Monthly Archives: February 2020

Seek Silence, February 24, 2020

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

We live in a noisy world. And we’ve become so accustomed to the noise that we have a hard time with silence. We often say we want to get away from the noise and the clamor that surrounds us, but many of us get home, and the first thing we do is turn on some sound machine. Whether it’s a radio or the television or some other device, we have a problem with silence.

I think that’s one of the reasons we have a hard time finding God today. You don’t discover God in the noise and business of the day. You meet him in quiet places. We picture him in his throne room surrounded by singing angels, but I think when he comes to us, he wants our full attention away from the distractions that the business and clamor of the world cause.

We aren’t the first generation to experience the problem of noise getting in the way of finding God. It happens to every generation. Remember, Elijah looked for God in the thunder and lightning and the earthquake. He expected to find God in the noise, the clamor, and excitement. But Elijah discovered God in the whisper of the gentle breeze that passed by the mountain.

God wants to meet with us but wants our undivided attention. As I sit in my study preparing this podcast, I’m aware of the dryer tumbling clothes in the room next to me. The HVAC system activated, and I hear air moving through the vents. Next door, contractors are putting the finishing touches on the fence my neighbor put up for his new puppies. A truck just passed by that needs a muffler repair. I hear a mower a few yards down the street. An airplane just flew overhead on its last turn before getting into the landing pattern in San Antonio. And even the clicking of the keys on my keyboard as I take notes can distract me from listening to what God has to tell me.

With all the noise, can we find silence? And do we want to? That’s an important question because when we find stillness and let God start to talk to us, two things begin to happen. One we desire, fellowship with the Father, letting him pour into us his love as only he can. The second, we don’t particularly like as he points to things in our life we need to change or actions we need to take on his behalf.

But do we really need that quiet time to hear God, you might ask? Jesus did. Look at the many times the gospels record that he went alone to pray. Moses did. He waited six days on the mountain before God called him into the cloud to give him the laws for the new Israelite nation. David did. Read his psalms and see how many times he admonishes us to wait on the Lord. Those 120 who met together in the upper room did as they prayed together for ten days waiting for something they did not understand to happen.

All of them emptied themselves and found that quiet place to commune with God. They found a place away from the business of life, apart from the noise that distracts us, away from everything except their attention focused on God. Then they listened. It’s when we get into the silence of our heart that we can begin to hear his voice.

Jesus told us to go into our closet to pray, and what we say to the Father in private, he will answer and bless us publicly. The implication is we need to get away from the noise. We need to follow his example and get alone in a place away from all those distractions so we can listen, not just talk. Prayer is more about listening to God than talking to God. He is so much smarter than we are, after all. If we will stop and get away from the noise, and listen to what God tells us, we might find out he has a pretty good path laid out for us. We might make fewer blunders along the way if we stop to listen in those quiet times. We might find listening to God a better use of our time than talking to God as we become his pupil for life.

How do we find quiet places? It’s not easy anymore. As you heard a few minutes ago, as I try to find calm in my study, noise still surrounds me. The decibel levels are low, but there nonetheless. If I’m not careful, I can let them take me away from what I should be doing. It becomes more difficult every day to find times and places to find silence in our world.

So what do we do? Ask God for help. Find as quiet a place as possible and ask him to help you train yourself to shut out the rest. Ask him to assist you in focusing your mind on him and him only. Ask him to help you recognize when your thoughts slip off onto something apart from him and immediately bring your focus back to him.

Is it easy to find that inner focus on God and him alone? No, it’s not easy. It takes discipline, a dirty word in today’s society, but one that God expects of those that follow him.

Extol the LORD our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he!

Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried to the LORD, and he answered them.

He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; they kept his decrees and the statutes that he gave them.

O LORD our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.

Extol the LORD our God and worship at his holy mountain; for the LORD, our God is holy. (Psalms 99:5-9 NIV)

God is worthy of our worship and our time. He is worthy of our attention. The invisible God will come to us when we invite Him into the temple of our hearts. But God comes only when he is the center of attention. We must discipline ourselves to push away all the distractions around us. The best way I’ve found is to find that place of solitude and seek silence as best you can. Then focus on the Holy One and let Him speak.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Scriptures marked NIV are taken from the NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV): Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™. Used by permission of Zondervan

It’s a Good Way to Live, February 17, 2020

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Today’s Podcast

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

Do not cross the double line. Do not pass. Do not enter. Do not steal. Do not kill. Do not lie. Do not commit adultery. Do not covet. Do not. Do not. Do not.

Have you ever noticed how negative life can sometimes get if we are not careful? We can get trapped in the “do not” whirlpool and feel like everything around us is taboo. Anything we do will bring lightning bolts down on our heads. Growing up, I felt that way. I grew up in an era when the church laid down lots of rules and regulations and said if you don’t do any of these things, you’ll be alright with God.

It’s funny how easy it is to get trapped in that mentality. The church still has that problem in many ways. The Pharisees still live in too many of our congregations. They quickly point to the things we shouldn’t do and tell us how evil we must be because of our behavior.

Jesus never seemed to work that way. It seems to me that he operated from a different point of view. It’s not that he didn’t understand the laws the Pharisees preached. His Sermon on the Mount proved that and went far beyond what they held as the universal standard. You can hear his explanation of the law in his words recorded by Matthew:

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.

So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one. (Matthew 5:21-37 NIV)

These demands certainly go much further than the Pharisees required, but Jesus puts a spin on what he asks of us that the temple could never do. Remember the two commands he says sums everything up? He puts those in pretty positive terms. Love God and love others.

How much more positive can his commands get? He gives us two and says he will send his Spirit to empower us to keep these two commands. He gives us simple rules to follow, then tells us he will provide us with the means to do it — what an extraordinary deal.

We could never keep the old rules. Jesus comes and explains the old rules start with thoughts we harbor and mull over until they become more than just ideas. They grow into acts of disobedience. Murder begins with anger. Rape and adultery start with lust. Theft grows from the seed of covetousness. Acts of disobedience don’t just happen; they germinate from ideas planted in our minds because of the evil desires within us. We take the God-given emotions and feelings we have and allow Satan to twist them and try to satisfy them in unhealthy disobedient ways to gain temporary pleasure.

Those who listen to Jesus’ words and follow him have found the promise God gave to the Israelites pretty applicable in their everyday life as well. Moses shared it with them in Deuteronomy 30, and it goes like this:

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. (Deuteronomy 30:15-20 NIV)

I think I’ll choose life by following his decrees as simple as they are: love God and love others. It’s a good way to live.

Scriptures marked NIV are taken from the NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV): Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™. Used by permission of Zondervan

Spice Up Your Life, February 10, 2020

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Today’s Podcast

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

Not often enough, I take it upon myself to clean out our refrigerator or pantry. When I take on the fridge, I’m sometimes surprised at the small containers that hold some mysterious gelatinous substance that no longer resembles the original product the box once held. I sometimes try to label those things I put in there (usually called leftovers), so I know what and when they first found their way onto the shelves, but I seldom keep up and so continue to find those mystery boxes.

The pantry task is even more fun. I hate to admit it, but even after trying to do a thorough job every once in a while, but obviously not often enough, I’m surprised to find products that expired, not months but years earlier. I’m not sure how that happens. I’m beginning to think elves come in at night and change the labels just to give my daughter and grandkids, who usually prompt me and help me take not on the task, a good laugh. We fill bags of expired stuff, drag it to the trash, and in a few months, seem to repeat the same process again and again and again.

A month or so ago, I decided to do the same thing with our spices. They sit in a separate space in our kitchen because we want them handy for cooking. Makes sense, right? The problem is they don’t get into the same not often enough clean this stuff out routine. I was a little more than embarrassed when I went through our spices. We used to joke that we have a kitchen because it came with the house, but we do a lot more cooking at home now that both of us are mostly retired. The expiration date on spices becomes a little more important. I don’t think that makes any of them dangerous, but it certainly makes them less potent in recipes.

So I started the process. I began to go through our two shelves of spices and divided the expired from the nearly expired, and the not expired. You know where this is going.

The three piles were not even by any measure. I think I counted the not expired collection on one hand and those probably because they had no expiration date on them. The nearly expired pile was smaller. If I remember correctly, two would expire within a couple of months. Then I looked at the heap of spices with expiration dates long past. Remember, this sorting happened at the end of 2019. I found spices that expired in the 1990s. Did you get that? Expired more than 20 years ago! How could that happen? And what good were they if they were that old?

I’m replacing spices as I need them. Most of those expired ones, we seldom use, which is probably why they found their way to the back of the shelf and ignored for so long. But the exercise caused me to think about a couple of verses in the lectionary from this week.

Matthew records what we call Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Early in that sermon, he says this: “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.”(Matthew 5:13 NIV)

Today salt remains salty a long time because of the way we process it. Sodium chloride the chemical name, and the two ingredients in pure salt can be extracted and purified to a high degree so that our salt stays pure for decades. That wasn’t true in Jesus’ day. They used sea salt and sea salt loses its saltiness. Why? Because it isn’t pure. It has other minerals in it that, over time, break down the chemical composition of the sodium chloride that is also in the mixture.

Does that mean sea salt is bad? No, some of the minerals are good for you. It’s just that those same minerals reduces the longevity of the salt’s properties. The people of Jesus’ day understood that very well. It’s the only salt they could buy. It’s the only salt they used. They replaced it often because it lost its potency and then could no longer be used as a spice or preservative, one of its most important uses to keep meat and fish from decaying.

Because we buy our salt from the grocery store and seldom kill, butcher, and salt meat and fish to preserve it, few of us understand the importance of these properties. We know salt as a spice to make things taste better, and we might use it to remove ice from our sidewalks, but we seldom try to save meat throughout the year by salting or smoking it. We just freeze it or more often go to the store and buy it fresh without knowing or caring how it appeared on the shelf. We just wonder why the price keeps going up.

Take a look at Jesus’ words again. “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?”

As his followers, we live here, we hope for heaven, but we’re not there yet. We are the salt, not of heaven, but of the earth. Live now, be salt now. Be the spice that makes the world better now. That’s part of the problem the world sees with Christians today. What are we doing to make the world a better place? If we are truly the substance in this place to make the world better the way salt makes food taste better, the world should recognize it.

I’m not a FaceBook person, partly because too often when I peak at entries from many who call themselves Christians, I have seen words that certainly don’t make the world better. I don’t see comments that lift people. I see judgment, criticism, hate, the things Jesus talked about with the Pharisees. I quickly retreat from the page before I get caught up in the vitriol that spews from the keyboards that I’m sure would never come from their lips if they were standing face to face with you. We hide behind the screen and seem to think we can say and do anything. Not so. I think we will be judged for every word we write.

The sea salt that lost its saltiness became good for nothing. People threw it out. The only positive property at that point, let it kill the grass and weeds that grew up in the road. People threw their useless salt on the path to kill the undergrowth and keep it clean; well, not so clean, but vegetation-free.

So what message does Jesus give us in these words? We’re salt. We’re supposed to add spice to the world and make it better. We’re sprinkled in the world like salt is sprinkled on food. But one last thing. Remember Jesus talked about salt losing its saltiness. It happened. Everyone knew it. Salt expired which means when you bought it, you started using it right away. You didn’t hold on to it and put it away in the back of the cabinet like my 1990s spices. You kept it up front and used it often, then went and got some more.

It’s like the daily bread for which he taught to us ask. Get enough for today and use it up. Then get more and use it up. Then get more and use it up. Rinse and repeat as the bottle says. We are the salt of the world so he expects us to be used up, restored, and used up again like those little bottles of spices. That was the problem with many of my expired spices, I bought the big bottles, cheaper per ounce to save money, then threw most of them away, wasting more money because I didn’t use them up. The small bottles would have been cheaper in the long run because I threw away spices I didn’t use.

I’m learning. Fresh is better in cooking. Fresh is better in spiritual warfare. Fresh experience is better in sharing what God is doing in your life. Fresh is better to act as salt in the world. Let Jesus spice up your life so you can make the world a better place as his salt in a world that truly needs it more than ever.

Some Things Don’t Make Sense, February 3, 2020

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Today’s Podcast

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

Some things just don’t make sense. Why do most animals in a herd point the same direction in a field? Why do penguins live only in the coldest climate on earth? Why do most whales, the largest animals in the ocean, eat only the plankton, the smallest of sea life? Why is an octopus considered one of the smartest of sea creatures, incredibly ugly, and seldom seen in the wild? Why do some areas of the world get torrential rains while others get only a few inches of rain over decades?

We sometimes call them imponderables, things that have no concrete answers. Science is uncovering some logical responses, but still, we are baffled by the mysteries of the world and the whys that surround us every day. We have learned more in the last 100 years than in the rest of man’s history, but we still have many unanswered questions about the world in which we live.

We think we’re pretty smart today since we know a lot about quantum physics and how things stay together. We’ve learned about the universe and the fact we are not the center or even near the center of one of several billion galaxies. Our Milky Way seemed so large until we began to compare it to more enormous galaxies around us. We thought we understood the weather until we found we really don’t, and our weather folks still get it right about two-thirds of the time. Yep, we think we are wise today with the trillions of words housed in the Library of Congress on floating around on the Internet.

Paul got it right, though, when he wrote his first letter to the members of the church at Colossae in the first century.

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Everyone around him thought they were wise, but compared with God’s wisdom, we are pretty foolish. We don’t know much of anything. Scientists will tell you the more we know, the more we figure out we don’t know. But God is the creator of all things. He knows it all. He’s the one who made all the rules we are just on the edge of trying to figure out. In the 1970s, we sent two experimental crafts called Voyager, to explore the outer edge of our solar system. Forty years later, they found out all our assumptions about the border of our solar system were wrong. Now those two satellites are still headed where no one has gone before but have barely scratched the surface of real space travel.

Our brilliance turns into ignorance when we see all that is out there beyond the confines of our puny planet. Our greatest wisdom appears as foolishness compared to God’s understanding. And what does Paul use as his comparison? The cross.

How can we explain why God would do such a thing? We can’t, except that he loves us more than we can ever understand. We disobey him, but he loves us. We run from him, but he loves us. We curse him and do everything he asks us not to do, yet he loves us enough to wrap himself in human flesh and live among us to show us just how much he loves us.

He died the most horrible death imaginable, crucifixion at the hands of Roman soldiers, after an unjust kangaroo trial. He never did anything to justify the suffering he endured, but he took it, all the same, to show us how much he loves us. Jesus taught radical lessons that said follow a pattern set by a heart filled with love instead of the rules given to the prophets and priests. He said to do two things, and you’ll be in good stead with the creator. Love God and love others.

He never said it would be easy to follow those two rules, but that’s a straightforward list to remember. It’s sure a lot easier than remembering the laundry list of dos and don’ts most organized religions give us to follow. Just love.

Paul tells us what that looks like, and again, it doesn’t make sense to us. It looks like the cross. Be ready to be hated by the world. Be ready to be misunderstood. Be ready to suffer when you share the good news of what God has done to redeem us from the deceiver who wants to capture our soul. It sounds crazy to those who have not given themselves to him. But for those who have, for those who know his forgiveness, the cross is the answer. The empty tomb is proof.

Are you ready to let go of the wisdom of the world and accept the wisdom of the one who created all things? It takes faith. It costs everything. God never accepts second place in your life. He wants everything you have and everything you are at his immediate disposal. But God never makes mistakes. He knows how best to bring you safely home. All you need to do is believe and follow him. It’s a good day to start.