My Most Reliable Guide

“In the work ahead, we must be guided by the philosophy that made our nation great. As Americans, we believe in the power of individuals to determine their destiny and shape the course of history. We believe that the most reliable guide for our country is the collective wisdom of ordinary citizens. And so in all we do, we must trust in the ability of free peoples to make wise decisions, and empower them to improve their lives for their futures.” President Bush, State of the Union, January 28, 2008.

When President Bush made this statement last week, he was affirming the democratic ideal that is the foundation of our country. It’s something we are supposed to applaud and certainly not question. But it’s not my ideal, and I was almost surprised by how strong a reaction I had against it when I heard the speech. Although the President expressed some truths, the heart of the problem is in the 3rd sentence quoted above. My “most reliable guide” isn’t people at all; it’s God. Changing “In God We Trust” to “In People We Trust” turns the foundation of our country into idolatry. It is the idolatry of secular humanism. Our country’s ideology elevates people to the place that only God should occupy, and we promote this ideology worldwide.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5

I think many would say that I am misinterpreting the President’s statements.  Many Christians would say that if those ordinary citizens are guided by Biblical principles in their decision-making, along with some God-given common sense, then their collective wisdom is in fact a reliable guide and is not leaning on their own understanding. This model of Christian decision-making sounds reasonable; the problem is that it’s not Biblical. Let’s look at Joshua Chapter 9 to see an illustration of how this method of decision-making differs from what God intended.

At the end of Chapter 8, the Israelites heard the entire Law of Moses read to them (vv. 34-35), so all those Biblical principles and commands were very fresh in their minds. There was one command in particular that would soon be very relevant: They were not allowed to make a treaty with any peoples living nearby in the land God was giving them. Then in Chapter 9, the Gibeonites show up and ask to make a treaty with the Israelites. They say they come from a distant country. They look like they come from a distant country. There does not appear to be any Biblical or logical reason not to make a treaty with the Gibeonites, and so they make a treaty. A few days later, the Israelites find out that the Gibeonites tricked them and actually live very close to them. With all the inside information that the reader of Chapter 9 is given, it is easy to fault the Israelites’ common sense and say that they should have investigated more carefully before going ahead with the treaty. But the Bible does not fault them for their faulty intelligence. Instead, it identifies the problem in verse 14: “The men of Israel…did not inquire of the LORD.” They didn’t ask God before making their decision.

God never intended for people to take the gifts of His Word and the ability to think logically as a license to make decisions apart from Him. Even when a decision seems clear, we are to “inquire of the LORD.” Because we are used to living our lives without God, at first this may seem impractical, burdensome, or even humiliating. “Why did God give me a brain if I’m supposed to ask Him about everything? Should I pray about whether to wear a blue shirt or a green shirt today?” This is the wrong perspective. If we are to “pray continually,” then inquiring of the LORD is simply the everyday working out of our being in constant communion with Him. Constantly talking to our Most Reliable Guide leads us into a more full understanding of His purposes in our lives and in the world around us, and ultimately it transforms us.

“Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?”  2 Kings 1:3

In 2 Kings it was Baal-Zebub; today it may be the god of individualism or secular humanism or something else.  Whatever god it may be, it is arrogant to place anything above consulting the Most High God. It is idolatry (1 Samuel 15:23). Making decisions on our own rejects God’s purposes and replaces it with our own purposes. It replaces the Kingdom of God with the Kingdom of Man. This is true both as individuals and as a nation, and it will indeed “determine their destiny and shape the course of history” as President Bush stated.

Certainty

I often drive past this vacant lot:

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1

Hopeful New Year

Happy New Year!  Yes, I know I’m a little late, but we all rung in the New Year with the stomach flu, so I’m still catching up.

There was a lot of new in the old year.  New city, new job for Elias, new church.  We moved unexpectedly to a place we did not want to go (back to Los Angeles), and then God led us to a very different church as well.  I resisted the move, but in fact the sacrifice turned out to be nothing, because God’s desires for us are better than our own.  We have found God’s blessings here.  How foolish to cling to my own desires instead of pursuing God’s desires; I cannot pursue both, although I constantly try to anyway.  I am still in need of a new heart and a new spirit, but God is working on them, so there is real hope.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.  (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

Life with Hosea is always new – last year he was a baby, now he is a little boy!  He has a new toddler spirit within him.  There are lots of pictures of this transformation on our family website.

May you walk in newness of life this New Year!

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”  (Revelation 21:5)

The Pre-Christmas Quake

It is the season of Advent, when we prepare for the coming of Christ.  The first Sunday in December our pastor gave a sermon about preparing for Christmas, with the text of Mark 1:1-4.  John the Baptist came to “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him” (Mark 1:3), so he baptized and preached repentance.

Repentance.  That is a different kind of preparation than we usually think of for Christmas.  Sounds a lot more somber than what we’re used to.  But if we knew that Jesus really were coming back this December 25th, our preparations for that joyous occasion would indeed be much more serious than for an “ordinary” Christmas.  Preparation and repentance prepare the way for celebration.  And so in the book of Luke, the Christmas story starts with Zechariah, Elizabeth, and baby John the Baptist, not with Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus.

In his sermon, our pastor explained that the Greek word for “prepare” is the same word used for constructing a house, so it’s work that involves breaking a sweat.  Kind of goes along with the carol, “Let every heart prepare him room.”  Except we’re not supposed to just clear out a corner of a room for Christ, or even prepare an entire room.  He’s supposed to get the whole house.  “Love the LORD your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your strength” (Deut. 6:5, emphasis added).

I used to watch the TV show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” where a lucky family gets their home completely remodeled.  At least that’s what they did originally.  The homes that were picked for the show were in such bad shape that, pretty soon, they realized it was better to tear down the whole house and start from scratch.  So now the family gets an entirely new house.

“Extreme Makeover: Heart Edition.”  That’s what we’re supposed to do to prepare for Christmas.  We’re not supposed to just clean house and make sure we remember to focus on Christ at Christmas amid everything else.  Our hearts need to be gutted and rebuilt from scratch.  Of course this is an ongoing process, which is why it is so helpful that Advent comes every year.  Elias and I just finished attending a Sunday School series based on Dallas Willard’s book Renovation of the Heart, which describes this process of extreme heart renovation.  It starts with acknowledging the utterly ruined condition of our souls and that our hearts deceive us.

I’ve also been reading a book of collected writings called Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas.  The reading by Alfred Delp speaks of Advent as “a time when we ought to be shaken and brought to a realization of ourselves” (p. 86).

“The Advent message comes out of an encounter of man with the absolute, the final, the gospel. It is thus the message that shakes – so that in the end the world shall be shaken.  If we are inwardly unshaken, inwardly incapable of being genuinely shaken, if we become obstinate and hard and superficial and cheap, then God will himself intervene in world events and teach us what it means to be placed in this agitation and be stirred inwardly.” (p. 85)

In the book of Haggai 2:6-7, the LORD says “In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land.  I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory.”

Do you desire Jesus to come to you this Christmas?  Then desire the shaking that comes before the glory.

Already Crossed Over

About once a week, Hosea and I drive down Sherman Way to go shopping at Trader Joe’s. As we pass Jordan Ave. in downtown Canoga Park, I say, “Look, Hosea, we’re crossing Jordan!” It makes me ponder what it will be like on the other side, in heaven.

I think of crossing over into eternal life as something that happens when you die. But in our Sunday class this week, we touched on John 5:24 where it says “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” I’ve already crossed over!

But what does that mean? John 17:3 says “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” If I believe in Jesus – surrender my life into his hands – then I know God. By knowing God, I am taking part in things which are eternal, and living eternally with God right here and now. Instead of being on a journey, I’ve already arrived.

The outcome is happening right now. The reward is happening right now. But knowing God will continue through eternity.

Blood

I have been initiated by blood into the next phase of parenthood. On Sunday morning I was home alone with Hosea when I heard him start to scream. This is of course a regular occurrence with a toddler. But this time, when I found him lying on the floor of our closet, his mouth was full of blood. For several minutes of panicked anguish, I didn’t know what to do besides mop up what seemed like large amounts of blood coming from his mouth.  Finally as the bleeding subsided I figured out that he had bitten his tongue when he fell over backwards, leaving a gaping wound. Fortunately, after consulting with the pediatrician by phone, I did not have to enter the emergency-room-visit phase of parenthood. So I changed us both out of our bloody clothes and off we went to church.

When I sing songs about Jesus’ death I feel like I “ought” to feel something, but I generally don’t, perhaps because of the familiarity of the thought. But that day at church, I couldn’t help but be moved to tears by the words of this song:

Gracious and astounding
God’s love so confounding appears to us
In a cleansing flow of blood

The Son left throne and glory
Bore the Father’s wrath and fury in our stead
And for the sins of all He bled

The guest preacher, a Messianic Jew, spoke on Atonement: A Gift of Life. Saturday was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Celebrating with repentance on Yom Kippur has even more value for Christians, because we have faith in Jesus’ blood atonement for our sins. Of course God knew that when he instituted the Jewish feast of repentance and blood sacrifice so long ago – that he would send his Son to be our salvation, the gift of life through the shedding of blood from his real human body.

Stand in awe and worship
Raise a voice in worship, come adore
The King of Kings and Lord of Lords

Faithful to an Unfaithful Car

Recently my car wouldn’t start.  We had a somewhat similar problem with it last year, which took 3 visits to the dealership to resolve.  The car is only 4 years old, so it is rather frustrating.  The frustration quickly grew into anguish when I discovered that the warranty expired two months ago.

When my husband Elias found out, he quickly decided that he just wanted to get rid of it.  “A new car shouldn’t be having all these problems!  Let’s just get something older that I can at least work on myself if it breaks.”  I reminded him that we would still have to fix the car if we were going to sell it.  This met grumpy silence.

The next morning the car still wouldn’t start, and the theme of Elias wanting to get rid of it repeated itself.  That afternoon we needed to drive to the airport to pick up my mother.  It was hot, and Elias’ car doesn’t have air conditioning and was filled with all his work stuff anyway.  So we lifted up the hood to my car, prayed for it, and tried starting it one more time.  Well, okay, three more times.  On the third try it didn’t die out, so off we drove with the plan of not turning off the engine until we arrived safely home.

As we drove along the freeway, Elias finally said, “You know, last night I was praying about the car and thinking about how I wanted to get rid of it, and it suddenly hit me.  God doesn’t just get rid of me when I give him problems.  Then I thought, ‘It’s just a car.  I don’t owe anything to a car.’  But oh, wait — God doesn’t owe anything to me, either!  Then I thought, ‘But the car is not fulfilling its purpose of providing transportation.’ But oh, wait – when I sin I don’t fulfill God’s purposes for me, either.”  Thank God that he does not get rid of us.  God is faithful and full of grace for his unfaithful, undeserving children.

Elias then told me that he had prayed recently for God to teach him more about grace.  Hmmm.  I guess we should say “Praise God for answered prayer!” and then say “Thank you, Lord, that it was just our car!”  In the Old Testament he had the prophet Hosea marry a prostitute to make the same point about grace and faithfulness.

In the end, the car needed a new fuel pump.  Assuming that this car is like us humans, it will cause more problems again in the future.  But hopefully we will not get too upset with it, and instead remember how faithful our God is.

Not My Will

I think my baby is now officially a toddler even though he’s not walking on his own yet, because he has entered the temper tantrum phase. It’s because he knows what he wants, but he doesn’t know what’s good for him. He wants to chew on a computer network cable. He wants to chew on or try to plug in the vacuum cleaner cord. He wants to play with the telephone and call Brazil or Singapore. He wants to drink baby shampoo during his bath. But he knows that he definitely doesn’t want his hair washed. Or his teeth brushed. Or his diaper changed. You can see why I might need to intervene at times, sending him into a screaming fit. Part of growing up is learning that you can’t or shouldn’t have everything you want, and if you know what’s good for you, you need to do a lot of things you don’t want to do as well.

You may have heard the saying, “Never say ‘I’d never be a missionary in Africa,’ because then that’s what God will ask you to do.” People say it jokingly, but it’s happened enough times to make you stop and think. Of course God isn’t trying to make our lives miserable any more than I am trying to make my toddler’s life miserable. He just knows better than we do what we need for His will to be accomplished in our lives and in the world.

I may or may not have ever said, “I’d never live in the San Fernando Valley,” but the thought was surely living unformed in the depths of my mind. So why would God send us here? I don’t know all the reasons why yet. Perhaps the better question for now is why was my heart was so resistant to the idea in the first place? When God directed my husband to look for jobs that would entail moving, I accepted it. Then as he began interviewing in various places, I would imagine moving to that place, and the struggles began in my heart of where I would or would not want to live. My obedience to God was taking on this unspoken form: “Yes, Lord, I’ll move anywhere you want us to go. Except (fill-in-the-blank).” When I found out that he had been offered this unlikeliest of jobs in the San Fernando Valley area, my first reaction was, “What!? Well, you don’t have to accept it!”

Clearly there was an idol in my heart that needed smashing. An idolatry of place, you could say. Wanting to live someplace nice is natural. America is a country of immigrants, all wanting to live somewhere nice. It’s easy to get attached to a nice place, and when you have to leave you grieve. But when my heart outright revolts against what God is calling me to do, it’s a clear sign that I’ve set up a little shrine in my heart to another god. It means I believe that my idea of a perfect life is better than the life that God has for me.

Being obedient to God was easy when he told us to move to the idyllic town of Fallbrook, the self-proclaimed “Avocado Capital of the World.” Obedience did not come so easily when he told us to move to the San Fernando Valley, the porn capital of the world. But disobedience is an arrogance that leads to death. Obedience leads to righteousness (Romans 6:16) and a life full of the Spirit (1 John 3:24). When my natural toddler self is in control, I’ll choose disobedience any day, but by God’s grace I am slowly growing up and becoming happier to say “Not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)

Welcome to the SFV

We moved to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles recently. It seemed more than a little crazy to move back to the big city after our idyllic life in a small town in avocado country. We can no longer walk out our front door and pick avocados, limes, and oranges. In its place, there’s a donut shop on every corner. I think the San Fernando Valley must be the donut capital of the world.

What I did miss about Los Angeles, and am enjoying now, is all the ethnic food. All around us is a feast – Mexican, Vietnamese, Persian, Thai, and Indian. The grocery store I shop at has wonderful Persian breads and sweets. There is a Vietnamese area in the middle of Reseda, and it is in a restaurant there that I discovered boba. Perhaps I was not my usual self due to the Valley summer heat, but I decided to order this scary looking thing – a drink with what appeared to be black round marbles filling the bottom third of the cup. I have since learned that they are a type of tapioca. But at any rate, they are very odd, and I am totally addicted. Sucking them up the fat straw, savoring their bouncy chewiness, what’s not to love? Of course the fabulously rich mango smoothie that the boba were sitting in didn’t hurt. Now that I’m tuned into boba, I see it everywhere. The sandwich shop has boba. The donut shops have boba. My friend said she even saw a boba bar.

We like to go for walks in the evening, and have been pleasantly surprised to discover that lots of other people in the “big city” also go for walks, much more so than in the smaller town that we moved from. Everyone tends to gravitate towards the block where the elementary school is, and people sit outside the school while their children play. So we are meeting other people with babies, as well as dogs and their owners. There are people from many places. We are getting to know a Russian woman with two children who emigrated due to religious discrimination. There is a Bulgarian grandmother who always talks to us in Bulgarian and smiles, and we smile back, not understanding a word. We often pass three Vietnamese ladies out walking for exercise. One night we passed an Indian grandmother and her young grandchild, squatting on the sidewalk outside their home. She was old and wrinkled, wearing traditional clothing, and appeared as if she had squatted for so much of her life that her body just naturally fell into that position. She looked like she had just been plucked out of a little village in India, and here she was, sitting right in front of a big new 2-story suburban American house with a bright green lawn.

Part of moving was finding a new church. My image of the San Fernando Valley did not include many churches; perhaps in my mind they were crowded out by the donut shops and pornography industry. But as I drove the streets doing errands, churches began popping out at me like boba. They were everywhere! Big churches, little churches, storefront churches. Could there be as many churches as donut shops? English churches, Spanish churches, Korean churches, Chinese churches, Iranian churches, Indian churches. It finally dawned on me that God is gathering the nations to himself right here under our noses. In the San Fernando Valley.

Facing Jordan

My 1-year-old loves to point at things. His favorites are airplanes, birds, flowers, cats, and dogs, and he does the sign language for some of these as well. It is a fun age, because he is starting to communicate and give us a glimpse into what is going on in his busy little head.

My dad was visiting this past week because his mother, who is 95 years old and in a nursing home near us, was failing, and it looked like she might be getting ready to cross the River Jordan. We were outside and Hosea started pointing, but I couldn’t tell what he was pointing at. “What do you see?” I asked. My dad chimed in and said, “What do you see, son of man? — A basket of figs,” quoting loosely from the book of Jeremiah.

To Hosea, a fig would be just another new, strange object to explore by examining, squishing, chewing, and throwing. As adults, a basket of figs (or apples would be a better modern-day analogy) has lost its novelty, so we don’t point to it excitedly or pay much attention to it. But Jeremiah saw more than a basket of figs in Jeremiah 24. He listened and learned from God, and through that everyday object was able to see far beyond the basket of figs and into the spiritual reality of how God was acting in the world.

It’s easy to loose sight of how spiritual realities are intertwined with the everyday life that surrounds us. We do not see many things in daily life, whether a diaper change or a change in the stock market, having much significance beyond this present world. But there’s a confluence of the worldly and the spiritual that will overtake us all whether we pay attention to it now or not. To see it, we must turn our faces toward the Jordan River, look deep, and learn about the world anew – like a 1-year-old.