Look to Me and Live!

Why are there so many hypocritical Christians? (oh, and I'm not one of them! ha!)

How can anyone believe in a God that condemns? 

How can some just believe in a God that loves?

How can I have faith in a faithless world?

I don't know pat answers to these questions, but I do know a God who speaks through His word over and over again.  Same stories, different "I get it!" moments.  Different not because He is, but because I am ever changing, ever coming to a knowledge of the truth.  

One such moment happened today as I grappled with those questions thrown at me.  I didn't have answers, but I did get a clearer picture of one biblical event with apparent answers to every question - the one where Moses is told to make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.  (Numbers 21:8)  

First off, the Israelites were the hypocritical followers.  They said, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul hates this light bread;" or, "now that I'm following you, I can't have anything that satisfies my old appetite!"  Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people and many died.  It was commented that, "yeah, see, that's the God I'm talkin' about:  the one that punishes all the time!" and I thought, "yeah, and that's just the problem with punishment, it infers that I can do the time, pay the crime, but in reality, I can't!  Death is at my doorstep - not punishment.  There is nothing, no nothing, I can do to save my life -  once bitten, I die; it's not punishment, folks, it's death.  

But God had a remedy:  make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole - look at it, and LIVE!  

Didn't Christ in John 3:14 compare His death to this very act??? 
"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up."

 I thought, "isn't it strange that He didn't say, 'as Moses lifted up the staff with the serpent on it, I must be lifted up?'"  No!  He compared himself to the serpent!  Because the first step of the cross is to look upon our sin! Which by the way is drawing us to look....  We can't run away; we can't hide.  We must face it!  We must understand that SIN IS DEATH.  I can't paint a pretty picture that, "oh, God is love...."  No, He demands we look upon our sin and.....LIVE!  The opposite of what we'd think:  if I hadn't faced my sin, I'd DIE!  

Now I can philosophize this and become your psychotherapist and say, "you must face your weaknesses," much like the first step of AA is "My name is >>>> and I am an alcoholic," but that is not enough.  And that is why so many people are stuck on feeling condemned, run away from God because they feel condemned, or never have victory over their sin...all they've recognized is sin,  not the Savior who became sin for us.  Thus, when we first come to that place of seeing sin for what it is, many shrink and feel condemned like so many do, and die. ... or we can recognize that he took my sin upon Himself - becoming sin for me. 

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Cor. 5:21 That is where belief comes in.  Faith.  He has become sin.  He has freed me from death.  He is a God who loves.  I am not condemned. 

"Look to me and live!"

Faith in a faithless world. Life amongst the dead. Will you be deathly satisfied with the sin.....or safely delivered with the Savior?

Pulling My Spiritual Weeds

Ambitious as I was this morning, the weather quickly hampered my intents to weed my garden, plot out the fall vegetables, and coerce my son into mowing the lawn.  The steady onslaught of rain redirected us to some much needed prayer and play time.  The Lord said, "pull some of your spiritual weeds, daughter, the others can wait."

I am so blessed to share these days with my mother, a beacon of light to me during so many of the storms of my life - not as the steady light of a flashlight shining to make clear and definite my path, pointed in the direction I should like to go, but as the light of a lighthouse that fades into and out of view, so focused and concentrated that its light guides me through the most perilous storms to safe harbor.  But in my heart I know she is not that light, Jesus is.  Rather, she is the lens so perfectly designed, composed of multiple panes (pains) of glass fashioned from her own fiery fabrication, meant to strengthen His light and be illumination to other wayward children.

After a particularly wonderful prayer time, mom opened the Bible, as she often does giving the Lord His own voice, to Isaiah 26.  We've been discussing of late (and I'd love to have you all add to this discussion) whether the kingdom of God began physically and spiritually with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 or just spiritually, with the physical yet to manifest after the time of the Gentiles (Luke 21:24) be fulfilled.  Both make sense to me.  I think that we think in time linearly - beginning here, ever marching forward to the end, when I think it is more like a graph with all points culminating at zero - absolute zero as my sister Leanne puts it, with Christ being that point - the beginning and the end.  Well, I can't even grasp that; my mind gets too bogged down.  But I would like to hear your views.