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A Pandemic of Love and Grace, April 20, 2020

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

We have a phenomenon going on across the country and around the world that baffles me in some ways. I’m sure it depends partly on how much you trust the news, social media, and other sources of information. It also depends on where you live and how this pandemic touches people you might know. But there is a significant segment of the population that thinks the novel coronavirus is no big deal. They wonder why we are disrupting our lives so much and taking such extraordinary measures for something that so far in this country seems like a nasty flu epidemic.

Of course, when you try to explain the properties of a pandemic and how they spread to those unbelievers, they wish it away and tell you you’re crazy. They don’t want to believe the catastrophe that is happening in New York City or Baton Rouge or Italy or Spain or many other places around the world. More than two million people have died, as of this podcast, that have been identified as coronavirus victims. Scientists tell us more died of the disease, but the dead are not tested.

The social separation states imposed works. In this country, when people work hard to enforce the rules for separation to curb the spread, it seems to be working. Cases are down. Hospital beds are available. Death rates are lower than in other places around the country and the world. Breaking the chain works. But there will continue to be those who doubt what the leaders enforced.

Our economy is in shambles right now after just a month of isolation. That shows you just how fragile this global system has become. When we close our doors for just thirty days, we fall apart as a nation. How much longer can we sustain the separation and closures to allow the virus to burn itself out in this first wave to enable us to find cures for it? I’m not sure.

We already have an increasing number of suicides, domestic violence, hungry children, and the list goes on in the most vulnerable parts of our population. Those on the fringe of society are clearly at the highest risk during pandemics, and this one appears no different.

Still, some doubt the reality of what is happening around us. The coronavirus is a hoax, they say. It’s a ploy to gain power by one political party or the other, they say. It’s a means of getting rid of a race of people I heard one doubter of the pandemic say. Some of the comments I hear and read flabbergast me. I don’t know where they get their ideas.

The doubt in the beginning, though, I understand. I think many of us thought the coronavirus was only a news item when we first heard about the epidemic in Wahun, China. Only when it reached the nursing home in Washington state did many begin to realize the jeopardy of the situation. And only when New York City’s hospitals and morgues begin to overflow did we come to understand the danger the country faced and begin to take active measures to slow the spread of the disease.

Doubt. The same doubt Thomas had when the other disciples told him Jesus appeared to them behind locked doors the night of the resurrection. We don’t understand how he suddenly appeared or what kind of physics allowed it to happen. But we know they could touch him. He could eat and drink. They could hear him speak, and he could hear them talk. But Thomas wasn’t there. He didn’t see it and wouldn’t believe it. John tells us the story.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”

Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (John 20:19, 24-29 NIV)

Thomas wouldn’t believe unless he saw Jesus himself. Some don’t want to believe what is happening with the pandemic unless it happens to them or someone they know personally. We have this big issue with trust sometimes that keeps us from realizing our full potential with God and others. Faith is a crucial part of life. Without faith, we cannot survive. It allows us to walk out the door and get in our car believing we will not be hit by another motorist when we drive down the street. It allows us to go to work, believing we will be paid for our labor. It keeps us motivated to raise our children, believing they will grow to become productive adults.

Faith is critical in our everyday lives. It is also vital in our spiritual lives. Faith for Thomas, and us, means believing in the truth that Jesus is alive. He rose from the dead, not as a disembodied spirit, but as a physical, touchable, breathing person. We don’t understand the physics that let him appear and disappear as the narratives tell us. We don’t understand the physics that let him feed more than 5,000 with a boy’s lunch. We don’t understand a lot of things. But we can exercise faith and believe.

Just as we can believe the devastation that the pandemic creates around the world without being in the middle of it, if you live in a part of the country or part of the world that has so far been only mildly touched by it, we can believe Jesus rose from the dead.

It was the disciples’ witness that gave them the courage to share the message of the resurrection. But it was the faith of the hearers of the message that continues to spread the message. Like the pandemic we see in our world today, there are a couple of truths we can learn. We don’t have to catch it to know it’s real. We can see it’s evidence around us.

The same is true of God’s grace. It doesn’t take a believer to see God’s grace, but experiencing God’s grace makes so much difference and solidifies the knowledge of his grace in our lives so we can never forget it.

Second, like the social distancing in our current pandemic, if we fail to share his love with those around us, how will his love spread? But live a virus, when we touch others with his love, he has a way of sparking love in them, and then one becomes two and two becomes four, and suddenly, we can see a pandemic of his love and grace when we exercise faith and spread his grace to those around us.

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

Pray, Believe, Act, April 6, 2020

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

If you keep your eyes and ears glued to the news, things seem a little hopeless right now, don’t they? The number of people infected by SARS-CoV-2 or novel coronavirus or COVID 19 or whatever name you want to call the tiny creature that is raising havoc among the population keeps growing with seemingly no end in sight.

It gets a little scary when you have kids that depend on you for food and shelter. It gets a bit scary when you know you have comorbidities that could put you at significantly higher risk for what victims describe as a horrible time if you catch it. It shakes us a little when we hear conflicting information from our city, state, and federal officials. Then there are all the anecdotal stories on Facebook and Instagram and the rest of the social media outlets. We sometimes don’t know what to believe.

Some say stay put and slow the spread so the healthcare system can keep up with the spread. Some say go back to work, so our economy doesn’t implode and drives us into a recession that makes the final outcome worse. Some say it doesn’t matter what we do because the end of the world is here, so don’t sweat it.

What are we to believe in this pandemic? What are we to do? How should we act as Christians?

The current debates between politicians, healthcare workers, economists, epidemiologists, and others remind me of what happened during Holy Week 2000 years ago in a little village called Bethany just a few miles outside of Jerusalem.

Jesus went to visit his friends Lazarus, and his sisters Mary and Martha. You’ll remember Lazarus. The guy whose corpse spent four days stinking up a tomb before Jesus raised him from the dead. Jesus and his disciples were having dinner with Lazarus and his sisters, and a crowd began to gather. John says some came to see Jesus, but some came to see Lazarus, the dead guy walking. But I want you to hear the end of that story as John describes it. It’s in chapter twelve of the story he wrote of Jesus’ life and ministry.

When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus. (John 12:9-12 NIV)

We’re in this debate about what we should do as the pandemic stretches across the country. Should we continue social separation? Should we go back to work like nothing is happening? Should we do something between the two? Should we listen to the CDC and stay home? Should we get the economy back on track before Easter? What should we do in the middle of this crisis?

I know a lot of people suffer right now. I look at the hospital census in places like New York City, San Francisco, and Detroit and see doctors having to choose between who lives and who dies because there isn’t enough equipment to take care of everyone. It was reminiscent of Italy and China just days and weeks ago.

We still have shortages, not only of vital medical equipment and supplies but of food and things those on the margins of life need for survival. How do we continue to ensure they have the necessary support when businesses close and we live in a day when so many live from paycheck to paycheck. What happens when the paychecks stop? The $1200 or $2400 that may come in the mail doesn’t go very far these days, and then what? And the small sum that is coming adds $2 trillion to our out of control national debt. That’s another $5,300 every American owes on top of the $48,000 every American already owed to pay off the mortgage Congress has given us.

The Pharisees voted to kill Jesus and Lazarus so they could keep their positions of power. The common Jews voted for Jesus so they could understand the power and authority Jesus demonstrated in his words. The Pharisees understood God as the giver of prosperity and position. Their national pride came from him. Jesus knew God as the one who calms the storm, the peacemaker, the healer, the giver of life.

I would not want to be in any of our leaders’ position today. They have no-win jobs right now. No matter what decision they make, it will be wrong for hundreds and thousands of people. Whether they choose to keep us sheltered in place or put everyone back to work, all of us will be affected in ways that are detrimental to individuals and the country. Pandemics are no-win situations; they always have been. Pandemic comes from a Greek word that means all people. It affects everyone. All of us will be touched.

So what does that mean for Christians when any decision detrimentally affects many of those around you?

First, we need to pray for our leaders. Pray for them as you have never prayed before. It doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you fall. It doesn’t matter who you voted for or who you like as a candidate now. No one, party, race, religion, gender, age, ethnic group, no one is exempt from what we face. The people in office must make some very tough decisions; none of us would want on our shoulders because all the decisions carry adverse outcomes. So pray for their wisdom and divine guidance.

Second, let Christ into your life and learn more about him through experience. He is our hope, our peace, our calm in the middle of this storm. Read about his life from the authors that lived with him. Read John and Luke and Mark and Matthew again and again, and understand the resurrection power Jesus wants to share with those who believe in him. He is our hope in this crisis. If you don’t know him as your savior, you can start with a simple prayer. Acknowledge your need; believe in his power to forgive your sins; declare him as Lord and Leader of your life from this point on. Mean those words, and he will enter your heart and life. He will make you into a new person.

Third, when you can do something for someone in these crisis times, no matter how small it might seem, do it. We can be a blessing to others and show Jesus’ love for us by showing his love to others.

One day all this will be in the past. Our grandchildren and their grandchildren will remember it only as a little piece of history. What we do as God’s children will make it a tale filled with heroic and loving stories or stories filled with only pain and agony. It’s our choice in how we allow God to work through us to make the difference.

Stay safe and may God bless you.

Plenty of Water, March 16, 2020

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

The headlines for this week will be much like the headlines of last week and next week and probably the week after. Coronavirus! It has everyone’s attention. Is it the next apocalyptic event? Are we in for the long haul with something akin to the Spanish Flu of 1918 or the Black Plague of the Middle Ages?

Frankly, no one knows. Thanks to the media storm with the misinformation and rumor that sells news by heightening fear, we are running into shortages of crazing things like toilet paper of all things. I’m not sure about your house, but we’d have a hard time using twelve jumbo packs of toilet paper in fourteen days. But that seems to be the fear of some as they raid the shelves of anything and everything they think might be of value in the coming days.

I think at least part of the world has gone insane over the coronavirus. I’m not dismissing the importance of taking precautions. I’m in that category with the highest mortality rates. Still, we can get a little overboard and do some incredibly stupid things that harm everyone when we lose our heads and don’t take appropriate actions to protect ourselves and others in times like this. Panic serves no useful purpose and keeps us from acting in ways that move us toward meaningful solutions to the problem.

One thing I’m sure of in times like this, God is still in control. For those saved by his grace, following in his footsteps, there need be no fear in these times. Despite the shortages of hand sanitizer (soap works just as well, by the way), bottled water, and toilet paper, God’s word reminds me he cares for us.

John tells of an event in Jesus’ life when he shares a source of life-giving water that never ends. We don’t need to worry about it running out or having to stock up in case of an emergency. We just need to tap into the source to satisfy our thirst. He tells the story in chapter four of the book by his name.

He [Jesus] came into Sychar, a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon.

A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, “Would you give me a drink of water?” (His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.)

The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, “How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans.)

Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.”

The woman said, “Sir, you don’t even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this ‘living water’? Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?”

Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.”

The woman said, “Sir, give me this water so I won’t ever get thirsty, won’t ever have to come back to this well again!”

He said, “Go call your husband and then come back.”

“I have no husband,” she said.

“That’s nicely put: ‘I have no husband.’ You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now isn’t even your husband. You spoke the truth there, sure enough.”

“Oh, so you’re a prophet! Well, tell me this: Our ancestors worshiped God at this mountain, but you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place for worship, right?”

“Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father neither here at this mountain nor there in Jerusalem. You worship guessing in the dark; we Jews worship in the clear light of day. God’s way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.

“It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”

The woman said, “I don’t know about that. I do know that the Messiah is coming. When he arrives, we’ll get the whole story.”

“I am he,” said Jesus. “You don’t have to wait any longer or look any further.”

Just then his disciples came back. They were shocked. They couldn’t believe he was talking with that kind of a woman. No one said what they were all thinking, but their faces showed it.

The woman took the hint and left. In her confusion she left her water pot. Back in the village she told the people, “Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out. Do you think this could be the Messiah?” And they went out to see for themselves.

In the meantime, the disciples pressed him, “Rabbi, eat. Aren’t you going to eat?”

He told them, “I have food to eat you know nothing about.”

The disciples were puzzled. “Who could have brought him food?”

Jesus said, “The food that keeps me going is that I do the will of the One who sent me, finishing the work he started. As you look around right now, wouldn’t you say that in about four months it will be time to harvest? Well, I’m telling you to open your eyes and take a good look at what’s right in front of you. These Samaritan fields are ripe. It’s harvest time!

“The Harvester isn’t waiting. He’s taking his pay, gathering in this grain that’s ripe for eternal life. Now the Sower is arm in arm with the Harvester, triumphant. That’s the truth of the saying, ‘This one sows, that one harvests.’ I sent you to harvest a field you never worked. Without lifting a finger, you have walked in on a field worked long and hard by others.”

Many of the Samaritans from that village committed themselves to him because of the woman’s witness: “He knew all about the things I did. He knows me inside and out!” They asked him to stay on, so Jesus stayed two days. A lot more people entrusted their lives to him when they heard what he had to say. They said to the woman, “We’re no longer taking this on your say-so. We’ve heard it for ourselves and know it for sure. He’s the Savior of the world!” (John 4:5-42 TM)

During these troubling times, take solace in the fact that Jesus cares. Paul shares the vision of what walking in faith can do. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55 NIV)

Scriptures marked TM are taken from 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

Spice Up Your Life, February 10, 2020

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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.

Let Him Shine, January 27, 2020

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

Last night the lights went out. It was dark. I mean dark. I went to the front of the house to see if the whole neighborhood lost electricity or just us. By the time I reached the hall, I had realized it was a bad idea. I headed back to retrieve a flashlight from the nightstand before I stumbled over a chair or table or something left in a spot I didn’t expect. I couldn’t see anything with cloud cover and the darkness.

It made me wonder about people living before electric lights. Just two hundred years ago, candlelight would have been the extent of the illumination to lead me through my house last night. Have you ever traveled through a house by candlelight? It’s not much. Certainly, more than pure darkness, but not much.

Candles produce about thirteen lumens, less than a two and a half-watt small Christmas tree bulb. Can you imagine living with no more light than that? Picture yourself as the woman looking for the lost coin with just a candle. Or think of the fear of huddling in the darkness during one of those famous Texas thunderstorms with only your oil lamp to provide some relief from the dark and the howling wind that threaten to overtake you.

Our kids don’t know much about physical darkness today. Few have seen the beauty of the Milky Way with their eyes. Light pollution from most of our cities keeps us from observing that band of stars that populate our galaxy and stretches across the sky. The lights from towns mask the brilliance of the stars except on oceans or deserts. We don’t know darkness, so we don’t appreciate the light.

Now that you’ve given a little thought to life without electric lights. Now that you’ve spent a moment putting yourself back a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand years into the past looking into the darkness of the night that surrounds you wondering about the predators that might be lurking in the shadows. I’d like you to listen to the words Isaiah wrote concerning the coming savior of the world.

They come from the book by his name from chapter 9.

But there will be no more gloom for those who knew such hardship. In times past, God humbled the land of Zebulun and Naphtali; later, He will restore the honor and glory to the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee, home of the nations.

The people who had been living in darkness

have seen a great light.

The light of life has shined on those who dwelt.

in the shadowy darkness of death.

And You, God, will make it happen. You bolstered the nation,

making it great again. You have saturated it with joy.

Everyone in it is full of delight in Your presence,

like the joy they experience at the harvest,

like the thrill of dividing up the spoils of war.

For as You did back in the day when Midian oppressed us,

You will shatter the yoke that burdens them,

You will lift the load that weighs them down,

You will break the rod of their oppressor.

About whom is Isaiah talking? The God-Man, Jesus. He sheds light on the darkness of our hearts. He opens our minds to what God intends us to be. He makes a way for us to enter into the presence of a holy God when we know we do not deserve to be there. Jesus, God wrapped in human flesh to show us how much he cares for us. He came to pay the price for our disobedience. He died for you and me so that we might live.

From an earthly point of view, he grew up in the most unlikely place, Galilee, and in one of the most unlikely villages in that region, Nazareth. No one would have thought the King of all kings would come from a place like that. He knew what it meant to grow up on the “other side of the tracks” in poverty and crime-ridden neighborhoods. Nathaniel understood Nazareth when he commented, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

But something did. Someone did. Jesus. The one who brings light to a dark world. His light is not that lumen candle the people of his day used to illuminate their darkened houses in a storm, but John described his glorified body in his Revelations as brighter than the sun. You can’t look at the sun for more than a few seconds without some serious pain; the light is so intense. That’s the light Jesus brings to our hearts.

The end of the first month of 2020 approaches fast. We’ve talked about the coming of God into our world and how we should listen to him, seek him, share him. We should also let him illuminate our lives in such a way that he can shine through us so that others see him in us. We should reflect his light in all we do. Today is a good day to start, don’t you think?

Seek Him, January 13, 2020

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

Last week I talked about John’s description of Jesus as the Word. We are bombarded by words every day that attempt to sway us to the world’s way of thinking, but Jesus gives us truth because he is truth. I want to go back to John’s description again, but in a different light.

Imagine yourself living in Jesus’ day. You live in a small village outside Jerusalem and see Roman soldiers pass through your town almost every day. When you see them coming, you do your best to make yourself invisible because the Roman soldiers have a reputation for cruelty. You hate the very fact they occupy your nation and live among you. You detest the abuse they inflict on innocent villagers who happen to be in their way or hesitate to do what they ask or look at them with anything other than honor and respect.

You’ve witnessed the verbal abuse, the floggings, and the crucifixions these beasts made an art form in their heinous subjugation of others. You’ll do anything to keep your family and yourself out of their sight as they pass through.

The Pharisees that rule the synagogues and temple are not much better. The rules they pile on you to appease God create such a burden it seems impossible to please the God Moses told us to serve. Is he any different than the pantheon of Roman and Greek gods who demand so much? The Pharisees have added so many laws, things we must and must not do to please God, it seems easier to satisfy Zeus than Jehovah.

But you’ve heard of a prophet named John, who has said the Messiah has come. He says we should repent, and he has called the Pharisees vipers because they tell us to do things they do not do themselves. He calls them hypocrites to their faces. So you go out to see this prophet. And you happen to be there when the writer of the gospel of Matthew describes an incredible event: “Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.

And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:13-17 NIV)

God arrived. The Kingdom of heaven came to earth. The Messiah, the Redeemer, lives with us. There is hope for peace and relief from the struggle you’ve faced all your life. Something good is about to happen. This man you saw come up from the water will change everything. You can feel the excitement in the air as all around you experience the beginning of his ministry today.

Someone beside you reminds you of the power of the voice of God as they sing out one of David’s Psalms:

Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.

Ascribe to the LORD the glory of his name; worship the LORD in holy splendor.

The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over mighty waters.

The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.

The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.

He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox.

The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire.

The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, “Glory!”

The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever.

May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace! (Psalms 29 NIV)

This man is the one. His voice carries the strength and power of the Almighty because he is the Son of Jehovah. His voice separated the waters at creation. His voice has the power of the whirlwind and shakes the earth. His voice rings across the water and through the valley where you stand, and you feel the majesty in it. As he speaks, you know he fears nothing.

The Romans from whom you cower are nothing to him. The Pharisees standing on the shore quiver at his gaze. The poor and outcast feel his compassion. The mood of those around him changes as his eyes make contact with theirs. It seems no one can encounter him without being affected. It’s like he can see into your soul.

The crowd would follow him anywhere right now. But he left as soon as he came out of the water. No one really knows where he went. Some think he went to Jerusalem, but the road is too busy for someone not to notice him. Some say he went back to Gallilee, but again the road is too heavily traveled for him just to disappear. Some say he was led into the wilderness by an angel. But who is to say how an angel looks?

Whoever this man is, you know you want to see him and hear his voice again. Wherever this man has gone, you know you want to follow him. There is something about him that draws you to him like a moth to a flame. You know he will satisfy the hunger in your heart as nothing else can. If only you can find him once more, you will never let him get away from you…ever.

Perhaps a few thought like the man described in this story. Most did not. The same is true today. We have 2,000 years of evidence that Jesus is who he said he was. We can trace with our technology, all the cross-references between Old Testament prophecy and Jesus’ fulfillment of those prophecies, almost 500 of them. The odds that Jesus is not the Messiah based on prophecy fulfillment statistical analysis alone is so great as to be irrefutable, better than our best criminal DNA matches to a single individual.

So, if that’s true, why do we resist him so much? He never told us to do anything that would hurt anyone, or that would hurt us. His commands are simple: Love God; and love others. Those two commands are not always easy to carry out, but they are simple to remember. So, why do we not listen? Why do we push him away? Why are we so insistent on having our way and not his? A single word answers the question and it’s the same word that caused Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Selfish. I want what I want. Period. Even at the expense of eternal separation from the God who made me and gave his all for my redemption.

This year, put yourself in the place of the man in the story just outside Jerusalem. Long for the one John baptized. Seek the voice of the one who can give peace and joy in a world filled with war and anger. He is here. He wants us to find him. It doesn’t take much effort, but we do have to walk away from the world to him. I guarantee it is worth the effort.

An Argument Worth Winning, November 11, 2019

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

Have you ever gotten yourself into one of those debates you never wish you’d entered? One you know there was nothing you could do but dig a deeper hole for yourself? You know the kind. Sometimes they involve politics or science or family or religion or a host of other topics, but there is just no way out and absolutely no winning.

In those debates, facts are fuzzy at best. No one has the real scoop because no one was around when events took place or like traffic accidents, everyone there saw the event from a different angle and so saw the crash just a little differently. It’s like standing on the other side of the word mom. From one side it says MOM, from the other it says WOW. Who is right? Both maybe. But not really, because the person who wrote the word in the first place is the right one.

After the fact, when the author is gone, and we happen on the word years later with no context, we wouldn’t know who is right. Either of us could walk up to the word and debate all day long about whether it says MOM or WOW and never know until some other intervention brings light to the events that happened that day that caused the writing and how the author penned it into the medium onto which we stare.

That’s how a lot of debates happen with scripture. We weren’t there when authors put words down. Jesus said things we don’t understand. He debated concepts from the old covenant with the scholars of his day that they didn’t understand and wouldn’t accept what he said. But Jesus spoke with authority because he knew facts they didn’t. He saw things from a different perspective. But Jesus’ view was infallible because he was there from the beginning. He was part of the inspiration process for the words in the first place.

Luke records one such debate in chapter 20 of his first book to Theophilus we call the gospel of Luke. Here is what he wrote.

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” (NIV)

The debate between the Sadducees and the Pharisees stayed heated over the topic of the resurrection. The Pharisees believed in a final resurrection of the dead; the Sadducees did not. The Sadducees based their beliefs only on the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, the Books of the Law. The Torah doesn’t mention the resurrection, so obviously, it must not exist according to the Sadducees.

The Pharisees accept the entirety of the Law and Prophets as inspired scripture in which the resurrection can be found and so believe in it. The debates became heated to the point fistfights broke out in the council at times. Amazingly enough, the two groups joined together to try to trap Jesus in his words to condemn him in his teaching. And on this day, the Sadducees took their turn at trying to trap Jesus with their questions.

Let’s use Moses’ rules about marriage to trap Jesus in his teaching about the resurrection. If people rise from the dead, what brother of seven, married to the same woman, will be her husband?

In our Christian faith today, we think this a stupid question. But think about the impact of the answer when first presented. First, the debate over a final resurrection raged within the temple, and the people just listened with no real answer. There might exist some hope of such, but the prevailing thought at the time said that when you died, you went to Sheol, the place of the dead. You existed, but it wasn’t a happy place. Sheol represented all that is anti-life; a place of silence where there is no praise of God; a place where God’s presence is not felt. ^[1]

The Sadducees thought that was the end. You headed to Sheol and stayed. There might be a difference between the righteous and wicked in their experiences in Sheol, but that was the final resting place for everyone. The Pharisees, however, thought Yahweh, Jehovah, would rescue the righteous from Sheol at the judgment. The righteous dead would experience a bodily resurrection from the dead at the end of time.

Jesus ended all debate about the resurrection for all time. First, he answered the Sadducees by pointing out their ignorance about the topic. He pointed out the fact of the resurrection but significantly changed from the current thought of what it meant. The resurrected no longer tied themselves to the Mosaic law but operated under the laws God set, more like the angels in heaven.

Second, he often talked about his own death and resurrection. His disciples and others who heard him didn’t understand at the time but remembered after they found his tomb empty on that first Easter morning. Jesus consistently announced the fact of his resurrection as the first event of many to come. A bodily rising from the dead in a form recognizable to all who saw him.

Third, it happened. Jesus, Paul says, became the first fruits of the resurrection. God ordained a day on which Jesus will return to take with him all those who believe in him for salvation. Paul tells us all the dead will rise first, then we who are left will be taken up with them in the air. I’m not sure I understand what that will look like except that the disciples saw a bodily resurrected Jesus appear with them behind a locked door. He walked with two men on their way to Emmaus and ate with them. More than five hundred people saw him after his resurrection in a physical form that defies what we know about physics.

Jesus demonstrated what those resurrected bodies could do. We don’t understand it. Many couldn’t believe it then and don’t believe it now. But his resurrection is the cornerstone of our faith. If Jesus did not come out of that tomb on that Sunday morning, the disciples would have abandoned the message. The Jewish Council and the Romans would have branded Jesus one more renegade, trying to overthrow the status quo. We would still stand condemned in our sins.

But the resurrection is real. Jesus did it. We believe. He forgives. We have hope in him. Those who believe will live with him forever in resurrected bodies like his resurrected body.

Read about him. Hope in him. Believe in him. And live.

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

[1] Sheol: The Abode of the Dead: A Study of the Imagery of Sheol (שְׁאוֹל ) in the Book of Psalms, BIBSPACES: ‘Moving in Christ,’ https://bibspaces.wordpress.com/2017/06/13/sheol-the-abode-of-the-dead-a-study-of-the-imagery-of-sheol-שְ%D7%81או%D6%B9ל-in-the-book-of-psalms/

Love the Underdog, November 4, 2019

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

I like stories where the underdog wins. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been much of an athlete. In Junior High, I tried out for the football team and discovered with my size at the time, pain and I didn’t work well together. I was a cornerback, and everyone who came at me weighed at least 30 pounds more than me. I saw a lot of blue skies that year while lying on my back. Did I tell you I’m not fond of pain? This business of no pain, no gain, just doesn’t work for me. It seems pain is there to tell us something is wrong. We might be doing something stupid and need to stop.

I like it when the underdog wins. Whether in sports, business, or life. It’s good to see the guy you least expect to come out on top do just that occasionally. It helps us to know there is hope that any of us can make it. Underdog stories give us the energy and enthusiasm to keep on going when things look kind of bleak. They give us courage when we want to back away from some seemingly insurmountable obstacle in our path.

We find an underdog story told by Luke from some eyewitnesses that saw Jesus come to Jericho. In chapter 19 of the writings in his name, he shares the account in this way.

He [Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”

So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”

Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

Zacchaeus would be called an underdog. No doubt about it. First, he was short. So short, he couldn’t see over the heads of the crowds gathered along the road, waiting to see Jesus. That meant he must find a way to maneuver through the mass or find a higher vantage point. Otherwise, the preacher everyone talked about would pass by without Zacchaeus seeing him.

Second, Zacchaeus held one of the most hated occupations in Israel. He collected taxes for Rome from his own people. And how did he earn his wages? From the taxes he collected. Zacchaeus added a little more to each Form 1040 to make sure he could pay his mortgage each month. Everyone knew the game. Tax collectors lived on the excess the received above that which Rome required. And that leads to the third problem for Zacchaeus.

The man was rich. In ancient times, Israel did reasonably well economically. Like any city, Jericho had its slums, its middle-class, and its wealthy. I picture Luke, a physician, one of the higher class in both our day and his, knew what rich looked like. Zacchaeus may have been Jericho’s poster child for the wealthy.

That meant no one was going to let him through. He would not push his way past that mob to see the man called Jesus. He’d have to find another way. So he did. Luke tells us he ran down the road and found a tree to climb. Picture in your mind this middle-aged man in flowing robes running down the street, kicking off his sandals, and climbing a tree. Zacchaeus probably put on a few extra pounds since buying food wouldn’t be a problem for him. So watch him in your mind’s eye pulling his rotund body up those limbs to find the right spot where the branches wouldn’t sag too far, but he’d get a good view of this miracle man.

Then imagine the surprise when Jesus stops under the tree. I expect most thought Jesus would ridicule this thief among them. He stole their money and gave it to their oppressors. They knew Jesus was about to let Zacchaeus have it. He preached righteousness and holiness, after all.

But that’s not what Jesus did. Luke says, “When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.'”

Stay at the house of the tax collector? Spend time with this thief? Make friends with someone who has tried his best to steal us blind through the years? Surely, not! But Jesus did. The crowd didn’t applaud Jesus’ action. They grumbled and complained. Why would the Prophet, the Teacher, the Rabbi, the Son of God, go to the house of a sinner? Why would he dirty himself by even being in this tax collector’s presence? They were not happy. Zacchaeus was. Jesus was. The underdog won.

But the day turned in a rather strange way. After spending time with Jesus, the tax collector changed. He saw people the way Jesus saw people. Zacchaeus’ focus shifted. Remember what happened? Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”

Zacchaeus didn’t think about what it might cost. He didn’t pull out his calculator to see if he would still be rich or if his plan would put him in the poorhouse. He just did it. We’re not told, but I expect Zacchaeus carried through with his promise. Meeting Jesus will do that to you.

Then Jesus says an interesting thing that you might not have caught before. Listen again. Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

Did you get it? Salvation came through living out the commands Jesus gave us. There are only two. Love God and love your neighbor. Then Jesus told his disciples to make more like themselves. Teach them to love God and love their neighbors. Let them see faith demonstrated through love as James and Paul and Peter tell us. Zacchaeus did it and found salvation.

We can find salvation, too.

We forget about that horizontal beam of the cross, but Jesus says it’s as important as the vertical one. He says you can’t love God whom you can’t see if you don’t love those around you that you can see. Paul’s letters and the other epistles tell us the same thing. Love other people and give us some examples of how to do that. Then, like Zacchaeus, we can find salvation. It’s not about a works-based faith, but as James says and as Paul says, faith without works is no faith. Expressing your faith through your behavior driven by the love of Christ in you demonstrates your faith.

We need more of that demonstrated faith in our world today. We see plenty of hate and vengeance and revenge. What we need to see is love demonstrated – a cup of water for a thirsty child, a blanket for a cold and homeless woman, a small meal for a hungry man on the street. We need to show we love God by loving those around us who appear so unlovable.

That’s what Jesus did, and that’s what he calls us to do. Just love – with our actions. Be Jesus to the world around us. Now go and do what he said.

Humble as the Son of God? September 2, 2019

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

You’ll find something interesting about military members who return from combat with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Sometimes it can be pretty severe causing a person to be unable to function well because of their experiences. Sometimes it’s a mild case that just causes a few hiccups and peculiarities in their behavior. One of those peculiar behaviors can be seen in most of those returning from combat zones.

I admit I’m one of those trying to recover from some of the things I’ve seen in some of those place the Army chose to send me over the years. It’s not always easy and I don’t always know what will trigger those memories, but one thing that I really don’t like and most of my military friends who have been in combat share my aversion. I don’t like to sit with my back to public doors. I want to see the exits when I’m in public.

In restaurants, I prefer booths against the wall and I want to face the entrance. In theaters, I like the back rows. They are high and I can see everyone else in the place. I’m not very good in large crowds and have a tendency to creep to the edges, not into the middle. I get anxious when I end up in positions that put me in opposition to my preferred spots. I’m working on it and know the likelihood of something happening is slim, but still, the brain works in strange ways after facing some of those past experiences.

What’s really fun is putting a bunch of us in a room together and watching to see who gets the prime seats first and watching the reactions of those who didn’t quite get there in time. I know my PTSD is not so severe as some of my buddies and in those instances try to make sure their needs are met, but I can’t say I’m always comfortable with the idea.

The lectionary from Luke chapter 14 reminded me of those seating peculiarities. Jesus told a parable about a wedding feast that goes like this:

Now Jesus told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of hone, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you. ‘Give you place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

I remember in one of my dad’s pastorates one of the ladies in the church told us how she “humbled” herself. She had hair down past her waist when she let it down. Of course, she would never do that in the church in those days, she always had it tied up in a bun. But every week, she let her hair down and dunked it in the commode to show God she loved him. We didn’t ask if she flushed first. Sometimes when you stood too close, I’m not sure she did.

And I’m not sure why she felt the need to tell us how humble she was by trying to flush her hair down the toilet. I’m not so sure God really cared much about that. And I’m sure he didn’t care about her proud attitude of her faithful ritual. My dad usually had a hard time keeping a straight face when she proudly announced her weekly ritual. The kids sitting around the church didn’t even try. We giggled and laughed as you would expect.

I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant by taking a lower place and being pulled up to a place of honor. I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t want us to stuff our heads in toilets to let him know we were humble. That’s pretty ridiculous in my book. And for all of us who heard it and knew her, we knew she took a lot of pride in her ridiculous ritual. She wouldn’t miss that dunking for anything…even her son’s graduation! Can you imagine? I don’t think God can either. He did make an incredible zoo.

We should strive toward a life of humility, though. Jesus is described as humble. He was God, but didn’t flaunt it. He could have. He could have grand-standed and shown off a lot more than he did. We have a few instances where he did some amazing things. Feed 5,000 men plus their families with a boy’s lunch. Make new eyes for a blind man. Fix legs that had never walked. Raise kids from the dead. Call a man out of the tomb who had already started to smell in the Mideast heat. Yep, those are pretty outlandish kinds of acts. But in most of those instances, he told them not to tell anyone. Just go about your business. Leave my name out of it. Give praise to the Father, don’t mention me. And I think he meant it.

Of course it didn’t work. People saw those miracles or the results of those miracles and wanted to know how they happened. And the recipients couldn’t help but tell their stories. Jesus was at the center of every one of them. He didn’t ask for recognition, but he got it. In fact, he got so much of it the religious leaders decided he needed to die. Interesting how it was okay for them to break the rules because they thought he was breaking the rules, huh?

So what does it mean to be humble? Jesus knew he was the son of God. God gave him an incredibly important mission. Yet he was humble. We define the word as: having or showing a modest or low estimate of one’s own importance. If we look at some synonyms of the word, we find these: meek, deferential, respectful, submissive, diffident, self-effacing, unassertive; unpresuming, modest, unassuming, self-deprecating; subdued, chastened

But he was God incarnate. How could he be meek and submissive and modest and unassuming as God incarnate. I think the answer lay in his relationship to the Father. Jesus was fully God, but set aside the glory of heaven to dwell in this space with us. He assumed the same flesh and blood we have and leaned on his heavenly Father for actions that seemed so miraculous.

He told us we would do more than he did after he returned to the Father and he sent the Comforter to be with us. The same power that raised him from the dead is available to us to do the work the Father has in store for us. What is that work? Redeeming the world through him. We are instruments of his love and we can tap into the power source, his spirit, to enable us to fulfill the role he planned for us.

But we must remember it is not us. Paul reminds us, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” That is true, but I must remember it is through him, not through me. Jesus fed the 5,000 through the power of the triune godhead. He raised the dead by the power of the triune godhead. He rose on Easter by the power of the triune godhead. Our finite brains can’t really wrap our minds around what that means. God is one, yet three. He did all those things recorded in the gospels and empowered others to do incredible things recorded in Acts and the epistles.

When we accept Jesus as Lord of life, King of all, the creator who brings order out of chaos and forgives us for our sins. He empowers us to do the works he set out for us. Will we do the kinds of miracles recorded in the New Testament? Maybe, maybe not. For sure, we can love those around us with a love that transcends that which the world knows or understands. We can demonstrate God’s love to those around us and cause them to wonder what happened to us to make us different from the rest of humanity.

I mentioned at the beginning a lot of soldiers end up with PTSD as a result of combat. I’m appalled at what humans can and will do to other humans whether in combat, as terrorist acts, or just through plain acts of evil. I’ve seen some of it that I would like to forget but know I never will. God destroyed humanity once with a flood because all our thoughts and intentions were evil from the time we were youths.

Jesus’ death and resurrection changed all that, though. He makes it possible for our minds to be transformed and for us to begin a better journey. One filled with his love for one another. One that because of his empowerment, can show the world a piece of the new heaven and new earth that awaits his adopted children.

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.

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.

The Questionable Life Challenge, May 27, 2019

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

Our pastor has challenged us since the first of the year to live a questionable life. Those of you who hear that for the first time might be taken back a bit. What do you mean live a questionable life? Does that mean skate at the edge of evil? Does that mean throw out everything we’ve learned and live like we want? Does that mean to make the Christians or others around us question our faith?

No. To live a questionable life in the context of our pastor’s messages, he challenges us to live like Jesus. Live a life that causes people to stop and question why we do the things we do. Why do we go out of our way to be kind to those who defame our character? Why do we smile and give warm greetings to those who ridiculous us and only want to do us harm? Why do we not live with the same standards of vengeance and revenge and selfish motivation that the rest of the world lives by?

Live a life that causes people to stop and question the goodness of our life. Live in such a way that others see the love of God extended to the unlovable. Live in a way that brings questions about why we live a life of love. Live a questionable life. Sounds like a good challenge, right?

There are a couple of verses in Psalms 67 that remind us why we should live like that. The Psalmist writes: “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah that your way may be known upon earth, your saving power among all nations.”

That “Selah” in the middle is an important interlude in those verses. Scholars have attached various meanings to the word including instructions to musicians accompanying the playing of the psalms, but most, including those scholars, agree that selah asks us to stop and listen. Pause and contemplate what you just heard. Think about what was just said because it impacts the words you are about to hear. That is so poignant in these two lines of verse from the psalms.

Let God be gracious to us and bless us and make our way a good one for a single purpose. So that those around us sharing this planet we call earth will know your saving power. How we live should reflect the gracious blessings God gives us. We who have experienced his saving power should reflect the light of his face in ours. We should live such outpouring lives of love to others that others know that it can only be by the power of God we are able to live that way.

I heard a great order from the Roman emperor Jullian when he was trying to oust the Christians from his kingdom. He said these atheists were winning over too many people by their kindness. Just as a side note, they were known as atheists because they believed in only one God. These followers of one God didn’t believe in a pantheon of gods as his empire did. In fact, many believed the emperor himself a god. So these Christians, followers of the Way, were certainly far afield in their beliefs. To thwart their progress, he ordered his officials to be kind to the populace. Well, that lasted about as long as it took him to say it. Why? Because the followers of the way didn’t need an order to love people. They did it from the inside out, not the outside in. Their hearts were made pure by the presence of the Holy Spirit in them. Jullian’s officials had no chance of winning against such odds.

Questionable lives? Absolutely. In their day, the early church fed and clothed the poor, the sick, the outcasts. They took care of the widows whose only recourse in life was prostitution if they couldn’t find another husband quickly. Women had no place in that society. The Christians took it upon themselves to take care of those who could not take care of themselves. Love won out. People asked why. Believers told them about the freedom they received in Jesus. Forgiveness from sin. Freedom to live truth instead of lies.

The Romans couldn’t provide it. The Greeks couldn’t mimic it. The only ones with a corner on the market giving hope and peace and genuine love were these uneducated men and women following this guy that had been crucified at the hands of his own people and the Roman government. It didn’t make any sense and yet here were the facts in front of them. Love wins. Forgiveness wins. Truth wins. Peace wins. Hope wins.

That was then. But what should we do now? Well, live a questionable life. People still know genuine love when they see it. People still recognize authentic care and concern when it happens. People still know the difference between an act and the real thing. When confronted by real love for each other, Jesus says the world will know we are different, that we follow him, that there is something strange and unusual, and good about us. Questionable lives.

That’s how Jesus lived everyday. Talking with women of questionable character but bringing them peace, not punishment. Questionable actions on his part. Telling men to pick up their beds and walk away on mended legs on the sabbath, doing work, questionable activity. Telling us politics don’t matter. Give to the pagan dictator his due. Governments, even bad ones, are allowed to stand because there are some things that only governments can do to bring order into the lives of large populations. Without them, even bad ones, chaos would reign. Hard to believe Jesus wasn’t a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent. He was a man living under the rule of a Roman dictator doing his best to share the good news that there is a greater kingdom for us to concern ourselves. God’s kingdom is here.

So how do we relate that kind of living into today’s culture? For one thing, we need to stop bashing each other on the Internet about everything. Talk about unsocial media! I see some of the most unChristlike behavior coming from people who call themselves Christians when they get behind the barrier of their keyboard and screen. Remember Jesus wasn’t into politics. The only thing he ever said about politics was to give the required support to whatever government is providing the current rule over the country where you live. Well, that’s a lot different than the blasts that come from both sides of the political aisle today, isn’t it.

Jesus helped the beggars, the prostitutes, the widows, the outcasts. Jesus went into the places no one else would go. Mother Theresa would be our modern day example. A nun who poured her life into the lives of others with no regard for her own. I encourage you to read the story of her life, particularly the years before she made all the headlines. Read why she became so widely known in the first place. It was her quiet sacrifice to those who could not fend for themselves. And she did it over and over and over, never expecting anything. She did it because she loved God and loved people.

Jesus didn’t care about the color of skin or the nationality of the receiver. We get so hung up on my rights and my poverty and my lack and my… We can all complain if we really look hard enough. But our complaining about our personal plight doesn’t do much for us. While we’ve been harping about how unfair life is, China has quietly taken over the largest number of billionaires in the world by about 50% according to a recent CEOWorld Report. With 819 billionaires in China, the United States came in a distant second with 579. There are 36 million millionaires in the world today. And that group of the 1% of the wealthiest people in the world hold half of the world’s wealth.

Does that make you angry? The deep question I have is why? It really is only money and money cannot make you happy. I expect if you could truly find a scale of life contentment and happiness, the lower 50% of the world’s population would rank higher than the upper 50%. That might sound crazy to most people in this country and in most societies where money is the driving factor in life. But when Jesus came, he turned the world upside down.

Jesus didn’t strive to be poor. He didn’t purposely strike out to abandon all material possessions. I don’t think he did. I think he provided for his mother and made sure she was taken care of after his earthly father died. In his day, age 30 was when a man was thought to have reached the age of maturity and could share wisdom as a teacher and leader. But I think he started on his journey away from Nazareth at the age of 30 partly because he worked to set aside enough to make sure Mary was taken care of after he was gone. He wanted to make sure she was not part of the troop of widows and orphans that turned to thievery or selling their bodies in order to survive.

No, Jesus didn’t think about money the same way we do. He knew we needed funds to do certain things because we live in this corrupt world, but he also knew that relationships are far more valuable than money. He knew that our intimacy with God is much more precious than any treasure here. Think about how ridiculous we are about some of that treasure. Diamonds are just pretty rocks thrown out of volcanoes from the past. Gold is a pretty metal that we wear around our necks or fingers. We’ve learned in the last half century to use them in different ways because of their physical properties, but that’s only been in the last 50 to 100 years we’ve made those discoveries. For millennia before that, it was just pretty stuff. Sometimes, we’re just crazy! But because of our selfishness, we think, “If I give it to you, then I won’t have it.” And therein lies the problem – our selfishness.

We hear about the disparities, the violence, the unfair things that happen in the world around us and it stirs our emotions. We sometimes become victims to those unfair practices and bite our tongues and recite WWJD, WWJD, WWJD. What would Jesus do? A nice mantra a few years ago reminding us that Jesus said, “Do unto others what you would have them do to you.”

But I think we get that wrong. Jesus didn’t think vengeance. He didn’t think about the cruelty of the world against him. Jesus loved. What would Jesus do? He would reach out his hand and help the one who beat him, pick up the club and put it back in the back of the pick up. What would Jesus do? He would encourage the billionaire to continue to be the very best entrepreneur he possibly could because it might mean he would build another building where one of those people begging bread could find a job sweeping the floor or taking out the trash at minimum wage instead of going to bed hungry. And he would talk to the beggar with the same loving spirit as he talked to the billionaire. In fact, if the billionaire met him at Starbucks, he’d probably have a couple of those down-and-outers at the table to introduce them to his friend.

“Do unto others, what you would want them to do to you,” he said. That doesn’t mean refrain from punching them in the nose when someone has hurt you. Although, it does include that. I think Jesus is saying to us, “Would you like someone to sit down and listen to you over a cup of coffee? Then don’t ask, go find someone that looks like they need someone to just listen and take them for a cup of coffee and listen. No advice. No, “I told you so.” No, demeaning or shocking looks. Just listen. It’s surprising how many people actually know the answer to their problems, they just need to tell themselves out loud and then follow their own advice. And once you’ve listened, then let the Holy Spirit guide you. Let him give you the words you need to say or the actions you need to take. Do what you want someone else to do for you. It’s the Nike commercial. They only took the second half, though. Just do it, but for someone else.

You want people to know you follow Jesus? What is a questionable life? Living out loud the love of God into the lives of the people around you. So go and be Jesus to those who need to see him in the world today.