He's Got This

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. – Ephesians 3:20-21

And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. – 2 Corinthians 9:8

We’ve been working in Hawaii on a metering project.  It’s been the typical getting the train going process complete with all the lurching forward then jerking back and everything groaning as the train begins moving forward slowly at first then slowly increasing speed.  Unfortunately the project work statement has been the worst we’ve ever encountered in the 6 or 7 years of doing metering.  This alone has cost time as several members of the team has had to sit and work through it for several days to bring it to a point where it resembles something useful.  But, things are starting to appear to picking up speed and be moving forward.  Hopefully it will stay on the tracks.

It is so tempting to worry and want to wring my hands and pull my hair out and allow my stress to rise over how/when/what/who/where this will get accomplished.  In fact, one of my employees, here for the first time, is so tight and worried that he is constantly grumbling and stressed over his to-do efforts.  He is completely unable to take a breath and look around and appreciate the beauty of God’s creation all around him at any time, even in the evenings when we are not surveying.  It’s a shame really.  Even though I’ve tried to coach him and lead him to it, he isn’t willing to … yet (hopefully).

God assures me that He can do more than I ask or even think.  So, if I ask God to bless my work, or even our (the team’s) work, only a lack of faith would lead me to believe He will not have His hand in it and on me or us.  He will bless it and I will give Him praise for it.  Not only will He bless it, but He will bless it abundantly.  God loves us and just as I want to bless my children in whatever way I can as they work to accomplish things in my imperfect and sinful manner, God who is perfect will bless us so much more.

He’s got this and He don’t need me stressing and worrying about how.  He just needs me to believe in Him and that He is for me and will not forsake me.  He needs me to have faith; to breathe in a deep breath; to look around at His creation and see Him in it; and allow His Spirit within me to spread to those who just can’t get beyond the world or themselves.

I pray that God would put His hand upon us and protect us, guide us as we work, to change the minds of those who would seek not to help or to obstruct, and to break open all the ways before us so that we might do good work and be able to give praise to Him for how He led us in it.

Zeitgeist

These are interesting times.

It seems we are in a world where common sense and reasonable discourse are breaking down, leaving us with social outcomes that only a few years ago would have seemed impossible. As Buffalo Springfield sang, “There’s something happening here; what it is ain’t exactly clear.”

This morning I sit contemplating the social upheaval and the speed of it.  One of the problems, if history can be considered, is that if this is the beginning of an upheaval then the speed will only increase greatly. 

The economist Neil Howe says this cultural shift is a natural feature of an 80-year cycle of generational change; and, lucky us, we are now entering the most volatile and critical period of that cycle, one that often produces crisis and relief from strong repressed emotions.  Consider that 80 years ago the U.S. was in the Great Depression and about to enter WWII.  80 years before that, the U.S. was about to enter the Civil War.  80 years before that was the Revolutionary War.  The critical year, if we have to be completely accurate, is 2020.  That is when the 80 year cycle lines up the truest.

If we do not see that there is a deep cultural shift happening then we are not living in reality.  Heraclitus said “The only thing that is constant is change” (around 500 BC).  And things are a-changing. 

Did I ever think I’d see a day when society would accept re-labeling bathrooms because a few people don’t know what sex they think they are?  The thought or slightest consideration never, ever entered my mind.

Did I ever expect that we’d go through racial fights, shootings, and protests like they did back in the ‘60s?  Especially since blacks have EVERY advantage.  We are living in an economy that promotes all things black, offers assistance in every way at every level, and we still can’t find enough blacks who will walk through the door and be successful.  It is a time of unprecedented black privilege and it still isn’t enough.  Now that there is a substantial poor white class, if this black unrest persist, I do not see how there will be anything short of very real violence.  I never, ever thought this would happen again.

Did I ever consider that America would be a country that would persecute Christians or Christian morals and ideology?  I could never, ever have possibly imagined such a thing. 

Very simply, people try to minimize pain and maximize pleasure.  If you can anticipate how they will do so, you can forecast results, economic or otherwise, not with perfect reliability but with high confidence.  Timing is the main challenge.  Today, we have a majority of people who do not want to persist in the pain of work for the pleasure of reward.  No one wants to sow in the sun so they can reap much later at the dinner table.  There is an absolute absence of own our reality.

No one want to admit that this sexual perversion is a moral sin.  No one is willing to confront the able poor and say that unwillingness to sacrifice your time in vocation is a sin.  How dare we be so unloving they proclaim.  Yet it is they who promote these unsustainable social existences who are unloving by allowing people to live in circumstances that will never allow them to be successful.  So it is no wonder that there is persecution of the Christian community.  No one likes to be told the truth of their reality.

Whatever our country is doing to solve these problems, it isn’t working.  One of the problems we all encounter is we want a return to equilibrium.  We want to go to what we knew.  But there is no equilibrium – you are where you are.  Winston Churchill said, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”  The current results are unpleasant to consider.

Ben Hunt, another economist, says this shift is because of a failure of narrative.  The Narrative around these events is being shaped and reshaped.  This Narrative seems to determining the path and outcome of government policy.  The assumed politically correct reaction to these events are actually forming social policy and re-writing the laws.  It is not the known moral laws being used to shape social policy.  THIS IS ANARCHY.  It is anarchy in public order and simultaneously, it is anarchy in the Christian church order.

There is a rebellion against police and laws.  There is a rebellion against the church and God’s Word.  Society is trying to change both and not for the better.  Our national laws will bend and be possibly changed.  God’s Word will not; He is always true.  The true church will simply go underground.

Another writer said, “How is the zeitgeist shifting?”  Zeitgeist is the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.

It is very important for us today to do our very best to consider this and to prepare as best as we know how to prepare for what seems to definitely be a cycle of crisis.

Nothing is Too Hard

“O Sovereign Lord!  You made the heavens and earth by Your strong hand and powerful arm.  Nothing is too hard for You!  You show unfailing love to thousands, but You also bring the consequences of one generation’s sin upon the next.  You are great and powerful God, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” – Jeremiah 32:17-18

Jeremiah is in prayer to the Lord.  This prayer, this conversation with God, is written here and I find it reassuring as it reflects how our own conversations, our prayers, with God ought to contain.  Jeremiah is praying for his people, his nation, and his home.  He begins by acknowledging that He knows God can do anything.  He has bought a field from prison from his cousin that tried to kill him for probably way too much money, because God instructed him to do it.  But now the city is under attack and it is obvious that the Babylonians will take it.  “Why”, he asks, “did I do such a foolish thing?”  We are a conquered people.  He admits that he understands the reason for the disaster.  My people “refused to obey You or follow Your Word”, “they have not done anything You commanded”, and “that is why You have sent this terrible disaster upon them”(v23).  However, as he stands there in it, his heart broken for his people and nation, he still wonders what purpose the Lord has for his direction.  He knows God can do anything, but is He going to do something?

The Lord answers Jeremiah in the faith that he has just proclaimed, “I am the Lord, the God of all mankind.  Is anything too hard for me?” (v27).  The Lord then explains just how evil the people are and describes the things they’ve done.  He uses strong language.  The actions of the people have been numerous and are “an incredible evil” (v35).  Then the Lord promises to Jeremiah that there will be a day of restoration.  “They will be My people, and I will be their God”, “I will give them one heart and one purpose: to worship Me forever, for their good and for the good of all their descendants”, “I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good for them”, and “I will put a desire in their hearts to worship Me and they will never leave Me.” (v38-40)  In this, the Lord tells Jeremiah that the city, the nation, and the people will function once again.  There will be buying and selling of land and that land that he has bought has a purpose.  That purpose was to illustrate to all the people that Jeremiah had hope in the Lord and the Lord had made a promise.  He was demonstrating, maybe without knowing it, that they were still invested in that promise even in the face of annihilation.

Are you in conversation with the Lord?  Is He leading you in actions or words to do things that make no reasonable sense to you?  Are you in the middle of an impossible attack with apparent certain defeat and it appears that God is not going to rescue you?  Do you think your actions or words are senseless or mindless and have no purpose? 

Maybe you are in what seems to be a hopeless situation.  But, no matter how bad the circumstances, remember Jeremiah, who followed God to buy land as the nation was conquered.  Join Him in faith and lay hold of the promises of the all-powerful God!  Nothing is too hard for Him!