Tag Archives: Relationship

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Leviticus 18

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God spoke to Moses: “Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them, I am God, your God. Don’t live like the people of Egypt where you used to live, and don’t live like the people of Canaan where I’m bringing you. Don’t do what they do. Obey my laws and live by my decrees. I am your God. Keep my decrees and laws: The person who obeys them lives by them. I am God. Leviticus 18:1-5 (MSG)

When, as parents, we make rules for our children there is generally a reason behind the rules. A young child doesn’t like, nor does he or she understand, the need to be strapped tightly into a car seat. It’s uncomfortable and confining to a little one naturally given to constant movement and squirming. Any parent can attest to the screams, tears and rebellious striving which occurs when strapping a squirmy toddler into a car seat. We as parents understand, however, that in the big picture we’re preserving and protecting life.

As I journey through Leviticus, I’m not just looking at God’s rules, but trying to discern our Heavenly Father’s motivation in making the rule in the first place. As I read through the laundry list of rules regarding sexual behavior in today’s chapter, a couple of thoughts came to mind:

  • The cultures of that day were given to sexual immorality. The beginning of today’s chapter makes it clear that these rules were meant to differentiate God’s people from the people around them. Incestuous relationships in ancient Egypt are well documented by historians. God wanted His people marked by their purity, not their perversions.
  • There is a constant theme in the chapter, not just about sexual acts, but the violation which takes place within the act.  Sex outside the lines creates personal, relational, spiritual and societal violations. Rather than building healthy souls, relationships and a stronger society, sexual violations tear individuals and relationships apart, weakening the societal fabric. Historians have clearly linked moral decline with the demise of multiple ancient societies. It’s not rocket science.
  • There is a direct connection between the sexual and the spiritual. Many of the gods and idols in ancient times were fertility gods whom cultures worshipped by committing sexual acts. Fertility gods became a kind of spiritual cover for prostitution and any number of sexual behaviors the fell outside God’s intentions. There is a particular reference to Molech (a.k.a. Moloch) in today’s chapter, who was a god worshipped by many of the cultures in the area where the Israelites wandered. People brought their children to be sacrificed (typically burned alive) to Molech. It is often argued that gods like Molech rose from sexually dysfunctional, spiritually dead cultures as they sought to justify their behavior and eliminate the unwanted consequence of their illicit sexual activities. It was a pretty preverse cycle. Give yourself over to unbridled sexual activity in the worship of a fertility god, but when the sexual act actually results in fertility you sacrifice the baby back to the fertility god.

I have to connect the dots here. Sex outside the lines creates personal and relational violations in which individuals are victimized. To perpetuate and justify the repeated violation,  we must depersonalize and diminish the victim, as well as eliminate the unwanted result [read: children].

I have to dig one level deeper. I have to believe that it is not just about society as a whole with which God is concerned. Any who have struggled with pornography or sex outside the lines can attest to the truth that a microcosm of this same destructive spiritual regression can occur within the individual human soul.

God made his motivation clear in his preamble to the sexual rules in today’s chapter. The rules were intended to preserve and promote individual, spiritual, relational and societal life. God was tightly buckling his young nation of sinful people into a cultural car seat knowing that death would result on many levels for not doing so.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Leviticus 4

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He is then to take some of the bull’s blood, bring it into the Tent of Meeting, dip his finger in the blood, and sprinkle some of it seven times before God, before the curtain of the Sanctuary. He is to smear some of the blood on the horns of the Altar of Fragrant Incense before God which is in the Tent of Meeting. He is to pour the rest of the bull’s blood out at the base of the Altar of Whole-Burnt-Offering at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. Leviticus 4:5-7 (MSG)

Let’s face it, reading through all of the prescribed sacrifices in the book of Leviticus is a very bloody affair. I have to keep in mind that in all of this blood-letting there is a core spiritual teaching that is central to understanding who Jesus is, why Jesus came, and what Jesus did.

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, God’s message tells us that sin entered the world. Every one of us, at one time or another, has willfully chosen to do what we knew was wrong. That’s sin. As we learned the other day, that willful disobedience is like yeast which taints the whole loaf. We may be good much of the time, but the fact that we sin at all (sometimes even without knowing it) seperates us from God, who is holy.

How do we, divorced from relationship with God by our own sin, get back into relationship with God? That is the ultimate question, and the ultimate story God authors in the Bible from beginning to end.

God’s message tells us that the penalty of sin is death. Therefore, the penalty must be paid in order for relationship between human beings and God to be reunited. Without the shedding of blood, there is no payment for sin. What we are reading in Leviticus is a methodical (and very burdensome) prescription for payment. The sacrificial lamb atones for the sins of the person sacrificing it. It is a brutal and bloody affair designed to address an eternally serious matter.

When Jesus came, He came on a mission. He was God’s son, sent to be the lamb without defect sacrificed for the sins of the entire human race. His death on a cross was a brutal, bloody affair designed to pay the ultimate penalty for sin once and for all:

The old plan was only a hint of the good things in the new plan. Since that old “law plan” wasn’t complete in itself, it couldn’t complete those who followed it. No matter how many sacrifices were offered year after year, they never added up to a complete solution. If they had, the worshipers would have gone merrily on their way, no longer dragged down by their sins. But instead of removing awareness of sin, when those animal sacrifices were repeated over and over they actually heightened awareness and guilt. The plain fact is that bull and goat blood can’t get rid of sin. That is what is meant by this prophecy, put in the mouth of Christ: You don’t want sacrifices and offerings year after year; you’ve prepared a body for me for a sacrifice. It’s not fragrance and smoke from the altar that whet your appetite. So I said, “I’m here to do it your way, O God, the way it’s described in your Book.” When he said, “You don’t want sacrifices and offerings,” he was referring to practices according to the old plan. When he added, “I’m here to do it your way,” he set aside the first in order to enact the new plan—God’s way—by which we are made fit for God by the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus. Hebrews 10:1-10 (MSG)

All of these bloody sacrifices accomplish two things. First, they reminded us of how impossible it was, and is, to completely atone for sin by ourselves. Nothing we do, in and of ourselves, can atone for sin and please God. I can’t imagine trying to manage this web of offerings and sacrifices on an on going basis. Second, the sacrifices of Leviticus foreshadow the ultimate plan, which was for God to make the ultimate sacrifice for sin on our behalf.

Understanding the sacrificial system of Leviticus, I gain a much greater appreciation of what we celebrate on Good Friday.

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Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Matthew 19

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Coffee Argument
Image by alasdair.d via Flickr

But Jesus said, “Not everyone is mature enough to live a married life. It requires a certain aptitude and grace. Marriage isn’t for everyone. Matthew 19:11 (MSG)

On Sunday night, after a long day and a trip to Des Moines, Wendy and I returned home and got into an argument. Little arguments pop up on any given day. They come and go like a cloudburst on a warm summer afternoon; They quickly emerge out of nowhere and are just as quickly forgotten. Then there are the arguments that build like a perfect storm and you unexpectedly find yourselves embroiled in a conversation that runs deep into the heart of who you are as individuals, and who you are together as a couple. The storm raged back and forth until after midnight on Sunday as we navigated our way through the tossing waves of intention, thought, emotion, notion and behavior.

Wendy and I don’t just have a good marriage, we have a great marriage. And still, at times, it’s really difficult to wade through the muck that’s created when two selfish, sinful human beings get together. We’re both good communicators and we still find it difficult at times to navigate the relational mine field of marriage.

I’ve lived through the long struggle and pain of a failed marriage. I’ve now experienced the blessing of a truly great marriage relationship. Through it all, I’ve come to better understand and truly believe Jesus’ words about marriage. We live in a culture dedicated to exactly the opposite of Jesus’ teaching: everyone should get married, and if you don’t there’s something wrong with you. That’s a huge load of b.s. We might publicly shout “amen” to Jesus’ words, but in practice we run to on-line dating services, play matchmaker to our unmarried friends and family, and secretly wonder “I wonder why he/she is still not married” as if being single is abnormal.

Marriage isn’t for everyone. Many people are better off single. We shake our heads in disgust at the divorce rate in our culture. Yet, aren’t we to blame when we treat marriage as a relational idol, bowing to the notion that marriage is to be honored without question even when the individuals getting married are setting sail into a perfect relational storm inside a dinghy that looks like swiss cheese?  Are we to blame for the divorce rate when we treat singleness as a cultural disease and make single people feel second rate? How many failed marriages begin with desperate individuals jumping at any chance to have a wedding and get married?

I’ll step off my soap box now.

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Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Jeremiah 36

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“Starting right now, I’m going to teach them
Who I am and what I do,
   teach them the meaning of my name, God—’I Am.'” Jeremiah 36:21b (MSG)

I played on the worship team in church yesterday morning. Between our rehearsal and the service, I struck up a conversation with one of the other musicians. We’ve played together a handful of times and have been around one another in church for years, but we really don’t know each other. We struck up a conversation. It was the “get to know you” conversation. He asked about me and what I do. I asked about his family and his background. It was a brief conversation, but a good one. We moved from being around each other into getting to know one another. I’m the richer for it.

It’s easy to forget that God desires a relationship with me. It’s not about being around God, the things of God, or even the people of God. God wants me to know Him personally, and wants me to let myself be known to Him in return. You can live your life being around God and never that step into the “get to know you” conversation.

I can be at church with a guy week after week, play on a worship team with him, hang around the same social circles, and run into him on occasion in the community and still not know him.

God could be that guy.

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Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Luke 10

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Painting by Bueckelaer via Flickr and Jim Forest

As they continued their travel, Jesus entered a village. A woman by the name of Martha welcomed him and made him feel quite at home. She had a sister, Mary, who sat before the Master, hanging on every word he said. But Martha was pulled away by all she had to do in the kitchen

. Luke 10:38-39 (MSG)

My wife, Wendy, and I are blessed to spend more time together than most couples I know. We both work out of a home office, so a normal day is spent in the house together. We eat breafast together, we eat lunch together, and we eat dinner together. If I take a break from my work, I usually walk down stairs to talk to Wendy. Much of our free time is spent working together on stage or in administrating the local community theatre. We worship together and serve together on the visual tech team at church. Wendy and I have an intimate relationship that is built on the foundation of shared time, shared space, shared interest, and shared conversation.

The story of Mary and Martha, and the simple lesson of it, keeps popping in my path the past few weeks. I was reminded of it once again in worship yesterday morning. So often I approach my relationship with Jesus like Martha, in which my relationship is really about doing things around him. Yet, Mary had the more initimate relationship with Jesus because she spent time centered on conversation with him.

My relationship with Jesus and my relationship with my wife are really no different. If I want to find intimacy in the relationship, then it’s going to require a foundation of time, proximity, and focused communication.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Romans 4

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If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That’s not a holy promise; that’s a business deal. A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise—and God’s promise at that—you can’t break it. Romans 4:14-15 (MSG)

There is a locked safe in the closet of my home office. Inside that safe is a marriage license which is stamped, notarized and filed with the county. My wife and I are legally married. Not once, however, have I had to pull out that contract and remind myself or my wife of this fact.

Before there was a contract there was a promise and a relationship. I love my wife, and she loves me. We are bound together by promise and trust, and this is reflected in thought, word, and deed each day as we live in relationship with one another. And believe me, with both of us working in our home office, we spend more time together than most married couples I know.

No wonder God uses marriage as a word picture of our relationship with Christ over and over again. I am drawn to Jesus by His promise, and by trust in what He has done for me (laying down his life). To think that my good works or legal obligation to perform religious duties are required to consummate the relationship, only perverts the beautiful picture of a gracious covenant relationship.

Today, I’m thankful for a relationship with Jesus that has nothing to do with me earning religious merit badges.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day 2 Chronicles 31

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Everything he took up, whether it had to do with worship in God’s Temple or the carrying out of God’s Law and Commandments, he did well in a spirit of prayerful worship. He was a great success. 2 Chronicles 31:11 (MSG)

I was at men’s group last night and around my table we were discussing our need to pray continually. In the midst of the discussion, I had a word picture come to mind. It fits perfectly with today’s chapter.

As a husband and a dad, it’s easy to be distracted. There are so many things running through your mind and the t0-do list is never ending. As a boy, I remember running errands on Saturday mornings with my dad. I sat next to him in the car but there were times his mind seemed a million miles away. It was as if I wasn’t even there. When my daughters were young, I know they could relate the same experience when they tagged along with me. I was preoccupied with the task in which I was engaged and ignored the relationship that was right there in the car seat next to me.

Hezekiah was focused on the task, but did it in “a spirit of prayerful worship.” He was aware of God’s presence wherever he went and whatever he did. He was in active relationship and conversation with God, even in the midst of the work at hand.

Today, I’m going to keep my conversation with God going through tasks, meetings, drive time, family time, and rehearsal.

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Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day 1 Chronicles 16

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Religion or relationship. That was the day that David inaugurated regular worship of praise to God, led by Asaph and his company. 1 Chronicles 16:7 (MSG)

There was a distinct point in time when, for me, “going to church” became “worship.” I was raised going to church. We were there every Sunday. I was a regular attender at Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, Choir, and Sunday mornnig service. It was what my family did. We were religious about going to church, but wasn’t really worship for me.

It was while I was in high school that I entered into a relationship with Jesus. Suddenly, the stale mechanics of going to church took on a whole new dimension. I wasn’t checking something off my to-do list of good intentions. I wasn’t just doing what my parents demanded. I was going to meet with God. I was going to have a heart-to-heart with Jesus, to learn from his message, and to worship the one who gave up his life for me.

One of the things that David understood was the importance of worship. Reading Chronicles, I get the sense that David viewed worship as a way of honoring God who had protected him, anointed him, and saved him. It wasn’t about some religious good-luck charm. David understood that regular worship was part of his relationship with God.

Going to church is a religious good deed. Worshiping God is a relational act of the heart.

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Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Isaiah 65

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Add as friend. "I've made myself available to those who haven't bothered to ask. I'm here, ready to be found by those who haven't bothered to look. Isaiah 65:1 (MSG)

If there's one key thing I've learned about relationships it is this: you can't have a genuine relationship without two parties. Relationships require two who are willing to interact with one another. If I reach out to someone on Facebook and add them as a friend, we can only truly interact and share if that person confirms me.

When Jesus came to sacrifice Himself for the sins of all He, in effect, reached out to click "add as friend" for each of us. We don't truly enter relationship until we, in our hearts, confirm Jesus as our friend and reach out to enter relationship with Him.

"Look at me. I stand at the door. I knock. If you hear me call and open the door, I'll come right in and sit down to supper with you." Revelation 3:20 (MSG)

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Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Isaiah 34

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Get and read God's book: None of this is going away, this breeding, brooding evil. Isaiah 34:16a (MSG)

Marriage is a great magnifying glass. Thrust two people into life together 24/7/365 and you are bound to quickly discover more than you perhaps cared to know about your spouse, and about yourself. You are a broken person. So am I. As human beings we have the capacity to love, but also the capacity for evil.

We like to distance ourselves from the thought of evil. We relegate evil to gross acts of serial murder or genocide that happen somewhere else, to someone else. We read about it in the paper. We see it on the news. It doesn't effect me.

Augustine, however, defined evil as the absence of love. In that context, we commit acts of evil to those we supposedly love on a daily basis. Our selfish and self-centered acts, void of love, drain life from our relationship. In a real sense, our love-less words and actions easily become a slow act of relational and spiritual murder. A slow IV drip of evil into the veins of our relationship.

As Jakob Dylan sings, "evil is alive and well." As Isaiah writes, "none of this is going away."

This doesn't mean that the situation is hopeless. Jesus said, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." In Jesus, the resources are found for real change. Forgiveness, cleansing, healing, redemption, peace, joy, life and love are available in increasing, abundant measure.

Choose.