Glass half empty or full?

     Most people are familiar with the question about how they view a glass of water filled like that shown below

    Do you see it has half FULL?                                              Or do you see it as half EMPTY?

    The answer to that question dictates whether you are more of an OPTIMIST or a PESSIMIST.

     It's all about how we perceive something.  There is no right or wrong answer here.  Both are simultaneously correct in their own right.   We don't know what makes one person more optimistic than another person.  In our world we need BOTH kinds of people to balance things out.   We need the pessimist to tell us to save our money because we don't know what tomorrow will bring.  Maybe a job loss or an injury/sickness or maybe even death.   We also need the optimist to use and spend our money because what is life if all we do is hoard our money and never enjoy it.

     When we view God's word,  the same optimist/pessimist views are often applied without us even knowing it.  I think that most people who study the Bible already know at some level they are sinners and in need of forgiveness.   We carry this view with us as we read the Bible and sometimes miss out on what God is really telling us.

    Take for example this verse from Leviticus 19:2

‘Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.    

   How does that make you feel when you read those words?

   Does it strike some level of fear into your hearts?

   Maybe it makes you feel a bit uneasy maybe even angry because it seems to be an achievable demand by God upon you.   Me??  Holy?

    But when we look at these words in context of the Bible these words seem less like a demand and more of a declaration by God on us.    Take for example, Genesis 1:1,  "Let there BE LIGHT, and there was light".    God calls for light to be created and it is.  Another example is when Jesus calms the storm

That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves,  

 “Quiet! Be still!”Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

40 He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” 

     Jesus words to the wind have effect.   When Jesus speaks, things happen.  His words change things immediately.   In another story, Jesus heals a man with leprosy (Luke 5)

12 While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy.[b] When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

13 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately the leprosy left him.

     Jesus words of "Be clean!" changes the man immediately.  No fancy incantation or magic words.   Reality is what Jesus says it is!

     Yet Jesus, being the very Word of God, is the same person speaking the words of Leviticus 19:2 to us.  To me, God's words of "Be Holy" are not so much a demand but more of HIM declaring US to be Holy.   What God speaks happens.   We are HOLY because God declares us HOLY.    God can only do this because he will be the one picking up the tab of all of our sins on the cross.

    Prayer: Thank you God for declaring me HOLY in your sight and changing my life forever.

Front doors do matter

  I just got done sweeping on the front entryway into our house and it got me to thinking.   We put a lot of importance on our front doorway.   First we spend money to make a nice flat and level concrete surface for our visitors to walk on because we don't want them to trip or get their feet muddy while coming to our house.   Some people even put solar powered lights to illuminate the entryway at night so it's easy to see.   We also put a light near the door so they can see where the door is and where we have put the doorbell for them to ring.   We put plants and flowers near the door as well to make their coming here pleasant.  We also put a seat near the door for older visitors to sit at while they wait for us to come to the door to greet them.

 

   Front doors do matter!

   Today, many say that there is more than ONE way to heaven.  All that matters is you are sincere in your beliefs and want to help others.  But Jesus says in  John 14:6

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

and in John 10:9 he also says,

I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.

  My argument with the "All ways go to heaven" crowd is simply this:  "Why would God go through all the trouble of building a front door then?".    The issue is that all other "teachers or prophets" (such as Confucius, Buddha, Mohammad) just appear on the seen out of no where.  No prophecy to predict their coming.  No promises from God to keep.  No effort on God's part to prepare their coming.   Jesus, on the other hand, doesn't just pop on the scene to announce God's grace and forgiveness out of nowhere.  Instead, God works over thousands of years and his plan takes literally thousands of years and the pain, suffering and death of many of his servants to bring it all about.  Abraham is told to go live as a tent-dweller and wait for God to give him a son in his old age.  Joseph is sold into slavery to Egypt and suffers imprisonment for obeying God.  Moses leaves his lofty position as next in line of Pharaoh to lead his people out of Egypt.  Elijah is chased from town to town by worshipers of Baal and forced to live in the desert.   Jeremiah is thrown down a well for his denunciation of idol worship and ignoring God. Daniel is thrown in a lions den for praying to his God and not praying to the king.   If God was going to allow ANY route into heaven, then he wasted all his time and energy with sending his own Son Jesus to bear all of our sins.

   If we invite someone over we EXPECT  them to use the front door.  If they decide to use the window or the back door we would probably call the police to report an intruder.  If we used the same "all ways lead to heaven" argument, you would be confronted with policemen who would tell you that the intruder is just a visitor who chose to use an alternate means of entering your house and since there is no one acceptable way to enter a house there is nothing illegal about it.  You would argue that you DO care about how a person enters your house!

  God does care about how you enter too.

   In the story about the Wedding Feast, Jesus says that at the end there was found a man who was not wearing wedding clothes.  The King asks him, "Friend, why are you not wearing the wedding clothes I have provided?".   At this the man was speechless and he was thrown outside.  That is how those who come to God but want to have nothing with the forgiveness he has so graciously provided through Jesus his only Son who died on the cross for them.

We don't know what we are doing!

   Never before did a verse from the Bible become more clear to me than when I had to deal with a friend suffering from mental illness.  Several years a friend of mine had been rehired to work with us.  We had worked together back in the 90's and he was a genius to work along side. I was excited to work again with him along with 2 other of my friends.  He had left the company and worked away from us for several years and we had lost touch.  We had a benign interview with him (we were required to do it) assuming we knew he would be a great fit for our team (we had worked with him for several years so we had no reason to believe he wouldn't be).  Well after a couple of weeks we realized we had made a mistake.  Our friend was not showing up to work or for meetings.   He would ramble on in emails about nonsensical things and would make odd conversations on the phone.  I finally took it upon myself to go find out what he was up to and went to the apartment he was staying at.   I knew from the moment I walked in that I was in the presence of someone with a mental disorder.  The place looked like something out of the movie "A Beautiful Mind" with papers everywhere and printouts tacked to the wall.   There were pizza boxes and chinese food boxes on the floor and I could tell he was living on Coca-Cola as there were dozens of empty 2-liter bottles of it everywhere on the floor.

   I tried desperately to reach him but he was out of his mind.  I could not reason with him on anything.  He was convinced that he had the answer to all our companies problems if we would just give him a few more weeks.   It was the saddest thing I had ever witnessed in my life.  Here was a good friend of mine who had been a great engineer at one time now reduced to a crazy person who was convinced in his own mind that everyone else had the problems and not him.

   When Jesus hung on the cross, he said to the people who put him there,

"Father! Forgive them for they do not know what they are doing!" 

   He was very much like me trying to reach my lost friend.  In his case, we are very much like my friend.  Our minds are so twisted by our sinful flesh that everything to us is really upside down.   We claim that everyone ELSE (including God himself) has the problems and we are completely right in our beliefs.  God tries to reason with us and help us to see how much we need him to fix our minds and our souls.   We cannot do it on our own.  Like my friend, our minds cannot fix themselves.  They are like broken computer processors that think there are problems everywhere in the PC but the real problem is with the processor.  In our view,  we think we have it all figured out.  We know what is best and what is not.

Adultery?            That's just a new loving relationship being formed to replace a broken one.
Pornography?      That's just self-expression
Lying?                 That's just an alternative form of the truth.
Stealing?             That's just an attempt to reapportion wealth from those who don't need it.
Intoxication?       That's just acceptable form of release from the cares of the world.
Abortion?            That's just fixing a female medical problem.

   This brings to mind another verse in the Bible.

"There is a way that appears to be right,

 but in the end it leads to death."   

-- Proverbs 14:12

Only God's Spirit and Love can bring true healing to our minds.  If only we will let him



POST NOTE: my friend did get help in the end and is doing much better today