Can't Wait (Friday Devotional)

“[Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.””

- Luke 19:1-8

Nobody likes to wait in line. Whether it’s at the DMV, the amusement park, or the ticket office, there is a sort of anxious energy that permeates every line. Everyone wonders how much longer it will be, everyone worries that they’re wasting their time, and everyone just wants to reach the front. But they all understand that waiting is just a part of life, so they try to be patient and they stay in line.

At least, until it’s important. When you have a crucial message to deliver, you don’t mind interrupting someone. When something’s on fire, you don’t seek permission before borrowing a hose. When your wife is in labor, the speed limit is suddenly just a suggestion. Sometimes you just can’t wait.

It is that sort of urgency that springs up multiple times in the well-known passage above. When Zacchaeus was unable to see Jesus on account of the crowd, he “ran ahead”, scrambling up a sycamore tree until he caught the view he needed. When Jesus spotted him in the tree, he told him to “hurry and come down,” because it was imperative that he stay at Zacchaeus’s house that very day. Luke couldn’t be much clearer—both Zacchaeus and Jesus feel a sense of urgency to make this meeting happen.

For those who know Christ, that feeling is quite relatable. Many believers can point to a specific moment, often at the end of a worship service or during a revival meeting or at youth camp, when the Holy Spirit seized their hearts and propelled them to a decision for Christ. In such a moment, nothing felt more urgent or important—it was time to meet Jesus, and everything else could wait.

But like with Zacchaeus, not everyone shares that sense of urgency. There are always those on the outside who see the excitement of the new believer and find in it cause to grumble. Maybe they don’t believe anything has truly changed, maybe they don’t understand what the fuss is, maybe they’re simply envious of an urgency and an excitement they don’t share. Whatever the reason, their response to the joy of the new believer is the cynicism of the skeptic.

And the sad truth is, sometimes their doubts wind up being justified. Many respond to the urgency of salvation only to then ignore the urgency of sanctification—they climb the sycamore, they hurry to host Jesus at their home, but when the time comes to make a Zacchaeus-like change in lifestyle for the good of the kingdom, they ask, “What’s the rush?” When the demand of discipleship sets in, far too often urgency is replaced by complacency.

Zacchaeus represents a model of a sinner saved by grace—saved not only to eternal life after death, but to new life now. Having met Jesus, he could not wait to be changed forever, starting that very moment. He met the grumbles of skeptics not with arguments or self-righteousness, but with the kind of visible change that could not be ignored, feeling the same urgency to be changed as to be saved. May we learn from the example of his earnestness, eager not just to meet Jesus, but to be like him.

Good, Not Better (Friday Devotional)

“He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’”

- Luke 18:9-14

Imagine you have two gallons of milk. The first expired one month ago and the second a year ago. Both have changed colors and textures to varying degrees, and both smell different than they did back when they were still fit to drink. Yet while neither sounds particularly appetizing, there’s no doubt which gallon is closer to being a viable drink—if I asked you which milk was better, no doubt you’d choose the one-month-old gallon.

But if I were to then ask you to drink it to prove your point, I can’t imagine you’d do so enthusiastically. After all, it may not be as bad as the year-old milk, but it’s still expired! Judging by comparison may tell you what’s better and what’s worse, but it won’t always tell you what’s good.

In the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Jesus shows us that the same principle goes for people. He describes two men, a self-righteous Pharisee and sinful tax collector, total opposites in almost every way, and has only one of the two walk away from his encounter with God justified—but turning expectations on their head, it is the self-proclaimed sinner, not the religious elite, who receives vindication. Many read the parable and draw from it a message about repentance—the tax collector, they say, is a model of how every person should approach God, with the understanding that only His mercy can save them. Those who humble themselves, as Christ said, will be exalted.

But that is only half the message, and we should not forget the other—and the harder—half: those who exalt themselves will be humbled. Jesus told the parable, says Luke, “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” In other words, his audience looked a lot more like the parable’s Pharisee than its tax collector. Where the tax collector could hardly bear to enter the temple, the Pharisee strolled right up, confident in his standing with God. Where the tax collector beat his breast with the passion of a desperate man, the Pharisee prayed with calm self-assurance. And most importantly, where the tax collector knew himself to be a sinner, the Pharisee found himself to be righteous.

The Pharisee made a mistake we continue to make to this day, whether with milk or morality—he judged by comparison instead of conviction, by what’s better instead of what’s good. While the tax collector held himself up to God’s standard and rightly found himself wanting, the Pharisee lowered the bar considerably—he compared himself to the worst society had to offer! “God, I thank you that I am not like other people,” he said, “thieves, rogues, adulterers, and even this tax collector here.” Wanting to be considered a righteous man, he found his security in the knowledge that at least he wasn’t one of those people. And yet, Jesus says he did not walk away justified in God’s eyes—he may have been better than the people he held in contempt, but that didn’t make him good.

When we judge people by comparison instead of by God’s standard, we cannot help but break the greatest commandment, to love the Lord with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. We fail to love God because we show that His standards, His character, and His commandments are something we will abandon when they become inconvenient to our agenda, that we’ll find an easier bar to clear when it suits us. And we fail to love our neighbor because when we compare ourselves to someone else, when we say “At least I’m better than him,” we are showing our neighbor contempt instead of mercy, loathing instead of love.

In an age when our media, politics, conversations, and communities are so polarized, Christians cannot afford to seek our own righteousness by comparing ourselves to others. “I’m not bad as him” is not the defense of a sinner saved by grace, but the false prayer of a self-righteous Pharisee, and Christ demands more. So may you look for righteousness where it is found, not in self-serving comparisons, but in humility and grace—because comparing yourself to others may make you look better in your eyes, but only God’s mercy can make you good in His eyes.

Something Better (Friday Devotional)

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”

- Philippians 4:8-9

Water jumped over the side of the bucket as I dunked my rag into it with force and more than a little frustration. I silently cursed my carelessness and felt my temper rise. This was getting ridiculous—my knees were aching, my fingers were as wrinkly as raisins, and I couldn’t even tell anymore if the sweat on my brow was from the work or my aggravation.

All I’d wanted to do was clean the kitchen floor, a job long past due but that nevertheless shouldn’t have taken more than half an hour. Yet here I was 45 minutes in, and every time I swiped the wet rag across the kitchen tiles, all I seemed to be doing was drawing new dirty streaks instead of removing old ones. I had soapy water, I had a rag, I had the elbow grease—why wasn’t the floor sparkling yet?

At about the moment I was getting ready to kick the bucket over, Lindsey called to check in on how my day was going. Venting, I explained the predicament: we were just going to have to get used to a perpetually dirty floor, because ours was apparently impossible to clean. With the gentle tone you might adopt when speaking to a lost child, she asked the obvious question: “Honey, have you been using the same water the whole time?”

I looked down at the bucket with fresh eyes and saw what my work’s progression had blinded me to—the water was a filthy brownish-gray color, the soapy bubbles long gone. For at least ten minutes, I’d been trying to wash a dirty floor with dirty water. It was time for something better.

Sometimes the world seems to be as dark and grimy as that water. All the news seems to be bad news, every conflict seems to be a crisis, and hope is a forgotten friend. The Fall seems much nearer than Christ’s return, sin more triumphant than grace. You find yourself wanting to replace the constant barrage of decadence, disappointment, and depravity with something better.

In the conclusion to his letter to the church in Philippi, the apostle Paul directs believers to do just that, to dwell not on the sinfulness the world bombards us with, but on what is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and praiseworthy—in other words, what is Christ-like. This is not a Pollyannaish plea to “be positive,” but a more serious command to be redemptive, to replace the broken things of our world with the wholeness of heaven. Rather than being preoccupied with the world’s problems and sinking into despair, the gospel calls believers to rise with Christ and serve as lights to the world.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Put less poetically, you can’t wash a dirty floor with dirty water. As believers, we are called to respond to sin not with more sin, but with the power and grace of the gospel. So when the world seems like it can’t get any darker, may you respond neither with retreat nor retaliation, but redemption.

Are You Sure? (Friday Devotional)

“The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.”

- 2 Timothy 2:11-13

I have never been any good at auto repair. Cars are complicated machines, and they work exactly as they should (or close enough) so often that when they do suddenly start acting up, I generally assume the problem is beyond my ability to fix. When I hear someone describing an automotive issue, my eyes glaze over the same way a churchgoer’s do when the preacher starts speaking in Greek. Car repair is just not something I have any knack for.

But if there’s one basic thing I can work on under the hood, it’s the battery, something I have an unfortunate amount of experience dealing with. Whether it’s cleaning corrosion buildup near the terminals, jump starting a dead battery, or replacing a bad one altogether, I’m relatively competent. But I’m also exceedingly careful.

You see, the first time I ever jump started a car, the person teaching me made a point to be sure I was attaching the right cable to the right terminal in exactly the right sequence. Make a mistake, he insisted, and I could create enough sparks to blow up the car. Was he joking? Probably. But I’m not confident enough under the hood to make any assumptions. So to this day, any time I have to jump start a car, it takes me several extra minutes, because before I’m ready to turn the key in the dead car, I have to double check and triple check my connections. Sometimes you just need to be sure.

It would be nice if you could be that sure in every part of life, if you had the luxury of double and triple check everything before moving forward, but of course there are areas where that’s just impossible, including your relationship with God. The very nature of faith is that you’re never 100% sure, that you are placing your heart, mind, and soul in the hands of an invisible God. No one living today ever saw Christ in the flesh, ever touched the scars in his hands, ever witnessed any of his miracles or heard his voice proclaim the Gospel—yet every Christian, drawn in by the Holy Spirit, is able to confidently proclaim that they know his power to save them. Denied the luxury of empirical data, faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not yet seen.

But admittedly, there are times when you want a little more proof, when you just need to be sure. When your family fractures, when your career craters, when sickness stops you in your tracks—any time your life seems to be splintering before your very eyes—you find yourself looking to heaven for reassurance that God is still faithful. You simply want a reminder that, to quote the hymn, faith is the victory, especially when your life seems anything but victorious.

In those times, draw encouragement and comfort from the saying found in 2 Timothy 2:11-13, a saying apparently already widely circulated throughout the early church at the time of Paul’s writing. The believer in Christ is inextricably identified with him, is in fact part of his body through the church—and is the beneficiary of his faithfulness. The world may hurl its darts, but in Christ you are given both the strength to endure this life and the promise of a better life to come. There is no promise of easy living now, but the beautiful promise that is made—of life in Christ, both now and eternally—is one that God faithfully fulfills. Even when your faithfulness wavers, God’s never does—of that you can be sure.