We'll NOT be Consumed

There is a promise in the Bible that has absolutely blessed me right from my youth. In Isaiah 43:1,2, God tells his children, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze." This verse subtly warns us that we may see torrents and infernos, but we are not to lose heart. Humans have a tendency to imagine the worst when the see the slightest indications of danger, but God tells us that we can be sure of the final outcome. We will not be consumed, annihilated, devoured, utterly defeated !

This promise was given to the Israelites about 700 years before Christ. It is likely that Daniel, Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego who were part of the royalty that was exiled from Judah to Babylon about a hundred years later, had read this promise while studying their scripture. When Daniel's 3 friends later came across the prospect of being thrown into an inferno, I am sure, this promise weighed heavily in their minds, as can be seen from their response to King Nebuchadnezzar: "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it . . ." What a confidence on God's power! They continued ". . . he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." They seem to have had a small amount of uncertainty about what God will do . . will he save or will he not -- that is for his sovereignty to decide. But they had no doubt on whether he can. And knowing that He besides being an all-powerful God is also faithful to his children, let them experience perfect peace with no anxiety about their future. They serve as ideal role models for us in these turbulent times.

In the new testament, we find similar trust on God's promise in Paul. While writing to the Corinthians, we find Paul stating in his second letter: "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." (II Cor 4:8,9) Here was a man who had gone through lot of suffering in life -- great endurance; troubles, hardships and distresses; beatings, imprisonments and riots; hard work, sleepless nights and hunger. His circumstances were such that should leave him dying, beaten, sorrowful, poor and having nothing. Yet he says he is living on, not killed, rejoicing, making many rich and possessing everything. (II Cor 6:3-10) How could he speak with such courage. Because he knew that the Lord who had given wonderful promises was living inside him.

• We too may face failures in life - failure in a critical exam, a broken relationship, loss of a loved one's life, etc., but we do not respond like those who have no hope. We do not handle a failure by commiting suicide or by resorting to addiction to forget the failure or by even becoming slothful and wallowing in self-pity. We are never crushed to the point of losing hope and giving up -- we have a glorious promise "you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze".
• When critical illness or a loss of job hits us, we may not know why they happen, but we will rest assured in the fact that the one who cares for us more than we ourselves do, is fully aware of what is happening to us and is sufficient to ensure that the worst does not hit us. We do not despair as the one who has promised to be with us has told us "Fear Not".
• People who we trusted may let us down when we expected them to defend our cause, but we never feel abandoned and alone. The one who said "I will be with you" came down to live among men as Christ. Is he not called Immanuel (God with Us), Jehovah Shammah (The Lord is present) and Ebenezer (The Lord who helps)? Today, through his Holy Spirit, he lives right inside of us even when we find ourselves in the eye of life's storm.
• We could fall in sin, lose to temptation again and again, but our Lord has promised that the Righteous shall rise up even if he falls seven times. We and not the Devil our adversary will have the last laugh.

Three things should comfort us. One: Our Lord knows our every situation. There is nothing that can come to us except with His knowledge, because we are His. Two: He loves us so much that he never lets go our hands and is always with us to help us tide over our situation. Three: The one who promised that we will never be swept away or set ablaze knows what he says and is able to keep his word. Therefore, Fear not . . Take heart . . and Cheer up!

Do I respond in Faith!

Philip Yancey in the second part of his book ‘Disappointment with God’ looks at Job to find how we too can have his faith in the face of disappointments. He acknowledges, “Studying someone like Job as an example of faith is a little like studying the history of civilization by examining only the wars.” However, he does that because there are others that promise victory alone and make no mention of the wars.

The book of Job portrays one man confronting misery that makes no sense. He lost 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 5000 oxen, 500 donkeys and numerous servants. He then lost all children – seven sons and three daughters – in one mighty gust of wind. Finally, his last consolation too failed – he lost his health as sores broke out from the sole of his fee to the top of his head. Yancey asks us to think of it as a “mystery play”, a “Whodunit” detective story. Before the play begins, we in the audience get a sneak preview. The plot and the main characters are described to us and every mystery is solved except one: How will the main character respond? He points out, that the book is not about suffering as most people think; it is primarily about faith in its starkest form. The book is not about ‘Where is God when it Hurts?’, the preview settles that issue; it is about ‘How does Job respond?’ Will he trust God or deny Him? Satan scoffs that God, unworthy of love in himself, only attracts people like Job because they have been ‘bribed’ to follow him. When God accepts the challenge to test Satan’s theory, calamities begin to rain down on unsuspecting Job.

God’s critics protest that Job paid one hell of a price to just make God feel good. Yancey points out that the wager, the bet, the wresting match was not between Job and God. Satan and God were the chief combatants – Job was just performing in a cosmic showdown before spectators in the unknown world. Many people get up, eat, drive their cars, work, make phone calls, tend to their children and go to bed without giving a single thought to the existence of an unseen world. Hence they find it absurd to believe that one human being, a tiny dot on a tiny planet, can make a difference in the history of the universe. Job’s friend Elihu too had the same thought: “If you sin, how does it affect God? . . If you are righteous what do you give him? Your wickedness affects only a man like yourself”. But according to the Bible, human history is a staging ground for the battle of the universe. The opening and closing chapters of Job prove that God was greatly affected by the response of one man and that cosmic issues were at stake.

The bible rustles with hints that something like The Wager is played out in other believers as well. Apostle Paul, borrowing an image from gladiators being lead into the Colosseum, pictured himself as on public display, “We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men”. He is emphatic, “The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own”. God who had created from nothing and ended up with an universe rich in splendor is now engaged in Re-Creation employing the very humans who had spoiled his work. Creation progressed through stages: stars, sky and sea, plants and animals and finally man. Recreation reverses the sequence, starting with man and culminating in the restoration of all creation. Yancey is convinced that The Wager is a stark reenactment of God’s original question in creation: Will man choose for or against me? Satan denied that human beings are truly free. Man has freedom to descend . . . but freedom to ascend, to believe in God for no reason at all? Often disappointments with God begin in Job-like situations. The death of a loved one, a tragic accident or loss of job may bring on the same questions that job asked. Why me? What does God have against me? We may beg God to change the circumstances – the ill health, the bank account, the run of bad luck. In our own trials, we will not have the insight that we got as readers of Job’s story. Will we trust God? Job affirms that our response to testing matters.

The book of Job does not answer the question ‘Why?’ When God himself arrives on the scene, one would have expected God to say, “Job, I’m truly sorry about what’s happened. You’ve endured many unfair trials on my behalf, and I’m proud of you. You don’t know what it means to me and to the universe”. God says nothing of this kind. He rather seems to guide Job through a course of appreciation for the created world. Perhaps God keeps us ignorant because enlightenment might not help us. No intellectual answer will solve suffering. Perhaps this is why God sent his own son as an active and personal response to human pain, to experience it and absorb it into himself. Perhaps God keeps us ignorant because we are incapable of comprehending the answer. A tiny creature on a tiny planet in a remote galaxy simply can not fathom the grand design of the Universe. In Yancey’s view, the book of Job substitutes the question ‘Why?’ with another question ‘To what end?’ Every act of faith by every one of the people of God is like the tolling of a bell, in the struggle to reverse all that is wrong with the universe.

At some point, everyone confronts the question –- Is God unfair? Yancey lists out several ways in which we respond.

• Some respond like Job’s wife who advised Job, “Curse God and die”. Why hold on to a sentimental belief about a loving God when so much in life conspires against it. Still they cannot avoid a tinge of outrage, as if they have been betrayed. They overlook the underlying issue of where their primal sense of fairness comes from.
• Others equally mindful of the world’s unfairness cannot bring themselves to deny God’s existence. They propose that perhaps God agrees that life is unfair but cannot do anything about it. Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of the best-seller ‘When Bad things happen to Good people’ portrayed God as compassionate but powerless, and millions of his readers found comfort in such a conclusion. If God is indeed less-than-powerful, why did he choose the worst possible situation (when he was being tried by Pilate) – when his power was most called into question – to insist on his omnipotence?
• Still others evade the problem of unfairness by looking to the future when an exacting justice will work itself out in the universe. The Hindu doctrine of Karma calculates that it may take a soul 6.8 million incarnations to realize perfect justice. At the end, a person will have experienced exactly the amount of pain and pleasure he deserves.
• Yet another approach is to flatly deny the problem and insist that the world is fair. Echoing Job’s friends, these people insist that the world does run according to fixed laws: good people will prosper and evil ones will fail.

Is God unfair? The cross settled that issue for ever. God is not, but surely life on earth is. No one is exempt from tragedy or disappointment – God himself was not exempt. Jesus offered no immunity, no way out of the unfairness, but rather a way through it to the other side. Just as Good Friday demolished the belief that this life is supposed to be fair, Easter Sunday followed with its startling clue to the riddle of the Universe. Out of the darkness, a bright light shone. Someday, God will restore all creation to its proper place under his reign. Until then, it is good to remember that we live out our days on Easter Saturday.

Was Job’s case exceptional? Yancey finds from reading through the Bible that Job stands as merely the most extreme example of what appears to be an universal law of faith. The kind of faith God values seems to develop best when everything fuzzes over, when God stays silent, when the fog rolls in. Yancey gives a new label “Survivors of the Fog” to Hebrews 11, a chapter most have labeled ‘The Faith Hall of Fame’. He draws distinction between two kinds of Faith: child-like Faith and the greater Fidelity. David exercised childlike faith when he strode out to meet Goliath, as did the Roman Centurion whom Jesus commended. Today, “faith missionaries” write stirring accounts of miracles – houseful of orphans being fed and mountains being moved - resulting from “seed faith”, a childlike trust. Childlike trust may not survive when the miracle does not come, when the urgent prayer gets no answer, when a dense grey mist obscures any sign of God’s concern. Such times call for something more – hang-on-at-any-cost faith that can be called fidelity. God did not exempt himself from the same demands of faith. Job sat on ashes, scratching his sores. Jesus hung on a cross, unable to reach his wounds. In a sense, God tied his own hands in The Wager over Job; in the most literal sense, he let his hands be tied the night of crucifixion. The three day pattern – tragedy, darkness, triumph – will someday be enlarged to a cosmic scale. We have little comprehension of what our faith means to God. According to the Bible, human beings serve as the principal foot soldiers in the warfare between unseen forces of good and evil, and faith is our primary weapon.

Why doesn’t GOD intervene? Living in a seen world of trees and buildings, we have difficulty in believing in another, unseen world existing alongside it. “We want proof”, we say. “How can we be certain that God even exists if he will not enter into our world?” We look for a blinding difference between the natural and supernatural worlds; a gulf separated by barbed wire. But in reality, we do not stop being ‘natural’ persons when we pray; we still get sleepy and lose concentration. Yancey quotes C. S. Lewis who talked of the obvious continuity between things which are admittedly natural and things which are claimed to be spiritual. He talked of the reappearance of all the same old elements which make up our natural life in what is professed to be our supernatural life. The modern world can reduce most natural phenomena and even most spiritual phenomena, to their component parts. Should it surprise us then to find the same universal principle operating in the realm of the spirit? From below we tend to think of miracle as an invasion, a breaking into the natural world with spectacular force, and we long for such signs. But from above, from God’s point of view, the real miracle is one of transposition: that human beings can become vessels filled with his Spirit; that ordinary human acts of charity and goodness can become nothing less than the incarnation of God on earth. Jesus Christ, said Paul, serves now as the head of the body. The risen Christ accomplishes his will through us, members of his body.

A final objection that one might have: Job got a personal appearance by God, but how does that help me who has not had a visitation from God, with my struggles? In a sense, our days on earth resemble Job’s before God came to Him in a whirlwind. We too live among clues and rumors, some of which argue against a powerful, loving God. We too must exercise faith. Paul told the Corinthians that in spite of incredible hardships, he did not ‘lose heart’. “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary [!] troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”. Let us fix our eyes on eternity and respond to God in Faith.

Are you there, GOD !

Is God Hidden, Silent and Unfair? Philip Yancey gives voice to these questions that no one asks aloud, in his book Disappointment with God.

• “Is God hidden? Why doesn’t he simply show up sometime, visibly, and dumbfound the skeptics once and for all?”
• “Is God silent? If he is so concerned about our doing his will, why doesn’t he reveal that will more plainly?”
• “Is God unfair? Why doesn’t he consistently punish evil and reward good people? Why do awful things happen to people good and bad, with no discernible pattern?”

He looks at what many consider to be the golden period and yearn for as the panacea for disappointment – the Old Testament days when God was so visible, vocal and indulgent – to see if indeed that is where the solution lies. God showed up in Moses’ time in a pillar of cloud by day (and fire by night) and spoke to him face to face as he might with a friend. He had simplified matters of guidance for the Israelites in the wilderness. A glance at the cloud over the tabernacle was all that was needed to determine if they should move today or stay put. Most things were pre-decided and communicated to them in a set of rules, codified into 613 laws that covered a wide range of behavior. For the rest, God had set up Urim and Thummim. And he had set up a “fair” system based on rewards and punishment -- health and wealth in exchange for obedience, and sickness and misery if they were to disobey. We would think that all this would produce great results. Yet, as one scans through Joshua and Judges, one finds that within fifty years the Israelites had disintegrated into a state of utter anarchy.

Yancey then turns around to consider from the Bible, God’s point of view -- “What does it feel like to be God?” Genesis begins with God’s creation and his exuberance that everything he had made was very good. He designed man and woman -- creatures unlike all others, reflecting back God’s own likeness and with a moral capacity to rebel. God had taken a risk and when the first man and woman chose to rebel, intimacy between man and God was spoilt leading to disappointment in man’s relationship with God ever since. Following Adam, Cain rebelled and soon the entire human race rebelled so much that the Bible tells us, “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on earth, and his heart was filled with pain”. Each time he intervened like a parent of a rebellious child and punished. God’s intention to have a mature relationship with free human beings was met with child-like behavior.

God then set in motion a new plan for human history, starting with Abraham. He set before man alternating experiences of revelation and lonely waiting, as if to help man reach a new level of maturity. After dangling a bright dream before Abraham, he seemed to sit on his hands and watch as Abraham advanced towards tottery old age. Isaac married a barren woman and so did his son Jacob – Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel, all spending their best child-bearing years in despair. Joseph's valiant stabs at goodness - visiting his brothers in obedience to his father, resisting a sexual advance in Egypt and interpreting a dream to save a cell-mate's life - brought nothing but trouble. In Yancey’s words, “A gambler would say God stacked the odds against himself. A cynic would say God taunted the creatures he was supposed to love. The Bible simply uses the cryptic phrase “by faith” to describe what they went through.” Faith was what God seemed to value as the expression of man’s love for God.

During Israelites' wandering in the wilderness, just as God found it nearly impossible to live among sinful people, the Israelites too found it nearly impossible to live with a Holy God in their midst. The elaborate rituals laid down for the Israelites to approach God with zero margin for error, made them feel distant and cry out, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die”. Looking back at that period one might ask, “Who wouldn’t lose heart in harsh circumstances? If only there were happier times, when God seemed close and granted heart’s desires!” God granted exactly that in Solomon’s time. He ruled over a golden age within a long tormented history of the Hebrews. With everything working in his favor, Solomon at first seemed to gratefully follow God. But by the end of his reign he had taken Israel from a fledgling Kingdom dependent on God for bare survival to a self-sufficient political power that took God for granted once his presence centered in the temple.

When the Kings who followed Solomon continued to lead Israel away, God turned to the prophets. But after spectacular demonstrations through Elijah and Elisha for a brief while, he seemed to rein in his supernatural power, turning from spectacle to word. Isaiah, Hosea, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all had no stunning displays of God’s power but only words. After all, miracles had not had a lasting impact on his people’s faith; he decided to inscribe a permanent record of how He felt. He felt like a betrayed lover and poured out emotions pent up for centuries. It was He not Israel, that was truly the disappointed party. The books of the Prophets reveal God struggling for a language, any language that might break through to his people. To the prophets too, it seemed like God was getting farther and farther that they protested loudly with disappointment. However God did not consider his ‘words’ as an inferior form of proof. Heaven then went silent for four hundred years.

What else could God do? God then set to win his people’s love through suffering, what he could not win through power. Supernatural encounters had always caused fear , sometime sounding like thunder, sometimes stirring the air like a whirlwind and sometimes lighting up the scene like burning phosphorous. God decided to span the vast chasm of fear that distanced him from his creation. On Christmas day, God became a baby, giving up language, muscle coordination and the ability to eat solid food or control bladder. God took on a shape in the world, acquiring a face, a name and an address. He made possible an intimacy that had never existed before – a bridge between ordinary human beings and a perfect God. Because of him, we can come directly to God. But his very ordinary appearance did not let Israel accept him as their Messiah, as it did not match with their expectation of what God should look like.

The problem of unfairness just did not go away and only seemed to worsen. Jesus’ own life ended in the greatest unfairness of history: the best man who ever lived becoming yet another victim of a cruel world. Though Jesus fed five thousand, raised Lazarus from the dead and calmed the raging storm, people disappointed with God are more interested in the miracles that Jesus did not perform. Why does a God who can right any wrong, choose not to sometimes? Why heal one paralyzed man at Bethesda – but only one? His selective miracles far from solving every human disappointment serve as previews of what God would someday do for all creation. Jesus refused temptations from the devil – to pull out a miracle to satisfy his hunger after forty days of fasting, to pull out another to defy nature and guarantee his physical safety, and to take the shortcut to achieve his messianic goal of making the world his own. The spectacle of the Cross – the one event that took place in the open for all the world to see - reveals a God who would not prove himself through power but rather through love. He had come to become one of us, and live and die as one of us. He passionately loved the people he had made but had a terrible urge to destroy the Evil that enslave them. On the cross, God’s son absorbed the destructive force and transformed it into love.

During his life on earth, after the seventy he had sent out returned with reports of people being healed and devils being cast out, Jesus jubilantly exclaimed, “I see Satan fall like lightning from heaven!” During the last supper on the eve of his arrest he told the disciples with a finality, “I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me”. While his disciples anticipated a call to take arms and overthrow the Roman Empire, he asked them to wait for the Holy Spirit and ascended to heaven. He had indeed come to settle divine justice and to show us what God is like. But more than that, he came to establish a Church, a new dwelling place for the Spirit of God. The New Testament uses the phrase “body of Christ” to refer to this church. Humans on earth in whom God himself –the Holy Spirit – was living, extended the arms, legs and eyes of God on earth. Here, God took another risk, of letting us represent him badly and Christian have indeed represented him badly – Slavery, the Crusades, pogroms against Jews, colonialism, wars, Ku Klux clan. A prefect God now lives inside very imperfect human beings. According to Dorothy Sayers, after the Incarnation and the Cross, the Church is his third humiliation.

In the Old Testament days, God's voice was thunderingly loud. When the voice spoke from the trembling mountain at Sinai or when fire licked up the altar on Mount Carmel, no one could deny it. Yet, amazingly those who heard the voice and feared it soon learned to ignore it. Its very volume got in the way. For a few decades the Voice of God took on the volume and rural accent of a country Jew in Palestine. It did not cause people to flee and was soft enough to kill. After Jesus' ascent, the Voice of God speaks to our spirit, as close as breath and as gentle as a whisper. It is the most vulnerable voice of all and the easiest to ignore. The change from the visible presence of God in the wilderness to the invisible presence of the Holy Spirit involves a certain kind of loss. We lose the clear, sure proof that God exists. But he has elevated us from being a permanently stunted child to becoming a mature lover. For a baby, dependence is everything; someone else must meet its every need or the child will die. A lover, on the other hand, possesses complete freedom, yet chooses to give it away and become dependent. He desires not the clinging helpless love of a child who has no choice but the mature, freely given love of a lover. His Spirit in us will not remove all disappointment with God. His titles – Intercessor, helper, Counselor, Comforter, - imply there will be problems. However, his Spirit inside us reminds us that such disappointments are temporary, a prelude to an eternal life with God.

[Philip Yancey's Disappointment with God includes 2 books that treat the same subject from two different perspectives. In the first book he looks at the whole Bible from beginning to end, to find an answer to our disappointment. In the second book he looks for an answer from 'Job'. I would be naive to believe that I can summarize 152 pages of rich arguments put forth by the author in the first book, in a few pages here. I therefore greatly recommend that you read Philip Yancey's insightful book to glean more of the Answer. I just hope that your appetite has been sufficiently whetted by this summary.]

Plead, Submit and Rest assured

God is sovereign. We find so many in the bible addressing the Lord GOD as Sovereign LORD. Dictionary defines sovereign as ‘supreme ruler’ or ‘a person with supreme power or authority’. Our Lord is the only true sovereign in this world. Paul writes about God to Timothy in I Timothy 6:16 calling Him “the blessed and only Ruler, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords”. The dictionary also has another set of meanings for Sovereign -- ‘preeminent’, ‘indisputable’, ‘self-governing’ and ‘independent’. God alone qualifies by these criteria. He says in Exodus 33:19, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” He is absolutely free to act as he will. He is not bound by any rules. Very often we do not realize this when we address God as ‘Sovereign’ in our prayers; 'sovereign' has just become a meaningless adjective in front of his name. If he is sovereign, we cannot demand from Him as we demand from our peers. If he is indeed sovereign, we cannot command Him as we command our servants. The only way we can approach this most High God to act on our behalf is to plead for his grace. The next time we go down on our knees or look up in prayer, shall we PLEAD for his mercy.

God is absolutely sovereign. Since he is indisputable, we cannot question his fairness or wisdom in how he deals with us. Paul asks the Romans, “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ”(Rom 9:20) Earthly sovereigns may be arbitrarily unjust, but our Sovereign Lord in his arbitrary mercy has decided "I will call them 'my people' who are not my people ; and I will call her 'my loved one' who is not my loved one." (Rom 9:25) Knowing that he is not just all-powerful but also all-knowing and loving, we need to submit to whatever is his plan for us. Paul continues, “Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?” (Rom 9:21) In this fallen world, there will be poverty and prosperity, health and sickness, literacy and ignorance, honor and rejection, all side by side. Whatever is the situation that we are in, we are not to question Him but remind ourselves, that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). In the limited light that we have, we will not see the greater good that awaits us. Today’s ‘seed faith’ theology may say that we are to visualize what the solution to our problem will be, in all its details and pray for that solution. I would think that any solution which we can think of cannot be the best, given our limited knowledge. After we have pleaded for a solution to our problem, it is in our interest to leave the actual solution to His infinite wisdom. We will do well to SUBMIT to his will.

Finally, God is not just sovereign over us; he is sovereign over all circumstances. We are safe in His hands. Too often people are afraid not just for this life, but even if their salvation and eternal destiny is safe. Paul asserts in his letter to the Romans, “Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:35, 37-39) What is his confidence? We find it in verse 34 -- Christ Jesus is at the right hand of God. Christ Jesus is on the Throne and He reigns supreme. He reiterates in 2 Timothy 1:12, “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.” We can certainly REST ASSURED in his SOVEREIGN Love.

If at some point in life, we have truly committed our life to God and have accepted his gift of Salvation, we can rest assured that he will keep us safe from falling. Even when we falter on the way, fall to temptations and drift away from him, His gentle love continues to tug us back towards him. When we stray away, we get to face the consequences, lose precious years and miss several blessings he had planned for us, but He does not let the devil steal us. He will chastise us and do all it takes to bring us back to him. Dr. Ravi Zacharias recounts the fascinating experience of one of his translators of yesteryears, Hien Pham. A young teen in the early seventies, he had been his interpreter in Vietnam when he ministered to the American troops. From those early promising days, so much went wrong in his life but God was faithful to bring him back to Himself. What a great assuring Rest we have in Him.

"When Vietnam fell, Hien was imprisoned and indoctrinated, and had decided to abandon his Christian faith. Then he came across a page from Romans 8 that had been used as toilet paper while cleaning the prison latrines. After finding the Scripture, Hien asked the commander if he could clean the latrines regularly, because he discovered that some official was using a Bible as toilet paper. Each day Hien picked up a portion of Scripture, cleaned it off, and added it to his collection of nightly reading.The day came when, through an equally providential set of circumstances, Hien was released from prison. He promptly began to make plans to leave the country and to construct a boat for the escape of him and fifty-three others. All was going according to plan until days before their departure. Four Vietcong knocked on Hien's door and said they had heard of his escape. He denied it and they left. Hien felt relieved, but at the same time disappointed with himself. He made a promise to God—fervently hoping that God would not take him up on it—that if the Vietcong returned, he would tell them the truth. He was thoroughly shaken when only a few hours before they were to set sail, the four men returned. When questioned again, Hien confessed the truth. To Hien's astonishment, the men leaned forward and in hushed tones, asked if they could go with him!In an utterly incredible escape plan, all fifty-eight of them found themselves on the high seas, suddenly engulfed by a violent storm. Today, he lives to say that if it were not for the sailing ability of those four Vietcong, they would not have made it. They arrived safely in Thailand, and years later Hien arrived on American soil where today he is a businessman." What providence we find in His sovereignty!

Jesus is our greatest example. When faced with the prospect of losing his Father’s presence and his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow, he pleaded, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” Having pleaded, he submitted to his Father’s will and prayed, “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” He was then prepared to face what he feared and rested assured in his Father’s divine providence. Let us follow our saviour's footsteps.

He's very fond of me

When asked who is the most important person on earth, most might answer that it is the President of the United States of America. Do we not call the occupant of that chair as "The Most Powerful Man on Earth"? Christians could possibly point to some Minister who is seen to be powerfully anointed of God, as most important. We find from the Bible that 'the greatest prophet of all times' Samuel was no exception either. When asked to anoint a son of Jesse as the 2nd King of Israel, he considered the appearance and height of Eliab the eldest and thought he was the Lord's anointed to be Israel's King. He had to be reminded by God, "The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart". Even Jesse who had been instructed by Samuel to assemble his sons and join him for a sacrifice to the Lord, had made the same mistake. While he called his first 7 sons for the worship, he did not consider his youngest son important and had left him to continue to tend the sheep. How radically opposite are our outlook comapred to our Lord's. Here is David, the youngest and the despised in the family away tending sheep and God has Samuel waiting to receive him so he could anoint him as King.

Very few people in this world look at it in the same way that the Lord looks. There are very few like Teresa who said, "I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds I feel I am nursing the Lord himself". Teresa could see God the Creator in every neglected person who had been created in the image of God. She could do so because she had come to share the Lord's burden for the lowly

Let's look at some of the civilian laws that God had given the nation of Israel through Moses, that will help us get a ringside view of his concern for the poor.

• 'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien." (Lev 19:9,10)


• At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. . . Every creditor shall cancel the loan he has made to his fellow Israelite. He shall not require payment from his fellow Israelite or brother . . . you must cancel any debt your brother owes you. (Deu 15:1-3)


• Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns. Pay him his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and is counting on it. (Deu 24:14,15)

Look at the Lord's heart. It can clearly be seen in 2 verses in Deuteronomy 15. Ver 4 says "There should be no poor among you." If the rich would take care of the poor and needy, realizing that God's riches are not meant for their individual use but have been given them in their capacity as Stewards, there would not be any poor. The world wants to make the poor still poorer through their debts and Credit cards but God had wanted the old nation of Israel to cancel the poor's debts. Ver 11 says "There will always be poor people in the land." As long as we are on this fallen earth, there will be poverty and prosperity side by side. It is the Lord's will that his Stewards will administer the riches in their hands generously and alleviate poverty. He told the Israelites that they are to deal this way with the poor because He is the Lord their God (Lev 19:10) -- God of both the poor and the rich. How often we forget this and live as if God is on the side of the rich? What a different place this world will be, if we will begin to see like God sees?

We considered how our 'outward look' at the world should be. Let us now see how our 'inward look' - the way we look at ourselves - should be. What should our identity be -- our profession, our prosperity or our family connections? Philip Yancey in his book 'What's So Amazing About Grace' quotes Brennan Manning "If John were to be asked, 'What is your primary identity in life ?' he would not reply, 'I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,' but rather, 'I am the one Jesus loves.'" Brennan Manning also tells the story of an Irish priest who, on a walking-tour of a rural parish, sees an old peasant kneeling by the side of the road, praying. Impressed, the priest says to the man, "You must be very close to God." The peasant looks up from his prayers, thinks a moment, and then smiles, "Yes, He's very fond of me".

Irrespective of who we are - rich or poor, educated or illiterate, high or low - will our identity be that "I am the one Jesus loves"? That will keep us from pride as well as from self-pity. Some of us could need the humbling that this identity brings while others could need the encouragement. Again, for some of us there could be times of success when we need to be brought to our senses that there is nothing we can do to earn God's love, and other times of failure when we need this encouragement that there is nothing we can do to make us lose his love. Jesus loves me because he created me in His own image. How comforting this is !

Fasting: a spiritual exercise

I once used to reject fasting as starvation, as I often ended up spending the hours without prayer and without food. I used to tell myself that unless I am also able to pray while I am abstaining from food, I am not fasting but merely starving. I had probably considered Isa 58:3,4 - "'Why have we fasted', they say, 'and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves and you have not noticed?' ‘Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please . . . You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high'" - while coming to this conclusion. Hence, over time, I stopped fasting. But today, I begin to see that fasting by itself is a spiritual exercise just as praying is.

I now see Isa 58:3,4 not in isolation but within the context of the whole chapter. God is not displeased about the fact that they carried on their work while fasting. Rather he is displeased about the fact that their hearts were not in right alignment with him. In fact, their hearts were set all out against his tenets of justice. Their fasts were acts of hypocrisy, hoping to please God with their outwardly righteous acts while their hearts were far from him. They hoped to impress God and keep his eyes away from their quarreling and exploitation, so he could bless them. But our God is a flaming fire who examines our heart and searches our soul. He therefore called their bluff.

Just as prayer itself may be offered either sincerely where one is fully focused on God or lightly without much thought to what is being said and to who it is being said, a fast too may be offered sincerely to God or offered without any thought of God. The fact that one is working while fasting should not make it inappropriate. The human mind is capable of doing several things together and over time one should be able to learn to focus on God even in the midst of work, especially when he is fasting. Charles Spurgeon writes on Exclamatory Prayer in his book The Power in Prayer, "The mind can be praying while it is studying. It can be looking up to God while it is talking to man. One hand can be held up to receive supplies from God while the other hand is dealing out the same supplies that He is pleased to give." Just as we do not advise people to stop praying because they do not pray the right way when they begin to, but rather to grow in prayer by focusing their thoughts on God, even so, a weak attempt at fasting should not be discouraged but one should rather be encouraged to make his fasting more meaningful and effective.

How is a fast that one offers in the midst of a busy day, an act of sacrifice? To understand it, let us first look at what any act of sacrifice to the Lord signifies and accomplishes – be it prayer or praise.

Firstly, we honor God with our sacrifices. Pro 3:9 tells us to “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops". In Heb 13:15, Paul exhorts us to “continually offer to God a sacrifice of Praise – the fruit of lips that confess his name”. Just as we honor God, when we do not take the firstfruits for ourselves, and instead consecrate them for God, we honor God when we forego what is by default ours. In India, when we have guests at home and do not have enough cots for everyone, we honor the guests by giving them the cots for a good night’s rest and settling on mats on the floor ourselves. In the same way, when we give away the food that is rightfully ours, to focus on the food from heaven, we honor God. It is not that God is honored because he has the firstfruits; God is honored by our giving hearts.

Secondly, we humble ourselves before God. Ezra tells us that when he had to lead a large group from Babylon to Israel, he was ashamed to ask the King for soldiers and horsemen to protect them from enemies on the Road, and instead chose to ask God for a safe journey (Ezra 8:21). There was a great hazard on the way and he needed protection. He could have deceived himself by thinking that the King's supply will make him self-sufficient. But he chose to humble himself before God through fasting, together with the group he was leading, knowing well that it was not wise to trust man. By going to the Lord fasting, we declare that we are not self-sufficient in ourselves and the resources at our hands, and we are totally dependent on the Lord. Fasting expresses humility, self-denial and submission to God.

Thirdly, we express our regret over our sins. We find Samuel leading the Israelites to fast and mourn for their sins, and he himself interceded for them and cried out to the Lord on their behalf (I Sam 7:5-9). Elsewhere in Neh 9:1-3, we find the Israelites who had returned from Babylon, having revived worship in the temple and rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem, assembling to fast wearing sackcloth and with dust on their heads, to confess their sins and the wickedness of their fathers.

Fourthly, we show repentance and make way for God to change his declared intention of judgment. When David sinned and God warned him through Nathan that he will have to pay with the life of his new-born son, he fasted and spent the nights lying on the ground until the child died. He explained it later, “When the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ ”(II Sam 12:22)  We find elsewhere how Ahab tore his clothes, fasted, lay in sackcloth and went around meekly, when he was warned by Elijah of the coming judgment on him (I Kings 21:17-27). The Lord took notice and told Elijah, “Because he has humbled himself, I will not bring this disaster in his day”.

We know that it is important to feed on His Word and listen to what He has to tell us. We know that it is important to seek God's presence and speak to Him in prayer. Therefore, irrespective of where we stand with regard to reading and meditating the Scriptures and praying, we always yearn to grow in these disciplines. Let us realize that Fasting too, is a very important discipline that the Lord has made available for us to grow closer to him, and begin to exercise it in our spiritual walk with God.

Do I need to fast ?

Jesus responded to the query from John’s disciples about why his disciples did not fast with a question, "How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?”. He then went on to elaborate saying, “They cannot, so long as they have him with them. But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.” (Mark 2:19,20)

Jesus did not say fasting was not necessary. Rather, he anticipated that they would fast at a later point in time. But before they could be expected to fast, he was at work in them. He was preparing their hearts so that when they fast they would not do it as an obligation to keep the law. Instead, they would do it for the right reasons. Jesus conveyed this through a metaphor. "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins." (Mark 2:21,22). He was giving them a new robe of righteousness. He was transforming their hearts that were old wineskins into ones capable of being home to his Holy Spirit. With his righteousness, they would then fast so that they are with the Lord even as their bodies are away from Christ. With fasting we seek him and draw near to him.

Today, some people fast as the pharisees did. They do it for all the wrong reasons . . . to be seen to be holy by others, to earn brownie points with God, or to wring God's hands into acting out what they desire. There are others on the other extreme who reject fasting as mere observance of the law that is no longer required, or as a dead tradition that yields nothing good. Jesus did not consider fasting to be an inconsequential and unnecessary practice.

In fact, Jesus thought and taught ‘Fasting’ to be an essential part of a child of God – putting it in the same league as praying and helping the poor – as can be seen from another passage in the Gospels. In his sermon on the mount, he preached saying, "When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Mat 6:16-18)

Why should we fast? If we know why we should pray, we would then know why we should fast. Fasting can be considered as an intense form of prayer. When we pray God often works changes within us though at times he additionally works out changes outside us too. Anyone who spends time with the Lord is transformed by his presence. In Exodus we find that whenever Moses returned from the Lord’s presence after speaking with him, his face was radiant (Exo.34:34,35). On most such occasions, his prayer was also accompanied by fasting. Prayer and fasting bring such glorious transformation. Fasting helps one to humble himself before God in order to experience God's intimate presence and more grace.

How is fasting an intense form of prayer? In prayer, we fervently petition God. In fasting, our prayer is all the more fervent and potent. A poet wrote “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of”. It is all the more true of fasting. In Mark 9:17-29, we find Jesus rebuking and driving out a deaf and mute spirit that also threw the boy it possessed to the ground, making him foam at his mouth, gnash his teeth and become rigid. His disciples wondered why they could not drive the spirit out. Jesus had a short reply, "This kind can come out only by prayer and fasting." Fasting is needed to save people from bondage to evil.

In the early church that got established soon after our Lord’s ascension, we find the apostles and the early Christians praying and fasting. In Acts 13:2 we find that while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." As they reaffirmed their consecration to God through fasting, he set out to do wonderful things in their midst. In verse 23 of the next chapter we see that Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust. Here, when they set out on a new task, they fasted to seek his grace for the task, even as Christ himself fasted ahead of his ministry (Mat 4:2).

Jesus fasted. His disciples fasted after he was taken up from the earth, true to the words he spoke while he had been with them. The early church fasted. All this should certainly encourage us to fast more than we do now, even as we are driven in our hearts to increase and abound in prayer.