WEEK TWO - DAYS FOUR AND FIVE, AND RECAP OF WEEK!

Playing catch up after battling allergies and subsequent sinus infection...just have felt icky and tired!  I'm sure many others are doing the same thing or worse!  So much flu, RSV, Covid and everything else going around this time of year...praying we all get better quickly!

Day Four of last week dealt with our resources, and in light of the focus of the rest of the week on idolatry and counterfeits in our lives, specifically showing that the way we use our resources reflects what we most highly value.  If there is an idol that is weighing heavily in our life, then it is likely that our money will find it's way to it...just like the saying goes, "follow the money."  But God calls us, as followers of Him, to be people who are utilizing the resources that He has blessed us with to help those who need our help....the  orphan, the poor, the foreigner, the widow and the innocent.  For us today, that may translate into anyone who truly is in need, the helpless and the vulnerable.  I can think of so many categories of people today that our hearts should break for and for whom we should funnel our resources to: the children across the world who are starving or who are in need of just clean water; those who are being caught up in the sex trafficking industry; those without any means of provision of the most basic of needs; refugees being driven from countries which have endured endless years of civil war; women, and men, who are old and lonely, just needing a friendly voice to ensure them that they are not forgotten; the mentally ill and the mentally challenged; and the unborn who need our voice to cry out for their chance to have life!

Are our hearts, and pocketbooks, turned towards these needs over and above our materialistic wants?  If not, we may need an idol check!  I think this is the message of Jeremiah 22:16, " 'He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well.  Is that not what it means to know Me?' declares the Lord." 

When we have come to know who God truly is, we will see that He is a God of great compassion, and He asks the same of us.  And then a reminder that all gifts are not monetary---we should also examine the use of our time and talents.  These are all resources that have been gifted to us by God our Father, not for our glorification, but for His.

On Day Five we covered the ways and reasons that we make fakes when we have access to the real.  Why would Israel have done that?  Why do we do it?  Don't we often try to "create" another god when we feel that God has gone silent?  That we're talking to a blank wall with no answers?  When our relationship has cooled (and whose fault would that be?) and when we feel God is distant and far, far away?  Those are the times when it is so easy for us to make a fake...it was for the Israelites as well.  Of course they actually "made" a false god, they carved a wooden idol or bought one formed of gold or silver.  But as we saw in our comparison, their man-made gods couldn't talk or walk; they were made by men; they were perishable and worthless.  In opposition, God is great and powerful, speaking over all the nations; He is alive and eternal, and His wrath will be felt by the earth and those who stand in opposition to Him; He created everything and everything was created for Him; He controls the universe, and He controls every cell in our individual bodies.  How foolish the people of Israel were to worship worthless man-made idols in lieu of Almighty God.  How foolish we continue to be when we worship the idols that we contrive in our minds and convince ourselves that they will give us what we need.  They will never satisfy, because they are worthless and by worshiping them, we, ourselves, become worthless.  We also practice a form of idolatry when we try to modify God to be the god we want Him to be, rather than who He truly is.  He is not our "genie in a bottle" ready to give us our every desire.  Rather, He is our good and perfect Father, ready to give us exactly what He knows we truly need to become the person He designed us to be.  That's when we will find real satisfaction - when we are finally everything that God saw in us when He created us without any of the encumbrances of sin in our lives.  

Trusting in His good and perfect plan for us is where He wants us to live every day.  Trusting Him removes us from the temptation of idolatry.  Trusting Him gets rid of the need, or the temptation, to "make a fake"!

OK - so recapping the week of Recognizing Counterfeits and the Real Deal!  To recognize a counterfeit, we need to know the real thing...stay close to God, read His Word, know His nature, trust in His provision...then when you are tempted to replace Him you'll see that nothing else comes close to what God already is to you.  He is your EVERYTHING.  He is always ready to satisfy our never-ending thirst with an everlasting fountain of Water.  Revelation22:17, "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.'  Let anyone who hears this say, 'Come.'  Let anyone who is thirsty come.  Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life."  How can we refuse such an invitation?  

As C. S. Lewis has said, "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."  

We keep drawing water from broken cisterns that are polluted and leaky so we can be "self-sufficient", rather than relying on God's pure and eternal fountain from which He is ready to provide us.

Come!  Let's go to the seashore!  

Day 2 - Week 2 - John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

So have you spent part of your day pondering these words and what they might mean to you?  It's a hard one to get out of your head, a little bit like a riddle that you just cant quite figure out and until you do, it's all you can think of. 

For some reason, John is the only one in Scripture who refers to Jesus as the Word.  Again in 1 John 5:7, he says, "For there are three that bear record in heaven the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one."  So, somewhat in algebraic style, we know we can substitute Jesus' name in place of "the Word", so that our verse would now read, "In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God."  Does that make it clearer for us? 

As I said yesterday, John's gospel is intent on convincing his audience that Jesus, the man that they saw so many years ago on earth, the man that they followed, the man that they saw crucified, and that saw resurrected and ascending into heaven, was and is God, nothing else, nothing less. 

Max Lucado writes a very touching vignette regarding John's writing of his gospel...he writes words that make you able to envision this old disciple of Jesus, starting to pen the words that we are now memorizing...

He’s an old man, this one who sits on the stool and leans against the wall. Eyes closed and face soft, were it not for his hand stroking his beard, you’d think he was asleep....he is not resting. He is traveling...he journeys back, back, back until he is young again. Strong again. There again. There on the seashore with James and the apostles. There on the trail with the disciples and the women. There in the Temple with Caiaphas and the accusers. It’s been sixty years, but John seems him still. The decades took John’s strength, but they didn’t take his memory. The years dulled his sight, but they didn’t dull his vision. The seasons may have wrinkled his face, but they didn’t soften his love.

He had been with God. God had been with him. How could he forget?

The wine that moments before had been water - John could still taste it.

The mud placed on the eyes of the blind man in Jerusalem - John could still remember it.

The aroma of Mary’s perfume as it filled the room - John could still smell it.

And the voice, oh the voice. His voice. John could still hear it....John could hear him, John could see him. Scenes branded on his heart. Words seared into his soul. John would never forget. How could he? He had been there....most who were there are dead. Peter is. So is James. Nathaneal, Martha, Bartholomew. They are all gone. Even Paul, the apostle who came late, is dead. Only John remains...what will happen when John is gone?  Who will tell them how Jesus silenced the waves? Will they hear how he fed the thousands? Will they remember how he prayed for unity? How will they know? If only they could have been there. Suddenly, in his heart, he knows what to do. Later, under the light of a sunlit shaft, the old fisherman unfolds the scroll and begins to write the story of his life.... 'In the beginning was the Word...’ ”

Let's join John in his fervency of declaring Jesus Christ as none other than Holy God, nothing else, nothing less.