Humble pie

A heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn. (Psalm 51:19) 

When was the last time you had to eat humble pie? You know, admitting your own mistakes and shortcomings to someone else. This is one way to understand the setting for today’s psalm. It portrays King David’s repentance after the prophet Nathaniel confronted him about his sins of adultery and murder. He is caught in his lies and violence, and he has to own up to them.

So how does David respond? With a combination of heartfelt repentance and deep confidence in God’s mercy. He trusted that God would not ignore “a heart contrite and humbled” (Psalm 51:19).

How do you react when you are brought face-to-face with your sins or shortcomings? It’s tempting to get defensive and to throw that humble pie back in someone’s face: It’s your fault, not mine! Or maybe you overplay your guilt: How could I have done that—again? Will I ever get past this sin?

 

God doesn’t want us to swing in either direction. Rather, he wants us to turn toward him, as David did. He promises not to turn us away. He won’t accuse us or condemn us; instead, he’ll welcome us, forgive us, and embrace us. It’s like the scene in the parable of the prodigal son: the father is waiting with joyful and eager expectation, filled with longing for his younger son to return home. When he does return, the boy begins, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you,” but before he can finish even one sentence, his father throws his arms around him (Luke 15:21).

The next time you find yourself holding a piece of humble pie, put the pie down and run to your Father. Don’t let yourself feel overwhelmed by a guilty conscience. But don’t try to shift the blame and justify yourself. Simply say, “Father, I know I have sinned. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” Remember, God delights in your repentance, not because he wants to condemn you or drown you in guilt, but because he is eager to forgive you and welcome you back. He will never turn you away.

“Thank you, Father, for your merciful embrace. Help me to run toward you every time I stumble and fall.”

from wau.org

forgiveness

If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. (Matthew 6:14) 

Does this verse mean that God’s forgiveness is like a vending machine? You put in your forgiveness, and his mercy comes out? Well, no. It doesn’t work quite like that.

Jesus is explaining a fundamental principle about the way God forgives. It’s not that he withholds his mercy from us until we have forgiven everyone who has ever hurt us. He’s always offering it to us—we just can’t receive it! It’s as if we are holding an umbrella over our heads, and the rain of God’s forgiveness can’t touch us.

So yes, we must forgive those who sin against us if we want to know God’s forgiveness. But how do we do it?

It’s simple: by choosing. Forgiveness is not a feeling; it’s an act of the will. But sometimes—often, in fact—it doesn’t come easily. God knows that we can be tempted to stew in anger or seek revenge, and that’s why he is always ready to help us. Just as he received a man’s humble and imperfect statement of faith—“I do believe, help my unbelief!”—so too Jesus receives our halting efforts to forgive (Mark 9:24). He embraces them and makes them fruitful. It all begins when we pray, “Lord, I want to forgive; help my unforgiveness!” We may still feel the sting of the offense against us, but with God’s help, we can choose to let go of the grudge.

No one embodied this kind of mercy more than Jesus did. Wounded and bleeding on the cross, he chose to pray, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Our sin had caused his suffering; our disobedience had led to his own agony and crucifixion, yet he forgave us. His example tells us that the grace to forgive is available to everyone—even us! 

Today ask the Spirit to reveal someone you need to forgive. Then put down your umbrella of bitterness, and make the choice to extend mercy. Don’t worry if you still can’t let go of the hurt. Just ask the Lord to help your unforgiveness, and leave it at that for today. Then ask the same thing tomorrow and the next day and the next. As you do, God’s forgiveness will begin to flood your heart.

“Jesus, give me a merciful heart.” 

from wau.org

Guilt

How much more will the Blood of Christ . . . cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God. (Hebrews 9:14)

It’s easy to recognize a child with a guilty conscience. He avoids making eye contact and stays away from his parents and the “scene of the crime.” If he can’t make a quick getaway, he’ll put on a fake smile and try to get back into his parents’ good graces.

Most parents know what the child has done and have already forgiven him, but often the child will still try to “fix” what he has done. Sweeping up the pieces of a broken plate won’t repair the plate or make things right, but still he tries!

How often do you relate to God your Father like a guilty child? Maybe you walk around with your head down, convinced that he is unhappy with you. Even after you have confessed your sin and received absolution, you may still carry it around like a burden. You may try to ease your conscience by doing as many good deeds as you can to try to balance out the bad ones.

So you work hard—really hard. But try as you may, your efforts only obscure the central issue: you have broken something that only God can fix.

The writer of Hebrews understood that it’s not only about what we do; it’s about what Jesus has already done! By shedding his blood, Jesus has already won our forgiveness. Even more, he has already cleansed our consciences of that nagging sense of guilt that says, “I must be better. I must try harder.” We don’t have to convince him to forgive us or to welcome us back. Our good deeds are meant to be a response of gratitude for what Jesus has done, not an attempt to muster up enough goodness to please God. 

By shedding his blood, Jesus has made us a new creation. His blood—his very life—changes everything it touches, even us! We can walk in freedom because we have already been made children of God, forgiven of every sin and washed clean by the power of Jesus’ blood.

What a loving God we have! What a merciful Savior too! How can we help but worship him with our hearts?

“Jesus, thank you for your blood, poured out for me!”

from wau.org

Expanding love.

Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you? (Matthew 18:33).

Science has suggested that humans use only 10 percent of their brains. Moving from this idea, some people have suggested that if we could access the other 90 percent, we would be able to solve so many problems like poverty and world hunger. There may be some merit in this speculation, but we should also acknowledge that much of the problem lies in our hearts and not just in our brains.

Imagine what could happen if we were able to access more of our hearts! What would this world look like if we could love more, forgive more, have more empathy, and look at ourselves and each other the way God does.

Today’s Gospel tells the story of a man who was given the opportunity to do just that but who refused. Having received the pardon of an immense debt from his master, he turned around and acted out of a stingy heart instead. Somehow, even though he had been given a huge gift, he remained as hard-hearted and ungenerous as before. And so it was not the master’s decree but the servant’s own ingratitude that landed him in prison. He excluded himself from the forgiveness his master had offered him.

As far as Jesus is concerned, anyone who has been forgiven much should be so touched by this forgiveness that he or she is moved to love much. But that will happen only as we allow our hearts to be melted by the mercy given to us. Again, it’s a heart issue as well as a brain issue.

Jesus gave all he possibly could when he died on the cross. Don’t take this gift lightly. There’s no way you could possibly repay him for what he has done for you. The only real response—the response of the heart—is to embrace his love and let it make you into a more merciful person. It’s only if we close our hearts to God’s mercy that our love shrinks, allowing criticism and harshness to creep in. So stay mindful of all that you have been given, and you’ll find your capacity to love expanding day by day!

“Thank you, Father, for treating me with so much love! May that love overflow in me, touching every person I encounter today.”

from wau.org

Acceptance

Luke 7:36-50 

This text presents to us two personalities: the Pharisee and the sinful woman. It is interesting to note that even though Jesus publicly rebukes the Pharisees in Matt 23, and obviously did not agree with their way of leading the people, yet he agreed to honor the dinner invitation from one of them and presumably went without any hesitation. What is even more striking is that even though Jesus knew that this invitation was not a genuine one and it was a trap because He was not accorded the courtesies given to welcome a guest in the Jewish tradition at that time i.e. The washing of His feet, the giving of kiss, He still decided to recline at the Pharisees table as seen in verse 36- He was relaxed in the Pharisees presence as though He was in the house of a bonafide friend. In verse 39, we are made aware of the internal monologue of the Pharisee and of how he condemned the sinful woman and Jesus, his supposed guest. After this point, Jesus begins to address him by name, Simon. 

It is interesting to see that from that time onwards the inspired writer, Luke, no longer referred to him as the Pharisee but as Simon. I believe that the Lord wants to draw our attention as members of the body of Christ to His call of evangelization by addressing our practical way of living in relation to how we welcome and accept all, into His fold. Jesus could have been equally hostile to this Pharisee but He chose to address him as a friend. He reclined at his table, and even called him by name. A reference by name connotes a certain level of relationship with a person. Jesus desired to have a relationship with Simon. Jesus desired that he did not remain as just the random Pharisee, but as Simon the Pharisee who had a relationship with Jesus. How do we respond to the people around us who we might not necessarily agree with, or who show a certain degree of hostility towards us, e.g. the gentleman or lady at work, in the class, that neighbor two blocks from you, over even in that member in the church committee you belong ? 

Today the Lord Himself lays down the template we must follow. He is asking us to reflect His accepting love to all such people. Just as He called Simon by name to acknowledge his identity and offer a hand of acceptance into His welcoming love, He calls out through us to these people we encounter. Are we ready to accept them? Again He sets an example of acceptance for us by receiving the gesture from the “sinful” woman. This was a woman who was renowned throughout the town for her sinful lifestyle. Presumably she had been shunned by the whole community but she recognised Jesus as the source of love. She sought for this love and expressed her joy at finding Him through her actions. If she had succumbed to the negative reaction from her community she would have missed the chance of encountering the Lord. In our quest to have a closer relationship with Jesus, are we being distracted by the other members of the community? Do we compare ourselves to Bro A or Sis B to the detriment of our spiritual growth? We can learn from the perseverance of this woman and continue to make Jesus our focus. In Luke 8:15, Jesus comments that through perseverance we can bear good crop. 

Again, The Lord wants to emphasize to us tonight the need to keep an open heart to accept all peoples into the Christian community. Unfortunately there are many complaints against the church today pertaining to our rejection or isolation of people from the body of Christ due to one flaw or another. How many people have been heartbroken and withdrawn by the church because they were look down upon? Like Jesus’ openness to this sinful woman, we’re being asked to be Jesus to all people. He implores us to cease the self-righteous attitude and seek to express His love to others. So in this text the two characters are placed side by side- the self righteous Pharisee and the renowned sinful woman. Jesus opened His arms to receive both of them in love. Today, the Lord is asking us to be Jesus to all people we may encounter. I pray that through the strength of the Holy Spirit, we will rise up to this task. Amen.

Atheist pilot mocked God, until he ran out of fuel in a snowstorm

By Mark Ellis -godreports.com

Raised in the secular Seventies, completely un-churched, he had no room for God until he ran out of fuel in an Alaskan storm, miles from his destination.

“I was a God mocker,” says Mark Rose, founder of Genesis Alive, and the author of Last of the Long Hunters, a story of the pilots who fly the Alaskan Arctic.

Rose learned to fly at 16, and by age 22 had become a bush pilot who helped to take care of a fleet of helicopters that worked on the Alaska pipeline. “My ego meter was on 101,” he admits.

One day he flew some hunters to the upper part of a large river on the Arctic. But on his return flight, carrying one passenger, several things went wrong. First, herds of caribou had moved in, covering his first and second choices for a landing spot. Then he began to run low on fuel, so he called ahead for a weather check at the small airport near Kotzebue, on the Baldwin Peninsula.

“Come on in, the weather’s fine,” the FAA flight service operator told him.

He decided to take the chance his fuel would hold out, but then weather conditions changed dramatically. “I ran into a snowstorm at night, and I couldn’t see the terrain, so I had to follow the gray ribbon of river below.” In the days before satellite weather imaging, the man had given him bad advice.

“All my options were evaporating as fast as I could fly.”

Rose had several friends – fellow pilots – who perished in similar flying conditions. There must be a way out, he thought. I don’t want to die at 22. I won’t get to experience marriage…

He had been flying on empty for 30 minutes. Then the engine started missing. “I was just waiting for silence and to have to crash at night.”

His mind turned to his very last option – God. Rose had never prayed before, but in desperation, he lifted up a silent prayer. If there is a God, I need your help now.

Then a voice spoke to him that was crystal clear. Son, you said the right thing. After he heard the voice, Rose also experienced the sensation of “a light bulb” that came on in his mind.

Immediately after his prayer, the plane popped out of the snowstorm! “Before me were the beautiful lights of Kotzebue – it might as well have been the lights of heaven,” he recalls.

There was only one problem – he still had to fly another 20 miles over the Kotzebue Sound, a broad expanse of salt water north of the Bering Sea.

“That was a breath-holder,” he says. When he landed safely at Kotzebue Airport, his humanist worldview collapsed. There was no earthly reason his plane should have traveled such a distance with no fuel.

Rose believes God added an hour of fuel to his tanks to save his life. “When I landed I was a different boy. I was not a Christian, but I was a believer in God.”

He thought about his grandmother, the only Christian in his family. So gramma was right; there is something out there, he thought.

Rose started to date a Christian woman who challenged him to read the Bible for the first time. As he read the pages of Scripture, something surprising happened. “I fell in love with the God of the Bible – his reasonableness, his forgiveness, his justice,” he recounts.

But his stubborn heart was still not ready to make Jesus his Savior and Lord.

Then he had another brush with death in a helicopter that crashed, which completely flattened the seat he rode in.

About the same time, he missed a flight with some of the lead contractors for the Alaskan pipeline due to a

schedule conflict. Shortly after the plane took off, it crashed, killing everyone aboard.

Later, on a flight to Fairbanks on a bush aircraft, he began to reflect on his life. I’m not happy. This whole thing is not working, he admitted to himself.

Everything I read in the Bible is either a lie or its true. It’s all or nothing. From reading the Bible I understand God is my creator. If Jesus can raise someone from the dead and forgive my sins, that’s exactly what God has for me.

At that moment, Rose surrendered his life to Jesus Christ. “When I landed in Fairbanks I was a different boy, once again.”

He is pleased with you

Perhaps the Lord will look upon my affliction. (2 Samuel 16:12)

 

How easy it is to think that when someone sins, it means he or she doesn’t love God! How easy to assume that this person has a permanently hardened heart or has completely turned against the Lord! But King David is the perfect example that this is far from the truth. David pleased God, warts and all, because he continued to pursue a relationship with him, despite his sins. So pleasing was David’s desire for holiness that God chose to have Jesus born through his line. 

David remained faithful to God—not through never sinning but through repentance and humility. Shimei cursed David and threw stones at him, and when David’s nephew, Abishai, offered to “lop off” Shimei’s head, David rebuked him. “Suppose the Lord has told him to curse David,” he said

(2 Samuel 16:10). David knew he was a sinner, so Shimei’s curses came as no surprise. But at the same time, he surrendered himself to God, trusting that the Lord would be gracious to him. Such humility and faithfulness must have pleased God very deeply. 

Guess what? You please God! We have all sinned. Maybe our faults are not as grave as murder, and maybe they are. Whatever our sins may be, we all have our own list of offenses against God that deserve strong judgment. Like David, we know these offenses, just as God does. But what God wants, rather than to curse us, is to see us face our sins in the same way that David did. He wants us to acknowledge them, turn from them, and earnestly seek his forgiveness and healing.

Even when David was suffering the consequences of his faults, he trusted that God is good and that he can do nothing but good. No matter what we do, God is ready to sweep away our sin and strengthen us against temptation. Fix this truth firmly in your mind. And when your feelings tell you that God doesn’t love you, remember David. Remember God’s mercy. Remember: he is pleased with you! 

“Father, remind me today of your unshakable love. Help me find joy in your mercy and redemption.”

-taken from wau.org.