assumptions

During a conversation this evening, I was reminded by a gracious brother, that I assume.  Though he didn't say as much, that is the core of the problem.

Historically, it has been a trend in my life to establish a solid friendship with a boatload of respect shared between parties, common ideals and worldview (or not), etc.  What I mean is that it's not a casual acquaintance.  Once the friendship is established and I'm confident that the other individual knows and understands the care and respect that I have for him or her, my effort to bolster that understanding dwindles.

To put it simply, I slack off.

The fact that the relationship was strongly established, however, brings us to the place where we are happy to speak into the other's life, to come along side, to help grow.  We give help, we receive help.  Community sanctification is a wonderful thing.

Down the road a mile or two, I wake up halfway through a conversation and it becomes clear that in the course of helping and being helped, I had neglected to make my purposes and my care plain.

We all know what it means to assume...

In the process of chiseling away at life and godliness, I forget to inspect the foundation to make sure that a stray stroke of the hammer hasn't done any structural damage.  I assume that the foundation is solid.  Unfortunately, it isn't always.

What happens is that the people that I love most become more aware of a critical eye towards them than they are of the loving care that I have for them.  Thankfully, I believe that the Lord has kept me from this type of situation with my wife.  But with others it has, at times, become a real issue.  Condolences haven't been offered.  Congratulations haven't been shared.  Observations, questions, and suggestions have been perceived as nitpicking.  In short, care has not been communicated.

I've had to ask forgiveness more than a couple times.

Not good.

We are told so often in Scripture that we need to remember the Gospel, not to forget, to hold fast!  As humans we very quickly forget our own story.

When you think about it, if God didn't just save us and let us fly, if he went through the trouble to remind us of his care and love over and over in life and in Scripture, it stands to reason that we should do that with our friends and family even more.  If we need to be reminded of perfect love, how much more do we need to be reminded of imperfect love?

Paul asks his readers to have confidence in God's love based on God's gift of his son.  If that has been given he will much more freely he give all things.  The gift of the Mercedes indicates that the floor mats weren't held back.

The fact of the matter is that what I've given to family and friends is really fairly minimal.  

There's significantly less rapport there.  I don't blame you if you wonder how freely I'm going to give you anything, much less "all things" if I haven't recently taken the time to make sure that you know that, first and foremost, I care about you.

So, there you have it, a public statement of my shortcoming and sin.  Godliness comes through moments and means.  I'm praying that mine is growing.

unbelief

I need to double check the schedule, but last I looked I'm scheduled to share a sermon on July 20th.

It's been a while.  It's been a long while.  If this is going to work, I'll need an extra truckload of grace.

One of the things that has been whispering to the tail region of my brain - the portion that doesn't get much attention unless it acts up or creates a grinding squeal of a ruckus that can't be ignored  - is that unbelief is much different and much more subtle than we give it credit for.

The author of Hebrews mentioned that without faith it's impossible to please God, because if we want to please him, we need to believe 1) that he exists, and 2) that he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

It has been my experience that generally we look over the first part of that list of requirements.  And, frankly, when there are only two rules, it seems foolish to just assume that the first is a given.  This is the sort of thing that ranks up there with professional baseball players showing up late.  Two rules: be on time and hustle.  "Yeah, yeah, got it, right.  You want us to get to the park two hours before game time.  It's covered.  Could we move on to the fun stuff, let's say, batting practice."

It seems to me that the fewer the rules, the more we should pay attention.  Does that make sense?

So, the first of those two requirements should, I think, get a bit more play.  We read it, "Yeah, well I wouldn't really be reading the Bible if I didn't believe that you exist.  Check.  Moving right along."

But when I break it down, I wonder if it's really that simple.

Believing that God exists involves a bit of information.  Saint Anselm defined God as the being than which none greater can exist.  It's an awkward but logically sound way of saying that, by definition, God is perfect - he's the best of everything that can be conceived of, and better.  It's called the Ontological argument, if you're interested.

Scripture might be a bit clearer, when it comes down to it.  God is perfect virtue.  As perfect virtue, he is perfectly true.  As perfectly true, he is perfectly trustworthy.  Since he's perfectly trustworthy, we can believe everything that he says about himself without reservation - as long as the method of communication is trustworthy and our reception of the information is also trustworthy, but that's for another discussion at another time.

If he is perfect in all things, complete and whole, then to take away one of the perfections is to make him imperfect.  A being that is no longer perfect can be no longer God.

Make sense?

All that being taken as true, those moments when we call God's goodness into question; when we think that he could not really have our best interest in mind as we lose a job; when we ignore his power to heal because what we think what we really need is medicine, rather than prayer; when we think that this last sin has got to put us beyond the reach of his grace; when we think that our life is an expression of God's disfavor rather than the opposite; when we feel pretty good about ourselves and think that surely this time we've earned a few brownie points; all are expressions of unbelief.

Those are moments when our hearts are saying "God - I don't believe that you are who you say you are."  Once we're there, we might as well come out with it and tell him that we believe he doesn't exist.  Because, after all, if we don't believe that he is who he said he is, we're calling into question his trustworthiness, his unchanging nature, his perfection.  And if he's not those things, he's not God.  We can think of a being that's entirely those things.  So, if our prayers are being heard by someone that isn't all of those things, then we're praying to something other than God.

Right?

Puts an interesting spin on those moments, I've found.  In my life it has become much simpler to identify sins of unbelief, of pride, of a sense of earning my salvation, of anger, of lust, of worry, of greed when I realize that at the root is a degree to which I'm looking at our Father and telling him that he's not real.

Once I recognize the truth - that God is real - I can adjust my perceptions, confess my sin, and move on to bigger and better things.

In short, I can believe.

So, those are some rough thoughts that I've been tossing around for the sermon.

Show of hands - who thinks it would be helpful to hear that explained a bit more?

d) all of the above

Crammed with packing, lifting and turning, working twelve hour days, negotiating, satisfying subpoenas, and sidling up to clients all buddy-buddy like, the last couple weeks have been nuts.

But we're now in a new location, just down the street about a mile.

Just two weeks before our move to a new apartment - a move about which we have been quite excited - a good friend told us of a place in their building, twice the space, roughly the same rent, new kitchen, and so on.  So, we took a look.  The landlord had not yet moved out, and it was dirty in the manner of someone who left suddenly and immediately cut off the cleaning service - we're not talking Mrs. Havisham-my-fifty-year-old-wedding-cake-is-still-on-the-dining-room-table dirty, but we are talking month-old-dusty-dry-dog-food-in-the-bowl-and-the-fridge-smells-funny dirty.  Still, the apartment had a lot of old construction potential.

We looked.  We haggled.  We checked the utilities.  We spoke with the owner.  We arranged the approval of the co-op.  We checked our credit (phenomenal, by the way).  And we almost said "yes" and signed the paper work.

The pieces, though, just didn't quite fit together.  After two voice mails and a text message from the owner within two hours, a projected increase in rent, utilities that seemed much too high, and a general feeling of ill-ease, we pulled our bets and stuck with our original lease.

Now that we're here and all the heavy lifting is done; now that my back is feeling slightly less stiff, the laundry's done and the dishes are out of the sink, we realize that the old rule is still true.

When the options are several, the first instinct is the best one.  Don't second guess.  At the end of the day, A), B), or C), is generally better than D) all of the above.  It just takes a bit more guts to choose only one.