Same Voice - Different Number

I called my friend Earl last week. For the past few years when I’ve called him I’ve used my business cell phone; this time I used my personal cell phone. When I call Earl or when Earl calls me we don’t say, “Hi this is Bob” or “Hi this is Earl” because we know each other’s voice.

Let me admit that I don’t know everyone’s voice who calls me who thinks I know their voice. Sometimes I’ve got to play along until I figure it out, sometimes I have to ask. When I call people I usually tell them who it is even if I think they’ll know - might as well make things as easy as possible on us both.

Jesus says in John Chapter Ten that His sheep know His voice - there have been many times I’ve had to trust Him on that - for while I have no doubt that He knows my voice I am pretty sure that there are times I’ve missed His. So I say, “Jesus, please help me to know Your voice,” because by now I know that without His help it ain’t going to happen with me. With Jesus and me it’s kind of like my dog Lily and me. I’ll call her and call her and walk around the house looking for her and finally I’ll see her beneath some bushes that I’ve walked by two or three times - she heard me but she didn’t hear me, or she heard me but ignored me. I’m afraid I’m like that with Jesus...the good news is that He keeps calling me.

One day a few years ago our home phone rang and I answered it to hear a child’s voice saying, “Pastor Bob, our Girl Scout group is selling cookies, do you want some?” Naturally I said “Yes” and made a commitment for some boxes. When I got off the phone I said to Vickie, “If anyone asks us to buy cookies at church let’s go ahead and buy them; I’m not sure who I just committed to because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by asking who was calling.” Sometimes you just don’t recognize the voice.

As I was saying, I called my friend Earl.

“Hi” I said.

“Hi” he replied.

“How’re you doing?”

“Who is this?” he asked.

“You don’t know who this is?”

“No...who is this?”

“It’s Bob.”

“Oh, I didn’t recognize the number.”

Earl knows my voice but when he saw a number he didn’t recognize he didn’t know my voice because what he was thinking overshadowed what he was hearing.  

Sometimes our eyes deceive us.

I wonder how many times Jesus has called me and I’ve not heard Him because He’s called on a number I didn’t recognize? How many times has He appeared to me in ways that I wasn’t anticipating and I didn’t see Him or hear Him?

How many times have I not “seen” others when they’ve been right in front of me because they looked differently or spoke differently or acted differently from what is within my comfort zone?

When we assume God is going to communicate to us in certain ways, when we in effect say, “God, here is a phone to use when you call me, please only use this phone and its number when you call,” we just might miss Him.

I Will Give Thanks To You For…

“I will give thanks to you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well.” Psalm 139:14

Psalm 139 is The Intimate Psalm in that it explores and celebrates how intimately God knows us, which is grounded in His intimate creation of us and His intimate purpose for us. The psalm reflects on this intimacy from the womb, “you  wove me in my mother’s womb”, to the vicissitudes of life, “If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold you are there”. It culminates in a desire to know God intimately, realizing that just as God created us that only God can purify us and draw us to Himself, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.” Perhaps Paul expresses this desire to be intimate with God as God is intimate with us when he writes, “Then I shall know even as I am known.”

A foundation for a life of thanksgiving is the simple recognition that, “I exist, there are profound mysteries within me, ranging from the physiological to the emotional to the intellectual, to the desire of the will, of hope, of joy, of love, and of those things that have the potential to destroy myself and others. I did not create myself, and the complexity of ‘I’ is not accidental, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

In Romans Chapter One Paul argues “that which is known about God” is evident within us and, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made…” Later in Romans Paul will discuss the role of conscience in life, that baseline innate sense humanity has of right and wrong, good and evil.

While many of the Psalms and other Bible passages direct our attention to the wonders of Creation outside us, Psalm 139 invites us to view the wonders of Creation within us. Who understands our capacity for love and hate? Where does our sense of beauty come from? How can we do such sublime good one moment and engage in evil (if not in action then in thought) the next? How can we put others first at 11:00 AM and live narcissistically at 11:11 AM?

Something is amiss, we are not as we should be - but the One who created us is also the One who loves us and desires to redeem us and heal us and bring us into an intimate relationship with Himself through Jesus Christ.

Many of us move so fast through each day that we forget who we are and in doing so we forget God; we forget God and as a result forget who we are. Outside of the Kingdom of God and the Bible we are spoken to as though we are simply biological machines to be repaired when broken; we are “dysfunctional”, we have “breakdowns”, we are “resources”. Sadly we have come to think of ourselves in mechanical and functional terms.

Psalm 139 invites us to stop and to be quiet, to turn the electronics off, to turn the noise of life off, to silence the smartphone and put it in another room.

Let Psalm 139 help us to listen, and as we listen let us allow this psalm to help us to respond.

“O LORD, You have searched me and known me, You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways.”

I exist, you exist, and there are profound mysteries within us, mysteries designed by our Creator, some of these are fractured mysteries which He desires to redeem and in so doing restore us to health and wholeness. Let us stop and ponder, be quiet and listen, and respond in conversation with God - let us remember who God is and who we are. Let us be thankful.

“I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…”

Thanksgiving - a Way of Life

I want to write about thanksgiving, but it is hard to get started, where to begin? I want to write that thanksgiving should be woven into the fabric of our lives, that the Christian should be known by his or her life of thankfulness - thankfulness to God and thankfulness for others.

Paul writes that when humanity turns from God and is unthankful that it descends in a downward spiral (Romans 1:21), this is true for humanity, this is true for the individual human. How often have I slipped into that black hole?

Paul not only writes that we should be thankful to God for His goodness, but he also writes that he is thankful to God for others (Romans 1:8; 1 Corinthians 1:4) - how often do I tell others that I am thankful for them?

What would our churches be like if people expressed thankfulness for one another to one another as a way of life? What would our workplaces be like? What would our schools be like? Our neighborhoods? Our families? Our marriages?

Consider that you may be the only person who expresses thankfulness to a retail employee or to a service representative who helps you via the phone or internet. You may be the only person who thanks a coworker or someone serving in your church. If you supervise people at work, do you thank them on a regular basis for what they do - do they know you are thankful for them?

How many marriages have we seen in which spouses fail to express thanksgiving for one another; how many marriages engage in constant criticism and then wonder why things are bad in the relationship?

Thanksgiving is a fundamental expression of a healthy life, for it recognizes that we have nothing that has not been given to us - no matter what our egos may tell us. We have achieved nothing that has not been provided to us, at the very least in seminal form. The breaths we take have been given to us, the beat of our hearts, the light by which we see.

Can it really be that we can live a day without giving thanks to our Creator? Can it be that we can live with a spouse and not give “thanks” for him or for her? How can it happen that we can work with others who contribute to our lives and not tell them that we are thankful for them?

Even in our most excruciating times and circumstances we can give thanks to the God who created us and loves us...for He has made us for eternity and He, Himself, has suffered for us in depths and dimensions that we cannot penetrate. Whatever the abyss of our sorrow, whatever the pain of our shattered soul, He has been there before us and beyond us and desires to walk with us through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Thanksgiving should be our way of life in Christ, we ought to be “always giving thanks for all things  in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father,” (Ephesians 5:20).

Am I living a life of thanksgiving? What am I taking for granted? Whom am I taking for granted? God? Others?

“Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His lovingkindness is everlasting.” Psalm 136:1.