This post calls for a bit of introspection.

In the final analysis………it calls on you to assess your relationship with God………and that can be scary.

Read on……..if you dare.

I have heard it said…….and I believe that it is true…….that the surest sign of the presence of God……..is joy. I see this joy from time to time on Sunday morning. I look around and see someone singing…….eyes closed, hands raised, and a face that literally glows with peace and joy. And I know that God is there.

Joy like this comes from being close to your creator. It comes from being in the place where you are supposed to be. It comes from being the person that you were created to be.

Do I feel that kind of joy?

Often……..but not always. It is hard to be joyful in the face of tragedy.

The other sign of the presence of God is peace. The peace that I am talking about is an internal peace……..a peace that transcends your circumstance. This kind of peace can co-exist with crisis. It can co-exist with tragedy. It can even co-exist with impending death.

Peace like this comes from confidence…….. confidence that the place you are in is safe…….that you are secure. How can you be confident that you are safe in the face of real tragedy…….even in the face of impending death? If you have a solid relationship with God…….then you are in his hands. And he has promised you a good future…….no matter what happens in the next ten minutes…….the next ten years……..even the next eighty years.
If you have a solid relationship with God, you will spend forever in the place that you were made for. You will spend forever in a place where you will fit in perfectly……..your true home.

And having that knowledge is a very good working definition of peace.

So……how do you assess…….how do you measure ……..your relationship with God?

You ask:

“Am I joyful?”

“Am I at peace?”

The stronger your yes is to those 2 questions…….the closer you are to God. Don’t be troubled if your score for joy is low today……..trust me ……..temporary circumstance…….. temporary tragedy can erode your joy. It will return.

If you can answer a strong yes to those questions, then you are truly blessed.

But……..what if you don’t feel joy…….or at least peace?

Then you are not in the place……..in this temporal world…….where you should be. Worse yet…….you may not end up in the place where you should end up. You need to reassess your relationship with God………your assumptions………your expectations………the amount of time you spend with God.

Because………the currency that you spend in order to buy peace and joy……..is the time you spend in conversation with God.

This bears repeating.

The currency that you spend in order to buy peace and joy……..is the time you spend in conversation with God.

If you ignore God………. don’t expect to find peace…..because this world cannot provide it.

If you try to run your life without God……..you may find a little scrap of temporary joy here and there………but don’t expect to find lasting joy……… because it just isn’t here.

So……..talk to God……..listen to God………study God………build your relationship with God…………and you will find joy……….you will find peace.

Because that is what God wants for you.

Because that is what you were created for.

You will go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
    will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
    will clap their hands.

Isaiah, NIV

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Jesus, NIV

 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

God, NIV

I’m 68 and my wife is 70.

I tell my granddaughters that we’re “older than dirt”……..and they believe me.

The unavoidable truth is that my wife and I have a limited amount of time left in this world.

It’s cicada season at my house. Millions of bugs that have been living underground for 17 years come out of the ground……..they bumble around for a few days then they die.

I think that my life is a bit like that. There is a part of me that lived somewhere else……a place that I cannot see or remember……….for a long time. I was born and I emerged into the light. I bumble around for a few years. Then I will die.

And that is where it gets interesting.

I am a Christian. That means that I believe in a supernatural creator……God……..and I accept at face value God’s promise that I will go someplace after my death. The Bible is a little short on details, but the cliff notes version is that there is a nice place…….and a not so nice place. The choice between those two places is irreversible and I will spend a long…..long……long time there. In fact, if you add it all up, my time in this temporal world is short in comparison……..so short as to be inconsequential.

It is hard to accept……but my life here, in the final accounting, is inconsequential.

So, how do I run my very short life? How do I handle this inconsequentially short slice of time between where I came from and where I’m going?

I run my life with my eyes on what is important………what is consequential. And that is the place where I am going…….next.

Oddly, it turns out that my ultimate destination…….nice…..or not so nice……….is entirely up to me. The heart of the New Testament is that I have been offered a free ticket to the nice place.

Free.

Whether or not I end up someplace nice depends entirely on whether I accept or reject the offer……. on whether I accept or reject the man who made that offer at great personal cost……..Jesus.

It has almost nothing to do with how “good” I have been.

It has almost nothing to do with how “good” you have been.

And that is not fair………that is not justice.

It is a gift…….born out of God’s mercy……….which is born out of God’s love………for me.

And for you too.

How cool is that?

My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 

Jesus. NIV

In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

A conversation between the “nice” and the “not so nice” places, as told by Jesus, NIV

There is a guy out there.

Every husband and every wife has run across him.

He is a composite of the best features of dozens of other men.

He has Brad Pitt’s smile.
He washes the car like Julie’s husband.
He is a great listener like Pam’s husband.
He bought a vacation home in Florida like Jean’s husband.
He never disappears into his office or the shop for hours.
He never hogs the remote.
He always puts the lid down.

You get the picture.

This composite “super husband” is what we mere mortal husbands are compared to every day……….and we come up short…….every day.

But marriage therapy is not what this post is about. You are going to have to sort that out for yourselves.

What this post is about………is expectations.

What do you expect of the Christians around you?

And more important……what do you expect of God?

I believe that unrealistic expectations have driven millions of people away from Christianity. I believe that unrealistic expectations will result in more people missing out on paradise than anything else…….with the exception of Darwinian Evolution.

What are these expectations?

Christians never get mad.
Christians never lie.
Christians are never judgemental.
Christians never act like they are better than you.
In a word………Christians are kind gentle Mr. Rogers types.

God would never allow anything bad to happen to me.
God’s answer to every prayer is “yes”.
God never gets angry.
God never gets sad.
God’s justice is flexible…….just like mine.
God’s mercy is unconditional.
God will find a place for me in paradise because “I’m a good person”.

Christians will rarely meet these expectations……and neither will God.

So what happens when Christians don’t live up to someone’s expectations?………or worse……when God doesn’t meet someone’s expectations?

The line that I hear often is, “I can’t accept a church……or a God…..that would _(fail to meet my expectations).”

The result is that people reject Christianity……. people reject God…….. because they have unrealistic expectations.

Here is the truth.

Christians are not fundamentally “better” than everybody else…..they are not fundamentally different from everybody else……. they are just forgiven. That’s all.

God does allow bad things to happen…..to you and to me……..and I can’t tell you why.

God sometimes answers prayers with “no”.

God gets angry…….and he gets sad. He is more like us than we realize.

God’s justice is absolutely inflexible.

God’s mercy is endless…….but it is not unconditional. There is a universal “get out of jail free” card…….but there is a price and that price is the critical point.

The price for God’s mercy is accepting and following Jesus.

Jesus voluntarily suffered an excruciating death to purchase God’s mercy………his forgiveness……….for you.

You cannot possibly expect to ignore that reality…….to ignore that sacrifice……….and then to avail yourself of his mercy.

Or you could just deny it……..say it’s all a big outdated myth.

Ignore it……deny it……..from God’s side it’s all the same.

The problem is that you could find yourself face to face with God………asking for a little slice of mercy……….and hear him say……..”but I don’t know you”.

You cannot earn a place in paradise.

But you can earn God’s mercy.

It’s easier than you could imagine.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life………Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

Jesus, NIV

Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.  “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.

Jesus, NIV

“Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.

Jesus, NIV

There can be no argument on this one.

There is a lot of suffering in this world.

There is a lot of broken stuff and there are a lot of broken people. There are angry broken people who harm themselves and others and there are innocent people who are broken due to illness, misfortune, and circumstances beyond their control.

In a word, our world is not the way it should be.

If God is all powerful and all knowing, then why is this world, his world, such a mess? In a lot of different ways, I hear people ask this question. When they don’t get the answer that they want, they often reject God.

So……how do we reconcile an all powerful, all knowing creator, God……….with a world that is such a mess…….a planet that is, in fact, dying right before our eyes?

There are several factors:

The first is that the world we live in and the culture that we live in are not anywhere close to what God had in mind. God created a sustainable ecosystem. He put us in it, gave us free will, and left us in charge. We rebelled and it has been downhill ever since. That story pretty much summarizes the old testament.

The second is that God hasn’t cleaned up our mess. He certainly could if he wanted to. Maybe he has lost interest. Maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he figures that we deserve the mess we’ve made. Maybe this mess is our punishment. While those are possible explanations, I think that the real reason is more complex.

The real reason has to do with free will. Our free will is very important to God. God would prefer that we fix the mess ourselves. Most of the new testament deals with guidelines that would fix our world and our culture……….if we would only follow them.

The two central guidelines?

Love God and love your fellow man.

These guidelines are closely tied to free will. And that is where the trouble begins. Love is closely tied to free will. Love must be given freely without compulsion. Love that is forced by compulsion is not love at all. And what God wants from us……in fact, the only thing God wants from us……..is love. You cannot have love without free will……….and you cannot have free will without love.

So…….in order to get the only thing he wants……love…… God is stuck with our free will……and with the mess it has created on his planet and in our culture.

The irony here is that the suffering that we see every day is a direct result of the free will that God had to give us in order to get the only thing that he wants from us…….love.

God wants love.

Love requires free will.

Free will creates choice.

Choice can be good or bad.

Bad choices create suffering.

And that is the history of mankind in five lines.

That is why we are in the mess that we are in.

I have to believe that God has hope in love.

I have to believe that God is conflicted by our use and misuse of free will.

I have to believe that God is profoundly saddened by the suffering that we create.

Suffering, it turns out, is not the creation of God. The suffering that we see and experience every day……..is our own creation. It grows out of our misuse of God’s gift………….free will.

God is not indifferent to our suffering

God suffers with us.

 See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse the blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today;  the curse if you disobey the commands of the Lord your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known. 

Moses, NIV

I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, 

Moses, NIV

My bible reading today is “The Magnificat”. It is the song/poem of a pregnant, unwed teenager living in a culture where pregnant unwed women could be stoned to death. She had been sent away from her family, probably to hide her pregnancy. The father is nowhere in sight.

Her response?

“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.”

Mary, NIV

To really grasp the gravity of this, consider Mary’s situation from her perspective……..looking forward. If she even survived, she probably faced a life with no job, no family, no support, rejection by society…….and a hungry mouth to feed.

By any logical accounting, Mary’s situation was a disaster……..and it was about to get worse. It was quite possible that she would not even live through it…….if the legalists got their hands on her.

And yet, her reaction to this disaster is not dispair…….but, rather joy, thankfulness, and praise.

How can that be?

Looking back, the answer is simple. Mary knew something that nobody else knew………or at least something that they didn’t believe. Mary knew something…….that was simply impossible.

Mary was joyful because she believed with absolute certainty in something “impossible”.

And here is the moral:

Limiting yourself to believing only in what is “possible”, ultimately leads to dispair. The best possible case? You are going to die. And I’m not even going to mention the worst possible case.

Believing in the impossible leads to joy…….even in the face of disaster. Because……..there is a part of you that is supernatural.

There is a part of YOU that is impossible.

YOU are eternal.

We all have bad days…….. fairly often…….car accident, lost keys, missed appointment, late for work.

We also have disasters………loss of a job, illness, homelessness, death of a loved one. These are less frequent……..but we all face them. Furthermore, our disasters are no worse than what Mary faced.

So……when, disaster strikes, the key to dealing with it?

Don’t dwell on the “possible” outcomes.

Remember, that you have been promised the “impossible”.

That promise comes from a creator who loves you and who has your back………all day……..every day.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

God, NIV

We live in a world where we are constantly told that there is no real truth.

It’s all relative.

It depends.

Everybody’s situation is different.

What’s right for you may not be right for me.

Do your own thing.

I just need this.

I’m OK…… you’re OK.

But, if you listen to your heart, you know things……..things that are constant……..things that are right…….things that are true.

So………my question for you today is this:

What is the greatest truth that you know?

The love of a parent for her child.

There is beauty in the world.

There is evil in the world.

It is right to be kind.

It is wrong to cause another pain.

Relationships are important.

Loneliness hurts.

Love……….it all seems to come back to love.

These truths are deeply ingrained in every one of us. We sometimes ignore them or deny them……..but they just will not go away. They are in our “operating system”……..our “read only memory”.

In a word…….they are written on our hearts.

When we pursue these truths, we are happy.

When we discard them…….or lose them…….we feel pain.

We cannot wish them away. We cannot replace them with self made rules in order to satisfy our appetites.

We can rationalize. We can justify. We can pursue appetites that go against them. We can weasel our way around them. But, our attempts to get around them are, at best, temporary. In the final accounting, our attempts to violate them always result in pain. They are absolute and immutable………in spite of what the culture tells us.

How can these ideas be so universal……..so uniform across cultures……… so constant over time?

Simple……..it’s because they are true.

These ideas are what Christianity, at it’s heart, is all about. They are in our hearts because they were put there. They were put there because they are essential. They are as critical to our lives as the chemistry that runs out bodies. Discard insulin and your body fails…….. discard these truths and your life fails.

It’s just that simple.

Love

Love God

Love your neighbor

That…….is the truth that is in your heart.

Love.

And that is Christianity.

So……..the challenge here is to examine your heart. Dig deep and find the truths that are clearly written there……… written there by God. Be careful not to substitute your appetites for God’s truth. Your appetites are transient. God’s truth is eternal.

This search is the beginning of wisdom.

“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Jesus summarizing Christianity, NIV

Honor your mother and father.

Rolls off the tongue doesn’t it? And yet how good are we at following this command?

For many years, I saw my mother as shallow and my father as distant. But lately, I’m seeing them more clearly. My dad ran a business. For decades he worked 6 1/2 days a week. My mom raised me and my brother and sister and did the books for the business.

Here is today’s epiphany:

I never heard them tell a lie. A lot of things happened in my family and a lot of things didn’t happen. But, every day a thread ran through it…….the truth. If my mom or dad said something……it would never have crossed my mind that it might not be true. You can say that that was the 50’s and that things are different now. But, are they? Has the truth gone away…….or possibly become unfashionable?

Watch TV tonight. You will see instance after instance where a well crafted lie is used to reach a goal. And the scary part is that this is presented as a positive thing. We even have a term for someone who strives to tell the truth and do the right thing. We call him a “Boy Scout”…………and this is not a complement. Telling the truth is often seen as evidence of naivety or lack of sophistication………or just plain stupid. We entertain ourselves by watching people lie and kill each other for hours every evening…….every day. We see that the best tool for solving a complicated problem is a handgun.

Just this week I heard a science based show on NPR that pretty much said that we should abandon the idea of truth. They said nothing is absolutely true, it’s all a question of probability.

And that doesn’t even come close to what we see on the “news” and what we hear from our leaders. Our leaders and the talking heads on our TV carefully edit the facts and present us with just the data that supports their agenda…….all in the name of promoting “the greater good”. They honestly believe that what they are doing is noble.

Is it any wonder that we have lost our mooring?

Is it any wonder that we have mass shootings?

Is it any wonder that we need web sites to tell us about the lies that other web sites tell us?

Is it any wonder that Facebook and Twitter block posts that don’t align with their agenda?

Here is an exercise for this week:

After dinner, turn on your TV. The first time someone tells a lie……the first time someone is killed…… the first time someone uses a gun to “solve” a problem……..the first time a talking head presents a “fact” that sells some political agenda…….turn it off.

You should have a good book handy……because I can guarantee you that you are going to need it. Or maybe you could go out into the yard and play with your kids…..or an even more radical move…….talk to them. Tell them the truth. Don’t lecture them about your politics.

We worry about the time our kids spend on their computers, cell phones, and tablets. But I can make a good case that what we adults consume on TV is far more destructive than “Roblox”.

Don’t lie

God