Rocks In The Garden

I was tilling my garden the other day with my Rototiller when I hit a fairly large rock with the tines of the machine as it was attempting to turn over the soil. It struck me at that moment that I have been tilling and picking rocks out of the same patch of ground for 18 years. I’m amazed that I never hit that particular rock before. Then I looked up and saw the pile of rocks I have been making for much of those years under the bushes next to the garden. There were so many. You would think they’d all have been removed by now but they aren’t. I’m still discovering new ones to be pulled out and thrown in the bushes.

The rocks remind me of sin in a Christian’s life. God reveals things about our lives that need removing from the day we were born again. You would think that after all these years of walking with the Lord there would be nothing left to be removed. Yet in the process of our daily walk we inevitably hit another stone that needs to be dug up and thrown in the pile. 

Some might say, “That’s depressing.” “When will the rocks be all gone?” The answer is they’ll never be all gone as long as we live, but I’m not worried because I know that there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ.” The other reason is that I am thankful that these things are revealed to help make me conform to His image.

In Joshua 7:26 Achan was buried under a large pile of rocks because he didn’t deal with his sin. Let’s not be buried by our sin, let’s continue to be over-comers

Years of Rocks

through the power of the Holy Spirit as we walk in the light of His love and forgiveness. God is patient. We must be patient too while we work in His field and focus on the grace given to us. When we hit a rock in the garden we don’t ignore it, we deal with it in the light of His presence, and the rock becomes a place of renewed fellowship with Jesus.

Death Is Death

We have all been there next to a casket, we've said a prayer, cried some tears,we've tossed a flower or some dirt onto it before it's lowered into the hole and sealed, never to be seen again.

It may have been a parent, a child, a sibling, a husband or wife, a good friend, but now they're gone, and an emptiness comes upon us as we realize that whatever hopes we may have had for, or with that person will never be fulfilled.

So imagine what it must have been like for Jesus' followers to have Him brutally ripped from their lives after being so sure that He was the One; God's Messiah.

I'm sure that to the disciples, the women who discovered that Jesus' tomb was empty on resurrection Sunday sounded like a bunch of hysterical fools trying to wish away the facts. He was dead. Only when they saw for themselves did they begin to ask, "Could it be?" When Jesus appeared to them they began to hope for real.

Jesus has changed the world by not only overcoming His own death, but by defeating death entirely. He said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life."
Paul says, quoting the Psalms, "Death is swallowed up in victory." The victory he speaks about is the one Jesus wrought on Easter morning when He defied death and rose again. Now the impossible becomes possible to all who put their trust in Him.
Because of Jesus victory over death, He says, "Whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.
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The Lord Has Need Of It

The story of the Triumphal entry of Jesus on the Sunday before His crucifixion begins with Him sending his disciples to collect a small donkey so that He could ride into Jerusalem on it. This was prophesied in Zechariah 9. It's interesting to me that he needed a young donkey. He is the King of Kings yet he had to rely on a donkey for transportation. That small ass had a purpose in God's eternal plan.

There was another donkey the Lord had need of in the Old Testament. This ass tried to save Balaam from an angel that was about to strike Balaam with a sword. Balaam couldn't see the angel but the Donkey could. Balaam beat the donkey, so the Lord let the donkey speak. "And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee? and he said, Nay." Numbers 22:30. Balaam's eyes were then opened and he saw the peril that the donkey saved him from.




Jesus came to open the eyes of the blind, yet the blind refused to see. Though they accepted him at first, 5 days later they would demand He be put to death. The Lord needed all of these things to happen for the prophecies about Him to be fulfilled. Jesus, though He created the earth, needed his creation to serve Him. In this case a small donkey, in ours a big sinner saved by grace. Either way the Lord needs his people to minister to each other and to be a witness to those who are dying. If He needed Balaam's ass and the young donkey in the Gospel, then be assured being available to God's plan might just earn you a call one day when the Lord has need of it.

Love Knows Me

Paul finishes describing what love is and is not, and what love does and does not by stating, “Love never fails.” There’s just something totally different about God’s love. Prophecies will cease, tongues will be stilled and knowledge will pass away. These are some of the gifts that the Apostle had been speaking of in chapter 12 and by mentioning the three he is implying that all the other gifts fall into the same category. They are temporary. Then he mentions that they are also incomplete.

That’s hard for us to accept sometimes. We like to think that we have it all figured out, like our teenage daughters do. But we don’t. The knowledge we have is not full, we are always learning new things, and hopefully getting stirred up by something that we finally figured out after all the years. Humility and the understanding that we will never know everything or be right all the time is something we have to learn to walk the road of Christ. It seems though that the love God has given to us is not temporary.

I was recently scanning some slides into the computer that are close to 30 years old. Many of the images are faded so you can’t see them clearly or recognize who’s in the photo. This is how Paul describes the knowledge that we have as born again Christians. We know, but not everything. We see, but there’s a lot we don’t see. We have to accept that. It keeps us expecting to find out more, to be curious about the ways of God. One day we will know fully. We’ll go from grainy black and white to full color HD, only better.

We may not know everything, but God does. The God of love knows our every need and keeps us in the palm of His Hand. That’s what love does. Jesus said, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. “ He knows us, and with perfect knowledge of who we are and what we’ve done He still chooses to love. That says a lot about the one we believe in. He knows me, He loves me, and He always will.

Bankrupt Without Love

"So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love" (1 Corinthians 13:3b MSG).

What does it mean to be bankrupt? One definition relevant to this passage is, “a person who is completely lacking in a particular desirable quality or attribute.”
The writer of 1 Corinthians lists, in order, 15 qualities that love has. These are descriptive and show what true love is like.

Jesus = Love

It’s been said that if you put "Jesus" in every place in this chapter where "love" is mentioned,  you see what Jesus is really like and how love is made personal in each of these characteristics through Him. It makes sense. God is love and Jesus is God, so when you substitute Jesus with love it's a seamless transition. It gets tricky though when we attempt to put our name in the place of love. What happens then? It’s easy for me to replace Jesus for love, but not so easy to put me in that spot. You see in practice, I am often not patient, I sometimes envy, and I have been known to keep a record of wrongs, and on and on it goes.

The Christian Ideal

1 Corinthians 13 is more than just a memorable, quotable poem; it’s the Christian ideal. When Christ will enters our life to a meaningful degree we are no longer bankrupt, but we’re living the ideal of love. It’s not theory, but practice in our dealings we have with others; from the most personal to a stranger. It means we change our minds about people. It means we want the best for them. It means our definition of who is our neighbor is greatly expanded. It means we don’t consider ourselves first. It means we don't judge situations prematurely and we aren't rude because we think we're better than the next guy.

The Ideal Christian

"There is no ideal Christian, but I’ll take one who is kind over one who can move a mountain, any day!"  There's no substitute for love. Love is the greatest. Everything we do for God should be motivated by it. Without it we're bankrupt, but with God's love working in us we lack nothing.

Love's a dirty job...... But someone has to do it.

Love is patient. That’s what the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13:4. Love is patient. What’s that mean? Patience is the kind of thing that has to be learned by kids when they’re on a long trip in the car with their parents, and that parents have to learn while waiting for their kids to shut up. Patience is waiting for a traffic jam to clear out on the DC Beltway. Patience is waiting for your kid to get in the game when you know they are as good, if not better, than the starters on the team. The list goes on. It always takes time. There is always angst. We want to see results. Impatience is the mark of youth and of the unlearned, the ungodly, and the privileged, who always get their way.

I hate to wait. I’ve been conditioned to hate to wait. I need it now. I want to rip open the package, add the water, throw it in the microwave, take it out and eat it all in one minute or less. No that’s too long! Why add water, just throw it in the microwave!

I get that way in ministry too. Why hasn’t that person changed? What’s wrong with them? Hello it’s in the Bible! That guy should be a pastor by now! Can anybody be on time? Once? Oh I wish the preacher would hurry up and finish, the football game starts in 45 minutes!

To be patient is to be “long suffering.” Could there be a better synonym for patience? Long suffering means it hurts for a long time. It means you don’t see results for a long time. It means you don’t get what you want for a long time. It means that you have to be around people you sometimes don’t like for a long time. It’s long, and it hurts!

Love is patient. Love suffers long. Love does not need immediate results because it is love, and if it did, then it wouldn’t be love. That’s what love is, it’s patient. It’s a dirty job. It means I stay with someone who I don’t love outwardly anymore, with the hope that the outward part will return, but if it doesn’t I stay anyway, because long ago I chose to love. Love is patient, and that means sometimes love equals suffering. It’s something we don’t want to do. It’s like unplugging the toilet. It’s like working in a coal mine. It’s like cleaning a sausage factory. We don’t want that job because it’s dirty and smelly, but someone has to do it, and that someone is us. So let’s man up and do the job we don’t want to do... That’s love.

Jesus came to a bunch of thankless hypocrites and loved them, even though they didn’t, and couldn’t love him back. He knew the job was dirty. He knew it was hard. He knew few would appreciate the difficulty of the task or the sacrifice required, but someone had to do it. He was that someone.

Patience is doing things we don’t want to do and changing things we don’t want to change. It’s a dirty job, but it has to be done to reveal God’s true nature of love. We haven’t always been successful; therefore we have not always loved in situations and relationships where patience was required, where suffering was necessary. Instead we’ve walked away.

Don’t condemn yourself. Be patient. Suffer long and suffer well. Get to know love that’s beyond the superficial emotion people associate with the word. If you do, you’ll do better next time.

A More Excellent Way

In 1st Corinthians 12:27-31 the Apostle Paul lists some of the gifts that are appointed to the church. The first 3 gifts are people; apostles, prophets and teachers, who build, proclaim and teach. The next two, miracles and healings, as well as the last, the gift of tongues, are gifts that can awe people who see them working in the life of the church. Remember how amazed in Acts 2 people were to see unlearned men speak in languages they had never learned? Thousands came to faith because of witnessing it; indeed that was the purpose. Helpers and administrations are people who get involved in the everyday workings of the Body of Christ; the daily grind of ministry. All of the gifts are important, and Paul explains that not all Christians have all the gifts but that our desire should be for the best or more useful gifts.

This is not the end of the argument about the gifts. Paul is setting us up at the end of chapter 12 “And yet I show you a more excellent way,” to make his point in chapter 13.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels….” This opening to Paul’s discourse on love starts with tongues. Paul is speaking hypothetically. So what if you do speak with languages of heavenly beings? Isn’t that awesome? Most people who had that experience today would hire a publisher and a co-author to write a book about it, maybe get it on the New York Times best seller list and have an appearance on Oprah. “But have not love….” The answer the Apostle gives is that these tongues, as amazing as they might be, are worthless and empty without love. Prophecy, understanding mysteries and knowledge and enough faith to move mountains, which would be awesome demonstrations of gifts, are completely meaningless even though they are God given. How about that! “Hey look at my gift! Isn’t it great? God gave it to me.” Yes but if it’s used outside of the context of love you are a nobody.

“And though I bestow all….” Generosity with money, possessions, time and even our physical body is considered by most to be the greatest form of sacrifice, gaining the giver tremendous stature in the eyes of the world, but according to Paul, it profits the giver nothing. There is no reward for any use of all the gifts unless God’s perfect love is the motivation behind it.

This is the crux of Paul’s argument. You are better off as a giftless unknown who loves, than a celebrated individual who demonstrates his great abilities, generosity and miraculous linguistics, who does not. A person who uses the gift of helps as a way to achieve position before God is also someone who gains nothing because this gift also, when used in a way that leaves out the love of God can produce no eternal benefit.

Love is a person, Jesus Christ. 1 John 4:12 says, “If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.” Those who practice love are not concerned 1st about gifts; they are concerned about others just as God is. That concern and charity is the proof of their relationship with the God of love, and it’s the only thing in the end that matters. Laying down their life in self-sacrifice is just what they do because of the One they love.

Real Love

Real love by itself is neither a feeling, a passion, an emotion or an attraction. Feelings change, passions cool, attraction fades and emotions have been well described as a Roller coaster ride. Jeremiah 31:3 says, "The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with loving-kindness I have drawn you." The people who God was speaking about in this passage were some of the most unfaithful people as a group that the World has ever known. Though God revealed His love to Israel over and over again, they repeatedly turned away from Him. Had love been an emotion, a passion, a feeling or an attraction God would have separated himself forever from them. He didn't and that says it all. Real love never fails and nothing can separate the believer from it.