Burdened for this generation

I currently work part-time as a substitute teacher to supplement my time (and income) while I serve my home church as youth pastor and complete seminary.

I cherish this opportunity for the interaction it affords me with youth in the public school system.

I cherish this opportunity on most days.

Thursday was not one of those days.

I was teaching 7th grade communication, and the students were allotted 40 minutes to complete their response to a writing prompt.

The prompt: write a three paragraph essay on a time in your life when you were pleasantly surprised or excited by something that happened.

One young boy asked me repeatedly if he could make something up for his essay. I said no, this was to be a factual account.

I didn’t understand what was happening.

Another teacher motioned me over and explained that some of the kids had never experienced anything pleasant, surprising, or exciting, and often resorted to making up things for these sorts of assignments.

My heart broke a little.

But – sadly – that wasn’t the end of my learning experience for the day.

I was reading through some of the essays turned in by the class – I will summarize the contents of the one that caught my eye:

It was a few days before Valentines day, and I heard Mommy and Daddy fighting in the kitchen…Daddy stormed out of the front door, I never saw him again. Mommy was in the kitchen crying. My brother tucked me into bed early hat night. A few days later, Mommy told me her and Daddy were getting a divorce….Just before Halloween Mommy brought home Fred for us to meet, Fred was going to be our new Daddy. I was excited.

How have we gotten here? How has our culture deteriorated to the place where a little boy has never experienced anything exciting? Where nobody has ever told him he was special? Where nobody has ever loved him? How have we gotten to the place where a sorry excuse for a man can run out on his family, never to return? Where it is normal for a young family to be ripped apart at the seams, only to be piecemealed together mere months later?

To be a fly on a wall in that room….

We read in Acts 9: 9 that following Saul’s encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, he spent three days fasting at the house of Judas on Straight Street.

As a pharisee, Saul would have been very familiar with the practice of fasting and praying – though we can only guess if he ever pursued those practices motivated by truth and in a God-honoring fashion.

He goes to the house of Judas and – maybe for the first time – experiences what it truly means to be in communion and fellowship with the Creator of the universe in Spirit and truth, the God whom he has supposedly been serving up to this point in his life.

Now, if I could have been a fly on a wall in that room…..

For three days Saul communes with Jesus Christ. What does he pray about?

Does he confess his sins of pride? Does he repent of his sins of persecution the early church? Does he ask why God desired to use him? Did he seek wisdom and guidance for the next step in his life?

We read in the beginning of Galatians that Paul spent three years in Arabia (Gal 1: 17-18) alone, so we know his fellowship with Christ was sweet and fulfilling, and we can only imagine that these three days in Damascus were the beginning of that journey.

So why is it that I make it so hard to confess to God, to repent, to simply pray? Why is it a task, a job, a chore?

Here is Saul, infamous persecutor of the early Christian church, Saul who held the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen, Saul the man whom Christians feared the most, and what is he doing?

Here is gripped by the great grace of almighty God, doing nothing but devoting himself to eager, honest, and heartfelt communion with his loving Creator.

O God, teach me fervent prayer like your servant Paul.
Soften my heart like his, and may I always be hungry for Your truth and desperate for Your presence!

To have been a fly on that wall….

What God wants

¹⁶For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it;
You are not pleased with burnt offering.
¹⁷The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

Psalm 51: 16-17

Danger abounds when we get caught up in trying to be “good enough” for God; we try and “do” to please Him and to earn His love.

We offer up religious ways of life as a way of “doing” our Christian life.
But is that what God truly wants? Is that why were saved?

God desires we simply come to Him, sit at His feet, and worship Him.
There is no sense in “doing” Christianity, for such actions stem solely from our own strength.

Instead turn to God and offer yourself, humbled and broken before Him, to work in you and have His way.
Don’t offer up sacrifices and attempts at “doing” Christianity, simply offer yourself, desperate for His grace and hungry for Him.
Recognize your inability to rely on achievements and accomplishments for fulfillment, and turn to Him who quenches all thirst (John 4:14).

Seek His face and desire to know Him, and in doing so He will be glorified.
Yearn for Him.

God will have His way, no matter what

⁷“Furthermore, I withheld the rain from you
While there were still three months until harvest
Then I would send rain on one city
And on another city I would not send rain;
One part would be rained on,
While the part not rained on would dry up.
⁸“So two or three cities would stagger to another city to drink water,
But would not be satisfied;
Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
⁹“I smote you with scorching wind and mildew;
And the caterpillar was devouring
Your many gardens and vineyards, fig trees and olive trees;
Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
¹⁰“I sent a plague among you after the manner of Egypt;
I slew your young men by the sword along with your captured horses,
And I made the stench of your camp rise up in your nostrils;
Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
¹¹“I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,
And you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze;
Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.

- Amos 4: 7-11

God speaks through the prophet Amos and proclaims to His people His desire that they would return to Him. He recalls times of trouble He allowed to come to pass, in hopes Israel would humble themselves and seek His face.

Through each hardship, however, they did not repent and they did not turn back to Him.

God desired Israel to return, and yet their hardened hearts and stubborn attitudes prevented them, and so God told of pain, angst, and suffering through the prophet Amos.

So often we do not understand God’s purposes and His plans, indeed it is impossible to do so.
Whether we are steeped in sin and need it stripped away through God’s sanctifying grace, or because God loves us enough to refine us that we would seek Him, only God knows His plans and His purposes.

For God is just that, God.
Infinite, incomprehensible, unsearchable, and always majestically and marvelously so.

John Chrysostom said it best when he said, “A God comprehended is no God at all.”

Whether because of our sin or because of God’s purposes (which are always far above us), God will have His way in our life.

Our circumstances are His design, and we have no ground from which to argue (just ask Job).

In all things, God will have His way, and our task is but to respond faithfully.