While the Simple Truth is that God doesn’t need to be invited into an event to show up, I believe God likes it when we invite His presence.  It’s not required for an omnipresent God, after all, He’s already there if He wants to be, but it is desired by Him and bears fruit for us when we desire it too.  It shows that we honor God, we remember Him, and that we hold ourselves and our conduct to a higher standard, one worthy of His being among us. 

In a day and age where political actions have become coarse, vulgar, an opportunity to oppose and resist and hate our fellow man, I believe Christians especially are admonished to maintain their witness no matter how tempting Satan might make it to make politics our god. 

I watch with a great deal of sadness at people I used to respect for their Christian beliefs fall into this trap, confusing and conflating politics with faith.  National organizations, pastors, churches, seminarians, it doesn’t matter how educated or reputed one is.  The bigger they are the harder they fall away and all the more witness is lost!  And worst of all, Christ and eternity bear the heavy brunt for their failure to listen to and obey Jesus’ command: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:21).

I was especially honored when a good friend of mine asked me to write an invocation that would be appropriate for the Republican Assembly of Lake County, IL (RALC).  Given our current climate of politics, I thought you might like to read the invocation I wrote.

Will you please bow your head as I open our time with a moment of prayer?
Eternal Father, Loving God, Creator of everything, and Author of grace everlasting, we invite Your presence upon our gathering today. 

May we find during our time together, a common good, a greater purpose, and many productive means to bring glory to You.  May we be united in heart and mind as we lift our prayer into a realm we cannot see.  We seek Your guidance for the realm in which we live with its daily challenges to our moral trajectory as a nation; assaults upon what we know to be right; ridicule for our belief that life is every bit as precious in the elderly as in the unborn; and relentless threats chipping away at the Constitution, yet we hold it dear because we believe the Founding Fathers had wisdom, Lord, that came from You. 

We trust, Father, that Your Word is true when You said,  “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God” (Romans 13:1). Therefore let us hold our heads high and do Your will gladly. As You have said in teaching us how to pray, that Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Let it be our aim and our hope.

You remind us to give thanks for our daily bread and we ask Your blessing upon the food we will receive.  Bless the hands which prepared it.  Bless our conversation with goodness worthy of Your hearing.  Bless our bodies and strengthen us for the work You have prepared for each of us to do.  When we see mountains beyond our ability, Lord, help us to remember Your Word spoken through Your prophet Zechariah :

‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty. Zechariah 4: 6  

You remind us that mighty mountains will become as level ground.  You take the foundation and complete what You begin, aligned with Your truth.  You remind us not to despise the day of small beginnings as You are the same God who can part any sea, still any storm, and multiply what little we can supply.

We give thanks for the callings upon our lives and may we each welcome any task You give, doing it in Your strength and with all gladness.  You are good, Lord; and we thank You for remembering this nation and for preserving the freedom we have to seek You in life and in prayer.  Bless us now, I pray, honoring Your Holy Name.  Amen.

He and I couldn’t have been more different, but we found middle ground at a gas station’s grassy parkway somewhere in Georgia.  He was traveling south from Shakopee, MN and I was traveling north from Florida.  He had ear piercings and multiple tattoos, spiked hair, and was wearing a Bad Wolves shirt as he got out of his rental van and extinguished his cigarette.  I had just paused “All Things Are Possible” from my CD of Hillsong Christian music as I got out of the car into the sweltering heat to stretch my legs.  He was moving his family down to help with his grandmother’s medical needs as she journeyed toward requiring hospice.  I was heading home after time doing some renovations and being with family.

As I spoke with him over his convenient beagle, having offered him some cold bottles of water, he opened up and told me his story. (I’m one of those people who experiences this a lot.)  I told him he was doing a beautiful thing, moving with his family to help family.  A way to live life with no regrets. 

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We talked matters of life and death and when one of his family members returned to the van, I said that one of the benefits of having hope in Christ, in eternal life, is that death isn’t the end—it’s a new beginning.  I quoted the Reverend Billy Graham about his death (which was actually re-quoted from D.L. Moody about Moody’s death), 

Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.” 

The woman who had just gotten into the van, having heard this part of the discussion, looked at me with misty eyes and a gentle smile that seemed to say something beyond sentiment.  Perhaps they’d been talking about that very thing.  Perhaps she’d been witnessing to the man from Shakopee.   Perhaps those words set the stage for the next leg of the journey and the discussions they’d have about Jesus and eternal life.  Perhaps they’d bring a message of hope from Shakopee and a Georgia gas station to the destination in Florida.

He loaded his beagle.  I got back in my car to head home with hours to drive and a mind and heart full of travel musings and pondering the surprising intersecting ways of God.  Every rest area in Georgia had been closed.  What gives, I thought!  I still needed a break so I stopped early to get gas for the car.  I had no idea that it was an opportunity God knew I wouldn’t have wanted to miss.

Colossians 4: 2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

One final look at the Sabbath.  There are people in the assembly, the church, the synagogue in need of healing.  Who among us is completely whole and without any brokenness all the time?  Jesus never layered an expectation of perfection upon people who gathered to worship.  They could come just as they are and learn the Simple Truth that a Sabbath blesses the whole man. 

Do you know it when you observe a Sabbath as the healing for your mind, your heart, your spirit, and your body?

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Matthew 12:9 Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10 and a man with a shriveled hand was there.

(All kinds of people show up at institutions of worship for all kinds of reasons.  Some need healing.  Some are there for reputation and appearances, putting on a mask of a cleaned up life made for TV or public consumption.  But doesn’t putting on an act speak of a deeper brokenness and worse, a prideful unwillingness to accept that they too are broken?)

Matthew 12:10b  Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, the Pharisees asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” 11 Jesus said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

More than just verbally teaching about the Sabbath, Jesus gave an object lesson that drove a veritable wedge to display that He means what He says about the Sabbath.  Is the Sabbath a day for legal bean counting of personal righteousness … or is it a set-aside from the daily grind to acknowledge God in our midst–a wonderful, benevolent, all powerful, almighty God whose love is so great He cares about the big and little things of our lives?  Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  That’s the Sabbath.  We can humbly lay it all at His feet.

Matthew 12:13 Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. 14 But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

It’s sad that the Pharisees preferred their legalistic view of Sabbath adherence to a different kind of Sabbath meant for the health and benefit of the whole man: body, soul, and spirit. 

What kind of Sabbath do you need?

For the pastor, theologian, or Bible teacher who reads about Sabbath, our challenge is double: reading Scripture is not only dependence upon God, but it’s work.  We cannot read the Bible as our nighttime reading for relaxation and meditation without it turning our minds back on.

(Barbara, maybe it’s just you…)

OK, maybe it is just me. I’m a walking anomaly, totally unable to compartmentalize my life and my Scripture reading into “Today it’s relaxation on the Sabbath. Tomorrow it’s study and it’ll be work.”

I am encouraged reading that Jesus healed people on the Sabbath.  His teachings about the Sabbath include the grainfield and picking grain to eat, but I love how His example in teaching about the Sabbath is helpful—directly so—for people like me. 

When questioned about lawfulness of the actions of the disciples and the Sabbath, Matthew 12: 3 Jesus answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread– which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 5 Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent?

(Hold on.  Let that sink in.)

The priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent. 

How can that be?

6 I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. 7 If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Jesus quotes Hosea 6: 6 For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

Acknowledgment of God is better by relationship than by geography or inaction because Jesus IS God and He is among us. 

One can keep the Sabbath without desecrating it by acknowledging God’s righteousness. When we’re Sabbath working, promoting God’s gospel, and proclaiming our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we’re actually honoring Him as Lord of the Sabbath!

On this Memorial Day weekend, I wish to remind all of us that freedoms in the United States of America were bought and paid for with the blood and lives of fellow Americans.  These heroes made the ultimate sacrifice of love, after all “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).  Even friends generations down the road who might forget … to remember … the sacrifice.

At the risk of inflaming the Internet trolls who have criticized my patriotism and written hate mail, today I remember the sacrifices of the fallen soldiers who have preserved my right, given by God, to be a Christian witness in this country. 

• My right to share the Gospel without fear of being boiled alive in acid or having my head severed. 
• My right as an American woman to dress as I please and to receive an education. 
• My right as an American woman to speak publicly and to inspire both women and men to live the Risen life.  
• My right to freely speak and freely think.  Not every nation welcomes the freedom to peacefully disagree and even protest, or to stand on the street corner soap box and proclaim the Name of Jesus.

On a day and a weekend too many people view as for picnics and barbecues or even as Veteran’s Day the Spring Edition, I choose to remember…and to say “Thank you” to those who are watching from heaven whose ears may never have heard those words while alive,

Thank you for sacrificing your life so I could be free.” 

I love you and I remember.

The Sabbath can be an interesting thing:  how a body can be at rest but a mind anything but restful. 

Can it legitimately be called a Sabbath if your mind is working overtime? 

Don’t ask me.  I am a thinker and a planner.  My mind weighs alternatives and builds cases.  I even do it in my sleep. There’s nothing wrong with planning, but there is something very wrong with a heart and mind that never rest, as a ship always sailing no matter the conditions … and never finding a port … anywhere.  A ship forever at sea is a craft in grave danger of becoming its own worst enemy.  A shipwreck waiting to happen.

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There’s a difference between a marathon runner muscling through the tough stretch to get a second wind and a person unwilling to rest.  I’m constantly aware of the danger when planner refuses to rest or to submit plans to God as a Sabbath.  A person can end up loving the work and loving the creative planning more than loving the Creator.  Loving the ministry more than the Savior.  It’s a common tale, but it doesn’t need to be that way.

Luke 12: 15 Jesus said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ 18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”‘ 20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ 21 “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Ouch.  Odd to think that refusing a Sabbath is much like greed.  It’s not giving God what belongs to Him.  The Sabbath is His.  But the kicker is: He gave it for our benefit.  God reminds us in Proverbs 19: 21 Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.

The Simple Truth is that submitting our plans to God is to honor His Sabbath.  It glorifies Him as the Creator of your body and your intellect.  

Is it too much to rest from the planning one day a week to check in with the Creator and avoid shipwrecking your faith or sailing headlong into the storm? No, and it’s not too late to thank Him for the work He alone can do and to always plan with God in mind.

How is it possible that something so simple as waiting and resting can become so complicated?  Is it just me, or a Type-A American phenomenon?  Or maybe it’s human nature to complicate something as easy as rest?  Jesus sets things simple and straight.

He’s Lord of the Sabbath

Mark 2: 23 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” 25 He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? 26 In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” 27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

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The Pharisees couldn’t stand it that manmade rules were being shunted off to the side as Jesus asserted His authority. 

Before I come down too hard on the Pharisees, do I do this too? 

• How many times on a Sunday do I ask myself whether it’s right, proper, or biblical to shop at a garden center, grocery store, or even go to a restaurant or a gas station? 
• After all, doesn’t my patronage violate someone else’s Sabbath adherence? 
• What about people who celebrate the Sabbath on a Saturday? 
• Am I just justifying my desire to shop by asserting that not everyone is Christian or observes the same day? 
• When I was employed at a garden center, I asked for Sunday morning to be able to worship but after church, there I was, working my tail off the rest of the Sabbath, yes?  
• What about when I was a pastor?  Didn’t I work then?  Sure I did, just like other pastors, I was working on Sunday. 

A Sabbath can still be a resting time even if not a prescribed day on a calendar.

For practical purposes, the Blue Laws (prohibiting business on Sundays) may have disappeared from many locales for everything except alcohol and cars, but they are alive and well in my heart.  And I’m not the only one.  Some stores deliberately close on Sundays to prevent that very problem:  Hobby Lobby, Chick-fil-A, and many other small businesses. 

With the secularizing of America, Blue Laws are a thing of the past.   As I struggle to rest—even on a Sunday—I remind myself of this Simple Truth:  He is Lord of the Sabbath.

All this thinking about drifting and stillness and considering it with the requirement to have a Sabbath made me process my thoughts via analogy.  I’m in a sailboat.  My sail is up but the wind is so light, it’s almost imperceptible. 

“Becalmed” is the term sailors use for this. Don’t you love that?  Becalmed. 

Be Calmed.

Blogger, businessman, former CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers Michael Hyatt describes this situation:  “Maybe there’s no wind on the water, or it’s blocked by land. Whatever the reason, our sails are slack and our boat just drifts along.”

(Aaiieeee!  Don’t say that.  I don’t want to drift!!!) 

Hyatt continues “I don’t know of any way to entirely avoid slow periods like this, but I do know the one thing we should avoid when we get discouraged waiting for the wind. Don’t take down your sails.”

Waiting on the wind is an act of trust. 

Ah, this is why I rest.  Because I need to trust God all the time not just when I write and work.  I need to trust God with my resting.

In Sea Shanties, Scurvy, and a Sailboat Regatta Without Wind, Captain Craig Forrest says, “When there’s almost no wind, everything that we do on the boat makes a difference.”  

A sailboat without wind is at the mercy of the currents. 

(I cannot control the currents.)

It occurred to me that I have three tools to keep me from drifting far away: a rudder, a compass, and of course, a paddle.  Of these three, the compass belongs to God alone…who incidentally also controls the wind and the currents.  I can know where I am in relation to Him by which direction I’m going.  I cannot change the compass which is grounded in forces beyond my control.  The compass does not steer the sailboat anyway.  That job belongs to the rudder.  The rudder’s ability to change my direction works in conjunction with whatever wind exists to guide the sailboat.  So long as God controls the currents and Jesus guides using the rudder, no matter how light the wind, I’m not drifting away.  Because He’s also the compass.  I can trust Him to guide me to Himself.  And the wind of the Holy Spirit works with the Father and the Son.

Mark 4:39 “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. 40 Jesus said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” 41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

I sit silently and remind myself that God gives this kind of rest when I’ve completed a task that took a lot out of me, when I’ve done all I can and the results are up to Him, or when I’m being prepared for a big task ahead.  I can wait on the wind.  I should trust Him. 

Why?  Because there’s always that paddle—downright dangerous when unguided.  It’s the paddle allowing me to take matters into my own hands.  I can give up on resting and instead work hard at paddling for power when I don’t trust the wind to show up.  I paddle for control of the direction I want to go when I want to ignore the compass or try to override the rudder. 

What about you?  Are you as familiar with the compass and the rudder as you are with the paddle?  Do you know what it is like to be waiting on the wind?

The pastor at the church I attend on holiday stated emphatically that no one ever drifts toward God, but we can find ourselves having drifted far away from Him.  Doesn’t the letter to the Hebrews warn us time and again against drifting away? (Hebrews 2:1, Hebrews 3:7-19, Hebrews 5:2-6:6, Hebrews 10:19-31.)

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. (Hebrews 2:1)

It’s not just listening, or even listening carefully.  It’s also believing.

But there’s another warning from Hebrews 4:1 Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. 2 For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.

And in James 2, isn’t there an admonition to add to our faith, deeds borne of love for God and compassion for our fellow man?

James 2:16 If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. 18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that– and shudder … 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

How many of us resist resting, instead running forever exhausted on the hamster wheel of hearing, believing, and doing?

To that flurry of activity in faith, God reminds us of a Simple Truth He gave us to believe in:  Hebrews 4: 9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his.

We don’t want to drift.  We don’t want to be Running Forever Exhausted or getting burned out by everything on the docket.  We want to be anchored.  We need to dock it.

Hebrews 4:11 Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following [the wilderness wanderers from Egypt’s] example of disobedience.

A Sabbath-rest is necessary to separate the “GOD-things” from the GOOD things.

Back to the subject of drifting versus stillness:  I don’t want to drift, that’s for sure!  I’m not sure that drifting is my bigger problem.  My problem is that I fear drifting so much that I am addicted to busyness (which in turn becomes my operating definition of success: how much I accomplish for the Kingdom). 

Rest is harder work than working sometimes.

I say I desire stillness before the Lord.  But the truth is, it scares me silly.  For every Christian who has ever experienced true stillness, it can bring about the same kind of discomfort that silence does.  Maybe that was Martha’s problem too.  It was far easier to work hard than do the hard, hard work of rest.

Luke 10: 38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” 41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

I’d probably be quicker to blame Martha for busyness saying, “Come’on.  Jesus is there!  Can’t you at least sit and listen to Him???” except that Jesus is there!  Time to give Him your very best. 

It can be discomforting to set aside your very best in service to the King (what you want to do for Him) …and instead do the hard, hard work of rest, to listen to Him, and learn from Him.

It must have been difficult to hear Jesus say that what Mary had chosen to do (rest and listen) was better than your offering Him your best as an unbridled act of lavish graciousness.  I’m sure the tone of Jesus’ voice was not a condemning one, but the wise voice of One who understood what would profit Martha more.  He needed her to focus on seeing that He was setting the example by sacrificing His BEING served in order to serve those He loved (Mark 10:45). 

It was a valuable lesson shown demonstrably in Martha’s home before visible to all on the Cross, a useful lesson for understanding His fullest ministry.  And for now, it was far more important to learn what He was doing which would provide the backdrop for what He would commission all His disciples to do (go to work hard for Christ) after His death.  Rest, Martha.  Listen … and learn.  The work will still be there tomorrow.

The Simple Truth is that “To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)  Even the hard, hard work of rest.