PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Romans 9:22–29 (NIV)
What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory—even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As he says in Hosea:
“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”
and,
“In the very place where it was said to them,
‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”
Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
only the remnant will be saved.
For the Lord will carry out
his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”
It is just as Isaiah said previously:
“Unless the Lord Almighty
had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
we would have been like Gomorrah.”
CONSIDER THIS
Something deep within every single one of us wants to be God; even if we don’t want to admit it. At least we want to sit in the seat from time to time. This is the Achilles heel of being the image bearers of God. We have enough of the stuff of God in us we think we can do the job better than God—and clearly we can do it better than the guy driving the car next to us. We think we know best.
As a result, we are all amateur theologians, desperately trying to understand what is happening in us and to us and all around us and make sense of it and yes, to explain it to each other. I repeat—we are all amateurs—from the highly educated to the most unlearned. For better or for worse, we are all doing theology, all day every day; believers or not; willfully or unconsciously. Theology, or grasping after the logic of God, is our native language. Again, when you are made in the image of God, it’s what you do. Oh yeah, and you create other gods (aka idols) in the process (to try and fill in the gaps and make it all work for you), but we will save that for another day.
So Paul is doing theology with the Roman church about this matter of the Jews and their future and his agonizing hope concerning such. And because we have weeks yet to discuss all this business, I would like us to take a minute to get some altitude, look down, and admire his method. For starters notice the three-word opener, which he repeats again in the same paragraph:
What if God, . . . ?
It is a beautiful way to open a conversation, isn’t it? What if God, . . . ? Ponderous, open, invitational, and yes, humble. When it comes to conversations about God, beware the NIDs and the SIDs: That’s shorthand for the “Never-in-Doubts” and the “Seldom-in-Doubts.” They mean well, but they are plagued with insecurity and as a result, they can’t risk faith, so they opt instead for an over-confident certainty. Faith pursues another outcome: clarity.
What if God, . . . ?
Notice also how Paul pursues clarity. He’s not building on the philosophical constructs of Aristotle, Socrates, or Plato (who were important players but quite late to the game). Nope. For Paul, it’s Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He works from Scripture as not only his foundation but his four walls and infinitely vaulted ceiling. The story of Scripture serves like his stained glass: The windows through which all light enters and is filtered—and the lenses through which he sees and interprets all of life and the world; history and eternity. Monday he called on Sarah and Rebekah. Yesterday it was Pharaoh and Jeremiah. Today it’s Hosea and Isaiah. Paul knows this story upside down and inside out. He knows it not like an academic remembers facts and data but like an old man remembers his life story with all its twists, turns, and surprising transformations. The story of Scripture is the substance of his memory and the source of his imagination.
What if God, . . . ?
That’s the starting place, isn’t it? It can lead to questions like, “How might God be working in this challenging situation or that intractable dilemma?” And, “What might God be saying to us in this moment of opportunity and possibility?”
What if God, . . . ?
It’s also the ending place, isn’t it? On this point, no one says it better than Isaiah. We will give him the last word today.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8–9)
THE PRAYER
Abba Father! Indeed, we know this—your thoughts and ways are not our ways and thoughts. Your ways are higher, deeper, longer, and infinitely wiser than we can imagine or even comprehend. And yet you have written them down in a book, through a thousand stories that are one story, and all of it perfectly finished and beautifully fulfilled in Jesus. Come Holy Spirit and teach us to ask this question, “What if God?” and to let the question permeate our stories, big and small. I want to be that kind of theologian. I want to live a “What if God” life. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.
THE QUESTION
What if God . . . ? Where are you asking this question these days? How is the story of Scripture becoming like the stained glass windows of your life?
THE HYMN
We will add the final verse today and sing all of them together, “The Church’s One Foundation.” It is hymn 388 in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise. Every time we sing it the foundations go further down into the ground of our hearts, homes, churches, and cities.
For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
P.S. IN CASE you missed it yesterday—I have a NEW BOOK out!
Some of you will remember last summer I wrote a series on the Wake-Up Call—Still Day One: Living in the Day after the Day of Pentecost. It’s one of my favorites. It is now a NEW BOOK and Nick Perreault (the designer of all things beautiful for Seedbed), has crushed the cover! In the series I explore the Holy Spirit, prayer, faith, love, and miracles, (remember the Dirty Kroger Holy Spirit fail story?), and this matter of moving from the endless loop of informational discipleship into the apostolic life of being an authorized agent of Jesus. I would love for you to have a copy. GET IT HERE (while supplies last).
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6 Responses
What if God
Simply wants
Your heart
Fully surrendered
To His hands
So He can mold you
Like a potter
Molds his clay
And lead you
By His Spirit
Throughout each day?
A heart-to-heart encounter with the risen Jesus, a flash of direct revelation in your spirit, can do in an instant what a lifetime of “grasping after the logic of God” can never accomplish!
What if God, is allowing the current form of the institutional church of Western Culture to experience death, in order to resurrect it to new life? Doesn’t Jesus clearly state, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it produces meany seeds. (John 12:24)?
I love the way you put it. I believe we’ve gone through a period of modernism that tried to exclude the supernatural and the church has been too heavily influenced by that. Now, young people, like my kids, are seeing what a dead end modernism has been and are trying to return to “spirituality” while rejecting entrenched Christianity. God is resurrecting the church to respond to this challenge and point them to Christ. “Where sin abounded, grace abounded more”.
Thanks for your comment. While I agree that a lack of the embracing and dependence on the work of the Holy Spirit is a major problem in the Western church; in my opinion, that’s only one of many. Also I believe that our problems started way prior to modernism. I foresee the need to go back to pre-Constantine. For what that might entail, just look around where Christianity is thriving in the world today.
JD, once again you’ve hit a home run. (Hey, you started the baseball metaphors 🙂 ).
I believe Christ is the only way to God, but there are many ways to Christ. Some of us have a logical theology, others rely more on intuition. The Holy Spirit has used you to remind me to always start with God rather than trying to fit God into my logic.
I believe “seek first his kingdom …” applies to every area of our lives. Not just to riches. When I start with God, my logical theology satisfies the deeper need to understand my purpose and place in the world. When I try to fit God into my theology, it leaves me with confounding puzzles.
From the heart of a very good friend during devotions last night…
Loving the unlovable, those with whom we seldom associate, with whom association may even be difficult,
is not only possible in Jesus, it’s required! Entering into their Suffering and Anguish.
Looking directly into their eyes so that their reality in never in question,
which means their significance isn’t in question either.
I see also a faith growing beyond that of the disciples feeding the 5,000. It’s clear they knew they could do it. (70 of them had
seen the miracles of the mission trip!) They just didn’t know how. I’m learning not to worry about “how”, but to focus on “what” of the task
and the “who” of it’s empowerment. Simply ask.
Knowing the “Who,” the “What,” will give us the “How!” Simply ask.