At a Loss for Words (Friday Devotional)

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

- Romans 8:26

Sometimes you can’t find the words to match your feelings. It can happen because you’re awestruck—for example, when you’re peering into the Grand Canyon or staring up at Mount Everest, no descriptor seems to do justice to your awe. It can happen because you’re confused—after all, if you can’t even understand what’s going on, it’s obviously going to be hard to describe it. Indeed, any emotion, when taken to the extreme, from joy to sadness to anger, can so overwhelm you that you lose the ability to describe what you’re feeling. When you’re truly overwhelmed, you’re often at a loss for words.

This can happen when you pray too. Prayer is the most direct way we relate to God, so emotion should be a natural part of every conversation with God. And when you’re overwhelmed with emotion—whether you’re approaching God in ecstasy, tragedy, bewilderment, or rage—there will be times when you want to pray, when you know you need to pray, but you won’t be able to find the words.

Thankfully, even in those moments, there is grace. Romans 8:26 says that when those times come that your vocabulary can’t measure up to your feelings and when your weakness leaves you unable to properly seek God’s will, the Holy Spirit steps in to do what you cannot, interceding on your behalf. With “sighs too deep for words”, God ensures that your relationship with Him remains strong, even when you are not.

Even when life overwhelms you and words fail you, God never leaves you. So don’t be too afraid or too ashamed to come to Him in prayer in those times, even when you’re at a loss for words. His grace will fill in the blanks.

Gotta Be Here Somewhere (Friday Devotional)

“Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’”

-       Genesis 28:16

Have you ever ‘lost’ something, only to discover, much to your embarrassment, that you actually had it on you the whole time? Maybe you were searching your house from top to bottom for your glasses, only to bump into something and watch them fall off your head. Or perhaps you were frantically digging through drawers for your keys, only to hear them jingle in the purse you were sure you had already checked. Or maybe, at the height of absentmindedness, you were gathering all your things together and couldn’t find your phone, no matter where you looked—until you looked in your hand, that is (that last one happened to me one early morning this week!) It’s amazing how, when we’re rushed and overwhelmed, we lose track of things we actually had all along.

That’s exactly what seems to have happened to Jacob with God in Genesis 28. Having cheated his twin brother out of his rightful inheritance, he had fled from his family and his old life, fearful of the repercussions of his deceit. Traveling by himself, his only hope was the vague potential of security in his uncle’s household. He was a foreigner traveling through strange lands, a wanderer with nothing familiar to cling to. He was, simply put, more alone than he’d ever been. So when he lay his head down on a rock that night to sleep, he must have assumed that, along with his family and friends, he had also left behind the God of his fathers. What would such a God want with him now?

Yet when he drifted off to sleep, he dreamed of a stairway reaching all the way to heaven, with angels climbing up and down it. As he stared in awe at this structure, the voice of God boomed forth, assuring Jacob that the covenant He had made with Jacob’s family still stood, that God would remain faithful in spite of Jacob’s faithlessness. When Jacob awoke, he could only conclude one thing: “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” So overwhelmed with his predicament, so sure of his isolation, he had failed to remember that God would always be with him.

In our own busy lives, sometimes we forget this too. You can make the same mistake with God that you make with your glasses, keys, and phone—so overwhelmed by everything flying at you, you can start to think God is missing when, in reality, He was with you all along. When life is at its most stressful and you start to wonder if God is absent, remember His promise to never leave nor forsake you, remember that even when you are fickle God remains faithful. When you are looking around in bewilderment wondering why God abandoned you, ask who is more likely to have gotten lost. He didn’t leave, you just took your eyes off Him.

Looking for the Perfect Word (Friday Devotional)

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

- Isaiah 55:10-11

Every day you are bombarded with useless words, words which demand your attention but receive only a fraction of it, words which plead for action but are met instead by indifference. Words like those in a coworker’s presentation that doesn’t seem to relate to your own work. Words like a distant friend’s rambling political musings on Facebook. And, of course, the big, bright words of an endless stream of advertisements—in magazines and e-mails, on bus benches and billboards—that confront you seemingly every minute of the day.

Occasionally, a message will burst through the fog of triviality—a kind note, a perceptive proverb, an inspiring speech—and remind you, if only for a second, that words can matter. In those brief flashes of transcendence, words can compel you, persuade you, encourage you, even inspire you. But usually, the moment passes quickly. The light fades, and you are forced to blindly stumble through a web of useless words.

There are so many unimportant, unwise, and even unintelligible words in our lives that it’s hard to know which matter and which do not. In Isaiah 55, God reminds us of this: the word of the Lord is always worthy of your attention and response, and it never returns to Him empty. Unlike so much of the chattering we hear every day, God’s word always has a purpose.

God’s word is, of course, revealed in Scripture, in the stories, poetry and teachings of the Bible. But the word of the Lord is not limited to verses on a page. The word of the Lord is the creative power that fashioned the stars and breathed life into the dusty form of man. The word of the Lord is the commanding power that delivered Israel from Egypt’s slavery and rebuked it in Babylon’s exile. Most importantly, the word of the Lord is the incarnate power—the word made flesh—who shows us the true character, nature, and purpose of God.

While the world’s gossip leaves you unmoored, you can build your life around the word of God. While the world’s precepts leave you unsure, you can find certainty in the word of God. And while even the most profound maxims of this world still leave you empty, you can find purpose and power in the word of God.

So few of the words we hear, read—and, yes, say—truly matter. But amid the onslaught of meaningless words, God speaks the word of life and truth. Are you listening?

Losing the Popularity Contest (Friday Devotional)

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

- Matthew 11:18-19

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time,” said Abraham Lincoln. Given his circumstances—presiding over a nation that split in two barely a month after his inauguration as president—few could understand this principle better than he. Whether fighting off generals who disagreed with his military strategy, a Congress determined to exert its authority, challengers in his own party, or the actual enemy to the south, this much was certain: there was no such thing as a slam dunk decision for Abraham Lincoln. Any move he made was going to be met with skepticism, backbiting, and even open hostility from some corner or another. If he’d made his decisions by waiting for universal acclaim, he’d never have accomplished a thing.

                                                                                                                   

Similarly, being faithful to God means ignoring the desire to please everyone all of the time. Even Jesus couldn’t do that! In Matthew 11, he was criticized by some for associating with society’s undesirables—tax collectors, prostitutes, and lepers, just to name a few. Instead of preaching at them, as the religious teachers might have liked him to do, from a spiritual distance, Jesus preached among them, sharing bread, wine, stories, and laughs with them over a table of fellowship.

But when called out for his behavior, Jesus noted the hypocrisy of their criticism. When his prophetic forerunner, John the Baptist, had been alive, he had ministered in exactly the manner they were demanding Jesus adopt—abstaining from social interaction with sinners and from the indulgences of their food and drink. And when John had done this, Jesus reminded them, they’d had a problem with him! You can’t have it both ways, Jesus tells them; you can’t criticize John’s separatist ministry and my incarnational ministry.

Ultimately, Jesus says, “wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” Put another way, Jesus’s approach to ministry (and John’s, for that matter) would be borne out by the lives changed, not by approval ratings. His ministry goal was not for the gospel to be deemed acceptable by all, but for it to save some.

For the disciple of Jesus, there is a hard lesson there: success as a witness for Christ is not determined by how you are personally viewed, but by how the gospel bears fruit through you. Bearing witness to Jesus is not always going to be good for your reputation. Sometimes it will mean mockery from unbelievers who declare you holier-than-thou, prudish, and close-minded. Other times it will mean condescension from modern-day Pharisees in the church, who will see your compassion for sinners and call it weakness. What you must remember in both cases is that your responsibility is not to be popular, but faithful, that you are not called to please people but to glorify God.

There will be a day when you will ultimately answer for your ministry, and your judge will not be to today’s critics. So may your ministry to your neighbors be guided not by the whims of today’s naysayers, but by the call given to you by the eternal, unchanging God. Pleasing everybody is a Sisyphean exercise…so why not aim to please Him instead?