A Personal God in an Impersonal World

A while back my wife went to the bank to make a deposit. The teller told her, after she had waited in line for several minutes; you know you should use the ATM instead of taking our time. We had four different accounts at the bank that we signed on. I went to another bank and asked them, “I want to open several accounts, but I have one question to ask first. Will it bother you if I come into your bank and stand in line and take up your time so that I can give you my money? I just want to know!”

Our world is very impersonal. We live in a very inhospitable world. Humanity has become cold and detached from each other. We have lost our sensitivity to our neighbor. We have become indifferent and unemotional toward mankind.

Call your utility company or any business and you will spend more time listening to a computer tell you that their menu has changed so listen closely than you will talking to a real human. Our world is impersonal.

On a daily basis you will get a call from a computer. It will tell you to stay on the line and wait for a very important call. The internet is set up for online shopping. It is designed so you will never have to leave you home for anything. We have lost the personal touch.

It is an impersonal world when women can scream for help while being raped or beaten. Nearby neighbors and passerby’s turn their heads. They shut their windows. They turn their music up louder. They don’t want to be involved. They want to remain detached and unemotional abut the world around them.

As time passes, the spirit of the age in which we live becomes more and more impersonal. It becomes more and more detached and distant. However, in the midst of an impersonal world we have a very personal God! He is a God that knows and loves each of us as individuals.

In John chapter one when Jesus first began to select His disciples, He called Philip. When Philip met Jesus, he was so excited that he went to tell a friend named Nathaniel all about Him. Nathaniel decided to come and meet Jesus for himself. Now, as he approaches, Jesus speaks to him before Nathaniel ever has a chance to say anything. What he says is so personal, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!”

Only someone who knew him intimately could make that statement. It catches Nathaniel off guard, by surprise. He asks, “Whence knowest thou me?” Have we ever met? How do you know me?

So Jesus makes it even more personal. “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you,” he said to Nathaniel. He was telling him I know you inside and out. I know all about you.

He is a personal God!

Jesus came down from teaching on the mountain and great multitudes followed Him. Suddenly the crowd which had been pressing against Him pulled back. At the feet of Jesus falls the ragged, tattered figure of a man.

His face is disfigured from the hideous disease that has ravaged his body. Rags are wrapped around his arms and hands to hide the effects of the leprosy that was destroying him.

Looking at Jesus, he begins to worship Him saying, “Lord, if you wanted to you could heal me.”

Most people would have been repulsed at the sight of the man. They would have averted their gaze. Their stomachs would have heaved. The stench would have caused them to retreat as discretely as possible. The thought of physical contact would have been abhorrent and would never have taken place. There would have been no concern about the feelings of this man. They would not have worried the least if he would have been offended or hurt by their reaction and rejection.

Jesus however is a personal God in an impersonal world. The man has recognized that Jesus had the power to heal him. He has prostrated himself before Jesus, desperately hoping and believing for a second chance at life. Jesus isn’t repulsed or revolted by the man and his condition. He is moved with compassion for the man. He feels for this man deeply enough that he reaches out and touches him.

We have to ask ourselves the question, “How long had it been since someone had touched this man? How long had this man lived without a personal touch of another human being?”

Lepers could not live with their families. They were not allowed to live in the cities of Israel. Rather, they were cast out of the communities when they were diagnosed with leprosy. They left their homes, their jobs, their communities behind. They walked away from their families, friends and loved ones. They were destined to live the life of an outcast in the caves and hills that surrounded the towns.

When they approached people, they had to cry in a loud voice, “Unclean, unclean!” This allowed people to stay back or change their course of travel and not be exposed to this highly contagious disease.

One must wonder how long it had been since this man had received a pat on the back from a friend. You have to ask how long since he had received a hug from his parents. How many days and weeks, maybe months or years, since his child had ran to meet him and jumped in his arms. How long had it been since his sweetheart had put her arms around him and kissed him telling him how handsome he was and that she loved him.

These are things that we experience on a daily basis. These are happenings in our everyday lives, so we often just expect them to always be there. This man had not enjoyed the feel of another persons touch in a while.

We all need to be touched. A touch releases endorphins which are healing agents in our blood stream. Medical doctors say that ten meaningful touches, showing value, a day can add two years to a person’s life.

He needed healing. He was a desperate man in a hopeless situation. A healing would have changed his life forever. Yet Jesus recognized this man needed more than just healing. This man needed a touch and being the personal God that He is, He touched Him! Then He healed Him!

When he came to Jesus, this man would have been elated to receive his healing, but Jesus said there is more that you need than just healing. You need to know that some one finds you to be important. You need the reassurance that someone loves you, despite your condition. So Jesus touched him.

The people were all around. People were pressing, calling, pulling, and shoving. Suddenly, Jesus stops and looks around and asks, “Who touched me?”

The disciples are bewildered at the question. People are touching him from every side. Everybody wants to get his attention. They are all there because they want to get close to Him. How can He ask, “Who touched me?”

The reply they get from Jesus is unexpected. He knows that someone with a special need has touched Him. He says they have been healed because He felt virtue leave His body. However, there is more that is needed and He needs to know who touched Him.

For twelve years this woman had a disease that caused her to be considered unclean. For twelve years she had suffered not only the effects of this disease, the weakness. But also, for twelve years she had also known shame, and the rejection, of being a castaway.

When she touched Jesus, she was immediately healed. Yet Jesus didn’t let her just walk away. He stopped her, had her tell her story, letting everyone in the crowd know that she was unclean. Then he announced to the world that she was not just healed but also restored.

Yes, he is a personal God even when the world is cold and detached. He was even personal to a jailer in a Philippian jail. He sent two preachers to preach a gospel message to him. He dispatched an earthquake to get his attention so he would realize that he was important to God. He is a personal God.

He was sitting on the curb of a well on a hot, dry afternoon when she walked up; thinking no one else would be there. She came thinking she was going to take care of a natural need. Yet Jesus saw that deep thirst that was in her heart and gave her what she needed to have that need met. A need she didn’t even realize that she had. He is an individual God. He is your own God, he belongs to you.

Our God is a personal God. He knows you as an individual. He is the God of the universe. In spite of that he is your personal, individual God. He cares for your needs while he is caring for my needs. He is a personal individual God.

You don’t know me, but he knows me. If you had known me before I knew him, you would understand why I love him the way that I love him. Who am I that the great God of heaven would bleed and die for? Yet he did just that. He died just for me.

We know that he made the worlds. He made earth. He made you and me. We know that there is great demand for his attention. We know that we can bring all of our cares to him and he will care. But the beautiful thing about God is that he is so personal he cares for the small things.

In September of 1999, after several months of terminal illness, my father passed away. We had spent weeks at his bedside. There were very few nights during that time when the phone didn’t ring calling us to his bedside. Not only were we physically exhausted, we were emotionally and spiritually exhausted also.

My father had pastored the church for 25 years and then had been Pastor Emeritus for the past 10 years. So the church was also exhausted.

A few weeks after his passing, my wife and I took a night off and went to the “big city” to spend the night and have a day of goofing off. That morning at the restaurant when I went to pay for my breakfast, someone had already paid for our meal. I was in a strange town. I didn’t see anyone I recognized.

While in town I took a gift back that I was unable to use. I received much more money than I thought I would. Initially I was told I could not have my money back.

The day continued in the same manner. There were just a lot of little things that day that went right. Driving down the road that evening I realized that God had just used several small things, unimportant to anyone else, to let me know he cared. He is a personal God.

Several months later, on Fathers Day, I was in Mississippi. My wife and I were preaching a revival in a small church. I was sitting in my motel room that morning waiting on my wife to finish getting ready for church. Suddenly it dawned on me that I could not call my father and wish him a Happy Fathers Day.

For the first time in forty-three years I would not be able to tell the most important man in my life how much I loved and appreciated him. It seemed like all of the emotions that I had dealt with flooded back to the surface and I began to weep. I felt lost and alone. Dad had been my friend and confidant. I could always call Dad and he would listen. I could always count on him to be there, but suddenly it had changed and reality had set in.

It was in this desolate lonely moment that God spoke to me. It was in this time of feeling so small and insignificant that God reached down and gave me that touch that I couldn’t get from my Dad. It was in that moment that God told me, “I am a personal God in an impersonal world and I love you!”

I have been dealing with a situation for a long period of time, several years. Important things in my life have not worked out the way I had hoped and prayed they would. There have been many times that I have called on God and asked, “Where are you in all of this?”

There have been times when I felt like Job, I see the evidence of God everywhere, but I can’t feel it for my self. You are blessing people all around me, but I can’t feel anything. I have given it my all, but my all hasn’t been good enough!

I was recently in a service where God spoke to me and told me, “I am working on you because I love you.”

It wasn’t just a thought or a feeling that went through my mind. I wasn’’t just an impression that I had. It was a Word from the Lord sent by a special messenger, just for me. A man who didn’t know me from Adam, but he had a personal message just for me. You may be skeptical, but I know I serve a very personal God.

No matter what it is you might be dealing with. Whatever you might be feeling let me reassure you that God cares. If you are feeling rejection, He cares! If live has overwhelmed you, He cares! If you lie on your bed at night, afraid to close you eyes because of the pressures that are there, He cares!

He is a personal God in an impersonal world. He cares when no one else cares. In fact Peter gives us this reassurance in I Peter 5:7, “Casting all your cares upon Him, for He careth for you.”

Take them to Jesus, He cares!

Remember...it's just a thought!

Words of Delight

As the bus pulled away from the stop, this morning, a passage of scripture came to my mind. I was very upset! Actually, to be honest, I was very angry! I was angry enough, now I am just telling you how I felt, that I wanted to take someone out behind the woodshed and give them a beating. Whoa! Now I have some folk’s attention.

No, I wasn’t angry at any of the passengers on my bus, they have all been well behaved and quiet this week. No, I wasn’t angry at any of the children’s parents. We all get along very well. No, I wasn’t angry with any of the co-workers on my bus, there was only one on there at the time and he was upset also. No, I wasn’t angry at a thoughtless driver. The road was empty. However, I was very angry and it was because of the thoughtlessness of a parent.

As we were loading a child on the bus I had asked their parent if they were ready for Thanksgiving in a couple of days. The parent looked at me and said, “If it were just my child and I having it together I would be ready. But we will be going to my Dad’s and I would just as soon not go there.”

I was a bit taken back by their honesty and wasn’t sure how I wanted to respond. My co-worker said something to the effect they should be happy to be with their parent and enjoy the time together. To this statement the parent replied, “I would and understand what you are saying, however, I am not looking forward to being called stupid and many other names. That is how my dad is and I will deal with it but I would rather not.”

I looked into the eyes of this forty-year-old parent and could see the raw pain in their eyes and recognized they were speaking from their heart. In just that moment I was given a glimpse of years of pain caused by thoughtless words that hurt beyond belief, leaving wounds that are open and bleeding. I saw years of compounded damage and pain.

After a few more comments about Thanksgiving day, the parent turned and left. I shut the bus door and looked in the mirrors before pulling out into the empty street and said, “That makes me so angry! How can a parent be so cruel to their children as to call them stupid?”

As I seethed at the thoughtless deeds of the unknown parent a passage of scripture came to my mind, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer” Psalms 19:14. As it ran through my mind I focused on this part, “Let the words of my mouth . . . be acceptable in your sight, O Lord!”

It is amazing how powerful words are! They can be destructive, tearing down and destroying a person. Words can also be constructive, building and strengthening someone. It is our choice in how we use them. Words can hurt and words can heal. Again, it is our choice how we use them.

The words that comes from my mouth need to be words that would be acceptable as far as God is concerned. The word “acceptable” comes from the Hebrew word “ratson” and means delight. So if my prayer is, “Lord let my words be acceptable to you,” I am actually praying, “Lord, let what I say bring you delight!”

I realize that there is nothing I can do about the thoughtless father who spoke words that have hurt and scarred his child. That is beyond my control. My anger was only for a few moments and quickly turned to tears as I felt the pain of that child. Still, there is little I can do to erase the damage that has been done. However, one thing that can happen, and I am praying it will, and that is I can be much more careful how I speak to others in the future.

God, let the words of my mouth be acceptable in your sight. Let what I say bring delight to you. May the words that comes from my tongue be words that lift up and encourage. Help me to speak words of blessing and promise, words of life. Let my words be words of delight!

Well, it’s just a thought! God Bless . . .

You are Talking Like a Kid!

Aren’t children amazing? They are so much smarter than we give them credit for. I have witnessed them doing amazing things. Today I listened to a two-year-old sing the “ABC’s” song. Well he sang most of it anyway. He is just now starting to talk but he can belt out “ABC . . . !”

A while back I told a four year old boy, who asked me if I was taking him home, that I was going to take him to the dump. He laughed at me and said, “No, this is a bus. It is not a dump truck! Take me home.”

Recently I heard a child tell another child something that was a complete fabrication of the truth. The second child reacted to the lie and began to whine. One of the adults that was there reassured the second child that what was said was not true and everything was going to be all right. The child continued to whimper for a while but then calmed down. The first child then said the same thing over again to the second child, calling them by name. The reaction of the second child was the same, and they began to whine. Again the adult reassured the child that this was not true and everything would be all right.

Just before we arrived at the home of the second child, the child began to sing out that they were going to see their daddy. The first child then called the second child by name and said, “No! That’s my daddy! No! That’s my daddy!” The second child responded by collapsing in hysteria! They began to cry out that it was their daddy and could not be consoled at all. Even when we arrived at the home and the father of the child came to take them off the bus they continued to cry. All the time the first child laughed and thought it was funny.

As we left the home and began to drive down the road I thought to myself, “How foolish to become so upset by such a complete and obvious fabrication of the truth.” The child knew whose daddy it was. They were reassured by those in authority that the other child was not telling the truth. Yet they chose to believe the lie to the glee of the one that is making it up.

I was then struck by the realization of how often we allow this to happen in our lives. The enemy of our soul loves to taunt and terrorize us with lies. In fact Jesus described him this way, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:44

He loves to tell us something that is obviously a lie and then sit back and watch us react to it in fear and frustration. He will call your name and taunt you! He will challenge your spirituality and authority. He doesn’t care that he is lying, he only wants to cause you trouble. He only wants to plant seeds of fear in your heart and mind. The whole time he sits back and laughs!

He will bring up every mistake you ever made and heap condemnation upon you. Then laugh while you beg God to have mercy on you and chuckle as you live in fear of the judgement of God. He will call your name and tell you that you don’t have faith and that is why you are going through the situations that you face. Then laugh when you hang your head and cry because you feel like a failure. He will tell you that you are losing your mind because of past mistakes. Then rolls on the floor in glee as you tremble with fear!

All the time this is happening, the authority in your life is telling you that these are just lies. What is being said is obviously not true! We do have power, faith and sound mind and it comes directly from God! (2 Timothy 1:7) We are children of the King and have spiritual authority as our heritage. We are God’s kids! (Romans 8:15-17)

We don’t have to worry about our past mistakes. We have the assurance that if we have confessed them to God, then God has forgiven us of them and cleansed us from all wrong doing. (1 John 1:9) We are also reassured that the only one who can condemn us is Jesus Christ and He isn’t condemning us because He is on our side! (Romans 8:31-34)

So the next time you hear that taunting voice. You know that voice that preaches to us about our failures. The next time you hear that voice, just stop for a moment and listen to the voice of authority, the Word of God! The holler back to the taunter, “You are just talking like a kid!”

Well, it’s just a thought!

Today is the Day of Good News!

Have you ever been sorry that you received good news? I can’t think of one time that I have regretted receiving good news. I do not remember one morning when I have awakened and thought, “I hope that I get some bad news today!” I do know that most mornings I am hoping for some good news. In fact, to be honest, I look forward to hearing good news, even when it isn’t for me.

The four men looked at each other and one of them said, “This situation looks really hopeless!” Another continued the thought, “That’s right! If we continue to sit here, we are going to die. If we go to the city we are going to die and if we go to the camp of the Syrians, our enemies, we will die.” Another one said, “You are right about dying if we sit here or if we go to the city, however, there is a chance the Syrians might feel sorry for us if we go to their camp and they might feed us.” The last man said, “What is there to lose? Let’s go take our chances with the Syrian camp.”

The Syrian army had besieged Samaria causing a great famine. It was so bad and people were so desperate for food that a donkey’s head sold for twenty pieces of silver. In fact the famine had gotten so bad that people were killing their babies and eating them. There was not hope in the city! This situation compounded the hopelessness of having the dreaded disease of leprosy for which there was no cure.

The four men got up from where they were sitting and began the walk to the Syrian camp. The Bible tells us in Second Kings seven that as they walked, the Syrians heard the sound of many chariots and many horses and a mighty host approaching. They thought Israel had found some allies to join them in the war so the Syrians fled before their imagined foe.

When the four lepers came into the camp, they found it deserted! The Syrian army had fled and left everything behind them just “as it was” and fled for their lives. The four lepers had come upon a bonanza! They entered into a tent and ate and drank and then carried off the treasure they found to hide it. They returned and went to another tent and carried off the treasure and hid it as well. They were going to live! Not only were they going to live, they were going to live well!

As they were returning to get more treasure one of them said to the others, “Fellas, this isn’t right. Today is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. People are starving in the city and if someone comes upon us we are going to lose everything we have. Let’s share the good news with the King.”

The angel of the Lord appeared to shepherds in the field and said to them, “I bring you good news that will bring great joy! A savior has been born today who is Christ the Lord!” Today is a day of good news. We have a Savior!

Many of us is as the lepers were. Our lot in life is hopeless and we don’t know which way to turn. If we stay where we are we will die! If we go to the left, we will die! If we go to the right, we will die! There is not hope! However, today is a day of good news! We have a Savior!

It was His custom to go to the synagogue and so He went. As the service progressed, the minister handed Him the Book of Isaiah and Jesus turned to the sixty-first chapter and began to read; “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty they that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. “ He handed the Book back to the minister and told the people, “Today is this scripture fulfilled.” (Luke 4:18)

The word gospel simply means good news. In fact if you read this passage in the Old Testament it actually says to preach good tidings or good news. The good news is that each of us can have hope. Life deals us blows! As life happens, it often breaks our hearts. Yet let me assure you, today is the day of good news! Jesus came to heal the broken heart. The circumstances of life can leave us bound, chained by fear and defeat. However, today is a day of good news! Jesus came to deliver the captive. The fears and failures caused by the events of life often leave us blinded, unable to see what God can do and what He wants to do in our lives. But today is the day of good news! Jesus came to restore sight to the blind. The emotional and spiritual blows of life leave us laying bruised and battered, unable to continue on! I assure you that today is the day of good news! The blood of Jesus Christ will liberate the bruised and bring spiritual and emotional healing to your life.

Life happens and it happens to us all. We will be broken, captive, blinded and bruised. We will be poor in spirit, at the point of hopelessness with no where to turn. Yet in the midst of a time of despair in your life, be assured, today is a day of good news! We have a Savior!

It’s just a thought!