Category: The Value of a Moment

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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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God’s “Value Added” to Our Moments

While I am often tempted to think about life as if it is a journey, like the water running through the land that I wrote in the last chapter, I have become aware of a tendency to consider myself as not having arrived, and that there is a destination that recedes from me, even as I approach. In some ways, this is biblical, and there are good reasons to see myself as unfinished. My pride will always be kept in check when I remember how perfect Jesus is, and how constantly I fall short in my thoughts, and fail to appreciate God, and how quick I am to lean on my own understanding.

A new understanding is breaking into my heart. It is the awareness of God in me.

Eph. 3:20. “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…”

We are constantly flawed in thought and weak in action, but He is constantly perfect and powerful. Our love is inconstant, and limited by our short-sightedness and our selfishness, but His love is never ending, never failing. His sight is infinite, in its simultaneous and complete grasp of the present, past, and future.

Though I’m always looking forward to something, and thinking how I’m not where I want to be with respect to what I know of God, and I tend to measure my “progress” by looking at externals, I’m beginning to appreciate the unlimited “value added” that God brings to every moment, and to see that God’s friendship and power is not limited to the size of our abilities, nor the extents of our intelligence.

We have been given the Holy Spirit!!! What more do we need in order to express God’s purpose and power to a world that reels in its desperate need of Him? He more than completes the finite “us”—He applies His eternal and infinite power and wisdom to our moments. He not only supplies what we lack, but through an incalculable spiritual multiplication, He accomplishes eternal kingdom work through us that no man or woman could have built, nor can any man or woman tear down.

What God builds is beyond comprehension, and even with a resurrected body and purified eyes, we will not see the beginning nor the end of God in us. He will increase our ability to see His work, but without unlimited sight, we will not completely grasp it. Joy and delight is available in the discerning of His presence, love, and power, and it is meant for NOW! The fellowship and communion that God seeks with us is always NOW. The sweetness that the Holy Spirit can speak into any moment is always NOW. The unlimited power of God is being dispensed NOW, at this moment.

He does not wait for us, but quickens our spirits to accomplish His purposes in each one of us. “After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” Genesis 15:1, NIV. God refers to Himself in present tense. His name is “I AM.” And He tells Abram that He IS Abram’s shield, presently, and He IS Abram’s very great reward.

So, while we are tempted to think that we are becoming more equipped over time to accomplish God’s work, and we assume that we will be ready on some future day to do this or that thing as we journey onward, the reality is that GOD Himself inhabits our moments with us–(“Emmanuel,” God WITH us!)—and that His power makes every moment a DESTINATION and a complete miracle! He is our shield, even NOW!

God’s presence and power is available to every believer, no matter how young or new, and He is not limited by our imperfection. If He were, we would never see the hand of God moving in anyone, since we are all hopelessly broken. We will never perfect ourselves, or arrive, in our own strength.

God’s “value added” packs treasure into “jars of clay,” and turns the mundane into the sublime. 2 Cor. 4:7, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” ESV.

I used to think that the best treasures were visible—something physical, that you could reach out and call your own. Within the band of my wedding ring, I had the jeweler inscribe a Bible verse reference, “Psalm 37:4-6,” before I even knew the depth of meaning these verses contain:

“Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. ”

I used to think about this verse, and what the Lord would do for me. If I follow Him, I reasoned, He would give me the things that I want most. He would give me a beautiful wife whom I love, a job that I thoroughly enjoy, wonderful children, good health, a comfortable house, a safe and comfortable car, and other stuff, as it comes to mind. Of course, I believed that I was already getting the first one, and that was why the verse was put into my wedding ring. The inscription was to be a reminder to me that God was providing the desires of my heart, starting with my prayers for a lovely wife.

In looking back, however, I see that my thinking on this verse, and about God, was completely errant. I thought that the desires of my heart were other things or conditions. I didn’t know then the new heart that God had given to me, with a capacity to appreciate and know Him more deeply—with a design to grow in love for Him above all else.

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.”

I have realized that the deepest desires of this new heart are set upon HIM, and that if I aim this new heart at other things, the heart will lose out, in comparison. He did not gift me this new heart so that I can run with it away from Him—that would be stealing the heart that is His. He gave it to me so that I will run to Him with this heart, and constantly return to Him what is actually His alone.

My God, I have squandered years of my life setting my heart on other things, casting but a glance over my shoulder toward You, the Beautiful ONE… When I feel the emptiness of my pursuits, then I set my heart to honor you, and then you fill my vision!

God gave me a realization that my love for Him was shallow, and that the heart He gave me was malnourished and weak through my neglect of Him. I wanted to have a heart that loved Him unreservedly, but I knew that I was far from possessing it. I began to pray consistently, a few years ago, that God would show me what it means to love Him with all my heart and soul, mind and strength.

I don’t presume that I can attain a heart that is unreservedly, unflinchingly whole in my complete and constant surrender and devotion to Him (this side of Heaven), but I do see that God is inclining my heart toward Him, (sometimes precipitously), and drawing me to Himself with cords of loving kindness. My motivations and hunger for fellowship with Him are deeper when I invite the activity of the Holy Spirit. When I delight in His presence and friendship, I realize that I already have Him, and that I am complete in Him, no matter what may happen to me, or whether I get anything else on my wish list, or if something else I treasure gets taken away. Jesus said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5 NIV.

God points out that David had a heart after Him. As I mention elsewhere in this blog, the life and heart of King David is fascinating to me because of its contrasts. I feel the contrasts within myself and my own heart. There is a strong desire for God in my best moments, but there is also a strong drive for other things, and a temptation to fan the flames of those other desires, to build passions for them. The struggle between conflicting desires is reassuring, actually, because it shows that my heart is deepening in understanding my God and my self. If my awareness of the struggle were small, it might be an indication that I have become spiritually dull, or proud. In my ignorance and sin, I can be lulled into a state of complacency or laziness, so that I do not recognize the Lord calling me. In my pride and sin, I can become drunk with the satisfaction of my own “spiritual” work or progress, and begin to lose the desperation for Him that is the foundation of the abundant life He offers me.

I think one of the most important verses in the Bible about the heart is Malachi 2:2, “’If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honor my name,’ says the LORD Almighty, ‘I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not set your heart to honor me.’”

It sounds harsh, that the Lord will send a curse upon us if we do not set our hearts to honor Him. Actually, the power of the curse is found within the precondition of not honoring the LORD. Put another way, not honoring the Lord, or delighting in Him, (to use the language of Psalm 37), IS ITS OWN CURSE. This is a circular curse. Absence of honoring and appreciating the Lord is a failure to enjoy the greatest blessing available to mankind: the fellowship and goodness of the Living God. We curse ourselves, because we fail to accept His blessing.

In the same way, the blessing in Psalm 37:4 is a circular blessing. Delighting in the Lord is the highest, and best, and truest desire of the new heart He gives!!! When you truly delight in the Lord, you will ALREADY have the desires of your new heart, and realize they are for HIM.

When this is fully realized—well, you’ll be dead and face-to-face with Jesus Our Righteousness and Our Beloved when you FULLY realize this—but when you begin to more fully realize this on earth, your capacity to appreciate everything else is increased. You realize that you don’t deserve anything, and that the next moment of life and the next breath and the next heartbeat is a blessing, and anything else is gravy. You also begin to realize that pain and suffering is your opportunity and can be a great blessing if it drives you to HIM. If, in desperation, you throw yourself on Him—then you will truly live!

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:6-7.

Knowing Him and delighting in Him—relying on Him, I have begun to see that it is true what Jesus said: “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” See Matthew 11:27-30. I want to spend time with Him, I want to know Him better and better, I want to do His bidding, I want to tell others how great HE is! I want to embrace suffering, and my own weakness, because to follow Him is to be weak on one hand, and to know His glory and power on the other! THIS is GOOD NEWS!!!

Our greatest treasure is God Himself. We should stop looking around for other treasures to pack into our jars of clay. There is no greater treasure to be filled with, than God Himself.

God, give us eyes to see who You really are, and what you are doing, and hearts to praise your handiwork in the seemingly empty spaces of our days. Enliven your people to look for your saving hand at all times, to look up, because You are working out Your redemption of our moments constantly, and You will not fail to wring eternal glory from every cranny of creation and moment of existence…

I am writing this chapter in a broken plastic lawn chair on a laptop computer in my back yard. I have been painfully bitten five or six times on the leg by one fly or another, (and AGAIN just NOW), but… I have seen the Lord! Not with my own eyes, but with the eyes of my heart, and not because I am special, but because I have looked for Him and found Him. He has shown me where He is. Today He was out back, with me and the flies. He was in this common place, and He is in every common place everywhere. Is there really any such thing as a common place or common moment?

Open your eyes and see that YOU are on holy ground! It is underfoot, wherever you may find yourself. Understand that you have a priceless treasure in you, if you have received Christ, and that the Holy Spirit has packed your jar. You are full, and rich, even if you have thought of yourself as poor. We were created to know Him.

Acts 17:27-28. “God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’” NIV 1984.

Know the LORD. He is not mere “value added.” He is your life. Delight in Him, and you will understand what real living is meant to be. You will know the true desires of your heart, and you will know that your heart, and your jar, has been filled.

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The Value of a Moment

Despite the inestimable worth that our God places on fellowship within the trinity, we think nothing of breaking fellowship with the Lord to go and get something for ourselves that we feel we need… we think there is little consequence or meaning in our sinful pursuits, and so our momentary devaluation of God approaches infinity. The pain that Jesus endured to relinquish fellowship with the Father for a moment, we eagerly trade into for ill-gotten and utterly rotten “gain.” Teach us, Lord, to more rightly measure your worth, and to see more accurately the true value of fellowship with you!!!

Miscalculations

We bargain our lives, oblivious to the fullness of the stakes, with a chip both infinitely grand and impossibly tiny—the mere, measureless moment. Born and passing away by the trillions every second, the moment is the smallest copper in the currency of time, but, unlike a penny in a piggy, it can’t be saved. In rapid fire execution, we have to spend each moment as we receive it, before we even know what value it holds. At times, we understand some of the significance of the passing moment, as we blow candles to count a birthday, say “I do” at the altar, or shed tears at a deathbed, but the majority of life is made up of commonplace forgettable moments of transition between the “important” moments. These forgotten moments have their own importance, as they set up the big moments, but there are simply too many of them for us to live intentionally within.

Even if we could fully engage in all our moments, we are limited in our understanding, ability, and strength to make the most of them. Moments fly past at the speed of… time, and we are no more able to grasp the full significance of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, or any moment in between, than catch a tornado by its tail. We fail, as a people, to grasp the value of a moment. This failure to note the significance, importance, and value of the moments we are given, often accompanies a spiritual nonchalance, and a desire to live for earthly pleasures.

Some of the value of a moment can be understood with the example of the “do-over.” A “do-over” is what we, as kids, used to ask for, if there was some kind of mistake or foul-up while we were playing a game. I called for a do-over if I suspected that someone cheated somehow, or if I got distracted or impeded by uncontrollable circumstances, such as when a passing car impacts the play of kickball in the street.

There is a certain do-over mentality that we learn as children, and carry over into adulthood. Everyone has heard, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” This is an encouragement for learning and applying new knowledge and skills, and for the development of perseverance. Unfortunately, we extend the principle to cover sacred things, like marriage. “If at first you don’t succeed…” We also give ourselves over to sin quite easily, since we are sure that we’re covered by grace, and we can overcome the sin on another day. “My sin just looks too good today! Some day I’ll be ‘tight’ with God… He knows my heart loves Him… it’s just that right now, my sin is just too hard to stop.”

As a result, we are tempted to spend another day in captivity, enslaved by our own desires, and looking after our own interests. Unless something changes in our hearts, tomorrow will be the same story. We reason ourselves back into our cages, because we think we have unlimited “do-overs.”

God is the God of second chances, we understand. Do we fly more quickly into sin, because God is so forgiving? Does His grace become one of our biggest excuses to just do what seems right in our own eyes? If so, we are slowly piddling away “life more abundantly,” in order to live life more “tenaciously” (selfishly)–to grab, get, and hold on to everything we can through mortal means. Life more tenaciously seeks a false abundance, consisting of status, material success, and the glory of appearance, and promotes our own ingenuity and strength to attain and hold on to what we desire.

Life more tenaciously ignores the “Value Added” to our moments that is God. (I’ll come back to this in a moment).

We let most of our moments slip by without paying much attention to them on a spiritual level. We live life on the surface, engaged in a thousand concerns, but we (intentionally, or “accidentally”) leave God out of our concerns. What’s more, we tend not to ask God to show us what His concerns are for the moment, for the day, and for our lives. We become comfortable in the state of repeated “do-overs.” Assuming that we have unlimited second chances, we devalue the present moment and ignore the pricelessness of “now.” We look more to what we can get out of “now” for ourselves, and ignore what God is looking to do in the moment.

Our moments are of inestimable value, but we are asleep to this fact. Some of us get a “wake-up call” in the form of a close brush with death on the highway, or grave news from a doctor. Perhaps we are reminded by the death of someone close to us that we are not guaranteed another chance… another “do-over.”

If you were told, right now, that you only had one, maybe two weeks, to live, how would you live differently? My guess is that you would learn, in that relatively short time, the value of a moment. Every moment that passes by brings you closer to the death that you would love to put off. Every moment contains a richness that, more often than not, goes unnoticed when we think we have all the time in the world left to live.

I’m guessing that you would learn to treasure the people around you and to appreciate your few remaining interactions with them. Perhaps you would call that friend you haven’t spoken to in years, or write a letter to a dear relative to communicate how much you love them, or to ask for forgiveness. Maybe there is someone you would want to make peace with, knowing that your time is so short, and seeing that the issue that divides you is not all that important, after all.

Looking into the yawning jaws of death, and considering how you lived, maybe the regrets start setting in. “I should have lived differently… I wish I had never made this or that choice… I wish I had spent less time at the office, and more time with my wife and kids. I wish I had enjoyed the moments I had, dwelling within them, instead of being distant and detached by always looking to the future. I wish I had made more of an effort to know God.”

You begin to understand that there really are no “do-overs.” You can’t go backward in time and choose differently to love that rebellious son at the moment he needed it. You can’t go and take back those hurtful words you uttered that pushed your spouse over a precipice, that hurled your daughter out of your home, that estranged your father, that severed your fellowship and made an enemy out of a friend.

You can’t go back to the same moment in time and do differently, and the cascade of consequences that poured from that wrong choice or lack of intention, (or attention), can’t be made to run uphill again and run afresh through a more pleasant valley. The streams of your life run onward and plunge toward a sea, and every moment is a continental divide, an encounter with a rock, a moment of swirl, an eddy, a lap onto the shore, a freefall, a tumble, and a splash…

Every moment is a statement of your existence and representation of your beliefs—and your thoughts, words, and actions are like a turning and a flowing—this time right, this time left, this time straight away. And a watercourse stretches behind you with evidence of your passing… a worn stone, an eroded bank, a drowned harvest, a sunken ship, a wedding ring tumbled and lost in the sediment.

If your streams flow in the Lord, He will cause the course of your life to be a blessing, and a plain is watered, a thousand saplings nurtured, an oasis created, a message in a bottle delivered, a treasure uncovered, and a canoe turned toward adventure and a true home.

If we could grasp this idea, that our notion about “living for God” is not about the future, but instead is “living in Christ” right NOW, and Now, and now, and now, then our lives would be filled with the significance we crave. No matter how small the moment is in our own eyes, it contains the opportunity for a special expenditure of the power of God as we align our hearts in concert with Him, or it can contain a hardening of the heart that exerts its own kind of power, which grabs, scratches, spits, and mars, as it leaks its way into the land.

Consider a song. What is a song, but an orchestrated collection of notes… individual moments filled with an assigned sound? A song that is good and lovely to hear has a cadence and a harmony that is recognizable and pleasant. Each individual note, played in isolation, and without the context of the song, is not nearly as inspirational. Weighing the worth of a single note is like our thinking that a moment doesn’t really carry much weight.

But when one note is played, and then another after it, and another, a song develops, and our appreciation of the song can build. Sometimes a song can move us to tears, or to laughter, or call up a memory—accomplishing heart-work—because the composer and the players worked together to fit sounds (moments) together that inspire, or encourage, or cause deep and good reflection, or stir the memory of the mind or heart.

But if you take a musical score and delete some of the notes, or if unpracticed musicians skip notes, or beats, or play discordant sounds, we are reminded how important a note is to the whole, and we hear that the song is not the same, or falls apart and loses its power, because the players lost sight of the moment, and the will to play a strong and right note, or willfully chose to play a note that sounds foul to the ear and heart.

There is a Composer, and He desires to feed us the notes to play in each moment. Sometimes the note feels like a strange one to play, but because I trust this Composer, I will play the note in His strength, though I am unable to hear or fully appreciate where the song is going. I have to put aside my notion of what note would be better to play at this instant, thinking that my song will be better than the one My Composer is teaching me to play.

I want more and more to be able to see what God is doing in the moment, to hear what note He desires my part to play, and then have the will and conviction to play the strong note at the right moment. This is like what Paul says, in Ephesians 5:19-20, “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Your life, full of individual moments, is a song—a “poema,” in the Greek, translated to “handiwork,” in Ephesians 2:10—a masterpiece. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” NIV. Invite God to play through you, and God will make the song beautiful to Him. The world may hate the sound of it, but playing it faithfully produces a joy that is independent from the approval of man, and fixed on the One through Whom all true joy comes. The music expresses God’s love for us, and our love for Him, and every note carries a beauty in the ears of God, because He Himself inspires it and gives it weight in a divine composition.

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