Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Our Daily Bread

Finding God In The Darkness

READ: Acts 17:24-31

The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. —Luke 19:10

When our boys were small, we played a game called "Sardines." We’d turn out all the lights in our home and I would hide in a closet or some other cramped place. The rest of the family groped about in the darkness to find my hiding place and then hide with me until we were squeezed together like sardines. Hence the name.

Our smallest family member at times became frightened in the dark, so when he came close, I would whisper to him softly: "Here I am."

"I found you, Dad!" he would announce as he snuggled against me in the darkness, not realizing that I let myself be "found."

Likewise, we have been made to search for God—to "grope for Him," as Paul put it so vividly (Acts 17:27). But here’s the good news: He is not at all hard to find, for "He is not far from each one of us." He desires to make Himself known. "There is a property in God of thirst and longing. He hath longing to have us," wrote Dame Julian of Norwich centuries ago.

Before we come to know Christ, we grope for God in the darkness. But if we search for Him in earnest, He will make Himself known, for He rewards those who diligently seek Him (Heb. 11:6). He will call to us softly: "Here I am."

And He awaits our reply: "I found You!" —David H. Roper

Man gropes his way through life’s dark maze;
To gods unknown he often prays,
Until one day he meets God’s Son—
At last he’s found the Living One! —D. De Haan


Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. —Isaiah 55:6

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

The Fear of Man or Woman

A devotion from Elisabeth Elliot's book "Keep a Quiet Heart".

The majority of men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible as a herd," noted the wise G.K. Chesterton. Alas. Are we so formidable? Robert Bly, in his best-selling Iron John, declares that men are petrified of female anger. Then there's a Time correspondent named Sam Allis who says "Women are often daunting obstacles to male peace of mind, and for all their brave talk, men remain utterly flummoxed by the situation."

"The fear of man bringeth a snare," according to God's Word. Meseemeth the fear of woman bringeth a worse one. These comments have set me thinking (again) about fear in general. If men and women were surer of their God there would be more genuine manliness, womanliness, and godliness in the world, and a whole lot less fear of each other.

Jesus told us not to fear those who can kill only the body, but rather to fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell-in other words, fear God and fear nothing else. Moses, by faith, "left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:27, NIV). When Daniel learned of King Darius's decree forbidding prayer to any god or man except the king himself, he proceeded with his regular manner of worship, on his knees, windows open, "just as he had done before, and was caught in the act (Daniel 6). He feared God; therefore, he feared neither the king nor the lions. His three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, faced with the choice between two evils, worshipping a golden image or burning to a crisp in a furnace, made an instant decision (Daniel 3). Fear of God made worship of an idol unthinkable. Fear of the fire was, by comparison, thinkable. That's manliness.

Uzziah, who became king of Judah when he was sixteen, was taught by Zechariah to fear God. A child who is not taught to fear wrongdoing when he is small will have great difficulty learning to fear God when he is a man. "Freedom from fear" is what Russell Kirk calls a "silly piece of demagogic sophistry," for we all have "a natural yearning for the challenge of the dreadful."

One of the nicest things any of the listeners to my broadcast, Gateway to Joy, has written to me came from a little girl: "You make me brave." Sometimes I wonder what has happened to words like courage and endurance. What reason is there in our feel-comfortable society ever to be brave? Very little, and, when you think about it, we miss it, don't we? To be really brave is to lay oneself open to charges of hypocrisy, of being "in denial," or out of touch with one's feelings. Moses charged Joshua to be strong and very courageous. Courage is not the absence of fear but the willingness to do the thing we fear. Go straight into the furnace or the lion's den. Were those men out of touch with their feelings or with reality? No. Nor was the psalmist who said, "When I am afraid, I will trust" (Psalm 56:3, NIV). There's a big difference between feeling and willing.

In George MacDonald's Sir Gibbie the boy (Gibbie) is up in the mountains in a storm. He hears the sound of the river in flood and realizes it is headed straight for the cottage. He shoots after it. "He is not terrified. One believing like him in the perfect Love and perfect Will of a Father of men, as the fact of facts, fears nothing. Fear is faithlessness... A perfect faith would lift us absolutely above fear. It is in the cracks, crannies, and gulfy faults of our belief, the gaps that are not faith, that the snow of apprehension settles and the ice of unkindness forms."

Do you feel, in spite of all the promises of God, as helpless as a worm today? There's a special word for you too: "Do not fear; I will help you. Do not be afraid, O worm Jacob, O little Israel, for I myself will help you" (Isaiah 41:14, NIV).