Hanging together or separately

Benjamin Franklin stated at the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." While this may not have been an expression of religious faith, it certainly inspired some sort of faith and understanding of being one and together.

The potential power and effectiveness of our Christian Communities is awesome. Working together with God’s guidance is life changing and life building. God did not intend for us to be at odds with each other, but to be uplifting and comforting with each other. We are His tools for seeking the best for His created children. The more we realize this, the better life on Earth will be. It takes all of us to help God realize His Will for us, His created children.  

In 1 Peter 4:8-11 we see our calling: “Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining.  Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.  Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.”

We sometimes have a lack of confidence in the gifts God has given us. He intends for us to use them for Him, but we don't think that we are worthy. We cheat others and ourselves when we don't appreciate and make the most of our gifts. God has given each of us so much. He created us for a reason. He gave each of us special gifts for a reason. He wants us to love one another and to come hand-in-hand to Him.

St. Paul says it so well, "Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." (1 Corinthians 12:1-11)                                                    

God is not interested in just the few working for Him; He wants all of us in on the action. The meek and the poor can well minister to the great and the powerful. St. Matthew shares Jesus' words with us when he said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." If this is true for these, then everyone else needs to get with the program and use the gifts that God has given for His work. Each of us is called to be a Christian leader.

God is not selfish with His word and His strength. He's willing to work with us on a "rent-to-own" basis. Using our gifts from God, we may speak His words as though they were our own and we may serve others having His strength within us. With the salvation He has given us through the life and the blood of Jesus, we gain forgiveness of our sins and ownership in His eternal kingdom.  

So we must hang together and not be separated in the Lord. In Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 we hear: “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.”

St. Paul wraps things up in Philippians 2:3-5:  “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,”

Hate rules out love

As we look around our world today and study past history, we see much of humanity filled with hate for one another. While there is much goodness and love in this world, hate seems to take the spotlight. In many cases, the hate has gone on for hundreds and even thousands of years between the same people. Unfortunately, hate exists in our nation’s communities. Yes, in the good old U.S.A. How does this happen?

I have always thought that hate was not inherent in us; that hate is learned. I was reminded recently of a quote by Nelson Mandela. He summed up and confirmed my thoughts. He expressed the following: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

We can justify our hate by retrieving a past history with a type of person. This is an immediate judgment of a person without even knowing them. We can find so many ways to decide there’s something we just don’t like about a person. Hate or dislike should not be our first action. If we can let love be our first action, we will allow the other person to express their inner self in a way that might surprise us. Our lack of love can produce a false negativity.   

In John 4:20 were hear: “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” And in Proverbs 10:12: “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” And then in 1 John 2:11: “But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. “

Peter warns us in 1 Peter 2:1-10: "Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation--if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good."

In one statement Peter just wiped out my average day. As much as we focus on Christ, we still stumble in our lives. It's hard not to be angry, deceitful, insincere, hypocritical, envious and slanderous as we go about our daily lives. Even with the best intentions, we slip into these evil ways. I know that I have been a blocker of good communications by the way that I have reacted to others. There are those little demons that I have allowed inside me that pop out at all the wrong times.

I have been a poor example to my brothers and sisters. Just when my correct action or reaction would mean so much to someone, I give in to my sinful nature and in doing so fail to witness as I should for the Lord. My movements toward my natural life nourishments overpower my taste for the spiritual milk of the Lord. The Saints must have had tremendous patience. My lack of patience keeps me from acquiring a taste for the good that is the Lord. I have my own agenda, not His.

Charles Swindoll wrote that ten percent of life is what happens to us and ninety percent is how we react to it. Every day we are challenged to react properly to the things that happen to us. Whether these things are good or bad, we must always seek the Lord's guidance in all things. Satan is waiting in the wings, ready to pull us back from our desire to taste God's spiritual milk. Our patience is short. Benjamin Franklin's words always bring me up short as he wrote, "Patience keeps the dear school, but a fool can learn in no other."

We must confess to the Lord that we have followed too much our own take on life, and pray that He will help us to seek Him in everything that we do. We must ask for His help to have His patience in our lives. His patience with us is a wonderful sign of His love for us. Allow Him to teach us to love our brothers and sisters as he has loved us, and to be patient as we await His guidance.

St. Paul sums things up in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Believing at home and away

God wants us to connect with His eternal kingdom while we are still in the natural world. By sending us His Son Jesus the Christ He is making that connection for all people forevermore. It is hard for us to think eternally. We have so many immediate distractions in the natural life that we fail to realize what God is offering us. We can start to experience heaven on earth by coming to the Father through the Son and the Holy Spirit.

God gives us this anticipation of eternal life with Him in order that our lives here on earth might be more fruitful for Him. While no human has ever seen God except His Son, the Son of man, it is through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that the promise and the vision of the everlasting kingdom comes to us. When we need this vision and assurance most, it comes to us through prayer. It comes to us by our faith and our hope. Our love for one another helps God reveal His promise of eternal care and comfort and joy to us.

In Revelation 21:1-7 we are told: "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

God, through Christ and the Holy Spirit uses the faithful to help carry out His work among His people. It is not always easy for me to love my brother or sister, but as I seek God and learn His ways and His promise, I see how He loves me a sinner and I learn how to love. We can more readily experience life and love with God if we learn to love one another as He loves us. This brings heaven so much closer to us. God did not create us to live as individuals. He created His people as unique individuals for the purpose of coming together in love to worship Him.

As mortals we tend to seek things and experiences as if our time is running out and we've got to get it all in before we die. This is a very fatalistic way of viewing and experiencing life. This is why we fear death. By seeking God's eternal kingdom through our living the life in Christ within the Body of Christ, life itself is connected to eternity for us and we have no deadlines or quotas. "The home of God is among mortals!"

We are tested many times in wanting to see things before we believe. In John 4:46-54 we learn about faith in this story: "Then Jesus said to him, 'Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.' The official said to him, 'Sir, come down before my little boy dies.' Jesus said to him, 'Go; your son will live.' The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way."

The royal official that approached Jesus in Cana where our Lord had turned water into wine had a sick son in Capernaum. The man begged Jesus to go and heal his son. This is when Jesus brought the man up short by saying, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe." The man was looking for Jesus to perform a miracle and to do this by going to the place where his son lay ill.

Jesus then said to him, "Go; your son will live." He believed the word of Jesus and went on his way to Capernaum. When he arrived he found that at the very hour that Jesus had said to him, "Go; your son will live," the boy's fever left him. Now the man and his whole household believed. Jesus did not make the trip to Capernaum, but the boy was healed. He was healed by faith.

So often we try to direct the Lord in our prayers and wishes. We look at healing and other needs through our own eyes and not through God's eyes. We are sometimes too specific in our prayer and lay out the details of the work that we want God to perform. We predetermine which outcomes that we will accept. We pray, but we lack faith. We think that Jesus must make the trip to Capernaum in order for the boy to be healed. We look for "signs and wonders" so that our belief can be confirmed.

Jesus saw that the man loved his son enough to humble himself and beg Jesus to heal the boy. The man was a royal official of much higher social and political ranking than Jesus. He believed that Jesus could heal his son. This belief was all that he needed. He did not need to presume anything other than this. Jesus did not need to go to the boy. He simply said, "Go; your son will live."

The Hidden Face of Grace

My brother does a lot of vertical climbing on the high elevation mountains in the Rockies. He was with a team of four a few years ago, just 400 feet from a 14,000-foot mountain summit. While setting the belay for their shared rope at the next higher point on the mountain, the lead climber knocked loose a boulder that was 3 to 4 feet in diameter. My brother heard it coming and quickly found a cleft in the rocky vertical face of the mountain. He pulled in all of his body except the knee of one leg. The boulder hit his knee gashing it open. The incident could have knocked all four climbers off of the mountain (all were connected by rope) had my brother not gotten far enough into a cleft.

Badly injured, the only way for my brother to go was up to the top. Climbing down this vertical side of the mountain was not an option. His team came to him in the cleft and nurtured him. When he had become stable enough, the others literally pulled him with them to the summit of the mountain. Once at the summit he had to be taken 4,000 feet down the hiking trail from the summit to a base camp where he would be protected from the life threatening exposure that he would have experienced had he stayed on the summit.

The next morning as my brother sat on the ground at their base camp treating his wound, a lady hiker came briskly trotting by and stopped to see what was wrong. She was a long distance runner and her husband was head of the rescue unit in the village at the foot of the mountain. She quickly jogged down the mountain to get help. Twenty-three hours after the accident, a rescue helicopter arrived at the 10,000 ft. elevation base camp to fly my brother to a hospital.

In a life threatening situation like my brother and his climbing mates experienced, there is no room for wondering if our Lord will be with us. We connect with Him automatically. These men were literally hanging off of the edge of the Earth and had to protect and deliver their climbing mate to safety.                                                                                                      

In Exodus 33:18-23 we are told: "And he said, 'I         proclaim before you the name, The LORD...But,' he said, 'you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.' And the LORD continued, 'See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.'"

My brother may not have seen God’s face, but he certainly felt the hand of God holding him in that cleft of a rock. This was a gift of Grace that truly saved all four men and gave them the skill and courage to move to a safe place. The early morning mountain jogging lady was a face my brother was happy to see, and he knew who sent her. He was far from any kind of population in this rarely traveled area. And the lady’s husband just happened to have a helicopter.

Psalm 34:1-8 informs us in saying: “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.”

We cannot see God face to face, but be assured that He will make all goodness pass before us. His goodness is His glory. He has given us a rock to stand on that is Christ Jesus and a cleft where we may find protection. He has shown himself to us through our life teams and others who find us in trouble. We will be able to see Him one day in His kingdom, but until then let us rejoice in the goodness that He brings to us through Jesus and one another. Let us share the good news of goodness!