“Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (II Corinthians 3:12-18 NIV)
Yesterday, after nearly a year of searching, my wife and I finally reached an agreement on a contract to buy a house. We sold our previous house a year ago and have been looking for a house at a great price. In our neck of the woods, that means a fixer-upper. The house we’re buying fits that description. It is the ugliest house in the little neighborhood in which it resides. It needs updating on the inside and completely new landscaping on the outside. And it needs lots of painting; basically every square inch (meter) of wall space has to be painted. It will be so much work; yet I lay in bed tonight and could not go to sleep. My mind was racing, not from stress, but from excitement of getting started on the transformation.
So here I am at 1:30 AM writing because I am wide awake. Transformation has always excited me. Every home I have ever owned has gotten a makeover of some sort. Sometimes it was just paint, but often it was major with redoing bathrooms or kitchens, or adding decks or porches. My wife will tell you that going through home transformations with me can be unpleasant at times as I can get frustrated with the difficulty of the job or the amount of time it takes me to complete it, or because I’m just completely exhausted at the end of the day. But transformation is usually never a cakewalk. Ups and downs are part of the process.
The same is true with personal transformations. I love those, too, particularly when they are spiritual in nature. There is nothing more exciting for me than to watch students come into our ministry at a certain point spiritually and during the next four to five years become men and women hardly recognizable compared to who they were when they arrived. I have seen students enter college acting as if they had their spiritual lives in order and later humble themselves, admit they had never truly followed Jesus, and be transformed into true disciples of Him. I have seen students embittered by the hand life had dealt them, come to embrace the Lord who can work all things together for the good, and be set free from depths of bitterness. I have seen students who came to campus fully intent on experiencing every pleasure college life had to offer to later discover a different way of living whose reward is joy and a life fulfilled.
None of these kind of transformations come easily and not often quickly. Getting there can be difficult and not without some, even a lot of, pain and discomfort. Mostly, they are made up of many small steps of change, that singularly may not seem significant, but added together produce great and positive changes. Transformation is a process, not an event.
For the follower of Jesus, it also does not have an end point in this life. Paul says we “are being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory.” It does not begin and end in college, after a week of church camp, after saying a prayer and being baptized, after graduating from seminary, or after being in church for 25 years. If we are not continually being transformed, our resemblance to the Lord growing more and more striking, then something is amiss.
The current owner of our future home seems to have had no interest in transformation. He moved into the house 15 years ago and did nothing to it, particularly to correct flaws that were there from the beginning. The house did not maintain its fresh look, but deteriorated over time. Houses cannot maintain or transform themselves; they need owners to do that. It is the same with us. Maintenance and transformation of our spiritual lives has to be done by the Lord, but in our case, we have to let Him.
Today, examine your life. What transformation has taken place during the last month, six months, a year, or the last five years? If there is none, then go to the Lord and ask Him to show you what is the reason for that. The truth is the process of transformation, becoming more and more like Jesus, should be an ever-present part of your life until the day you die.
© Jim Musser 2014
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” (Hebrews 11:1-2 NIV)
Religious faith is a concept about which many have difficulty getting their minds around. Believing in an unseen god, hoping in certain promises proclaimed to be true millennia ago, and trusting after so long that it could still possibly be true is just too big a mountain for many to climb. They don’t see the rationale; they don’t see the point in believing in stuff science can’t prove.
Yet, those same people display faith in their lives all the time. Every time they climb aboard a subway, get on an airplane, or hop into their cars, they are demonstrating faith. As they begin their days, they hope to be where they plan to be, and, if you ask them, they will most assuredly state their expectation of arriving there safely. If there is doubt, it is overwhelmed by confidence. They have faith in the vehicles transporting them and in the skills of those operating them. None of it can be proved at the outset, but they have confidence nonetheless. And no one thinks it strange.
You also see faith exhibited routinely by sports fans. At the start of every season, fans are hopeful that this will be the year their team wins it all, and this is particularly true of fans of teams who play particularly well. I just watched one of the most exciting postseasons in Major League Baseball, with the Kansas City Royals seeking to win the World Series (apologies to my international readers for an obvious American habit of using “world champions” when in reality, the only teams involved are American or Canadian). Throughout the postseason games, Royals fans truly believed their team could win it all. They had hope and confidence. The same was true with fans of all the playoff teams. And no one thought it strange.
The reality is people from all walks of life demonstrate faith every day. They trust when they get into the shower and turn the handle that water will come pouring down. They can’t prove it will, but they trust it will. And when they pour the milk over their morning cereal, they have confidence it is not poisonous to ingest. And when they grab lunch at a local restaurant, they trust the cooks in the kitchen are preparing their food in a healthy manner and they won’t soon after be suffering from food poisoning. They walk with assurance through a crosswalk, often on their phones, that traffic will remain at a halt until they are through to the other side.
None of the things in life that we often take for granted or passionately believe in can be proved absolutely. There is always faith involved, hoping for and having assurance in things we cannot see or prove. So, while religious faith may seem “out there” by many, the truth is we all live by faith. Every day. And what increases our faith are the outcomes. They give us confidence and assuredness to continue “walking in faith.” The question is: if we can have faith in such mundane things in life such as subways and sports teams, what is so strange about having faith in the Creator of the universe, for which we can demonstrate positive outcomes as well?
Today, recognize the world demonstrates faith every day as it goes about its business. There is nothing strange about having faith. If people question your faith in God, then ask them why they have faith in their lives. It could lead to a fascinating discussion and an opportunity to give the reasons for the hope within you (I Peter 3:15).
© Jim Musser 2014
“Without wood a fire goes out;
without gossip a quarrel dies down.” (Proverbs 26:20 NIV)
Once, one of our small groups came out to the house to use our fire pit. I had started the fire before they arrived and had plenty of wood available to keep it going. After only an hour, they came to the door to say they were leaving. Turns out that the fire had died. They had been so into their conversations they had neglected to tend the fire until it was too late.
Fires can only start when there is wood to burn and can only continue to burn when more fuel is added. If they are not maintained, they will quickly die out.
Solomon says the same is true for relational conflicts. They will die down if there is not gossip to fuel them. So often we hear something about somebody from someone else. We accept it as true and accurate and then relay it on to another person. They, in turn, do the same. It is not long before a storyline has developed about someone that may or may not be true, but if true, is likely to contain inaccuracies or exaggerations. And discord grows between people.
The way to stop this is the same way we allow a fire to die: we stop adding fuel. I once heard something about someone that led me to believe I needed to confront them. But before doing so, I went to the original source and sought the details. It turned out the information I had heard was only partially true and the inaccurate details created the wrong impression. I am thankful I made that decision, because it would have been easy just to proceed on what I had originally heard. That’s usually what people do.
I often tell students if they have an issue with someone, then go to that person instead of telling everyone else but them. That is the way to keep the “fire” from getting hotter.
Today, if you hear something unflattering from someone about someone else, think about if you really want to add fuel to the fire by telling someone else what you heard. Perhaps it would be better to just let that fire die.
© Jim Musser 2014
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.” (II Peter 3:8-9a NIV)
The one thing I hate when I am sitting in front of my computer is the spinning cog or rainbow, or the rotating hourglass. That means waiting, perhaps as long as a few minutes. Ugh, I hate it! This from a guy who used a typewriter in college, who waited every day for the morning paper to read the news, and who made once-a-week phone calls on a payphone to his mom!
Our high-tech society has speeded up everything and I think, as has mine, people’s impatience has increased right along with it. We expect our computers to work fast, checkout lines to move quickly, and information to be immediately available to us. We have little patience with slowness.
Yesterday, I was reading in Jeremiah about God’s punishment of Judah, telling them they would be exiled to Babylon for 70 years. That number just stopped me. Seventy years is practically a full lifetime. His promise was that after 70 years, they would come back. Can you imagine being told to wait 70 years to return home, or 40 years, as in the case of the Israelites wandering in the desert? Think of how long that actually is. What will your life look like in 70 years or 40 years, even 10 years?
So, is it a surprise that we often get impatient with God when He does not act quickly enough for us? We have grown so accustom to quick answers and quick solutions that we expect the same from Him.
Yet we must understand God is not governed by our changing world. He does not necessarily move faster just because our world does. He is the same as He was at the time of Jeremiah, and He will remain the same in the years and generations to come. He does not view time in the same way we do. Does a thousand years seem like a day to you?
This is the God we serve and to avoid being continually frustrated, we must understand we will not always receive a quick answer, or be changed overnight. As the Psalmist says, “I wait for you, O LORD; you will answer, O Lord my God.” (Psalm 38:15) But be prepared to wait longer than you might want.
© Jim Musser 2014
“A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. ‘Give glory to God,’ they said. ‘We know this man is a sinner.’
He replied, ‘Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!’
Then they asked him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’
He answered, ‘I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?’
Then they hurled insults at him and said, ‘You are this fellow's disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don't even know where he comes from.’
The man answered, ‘Now that is remarkable! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’
To this they replied, ‘You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!’ And they threw him out.” (John 9:24-34 NIV)
When I first became a Jesus-follower, my mother thought I had joined some sort of cult. She saw the sudden changes in me, and good though they were, they frightened her. I was talking about the Bible and about praying, things never discussed in our so-called Christian home. My mom was a churchgoer, but her understanding of a Christian and what she saw in the young man she raised were quite different. And it scared her.
Jesus miraculously healed a man and it was a proven fact; yet the religious leaders were scared. Jesus didn’t fit their understanding of the Messiah. He didn’t show them respect and He went against their long-held traditions such as observing the Sabbath. So they persecuted the man who was healed. It doesn’t make sense unless we understand how easy it is for us to reject out of hand anything that doesn’t conform to our view or experience of things.
Before I became a follower of Jesus, I thought true Christians were strange. My friends and I referred to them as “Jesus freaks.” They often carried Bibles, prayed together, and lived very different lifestyles. Even after I became a Christian, I thought people who raised their hands in church were strange. I judged them in my heart. Why? Because I was scared. It was different and I was uncomfortable with it. Judgment quite often is the result of fear.
We see this in the religious leaders. How could anyone decry a miracle, particularly one that ended the long suffering of this man? Yet their fear led them to judgment.
The story of the man healed from blindness is in one way a sad one. In it was the opportunity for the religious leaders to be set free from their own blindness and fears. Yet, they rejected it in favor of clinging tightly to what was familiar.
Today, consider what fears may be preventing you from experiencing what the Lord has for you. What we are comfortable with is not necessarily what is best for us.
© Jim Musser 2014
“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ and again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:26-31 NIV)
Pendulums of popular thought swing widely over the years and through generations. That’s why they are referred to as “pendulum swings” because they swing way to one side and then back to the other. Science is a perfect example of this. In the 70’s, it was thought the earth was cooling and we were headed for another Ice Age. Beginning in the 90’s, the thinking of scientists started back toward the alarming news of the earth’s precipitous warming and picked up momentum at the start of this century, to the point one was considered an idiot to deny the “facts” of global warming. But in the last year, there has begun to appear research indicating perhaps the earth is not warming as much or as quick as was thought. (Google “global cooling 2014”)
The ancient practice of using leeches in medicine had long been abandoned by the modern medical community as a barbaric procedure, but guess what, it’s back! (See this article.) And, of course, in the areas of health and nutrition the pendulum swings so fast, one can get dizzy. Saturated fat, once the ogre of the diet, is now getting a second look and it’s being seen as perhaps not so bad after all. Low fat everything is now being questioned as the answer to combatting heart disease.
So it is no surprise that the same pendulum swings are common when it comes to talking about the Scriptures. For most of church history, “pre-millennialism” (Jesus returning at the Rapture, followed by the Tribulation) was not the common view. It wasn’t until the early 20th Century that this view began to be more common. Today, it is the prevailing view, with the majority of believers unaware of any other. A focus on sound doctrine was also an emphasis for the Church throughout its history, to the point of people being persecuted and even executed if they held to doctrines different from those believed to be the true ones (Martin Luther was an example of this.) But in this century, emphasis on sound doctrine has lessened in favor of the feel of the church. Is the pastor an entertaining speaker? Is the music contemporary and the worship band good? The majority of churchgoers have little idea upon what doctrines their churches operate around. It is no longer a major concern.
Hell and eternal punishment were also common teachings of the Church for centuries. The 18th Century preacher and theologian, Jonathan Edwards, gave a famous sermon on this passage in Hebrews. But today, the pendulum has swung away from the wrath of God to the grace of God. Several years ago, Rob Bell, in his book, “Love Wins,” suggested there is no eternal punishment. In today’s church, Hell and wrath have gone out of fashion.
Of course, the danger of pendulum swings is that we miss the truth that is so often found in the middle. When we read the Scriptures, we often tend to focus on the ones that resonate most with us, that are the most appealing. In earlier times, people were brought up to do things the right way, to be disciplined, and the view was that punishment and the fear of it were the best ways to make sure people lived correctly. So naturally, the believers of those times focused on the Scriptures that dealt with fear and punishment, like this passage in Hebrews, often to the exclusion of passages referring to God’s love and grace.
But when the cultural shifts of the 1960’s-70’s happened, slowly fear and punishment gave way to positive reinforcement. Spankings were replaced by time-outs as discipline for kids. The raising of self-esteem became more important than discipline and doing things correctly. And the Church followed this swing. God’s wrath fell out of favor and was replaced by God’s grace and mercy. Sermons focused less and less on eternal punishment and much more on eternal life, eventually reaching the point of practically, as Francis Chan entitled his book, erasing hell.
The truth is, Scripture must be read and interpreted in its entirety. One cannot, as Thomas Jefferson famously did, only select the parts of the Bible we really like or agree with and leave the rest untouched. And if we do this, we find the truth that God is love and full of mercy. But He is also a God of wrath for those who refuse His offer of grace and insist on being lords of their own lives. Love is a wonderful motivator, but as any parent will tell you, it isn’t always enough to motivate a child to do what is right. Sometimes the fear of punishment has to be employed.
Today, has your view of God swung so far toward viewing Him as a God of love and mercy that these words of the Hebrew writer strike you as extreme and unloving? If so, realize you are missing a central biblical truth that punishment awaits those who do not accept God’s gift of grace and live their lives under His Lordship. The truth once again is found in the middle.
© Jim Musser 2014
“Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, ‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!’
Jesus replied, ‘And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, “Honor your father and mother” and “Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.” But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is “devoted to God,” they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.”
Jesus called the crowd to him and said, ‘Listen and understand. What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.’
Then the disciples came to him and asked, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?’ He replied, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.’” (Matthew 15:1-14 NIV)
When I was in grad school, the professor of one of my classes asked two gay men to talk to our class about their life experience, particularly navigating a then very hostile culture to homosexuality. Their basic message was this: anyone who did not approve of homosexuality was homophobic. Fast-forward 20 years and the word used is not fear, but hate. Anyone against homosexual practice is no long considered a homophobe, but rather a hater. While the labels may have changed, the assertion is still the same: You are wrong to disagree. And the reaction is the same as well: I am highly offended by your stance on this.
In a generation where we were told tolerance is one of the highest cultural values, what has become very clear is there is growing intolerance for disagreement. If you don’t agree with (fill in the blank), then you are a hater, to be despised, ridiculed, and, in some cases, arrested. And it runs the gamut of our society. This is not just limited to liberals and conservatives, or the pro-this or the anti-that crowds. It’s everywhere. Dare to speak your views among others than your own like-minded crowd, and you will likely be quickly confronted or rejected. There will be little, if any, rational discussion.
And the effect on us as followers of Jesus by living in such times is we draw back and hesitate to speak the truth. We don’t want to be labeled a “hater” or an “extremist.” Or among our friends or fellow believers, a “busy body” who should mind our own business and stop judging. We just don’t want to be those people who are so reviled by the world.
Yet, the example of Jesus should give us courage. He offended a lot of people, but He didn’t seem to care. Not that He went out of His way to be offensive, but He always spoke the truth without concern for the reactions of others. In this account, the disciples were very concerned at how offended the religious leaders were by what Jesus had said to them. They sat at the pinnacle of Jewish society. They were highly respected men. And they were offended by Jesus’ remarks. I can imagine the disciples thinking they needed to help Jesus in this situation, help salvage His reputation by letting Him know how offended these men of standing were so that He could go to them and apologize. He didn’t care. In fact, he doubled down on His criticism by calling the religious leaders “blind guides.”
When it came to truth, Jesus was not going to hold back for fear of what others might think. The religious leaders hated Him for it. And I suspect if Jesus were walking the earth today, there would be many who would call Him a hater. And He wouldn’t care because speaking the truth is far more important than what people might think of you or how they might react.
Today, in a world where people want to be told what they want to hear, take courage from the example of Jesus. He was not afraid to offend people if truth was on the line. As He demonstrated, sometimes people need to hear the truth no matter how they will react.
© Jim Musser 2014
