to capture the creature, and bring it aboard their ship. When they got it on board, they saw that it was indeed like a squid, but with some significant differences. This creature had eyes the size of dinner plates, and on its tentacles (which were sixteen feet long), instead of just suckers, it also had hooks, which had full 360-degree rotation. Thus, instead of just latching onto prey with suckers, it could dig into them with hooks.
A nasty creature.
When they brought the thing back to New Zealand, scientists there declared that the creature was not even full grown -- just a baby! They called it a "colossal squid," and estimated that, when full grown, it would be about as long as three school buses lined end to end.
Wouldn't want to meet that thing in the water!
As I read about that, I thought, "For hundreds and hundreds of years, mankind has been sailing the seas, exploring its depths, and we have never seen this thing until now? How enormous the oceans are, and how incredibly complex...and who knows what else might be down there?"
Who knows? God knows. Psalm 29 says:
The world is full of strange and marvelous things. Some beautiful, some extraordinary, some frightening, even terrifying. But God knows them all, for He is their creator, and He is over them all. And everything out there declares the glory and the majesty of its creator.
Psalms 29:9 says: "in His temple all cry, "Glory!"
The world is a scary place.
Several years ago I took a business trip to Israel. While I was there, I stayed in Beersheba, which is known for Abraham's Well. Some of us decided one evening we wanted to see this little piece of Biblical history, so we asked the hotel clerk how to get to it.
He told us to go out of the hotel, down the street, turn in at the bus station, walk through and out the other side of the station, then turn down that street, and the well was at the end.
So that's what we did. Abraham's Well was not really all that exciting -- a hole in the ground with a grate over it to keep people from throwing things in (or falling in, I suppose) and a fence all the way around it.
So we turned around and came back to the hotel, retracing our steps, going back through the bus station, and down the street as before.
And I didn't think anything about it until about four days later. I was back home, and I got a call from Matt, who was with me on that trip. "Doug, have you seen a newspaper this morning?"
"No."
"Go get one."
So I went and picked up a newspaper. On the front page was a picture of a building that had been utterly demolished. The caption read: "Terrorist bomb destroys bus station in Beersheba."
YIKES! I was in that bus station four days earlier!
The world really is a scary place. But this story makes me think of two verses in the Bible. One is John 16:33 in which Jesus says: "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." Isn't that good to know? There is nothing in this world which takes God by surprise. He knows it all. Yes, the world is scary. Yes, we will have troubles. But He is bigger than all our troubles.
The other verse I think of is 1 Corinthians 15:30. This verse is right in the midst of Paul's discussion on the resurrection, and Paul says that he is "in danger every hour." How can you live with such trouble and tribulation? Because what happens to this mortal body is only temporary, because for the believer, there is something far greater waiting for us.
When I was in elementary school, there was a boy in my class named Steve. Steve was a real troublemaker. No matter what the teacher said, he would do the opposite. He was always getting in fights, and doing things on the playground that he wasn't supposed to do. Not the kind of kid you'd want for a role model!
Speaking of rules, there was a rule on the playground (and a very sensible rule it was) that you weren't allowed to stand on the merry-go-round. You had to sit.
I remember very well a day that Jim decided he would not just stand on the merry-go-round, he would stand on top of the metal bars that we used as handholds. Right in the middle of the merry-go-round, he was going to stand, and then get dizzy spinning in circles.
Great idea, right??
Needless to say, his idea of a fun time didn't turn out to be very fun -- within seconds he was flat on his face, with a bloody nose and a very puffed up lip!
After he got "taken care of," the question was asked, "Why did you do that? Didn't you know it was against the rules?"
His answer? "Steve said it was okay to do that."
That makes me think of Psalms 1:1 which says, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked." What kind of person asks a "troublemaker" for advice on what is right and what is wrong? A person who wants to do what is wrong. He knows the right answer, but he doesn't want to hear the right answer, so he asks the wrong person.
Jim knew very well what I would have told him if he had asked me...so he didn't ask me! And he suffered for it. Don't take counsel from troublemakers...you'll eventually regret it!
A few years ago I was asked to take a trip to Dimona, Israel to do some computer work. It was springtime when I left Maine, and I love springtime! The lawns are turning green, the trees are budding and blossoming, and the leaves are such a beautiful, rich, deep green, after a long winter. I love it.
When I arrived in Tel Aviv, I thought "These are ugly trees." Not a lot of trees and plants, and what there was, the leaves were a pale, sickly green. Didn't look healthy to me.
But then I went from Tel Aviv to Dimona, and found that Dimona's vegetation was even uglier! All dried up, hardly any leaves, scraggly, and looked like it would blow away in the wind.
That comparison made me think of Psalm 1, which says the righteous are like a strong and healthy tree, and the wicked are like the dried up grass that'll get blown away in the wind.
Of course, we all want to be full of life and health, like a strong, green tree. But in reality, our sin makes us shriveled and dried up (and let's even go as far as to say it makes us dead -- after all, that's what the Bible says!) Sometimes, we have a tendency to compare ourselves to others and say, "See, I'm not so bad!" But when we do that, we are comparing ourselves to the wrong person. Our measuring stick is Jesus Christ, in whom there was no sin at all (1 Peter 2:22).
The odd thing about my trip to Dimona was this: on the way home we returned to Tel Aviv, and I found myself thinking, "These trees look really green and healthy!" Then I thought, "Wait a minute...just a week ago, I was saying how ugly they were! What happened?" What happened is, I was comparing the trees to the Dimona trees instead of the Maine trees!
We get ourselves in trouble when we compare ourselves to anyone but Jesus.
Thanks to John R. for allowing me to post this.
John R. was sharing in a devotional time about convictions, and standing by those convictions, but not forcing others to abide by them (unless they are clearly stated Biblical commands!) His scripture was the passage in Romans 14:6 which speaks of whether or not we eat certain things, and which days we regard as holy, and talks about not "judging another man's servant."
He shared with us that last year he talked about going to see the New England Patriots play a home game. So he looked up the prices of the tickets and was absolutely horrified by how much it was going to cost. So he chose not to go.
The game was on a Sunday, and he knew that there were many people who would refuse to go because it was on Sunday, but wouldn't think twice about the cost of it. Whereas John felt very strongly that it would be poor stewardship of the resources God has given him to go to the game, but didn't really care that it was on a Sunday.
Each was fully convinced in his own mind, but even so, there is freedom to have those convictions yet not force others to bow to your own conviction. There is no room for pride in comparing your convictions to others and looking at another man's servant who doesn't do things your way.
Last week in my message I spoke on the Gospel. I began with who God is, and moved on to talking about who we are, our sin, and the judgment it requires. Then I began to speak of Jesus. I told of who He is, of His divine nature, of His life, of His crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. And then I spoke of our response to this: faith.
After the service, one man spoke to me and said: "You know, a lot of times when people are teaching the Gospel, they speak about faith, but it's hard for people to understand what that means exactly. But you told us all the story of Jesus, and asked us to believe that story. It was so clear what you meant by 'faith.'"
That comment confirmed to me something I had been thinking about, and that I had recently been discussing with a friend. In many cases, the church has lost its understanding of what the Gospel is. We have stopped having faith in Jesus, and instead have "faith in faith." Our faith is not placed in Jesus, but in the fact that we have faith. Does that sound confusing?
Think of it this way: when people teach the Gospel, what do they focus on? Often they focus on faith. Only believe. You must believe. If you have faith you will be saved. But the Gospel message is not simply "you must believe."
The Gospel is that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to scripture, that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-5). Faith is our response to this Good News.
A few months ago my pastor did an experiment in which he "preached the Gospel" without ever even talking about Jesus. He was curious to see how many people would recognize what had been left out. In our church, he was pleased to see that many people recognized what had been left out. But he said he had seen churches where no one realized what was missing.
This is a tragic state of affairs.
If your message is not about Jesus, it is not about the Gospel, because the Gospel message is a message about Jesus.
It isn't often that I'm awake early enough to hear the birds start singing. I woke up Saturday morning, long before I planned to, for some odd reason. Sometimes my body just does that and I don't know why. All I know is that it has nothing to do with caffeine.
And sometimes I wonder why the birds sing. I've heard that it's because they're happy to see the sun again. Funny thing is, I was able to witness that the singing starts long before the sun is even visible. And yet they sing anyway. They sing in the darkness, because they know it won't stay dark forever. How do they know this? The same way we do:
It would be so easy to sing in the darkness as an act of pity -- to mourn for the pain it is causing us. But the birds aren't doing that, and neither should we. Sing to welcome the sun. Even if you can't quite see it yet.