Word of Life Church Podcast

When you are grieving and in great pain, pour out your lamentation to God, but hold on to your ticket. Remember that life is a precious gift, affirm the goodness of creation, love every leaf and every grain of sand, and trust God. Trust that, in the end, God is able to make all things work together for good, that God will wipe away every tear, and that God will make all things new.

When we encounter tragedy, the question is not, Who can we blame? The question is, How can we help? If the framing question in tragedy is, Who can we blame?, then we end up doing the work of the devil. But if the framing question in tragedy is, How can we help?, we will do the work of God.

The Book of Job exposes the satanic practice of blame. The book presents a test to the reader: Can the reader hold onto what God says about Job — that Job was blameless. Most readers cannot. Eventually they are seduced into agreeing with the arguments set forth by Job’s accusers. Most readers end up forgetting what God has said about Job and agreeing with what Satan says about Job. This shows us the insidious lure of the satanic temptation to blame a scapegoat. It’s a temptation that really only Jesus can save us from.

“The essential thing in heaven and in earth is that there should be a long OBEDIENCE in the same direction that thereby results, in the long run, in something which makes life worth living—virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality—anything whatsoever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine.”–Friedrich Nietzsche

Jesus shows us what it means to be family. We are fully seen and known by him. Even after diving deep into the details of our lives he still calls us family. This is how we are called to love each other as well. To go out of our way and be troubled by what troubles others is the love Jesus challenges us to live.

It feels good to be chosen, because it communicates to us that we are wanted. It communicates that not only are we welcomed, but we are wanted. It creates a sense of belonging. Psychologists since the 1950s have said that a sense of belonging is a fundamental human need. You feel like you belong when you know you have been chosen. As followers of Jesus we have been chosen, not for salvation, but for a vocation, for a mission to bear the image of God in the world. We live in a wolf-world and Jesus isn't sending us out to be a better version of the wolf. Jesus is sending us out like sheep among wolves. Jesus is sending us out to be distinctly different, a chosen and holy people. It is through our holiness, our distinctiveness, that we fulfill God's call for us.

You were made to worship, because you are human. Worship is a human quality. We all have the capacity to look towards something outside ourselves, to give attention to some version of the good life, to give our hearts and devotion to something or someone. This is what worship is and we were made for this. Our hearts were made for worship just as our bodies were made to move. We were made for worship. For followers of Jesus, God is looking for worshipers who will worship God in spirit and truth.

From Moses to Mary we see God calling individuals to specific tasks and special vocations through peculiar and powerful events. This can leave us awestruck and distraught at the same time, wondering what our calling may be and if we have missed our calling. In Christ we discover that we are all called and our calling is more about who are becoming than what we are specifically doing.

We are created to be people of peace. Jesus is present with us in the midst of our fears and worries. Rather than participate in the chaos Jesus invites us into the peace of His presence through prayer. Prayer is the place that makes space for peace.

There is a sense in our day that the drive for more is driving us crazy. Jesus wants to liberate us from this madness of more, setting us free to rest in his grace. Jesus says to us, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest.” May we learn to walk the way of thankfulness and trust, seeing more than enough wherever we look.