The Good Portion

  "You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Mt. 5:13-16). There are few things easier to forget in the Land of the Free than the fact that we Christians are not our own, we were bought with a price. Our purpose in life is not to please ourselves, but to glorify God (see 1 Cor. 6:19-20).The purpose of salt is to be salty; the purpose of lamps is to give light; and the purpose of Christians is to glorify God with our lives. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offens

  What were you hoping for this Christmas? Whatever it was, I doubt it was this. This has been a year of disappointments. So many hopes, big and small, have been dashed. So many plans have been thwarted. So many people are suffering. So many people have died. Our todays and tomorrows have been rearranged without our consent. Nothing in our world is what we expected, and we sense too keenly that our lives are not entirely in our own hands. Now Christmas is here, threatening for many of us at least as much disappointment as joy. The book of Matthew begins with a genealogy, a disappointing beginning, perhaps, to the modern reader, but not to his original audience. Genealogies, for the Jews, were the tributaries through which the promises of God flowed. From Adam to Abraham and through Judah they coursed. From Judah would come King David, and through the line of David would come the Messiah, the ultimate fulfillment of all of God’s promises: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,

What behaviors come to mind when you think of an unrighteous man? What habitual behaviors might lead you to believe you are not dealing with a Christian? I'm sure we can all think of a few, and that most of them are included in the following list: "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God ? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers , nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." (1 Cor. 6:9-11, my emphasis) We Christians are known for our outspoken opposition to many of the behaviors in that list. But there is one I have yet to hear Christians protest against. It is the sin of reviling: *Revile: –verb (used with object)  1. to assail with contemptuous or

  The joy of the Lord is my strength. Years of Sunday school ensured that I can’t think those words without a beat: The jo-oy of the Lo-o-o-ord  is my strength! Those lyrics are a nearly exact quote from the most (only?) famous (part of a) verse of Nehemiah:  “Then he [Ezra] said to them, ‘Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength’” (Neh. 8:10). That last phrase, with its corporate “your” changed to “my” to make it more personal, makes a chipper little tune. As a child it was fun to sing. But as an adult staring down the barrel of life’s very real griefs and challenges, it can ring hollow. Divorced from its context as it is, it comes across more like a happy-slappy taunt to the strengthless. I don’t have that joy? How will I ever find strength? Singing that song over and over does little to drum it up. So how, I wonder, can I get this

Several years ago, I received a daily devotional for my birthday. In the introduction, the author explained how she had come to write it. Once, while alone in nature, she had a strong sensation of what she believed to be the presence of God. Afterward she spent many years attending seminary and working as a Christian counselor. But, though she read her Bible and kept a prayer journal, she was dissatisfied. "I knew that God communicated with me though the Bible, but I yearned for more. Increasingly, I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day. I decided to listen to God with pen in hand, writing down whatever I believed He was saying. I felt awkward the first time I tried this, but I received a message.” She goes on to say, “This practice of listening to God has increased my intimacy with Him more than any other spiritual discipline” (emphasis mine).* She wrote down the words she “believed” God spoke to her personally and eventually published them, makin

There is something offensive about blood. My sister faints at the sight of it. My son hated the mere mention of the word "blood" when he was a little boy—probably still does. It's as if we know instinctively what the word of God tells us: "the life of the flesh is in the blood..." (Lev. 17:11).  When God formed Adam, he “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Gen. 3:7). Ever since that day, it has been the role of blood to circulate life through every person’s heart. Contrary to the popular saying, death is not a part of life. Death is the end of life. It is the curse of sin: “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23a). Death is our enemy (1 Cor. 15:26).  So when we see blood, a tiny trickle or a fatal gush, it makes sense that we recoil. It makes sense that so many of Jesus’s disciples quit following him after he told them that eternal life could only come through eating and drinking his flesh and blood (Jn 6:53-5

Thanks to my church's New Testament reading plan , I've just finished reading Paul’s letters to the Thessalonian church. These letters pick up on a biblical theme as old as Genesis: waiting for salvation from wrath. The apostle Paul characterized the faith of the Thessalonian church this way: “. . . you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come”  1 Thess. 1:9b-10. They turned from idols to wait for Christ. Is this how you think of your calling? Is this how you view your life, as life of waiting for Jesus to come and deliver us from the coming wrath of God? I’ve got to admit, I wouldn’t probably have phrased it that way. But that might have something to do with the passive way which we usually use the word “wait.” Wait is what you do in a waiting room. But in Scripture, waiting is not passive. It’s being dressed and ready to go, sitting on the edge of

Josiah was six years old when his grandfather, Manasseh, died. Manasseh’s reign was long and wicked, but he died a humble and repentant man. Josiah’s father, King Amon, “did not humble himself before the Lord, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself, but this Amon incurred guilt more and more” (2 Ch. 33:23). Amon quickly and easily steered Judah back into idolatry. After only two years he was murdered, and eight-year-old Josiah became king in his place. Only God knows why—perhaps he’d been told about his grandfather’s repentance—but when he was 16 Josiah “began to seek the God of David his Father” (2 Ch. 34:3). At age 20 he set about destroying every vestige of idolatry and false worship in Judah. At 26, he began restoring the temple. That was when Hilkiah, the high priest, found a copy of the book of the Law of Moses (2 Ch. 34:14). After 18 years as king and a full decade of seeking the LORD, Josiah was finally about to hear God’s written word for the very first time.  “And when th

You need to learn to forgive yourself!  How many times have you heard those words? Maybe they came from a friend, or a counselor, or a book you’ve read. Maybe you’ve said them yourself to someone you care about, someone you want to set free from the burden of guilt and self-condemnation. I’ve heard and said them myself. I’ve tried to follow those words, but the burden of guilt never went away.  I’ve lived a sinful life. I’ve said and done many things I am deeply ashamed of. I’ve hurt others and disgraced myself. And there are witnesses, people who will never forget, and never forgive. How can I be free from the burden of all that guilt and shame? I can’t undo what I’ve done, and I know, deep in my heart, that I have no more authority to forgive my sins against others than I have the right to forgive my own debts.  After King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and arranged the murder of her husband, Uriah, he cried out to God in a prayer that is shocking unless you understand the n

  There’s more than one way to be worldly. There are “heathen” ways and there are “Christian” ways. What they have in common is found in the word worldly itself: this world is at the center of their heart.   “Heathen worldliness” is easy to spot, though its description may vary here and there. It includes things like smoking cigarettes (unless you are south of the Mason Dixon line, where, I’m told, you might even find an ashtray at the end of your pew); drinking alcohol (if you’re a Southern Baptist); recreational drug use; premarital sex and sundry other sexually immoral practices; abortion (obviously); listening to secular music (unless it’s classical), and watching movies rated higher than G (or PG, or PG-13).  And let’s not forget using profanity. Oh, and the heathen worldly are Democrats (unless, of course, you are a Democrat). Humor aside, to the extent that any of these “heathen” ways are inherently sinful, Christians must avoid them. “Heathen worldly” was once my sole definiti

I' ve heard a lot of complaining lately. Complaints about the COVID pandemic and the way it is being handled, complaints about the condition of our state and our city. And I’ve seen more and more people take their complaints on the road, literally. They’re packing up and moving away. Some of them had little or no choice following the Camp Fire, but many others are not being forced out. They are bailing. I’m not blind to the problems we suffer. I’m fully aware of the crime and disintegration of our local way of life. But here I sit, working from home in a house we bought here in Chico less than two years ago. Two years ago Paul and I had finally saved up enough for a down payment on a house. We began researching places to live and decided to move twenty-five miles down the road to Oroville, where we could get a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood for the same amount of money. That October we started shopping and put an offer on a lovely three-bedroom house. We were outbid, but undet

T he book of Hosea shocks me every time. Hosea, was a prophet of God, and as a prophet God, he was called to a difficult life. The very first time God spoke to him was to tell him to go marry “a wife of whoredom” (1:2) and father children with her. Hosea obeyed. He married Gomer, whose faithfulness he could never trust, and fathered children of whose legitimacy he could never be certain, all to paint a visible, flesh and blood picture for God’s unfaithful people. And then there were the children. God commanded Hosea to name his first child, a son, Jezreel, as a reminder of the wickedness of the kings of Israel. His next baby, a girl, was to be named No Mercy, and his third child, another son, was to be named Not My People. As a mother of two children of my own, I can’t imagine making them live with names that represent God’s rejection. We are never told what Jezreel, No Mercy, and Not My People were like. We don’t know if they were happy children, if they were gentle or funny or sweet,

Things were quiet until she moved into the neighborhood. Then came the loud, joyless laughter, the angry shouting, and the profanity, lots and lots of profanity. I judged her long before I laid eyes on her. This is not someone I want to know. But there was a time when I was the person I would not want to know. That was before God saved me. And even now, truth be told, there are times when I still feel that other person’s heart beating right alongside the brand new one Christ has given me. “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespass

In my yard there are many weeds. We label plants as weeds when they exist only for themselves. They provide us no fruit, and worse, they destroy the plants that do. As I’ve undertaken rooting out my weeds out by hand, I’ve noticed how many weeds closely resemble the good plants that they destroy. This close resemblance gives them more time to work their damage before they can be identified and dug out. This is how sin works in our lives and in our church. It mimics spirituality. It makes us feel spiritual and righteous, or at least more spiritual and righteous than others, while in truth it is not spiritual at all. It is living “according to the flesh.” “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” (Romans 8:5-6) The Scriptures reveal many ways to live

Years ago, when she was a student at Chico State, my daughter came over for a visit. With her head in the refrigerator, she remarked: "Nothing ruins a good book like having to read it for a class!" In one breath she captured the human condition. Reading a good book is a joy. So why does being required to read it kill the joy? The answer lies at the heart of what it is to be a sinner. “I was once alive apart from the law,” wrote the Apostle Paul, “but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died” (Rom. 7:9-11). When a commandment appears, up pops the defiant head of rebellion, ready to poison our best pleasures. In the flesh, autonomy is king. We think of ourselves as free, yet we are dominated by our worldly desires, our physical urges, and our unrestrained personalities. We resent doing what we’ve been told we should or must do, even when we would happily have done it on our own. So we resist, or, when the fear of consequences outweighs the benefits, we submi

The day after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus set in motion the chain of events that would lead to his death. Throwing the money-changers  out of the temple (11:1-19) was like kicking a hornets’ nest. Enraged, the chief priests, scribes, and elders devised a plan to destroy him. They challenged Jesus’ authority. With one question he silenced them and with one parable he indicted them. They retreated, but they regrouped. Proving the adage that politics makes strange bedfellows, they sent political rivals, the Pharisees and Herodians, to “trap him in his talk” (Mk. 12:13). Jesus stymied them as well. Finally, the Sadducees, who, Mark tells us, “say that there is no resurrection” (12:18), approached him with a question of their own (12:19-23): There was a widow who, in hopes of producing an heir for her first husband, married, each of her dead husband’s six brothers, one by one, each upon the death of the former. Eventually they all died, and so did she, without producing

Our pastor recently preached his Sunday morning sermon from the book of Judges. Judges is a painful read. It hurts to see such evil recorded so plainly. It makes me wonder what on earth it’s all for. Why did God let people become sinners? Why did He not just wipe out sin right there in the Garden of Eden and start over fresh? I think this is exactly the question God want’s us to ask. Of course the answer is long, eons long. God’s plan is older than time and too great for our pea-brains to comprehend. But He gave us His Word and planted eternity in our hearts so that we can spend our forevers knowing Him better. The Apostle Paul put it this way: To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the

These are challenging times for all God's image bearers, are they not? And for those of us who belong to Christ it feels like we are being forced to hide His light under a bushel. But we still have forms of communication left to us, and it's never been more important that we use them for the sake of Christ's kingdom. "We are not our own. We were bought with a price. Now we are called to glorify Christ in every aspect of our lives. That includes our time alone, and our time with others. It also includes our social media presence, which for many of us is now one of the only places where the light of Christ in us can shine.  So let's be circumspect in what we communicate and in how we communicate it, so that what we share (and how we comment) reflects the character of Jesus Christ as demonstrated by the fruits of His Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (I suggest writing those words on a post-it a