Tag Archives: David

Pray for Wisdom, July 27, 2020

Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|

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

As many of you who have listened to my podcasts for a while know, I often use a scripture from the lectionary for the focus of my thoughts. I’m amazed how often the scriptures seem to point to the very things I need to hear. And as I hear from others of you, it seems the scripture often relates to something going on in your life at the time as well. It is uncanny the way God works, but he is God after all.

Well, this week’s Old Testament focus was no different. It comes to us from 1 Kings 3 as Solomon takes the throne succeeding his father David. You’ll remember David became the model against whom every other king was measured. He wasn’t perfect by any means. We know about his adultery, his attempts to hide it, and ultimately his plot to murder his mistress’ husband to cover his sin. David’s life wasn’t one spent in dark, hooded robes mumbling prayers in the sanctuary. He was king. A battle-hardened warrior. He expanded Israel’s territory and rooted out it’s enemies from its cities. But God called David a man after his own heart.

Now Solomon has gained the crown. God comes to him and we pick up the story from there as Eugene Peterson describes it in The Message:

^4-5The king went to Gibeon, the most prestigious of the local shrines, to worship. He sacrificed a thousand Whole-Burnt-Offerings on that altar. That night, there in Gibeon, God appeared to Solomon in a dream: God said, “What can I give you? Ask.”

⁶Solomon said, “You were extravagantly generous in love with David my father, and he lived faithfully in your presence, his relationships were just and his heart right. And you have persisted in this great and generous love by giving him—and this very day!—a son to sit on his throne.

^7-8“And now here I am: God, my God, you have made me, your servant, ruler of the kingdom in place of David my father. I’m too young for this, a mere child! I don’t know the ropes, hardly know the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of this job. And here I am, set down in the middle of the people you’ve chosen, a great people—far too many to ever count.

⁹“Here’s what I want: Give me a God-listening heart so I can lead your people well, discerning the difference between good and evil. For who on their own is capable of leading your glorious people?”

^10-14God, the Master, was delighted with Solomon’s response. And God said to him, “Because you have asked for this and haven’t grasped after a long life, or riches, or the doom of your enemies, but you have asked for the ability to lead and govern well, I’ll give you what you’ve asked for—I’m giving you a wise and mature heart. There’s never been one like you before; and there’ll be no one after. As a bonus, I’m giving you both the wealth and glory you didn’t ask for—there’s not a king anywhere who will come up to your mark. And if you stay on course, keeping your eye on the life-map and the God-signs as your father David did, I’ll also give you a long life.” (1 Kings 3:4-14 TM)

What maturity Solomon showed as he expressed his wish. Give me wisdom to judge these people. Help me to know the difference between good and evil. If you want me to lead, then give me a listening heart.

Don’t you wish more of our leaders would pray for a listening heart to know the difference between good and evil? It seems we live in a time more like the beginning of the book of Judges when everyone did what was right in their own eyes. This “cancel culture” that sprang up from somewhere that decided if I don’t like what you say or what you do, you become invisible. We make you disappear from the world. What you stand for doesn’t count. What you believe doesn’t matter. You are hereby cancelled.

How does that fit into what God wants for us? Do we think we can add him to part of the “cancel culture?” I know there are those trying – pulling down statues of Jesus, desecrating churches, synagogues, temples, and other houses of worship. We see an “I believe in me” culture rising. But God cannot be cancelled. Nations tried before to their destruction. We can try to rewrite the past. We can try to remake a belief system. We can declare we will rise on our own strength. Many tried. Many failed.

A relatively small group decided they want a different government here. I’ve heard too many times, “We’ll burn it down if we don’t get what we want.” How does that help anyone? If everything has been burnt to down, who will rebuild? Who will expend the energy to watch it come tumbling down again? Who wants to risk the threat of careless vandals destroying a life’s work again? And who will have the funds to do so? When the government changes, so does the money. The meaningless coins and paper that we pass to one another in exchange for something. We think money has value, but it doesn’t.

If you think money has value, ask the Argentinians who went through month after month of triple digit inflation when prices became so high the last three zeros on every price tag were removed. But salaries didn’t change. Income didn’t rise with the same inflation. Ask the Venezuelans who experienced triple digit inflation not so long ago. Money didn’t mean anything anymore. Did the government help? No. Did the change in leadership make things better? No.

It seems to me we have an awful lot of people trying to get into this country for it to be such a terrible place to live, work, and raise a family. I see millions trying to come in every year, but I don’t see millions trying to leave to go to some other country. Why is that? Maybe it’s because in the past we thought about more than ourselves. Maybe in the past our elected officials remembered their office wasn’t about making money or becoming popular or even getting reelected. Their office was to pray Solomon’s prayer and ask for discernment so they might have a listening heart.

As I watch most votes in the House and Senate, it seems no one has a listening heart anymore. Most votes split across party lines. Why? Because no one listens. Is every Democrat good? No. Is every Republican bad? No. We will find good and evil among every party, every race, every economic stratum. We will find racism in the same places. No section is exempt. I will say, or write, or do something that I’m sure someone will think is racist. So will you. Why? Because we are. We think in the culture in which we live and work and play. And whenever we come in contact with another culture, it doesn’t matter what color their skin or what language they speak, we will do something someone in that culture could take as offensive.

But when do we act like Solomon and stop and listen with a discerning heart? When do ask the question, “What do I have to think about the person I know to believe he or she said or did whatever it was to intentionally hurt me?”

When we ask that question before we blurt out a response, most of the time, we know the answer will be they didn’t intend harm. I took something wrong. I didn’t understand. There is miscommunication between us. How can we learn from each other so we can avoid bitter feelings? Then talk to each other and listen to each other – but not on Facebook. Pick up the phone. Go to lunch. Really communicate. Don’t scream that you know what the other person thinks. You don’t.

Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived knew he needed a listening heart to discern the good from the bad. How much more do we need to pray for such a thing in this day? How much different would the streets of our city be tomorrow if all of us sincerely asked for a discerning, listening heart, then sat down with those not like us and heard their story. Maybe we would learn something. Maybe we would care. Maybe we would find some directions to take that would ease the growing tension in a country where millions come to find freedom from oppressive governments.

Is our nation perfect? Not by any means. Is it terrible? Talk to those who escape from those nations led by dictators and politburos. Can we make improvements? Not until we stop and listen to each other and decide we want to do what is right, not what is politically advantageous. As we begin to approach elections in the fall, I encourage you to get information about the candidates. Don’t listen to the news or social media or the campaign adds. Find out about their character. How did they vote on critical issues and why? What do they say they believe and do their actions support it?

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 TM are taken from the THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH (TM): Scripture taken from THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH, copyright©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group

For God so loved – he waits

Leave a reply

Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|

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

My pastor is going through a series of sermons entitled “For God So Loved” through the Lenten Season. There is a devotional book that goes along with it that has devotionals written by several different authors. And for the next few weeks, I will be using the same scriptures and themes that come from that devotional to align with the sermon series my church is going through. So today I’ll be looking at a passage from Psalms 17 in which David writes these words:

Keep me as the apple of your eye;
   hide me in the shadow of your wings
9 from the wicked who are out to destroy me,
   from my mortal enemies who surround me.
10 They close up their callous hearts,
   and their mouths speak with arrogance.
11 They have tracked me down, they now surround me,
   with eyes alert, to throw me to the ground.
12 They are like a lion hungry for prey,
   like a fierce lion crouching in cover.
13 Rise up, Lord, confront them, bring them down;
   with your sword rescue me from the wicked.
14 By your hand save me from such people, Lord,
   from those of this world whose reward is in this life.

We feel like David sometimes, don’t we? Try as hard as we may to live like we are supposed to, the bad guys seem to win and we want them to get what’s coming to them. We know there is a judgment day they will face. We know Jesus will sort the sheep and the goats. We know we will ultimately be avenged for what wicked men have done to us in this life. But we would like to see a little of that justice now, wouldn’t we?

I’d like us to go back and look at the setting in which David wrote this psalm for a minute. Samuel, the great and last judge of the nation of Israel, warned them about the trouble a king would bring on them. But the people insisted on having a king like the nations around them. God chose Saul for that position. Interestingly enough, of all the troubles a king would bring, like taxes, standing armies, forced labor, and so forth, all the things Samuel mentioned, Saul was the only king that did not impose any of those things on the people. David did, but not Saul. But Saul disobeyed a command God gave him through Samuel and made a sacrificial offering he was not authorized to make. Only a priest could perform that duty, but Saul took it upon himself to do it when Samuel was delayed. It cost Saul the kingdom and brought about the enmity between Saul and David. Samuel anoint David as the next king, but he had not yet been crowned.

Saul’s jealousy raged. He tried to kill David on many occasions and David fled for his life. As one of Israel’s greatest warriors, defeating the Philistines on the battlefield many times, the nations around Israel wanted the young warrior dead. Now the king of Israel wanted him dead, too. David had enemies surrounding him from every corner. He felt like he had nowhere to turn even though he was doing what he thought God wanted him to do in fighting for his nation and his king.

Remember, that on at least two occasions, David had the opportunity and the means to take Saul’s life, but refused because he would not harm the man God anointed as king. Instead, David ran for his life. It wasn’t fair. God laid out some spectacular things for him to do. God made some incredible promises to him and gave him talents that brought fear to his enemies. (When you can defeat a nine foot giant wearing battle armor with a sling and a stone, that can cause people to be afraid of you.) Yet David displayed a gentle spirit with many who came in contact with him.

Now on the run, David pours out his heart to the God he learned to trust as a shepherd out on the hillside protecting his father’s sheep against the wild animals in the wilderness. Was it fair? No. Did God ever tell us life would be fair? No. Was David’s life on the run an easy one? No. Did God ever tell us life would be easy? No. In fact, Jesus told his disciples to expect trouble. Following after God is bound to put you in opposition to the world. The average person will not like what you do if you follow his teaching. He puts boundaries on your actions. You can’t do anything you want to do. Your rights stop where they collide with responsibilities.

I would love life to be like that a couple of those line we read. “… hide me in the shadow of your wings, from the wicked who are out to destroy me… Rise up, Lord, confront them, bring them down; with your sword rescue me from the wicked. By your hand save me from such people…”

Doesn’t that sound good? But God doesn’t always do that. In fact, like with his son, Jesus, we often face the worst. God sometimes puts us in the very front of the battle lines of this world and we must stand against some of the most wicked and atrocious acts Satan has in his bag of tricks. Does that mean God doesn’t love us? No. Does it mean he has abandoned us? No. Does it mean he doesn’t care about the struggles we face in this world? No. God still loves and cares for us.

But as with David as he ran for his life, we sometimes draw closest to God in the times of our greatest struggles. Sometimes God allows these things to happen because it is in those times when we find we have nowhere to go for relief that we throw ourselves into God’s great arms because we know he is our last and only hope. It’s at times like those that we learn the greatest lessons about how little of life we control and how much we rely on him for every heartbeat and every breath of life.

God loves us so much he lets us endure some of the hardships of this world so we might draw closer to him and find solace in his embrace when life seems to overwhelm us in every direction we turn. Then when the lions roar, when the vipers strike, the hurricane winds and floods push to engulf us, we can rest in the assurance that God’s hand will reach down and cover us. He will not let us suffer more than we can endure. He will rescue us. But he does so will his purpose in mind.

God still wants his message to ring through our lives so others will see the peace in our hearts that come from knowing him. He wants others to know the legacy his son left us. Peace that when the chaos of life crushes in upon us, we can know that with our last breath, we awake in a new heaven and a new earth surrounded by the brilliance of God glory forever. A place where pain and death and evil can never touch us again.

Will I stop praying David’s seventeenth psalm just because I know my future in heaven? No, I would still like relief from the wickedness that plagues this world. I would still like God to intervene to stop the suffering that comes from the evil that lurks in the dark places that seem to encroach more and more on the innocent. I still cry out like David for God to rise up and confront those who find their reward in this world instead of in his kingdom.

But I also read the last chapter of the book. I know how it all ends. I have confidence and hope that someday soon Jesus will come as the avenger for all his children. And I cry for those who do not know him. Their eternity will not be as short or pleasant as they imagine. Eternity is something our human mind cannot grasp. Eternal punishment and banishment from the God of creation is something we cannot fully understand or imagine. I pity the lost whose souls will forever experience that awful place.

During this Lenten Season, take time to understand what Jesus has done for you in making a way to avoid that place of eternal lostness. Take time to think about the avenger who will come again and make right a world that has gone very wrong because of our refusal to accept God as God. Stop and remember that he will one day soon call an end to time and he will do exactly what the psalmist asked. He will rise up, confront, bring down, and destroy those of this world whose reward is in this life.

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.

Music exit

Killing giants takes a little faith, July 9, 2018

Leave a reply

Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|Download

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

Today we will talk about the last in our series of what can help us defeat Goliaths of addiction and habits in our lives that we just can’t seem to conquer. Those things that seem to just linger on and seem impossible to change. You’ll recall we first said you can’t fight Goliath alone. God will go with us if we ask him. We should also try to take with us trusted friends, accountability partners, prayer partners, those that understand the battle we face and can help us through those struggles because they have been there before us.

We talked about overcoming our fears when we face our Goliaths. That doesn’t mean we won’t have any fears as we face them, but we must control our fear and use the energy, drive, emotions, and all the positive things that come from that singular emotion to help us focus on the addiction or habit we want to overcome.

We said we sometimes hold on to those habits and addictions because of our fear of rejection. We think if others know what is going on with us, they won’t like us. They will turn away from us. They will think poorly of us. If they knew, they might push us out of their lives and we would be alone. To be honest, some will, but you probably don’t want those in your repertoire of people trying to help you through victory over your problem anyway. You need to be surrounded by people who will be honest with you and not condone the habits or addictions you want to rid yourself, but you need people who will love you and stick with you through the tough times of change, as well.

We discovered that sometimes we hold on to those bad habits and addictions because we are comfortable with them. Change is hard even though we know the change is better for us than the circumstances we created for ourselves in our present state, but most of us do not like change and will stick to the devil we know rather than chance the angel we don’t know. So we stick with the comfortable thing we know even when we know it’s bad.

We learned that anger can sometimes help us overcome those Goliaths of addiction. But anger can also hinder us in facing those giants. Anger is not good or bad. It is an emotion God built into us. The question is what sparks our anger and how and where do we focus it. When we focus our anger appropriately, we can use the energy and strength that comes with it to attack those addictions and habits we want gone. When we use that emotion inappropriately, we might strike out against the people that could help us the most.

Last week we talked about the importance of openness about the thing you want to change. Until you identify and name the thing you want to fix, you are at best attacking symptoms, but never getting at the real root of the problem.

Today we look at one more exceptionally important trait that you must exercise to face the Goliaths in your life, those addictions, bad habits, things in your life you need to change. What is that trait? Faith. If you don’t believe you can change, you won’t. If you believe there is no hope, you will create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Without faith, you’ll find all your attempts at change are futile.

Faith, the writer of Hebrews says, is the substance of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen. It is knowing that an unseen future will circumstance will be true. We all exercise faith in our daily lives. We all have it and really could not live without it. Imagine going through life without faith. Not believing the lights would come on when flipped the light switch. Not knowing if the car would start when you turned the key. Not believing the sun would rise in the morning or the moon at night. Living without faith means wondering if the food you just ate is good for you or poisoned.

No faith in life makes you question whether the next step you take will be on solid ground or something that just looks solid. No faith makes you hold your breath because the air might be filled with toxic fumes instead of good clean oxygen.

So does all of that sound a little crazy? Maybe, but it really shows that everyone has faith. We have faith that the world works in certain ways that we can trust. We exercise faith to just live our lives in ordinary ways every day. It takes a lot of faith just to exist. Faith is faith is faith. The question is how do we direct that faith? In what or in whom do we have faith? I have a lot of faith in myself in certain aspect of life. In other aspects, I have very little faith in myself.

As a simple example, I have faith that I can drive without having an accident, so tomorrow I will get in my car, turn the key in the ignition, and back out of my driveway with full confidence that I will make it across town and arrive at my destination before my appointed time to be there. But I have very little faith that I can climb Mount Everest successfully, so don’t expect to see me even close to those slopes…ever. It would be crazy for me to even attempt the climb because I know my physical limitations and I have like no confidence I would get to even the 7,000 foot camps alive.

What does that have to do with addictions, habits, Goliaths we want to conquer? We need faith that we can actually change if we expect to change. If I don’t think I can kick a habit, I won’t. If I don’t think I can change my behavior, I’ll fail to change it. If I don’t have enough faith in myself to believe God and others can help me through some process to replace those things that need replacing in my life, I will sabotage the efforts and I will keep those things resident in my everyday life.

So, if I want to defeat a Goliath of addiction in my life, whether it is a simple thing like dropping dirty clothes on the floor instead of the hamper or a very complex thing like addiction to heroin. If I can’t picture and believe in a different future, I am stuck with the present life with no chance for change. I must have faith God and those he puts in my path as his helpers can make a new future for me.

Faith. Maybe today you’ll think about faith a little different than you have in the past. Remember, we all have it. Without out faith, I’m not sure any of us would survive. We’d go absolutely nuts. But with just a little faith, we not only survive, but we thrive. And with faith in the right who, Jesus said we would do even more than he did when he lived among us. Think about it. What future can you envision if you let him help you get rid of the Goliaths of bad habits and addictions that have seemed impossible to resolve. It’s time to start today.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved. In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Breaking bad habits takes openness, July 2, 2018

Leave a reply

Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|Download

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

We’ve been talking about some of the things that keep us from getting rid of our Goliaths. Thinking that some of our Goliaths are addictions and habits we want to rid ourselves. One such addiction all of us inherit because of that first act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden is the addiction of sin. We all sin. It’s a habit we might try to stop on our own, but it is just not possible. Paul talks about at the end of Chapter 7 in his letter to the Romans when he says, “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am…”

That’s what we inherit from the very beginning of humanity. We can’t get away from it. It’s in our genes. It’s passed perfectly from generation to generation. And just like all our ancestors from the very first man and woman, we think the best thing to do is try and hide our addictive behavior from others. Just like Adam and Eve, we feel shame and guilt and all those other ugly emotions that go along with habits and addictions we know are wrong and we don’t want anyone else to know about them.

But you know what? We can’t hide them any more than Adam and Eve could hide them. We might be able to pull the wool over people’s eyes for a while, maybe even for a long time, but those things will make themselves known at some point. If nothing else, they come through in the stress and anxiety and wasted effort in trying to cover up that bleeds energy and effectiveness from you that could be used in more positive ways.

We think we are so good at hiding those dark things in our lives, but we really are not so good at it. Others can see through you. They can see the slippery slope you’re on. They may not know what it is, but people can sense there is something wrong. They can sense something is not quite right. How, because we all have that inherited trait and have all tried to hide at some time or other.

But how do you get over it? How can we work through those addictive behaviors? First, we recognize we can’t do it alone as we talked about earlier. But another point we’ll talk about to day, we need to get that thing, that habit, that behavior out in the open. We need to bring it into the light.

As long as my kids lived at home we had a rule for them. Curfew was always before midnight whatever their age. They didn’t like it when they were in their mid to late teens and all their friends parents let their kids set their own curfew, but our kids had to be in the house before midnight…period. And why did we set that time? I’ve found as a general rule through the years that nothing good happens after midnight.

Take a look at domestic crime, murders, rapes, robberies, violent crime, DUIs, just go on down the list. You’ll find the percentage of those that happen in the dark hours of the night after midnight far outweigh the number that happen in the light of day. Evil hides. Good is not afraid of the light. But that’s how we begin to shed the things we want to change in ourselves. We bring it into the light.

First we admit we have those things in our behavioral repertoire to God and seek his help. But we very often need to get it out some at least a few close accountability partners know we struggle with something. We need to get it into the light so we can get help. Think about it. Few alcoholics can drop the habit without medical and psychological help. Without some kind of organized support like Alcoholics Anonymous to help them out. Few drug addicts can just stop using without significant help and support from groups that understand the progression of the addiction and how to curb it.

What we often don’t realize is that every habit, every addiction has some of those same traits. They become ingrained in certain parts of the brain that brings us pleasure. No matter how much we loath what we have done after the fact, those moments of pleasure we experience bring out the behavior and we have a hard time breaking it.

So what we need is a deterrent more powerful than that tickler in the pleasure centers of our brain. We need some counterbalance that will overrule that behavior and help us break that habit, that addiction. One way to do that is through the help of an accountability partner. Someone you trust that is not afraid to tell you the truth. Someone that knows the problem you’re facing and the habit you’re trying to fix. Someone that will hold you accountable and not tell you it’s okay when it’s both of you know it’s not okay.

So many times we try to keep these hidden secrets, but they are really not so secret and they are not so hidden. We just fool ourselves into thinking they are. The telltale signs always seem to show up at just the wrong time for us and then everything unravels. All our secrets just roll out for everyone to see. So if that’s true and it usually, normally, most of the time is, then why not find that trusted friend, open up to God and them, and just get to work on those things that must change.

Will it be easy? No. Will it sometimes feel embarrassing? Yes. Will there be times that you seem to fail in the process? Probably. But in our McDonald’s world we expect things to happen instantly and in life they seldom do. This instant gratification that we want usually sparks the bad behavior we struggle with in the first place. When we recognize it takes a lifetime to develop into Christlikeness, we will be much more forgiving of ourselves and others when we misstep and end up confessing one more time about that addiction that seems to have us in its grip.

That isn’t the end of the journey, though. One false step doesn’t mean failure. It means we ask forgiveness, pick ourselves up, figure out what triggered that bad response, do our best to set up ways to avoid that trigger and move on. God will help us tackle that giant if we let him. He is faithful to forgive us when we confess and truly repent. He will help us conquer those things displeasing to him. Why? Because he wants that intimate relationship with us that he had with Adam and Eve when we walked with them in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden

Is our confession to him something he doesn’t already know about? No. He knows us better than we know ourselves, but until we can name the problem we deal with, we cannot solve it. Until we name that thing we need to turn over to him, we can only stab at relieving symptoms, not getting to the root of things. It’s kind of like weeds in a garden. You can cut them, but they come right back until you dig out the roots of the weed. Only then are you rid of the weed, and even then, unless you have also removed any seeds that weed has left in the ground, it may pop up again later. You have to purge the ground of every part of that unwanted plant. And the good gardener knows he needs help to do that. He uses the right tools, the right chemicals, and applies all of them at the right time with frequent inspection over time to make sure the weeds are really gone.

So it is with the seeds of addiction and bad habits, Goliaths, giants that have us acting like cowards hiding in our tents Saul’s army in the Valley of Elah. Until we get them in the light, name them, share them with a trusted accountability partner, turn them over to God for his help, and apply every tool at our disposal against them, they will be like weeds in the garden of our lives. Not easy to get rid of them, but not impossible. Because nothing is impossible with God.

Focus your anger on Goliath, not you or others, June 25, 2018

Leave a reply

Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|Download

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

The question for today? What does anger have to do with fighting your giants?

In fighting Goliath, we’ve seen you need help from God and possibly others. You need to conquer your fear. You need to get over your feelings of rejection. You need to get out of your comfort zone. But what is this about anger?

Well, if you’re like me, every time I’ve worked on a habit I’m trying to change and then that habit pops back up I get angry. Mostly at myself, but sometimes at those around me and even at God.

I don’t know if that has ever happened to you, but if you’ve ever tried to break some habit and failed the first few times, I expect that ugly emotion popped its head up and made its appearance known in some way. Why can’t I just get rid of this thing that hinders me from being the man I want to be, the man God wants me to be? Why can’t I be the perfect husband or father or leader? I think I know what right looks like most of the time, but I just can’t seem to do it sometimes. And so I get angry.

Anger is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s one of those emotions that God put in us. The Bible tells us that even Jesus got angry. Remember the story of Jesus as he entered the temple courtyard and saw the money changers cheating the people who entered? He was not just a little upset at what he saw. He was angry. So angry, in fact, that he overturned the tables where the thieves were sitting. He picked up a whip and drove them out of the temple courtyard. He had some pretty harsh words to say about them and about the leaders that allowed them to carry out their dishonest businesses in the temple. Jesus was beyond man and hit the ceiling of real deep down anger.

So let’s get back to our David and Goliath story. Any anger there? I expect there was a lot of it floating around. Some focused rightly and some not so. If we could put ourselves back into the story, I think we would see Saul’s army angry at Goliath for his taunts, but probably more angry at themselves because they were too cowardly to stand up to him on the battlefield.

Perhaps some of those soldiers were angry with Saul because he had no battle plan to face the Philistines poised across the valley from them. They had fought before and God led them to victory, but here their leader just sat, scared of the forces in front of him. Making them listen to the taunts and blasphemy that spewed from the mouth of this giant. They were angry at their king because they just sat and did nothing.

Maybe the army was angry at God because he didn’t reveal himself to them as he had before. He didn’t come down with any lightning bolts or an earthquake or some other freak sign of nature to destroy their enemies. God just let them be humiliated in the eyes of these pagan warriors that stood across from them.

Then David arrives.

His brothers were angry that he inquired about this giant and why no one dared to fight him. They were angry that he left the sheep in the hands of someone else and shirked his responsibilities at home, leaving their father on his own. They were angry at him because his words made them look a little cowardly. They were angry with him because he dared to recommend actions others wouldn’t take.

Then there is Goliath. He was angry at his enemies. He was angry just because the Israelites were alive and in the land he thought belonged to his people. He was angry because he wanted a fight and none of those cowardly soldiers on the hillside were brave enough to come out and face him. Goliath was angry because his king placed him in the valley as a challenge to the Israelites. He expected to win in a one on one fight, but he could also lose or be injured. As much as he enjoyed killing his enemies, he didn’t relish the thought of another injury in battle. Goliath was angry because once again, the king used his size to intimidate his enemies instead of real battlefield strategies and put him in danger while his fellow soldiers just acted as spectators.

And David. David was angry because his brothers ridiculed him. They tried to belittle the journey he made at his father’s request. David was angry because he felt a little picked on because his brothers had no confidence in him as the youngest in his family. David was angry at the Israelite army because they listened to the taunts of Goliath for 40 days and did nothing to stop his blasphemy. He was especially angry at Goliath because of what he said about his God. He was angry enough to take up his challenge and fight him.

So anger is not always a bad thing as we see from this story. Some of the anger some of these characters reveal is not the right anger. But some is. The soldiers’ anger at Saul for not doing anything is probably justified. Saul needed to listen to God and lead his army to victory against this pagan nation. But he had already lost his connection with God because of his greed and the power he thought he had. Anger focused at Goliath and the Philistines for their blasphemies against God were justified.

Sometimes anger is good. It can get us off our best intentions and get us to take action. It keeps us from accepting things as they are and lets us begin to make things better. But this anger is only good when it is focused on the right thing. If we keep that anger focused on the right things, we can use it to defeat that thing that looks like a giant in our life. We can use that energy and focus to help us get through the apathy that lets that thing keep us discouraged, defeated, trapped in its clutches. We can use the energy that comes with anger to focus our attention on its defeat.

David’s anger at Goliath helped propel that stone with extraordinary strength and accuracy to defeat that giant that stood in his way. David’s anger took the shape of that nine-foot obstacle so he could focus on what his real problem was in that valley. When we can figure out the real problem, not the symptoms, but the problem that is causing us the defeated life we feel, we can focus our anger appropriately.

So as you face the giants in your life, be angry for the right reason. You may be angry at yourself for failing to keep some promise to yourself about some behavior, but remember that if you’re trying to change something, change takes time. It’s usually not instantaneous like most of us would like. Change takes time and effort. Channel anger into constructive activity that will do something about your giant. Use it to give you the energy, passion, impetuous you need to get out of your position of weakness and into a position where you can face those giants from a position of strength.

Let God fight your battles. Recognize that he can help you even with your emotions and can help you focus the energy that comes with anger toward the right things. Anger is one of those emotions we experience from time to time. It is not necessarily unhealthy, as Jesus showed us in the temple. As David showed us as he faced Goliath. But also, we can not let anger rule us or let it get focused on the wrong thing or used as a source of power for revenge or vengeance.

Fighting giants means getting uncomfortable, June 18, 2018

Leave a reply

Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|Download

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

We’ve been talking about Goliaths in our life the last few weeks. We’ve discovered everyone has giants in their lives at some time or other. We’ve learned we should not face them alone, but always face them with God by your side and with a friend, a mentor, a praying church when you can. We discussed the fact that often fear keeps us from fighting that Goliath in our path and we must push through that fear to face it head on. We also discussed the fact that we often fail to face those giants in life because we are afraid that when we get rid of those giants in our life, we will be rejected by those around us. None of these are healthy, but they exist nonetheless and keep us attacking that thing that destroys our joy and freedom in Christ that we long for.

Today we continue that theme with another issue that keeps us from facing those giants that seems to overwhelm us, whatever they might be. Whether some addiction, some task you think God has laid out for you, some apology or act of forgiveness you know you should make, some act of kindness you should demonstrate. Whatever that giant might be in your life, let’s look at another reason we today we just don’t want to face that bully in the valley.

What is it that gets in our way? Sometimes it’s comfort. Now that might sound a little ridiculous at first, but stop and think about it for a few minutes. It’s hard to see how giants that you want to get rid of and comfort go together but let’s go back and look at the story again. Goliath came out into the Valley of Elah every morning and taunted Saul’s army. His men heard the challenge. They knew the reputation of this beast. They saw his stature. He stood some nine feet tall and his spear looked like the trunk of a tree. No one wanted to go down into that valley and face him.

What did Saul’s soldiers do instead? They sat by their fires and filled their bellies with food. They kicked back in their tents and took a nap. They sat around sharpening their spears and shining their armor. They got comfortable around the camp because they didn’t want to go into the valley to fight. Fighting meant using muscles they weren’t used to using. Fighting meant getting out of their tents and leaving their campfires. Fighting meant facing these professional warriors. Fighting meant risking pain and death.

They were comfortable where they were. They were comfortable just sizing up the enemy on the other side of the valley. As long as the Philistines stayed on their side of the valley and Goliath just keep shouting at them, they were okay with that. As long as the armies didn’t have to clash in the middle of the battlefield, they were content to stay where they were. It wasn’t as nice as their bed at home. The food wasn’t home cooked and they sometimes were a little wet and cold. They didn’t get to see their wives and kids much. Life wasn’t what they would like it to be, but that was okay. They could put up with the comfort of the camp compared to the unknown discomfort of the battlefield.

There is a old saying that goes something like this: “People will keep the devil they know before they will accept the angel they don’t know.”

What does that mean? It means we just don’t like change. It’s the problem the Israelites faced in that valley. It’s the problem we sometimes face when we take on the Goliaths in our lives. It’s the problem we must overcome if we are going to get rid of those habits and challenges and giants that plague us. We have to accept the fact that change must happen and whether or not we like change, we must embrace it if we are going to face those giants in life. We have to recognize the damages that devils keep doing and know that there are angels out there that are anxious to help us find a better way.

Part of our problem with these comfortable habits, these Goliaths that plague us comes from something akin to muscle memory. We get so use to something that we must train our bodies and mind to do something different. That muscle memory reflex happens so easily and is so difficult to change. It becomes ingrained in our subconscious so we are often not even aware that it is there. Take for instance your driving skills. When you first got behind the wheel of a car, it was probably a horrifying experience. How do you coordinate all the movements you have to make with your hands, feet, head, eyes, virtually every part of your body to make those rapid movements required to operate that 3,000 pound monster?

But after a couple of months you’re not even thinking about it. Feet find the accelerator and brake pedals without thinking. There are no jerking motions when you start and stop any more. You don’t have to look to see where the turn signal is, you just flip it at the appropriate time and don’t even think about when and how much to turn the steering wheel to make the turn in to the appropriate lane of traffic. Merging into traffic, parking into spaces in the parking lot, backing out of the driveway, all those things that seemed like nightmares the first few times in those early days of driving are now routine. You don’t have to think about them. You even carry on conversations with those in the car with you as you make all those tiny maneuvers because you’ve trained your muscles to do them almost without thinking.

You can think of hundreds of those kinds of muscle memory things you do every day without thinking. I would venture to guess when you brush your teeth, you start at the same side at the same spot every time. You probably put your first sock on the same foot every day. You more than likely put the same foot in your pants first almost every time. I would guess you wash and dry your body in the same pattern every time you bathe.

The same is true for all of us. We build these patterns in our behaviors and don’t even think about them after a while. It’s why bad habits are so hard to break. They become ingrained muscle movements that just happen. That’s one of the reason it is so hard for long term smokers to break the habit. It’s not just the nicotine, although the drug is extremely addictive in its own right. But it is also about the muscle memory developed over time. You eat a meal, a cigarette appears in your hand. You get into a car, you light up. You finish a project, a flame touches the end of that paper stick. All those cues that have told your body to make those movements must be relearned and replaced with something else.

It is much more difficult to unlearn muscle memory and relearn something that it is to learn it the first time. The brain is such a complex organ, more capable of storing and sorting memories than any computer. And unless there is some sort of trauma to the brain, that memory is there…forever. Stored away, never overwritten. Never erased. Always available for recall. So why is an alcoholic always a recovering alcoholic? For just that reason. The memory never goes away. They muscle memory is always there. Don’t get me wrong, change can happen. But habits must always be replaced with equally strong habits. You just have to make them good habits instead of bad. The better angel out there. The uncomfortable change. The unknown that we know must be better but our minds and bodies are afraid to try because of the comfort of our habits no matter how bad they are.

So, as we close today and think about the Goliaths in our lives, those habits that are out of control that we wish to change. The giants that we face that seem to just envelop us. Think about the muscle memory we’ve discussed and the comfort we must push away from if we really want to change. When we face the giants, we will be uncomfortable for a time. When we get into the valley with those things that seem to overwhelm us everyday, we will find our bodies wanting to revert back to old patterns and old ways, but we can overcome with God’s help and sometimes the help of a friend. Remember he will never leave us or forsake us. He will fight our battles for us, but he expects us to carry the shield into the battleground.

Nobody loves me, June 11, 2018

Leave a reply

Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|Download

What addictive behaviors do you hang on to because you think others think poorly of you? Let’s talk about that today.

Many of you know my wife is a registered nurse. She often watches programs, videos, and podcasts that might sound a little weird to the average person. For instance, I often find her watching a pimple popping doctor. Of course, these aren’t ordinary pimples. They are the ones that are deep rooted and need minor surgery to get to the root of them. Yuck! Not good viewing for late snack entertainment or for the squeamish.

And sometimes she watches a program that involves some people that you wonder how in the world they got into the circumstances they did. The program follows patients of a Houston doctor that tip the scale at 600 pounds or more. When you first see some of these folks you get a little mad at them and blame them for their condition. After a while you discover it’s not them. At that weight, they can no longer lift themself from the bed or get through the door of their room. The only way they can get the food that is gradually killing them is for someone to bring it to them.

Among alcoholics and drug abusers we have a term for that person. They are titled co-dependent of the person with the problem. The truth is that both the addicted person and the person feeding the habit both have a problem. For these 600 pound people, those last couple of hundred pounds come only because someone else provides the calories to them. Someone else provides the very thing that shortens their life.

So why do both of these groups, the addict and the codependent do what they do? Every single one has said they don’t want to be that way. Every single one has declared they want to lose the weight. They don’t want to eat so much or they don’t want to deliver so much food to the person in the bed. Every one of them say they want help to get the morbidly obese person back to a better state of health and get them up and moving on their own again.

But every one of them at first, fail to recognize their problem doesn’t start with the consumption of calories. The overeating is just an expression of a much deeper problem. The doctor who treats these men and women always insists on some pretty intense counseling before he will consider gastric bypass surgery to curb the appetite of the morbidly obese and try to bring their weight back to a level which will not mean certain death within months.

As part of the program, the individuals let us take a peek into their private lives and invariably we find they have a pretty high dislike for themselves and assume everyone else feels the same about them. They feel alone in the world. They tell themselves the mantra, “No one loves me.” a thousand times a day. When you tell yourself those negative thoughts enough, you begin to believe them. And for these morbidly obese individuals, their escape from the self loathing dialog is in food. Then because the codependent partner or child doesn’t want them to feel that they are unloved, they give them what they want…more food. It becomes a vicious cycle until before long the individual finds they cannot move themselves off the bed and they know they are dying by their own habits.

My heart goes out to these individuals, but they are not alone in their negative self-talk. They escape is more obvious than some because they wear their escape in the form of added pounds. But thousands upon thousands have that same conversation with themselves every day. “No one loves me. I’m all alone in the world and no one cares.” And they feed that negative emotion with some dangerous addiction that pushes them to believe their lie more each day.

Satan does a great job of putting blinders on us so we can’t see what’s really going on around us. He puts roadblocks in our path and puts the right negative people in front of us or maybe even the right positive people to make us feel even worse about ourselves. “If I could only be happy like that person.” Ever been there? I expect you have at some point in your life. It is one of the world’s greatest lies.

Saul’s soldiers felt that way in the Valley of Elah, Death Valley. Goliath came out every day to tell them how worthless they were. “Lazy. Cowards. Can’t fight. Dung heaps wasting good air. Unbelievers can’t even trust your own God to rescue you.” Forty days he came out telling them the same thing. They began to believe it of themselves. A friend of mine calls it “stinkin’ thinkin’”. She is very right.

So what can we do about it? How can we get past Goliath and his negative taunts rolling around in our head when the voice sounds just like ours? Because we would certainly tell ourselves the truth, right? How do we turn those thoughts around and begin to get an edge on that giant to we can win against him?

First, remember who made you. God is the creator of all things. He made you. As much as science would like to say you are just the conglomeration of some biological process. We haven’t been able to come close to creating life. That’s God’s job and he does it very well. By the way, if you go back and read Genesis Chapter 1, you won’t find a single time in the creation story where God says, “Oops, I made a mistake with that one.” He declared everything he made as good. Everything. So that means he didn’t make a mistake with you either. God created you to be you and he did it well.

Second, if God says everything he created is good, who are we to argue with him? How can we turn around and say, “Hey God, you got this one wrong.” Not possible. He did it right and you are included in that creativity he started those uncountable years ago.

Third, with those two things in mind, write down a positive mantra for yourself. Something as simple as “God makes all things well and I’m one of those things he made.” Then when the stinkin’ thinkin’ starts to rear its ugly head, turn it on its ear with that mantra. Whether you want to believe it or not isn’t the point when you start. Just say it. Out loud or in your head, say it. Focus on it. Believe it. Get the stinkin’ thinkin’ out of your head by pushing it away with that positive mantra. Let that be your release instead of whatever habit you have been using to pacify yourself when the “woe is me” thoughts creep in.

Will this positive thinking cure all your ills, habits, and addictions? Not by itself, but it’s a start. At least it gets that noisy negative guy pushed into the recesses of your mind for a while so you get a break. And who knows, with some positive reinforcement and God on your side, Goliath doesn’t stand a chance.

Don’t be afraid to face your giants, June 4, 2018

Leave a reply

Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|Download

Today we want to talk about another obstacle in the way of overcoming those giants in our lives. Last week we discovered you should never try to tackle Goliath alone, but go into the valley with God by your side. It’s also good to have a mentor, a friend, and a church along with you to conquer those giants that come your way.

There is an old saying that goes something like this, “People are more comfortable with the devil they know than with the angel they don’t know.” What does it mean? People will stay in a bad situation, stick with bad habits, continue down the same destructive path because they are comfortable with it. Even though they see what might be a better way, they still hold on to what they know instead of taking a chance with something they don’t know. It’s pretty amazing just how hard we push against change in our lives.

That was true of those warriors in the Valley of Elah who listen to the Philistine, Goliath, challenge them each day. For forty days, Goliath marched down the hillside and stood in the valley with his armor bearers. He dared anyone to come fight him. The Israeli warrior cowered in their tents. They knew Goliath’s reputation and feared what would happen to them if they went into that valley. It was called “Death Valley” for a reason. They all just knew that if you went into that place, you wouldn’t come out again.

Fear of the unknown or fear trapped in their imagination captured them and froze their feet to the ground. They listened to that giant of a man roar his blasphemies against God and did nothing. They were afraid. They pictured themselves looking up into the eyes of that nine foot monster and couldn’t see their blood turned to ice. Who could possibly fight this guy?

But something happened after 40 days of the same old pattern. Goliath comes out, shouts his challenge, the Israelite warriors hide behind anything they can find, Goliath finally gets tired of waiting, and he climbs back up the hillside to wait until the next morning to do it all over again. The soldiers got used to the ritual and probably got to the point that when they saw the first glimmer of sunlight reflecting off Goliath’s helmet from the top of the hill, they hightailed it to the back forty to wait until he left. Fear.

In some ways you can’t blame them, I guess. I know I wouldn’t want to take on a nine foot monster in a fighting match. He was trained as a warrior. He had the reach, the weapons, every advantage you could think of except one. God was on David’s side.

So Jesse’s youngest son sees what’s going on. He’s too young to join the army. He’s only there to deliver some lunch to his brothers. Get a little news to take back home so his mom and dad will know their kids are still alive and doing well against their lifelong enemies, the Philistines. David went with no intention of joining the fight. He was just a shepherd. All he had was a sling. Coming from Bethlehem, he was pretty good with it, but still… A sling against a spear doesn’t sound like very good odds.

Was David afraid? You know, I want to think he had a few butterflies in his stomach as he reached into that stream and pulled out five stones. David knew God was with him, though. David knew how to use that sling. Elsewhere in God’s word, it tells us that the Benjamites could hit a hair with one of those slings. That’s pretty good. And considering that David could attack Goliath from the length of a football field with his sling and he had to be closer to the 20 yard line for Goliath’s spear to be as effective a weapon, David had a little bit of an edge from a distance. He had to hit Goliath in the space around his eyes, though. Everything else would be covered and the stone would bruise, but not kill on impact.

David marches out onto the field after refusing to take Saul’s armor. We sometimes think David was a puny little kid since the Bible tells us Saul’s armor didn’t fit. That’s not the picture I get of David, though. He killed a lion and a bear with his bare hands. I think the armor didn’t fit because Saul was head and shoulders taller than any of the other men present at his coronation. Saul stood out in a crowd. His armor was too big for everyone there.

The most important part of this story in relation to Goliath and fear, though, is that whatever fear David might have had as he looked at this monster of a man, he set it aside and trusted God. David believed God would help him vindicate his name against the blasphemous outpouring that came from this heathen. David believed God could take his fear and turn it into enough adrenaline to help him conquer this undefeated champion of his enemies. He pushed past the fear of what he knew and dared to launch into the unknown.

That’s exactly what we have to do with the Goliaths we face in our life. I don’t know what your Goliath is, but I expect you are like 99% of everyone else who faces Goliath. I expect there is that little bit of fear that asks what happens when I let go of this and let God have it? What will God ask of me? What will happen? How will my life change? What will other people think? What if God can’t break through the problem? (Yeah, right! Let me tell you, it’s not God that can’t fix it. He’s God! We are the problem, not him!)

The best way to attack those giants in our life is to act just like David. Don’t let those giants taunt you with their blasphemy. You will undoubtedly hear some voice in your head tell you that you can’t win the battle. It’s too hard. You can’t possibly overcome. You will hear the same tired excuses Goliath yelled at the Israelites across that Death Valley. But David refused to listen to Goliath. He refused to give in to his fear. He refused to let the giant dictate his moves, but instead listened to the voice of God.

I think it was God that prompted him to pick up five stones instead of one. He only needed one to defeat Goliath. David knew that and God knew it. So why five? Finish reading the stories of David’s battles and you’ll find Goliath had four brothers. David was ready to take on all of them if necessary. Fear. Sure. Enough to stop him from doing what God told him to do? No way. David knew God was bigger than any problem or any giant he came against. He was ready.

Are there times you will be afraid? You are not human if you don’t experience that emotion every so often. But we don’t have to let it cripple us. We can remember that God is for us, so who can be against us. Nothing can defeat us, because nothing can defeat him. He proved it a couple of millennium ago when he decided he didn’t want to stay dead. We can borrow his strength and his power to push through the fear the world tries to stir up and we can win against our Goliaths. Be like David today.

What is integrity?, April 30, 2018

Leave a reply

Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|Download

Music intro

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

Last week we finished with “The Story” as we explored God’s plan to restore us to that face to face relationship he enjoyed with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before their act of disobedience that banished them from that paradise. God has been working ever since to bring us back to him and to teach us to live in community with each other and with him so we might share eternity with him in a new paradise he has created for all who follow him.

Well, as we start something new this week, I thought about a devotional series I read a few weeks ago on integrity. That’s really what God wants from us. To have integrity. To be genuine with him. But in our society today, I’m not sure we even know what integrity means anymore, much less practice it. So I want to take the next few weeks and explore what it means for us to have integrity.

Let’s start with David. He declared in Psalms 25:21, “May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope, Lord is in you.” If his understanding of integrity is such that it would protect him from something when he was running for his life from Saul’s army, then I’d like to figure out what that integrity is because I sure need some protecting in this day and age. Satan is alive and well and wants to destroy my soul. Just like he wants to destroy yours. So what is integrity, then.

The dictionary says integrity is, the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. Another definition is, the state of being whole and undivided. There are a lot of synonyms we could throw around to maybe help us get a handle on the word. Some like: honesty, probity, rectitude, honor, good character, principle(s), ethics, morals, righteousness, morality, virtue, decency, fairness, scrupulousness, sincerity, truthfulness, trustworthiness. Or from that second definition things like unity, unification, coherence, cohesion, togetherness, solidarity.

All of those sound good, but I’m not sure that’s where David was going with this when he was talking to God about integrity. We too often fit our good character, principles, ethics, morals, and virtue into our societal code which may or may not be what God is looking for in us. I’m sure you’ve heard the term situational ethics thrown about more than once in the past few years. What’s right depends on the current situation and circumstances. Well, does it? Is God that wishy-washy in his behavior that he changes his rules to fit our circumstances? I doubt it.

David, in our eyes, had every right to defend himself against his accuser, Saul. He was falsely accused. God had already had Samuel anoint him as the next king to sit on the throne of Israel. Samuel had given Saul his pink slip from God. And twice God put Saul into David’s hands, when he relieved himself in a cave and David was close enough to cut off part of his coat. And against when the whole came around Saul slept and David went into the camp and took Saul’s sword and spear. But David was a man of integrity, not someone who adhered to the idea of situational ethics. His integrity kept him on the run instead of in the comfort of the palace. Was that protection? David thought so.

Does fair and decent fit the bill? It depends on who you talk to. Who is to say what is fair. Job didn’t think life was fair when he lost everything but his nagging wife and three friends that told him what a sinner he was. We look at the narrative and look up at God and say the same thing. “God, how is it fair to bring such calamity on such a righteous man?”

Was it fair for the Europeans to blast their way through the native Indians, cut down their forests, deplete their hunting grounds, pollute their rivers and streams, and turn this continent into a new country? They certainly didn’t think so, but their European victors did. And if history had not played out as it did, what would our country be like today? Would we still be living in animal skin huts and trying to forage for deer and buffalo meat for supper? Probably not, but the country would be far different since the Europeans would not have had the land to forge the pioneer spirit that has forged us into the nation we have become. Has it been fair to every group? No. Will it ever be? Not as long as people are involved in the process.

Marx and Stalin thought they could make a fair system work under communist rule. It lasted about 70 years until those that worked hard so that the fruits of their labor went to those that chose not to work so hard. Then no one worked very hard and the Soviet Union finally collapsed. Socialism and communism only work if every single person in the system are highly motivated to give their best to the system. We know humans don’t operate that way because we are inherently selfish. So governments of any flavor are never fair because people are not fair.

Well, what about that decency rule? If you’re old enough, you remember the National Geographic documentaries of newly found tribes in Africa and South America where no one wore clothes. Were they decent? To them they were. To us they were far from it. But even in our society, we have extreme views of what people call decent. Laws can’t dictate decency, though we try. So decency is out of the question if we want to try to define integrity by that norm.

How about ethics? I’ve been to countries where it was impolite to tell a guest something that might hurt their feelings, so lying was okay if you knew the facts would be disturbing. Were they ethical? In their society, absolutely. For me and my colleagues, we were more than frustrated when the facts were discovered later. But as guests around their table drinking tea, everyone needed to be all smiles so were we told what they thought we wanted to hear. Were they wrong? To them it was quite ethical. We were the crazy Americans with stupid ideas.

I could go on down the list of synonyms and pick them apart and find that none of them describe what David saw as protection against his enemies. But I think the second definition will give us some clues about the integrity David and God have in mind when we think about integrity in spiritual terms. Think back on our journey through God’s word over the last eight months. In God’s upper story, he desperately wants to have us return to him in an intimate face to face relationship. He wants to restore that oneness Adam and Eve enjoyed before the fall.

So what was that second definition again? Integrity is the state of being whole and undivided. But when Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, a piece of them went missing – the presence of God in their life. They walked with him face to face until they disobeyed. But because of their disobedience, God’s truth, his integrity, his holiness demanded their sin be put away from his presence. So they lost his presence in their life.

Jesus talked over and over about unity among the disciples. He talked about how others would know they belonged to him, by their love for each other. He talked about the oneness between him and the father and that same unity could happen between him and us. Jesus mentored his disciples on togetherness. How to break bread with each other and share their faith. He taught them to overlook that faults and dwell on the spirit that God forgives when we ask him. Jesus talked about a kingdom that is open to anyone who believes. That kingdom is not bound by race or color or nationality. It is bound by faith. By unity. By oneness. Cohesiveness in believing in the one name above all names. Jesus, the Christ, our Savior and Redeemer.

I kind of think if David wrote this psalm in twenty-first century vernacular he might say, “God, I’m going to do my best to stick to you like glue. I know that if I do that, you’ve got my back. I don’t need to worry about the things that go on around me because you’re God and I’m not. But together I can make it because you can’t fail. I can’t make it on my own, but my hope, my peace, my joy, my comfort, my assurance is in the one I put my faith in and that’s you, Lord.”

Integrity. It’s not about me or what I think is right or wrong. It’s not about what society thinks is right or wrong, good or bad. I’m not even sure it’s about any in that long list of synonyms that focus on personal character. I think integrity has everything to do with how close I can squeeze up to God and let him carry me through this life wherever he wants to take me. Doing with me whatever he wants to do. Teaching me whatever he wants to teach me. Molding me into the likeness of his son day by day as I obey his voice as he whispers in my ear.

How do you define integrity?

If today’s devotional strikes a cord in you about your personal integrity as it relates to your nearness to God, what will you do about it today? Tomorrow and the next day?

How can you show integrity where you live?

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 about The Story and our part in it. 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.

Music exit

One bad night in Jerusalem – November 20, 2017

Leave a reply

Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|Download

Bible Reading Plan – www.Bible-Reading.com; The Story, Chapter 12; You Version Bible app Engaging God’s Story Reading Plan Days 78 through 84

What one night would you like to erase from your memory forever? What one event would you like to just take away from your past because of the consequences that have come from that one indiscretion? You know what it is. It probably doesn’t take you a lot of time to think back through your history. You probably don’t have to thumb through pages and pages of journals to think of the event you’d like to relive and do things differently.

King David had one of those days. His army went to war in the spring of the year, but he didn’t go with them. One night he went out on his roof and glanced over his city and there on another rooftop he saw Bathsheba bathing. If David had just walked back inside and gone about his business we probably wouldn’t hear about the demise of the twelve tribes or the terrible things that happened within his own family. But he didn’t.

David sent a servant to bring Bathsheba to his palace and he slept with her while her husband, Uriah, one of David’s mighty men, a brave and loyal soldier in his army, performed his duties on the field of battle. David sent her home. Soon she sent word to David that she was pregnant and the king tries to cover up his wrongs.

First, he brings Uriah home to blame the pregnancy on Uriah, but he doesn’t go home. Refusing to enjoy the comforts of home while his men are suffering the discomforts of the battlefield. Next, David tries to get Uriah drunk to then let his baser desires take hold and get him to sleep with his wife. But that doesn’t work either. Uriah is just too loyal to his men and the king’s army. Finally, for all intents and purposes, David murders Uriah by sending a secret message to his commander instructing him to place Uriah at the front where the fighting was the fiercest and then withdraw leaving Uriah to die. David even sent them message by Uriah to seal his own fate.

David thought he covered his tracks. To the army and the kingdom, it looked like he did a noble thing and took in his warrior’s widow into his palace to marry her and take care of her after Uriah’s untimely death. He thought his sin was hidden from all but he and Bathsheba. But God knew and God let Nathan, His prophet know. The prophet came to David and uncovered the sin. He pronounced the punishment that God decided. Bathsheba’s child would die.

David prayed, he pleaded, he begged. The consequences of his sin began. David repented, but Bathsheba’s child still died. His son raped his daughter. Another son rebelled against him and tried to take his kingdom from him. David watched his family fall apart as a consequence of the sin that started because he didn’t walk away that spring night in Jerusalem.

God forgave David and called him a man after His heart. Why? Because David did repent and tried to live according to the laws God laid out for His people. Did he make mistakes? Absolutely. But God still named David a man after His heart and all the kings of Israel were compared to David, the nation’s best king. David made mistakes. God forgave him. But David still suffered consequences as a result of his sin.

David didn’t blame God for his suffering, though. He understood justice and knew the things he suffered were a result of his actions, not God’s. The family problems he faced were because his children behaved as he had behaved with Bathsheba and Uriah, so how he could expect other results. David knew something we forget too often. The message that we reap what we sow doesn’t matter if God has forgiven us or not. We may still reap the harvest of the actions we have taken. Like David, we may be forgiven, but it doesn’t mean we won’t suffer the consequences of those actions in this life.

What does it all mean for us as we look at those characters like David? God isn’t looking for perfect people. He knows none of us are perfect. He made us. He knows us. He knows your faults and failures better than you do. What He’s looking for are men and women who, like David, will listen when confronted with their sin. He’s looking for men and women who, when confronted with their sin will repent instead of blaming someone else. He’s looking for men and women who, like David, will meditate on His word, do their best everyday to abide by His law, and listen to His voice.

He tells us He really only has two rules for us to keep. Love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love other people like we love ourself. If we will just do those two things we will stay out of trouble and will keep all His other commands. If David had kept those two rules that night in Jerusalem when he was out on his roof, he would have walked back inside when he noticed Bathsheba bathing on her rooftop. You see, he would not have wanted to sin against God or against Bathsheba or her husband Uriah. He would have wanted to maintain their reputations and his own.

David had that bad night and God forgave him. You’ve probably had a bad night or two yourself. I doubt if your bad night was any worse than what David did, though. He drug his whole family and nation through the mud resulting in rape, murder, incest, a divided kingdom, defeat by their enemies, finally the whole nation falling into exile. God forgave him, but the consequences unfolded before him.

Don’t let that happen to you. Obey God. Recognize He has your best in mind. He doesn’t want you to suffer the results of the harvest of sinful ways. Reap a harvest of good deeds and righteous living. It’s not impossible. In fact, God will help you along the way. Just put your trust in Him, listen to His voice, and obey when you hear Him call.