A Prayer for Year's End

From The Valley of Vision Devotional:

O Love beyond Compare,
Thou art good when thou givest,
when thou takest away,
when the sun shines upon me,
when night gathers over me.
Thou hast loved me before the foundation of the world,
and in love didst redeem my soul;
Thou dost love me still,
in spite of my hard heart, ingratitude, distrust.
Thy goodness has been with me another year,
leading me through a twisting wilderness,
in retreat helping me to advance,
when beaten back making sure headway.
Thy goodness will be with me in the year ahead;
I hoist sail and draw up anchor,
With thee as the blessed pilot of my future as of my past.
I bless thee that thou hast veiled my eyes to the waters ahead.
If thou hast appointed storms of tribulation,
thou wilt be with me in them;
If I have to pass through tempests of persecution and temptation,
I shall not drown;
If I am to die,
I shall see thy face the sooner;
If a painful end is to be my lot,
grant me grace that my faith fail not;
If I am to be cast aside from the service I love,
I can make no stipulation;
Only glorify thyself in me whether in comfort or trial,
as a chosen vessel meet always for thy use.

Yawning With Purpose

Ever wondered why we yawn, and why it seems so contagious? Read on!

From ICR.org:

Yawning With a Purpose

by Brian Thomas, M.S.*

All vertebrates yawn, but why they do it has long been a mystery. Recent research suggests that yawning may be a cooling mechanism for the brain.

In their study set for publication in the journal Animal Behaviour, Binghamton University biologists tested the hypothesis that “as ambient temperature increases and approaches (but does not exceed) body temperature, yawning should increase as a consequence.”¹ In other words, as the surrounding temperature rises closer to the body’s warmer temperature, yawning should result. The parakeets they tested yawned as predicted, thus confirming the researchers’ temperature-based hypothesis.

Oral and nasal passages are very close to the brain, as those who have experienced “brain freeze” when swallowing ice cream too quickly can attest, and it makes sense that the increased air movement through those passages would aid in cooling. Vertebrate brains, which contain billions of delicate, heat-generating biochemical reactions occurring every minute, operate best within a certain cool temperature range. Further, “the new findings also explain why tired individuals often yawn, since both exhaustion and sleep deprivation have been shown to increase deep brain temperatures.”²

Thus, the pre-programmed instinct to yawn may serve the purpose of cooling, but it only does so because of the location of specifically-shaped airways near the deep brain.³ Remarkably, both the physical equipment and the metaphysical instinct (information or programming) to use it are found fully integrated “in all classes of vertebrates.”¹ How did this come to be?

Lead author Andrew Gallup asserts that yawning “evolved to allow maximum cooling of the brain,”¹ though he offers no evidence to support the concept that a long series of adaptations in response to differing environments led to the development of yawning—nor does he explain how this feature was retained by all seven vertebrate classes throughout their hypothetically long history of development from a common ancestor. Much less faith is required to believe that a Creator specifically integrated this system to maintain brain temperature, and that “in his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.”⁴

References

1. Gallup, A. , M. L. Miller and A. B. Clark. 2009. Yawning and thermoregulation in budgerigars, Melopsittacus undulatus. Animal Behaviour. 77 (1): 109-113.
2. Viegas, J. The Yawn Explained: It Cools Your Brain. Discovery Channel News. Posted on discovery.com December 15, 2008.
3. Thomas, B. 2008. The Amazing Design of the Human Nose. Acts & Facts. 37 (8): 14.
4. Job 12:10.

Musical Train-Wrecks for the Glory of God

If you have ever been to church, you've probably seen or been involved with the musical worship portion at some point. This clip, from Bob Kauflin's Sovereign Grace Ministries church in Gaithersburg, Maryland shows what happens when worship goes wrong. Hilariously wrong.

Beloved Unlovely, by Brenna Kate Simonds

From http://www.boundless.org:

It was the summer of 2000, if I remember correctly. Even though I'd only been serving God for a year and a half, I was zealous for God's Word and heartbroken for those who didn't know Him.

I had shared my desire to take my music to the streets with a friend, and as we prayed, she asked, "What's stopping you?" So I went. It was my first day of playing guitar out in the park. It was a very busy weekend in Boston, as there was a big tourist attraction in town, and there were literally thousands of people walking through the park.

I was ready to take on the world for Christ. Or so I thought.

I was unsure of whether or not God had really led me to sing in the park that day, and I wanted His confirmation. As I began to strum my guitar, I closed my eyes to sing some lines of a Delirious song:

Lead me to the cross
Where we first met
Draw me to my knees
So we can talk
Let me feel your breath
Let me know you're here with me

When I opened my eyes, there was a man standing in front of me. He was visibly intoxicated, and he reeked of mouth wash (I later found out sometimes alcoholics drink a certain brand of mouth wash when they can't get hold of alcohol). He was dirty, smelly and scary.

I was speechless.

And then he spoke. "I was headed in the other direction down the path when God told me to come over here and talk to you."

I didn't know whether I should be praising God for this confirmation or running for the hills.

I grew up with an alcoholic parent. I don't drink, and haven't for years. In fact, I can't stand the smell of alcohol. If I'm in the proximity of someone who has had a drink in the past 24 hours, I can probably tell just by standing 5 feet away. And I can't stand it.

Yet here was this man, standing in front of me, claiming that God had sent him to talk to me. I didn't know how to respond, so I asked him to sit on the bench next to me.

* * *

I was out of my comfort zone. God was having me share His love with the "unlovely." The thing is, Jesus was one of the original lovers of the "unlovely"; out of the many examples of this in the Gospels, a story in John 8 sticks out to me.

Jesus was teaching one morning, when the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought a woman to Jesus who had been caught committing adultery. They asked Jesus if she should be stoned, as Mosaic law required. After a lengthy pause, Jesus responded, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

Many people walk away from this passage and think that this statement from Jesus is the key moral of the story. And maybe it is. It just strikes me slightly differently. Personally, I rarely have to remind myself that I'm a sinner. I could have written the words from Psalm 51: "For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night." I was once the woman caught in adultery. I also was ungrateful, bitter, self-righteous and proud. I'm generally very aware that I'm still many of these things, but I have to wonder if the majority of the Church can see themselves this clearly. Indeed, as Scripture says, if we think we are without sin, we are lying to ourselves. Even as believers who are no longer bound by the laws of sin and death, we still sin.

I knew a homeless woman who went by the name of Friend. We attended the same church for a year or so. Since she didn't have a place to live, she had nowhere to store her things. Every Sunday, she carried two huge pieces of luggage full of her stuff, big duffel bags that she threw over her shoulders, down into the basement sanctuary of our church.

That year, the associate pastor got engaged and invited everyone in the church to attend the wedding ceremony, which would be held in another, more traditional church in town. Friend showed up to the wedding with all of her stuff in tow. She was dirty, and she probably smelled, but she wanted to attend her pastor's wedding. I was shocked when I saw the looks of disgust on people's faces as she walked down the aisle — people whom I knew were Christians.

I honestly wanted to punch a few of them, evidence of my own unlovely attitudes surfacing.

For me, John 8 is about how Jesus deals with sinners, sinners like me. It's not only about how He dealt with the unlovely people, but also the unlovely attitudes that live in all of our hearts. How would Jesus respond to the man who smells like body odor and mouth wash? The homeless woman who carries two bags of her stuff into a church wedding? Or whichever unlovely person He might come in contact with? How did He deal with this woman, caught knee-deep in her sinfulness?

To help me resolve these questions, I turned to German theologian Helmut Thielicke:

When Jesus loved a guilt-laden person and helped him, He saw in him an erring child of God. He saw in him a human being who His Father loved and grieved over because he was going wrong. He saw him as God originally designed and meant him to be, and therefore, He saw through the surface layer of grime and dirt to the real man underneath. Jesus did not identify the person with his sin, but rather saw in this sin something alien, something that did not really belong to him, something that merely chained and mastered him and from which he would free him and bring him back to his real self. Jesus was able to love men because He loved them right through the layer of mud.1

All of the accusers left. Jesus illuminated their unlovely attitudes. But the woman stayed. Was she waiting to see if Jesus would accept her? Was the hope in her heart that Jesus would be able to love her, that He would see right through her layer of mud?

Jesus did not condemn her, nor did He shy away from commanding her to "Go now and leave your life of sin." I see Jesus' admonition here as a general admonition, not a specific one. Even if she stopped the specific sin that got her into this situation in the first place, she would not be in any better position than she was in before. She would still be a sinner, in need of a savior.

I've noticed that Jesus often refused to point out people's specific sin struggles to them. Instead, He pointed out the overall sinful condition of people's hearts and their need for a savior. He loved this woman caught in adultery and extended His grace to her, just as He does to us, and just as He asks us to do for others.

* * *

I wish I could find a written account of my encounter with the man in the park. I can't even remember his name. But I do remember how God worked in my heart, and in his, that day. I talked with him, as scared as I was, and I shared God's love with him as best as I could in my own brokenness.

He eventually consented for me to pray for him. I put my hand on his shoulder as I talked to God on his behalf, and he wept so hard he was shaking and snot was unabashedly running out of his nose. I struggled in that moment with my own unloveliness as I looked around and wondered what people were thinking about me, if they were noticing me and the snot, and looking down on me.

When I finished praying, his face was genuinely different, his entire demeanor lighter. He asked me to play "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore," which I faked my way through. He sang passionately, at the top of his lungs, for all to hear. By that point, I had gotten over myself and I sang out loud with him. Eventually, we parted and I said goodbye, letting him know I'd pray for him.

I don't know what happened to him after that. I never did see him again, though I would often look for him in that park, the same park where I would sometimes meet up with Friend for lunch. I know I was changed in that encounter, and I still pray that he was, too.

In the years that followed that day in the park, there have been many times that I've felt very unlovely, times when I was sure no one could handle seeing my brokenness or hearing about my unloveliness. I know that in the times when I've let my guard down and shared my struggles with someone, I've most often found compassion and acceptance, and rarely rejection. I find comfort in knowing that I have a high priest, Jesus, who sits at the right hand of God, interceding for me, a high priest who has been tempted in every way, who, when I confess my struggles, can honestly say to God the Father, "I know exactly what that feels like."

I sometimes wonder how we, as believers, might do a better job of loving the unlovely, people covered with the filth of sin. How we might love them right through "their layer of mud." How we can extend the message of grace and love to those who so clearly need it. And I sometimes wonder how willing I am to come face to face with my own unloveliness.

* * *

NOTES

1. Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace?, p. 175.

From ICR Daily Devotional

Occupied Territory

December 10, 2008

"But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." (1 Peter 2:9)

In our ongoing struggle for both survival and victory in this world, we do well to recognize that we are in enemy territory. While it is true that our Captain created the world--indeed, "all things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:3)--sacrificed His life to redeem it, and will reign over it for eternity, it is also true that "the whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 John 5:19), occupied by "the prince of this world" (John 12:31), "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" (Ephesians 2:2).

The fact that we are surrounded by such darkness should come as no surprise, for before we were rescued by His grace, we too were part of the darkness--indeed, we had to be called out of it. John the Baptist came "to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace" (Luke 1:79). Furthermore, as Christ taught, "men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19).

This confrontation overshadows mere human conflict, however, "for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12). But, praise God, we have been called "out of darkness into his marvellous light" as described in our text. Although we may be still in the world, our King has "delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son" (Colossians 1:13). "In him was life; and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4). JDM