Category: Practical Surrender

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Giving Jesus the Key

I recently lost one of the two keys to our Toyota mini-van, and the Lord didn’t reveal its location. I thought I could just go down to Home Depot and have another key made, but the associate there told me otherwise. He said that they have Toyota Blanks, but the key will only be able to get the outer door unlocked. If I put it in the ignition, the car can’t even be started!

It turns out that you have to have an authentic Toyota microchip key in order to drive the car. When the microchip in the head of the key comes close to the sensor near the ignition, the computer unlocks and allows you to start the car.

I guess there is a little value in having a key that gets you into the car only… if I lock the true key in the car, then I could use the valet key to get in without calling the Triple-A service. Actually, “valet key” is not the right term for this copied key, because a valet key can actually start and run the car. I will call the copy key the “fake key,” because the promise that is wrapped up in a real car key is that you will be able to use the car for something other than sitting in it or storing items within it.

Many who call themselves Christians give Jesus the fake key to their lives. The key allows Jesus to get inside the car and sit in a seat, but they don’t really want Jesus driving them around. After all, Jesus might drive them places where they do not want to go. He might drive too fast or two slow, or he might scrape the paint finish or even crash the car! They like Jesus well enough that he can come along for the ride, but they don’t trust Him well enough for Him to do the driving.

He might interfere with where they want to go in life!

Occasionally, I will drive past a police car that is parked on the side of the road. A sidelong glance reveals that the policeman in the driver’s seat is actually an inflatable balloon, designed to look like a policeman. I understand that the Police Department uses this decoy around town in different spots in order to affect a calming of traffic. When people see the “manned” police car, they are likely to slow down if they are speeding, and to be on their best behavior.

Perhaps you have an inflatable Jesus in your car? You blow him up with your own breath and place him in the driver’s seat when you park your car at Church. Those who drive or walk past see that Jesus is in the driver’s seat, and people think well of you. When it is time to leave Church, however, you look both ways before you get into the car, and then you reach in and throw the balloon Jesus into the back seat. You think to yourself, “I can’t get anywhere I really want to go with this Jesus in the driver’s seat!”

The balloon sits quietly in the back seat while you drive to Sin City. Catching a glimpse of the balloon’s eyes in the rear view mirror, and feeling a tad guilty, you grab your coat and throw it over the head of the balloon Jesus. This is the extent of your relationship with Jesus. You prop up the balloon and move it around, promoting “Jesus” to the driver’s position when it is advantageous to do so, and then unceremoniously demoting the colored air bag to the back seat and covering its “eyes” so that you won’t feel guilty as you do the real driving. You hardly ever talk to it, except when you want something badly, and when you don’t get what you want, you think you might as well be talking into the air.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ Matthew 7:21-23.

Perhaps you have done more than buy an inflatable Jesus, and you have really given Jesus a key—the fake key? Is it possible that you’ve kept from giving him the microchip key that is the all-access key that he’s waiting for? Perhaps the key you’ve given Him is the car key of promise, but in reality, it is just a lock-picker for the door. So Jesus is allowed to come pick your lock from time to time, and maybe he can sit in the seat sometimes, or store some of His stuff in the back seat, but you’re not willing for Him to drive you where He wants you to go. He can sit in the driver’s seat, but like the inflatable policeman, He’s just there for effect. He can’t take you anywhere…

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Heart of Stone… Heart of Flesh

A friend has been meditating over the space of a few years about the new heart that God has given us. He wishes to comprehend the victory that Jesus has given us over sin and death, and to apply the new creation heart to live victoriously and become an overcomer. This is a noble, but frustrating, pursuit. Believing that we have been given a free and victorious heart, we have to reconcile the victory that has been won with the simple fact that we are far from perfect, and we “lose” battles every day.

In fact, to have the fallen flesh is to operate in brokenness, and to interpret God and the world around us through a grimy lens. Even in my best moments of, what seems to me, complete surrender to Him, there is some degree of self-preservation or exaltation that is unseen, at work beyond the edges of my consciousness. God knows that we are unable to present a heart to Him that is completely devoid of the concerns of the flesh. And so God operates in continual grace to a constantly broken and needy people.

It is a JOY to the Lord to fill His people with Himself, and to do things through a people who acknowledge that they need Him desperately and are looking toward Him like helpless children. This kind of heart is soft and receptive to the Spirit, and desires what God desires. But no heart started out this way. We know from Jeremiah that the heart is desperately wicked, and we know from Paul that there is no one who seeks after God on his own. God Himself draws us and opens our eyes to Who He is:

Hosea 11:4. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them.

John 6:44. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Romans 2:4. …God’s kindness leads you toward repentance…

So God Himself opens our eyes to be able to see Him, and He gives us a new heart. Ezekiel 36:26. “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.”

We are tempted to think that this new heart is one that is able to gain victory over sin, and that it has the capacity to throw off the domination of sin. After all, we are a new creation! We begin to adopt the idea that we have the final victory over sin already, and that all we need to do to resist sin is to believe hard enough that the victory is already ours. Subtly, our eyes can be diverted from an ongoing dependency on Jesus to a pursuit of perfection of our own righteousness.

If our primary goal is to be victorious over sin and to be an “overcomer,” we will be constantly frustrated. We supposed that we just hadn’t believed strongly enough… that we are more than conquerors. If God has already given the victory, and we are still experiencing defeat, we rationally conclude that our faith is lacking, and assume that we just need to work up the strength of our faith.

But what is the goal of the Christian life? Are we supposed to reach some state of sinless perfection, or perfect obedience? God knows that we can’t do this, and yet we often make this our chief pursuit, taking on an impossible behavior management project which, we suppose, will please Him. A behavior-centric focus to the Christian life is a path to burnout and disillusionment, and shifts the burden of perfection from the shoulders of Christ onto our own. Our faith and sanctification must be Christo-centric, because Christ is our very life!

Hebrews 12:1-2. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

This kind of persistent pursuit is a testimony of His grace rather than our obedience—of His righteousness rather than our own. HE is the perfecter of our faith, and not we ourselves. He is the Author and the One Who has made us holy, and it is HE who sanctifies us as we still inhabit the body. I can’t will myself to stop committing sin, but I am able to humble myself as one who recognizes the bankruptcy of his own righteousness, and ask that God do in me what I can’t possibly do.

Col. 3:1-4. “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

When I eagerly submit to the reign of Jesus in me, and Christ lives and breathes and speaks and thinks through me, then I have nothing to boast about for myself, and I will find myself in awe of His presence and power, and in the difference He makes in my life. I won’t worry about my progress in becoming an overcomer; I will be enamored with the One Overcomer, who overcame for us, and christens us overcomers despite our incomplete obedience.

So, what is the “heart of flesh” that God gives us, spoken about in Ezekiel 36:26? I think the answer is grasped when we consider what the “heart of flesh” is contrasted with—the “heart of stone”–that God removes. The description of our former heart, the unbelieving one, focuses on its hardness and coldness. This hardness is primarily toward God Himself, and to His truth, but is evidenced in our lives by a strong self-will to pursue our own ends or to secure our own security. This might even look like a life of selflessness in some people, as they try to win acceptance from others and from God through being a people-pleaser. Self-salvation is the goal for this hard-hearted condition.

God opens eyes in our stony hearts so that we can see Him, and agree with the truth that we can’t save ourselves, and, at that moment of belief, God removes the heart of stone, the hard one, and gives us a heart of flesh, that is soft toward Him—yielding and responsive. Before receiving Christ, truth could be poured out all over our stony hearts, but none of the Living Water could be absorbed nor find purchase. Since we now have a heart of flesh, purchased by the blood of Jesus, God makes it soft and absorbent, like a sponge, so that our hearts can be made full of Christ and grow in Him.

Even so, our new fleshy hearts can get dehydrated through our neglect of God and His truth. We can still harden our hearts toward Him, and when we deny the Living Water passage through our hearts, our hearts begin to dry out, shrink, and become hard to the touch again. A sponge left on a stone outside, to dry in the desert sun, will become hard and brittle in pretty short order.

But this new heart, dry and hard as it can become again, has many holes in it that are made for receiving and holding the water, so that it can be made soft quickly, the moment we call for Him, and God’s refilling occurs—a re-hydration of the Spirit.

The heart that we have been given cries out for the Living Water, and will not find rest nor peace outside of fellowship with the Lord. This new heart is holy, and has been given a True North direction by which to orient itself. The new heart is more sensitive to changes in direction, and has new desires to return to the north heading when straying east or west, (or south!), in order to be at home with the Lord.

This new heart is responsive to the Holy Spirit, and can be roused to condemn our direction when we stray, and hears the Lord calling, when we wander from Him and rebel against truth.

1 John 3:19-24. “This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”

So this new heart is not the exact same deceitful heart that we once had, but we still have “sin in our members” that tempts our hearts to follow the lies, the old patterns, and the dead trails that our old stony hearts could not help but trace in the past.

Romans 7:23-24. “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.”

If our new hearts are drawn away by sin in our members, we will experience the wounds of the spiritual battle, and can even be taken captive in some ways by the enemy. Our hearts are often willing accomplices to the “sin at work,” and we allow ourselves to surrender our bodies temporarily to the enemy.

Galatians 5:16-18. “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.”

Here is the answer, again, in how to live. Live, being led by the Spirit, not as one who is trying to keep the law perfectly, but as one who knows that he can’t. If we think, act, and speak in Christ, submitted to Him consciously, and rely on His power and presence, we will truly live, and He will give an eternal weight of glory to our moments that is an additional blessing to the grace that sustains us and makes up the continual difference between our impotent obedience and Christ’s perfect obedience.

If we keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:25), then 2 Corinthians 4:17, “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

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Defining Moment: Good Samaritan Freefall (Part 2)

Lee was hailed as a “Good Samaritan” in the local press for putting his life on the line to help motorists in need. If he landed as a believer in Christ, then He fell into the loving hands of the Father, where there is no more sadness, no more sickness, sin, or pain, forevermore.

If he was not a believer in Jesus Christ by the time he hit the ground, however, no amount of do-gooding during his lifetime could save him when his ice-blue eyes beheld the Lord face to face, even in sacrificing his life for another! For those who do not believe and rely on Jesus Christ as Savior, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God!”   Hebrews 10:31.

God has used Lee’s death to change my life, and I pray that God will use this as a wake-up call to people everywhere.  (If you haven’t read “Defining Moment: Good Samaritan Freefall (Part 1)”, you should read that post first, detailing the Lee’s story).  One day, every one of us will fall into the hands of the Living God.  Will you land as a friend, welcomed into eternal glory, or will you land in permanent unbelief and denial?

To the unbeliever, this is another reminder that you just don’t know how long you have left. God knows, and if you think about it, every second brings you closer to the moment when your soul leaves your physical body at your death. I think it would be sobering if we each carried a clock around with us that counted down the years, months, hours, days, and seconds to our own deaths. I once saw a short Christian film called “Clocks” that illustrated that idea.

I suppose many people would take advantage of this, however, and put off dealing with the Jesus question until perhaps a few days before death. Many people imagine they can have fun all life-long until right before their death, when they suppose that they’ll finally “make peace” with God.

Perhaps the knowledge that you only had 18 years to live would cause you to want to “live life to the hilt” and engage in risky and sinful behaviors or thrill-seeking. Imagine the irony of finding out that one of your risk-taking adventures was actually the cause of your death.

What a short-sighted way of looking at things! This view totally overlooks the fact that one is spiritually dead until Jesus makes us spiritually alive! Would you really want to live your whole life spiritually dead and miss living what Jesus calls “life more abundantly?”

And what if you had confidence to put God off because your clock said that you still had 10 years, 5 months, 2 days, 14 hours, and 21 seconds left? You assume that you have 10 more years of sentient health, and miss the possibility that you will step outside in a few minutes and be involved in a car accident that puts you into a coma, where you will spend the rest of your clock time until your body finally succumbs… You ended up consciously putting off the Lord in the “now” because you were sure that you still had time and a coming “then,” when in fact your “no” in the “now” is really your final answer!

All you can be sure of is right NOW!

2 Corinthians 6:2. “For He says, ‘In the time of My favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.’”

Do not wait to truly live, but receive the Truth, accept Him, and begin to live truly this very moment what you believe!

And if you believe, and you have received Truth and Life in Jesus Christ and the promised Holy Spirit, the fall of the Good Samaritan underscores how precious every opportunity is to help people on their journey to understanding Christ and His love for them.

When Lee and I talked that afternoon in November on the sidewalk, neither of us knew that he had so little time left. I had no idea that I might be the last person to ever speak with him about Jesus. I had no idea how important it was that God spoke at that time and in that way through me to someone who desperately needed to hear the truth one more time!

Perhaps the greatest gift to me through this surreal experience was the personal epiphany of the “surrendered moment.” Though I’ve never read it phrased this way, this idea is not new to mankind. God’s people have written in times past about being filled with the Spirit moment-by-moment. But God made a timeless truth new and fresh to me.

This is a reminder and an exhortation that there is an urgency to each moment, and a fullness of His eternal power, that God chooses to deploy through the surrendered thoughts, words, and actions of His people. This is GOOD NEWS! We are not limited in the NOW by our failings and our past. The fullness of God is available to EVERY believer, and He WILL exert His eternal power within our moments when we set our hearts to honor Him and prepare the way for the Living God to live out Christ in us!

It is true: every single person who ever lived will surrender to the Living God at the moment we see Him face to face. It will be, for most people, the first moment of complete and utter surrender. At that moment, there will be no choice, and it will be too late for them to surrender to Him in such a way to be saved for all eternity. This is what God says about that moment:

“For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:9-11. NASB.

Surrender to Jesus is inevitable—unavoidable—sooner or later. Perhaps it is easier for us to comprehend a surrender to an overwhelming presence in that awesome moment on some future date, but we resist the idea of surrendering in the NOW when there is nothing to shock and awe our senses, and the call and activity of God seems more a whisper than a supernova.

God’s arm is not too short to reach from His throne into our momentary troubles, and His power is not diminished in any way by being less visible now than on that great and terrible future day. His desire is to use the broken and foolish things of this world to display His power. Those who know that they can do nothing apart from Him—and in their desperate weakness and desire to see God’s salvation in their moments—they are the ones who will see His wonders from day to day!

Wendy and I didn’t go downtown on that day in November trusting in our own intellect or talents or even spiritual gifts. In fact, we were way out of our comfort zones whenever we would go to be with the homeless people of our city. Every time we went, we would feel so empty and inadequate on the way downtown, and we would pray that God would prepare the hearts of those we would talk with, and that He would give us words to say, and that He would love others through us, because in and of ourselves we had nothing of lasting value to give. We were desperate for God to do something, feeling that we were being poured out like a drink offering, and that there was nothing in our broken cups for us to offer.

But it is precisely the emptiness of the cup that God is looking for in the hearts of His people. He wants those who understand their impotence and emptiness to look to Him, and those are the cups He loves to fill up with Himself and His power, that the glory of the Lord accomplishes what He will because His people made room for the Lord Himself to pour out and to work as He desires!

“Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.” Psalm 126:5,6.

We surrendered the moment to God, knowing that we cannot make any heart believe, but trusting that God will do something supernatural with that moment that is beyond our reach. And He always does! If you doubt this, refer to Romans 8:28. When you surrender a moment, and it goes by, it may seem like nothing eternal really happened. It may seem like things get worse when we surrender a moment, or that God is not paying attention. We likely will forget more surrendered moments than we remember, thinking nothing significant happened.

But we are measuring with our human yardsticks! Throw away your measuring tape that looks to quantify something that can’t be measured. Why are we so concerned with a specific result? It is God working and not we ourselves, so if God does this or that thing through us in a certain moment, or if He doesn’t, we should never be disappointed with His presence or embarrassed by a lack of specific results looked for! The fact is, God LOVES those surrendered moments. He is most glorified in the times when His children cry out for Him as their only hope; when we acknowledge that without Him, we can do nothing! (John 15:5). And we ask Him to do what in reality we cannot do on our own.

2 Chronicles 16:9, “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.” God is actively looking to prove Himself strong through those who are surrendered.

Surrender is not something that was meant for people only after they die—surrender is meant for God’s people constantly while they are living, and surrender reveals in those moments the promised “Christ in me.” (Galatians 2:19-20, and Philippians 1:21). As we string together a surrendered moment with another one, we begin to see and understand the abundant life, and to discern the supernova within each whisper, to realize a crumb of a moment might feed thousands, and to take a step of faith—ruby red slippers or not—trusting only in the strength and love of our Scintillating Savior.

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Defining Moment: Good Samaritan Freefall (Part 1)

At a particular moment on a sunny-but-brisk Saturday morning in November 2009, I was about to be shaken to the core by a man I had never met and might never see again.

I had been serving monthly at that time among the homeless people of our city with my wife, Wendy, not because we felt gifted for or attracted to this kind of ministry, but because we had a growing hunger for God, and a willingness for Him to use us however He desired. I can see looking back that God led us with little bread crumbs of “yeses” to a land that might as well have been Oz to us, where its people struggle to meet basic needs between skyscraper shadows. We emerged from our cocoon in the suburbs, fresh and rested from a night in our warm bed, spreading our wings to meet with stranger-friends of the inner city.  In the meantime, they had slept on cardboard or under bridges, or not at all, huddled against life storms, derailed and forgotten like boxcars left to rust.

Before I go on about how my world shifted on its axis, I think it important to say that the LORD puts out little bread crumbs each day, disguised as “almost nothing” moments. Jesus linked the sustenance of bread to action when He said His food is to do the will of the Father. He would take a little nothing moment, a leftover crumb, like talking to a woman at the well, (John, Chapter 4), and turn it into something very significant, so that within hours, many believed in Him because of that woman’s testimony about Him in that moment, and many more believed after seeking Him out and hearing for themselves. And the half-life of that moment of simple conversation echoes throughout eternity, not just because it was written down in the Bible, but because Jesus followed the Father’s lead, and lives were changed when He asked for water. I suspect that we miss the opportunity to do the big things that we imagine we’re going to do because we ignored the little crumbs that would have opened the gates to it. We ignore the seeds of trees while looking for the forest.

The crumb that opened the gates to Oz for us happened months before that fateful Saturday—such a little thing, really. Wendy and I used to meet regularly with friends over coffee for fellowship and encouragement in the LORD at a Borders Bookstore, and we noticed a group of Christians that would come and have a Bible study together at one of the long tables there on the same nights that we would go. One evening, I had a notion to go and introduce myself and encourage them. These people were warm and exuberant about God—we were friends instantly—and my little “yes” to go and speak led to another little “yes,” to sit with them on their next study. That’s where we learned about their “Matthew Ministry,” patterned after Matthew 25:31-46. They served the poor on Saturday mornings in our downtown, distributing clothing, toiletries, food, water, and other necessities to whomever walked up. And with another “yes,” we agreed to go and see how we could serve, too.

The deep intention of this ministry is to go the extra mile to connect in a personal way and minister spiritually with each of the people who come. We often had a chance to support, encourage, share truth, and pray with our new homeless or drifting friends, sharing the love and truth of Jesus. We shared bread crumb moments, and trusted that God could take them and accomplish more than physically feeding 5,000+ people with bread and fish, just as Jesus did more in speaking to the crowd than He did in giving them physical nourishment.

On a Saturday in early November, at Moore Square in downtown Raleigh, I was approached by “Mankind.” Lee was his name, but his friends called him “Mankind,” since he was about 6’4” in height, built like an NFL lineman, and because they thought he resembled the wrestler, “Mankind.” His blonde-dyed hair set off his steely blue eyes—cold in color, but rendered warm by the gentleness of his face. He explained that he was going through some rough times, living out of a car, holding down a new job—but there was hope in his eyes that we didn’t often see out on the sidewalk hardscape… he was reuniting with his ex-wife and daughter.  For about forty five minutes, he was an open book, sharing pages of his life with me as we talked about his past, present, and future. Neither of us knew the secret that he only had a few more days to live.

I asked him if he knew the Lord. He didn’t put an exclamation mark on it when he answered, “I’m  an atheist.” We talked about Jesus Christ. I asked him, “What makes it difficult for you to believe in Jesus?”

His eyes got that far-off look, as if he was looking back through time, and he said church people he had known were so hurtful and hypocritical.  As I listened to Lee open up his wounds for inspection, I was asking God to give me ears to hear him, and to give me words that were true and right that would speak to his heart’s cry.

I heard myself say that Lee should ignore the bad behavior of self-proclaimed Christians in forming a true picture of Christ. Many who call themselves Christians don’t actually know Jesus themselves, believing in “Churchianity” instead. Many believers are not following Jesus in their daily lives, or are ignoring or misunderstanding the life that Jesus is calling them to live.  We uphold a standard of thought and behavior, and righteousness, that is higher than we are able to reach ourselves. But there is grace and acceptance for those who recognize their need for the Savior, and who receive Him and HIS righteousness. And God loves all people, whether we receive or rebuff Him. And God loved Lee; He wanted Lee, “Mankind,” to turn to Him.

I encouraged Lee to re-form his opinion about Jesus by going to His Word, and reading for himself what Jesus said and did.  The Bible is the most accurate picture of the Savior.  His image burns true and bright on the pages of scripture, no matter how imperfectly we, as Christians, reflect that light.

Toward the end of our time together, I gave him a Gospel of John booklet from the Pocket Testament League, and I challenged him to read it and learn about Jesus in His own words and actions. If only he and I could hear the secret whispers, “Mankind will die in 21 DAYS!” He listened to me intently and earnestly, and at the end, he let me pray for him, that God would reveal truth to him, and he actually asked me to pray for his ex-wife and his daughter and her other child.

We gave him a warm winter coat that fit perfectly; clothes and other items for his family. I felt that I had made a new friend, and that here was a man close to turning toward God in Heaven. I couldn’t help wondering if he had met the LORD before, when he was young, and then run from him? I looked forward to seeing him in the coming weeks.

When he turned to go, I didn’t realize he was close to the end of a skydiving free fall, and he needed to pull the rip cord fast. I had told him about believing in Jesus, even helped him put his hands on the truth with the Gospel of John, and gave him instructions on pulling the rip cord through talking with God and repenting—turning to God and placing his full trust in Jesus and what He has already done for him—but he put it off. I watched him walk away, his new burnt-orange colored coat falling back into the milling Saturday morning crowd. That jacket wasn’t padded enough to save him, and the ground was rushing up at him faster than any of us could imagine.

John and Linda, our friends in Matthew Ministry, broke it to me at Bible Study. “Did you see Lee on the news?”

“No! What happened?”

Night had fallen on November 29th. Lee was driving on the I-440 Belt-line on his way to pick up a Christmas present for his daughter when cars up ahead collided at high speed next to the concrete median barriers. Lee put the brakes on his home-on-wheels, jumped out into the time-ticking fray in split-second sacrifice, and ran to a crash victim by the barrier. Oncoming traffic deflected and scattered at speed, dodging cars and people, and one car peeled pell-mell through an opening toward the barrier where Lee was helping a young motorist. Like deer in the headlights, pinned in place by fear with nowhere safe to run, they did what probably most would do in the situation: they hopped behind the waist-high concrete barrier, assuming in the darkness that there was solid ground in the median beyond it. At that one spot, however, the beltline is actually a bridge, and the safe and solid ground they sought was 70 feet below the road level. They fell.

The 18 year old landed in the water and miraculously had no major injuries, but Lee landed on the rocks and probably died instantly.

I was stunned to hear it. He had been so full of this life and hope, and suddenly he had neither.

Lee knew all of the essentials about Jesus from our previous conversation. I had prayed for him that he would come to know Jesus, and he had been given the Gospel of John. Did he read it? Was he changed by the truth? Was he a believer when he went over that railing? I don’t know.  No matter what belief Lee held when he hopped over the railing, there is still a chance that Lee is with God in heaven! As long as there was still life and breath and conscious thought, Lee still had the chance to turn and believe.

How long does it take for belief to happen? It’s instantaneous, isn’t it? Belief in Christ is instantaneous. One moment, you’re not believing, but then, you believe! And at that moment of belief, God forgives you of all your sins (past, present, and future) and puts the Holy Spirit within you to seal you as His own child, and to empower you to live in Christ as a new creation. All that happens instantaneously, at the moment of faith, because Jesus Himself has done the work to provide salvation already. A simple agreement in the soul confirms the efficacy of the work He did for us.

Lee had two seconds of falling before he hit. Maybe he pulled the rip cord at the last second and called out a believing “JESUS!” in his heart and was saved? (He didn’t have to recite the “Sinner’s Prayer” as many suppose; the thief on the cross didn’t say the “Sinner’s Prayer,” either, and yet Jesus recognized his saving faith). A physical parachute deployed at 70 feet from the ground is useless. There isn’t time for the chute to open and slow the fall. But a spiritual parachute deploys immediately and is 100% effective. Even if he was a still a stone cold atheist when he hopped over the barrier, it is possible he landed a 100% believer in Jesus Christ, falling from the jaws of death at the gates of Hell into the hands of THE WONDERFUL—the LIVING GOD!

If only it is so!

Be sure to read the continuation of this post:  “Defining Moment: Good Samaritan Freefall (Part 2).

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Lost TV Remotes

It’s not natural for us to count on GOD in everyday, mundane circumstances—matters that seem to be below Him and not worth bothering over. Not long after finding the diamond, (read this first:  The Lost Diamond),  we had lost the remote control for the TV, (again), and I looked and looked everywhere, feeling along all seams of the couches. I searched the room thoroughly for about twenty minutes.

Only then did I ask God about it, and He showed me, (after another twenty minutes) not one, not two, but three remotes within the bowels of our couch. Apparently a cavity opens up within the couch when the recliner leg pads are extended outward, and over the years the original TV remote control, (and two universal replacement remotes), had been swallowed by this Bermuda Triangle compartment, and held captive—despite a couple of re-locations.

I told my family how God had led me to the remotes, and how I searched for Him, and how he set the remotes free from their captivity. We all had a good laugh. It is all too easy to explain away the move of God, however, especially in practical situations where a little more diligence, a little more wisdom, a little more skill is applied, and lo, the desired result is achieved. Nevermind, God! I found it!

Two days later, God provided another living demonstration for us. My son, Nick, had gotten a toy plastic Nerf gun, complete with sponge darts. The “weapon” was capable of rapid firing a number of rounds in three seconds. Anyway, he was having fun shooting these off in the house, but then he lost one of his darts.

He looked all over the area for it, and I started to join in the search. After looking around a bit, I told Nick that he should ask the Lord to show him where it is. I reminded him about finding the diamond, and finding the remote controls a few days before. He laughed at me, and said something to the effect that it wasn’t that big a deal and that God wouldn’t do that, anyway.

I turned my head in the next instant and saw the dart across the breakfast nook nestled into a shoe along the baseboards. “Look, the dart is right over there in that shoe.” Nick was happy to have the dart back, but didn’t really believe that the finding of it was helped by the Lord. Nobody likes to admit being wrong, and there is always a secular explanation to these kinds of minor miracles, but I reserve the pleasure of seeing the Hand of God all about me, even if others would explain Him away.

Maybe you’ve asked God, and your diamond is still lost, and maybe your TV remotes keep disappearing forever, and perhaps even your Nerf dart is completely invisible to you, but one question burns to be answered as your life flows and ebbs: have you sought the Lord more diligently than all the “important” items or successes that seem beyond your sight and reach?

Have you invited Him into the commonplace crannies of your daily life? Or has your search for these things, and your frustration with God over losing or not getting them, actually turned your heart in other directions, away from the God Who Sees You? Perhaps you could undertake to search for Him in your life, and consider that He may not appear or act the way you think He should? Like the diamond in the parking lot, He is the stone of greatest importance, invisible to the myriad casual passersby, but uniquely accessible and valuable to the one who looks diligently for Him.

Your lost diamond may stay lost, but make sure you find HIM.

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:33. NIV 1984.

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The Lost Diamond

A few years ago, we received a distressed call from our close friend, Barbara. Her daughter, Saki, recently engaged and within about a month of her wedding, had lost the diamond from her engagement ring some time during the day. She had been collecting her and her fiance’s possessions from each of their families’ homes, and delivering them to their new apartment that day, in multiple trips. Late in the afternoon, she looked down at her ring, and panicked when she saw that the setting was empty. Can you imagine, the symbol of your future husband’s promised love, gone, before you even wed?

The ring was vintage jewelry that her fiance, Austin, had specially picked, and the diamond was beautiful and of significant size.

But even a large diamond can seem very small when it is lost in the wide world, and it could be anywhere: her parents’ minivan, her parents’ house or gravel driveway, Austin’s parents’ house or driveway, or the new apartment or parking lot, to say nothing of a store or gas station. Not only that, but she had parked in different spots during the day to make deliveries from the van, and she had to walk varying distances along the sidewalk before turning up the pathway directly to their specific apartment building, and up and down the staircase to their second floor unit. Sometimes she even cut across the lawn to save the time and distance of staying on the sidewalk…

Several families dropped everything to go over and search for the diamond at the apartment complex. It was the one place that Saki kept coming back to, during the day, so we all converged there with prayer in our hearts, and high hopes that the diamond would be found. Saki reasoned that the jewel probably got dislodged or loosened when she was taking things out of the van or placing things in the apartment. Of course, the jewel could have fallen loose at one of the parents’ homes, but given that she had spent more time at the apartment than anywhere else that day, it became the focus of the investigation.

It seemed an impossible task, searching to find the missing diamond in front of the apartment complex with about a dozen other friends that had come right over, shining flashlights in the dark, and searching across the asphalt, under cars, along the sidewalk, through the grass, up the flight of exterior building stairs, across the landing, into the apartment, and through the carpet into every room.

Have you ever shined a light across asphalt at night? There are millions of shiny, reflective, sparkly stones, like the quartz and mica that are ubiquitous in the mixes here in North Carolina. Everything that sparkled looked like a diamond, but nothing we scrutinized actually was.

We looked for hours that night, and many of us came out the next few days and searched long in daylight. As desperation started to set in, I even thought of using our Dyson to vacuum the lawn where Saki had cut corners on her multiple shortcuts! We could suck up any loose lawn debris and then open the vacuum compartment over a sheet to examine the contents of its gullet little by little. The neighbors were already suspicious about what was lost, but can you imagine hearing a machine outside and looking out the window to see a grown man vacuuming the lawn?

“You there—what are you doing?”

“Oh…just doing a little tidying!”

I decided against vacuuming.

For several more days, Austin and others looked over and over for the diamond. He was beginning to talk about ordering a replacement stone, since the wedding was coming up, though we were all still praying that God would show us where the diamond was lying. Hope, in the meantime, was dying.

On the following weekend, I wanted to go just one more time to look for the diamond. My wife, Wendy, was leaving home to shop with our daughter, Tess, and I suggested that they could drop me off at the parking lot of the apartments so that I could search while they shopped. Wendy was skeptical, but I insisted, so I grabbed my rain jacket, (since it looked like we were going to get some rain), and we headed over to Austin and Saki’s place.

By the time we got to the apartment, however, the sky had gotten very gray, and a storm was threatening through a ceiling of dense, dark clouds, with rumbling thunder in the distance. I was resolute. I told Wendy that she could leave me there, and that I would be alright.

“You’re crazy! You’ll be soaked from head to toe by the time I get back,” she said. She wore me down, convincing me that searching for a diamond in the rain would be futile. The water would make everything slick and glossy-looking. I knew, however, that a hard rain could wash the diamond down a stormwater drain forever, so I insisted that I should at least get out and look, “just for a minute!”

As I got out of the van, I was doubtful, and felt a little sheepish. “I must be crazy,” I mused. (To think that the diamond could be found in one minute after so many had looked for hours upon hours—it was crazy! And it was probably resting at a completely different location—perhaps at one of the parents’ houses—but still I felt an inexplicable optimism that God could show me right now). Closing the door of the van, I prayed to God one last time. I said in my heart, “God, you know all things—you know where this diamond is! If it is ever going to be found, please show me where it is. I can’t do this on my own…”

As I crossed the drive lanes to a parking spot we knew was one Saki had parked in, I was praying, and the thought popped into my mind, “Could the diamond look different from what I am expecting, sitting on the ground? Something perfectly round when viewed directly overhead…”

This was my thought as soon as my eyes started scanning the pavement. Within five seconds, I spied a round, quartz-looking stone nestled in a cranny in the asphalt—too perfectly round among a sea of natural pebble bits—and I knew instantly that it was the diamond!

Photoshop recreation. The diamond was upside-down in a cranny of the pavement. For some reason, it appeared whitish, and not shiny, but it was perfectly round. God gave me a thought, “Round,” and I looked down, and there it was. In a sea of imperfect stones…

 

Can you imagine what I felt? The exhilaration of experiencing God, (and it had to be Him), as He drew me to the spot and gave me eyes to see what I needed to see? In my heart I was “walking and leaping and praising God!”

The diamond was upside down in a cranny of the pavement, and didn’t appear clear and transparent, but rather looked whitish. I suppose it was reflecting some of the matrix around it—I don’t know—I didn’t stand there examining the setting. If I had any sense of posterity at that moment, I would have whipped out my phone and taken a picture of it as it sat waiting for me in the pavement.

Bent over and trembling with adrenaline and excitement at experiencing a miracle, I pinched the diamond from its niche, leaped over to my van a few feet behind me, and threw open the door. With a flourish I stuck my arm across the driver seat to wave the diamond in front of Wendy’s face and yelled, “I’ve GOT it!!!” I was pinching the diamond so hard between my thumb and forefinger that it could not be seen…

Wendy, supposing I was playing some sort of sick joke, said, “Jeff, that’s not even funny!” She was already annoyed at the delay and this was no time for humor.

So I placed the diamond on the plastic island between the front seats, and the three of us leaned in to look at what simply could not have been real. I think I held my own breath as if the whole thing was a dream until someone else could pinch me. Wendy and Tess blinked in disbelief, again and again, inching closer, as if to reset their eyes and turn the faceted jewel back into a piece of broken glass handed over in jest. After a few breathless seconds…“Ohmygoodness!!! Is that really IT?” More pauses. I couldn’t speak. I just looked on, dumbly, fighting the tears of gratitude to the LORD for what He had done. “What!?! I can’t believe it—I thought you were joking! I was about to get really mad!”

What a celebration ensued! What an incredible miracle— how it all unfolded… how we had to search diligently, with great patience and, yes, with faith.

In a way, I’m glad that God didn’t show us all immediately where the diamond was… we would have been tempted to think, “well, of course it’s right there under our noses. Nevermind, God, we found it!” No, instead there was this beautiful struggle, this constant fellowship of going back to God and counting on Him to come through, no matter what the odds.

And whether the diamond was to be found or lost forever, the main thing is that we sought and found the Lord, who is precious beyond all the wealth of every kingdom. The diamond that is, even now, set within Saki’s ring, is a symbol to me of searching for and finding God. He is the greatest treasure, but oftentimes we don’t recognize Him in the setting. We’re looking for something more dazzling, not imagining that He can appear common, or lie waiting quietly in the most mundane parking spot. Or worse, we assume that He’s not around, because we’ve given up looking for the impossible. We don’t seek Him with a whole heart, because our hearts doubt that He will deliver us this time, anyway.

I will never forget watching the LORD deliver at the last instant, in the shadow of a storm, meeting me between two painted lines on the barren asphalt.

“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, “and will bring you back from captivity.” Jeremiah 29:12-13. NIV 1984.

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Waiting For An Answer

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:5, NIV.

One of my biggest disappointments with this earthly life is that I can’t see the Lord face to face while I am living it.

Every one of us loves to spend time with a special friend. When I’m together with that person, I know I’m accepted and loved just as I am, and I don’t have to pretend to be someone else to win approval. The conversation we have is stimulating, encouraging, insightful… and meaningful!

Oftentimes, a friend will have a viewpoint and experience outside my own that I find refreshing or relieving, and there comes a lightening of my burdens through our being vulnerable and sharing together. Sometimes my friend can sympathize with me and comfort me, or help me break out of the despondence that threatens to overwhelm. Sometimes my friend can help me laugh in the middle of my struggles, or remind me that better days are coming. Sometimes a friend can say something very challenging, and it may take me days, weeks, or months to wrestle with that truth to come to a place of deeper understanding.

Nowadays, we can get a fairly instant response from a friend if we really need to. We can call them on a smart phone, or message them, or tweet, or email, etc., etc. We can post to our walls on Facebook, and many friends can chime in with a response at one time. It’s comforting to have such instant means to connect to someone.

Even now, though, it’s sometimes hard to reach a friend. Perhaps you’ve left a voicemail for a friend, with an expression of urgent need, and then you don’t hear back from the friend for a week. We have such an expectation of instant feedback that we might be tempted to think less of the friend somehow, forgetting that our friends have burdens and responsibilities, and sometimes are forgetful, just as we do, and are.

In the year 1776, in the American colonies, you couldn’t just pick up a phone and call that special friend. You’d have to either get out and walk, or saddle up your horse and ride, or get out your quill and ink to write a letter, in order to at least convey a message to your friends. If you could only write, and depending how far the letter would have to be carried by horse, it could be weeks before your friend could come to you personally, or return a letter.

With the Lord, it is different. I can’t go out and walk or ride to where He is, and see Him face to face. I can’t call Him on my cell phone, and hear the sound of His voice responding to what I say. He doesn’t send me instant tweets or write on my Facebook wall, or “poke” me. I can’t even send a letter by horse, and receive one back from from a heavenly rider.

When I ask God specific questions, He doesn’t speak audibly. When I have a major decision to make, and I have the time to go to Him, again and again, before having to make a choice, He doesn’t write His answer in the sky. Sometimes, I’m tempted to wonder if He is even listening, as when I talk with a friend that dozes completely off while we’re talking. (I’ve been that dozing friend on too many occasions, when exhaustion and comfortable surroundings conspire to slay me with sleep).

Too often, we grow impatient with our “slumbering” Friend. We distrust the One who does not seem to check His voicemail. We grow tired of having a Father Who seems to consistently return silence when we “poke” Him. Did He miss my snapchat—I thought He sees everything?

But our God does not slumber, nor sleep. He hears my voice when I call, no matter how far away I can imagine He is from me, and He knows my every thought, before I think it. Through the prophets of old, He has spoken, and still speaks, into every situation and experience known to mankind.

The real issue is this: how far will I trouble myself to hear from Him? Will I walk across a room and pick up a Bible and search the words He has given to us all? Will I take a moment and ask Him to show me something in His word or in my heart, to open my eyes, to His Truth and His Presence? Will I try, again and again, to hear from Him if I remain perplexed or feel alone?

God absolutely loves it when we treat Him as Someone worth being pursued, sought after, and praised, no matter what life circumstances come. If there is a perceptible distance between me and God, I know it is I who created that distance, it is I who turned away, it is I who wronged the greatest Friend I’ll ever have.

Sometimes it takes awhile to recognize that we’ve left our God out of our lives. Since we are creatures of routine and pattern, we can coast within our roles and our rituals, thinking all the while that we are including God in what we are doing. We can even serve, pray, think, speak and act spiritual, but deep down, have what God must know is a casual indifference in our heart of hearts.

Oftentimes, it is a period of suffering that wakes me up to the reality that I’m just coasting on the powerlessness of my own gas. What a blessing it is to suffer, if I reconnect with God in a more desperate way! It is a privilege to see my own limitations, to peer over the edge of the abyss, and realize that I am at the end of myself… and that God must absolutely save me from myself, and work in power, with resources that I cannot possess apart from Him.

At moments like these, I gain my clearest picture of Him, because what happens next allows me to experience Him, and to see the beautiful and complex mosaic that He is working out. Sometimes He saves me within my circumstances in a dramatic fashion, sometimes in a quiet way, and sometimes I have to look around and wonder if anything is different, only to find that my heart towards Him is tender, and that my craving for His nearness and life is deeper than before. It is this last salvation that is the most precious, when I realize I have everything I truly need in Him, even if life circumstances should grow harder.

And this is the heart God is after… this is the Life He wants to grow in me. It is invisible to the naked eye, undetectable in the sight of the world, and oftentimes forgotten, or overlooked, by the people who are called by His name.

This invisible life is what God loves and rewards. He sees the heart that longs for Him, that looks for Him, that begs Him to BE the difference. He has determined that the righteous shall live by faith, and not by sight.

I said before that one of my biggest disappointments in this earthly life is that I cannot see the Lord face to face… well, my greatest opportunity to bless the Lord is to cultivate a heart that sees Him despite having eyes of flesh, and that values Him above all else that parades before me.

Lamentations 3:18-26. “So I say, ‘My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD.’ I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him.’ The LORD is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.”

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