DAY 185 - Good and Happy

Romans 6:12-14 (NIV) ¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. ¹³ Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. ¹⁴ For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

Galatians 3:1-5 (NIV)  ¹ You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. ² I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? ³ Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? ⁴ Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? ⁵ So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

We can acknowledge our self-respecting flaws, but ego damaging faults are difficult to see and admit. Yet, when we find the courage to do so, it usually brings relief and helps build bridges between ourselves and others. As we begin to recognize our faults and desire to rid ourselves of them we often run into the frustration of finding we are powerless. We try and we fail. We become frustrated and fail some more. We fail until God touches our life with the gift of grace. Grace is the confidence that we are loved despite our faults.

Anyone who works with people over a period of time realizes that unaided human effort is not enough to defeat the problems and difficulties that defeat us. Grace is a gift we receive to help us and to equip us to deal with the falleness of our life. It is an event and an experience that happens. I do not know if we can “fall from grace” but I do know that we can have a relapse from this experience of God’s goodness and power, and when we do we strike out again on our own to make ourselves “good and happy.” This had happened to the Christians in Galatia.

Repeatedly we hear the groanings of those who have achieved what the world calls success. The mirage of success holds out its alluring promise and people still strive to achieve it. Most tragically, works of the flesh and of the law are efforts to earn what God desires to give.  The difference between the works of the flesh and the law and the work of grace is subtle but significant. Your life is no longer controlled by striving. It is directed by the gift of Christ within you. The graceful life is living in response to that gift.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope October 25, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 184 -Can I Have a Witness?

Jeremiah 1:4-9 (NIV)  ⁴ The word of the LORD came to me, saying, ⁵ “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” ⁶ “Alas, Sovereign LORD,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” ⁷⁸ Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the LORD. ⁹ Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.

I Peter 3:13-16 (NIV) ¹³ Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? ¹⁴ But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” ¹⁵ But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, ¹⁶ keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

A witness is someone who tells what he or she has seen, heard, and personally experienced to be true. We are called to serve God by what we say to others. To say we only witness to God by the way we live is like trying to fly with only one wing. It takes two wings to take off – our works and our words. Both wings are important, but often it’s the word wing that is the most difficult to get off the ground. Jeremiah found this to be true, saying “I do not know how to speak. I am too young.” Jeremiah had his excuses, and we have ours. Beneath those excuses and reasons for silence may be a fear that if we were to speak there would be nothing to say. Do we remain silent because we feel we have nothing to share?

God has reasons for wanting us to speak. If we do not speak, God’s Word may not be heard, God’s life may not be found, and God’s truth may not be obeyed. God calls us to speak His Word. God has chosen us to be channels of God’s truth, grace, and love. If we do not speak, the Word people need to hear may not be heard.

To be a witness means we share with others what our faith has meant to us. If we are serving God and discovering a measure of freedom in that, we have the power to help others find that freedom as well. As we speak of God, our own faith is made more firm, more clear, more important. Let us never underestimate our own need to speak to others about what we have seen and heard of God. The pleasure of discovery comes only if and when we speak and share however much or little we have known of God’s presence and power and work in our life.

“LORD, I do not know how to speak.” “I have put my words in your mouth.” Which one will we listen to? Which one will we follow?

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope September 27, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 183 - Holy Leisure

Isaiah 55:1-2 (NIV) ¹ “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. ² Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.

I Timothy 6:6-8, 10 (NIV) ⁶ But godliness with contentment is great gain. ⁷ For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. ⁸ But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.  

Most of us have times when we are between completing one task and not quite ready to begin the next one. The early church leaders called this “times of holy leisure.” They saw these in between times as the opportunity to refocus life on the matters that were really important, to balance life between the competing demands and responsibilities, and perhaps most importantly to remember the calling to be Christians before being called to do anything.

False teaching abounds, telling us we must have more and that we must do more to be happy. Without some space for holy leisure we are very likely to buy into these promises and proddings almost without knowing it. Amidst all the noise of the false teachers comes the quiet voice of the Apostle Paul. There is something to be gained from our faith and it is called Godliness with contentment.

Paul is speaking of the kind of contentment where Timothy could rest on the confidence that God will supply every need according to the riches of His grace in Christ Jesus. This is the contentment promised, but Paul says this contentment comes as a part of Godliness. Godliness is a kind of mind-set that develops as we respond to God in faith and in obedience as best we can. We learn contentment as we respond to the daily events of our life out of whatever faith we have. That is the way Godliness is formed. The shedding of the old mind-set and the building of the new one takes place where we live and work day to day, where we respond with confidence in God.  If Jesus is only some veneer on an already polished life we may see Him simply as a quick fix for a problem. If He is one more responsibility in an overcrowded schedule His power will not be found and felt by us.

Holy leisure requires that we live in the passive voice, and allow and ask and give permission to the living Christ to prepare us for whatever the future holds for us. It is a time to remember that God is present to us, that God is at work, and that we are constantly being called to respond to life events out of our confidence in God.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope August 30, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 182 - Christian Submission

Romans 13:1 (NIV)  ¹Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.

I Peter 2:13-14 (NIV)  ¹³Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, ¹⁴or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. 

Peter reminds the church of its responsibility to the state. Submission to authority is an anathema in today’s world, and certainly there is a need to resist unjust authority, but submission was no more desirable for the early Christians than it is for us today. We prefer love to submission, because we know submission means saying no to our own self-will and saying yes to the will of others. Submission is a willingness to try solutions that others have offered. Submission accepts authority and assumes that those in authority have made good decisions. It is a willingness to test out those decisions in daily life. Submission places our will under the will of others. It listens to what others say and accepts their thoughts and judgment as being right and good.

Submission can become conformity, behavior based on fear and force. Submission, on the other hand, is chosen. Conformity makes us a slave to the demands of others. Submission enables us to freely serve. Our submission to human authority is supported by and limited by our trust in the sovereign power of God. Our bottom line faith is that God is sovereign over our country and over all nations. With confidence in that sovereignty we submit to human institutions. With hope in that sovereignty, we obey. And sometimes in obedience to that sovereignty we resist and rebel against human authority.

Submission is the risk Jesus took when He came into our world. We like to say that love is the cardinal command for Christians, and so it is. And at the heart of the command to love is Jesus Christ laying down His life for us. Jesus defined love as submission, and because Jesus submitted Himself to us, submission became a litmus test for love.

Submission is risky. I know of nothing that can remove the risk of abuse brought on by submission, but there is something that reduces the risk. There is in submission an element of truth that gives us power and protection from abuse. The sovereignty of God is our protection. God’s sovereignty is available to those who submit to others out of their trust in God. Submission is ultimately and finally and thoroughly an act of confidence in the power and might of God.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope July 5, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 181 - Powerful Mercy

Matthew 5:7 (NIV) ⁷ Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Luke 6:27-36 (NIV) ²⁷ “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸ bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹ If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. ³⁰ Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. ³¹ Do to others as you would have them do to you. ³² “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. ³³ And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. ³⁴ And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. ³⁵ But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. ³⁶ Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. I hear the words of Jesus, but they sound like He wants us to overlook and ignore the faults and failures of others. Turn the other cheek. Once again His words seem to challenge some of the popular notions of our time. Jesus makes clear that mercy is one of the weightier matters of the law.

Mercy describes God’s patient and persistent love for people despite their consistent failure. Divorced from these roots, mercy takes on a distorted meaning. Mercy begins to mean not enforcing moral law or feeling sorry for someone. When rooted in the action and the attitude of God we see the tenacity of God’s mercy. Mercy is a word of power, the power of God to change the life of the woman caught in adultery. It is the power to clean Peter’s shame. If forgiveness means giving up the right to get back at a person, mercy is giving up the right to be right. Mercy does not merely overlook the faults and failures of others. Mercy looks beyond our personal prejudices. Mercy does not bet its future on the way others respond to mercy. Mercy banks on the truth of God’s promise. We give and we receive. We exhale the gift of mercy. We inhale the mercy we need. To refuse mercy stops the process that gives us life. It stagnates the spirit of God in us.

If nursing resentments and cultivating a critical spirit revokes our pardon and imprisons our soul, then the practice of mercy sets us free. We let in a breath of fresh air to our critical spirit. We bring peace to a troubled soul. We bring healing to a wounded spirit, and the soul and spirit we bring these gifts to are our own. Mercy brings judgment in a way that being critical can never accomplish. Awareness of our indebtedness disturbs our comfort, and the place where we see our indebtedness is in the Cross of Jesus. God did not show mercy by overlooking or ignoring our sin, but by dying for us. Mercy banks on the truth of God’s promise. Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope May 24, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles

DAY 180 - The Evil Empire

John 12:35-36  (NIV) ³⁵ Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. ³⁶ Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.

I John 3:7-10 (NIV) ⁷ Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. ⁸ The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. ⁹ No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. ¹⁰ This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister. 

For Jesus, the enemy was more than the people standing around the Cross jesting and ridiculing Him, reveling in his death. The enemy was a power behind them. Jesus had called this power the Accuser, the Deceiver, the Father of all lies, Satan. Jesus was seeing something that we find hard to see and comprehend and to deal with. Do we fall into that trap, seeing the cause of our faults and failures, our problems and difficulties as always being something visible and tangible that we can manipulate and control? 

If there is an evil power that opposes God’s will for us and seeks to sabotage our life and capture our mind and heart, there is also a power that overcomes the darkness, and that power was unleashed through the death of Jesus. How did the death of Jesus conquer the power of evil? We do not know fully how the Cross works, but we know its power is verified in history and in human lives. We can debate the existence of evil and discuss the theories of the Cross until we are thoroughly confused. But when our sanity and survival are at stake, only our experience of the Cross is important.

How does that come about? Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. To believe in the light is to live in a spirit of confidence and trust that the ruler of this world has been cast out. Trust helps us to see through the deceits that try to control us and drive us. Most of us know when the demons of fear and anger, greed and guilt and a host of others are the residing dictators of our life. We absolutely can do nothing about them without trust and confidence in God to act in us and for us. By faith and with trust, we resist the deceit that drives us even further down the road to poor judgment and woeful song of self-pity. Jesus saw the real cause of the Cross, not because He had some supernatural knowledge that has been denied us. He saw because He lived with such complete trust in God.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope April 5, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 179 - You, Judas!

Matthew 26:14-16, 19-23, 25 (NASB) ¹⁴Then one of the twelve, named Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests ¹⁵and said, "What are you willing to give me to betray Him to you?" And they weighed out thirty pieces of silver to him. ¹⁶From then on he began looking for a good opportunity to betray Jesus. ¹⁹The disciples did as Jesus had directed them; and they prepared the Passover.  ²⁰Now when evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the twelve disciples. ²¹As they were eating, He said, "Truly I say to you that one of you will betray Me." ²²Being deeply grieved, they each one began to say to Him, "Surely not I, Lord?" ²³And He answered, "He who dipped his hand with Me in the bowl is the one who will betray Me ²⁵And Judas, who was betraying Him, said, "Surely it is not I, Rabbi?" Jesus said to him, "You have said it yourself."

Is there any Judas in us? Look with me at the act of betrayal. The word literally means to give over or to deliver into the hands of judgment. But, no definition can capture the experience of being betrayed or of betraying. Betrayal takes place between friends, with people we are close to, people we love, trust, and have confidence in. Only people we care about have the power to betray us. The Sanhedrin was right in recognizing that only a friend in pretense could get to Jesus, could bring Him down, could do the deed that would destroy Him. Betrayal is the deepest wound we can inflict on someone who cares about us, and the deepest wound we can receive.

While there is a certain amount of self-deceit involved in betrayal – we excuse, we rationalize – betrayal is not done entirely blindly. It is deliberate. We always have some awareness. We do not accidently betray someone. We do not simply stumble into it. Because betrayal has an element of knowing, words like "I’m sorry" sound hollow, and explanations are ultimately futile. Forgiveness is the only help we have for betrayal. Forgiveness is the only thing that will bring healing to the betrayed and the betrayer. We remain trapped by betrayal if remorse, and not forgiveness and repentance, is all we feel along with our wounded pride.

We are all capable of being a Judas. Hear and heed that warning. Receive also this word of hope. Jesus knew who would betray Him, and He knows us as well. Jesus knew and loved Judas still, and loves us still. God is not surprised at our sin, because God knows. If we can remember and are willing to believe that God knows our betrayal and is troubled by our betrayal, but is not surprised, alienated, or turned away by it, we will know we still have a choice. We are not condemned forever to a prison of pain. God will work. God will forgive. God will restore. And we can choose whether to accept or reject God’s continued commitment to us.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 29, 1992

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles