Teach me to fear?

Several months ago, Amanda and I decided to rescue a second dog as a way to socialize our neurotic first dog Chara. So we brought home this absolutely adorable Pit Bull who we named Tobias. Now, from the start Tobias was hard not to love. From what we were told, he hadn't exactly had the best life. They found him tied up on a concrete slab down in the inner city of Baltimore. He was deathly thin from lack of food and his ears had no fur from where the bugs had eaten it all off. We loved him from the start. The problem was he didn't respect us. At first we though he might have hearing problems, but we quickly realized that he just wasn't listening. We decided that obedience training might be the answer, so we enrolled him in a weekly class where Amanda could learn how to work with him.

At the first session, Amanda learned that the reason that Tobias would not listen was because he wasn't afraid of her. In fact, over the months that we had him, we had basically given him everything we thought he could want. We denied him nothing. As a result we had trained him to think of us as his servants. Now, if we wanted him to learn to listen, we first had to break his spirit. We had to teach him to fear. This was not an easy process, particularly since Amanda is so affectionate towards our dogs. The idea that we had to break his spirit was hard for us both. But Amanda was told that this was what was best for him. So she began the hard process of breaking his spirit and teaching him to fear her. I could tell that it was hard for Amanda to do some of the things needed to break him. In fact if someone were to watch her use the techniques she learned, they might think it were downright abusive. But slowly but surely, Tobias began to respond and he has begun to listen.

In many ways, this method of breaking our dog, reminds me of how God has disciplined His people throughout history. Many times, people would become spoiled by God's provision and become lax in their view of Him. They seemed to think that God would always protect them simply because they were His people. God had interesting methods of stirring fear in His peoples' hearts. When the people of Babel refused to spread out and populate the earth as He had commanded, God confused their languages so they couldn't communicate with each other anymore. Later on, after God had delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt, the people, forgetting how he had already provided for their every need, complained in the wilderness that they didn't have any food or water. So God sent poisonous snakes to kill many of the people. When the people were too afraid to go into the land of Canaan, God promised that because of their unbelief, every single one of that generation would die in the wilderness. When they finally did enter into the land, a man named Achan took some treasure from the city of Jericho (after God had expressly forbidden it). So God had Achan and his whole family killed. When Nadab and Abihu burned "strange fire" to the LORD in the tabernacle, fire came out from the alter and consumed them. Later, when David committed adultury with Bathsheba, David begged for his life and God granted it...but the child of the adulturous relationship died. Ecclesiastes 3:14 states that "God has so worked that men should fear Him." (NASB) Yet how many people truly do?

As I look at our culture today (especially in the church), I notice a lax attitude toward one's relationship with God. We as Christians, in this country, have not been truly aquainted with persecution or oppression for what we believe in. Many of us would probably equate this with God's provision. But what has that led to? How many people truly fear the consequenses of their sin? Church has become a religious practice that we seem to do with little reverence. I was teaching High School Sunday School and we were discussing what God thinks of sex. One of the students suggested that God doesn't care about premarital sex because it is simply a non-issue in today's culture. I must admit, I wasn't surprised by such a response since that's pretty much seems to be the opinion of the church at large. But, God has called us to holiness as a way of reflecting his holiness. Yet, many people have a distorted view of what holiness means. The phrase I hear over and over again these days is" God just wants us to love everyone." Wow. I'd agree with that if it didn't stop there. Love is not enough if our personal lives do not reflect the holiness of God. As one of my professor's is apt at saying, "emphasis not exclusion" (i.e. We should not "emphasize" God's love to the "exclusion" of God's wrath.)

I responded to this student by stating that I was surprised that something that God didn't care about would have the potential for such horrible physical consequences. It's interesting that sexually transmitted diseases exist in the first place. When you think about a monogamous marital relationship...there is absolutely no physical consequenses, because you can only contract an STD from another person. Two people who have only ever been with eachother can't give one another an STD. So where did these STDs come from? Were they an accident? Or were they created? And if they were created, what was their initial purpose? I'm beginning to believe that they were created as a way to garner fear in the immoral.

People don't fear God anymore. Turn on the TV. Open the newspaper. It's not hard to see. So if no one fears God anymore, how will God teach us to fear Him? Looking at history, we can easily see that God's method of teaching his people to fear him was pain. I can see this in my own life and I can see it in the lives of those around me. God causes us pain as a way of getting us to look to him for help. God's blessings are useless if they only move us away from Him and cause us to see Him as only a provider and not a sovereign God with the power to destory us.

Phillipians 2:12 is a very controversial passage in the Bible that says, "work out your salvation with fear and trembling." For many people they see this as pointing to a "works-based" salvation where you must continue to work at it and earn your way into heaven. I really don't see it as very difficult at all. If, as Ecclesiastes 3:14 says, God wants people to fear Him, what good is our salvation if we lose our fear of God. We all need a healthy dose of fear for God in our lives. As with Tobias (our dog) we still love him although we taught him to fear us. And he still knows that we will provide for him. He is still happy to see us when we come through the door (so I know he still loves us). But his obedience to us must be rooted in his fear of us. Likewise, I know that God loves me despite His discipline. I love God, therefore I want to obey Him, but because I still struggle with sin, it is very difficult for me to obey against my sinful nature. So how then will I obey God? My obedience must also be rooted in my fear of Him. How will I learn to fear God? He must teach me.

Do you trust me?

I feel like everyday there is someone making me a promise they don't intend to keep. There's the diner down the street that promises me the best fried chicken on the planet. There's a coffee shop that promises me the "world's best cup of joe." There's the little green lizard on TV promising me that he can save me money on my car insurance. In reality, I think they might just be trying to sell me something. We live in a culture that has encouraged us to be skeptics by the very nature of these false promises. We've been burned so many times by other people that the simple act of trust is considered naive or downright stupid. Two lovers stand at an altar promising "till death do us part" only to get divorced 5 years later when things aren't going so well. A little boy stairs out the window waiting for his mother to pick him up for their weekend visit...but she never shows up. There are so many promises being thrown around that it is difficult to know what to believe anymore. If I make promises to a person, what reasonable assurance can I give them to believe me? It must be even harder for God. What could God possibly say or do that would get us to trust Him?

Now, let's not think for a second that our present skepticism is anything new. As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes..."there's nothing new under the sun." The Bible speaks of God's relationship with his chosen people Israel. Throughout their history, they were constantly skeptical of God's promises. Even after God rescued them from their Egyptian captivity, parted the red sea, and provided food for them from the sky, they quickly turned their back on God to worship a golden calf. When God provided the manna from the sky, they complained that they had no meat. When God promised to give them the land of Canaan, they were too scared to accept it (at first) because the people who lived their were "giants." God gave them every reasonable excuse to believe Him. Yet they continued to doubt.

As God continued to demonstrate His trustworthiness to His people, His people continued to doubt Him. As we read the Bible and these stories, it's easy for us to say, "what a bunch of idiots. If I were there, I would have never doubted God!" But in reality, we probably would have been right their with the Israelites, bowing to a golden calf. Eventually, God got so angry with His people that He had them deported into the land of the Babylonians. Most of them would never see their homeland again. But God never forgot His promies. People called prophets came and they told the people of God's judgment of them for their unbelief. But these prophets also promised that God would one day restore His people. The prophets promised that God would fulfill all of His promises. And every single one of those prophets assured the people that God was trustworthy by pointing to what God had already done. They pointed to the deliverance of God's people from the land of Egypt. They pointed to His parting of the red sea. They pointed to His giving the land of Canaan to His people. Their assurance that God would be faithful was based on the fact that God had always been faithful. They just weren't watching.

So today, as we ponder whether or not God is trustworthy, we look to those same stories. Because they weren't just meant to assure those people...they were meant to assure us as well. The Bible is made up of books written by men over the span of about 1,500 years. It all says the same thing...God is faithful. From Genesis to Revelation God has promised that He would redeem His people. From Genesis through Malachi, God promised that He would send a savior...The Messiah. The New Testament tells us that this Messiah was Jesus Christ, who was crucified on a cross and as a result of His sacrifice, the penalty for our sins has been paid for. The redemption of His people was a redemption from sin. Various books of the New Testament tell us that Jesus is coming back again to finally destroy evil and usher in an eternity with Him. But we are over 2,000 years in waiting. What reasonable assurance can we have that He will come back. Well, we need only look at what He's already done. You see, I've been to that diner...their fried chicken really isn't that good. That coffee shop's coffee taste's like burnt motor oil. And I got a better deal on my car insurance from another agency. But God has never let His people down. He promised that He would redeem us. And He did...at the cross. So why do I trust that God will keep His promises? Because He always has.

It's Just a Dollar!

I've had this dollar on my desk for over 6 months. I haven't been sure what I should do with it. You see, this past summer, the senior pastor at a church I was interning at gave over a thousand dollars of his own money in single dollar bills to those in attendance at church that Sunday. His charge was that we should use that dollar to make an impact on someone's life. So six months later, here my dollar sits. A hundred thoughts go through my head like wildfire all returning to a single conclusion: "It's just a dollar!" What can a dollar do in our fast paced, consumer driven society. I could buy a homeless person a double cheeseburger off the dollar menu at McDonalds, but would that really make an impact on his or her life? Most of my ideas would involve actually multiplying the money by adding more. But that really wouldn't be the point of the pastor's charge would it?

As I look at the dollar, I'm reminded of Jesus' miracle where He fed 5,000 people. In this miracle (recorded in Matthew 6; Mark 14; Luke 9; and John 6) Jesus was speaking to this large multitude of people for an extended period of time. When it came time for them to eat, the Disciples encouraged Jesus to send the people away so they could get food in the neighboring villages. Jesus astounded them when He said for them to feed the people. Where on earth were the disciples to get that much food. They'd seen Jesus do miraculous things, but now He expected them to do the impossible. Their faith was dwindling. But, in the midst of this debacle, a little boy offers a meager lunch of 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish. I can only imagine the disciples as they (most likely) laughed at the little boy. "What good will that little lunch do for 5,000 people?" But Jesus accepted the boy's meager offering, and from it, did something ridiculous. He gave thanks to God and began to divide the food. He instructed the disciples to distribute the food to the people. I can only imagine their surprise when after distributing what Jesus had already given them, He gave them more to distribute. When all was said and done, not a single person left hungry. As if that wasn't enough, there was an abundance left over. They were probably wondering, what are we going to do with all this extra food? I'm sure that Jesus had a plan.

So what impact can a dollar make? Certainly none on it's own. However, in the hands of Jesus, the possibilities are endless. The real question becomes, "What can't a dollar do if we humbly bring it before Jesus?"

I finally decided to put that dollar in the hands of Jesus. As I thought about how I might impact a person's life, I was led to think of the people who have impacted mine. The funny thing about it is this: the things people did for me that made the biggest impact, never cost a thing. They were done with love with no expectation of anything in return. Whether it was sitting and listening to me pour out my heart about my problems or being there at a high school football game in which we were getting pounded 35-0. The things you remember most, seldom cost a thing, but the experiences can last a lifetime.

So here's what I did with my dollar; I bought a stamp and wrote a letter to a person who's made a significant impact on my life (my middle school youth pastor) and I said, "Thank you." I'm not sure if that's what the pastor had in mind, but hopefully my meager card will make an impact. But wait, there's 58 cents left over! What will I do with this extra money? I'm sure that Jesus has a plan.