I Wanna Know What Love Is

It’s hard to imagine, but this very Monday one year ago I started this devotional.  In honor of its first birthday, I wanted to pull some of (what I think are) the more memorable lines/contexts from my year-long journey of trying to train myself to find God in places we don’t expect to find Him.  So here they are…my David Letterman Top-10 List – of course, in no particular order.

But like Morpheus said in the movie, The Matrix, you need to “free your mind” to break away from the world you see with your eyes, and see the world with the Spiritual Eyes that we’re all supposed to have.

God doesn’t work to bring glory to us.  God doesn’t work miracles simply to make us happy or be our Jesus Genie that pops up to grant wishes when we rub our Bibles.

Are we Christians because God is Holy and Righteous and Sovereign, and should we serve Him because He truly IS the King above all Kings?  Or are we Christians because Jesus is preparing a place for us?

But we don’t always wear the Armor of God.  We wear the armor of ME!!  And I grab my Belt of Half-Truths, and the Breastplate of Self-Righteousness, and my feet are fitted with the worries of this world because my worries outweigh His Peace.  And I stand behind a Shield of Weak Faith (that sometimes falters when it’s tested), and I don’t need a Helmet of Salvation because My Big Dumb Hard Head is helmet enough for me!  And lastly I use a dull, rusty sword.  And my sword is rusty and dull because I never sharpen it.  My sword (which is the Word of God) lays in my back seat all week long until I get it out to carry it in on Sunday morning.  Then I carry it back out (having never opened it) when church is over, and when I finally need my Sword of the Spirit, it’s mostly useless to me…because I don’t know how to use it, because I never have.

And feel the comfort God offers when He pulls you to Him unexpectedly in a great, loving hug and says, “I was never angry with you.  I was sad because you had lost your way.”

God’s love is perfect love, and He gave it to you when He didn’t have to.  So crank your love for Him to 11 and rip the knob off!

Be the kind of person that you need to be so that your Christianity is never ketchup on a baked potato.

Don’t try to be like a kid at the store…close enough to see mom, but trying to stay far enough away to still find mischief and be out of swatting distance. 

After creating the universe, I’m feeling pretty certain that God was capable of naming the animals and then telling the man, “Hey, Jethro!  This is an elephant.  This is a camel.  This is a dog.  No, that’s not a monkey, THIS is a monkey.” 

But being the best goat in the goat pen, doesn’t make you a sheep.

And there you have it, folks…a quick snapshot of these devotionals.  Presented in quick, rapid-fire format were ten snippets of the 78 devotionals that preceded this one.  Now for the twist – because oh no, my friends, this wasn’t just some quick stroll down memory lane of the weird things I’ve said – so the twist is this:  Did you get a full understanding of any of those 78 devotionals from those ten highlights?  Me either, and I’m the guy that wrote ‘em!  So here’s the follow-up question for bonus points:  If you can’t get the full meaning of some devotionals by reading 10 cut and paste segments, why do we try to do that with the Bible?

John 3:16, Psalm 23, Genesis 1:1, Philippians 4:13, Proverbs 3:6, Galatians 5:22, and 1 Corinthians 13 dissertation on true love are all wonderful Bible verses (I’ll let you look them up on your own).  But why is that we think we can truly understand who God is and what God wants us to do in this world if those are the only glimpses we’re getting into the Bible?  Ephesians 6 lays out the full armor of God from which I drew my parody above, but if we’re not reading the instructions that came with it…it’s useless.

Listen for the Whisper that tells you that the whole Bible is God’s Word.  If you want to understand, to learn, to grow closer, to love someone then you have to try and get to know them.  Going way back to your school days, when you wanted to get to know a girl you liked, you didn’t spend the whole time talking TO her.  You listened to what she said.  You read the notes she passed you between classes.  And if you want to get to know God, then His Word is where He speaks.  It’s all there.  His power, His holiness, His jealousy, His anger, His compassion, His promise…His promise to Abraham and His promise to you…all that God is can be found in His book.  Along with some very weird allegories when reading the prophets, but it’s still there.

You can’t learn anything about a new girlfriend if you only see her for an hour or so one day a week when someone else tells you about her…like we pretend to do at church.  We go to church on Sunday morning, and we listen to a preacher tell us a few points about how God expects us to live our lives.  And somehow we act like we know God?  Let’s say you go to church 3 times a week and call it an hour a “go”.  52 weeks a year. That’s (pulling off my shoes to do some ciphering) 52 times 3…carry the one, remainder of four, rounded to the slope of the tangential angle divided by the speed of light through a dirty window on a cloudy day…is 156 hours a week.  Quick back figuring for 156 hours and 24 hours in a day…is 6.5 days for 156 hours.  Six and a half days per YEAR is what many people spend getting to know God.  How well do you know someone that you only see six and half days per year?  That’s not even a full week.  Take your yearly vacation week and spread it out over the year in one hour chunks and see how refreshed you feel.  My guess is not very.  And if you only go on Sunday mornings, then that time gets cut by a third…and then you’re talking a whopping two days a year that you spend “getting to know” God.

Take time to know God.  God took the time to put together a plan of Salvation for all of mankind.  Jesus Christ came to earth and took the blame for all of history’s and all of future’s sins onto Himself.  And paid the price of death for you.  And for me.  And for the person you hate most in this world.  I’d want to get to know the guy that did that for me.  I’m never going to get to know God by reading a few verses someone posts on Facebook – even if they come with a funny graphic.  It’s time to blow the dust off your Bible.  Open it up and wear the pages thin reading and rereading it…then go buy another one.  Maybe get a reference Bible that explains extra things in the margins, or a keyword bible to get back to the root languages.  But even if all you have is a basic New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs thrown in…that’s a start.  It’s all right there in the Bible.  And you’ll never truly get to know God if you’re only reading random, disconnected verses.  God loves you.  And God’s asked you to be like Him.  How are you going to act like Him if you don’t even know who He is? 

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

Mapdot Devo

OK, so I’ll admit on the front end that this set-up story is one of those stories that will really only be interesting to those immediately involved.  “Just had to be there things.”  A Location Situation if you’re in, like, 9^th grade.  There’s a little town in Mississippi about halfway between Grenada and Jackson named Durant, Mississippi.  It’s just east of the Interstate 55 – population of about 2,600.  I’m sure millions of people drive by the exit signs on I55 that say Durant and pay no attention.  But the sign means something to someone.  Back when Andrea was growing up, her family was on the way to Florida, and their car broke down.  A kind, local sheriff, let’s call him Andy, came and picked them up and let them hang out at his house for the afternoon while the car was being fixed.  It was a regular Mayberry scene, with local church folks bringing food and the whole nine yards.

So now, every single time we pass that sign, we point it out.  “Hey! There’s good, ol’ DOO-rant, Mississippi!”  (and yes, I say it just like that) And there are other little towns like that.  There’s Star, Mississippi an unincorporated area outside of Jackson where Faith Hill called home.  And there’s similarly-named Start, Louisiana near the booming metropolis of Rayville (population 3,600)…15 minutes the other way from Monroe, where her hubby Tim McGraw called home.  They still have friends and family there.  That is to say that places that are negligible and insignificant to most folks may mean quite a lot to others.  It’s the same with Bible verses...Some of the ones we rush right through mean a great deal to someone else.  Maybe it was their grandpa’s favorite verse.  Maybe it was one they learned when they were young that inspired them to do something…or whatever, you get the point.

And, in what will likely be a short devotional, Listen for the Whisper that tells you that maybe “DOO-rant, Mississippi” isn’t a mapdot town, or a Bible verse…maybe it’s a somebody.  Maybe it’s somebody walking down the street that looks tired and hungry.  The guy that looks like he’s walked a million miles, with a million more to go.  Maybe it’s someone sitting alone in a church pew that looks like maybe there’s nowhere else to turn.  Their last stop was here to look for answers…The Answer.  Maybe it’s someone at work, and you know they have the weight of four lifetimes weighing on their shoulders.  You know they’ve brought it on themselves…bad decisions, poor choices, but still they’re buried under a mountain of poor choices.  And maybe each of those people is a “DOO-rant” unto themselves.  Other people (maybe you, maybe me) walk by them, ignore them, no reason to even glance their direction.  But God knows each of those people.  Like God told Jonah about Nineveh in Jonah 4:11, “And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left…”  We judge them as unworthy of attention – or even a look sometimes.  You know, like when we pull up to the stop light, and they’re standing on the left side of your car…then you get that sudden guilt-crick in your neck, and you can only look off to the right until the light changes?  But God thinks they’re important – important enough for Jesus Christ to die for them – just like He did for you and me.  So maybe those people ought to be important to us, too.

The prodigal son made stupid choices.  He wished his father dead, and squandered his “inherited” money.  And still the father welcomed him home.  And in that parable, which person is it that Christ tells us we should be like?  I’ll use Ephesians 5:1,2 to answer my rhetorical question, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; 2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”  If they’re important to Him, they should be to us.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com