Saul now urged his servants and his son Jonathan to assassinate David. But Jonathan, because of his strong affection for David, told him what his father was planning. 1 Samuel 19:1-2a (NLT)
The story is downright Shakespearean. I’m surprised the Bard never penned his own version of the story of Saul and David. Saul is the mad king given to fits of jealous rage. David is the young anointed one whom God has chosen to succeed Saul. What’s worse, David is Saul’s son-in-law and the best friend of his first born son, Jonathan. Saul tried desperately to follow Michael Corleone’s advice and “keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” but Saul’s own family members thwart his attempts to whack David.
The problem is, of course, that Saul is trying desperately to thwart God’s own purposes. Like the runaway prophet Jonah, every time Saul tries to oppose God’s will he finds himself running smack dab into it.
God’s designs and purposes are a mysterious thing, but along the journey I have experienced it enough times to know when I sense it. I have watched individuals try to accomplish their own purposes in God’s name and have seen it fail time and time again. I’ve seen individuals striving to stay far away from God while God continuously draws them to Himself. I have experienced God bringing about His purposes despite others active attempts to thwart it.
Today I am thinking hard about Saul and doing a little self-examination. In what areas of my life am I striving against God’s purposes? Where in my life am I being like Saul in my refusal to accept and surrender to God’s grand design? What areas of life to I need to stop struggling and simply surrender?
I am reminded this morning of a conversation I had with a fellow actor during a production this past year. She had been sharing with bits of the story of her own life journey. Like many people, her life had been marked with some difficulty and we were talking about the struggles and disappointments we experience in life.
“I took an informal poll and asked a bunch of people if their lives had turned out the way they had expected when they were young,” my friend told me. “Not one person said ‘yes,'” she explained. “So, I figured that while my life wasn’t what I expected it to be, I’m just like everybody else.”
I recalled this conversation when I read about Saul being unexpectedly anointed king, empowered by God’s spirit, and then choosing to go hide in the baggage. The reality is that we will all face certain events, circumstances, opportunities and callings in this life which we didn’t expect, nor do we feel capable of facing. Like Saul, it’s tempting when experiencing a major curve in life’s road to take a good look at the uncertain path ahead and immediately run for cover.
God makes a habit of throwing unexpected and seemingly tangential waypoints into our journey. Saul experienced it in today’s chapter. Mary experienced it with an unexpected angelic visit and a positive pregnancy test. Paul experienced it on the road to Damascus. Joseph experienced it being sold into slavery by his brothers. Moses experienced it in a conversation with God amidst a burning bush. The twelve disciples experienced it in Jesus’ betrayal and late night arrest, then a few days later in an unexpected appearance of the resurrected Lord.
We cannot control our circumstances, but neither should we be afraid of the road ahead. We who walk by faith are repeatedly told not to fear, not to be anxious, and to choose to rejoice even in the toughest most unexpected stretches of life’s journey. God purposes not the fulfillment of our short-sighted and finite desires but the fulfillment of eternal and divine purposes. God will not call us to walk a path we are incapable of traversing. Even if we stumble and stagger, we can be confident that there is meaning in the struggle which will only be revealed when we later look back with 20-20 hindsight at just how far the journey has brought us.
Now, get out of that steamer trunk and put on your hiking boots. Time is waning and we’ve got a long road ahead of us.
Me and some of my Gospel Team bros on a mission trip (c. 1984)
Meanwhile, the boy Samuel served the Lord by assisting Eli. Now in those days messages from the Lord were very rare, and visions were quite uncommon.
One night Eli, who was almost blind by now, had gone to bed. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was sleeping in the Tabernacle near the Ark of God. Suddenly the Lord called out, “Samuel!”
“Yes?” Samuel replied. “What is it?” 5 He got up and ran to Eli. “Here I am. Did you call me?” 1 Samuel 3:1-5a (NLT)
I have rarely told the story of the beginning of my spiritual journey. Like Samuel, I was called by God as a young man and after sharing the story with my friend Kevin for the first time this past year, he challenged me to share it in a blog post. I have been waiting for the right time. This morning as I read about God’s calling of young Samuel and see the loose parallel, I think that this is the time. Be prepared. This will be a longer post than usual.
I was raised in a nice little neighborhood Methodist church. I like to joke that despite all that I was taught in the Methodist church, I still believed in God. Like a lot of kids in the junior high or middle school age, I experienced the crisis of trying to figure out who I was in the world. I had been “confirmed” in church at the age of 13 and my parents let me know that after being confirmed I was allowed to decide for myself whether I wanted to attend church or not. I believed in God at this point. I mentally accepted the basic tenets of the Christian faith. In retrospect, however, I didn’t have a relationship with the God in whom I said I believed.
After confirmation I stopped going to church for a while. I was a good kid. I enjoyed my junior high years, but over a short period of time there grew within me a nagging confusion about life and what it all meant. I felt depressed and sunk into full blown teen angst. Realizing that I had not been to church regularly for a while I decided to return, wondering if that might not be part of the answer. I got involved in my youth group and started to feel better about things.
In February 1981, a girl in my youth group invited me to make an hour long trip to Marshalltown with her and her dad on a Friday night to hear some guy speak. She was a senior, I was a freshman, and I had a bit of a crush on her – so of course I said “yes.” There was another friend from church going and it sounded better than anything else I might be doing on that Friday night. The speaker was part of a weekend conference at a church there Marshalltown. I listened to this guy talk about God in a way I had never, ever heard before. He spoke about faith being a living relationship with God which was something very different from the simple mental acquiescence to certain spiritual truths that I had always considered “my faith.” Jesus spoke of the eyes of your heart being opened to see the truth clearly, and that night I experienced it personally. The eyes of my heart were opened for the first time. I committed my life to following Jesus. I asked Him to come into my heart to start a personal relationship together. There was a subtle, but substantial shift in my soul. I knew I would never be the same, which has proven true to this day.
My sister, Jody, is two years older than me. Upon arriving back home late that night I shared with her what had happened to me and pretty much demanded that she go with us the following night. She did, and that night I could tell that the eyes of her heart were being opened too. At the end of the service an invitation was given to any who wanted to start a relationship with Jesus and follow Him. She went forward to pray and I was left sitting in the pew praying. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was sitting about 4-5 pews back on the stage right side of the stage right section of pews.
At this point, let me explain that I don’t claim to have spiritual dreams and visions all the time. God may work that way with others, but I have only heard God speak to me clearly on a handful of occasions in 35 years (that’s another blog post, for another day). That cold Saturday night in February was the first time. As I sat in the pew praying, I suddenly felt like I was dreaming in deep REM sleep. In the dream I was sitting in the pew right where I was, but as I looked up toward the front of the church I saw myself standing on the platform speaking just like the guy whom we’d listened to the past two nights. “You are going to proclaim My Word,” a voice said to me. I knew it was God’s voice. Here I was, a young kid in Iowa, hearing God’s voice just like the boy Samuel heard in the temple in today’s chapter.
That was it. Dream over. I was back in my pew watching my sister praying to start her own relationship with Jesus. But, I knew what I saw and heard. It sounded so crazy at the time, but I knew that it was real. That night I went home and told my parents that God had called to me that night. Mom was folding clothes on the family room floor. Dad was laying on the couch. They were watching television. I think they must have wanted to check my pockets for hallucinogens.
“Okay God,” I remember praying shortly thereafter. “If you want me to do this, you’re going to have to open the doors for it to happen, because I don’t know what to do.” I began reading and studying the Bible voraciously. A few weeks later, an adult approached me at church.
“In April, we’re having a youth service,” she said. “We were wondering if you would agree to be one of the youth to share the sermon that morning.”
About eight weeks after God called to me in a dream, I preached my first message.
The following summer my parents, having seen a very distinct change in my sister and me, reaffirmed their own faith in Jesus. As a family we decided to leave our little neighborhood church and start attending another church a few blocks away. This church had a large youth group and also had a youth “Gospel Team” (think “Glee” for Christians). My sister decided to join the Gospel Team and early that fall there was a kick off concert at the church. The Gospel Team Director pulled me aside the week before the concert and asked me if I’d be willing to share my story during the concert. I agreed and during a break in the concert I shared the story about how I decided to become a follower of Jesus.
After the concert, the director sought me out. “I think you’ve got a gift,” he said. “I’m wondering if you’d be interested in joining our team. In a few weeks we’ll start going out every Sunday night to do concerts in different churches around the state. I’d like you to consider going with us and giving a message at each concert.”
And so, less than a year after hearing God’s call to proclaim His Word I was travelling around the state every week doing just that. My Gospel Team experience led to other opportunities to speak in churches, camps, and other groups. But, the story doesn’t end there.
I attended Judson College (now University) for four years where God continued to give me opportunities to speak and to teach. I was even the campus Student Chaplain for a year. As I prepared to graduate, I wondered what I was going to do and thought I might pursue full-time pastoral ministry, but I was newly married and didn’t really want to rack up more debt with grad school. Youth Ministry is a common first step breaking into pastoral ministry, so I began applying for positions as a youth pastor.
There was one youth ministry position open that I desperately wanted, but had little chance of getting. It was a large church with a large youth group and a solid reputation. I figured that without a seminary degree and with no experience there was no way I would even be considered for the job, but I sent in my resume anyway. A few weeks later I received a phone call and a subsequent phone interview, but shortly after the interview I received the polite “thanks, but no thanks,” letter from the search committee. I continued to pursue other options.
Weeks went by and I was no further in figuring out what I was going to do after school. I interviewed and was accepted into the Master’s program in acting at the University of Iowa (ironically, my 10 Ways Being a Theatre Major Prepared Me for Success blog post is now a fixture on their department’s homepage). However, that didn’t seem like the right avenue for me any more than going to seminary. Either option would only add to my debt load and my young wife was less than thrilled with the idea of having to continue working full time to support us.
Then, out of the blue, the Chairman of the search committee for the youth pastor position I figured I would never get called me. “We’ve been praying a lot as a committee,” he said, “And the Holy Spirit keeps bringing you back into our conversation. It’s kind of crazy, but we believe we’re supposed to invite you for another interview.” And so I interviewed again. Quickly, I was asked to visit the church for a weekend round of interviews culminating in me giving the message in the Sunday morning worship service and being voted on by the congregation.
And so, I visited the church the following weekend. I breezed through the interviews. On Sunday morning I stood up on the platform to proclaim God’s Word. Incidentally, it was the same platform I had seen in my dream seven years earlier when God called me. I was interviewing for a position in the very church in Marshalltown where my faith journey following Jesus began and where I heard God’s call. The dream like vision I had been given of standing on the platform in that church was literally fulfilled.
Samuel’s story is one in a long string of examples of God calling and using the young, the weak, and the least to accomplish His purposes. My own story has caused this truth to resonate deep within me. Every person who enters into a relationship with Jesus and is a part of the body of Christ has been spiritually gifted to accomplish God’s divine purpose. This is true no matter the age, social status, gender, background, experience, history, pedigree, or educational level. You don’t need a degree, a certificate, or a stamp of approval from the board of your local church. Using the gifts you’ve been given to serve God and others is part of the daily journey of any Jesus follower.
My and my youth group of 1980s kids in parachute pants and permed hair!
The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith. 1 Timothy 1:5 (NLT)
Whenever I prepare to deliver a message, whether it is in a classroom, stage, boardroom, or sanctuary, I always start by identifying and articulating the one thing I want to communicate. If I can nail that, then the rest of the message become much easier to prepare. If an idea, explanation or illustration does not serve to lead the hearers to the articulated purpose of my message, then I’m wasting my time and theirs. Without a clear purpose, a message will become lost as it meanders in different directions.
In today’s chapter, Paul is instructing his young protege Timothy whom he left behind in the city of Ephesus to teach the followers of Jesus there. Paul clearly articulates the purpose of his instruction: Love from a pure heart, clear conscience, and genuine faith. As I read this I thought of all the messages I have heard through the years that seemingly had little or no clear purpose. I thought of many messages I’ve heard in which the purpose seemed to be judgement, condemnation, and shame.
I’m taking Paul’s purpose with me into my day as I think about all that I think, and say, and do. Is my purpose today an increasing measure of love in my own heart, love that flows from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a genuine faith in Jesus, the One whom I follow?
“Soon I will die,” Joseph told his brothers, “but God will surely come to help you and lead you out of this land of Egypt. He will bring you back to the land he solemnly promised to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”Genesis 50:24 (NLT)
One of the things I’ve recognized in my sojourn through God’s Message these many years is that between the promise being made and the promise being fulfilled there’s a whole lot of time filled with a whole lot of suffering. It’s ironic that Joseph lived this principle and now in the end he makes a promise to his family which wouldn’t be fulfilled for hundreds of years after becoming enslaved and suffering at the hands of the Egyptians. His family would walk in his sandals for generations.
Suffering is part of the journey. There is purpose in the pain. I saw this quote from C.S. Lewis that came across my twitter feed yesterday:
“The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.”
Joseph interpreting the dreams of the baker and the butler, by Benjamin Cuyp, ca. 1630. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Pharaoh’s chief cup-bearer, however, forgot all about Joseph, never giving him another thought. Genesis 40:23 (NLT)
Timing is everything. Over and over again I’ve seen this simple truth bear out along life’s journey. Wise King Solomon put it best in the book of Ecclesiastes (and gave the Byrds the lyrics to their number one hit a couple millenia later):
For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.
The timing of Joseph’s audience with Pharaoh was not yet right and there was a reason the cup-bearer forgot to mention Joseph as requested. Despite Joseph’s series of hard knocks, there was a plan and a reason. God was working His plan to put Joseph in just the right place at just the right time to accomplish His good purpose. Despite the fact that he would have to spend more time in prison, God was looking out for Joseph in the midst of his suffering.
Today, I am thankful for where God has me. It’s not anywhere near where I thought I would be on life’s road. I have only the vaguest of ideas of God’s ultimate plan for me. Nevertheless, the story of Joseph reminds me that even the most arbitrary and negative of circumstances can be threads in a beautiful tapestry and story that God is weaving in and through me.
So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. I Peter 5:6 (NLT)
BERCHEM Nicolaes landscape With Jacob Rachel And Leah (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When Rachel saw that she wasn’t having any children for Jacob, she became jealous of her sister. She pleaded with Jacob, “Give me children, or I’ll die!”
Then Jacob became furious with Rachel. “Am I God?” he asked. “He’s the one who has kept you from having children!”
Then Rachel told him, “Take my maid, Bilhah, and sleep with her. She will bear children for me, and through her I can have a family, too.” So Rachel gave her servant, Bilhah, to Jacob as a wife, and he slept with her. Bilhah became pregnant and presented him with a son. Genesis 30:1-4 (NLT)
There is so much happening in this chapter I felt chaotic reading it this morning. There are four discontent main characters, all part of the same dysfunctional family system, all trying to force God’s hand and make things happen on their own:
Rachel becomes jealous of Leah and parallel’s Jacob’s jealousy of Esau.
When Rachel, then Leah, can’t have children on their own they take matters into their own hands repeat the mistake of Jacob’s grandmother and have him sleep with their maid servants.
The sisters, catty and desperate to have more sons, grasp at superstition, eating mandrakes in hope it will make them pregnant
While the baby-making contest continues between Jacobs wives and concubines, Jacob and Laban continue the family tradition of deception in the ordering of the family business:
Laban deceptively takes the sheep he agreed to give Jacob and gives them to his sons instead
Jacob answers deception with deception, using superstition to try to make more of the spotted sheet Laban had agreed to give him.
I get the sense that all of this jealousy, deception, superstition, desperation, and generational family sin makes for a dramatic amount of crazy in their everyday lives. It feels more than a little out of control, and I think that’s one of the points that I’m taking away from today’s chapter. When we desperately seek to take God’s will into our own hands and make things happen by our own ways and means, the results are often disastrous.
The other thing that I must acknowledge in all of this is that God continued to work His own will and purpose in and through Jacob, Leah and Rachel despite their own sinful deception and foolishness (So, I guess there’s hope for me!). As I journey through God’s Message I’m continually reminded that God’s divine purposes in this world are often carried out by unlikely and arguably unworthy individuals. There’s something unsettling and seemingly unfair about it, but it reminds me that I am not God. I do know see the big picture nor is my butt big enough to occupy His judgement seat.
Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” Genesis 17:17 (NIV)
When I was a young man, I memorized and clung to this line from Paul’s letter to his young protege Timothy:
Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.
I figured that if God had given me spiritual gifts like everyone else, then I was totally going to use those gifts and be of service. I wanted to make a difference. I tried to instill that same spirit in my daughters in their youth, and continue to get jazzed when I see young people with a passion for God actively living out their faith.
Today, I’m at a different place in the journey. If averages and genetics hold sway, you could say that I’m still in mid-life. Nevertheless, I can’t deny the fact that I’m likely on the downhill side. Instead of not letting others think less of me because I’m young, I sometimes feel the need not to let others think less of me because I’m old. As technology advances at breakneck speeds, I wonder if the gulf between generations is expanding and making it easier for in the back stretch and making the final turn to feel irrelevant and lost.
I think that it’s awesome that God made such a huge play in Abram’s life right when Abram was turning 100 and Sarai was in her nineties. God willing, I want the last half of my life to be more productive than the first. I want to live with purpose and witness God doing big things in and through my life when I’m old. I don’t want to stagger and limp to the finish. God grant that I finish strong. I want to be kicking it in to a full sprint when I hit the home stretch and find myself heading for the tape.
Wendy and I live in an unusual situation compared to most married couples I know. We work for the same company and we both work from home. In our spare time we both serve on the Board of Directors for our local community theatre, operate the virtual box office together out of our home, and are regularly involved in shows and productions together on stage. On Sundays, Wendy and I serve together in the visual tech ministry of our church either directing video production or serving behind a video camera. The bottom line is that with the exception of some business travel, Wendy and I are virtually around one another 24/7/365.
Today’s chapter is a virtual web of situational and circumstantial advice, suggestions, and commands surrounding marriage, singleness, and relationships. It’s a little confusing to try and sort out all that Paul is saying and still get the context in which he’s saying it. Whenever I wade into a chapter like this, I try to look for the crux of what the author is getting at. I think the sentence I pulled out from verse 32 is it. Paul’s personal preference is for people to be single like he was, and to be free from earthly concerns so they can focus on eternal matters. He personally saw it as a good thing for people to be free to follow God’s calling without the complications of earthly responsibility.
Being married, and being around your spouse all the time, it’s easy for me to relate to the point that Paul was trying to get through to the believers in Corinth. Marriage creates earthly entanglements. Perhaps this is even more clear to me because my beloved and I are around one another so much. Because of me and the girls, Wendy’s mental focus is constantly shifting from what she needs to do herself to managing the house and the needs of others in the family. She never complains (okay, she rarely complains), but there is no doubt that I am a complication to her existence. The same is true on my side of the ledger. Besides the day to day priorities of making sure I’m looking out for Wendy’s needs, being married carries added responsibility of thinking about provision, planning, and legacy. I’m not just responsible for myself but for my family and the probability that I will leave this world before them.
Marriage creates earthly entanglements. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it is an honorable thing and Paul acknowledges that those who are in marriage are called to serve their spouse well. Nevertheless, one must understand that marriage carries weighty and far reaching consequences. You can’t always do the things you personally desire or perhaps to even to do things to which you feel called because your higher priority is looking out for and meeting the needs of your spouse. As a single person, Paul observed the freedom he had to serve Jesus wholeheartedly without the entanglements of marriage, and he obviously thought it a good thing to do if a person could pull it off.
This morning, I’m thinking about Wendy and me and one observation that Paul didn’t make. Sometimes two are better than one because there is a better return on their labor. I am convinced that Wendy and I together accomplish more and do a better job than either of us would alone. We compliment one another’s strengths, sharpen one another’s dull edges, and protect one another from our weaknesses and shortcomings. The marriage brings earthly entanglements, but it also brings tangible, eternal strengths to our earthly purposes.
Joseph is raised from prison to prominence as the biblical story is retold in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
Chapter-a-Day Psalm 66
You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance. Psalm 66:11-12 (NIV)
Wendy and I are in production week for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The award-winning Broadway musical retells the story of Joseph (Genesis 37-47), the famed little brother who was given a dream that he would rise to greatness and all of his brothers would bow down to him. His older siblings responded to Joseph’s dream in typical fashion by throwing him into a well and then selling him into slavery. Though his father was told he was dead, Joseph was actually taken to Egypt where he was put to work in the house of prominent local official. After a brief stint of success in his job, Joseph was wrongfully accused by his master’s wife and put into prison. Talk about a string of bad fortune.
Through the long weeks of production, Wendy and I have constantly ruminated on the story of Joseph. I can only imagine the cynicism and anger Joseph must have felt rotting in the Egyptian prison. For years and years and years his dreams of greatness had proven to be nothing more than pipe dreams. One bad turn after another appears to lead Joseph further and further away from the dream God gave him as a boy. It seems so unfair for God to give a promise of incredible blessing, then immediately lead Joseph down a marathon road of suffering.
Of course, Joseph’s misfortune proves to be God’s divine providence in the end. In prison, Joseph gains a reputation for having a knack with dreams. Circumstance brings him before Pharaoh who was having some confusing dreams about an upcoming famine. Pharaoh is so impressed with Joseph that he raises him to a place of unparalleled prominence and puts him in charge of getting the nation ready for the upcoming famine. I’ll let you guess or read the rest (or buy a ticket and see the show over the next two weekends). Joseph’s long, hard road was actually preparing him for leadership, honing his character, and putting him in just the right circumstance to save his family.
I was reminded once again of Joseph’s incredible story when I read David’s lyrics from Psalm 66 this morning. Joseph’s biography, along with David’s, remind us that God’s ultimate purpose for us is often at the end of a tough road. Wendy and I can bear witness to this simple spiritual principle as we see it at work in our own lives. The truth is, we want the blessing without the burden. We want the pleasure without the pain. Yet, God’s purpose is for our spiritual maturity and wholeness, and that does not come without a price.
Today, I’m thankful for the hard roads I’ve trekked on this life journey. They haven’t been easy or fun, but they have been both necessary and beneficial. It is what it is.
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:6-7 (NIV)
I want you to be free from the concerns of this life. 