Worry or Trust?
A couple of weeks ago I had my first physical in about 10 years. I hate going to the doctor. Most of all, I hate having blood drawn. Judge me all you want, but I hate it. I don’t mind shots, but I can’t stand them taking blood. I started to dread it, and after a day or so I realized that the process that would take 3 minutes was another week away, and it was stupid to turn 3 minutes of misery into 168 hours. I tried not to think about it too much, and when the time came, I held my breath and survived the 180 seconds of horror.
That was dread. I knew it was going to happen. I just dreaded it. Worry is an even dumber emotion. When we worry, we don’t even know the thing we are worrying about is going to happen. But we still let the possibility of something bad happening rob us of days, weeks and months of the joy and peace that God intended for us to have. Maybe that’s why he told us not to do it.
We dread bad things we know will happen and worry about bad things we think might happen. But if we believe in who God says He is, we should be able to remember that God already has the future covered and He didn’t forget about us in His preparations for them. If the bad happens, He’ll give us peace to get through it and ultimately use it for His good.
We can believe that and enjoy His peace or trade our joy in for the pain and fear that accompany doubting God. It’s a simple choice. It’s just not always easy.
Jesus Cleans us Up
One of my favorite Episode titles that we’ve had is “He Loves You the Way You Are, But He Refuses to Let You Stay That Way”. I liked the line at the time, but it has grown to mean more and more to me over time.
As a non-believer or maybe even a new believer, I think the first half of that line is important to remember. God doesn’t expect us to clean ourselves up. He loves us as we are and that’s how He wants us to come to Him. But make no mistake, He wants us to come as we are, so we don’t have to stay that way.
I loved Ben’s analogy about giving his dog a bath. The image that came to mind was Simba fighting his momma trying to give him a bath in The Lion King. We don’t always realize that we need a bath, and most of us probably fought them when we were young. Christian often asks me to smell under his arms in protest of the process.
But God knows we need it. And like our kids, the process isn’t usually worth the fight we put up to prevent it. Yeah, some soap might get in our eyes once in a while, and a little water might go up our nose. But more often than not, God uses “gentle correction” to steer us toward the path of righteousness. It’s having to correct your nine-year-old for doing exactly what your eighth-grade basketball coach ripped your hair out for, but you still do every day. Or your 12-year old’s Bible test being on your favorite verse, the one about not worrying, when all you’ve done for a month is worry. God has His ways.
As we grow in Christ, the second half of that line starts to become more important to remember. We already know He loves us the way we are. Why wouldn’t He?! But no matter how much we think we’ve grown, He still sees work to do. As “mature Christians” we’re awfully grateful for the work God has done in us, as long as we think He’s finished. But when He breaks the soap back out, there we are, asking Him to smell our arms in protest.
This is How Much He Loves You
It’s so easy to overcomplicate spiritual matters, and yes, I realize I’m the extreme example. But I don’t believe that’s God’s intention. God went to great lengths to drive home the simple truths He wanted us to anchor to in our lives.
The 66 books of the Bible tell a lot of stories and provide a lot of wisdom in a lot of areas. But the common themes seem to keep repeating. God loves us. God is perfect. God is there for us. God is patient and forgiving. Far from an exhaustive list, but when we remember these things, the minor details of our lives fade in significance.
When we cling our hope to things of this world, we will be hurt. Money can be lost. People can hurt us. We can get sick. There’s no limit of things that can go wrong in our lives that may be out of our control. God knows that when our joy is determined by these things, our lives will be emotional roller coasters. But His love never leaves us, and His power never fades. He knows that the only true peace and joy are found in our relationship with Him, which is why He gave so much to prove His love and provide us a path to it. It’s up to us each day to decide which path we are going to walk.
Authentic Christianity
Followers of Christ are called to follow His example, showing His love to others to encourage them to follow Him as well. But it doesn’t work as well when we forget to follow His example. The world has a lot of misconceptions about Jesus and what Christians really believe today, and the enemy loves confusion. But our countermove in this battle is simply to be more like Jesus and let His Spirit and God’s word guide us.
God Did it All
We tend to give ourselves more credit than we deserve for the things we do in life. When you woke up this morning, what was your contribution to the process? Setting an alarm, and getting out of the bed when you heard it?
What was God’s part? While you rested, God kept your heart beating, brain functioning, lungs working, with oxygen in the room at a comfortable temperature and made sure no asteroids fell on your head (and helped your ears hear the alarm clock when it went off).
Our growth with God is the same way. We read the Bible, we go to church, we pray. But it’s His Spirit that enables us to understand and actually grow in Him. Otherwise, we are just going through the motions. You can know the Father and know the Son, but if you don’t know the Spirit you’re really missing out. That’s how the stuff you hear and read about starts to come to life.
I’ve always known that God could do anything. I think the big difference for me has been realizing I can’t do anything without God. It’s all Him, simple as that.
Wrapping Yourself in His Love
We can be awfully entitled in this country, and that includes, maybe even especially Christians. We start off knowing that we need God. Then we seek Him, we find Him, and His love changes us. We start walking by the Spirit and seeing Its fruits. Then something bad happens and we start wondering what we did to deserve the misfortune.
Here’s a question: what did we do to not deserve it? Christians aren’t somehow exempt from suffering. But it’s so easy to slip into thinking we are owed some cosmic and divine favor thanks to our faithfulness to our Creator. But here’s the thing: God doesn’t owe us anything; He’s already given us everything.
Our relationship with God does provide us with one advantage over non-believers. God provides His children with His comfort and peace in our struggles, and it surpasses all understanding, far sufficient to get us through them. But our complaining fills up the room with enough of our own hot air to fog our view of Him, getting in His way of providing this peace.
We’re going to have bad days, struggles, failures and heartbreaks. And sometimes God’s love may feel like the only thing we have going for us. But if we’re not careful, we can get so wrapped up in our own feelings that we block our only source of comfort.
What a waste that must feel like to the One who paid for our privilege.
Humility is a Gift
Nick Saban has won 7 National Championships, more than any other college football coach in history. How successful would his career have been if he let every player pick their own position, let them play their way, patted them on the back after every play, and helped them blame others for their failures? How many titles would his teams have won? How many of those players would have gone on to professional careers in football, or any other endeavor for that matter? How much more knowledgeable, righteous, and loving is God than Nick Saban?
It’s easy to shy away from God’s instruction. Sometimes His lessons are difficult. Sometimes they make us uncomfortable. Sometimes they make us recognize our imperfections. But they are always intended to grow us and draw us closer to Him.
In order to accept His instruction, we have to first admit that we need it. And that can be a lot harder than it sounds like it should be. We seem to naturally think that we know best and think we have to rely on ourselves to grow, even in our relationship with God. We forget that that’s His job. Our job is to admit that we need Him and then listen to (and obey) His instruction. That’s all. He doesn’t need us to figure out the plan. He just needs us to follow it.
Nick Saban won 7 championships, but he also failed to win 21 times. But God doesn’t fail. Ever. He just needs us to remember it.
Resting in God’s Sovereignty
It’s easy to attach our own limitations to God. His knowledge, power, and love are so far beyond our human capabilities to comprehend even individually, so how can we expect to understand the effects of all three? It takes understanding all three and how they work together to be able to truly find the peace and trust in His will.
For example, what good is God if He is all loving and all knowing, but limited in power to do anything to help us? This places Him as an empathetic bystander, knowing what has happened and will happen, but unable to step in and help.
If God were all loving and fully capable of anything, but limited in knowledge, how can we trust Him to use those powers for good, even with the best intentions? And worst of all, a god who can do anything and knows everything, but lacks compassion, sounds more like a really dangerous super villain than someone we can trust.
These three attributes of God do not just add to each other, they compound His power. He knows everything, has the power to do anything, and how does He use these unlimited abilities? He devotes it all to demonstrating His unlimited love for us.
Jesus demonstrated this perfectly on the Cross and in His resurrection. He showed His knowledge in His teachings and predictions of His own death, and His power in His resurrection. But why did He do it? So we would all come to fear the wrath of the Father and finally start obeying His commands? No. To free us from our inability to obey and to prove, once and for all, that He loves us and can, and will, do anything to prove that.
When we face challenges and uncertainties, it’s easy to doubt God. But when we do, we can ask ourselves which part we are doubting. Do we think our circumstances surprised Him? Do we think He can’t do anything about it? Or do we think He doesn’t love us enough to help? Knowing that all three are false leaves us with only one option. To trust Him and enjoy the blessing of knowing that how He handles it will be best.
Knowing. Learning. Growing.
Knowledge by itself isn’t really worth a lot. I know a lot about football. But I never played past JV and my coaching career stalled out at Pop Warner. There’s a big difference between knowing a lot about something and having the ability to apply what you know.
If you read a recipe for French Souffle’, then you will know how to make French Souffle’. But that doesn’t mean you can do it. In order to do it, you will have to do the steps in the recipe.
You only really learn from doing the steps. Reading the recipe will tell you the right way to do it, but doing it wrong a few times will teach you why that’s the right way. My first steak in college was a charbroiled leather nightmare, but now I understand the importance of meat selection, and that no matter what your buddy says, A1 and Miller Lite is not a good marinade.
I can read the recipe in Matthew (5:44) and have the knowledge that Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. But when I put it into practice, I start to sound a lot like the Pharisee in Luke 18, thanking God for making me better than them. Apparently, I missed a step in the recipe. Let’s try again. After failing at it enough, I’m starting to realize it might just be easier to try not to have as many enemies in the first place.
Growth comes from trusting the Lord with all of our heart and leaning on His understanding instead of our own, in all of our ways. I trust the Lord, I lean on His understanding instead of my own. Sometimes. The rest of the time I spend learning why I should have.
The Eternal Things
I’m constantly trying to figure God out. He must find it amusing. Or annoying. It could go either way, I guess. But I want to know what God is doing. I can drive myself crazy asking ‘why is He doing this’ or ‘what is He going to do with that?’
But we don’t need to worry about what God is doing. God’s handling what God needs to do, and He’s doing it just fine. What we need to be worrying about is what God wants us to do. Simple little impossibly hard things like obeying His commands, loving each other, caring, encouraging, that kind of thing.
And trusting that He knows what is right, has the power to do it, and is faithful to His promises, because He loves us.
Ownership Vs. Stewardship
The human ego is one of our most self-destructive traits. Thinking we control things that we don’t causes us to fear and worry about things out of our hands. When we set our goals for 2025, I believe the very first step should be asking God to show us what they should be. The workers don’t write business plans and take it to the CEO to execute, do they? As children of God, our New Year’s resolutions should be divine commands, not a personal wish list.
Own my own, here would be my list: Lose 15 pounds, grow my business, finish reading the Bible. Now, let’s ask a simple question: why?
I want to lose 15 pounds so I’ll look better and feel better. I want to grow my business so I’ll have more money and feel more successful. I want to finish reading the Bible so I can say I’ve read the entire Bible and have more divine wisdom to help me navigate life. If I take this list to God and say “Lord, please help me accomplish this”, I imagine He’d reply “Why should I?”
I can play around until I think I’m aligning these somehow with God’s will. He wants me to be healthy and happy, so he’d want me to lose weight. He wants to bless me so surely He wants me to have more money so I can give and bless more people. Obviously, He wants me to know His Word and grow in my relationship with Him. But He knows those aren’t my real motives.
But I think it goes further than motivation. It’s about recognition and reverence for His righteousness and power. He doesn’t just want us to set our goals to align as best we can with His. Ultimately, I think He wants to set our goals for us. Not because He’s power hungry, but because He loves us and wants to help us achieve the right goals.
If God gives us a goal, the command itself is embedded with a promise for His power to fulfil it. He doesn’t fail, and He doesn’t set us up to. So, I just have one New Year’s resolution this year, and it’s not complicated. Obey God.
Living the Abundant Life
John 10:10 is one of the great marketing slogans for Christianity. The promise of receiving abundant life sure sells a lot better than images of bearing crosses and dying to ourselves. But like a lot of things in the Bible, I think we might let a little too much human play into our interpretation sometimes, rather than reading what it actually says.
Jesus came to give life more abundantly. But as the recipients of this amazing gift, we think we ought the be the ones who get to define it. Love, joy, peace, that sounds great and all, but what’s the trade in policy on this thing? “I’m pretty well set in the patience department” we might negotiate, “How about some more money instead?” or “I’ve got plenty of self-control but don’t skimp on the kindness. I do wish people would be nicer to me!”
I bet if God were the proverbial genie granting 3 wishes, our requests would reveal at least 4 desires of the flesh. But that’s not what it says.
It’s kind of ironic when you think about it. The word abundant means “existing in large quantities” (in English, I’ll leave the Greek to Ben). How exactly did we turn that into a promise to increase the quality of our own lives, at the individual, singular, level? Isn’t that kind of the opposite of abundant?
Maybe He just meant that He came to give life to more sheep? Considering that without Him, all the sheep would die, that interpretation seems reasonable. But it’s not much of a marketing slogan. Unless you’re a sheep.
So what? We follow Jesus just so we get to live? Not to go all Ecclesiastes on you but, yeah, from John 10:10, that’s about all I read.
But don’t just read John 10:10. Back up a few verses and read about knowing His voice and Him calling us by name. Rewind to John 3 and remember much the Provider paid for this gift, and fast forward to John 14 - 16 and read about how simple the Shepard made His commands and His promises to help us fulfill them.
Read other books too. He doesn’t promise us riches, but Matthew 6 does promise that He’ll provide for us. And when it doesn’t seem like He will, Hebrews teaches us how to have faith. When we get tired of turning the other cheek, Ephesians 4 helps us handle conflict, and when we’re the ones we keep having to forgive, Romans 7 reminds us that we aren’t the first and Romans 8 reassures us that God accounted for our imperfection.
To truly discover the abundant life, we have to get to know the Provider. Yes, He’s more concerned with giving life to more sheep than improving the quality of life for one, but He’d love to let all of the sheep participate in the mission.
I can’t define the abundant life because it is beyond measure, existing in infinite quantities of infinite varieties. But I do know where to find it. Go back to John 10:10.
The Enemy Never Sleeps
When do you like to let the enemy control your life? Saturdays? Right after breakfast, or do you like to make him wait until after dinner?
Following Jesus is a decision that repeats itself more than Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. It has to be. He told us that Himself, and if you didn’t read the warning label in the welcome packet, well, join the club, I guess. But He didn’t say ‘pick up your cross and follow Me once’, or even ‘once a week’. He told us it was daily. But we aren’t always the best listeners. Honestly, it isn’t even daily. It’s constant.
So, what exactly do we have to do? Read the Bible all day? Pray without ceasing as Paul suggests? Oh, if it were only so simple! Prayers can become vain repetitions, and even the enemy can quote Scripture. To truly follow Jesus, we have to do something way harder than that.
We have to trust God. Constantly.
It gets worse. It’s not just the easy stuff. We have to trust Him with everything. Yes, even that thing. Most importantly, that thing!
Did I mention this was constant? It’s not just giving Him that most important thing once, or even daily. I’ve regifted my biggest problems back to God more times than an ugly Christmas sweater, only to steal them back like a tormented game of Dirty Santa.
The only thing I’ve found to manage this impossible requirement is to tell myself that God knows more than me. And if you think that’s easy, well, you don’t know me. But I’m trying. Constantly.
Growing in Gratitude by Grace
Gratitude isn’t technically listed as one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5. Maybe it was a given? How can we not walk in gratitude as Christians?
As I’ve prepared for Thanksgiving, I’ve been trying to inventory all the things I’m grateful for. Starting at the top, I’m thankful for Christ. When you let all of that soak in, it’s about enough to stop you in your tracks. Not only for what He did for us at the Cross, but all that He taught us before and all of His guidance since. We certainly didn’t deserve it, and that alone is more than we could ever say thank you for enough.
Then you have the obvious top 5s or top 10s of our lives. Our families, kids, friends, homes, all of the things as Americans we count as a given right rather than a blessing, until we realize that these things aren’t so automatic for a lot of people around the world, and even right here at home.
But when I thank God for the things I’m grateful for today, I start to also thank Him for the things that caused them. Many of today’s blessings grew out of something I was worried or angry about in the past. When I was begging God to change these things, I didn’t know what I was asking Him to take away. And I’m so grateful that He didn’t listen.
God is always working. everywhere, for everyone who loves Him, in every circumstance. So, we should be thankful for the blessings we can see, but I think we can also go ahead and thank Him in advance for all of the blessings we can’t see yet from the things we may not be so thankful for today.
Happy Thanksgiving!
(PS, go like us on Goodpods (https://goodpods.com), and maybe we can crack the top 5)
A Living Testimony
My grandfather lived out Christianity as well as anyone I’ve ever known. Well, sort of.
The man was the father of under complicating things, to a fault. His faith was no different. It was like he read Matthew 22 one day and said “Greatest two commandments, got it. That’s all I need to know.”
I like to say he got the big things right. He certainly couldn’t judge others. He and his friends wouldn’t have been allowed in the church at Corinth, even as visitors. He’d evict a tenant from a property because they were $1,000 behind on rent and send them a check for $2,000 to get them back on their feet. He invented new ways to use the four-letter words, but that Three-Letter Word was never out of context.
He didn’t pretend to be perfect. I’m not even sure he tried to be “righteous”. But he knew how to love, because that’s what “the Master” said was most important to Him.
He died when I was 18, and it’s probably a good thing. Because I’ve spent the last 21 years trying to quit most of the things he taught me how to do. Except for loving God and loving others. No one ever taught me that any better.
It’s Not Complicated. It’s of God.
Remember the movie A Few Good Men? It’s the one where Jack Nicholson yells “You can’t handle the truth!” If you know the scene, what seems to have set Jack off was Tom Cruise’s character demanding answers “he thought he was entitled to”.
We’re bad to play this scene out with God, getting frustrated that we don’t have all the answers, and feeling entitled to the truth we think He’s unfairly withholding from us. The funny thing is, Jack’s line actually works from God’s perspective. We can’t handle the truth. But God isn’t hiding it from us. We know the truth. We just can’t handle it.
I mean, really, how much simpler could God have made it? He put it in writing. He sent us the perfect demonstration. Not a metaphorical one either. A literal fellow human, like us, to show us how it was done. And while He was here, He told us exactly what to do. It’s not like He gave us the instruction manual for cracking the Da Vinci Code. He told us to love God, love each other, and He’d do the rest. That’s it.
It’s not complicated at all. But we can’t handle it because it’s too simple. It doesn’t give us anything to be proud of. No mountain to climb, no race to win, nothing at all to feed our ego. It robs us of any sense of accomplishment and requires us to accept the simple fact that we can’t do anything without God. Put simply, it requires us to admit the truth that deep down, we already know, but can’t handle. At least not without Him.
The Answer is Christ
I saw the other day that a church got in trouble for displaying a “Jesus in ‘24” sign outside of their church. As Christians, doesn’t it sound amazing to think of what it would be like if we could elect Jesus Christ as our next President? Can you even imagine it? Lovingkindness for all, peace and joy abounding, generosity and freedom overflowing behind the leadership of the greatest figure the earth has ever known.
Here’s the problem: He’d never get elected. Want to hear something even worse? You probably wouldn’t vote for Him. And neither would I.
Consider His platform: He’d close every “reproductive healthcare” facility in the country and impose a tax of, I don’t know, around 10 percent, on all Christians that would go directly to funding a new program supporting unmarried single mothers.
He’d deport every illegal alien on day 1 and pass immigration reform that simplified the process so much that twice as many new immigrants showed up on day 2. This would throw a huge wrinkle into the economy. But He wouldn’t care. He’d just dip into His Christian tax fund to make sure everyone was provided for (including the single pregnant women arriving from Mexico).
He’d appoint a hippie from California as His press secretary to communicate the vision He had for His people and invite the most ruthless and greedy Wall Street executives to Presidential dinners at the White House, setting quite the scene for when the LGBTQ+ leaders showed up with the best seats at the table.
As Christians, we might know that Christ is the answer to the world’s problems. But we only like to think about how He’d fix the problems WE HAVE with the world. How can we be His hands and feet if we only think of how His grace extends to our needs? The right hand might be on the opposite side of the left, but neither one can scratch itself. Just sayin’.
Quality of Faith
What do we have to do to go to Heaven? And once we do it, can we undo it? Is the thing we have to do a one-time thing, or a process over some period of time, and if so, for how long? These are common questions we tend to ask ourselves, and we spent most of this episode on these topics in some form or another.
I don’t believe it’s as simple as being dunked in water. I don’t believe any prayer will do it. I don’t believe a certain attendance record at your local church or even the denomination of this church is a deciding factor. In fact, I can make a longer list of things I don’t believe will get us into Heaven than I can of things that I think will.
At the same time, I’m almost positive that whatever the answer is, it’s not a complicated one. I don’t believe God sent His son to bear the burden of our sins and suffer the way He did to demonstrate God’s love, only to make the acceptance of this love difficult to figure out. If we have to solve a spiritual Rubik’s cube in order to receive our salvation, why put Jesus through that in the first place? But if salvation is so simple, why is the Bible not clearer on what exactly defines it and how it’s obtained?
I believe it’s because we are asking the wrong questions. God didn’t share the minimum standard with us because that’s not what He wants for us. He did make it clear and simple. He tells us to seek Him with our whole heart, and to seek first His Kingdom and the rest will be added. If we seek God with all our heart, it’s impossible not to find salvation in the process, but it will be on our way to far greater things.
This isn’t for God’s benefit. It’s because God wants us to enjoy more of His blessings than just the minimum. He knows that we will have more peace, love & joy seeking Him with our whole heart than we will by seeking enough of it to get us to Heaven. Rather than worrying about what we have to do for God, we should be seeking all He wants to do for us, and Heaven will most definitely be included.
He Cares for You
Sometimes I slip into treating prayer like it’s some kind of game show. Ask for the right things, get 10 points. Ask for the wrong thing, but with the right motive, lose 10 points. Ask for something selfish, and that little whammy guy comes out and steals all your points and you lose a turn.
I have absolutely no Biblical reason for this. God isn’t giving out bonus points for asking for the right things. He’s well aware that He knows more than we do about what is best for us. He’s even aware of all those selfish things I want to ask for, and probably finds it funny that I pat myself on the back for thinking I kept them a secret.
1 Peter 5:7 is an interesting verse. In the NASB it reads “casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” But the KJV uses “care” in place of anxiety. “Care” has a lot of definitions, and I’ll yield to the Biblical scholars that they mean the same thing. But in modern English, you could paraphrase that to mean entrusting your care to Him, like you cast the care of your child onto a teacher or the care of your health to a doctor. If you read it this way, the next line just affirms the first.
These two ways of reading the verse don’t contradict each other. They are actually reinforcing. We can trust God with all of our worries, because He cares for us. And because we can trust Him to care for us, we should entrust Him with our care.
I don’t treat prayer like it’s a game show because I’m afraid God will be mad at me for asking for something He doesn’t want me to have. I do it because I’m afraid He’ll give it to me, and it’ll be my fault for asking it! But this is so flawed. Part of casting our care and worries onto God means trusting Him to tell us “No” when that’s the best answer. Paul says in everything by prayer…make your requests known to God. He didn’t say God would grant them. He says the peace of God will guard our minds in Christ Jesus. That’s the answer He wants to give us.
Our Best vs. God’s Best
Several years ago, a friend asked me if I wanted to be on his mud run team. “Hmm, sounds fun”, I said, “but what’s a mud run?” A couple of amusing minutes later, not only was I positive I didn’t want to be on his mud run team, but I was also reevaluating the judgement of my friend selection. That sounded insane!
No offense to anyone who has participated in these self-inflicted torture tests, but I’m out. After paying about a $100 entry fee, you get to run like 2 miles through freezing water and mud, through dozens of obstacles including my personal favorite, live electrical wires! But not for nothing, if you complete the course, you get a free tee shirt.
At first glance, this might be the way we see the Christian Walk. Being crucified with Christ and baptized into His death doesn’t sound fun (Romans 6). Dying to self and picking up our cross daily doesn’t sound appealing at face value either (1 Cor. 15 & Luke 9). But that’s because of our flawed human perspective. Our selfish nature causes us to see our ways as best and, as a result, we view trading them for God’s righteousness as a sacrifice.
But God doesn’t see it is a sacrifice. From His perspective, we are ALREADY running the self-inflicted torture test, and He’s offering us a way out. Everything Jesus suffered at the Cross was to give us access to a better way. It even refunds our entry fee and ends up with something way better than a tee-shirt.
If you want to see how much God wants us to stop torturing ourselves, just look at the Cross. Did the same God who loved us enough to brutally sacrifice His only Son for us do it just so we could sacrifice our own joy back to Him? If that’s what He was willing to do to give us another way, how much torture are we putting ourselves through?
I won’t try to answer that. Even God couldn’t find words to answer that. He showed us with Jesus.