For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. [Romans 3:23 (NLT)]
When I was in college, most of the girls in my sorority house played bridge. After watching a few games, newcomers would sit in and learn from the more experienced players as they played. We novices lost a lot of games in the process but, eventually, we became good players. One friend, however, wanted to start as an expert. She sat alone in her room with a deck of cards and a bridge book trying to teach herself. Unwilling to make rookie mistakes, she wouldn’t play a hand until she was a skilled player; that day never came. She wasn’t much different from the people who say they’ll join a gym once they’ve gotten in better shape; rarely does that day come either.
Bridge is an experience-based game; in order to get good at it, you have to be willing to be bad at first. No one starts by winning every hand just like no one begins at the gym as fit as ninja stunt-woman Jessie Graff or The Titan Games’ Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. Even the legendary Charles Atlas started out as a “97-pound weakling.”
Just as feeling incompetent might keep us from playing a card game or feeling uncomfortable in spandex can keep us from the gym, being weighed down with self-judgment, shame and feelings of inadequacy can keep us from God and fellowship with our sisters and brothers in Christ. Some people think they can’t come to church until their lives are less messy or their addiction under control while others think they can’t join a small group or do a Bible study because they don’t know enough Scripture or are in the midst of a divorce. God doesn’t require life masterpoints to come to His table nor does He expect the power and strength of competitive athletes. Rather than a country club for saints, His church is a hospital for sinners!
Romans 3:23 confirms what we all know; we’re sinners and not a one of us meets God’s glorious standard. The enemy wants us to stop reading right there. Whispering, “You’re not good enough,” he wants us filled with regret, self-doubt, and guilt so that we’re unwilling to bare our shabby souls before God. He wants us to believe that we’ll never be good enough to enter God’s presence, come before Him with our prayers, enjoy fellowship with His Son, be His son or daughter, or eat at His table. The enemy is partially right; there’s nothing we can do on our own to be good enough. The work Jesus did on the cross would have no value if we could make ourselves learn, earn, or work our way into God’s presence! The good news is found in the rest of Paul’s letter to the Romans: it’s the power of Jesus that makes us good enough to come into God’s presence and do His work!
Good enough, however, is not perfect and we will continue to have shortcomings. Like playing bridge, walking with Jesus is experience-based and we’ll make plenty of mistakes in the journey. But, if we keep at it, we’ll get better. Like the trainer at the gym, Jesus welcomes us as 97-pound weaklings but He doesn’t expect us to stay that way. Like any trainer, He’s going to challenge us to become stronger and better. Remember, God loved us so much that He gave His only son for our salvation. If that’s good enough for Him, it’s good enough for me.
Why God should choose the meanest, basest, most unworthy individuals with absolutely nothing to commend them at all to God, except their miserable, lost condition, and then exalt them to become the sons of God, members of the divine family, and use them for His glory, is beyond all reason and human understanding. Yet that is grace. [M.R. DeHaan]
With the back-to-back hurricanes that tore through Louisiana, two others that devastated Nicaragua and Honduras, and the consecutive typhoons that flooded the Philippines, a great many people must be asking, “Why us, Lord?” In spite of the meteorological explanations for the paths taken by those storms, there is something discomforting about the seeming randomness of such destruction. I can’t help but wonder, “Why them and not us?” In a universe of retribution and reward, we’d have a sense of being able to control our destiny; only bad things would happen to bad people and only good things to the good ones. If we did all the right things, life would go smoothly and, if we didn’t, we’d just be getting what we deserved! That, however, is not the way of the world and back-to-back hurricanes along with cancer, ALS, hit-and-run-drivers, stray bullets, and tornadoes hit both the deserving and undeserving.
My daughter has become quite adept at hiding Christmas gifts from her husband. If she doesn’t, he will find the presents and open them early; patience is not one of his strong suits. It wasn’t one of Sarah and Abraham’s either. Although they’d been promised a son and many descendants, they grew impatient waiting and took matters into their own hands. Sarah gave Abraham her maidservant Hagar with whom to make a child. Although she made the offer, he didn’t have to accept—but he did. The boy Ishmael was the result of their rashness and the rivalry and strife that continue today in the Middle East came from that impatience. Like Sarah and Abraham, when my son-in-law knows a gift is coming, he just can’t wait until the correct time to receive it. Fortunately, while his wife may get annoyed when he takes matters into his own hands, his impulsiveness hasn’t resulted in centuries of international conflict.
Rescue me, O Lord, from liars and from all deceitful people. … How I suffer in far-off Meshech. It pains me to live in distant Kedar. I search for peace; but when I speak of peace, they want war! [Psalm 120:2,5-6 (NLT)]
Psalms 120 through 134 have the superscription A Song of Ascents. What that means exactly, no one really knows. The original word translated as ascent was “stair” or “step” and some scholars believe the title refers to the temple’s fifteen steps leading from the Court of the Women into the Court of the Sons of Israel. Jewish tradition holds that Levites sang a different one of these psalms as they climbed the steps to the temple. Other scholars posit that the title of the psalms has to do either with the rising moods or thoughts in the psalms’ words or their rising pitch as they were sung.
Devotions of the Heart 