DAY 323 - The Perfect Life

Isaiah 11:6-9 (NIV) ⁶ The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. ⁷ The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. ⁸ The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. ⁹ They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Isaiah lived in a time of prosperity, but it was not like the kind of prosperity enjoyed under the days of King David and Solomon. War was a constant threat. A sense of doom laid heavy over the lives of the people that disturbed what peace and security they had. The economy was unstable, strife and conflict broke out continually among the people as each connived on how to benefit to the fullest without concern or compassion for others.

Isaiah was angry at what he saw. He fiercely denounced the greed in the peoples’ hearts and the injustices that ruled in the market place. And Isaiah was sometimes discouraged with the people of Israel, believing that their hearts could not be changed nor their eyes opened to the kind of life God wanted for them to have. But Isaiah had a dream. In the midst of a world filled with quarreling Isaiah shared this dream of a peaceable kingdom led by a little child, an agent from God. Over and over again the New Testament testifies that Jesus is the one Isaiah dreamed about. And those who met Jesus had the dream awakened in them.

Jesus awakens the dream in people. Though He did not bring in a society of perfect peace, He did make it possible for us to have perfect peace with God. To have peace with God awakens us to new possibilities in life, and makes us aware of God’s plan and purpose for this world. In Jesus, we know that God did not put us here to be realistic. He put us here to be partners with God in making some of the wildest, most outlandish and hopeful dreams about this world come true. Do we dare to dream of the kind of world God wants and believe that dream can come true?

Sometimes I am afraid that we are too accepting of our life as it is. Do we dare to dream of a better life and a better world, a world where people can live in peace and harmony with one another, cherishing mutual respect and love? Do we dare to believe that these dreams are from God and that He has the power to make them come true?

Do we hold back from our dreams from fear of being disillusioned, afraid to run the risk of being disappointed? Do you have a dream? Some wild, fantastic, unattainable dream buried deep within your soul? Consider that this dream has been planted deep within you by God, and that God has a reason for putting it there.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope march 17, 1974

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 322 - Hiding Behind Your Religion

Isaiah 1:11-13, 15-19 (CEV) ¹¹ “Your sacrifices mean nothing to me. I am sick of your offerings of rams and choice cattle; I don’t like the blood of bulls or lambs or goats. ¹² “Who asked you to bring all this when you come to worship me? Stay out of my temple! ¹³ Your sacrifices are worthless, and incense is disgusting. I can’t stand the evil you do on your New Moon Festivals or on your Sabbaths and other times of worship. ¹⁵ “No matter how much you pray, I won’t listen. You are too violent. ¹⁶ Wash yourselves clean! I am disgusted with your filthy deeds. Stop doing wrong ¹⁷ and learn to live right. See that justice is done. Defend widows and orphans and help those in need.” ¹⁸ I, the Lord, invite you to come and talk it over. Your sins are scarlet red, but they will be whiter than snow or wool. ¹⁹ If you willingly obey me, the best crops in the land will be yours.

What provoked God to such fury as to be sick of the offering of sacrifices? God was angry with the people of Israel because they were pretending at something that was not true. They performed the acts of worship and the duties of their religion, but their heart was not in it. God was angry at the people of Israel because they were actually hiding their lives and hearts from Him. And, of all places to hide, they were hiding behind their religion. They did worship as a way of avoiding any real encounter with the living God.

How can worship and trying to live like we should be a way of hiding from God? How many of us have ever had a quarrel in our marriage and instead of sitting down to deal with the cause of friction, we continued in the routine. We did our chores around the house. We had people over to the house. We may even have shown some affection toward each other. But, underneath this show, we were really at odds with each other. And the routine of life, which used to be a normal way we lived together becomes the way we avoid each other. That is what the people of Israel had done. Instead of truly repenting and meeting God face to face they maintained the routine of religion.

Is that true of us? Are we guarding our life from God, going through the motions of being a Christian, but secretly, inwardly keeping God from penetrating to the core of our life? We can appear to be very devoted to God, attend church every Sunday, or we can play the same game by checking in with God every three months or so. But, either way, this is not what God has ever asked of us, to go through the routine of worship when our heart is not in it. God wants to penetrate our soul, to bring about a transformation that leaves the very center of our life pure, clean, good, beautiful, and full of wonder. But, that means total exposure of our life to Him. Otherwise we are still fooling ourselves, still playing the careful game of avoiding God. The only way we can stop dodging and meet God face to face is through God’s promise to us. If we will only let God help us, if we will only obey God, then God will transform us and make us rich in Him.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 3, 1974

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 321 - Shalom

Philippians 1:1,2, 4-9 (NIV)  Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: ² Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. ³ I thank my God every time I remember you. ⁴ In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy ⁵ because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, ⁶ being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. ⁷ It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. ⁸ God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. ⁹ And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,

Shalom is the Hebrew word meaning peace, and it has been used since the days of Abraham as a way of greeting one another and as a way of saying farewell. Jesus used the word several times in His ministry. I would like for us to sense something of the beauty and meaning of this word shalom, a word that has been so crucial in the life of the Christian community. Shalom is a word so rich and varied in meaning that it almost defies definition and description. It means more than simply peace. Shalom has been defined as the full blessings of God, the ideal state in life, wholeness and well-being, and harmony between mind, body, soul.

Shalom is peace that is found not be escaping the turmoils of life, but peace that comes from a secure relationship to God. It is to have the peace of inner conviction, to have mind, body, soul, actions committed to one thing, to be so committed that all of the threats, arguments, and pressures of the world cannot disturb or make us falter from that commitment.

Shalom. To be at peace with God, to know a oneness with Him that fills our whole life and enables us to be in touch with our inner self, with others, and with the world around us.

But shalom does not drop down from heaven. It is the work of the Holy Spirit through human beings. Shalom is a gift of God that we can give one another when we are truly being a Christian fellowship. May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. Shalom.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope February 24, 1974

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 320 - The Cup of the New Covenant

Hebrews 10:12-17, 19-24a (NIV ) ¹² But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, ¹³ and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. ¹⁴ For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. ¹⁵ The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: ¹⁶ “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” ¹⁷ Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” ¹⁹ Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰ by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, ²¹ and since we have a great priest over the house of God, ²² let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. ²³ Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds,

Does is sound strange to you to say that the people who crucified Christ were simply trying to live up to the demands of God? Could it be that, deep within, Christianity has been the same challenge for us - an effort to live up to the demands of God? If that is what our religion has been, I would like for us to look again at the Cross. The words of Jeremiah are given not once but twice in the book of Hebrews, first in the 8^th chapter and again here in the tenth chapter: This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds. That is the new covenant that God has made with us through Jesus Christ. As long as we are trying to live up to the demands of God, we are still basically at odds with God; there is still enmity between us. And that is not what God wants.

In the new covenant we do not have to live up to the demands of God, as if His laws were somehow external to our life and contrary to what we really want. No, the good news of the new covenant is that God’s laws are written on our minds and hearts. That means that we are so much at oneness with God that what God wants for our life and what we want for our life is normally one and the same. Of course we do not perfectly want the same thing as God wants. The writer to the Hebrews also reminds us to help one another to show love and to do good.

But, normally and naturally, when the laws of God are written on our hearts we can know that what God wants for our life and what we want for our life is one and the same thing. This is the new covenant, made possible for us only by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I want more than anything else for us that we move out of religion that is just external demand, and to move into the new covenant, to know the confidence of which Hebrews speaks, that what God wants and what we want is one and the same thing.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope January 6, 1974

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 319 - The Helmet of Hope

I Thessalonians 5:8-11 (NIV) ⁸ But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. ⁹ For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. ¹⁰ He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. ¹¹ Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

This passage speaks of wearing our hope of salvation as a helmet. Helmets are worn to keep us from getting our heads crushed or injured, and so this is a perfect metaphor of what hope is for – to keep us from being crushed by the blows that life will deal us. When problems come back again and again, when we experience failure and defeat again and again, that is when a sense of hopelessness begins to swell up within us. For instance, in our marriage we can deal fairly well with the day to day normal difficulties and tensions that may arise. But when some problem crops up again and again, almost on a regular basis, year after year after year, a deadening sense of hopelessness begins to creep into our marriage.

Our sense of hopelessness may come from financial indebtedness, or from grief … or the sense of hopelessness may flood us from every direction. It could be our temper, a rut we are in, smoking, eating, tardiness … anything we’ve tried to improve in our lives without success until we finally say “I guess I am hopeless. Why try? I’m caught. There is no way out, no possibility for any answer or solution.” Don’t believe it. Don’t settle for that kind of life. Put on the hope of salvation as a helmet. We don’t have to be crushed by the blows life deals us. God isn’t through with our problems, our failure, our defeats. God isn’t through with us yet. The hope of salvation gives us an expectant stance toward life. We do not know what is going to happen, but defeat is not certain. Failure is not certain. The only certainty we have in life is God, and God isn’t through with us yet.

The life of hope is a risky life, and in some ways an anxious life because we never know what tomorrow holds, except that God will be there, continuing to complete the work begun in Jesus. That may be why many of us settle for a life of hopelessness, for hopelessness offers us a great deal of security. Life is very predictable for the hopeless person, the misery of the future is certain. “I know that my happiness cannot last. I know death is the end of life. I know my life can never get any better. The blow will fall, it is only a matter of time.” Can you sense the morbid kind of security that goes with a hopeless life? But for that security we pay a high, high price .. the price of life itself.

Can we put on the hope of salvation as a helmet, know that God isn’t through yet, that God has much, much more life, joy, freedom in store for us in the future than we are now experiencing? Armed with our hope can we square up, face up to repeated failure, disappointment, pain, and know that the blows will fall but that they cannot crush us? We must wear the hope of salvation as a helmet. Can we leave the security of our hopelessness and step out into the risky life of hope?

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope December 9, 1973

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 318 - What Makes God Happy

Luke 12:22-32 (RSV) ²² And he said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on. ²³ For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. ²⁴ Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! ²⁵ And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life? ²⁶ If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? ²⁷ Consider the lilies, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ²⁸ But if God so clothes the grass which is alive in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O men of little faith! ²⁹ And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be of anxious mind. ³⁰ For all the nations of the world seek these things; and your Father knows that you need them. ³¹ Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things shall be yours as well. ³² "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Imagine you stand before Jesus, and when He puts His arm around you and looks you in the eyes you know it is OK to ask Him for anything. What would you ask of Him?

Now believe, imagine that whatever you asked of Jesus, He granted, and then tells you that it gives God great pleasure to give His life to you. Now we begin to understand the reason for Jesus’ generosity. He is not catering the our whims, but He gives to us signs that point to the desire God has to give to us.

Do you find that hard to believe? Do you wonder if there is some catch to His offer? Surely God wants something in return. He wants to dominate and control our life? He wants to make sure we live right? No. Jesus says it simply gives God great pleasure to give His life to us and all the benefits that go with that life: peace, love, security, joy, love, everlasting life.

Can you begin to see why Jesus was so popular with the people? Why they were excited about His coming, and why His message is called “Good News?” In Christ people discovered as they never had before that God was fantastically for them. There was no need to beg or whimper at His feet. No need to try and impress Him or appease Him. That is how we make God happy, not by trying to do anything, but by simply receiving the life He has offered so freely. God meets us like the Father of the Prodigal, with arms wide open, happy, joyful and gleeful that we have come to Him to accept the offer into life in Christ. When we accept that offering a party is thrown in our honor and God dances with pleasure.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope November 25, 1973

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 317 - Money, Money, Money, Or …

Matthew 6:23-25 (NIV) ²⁴ “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Ephesians 1-8, 12, 22 (NIV) ³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace ⁸ that he lavished on us. In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, ¹² in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. ²² And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

We are born seekers. And one of the things we seek most diligently is security and protection from hurt and harm, which also includes an inner sense of safety and well-being. Early in life we learn that money and material things go a long way in providing us with security. But many of us also learn somewhere down the line that money cannot buy total security. It cannot ultimately protect us from sickness and death. It cannot guarantee us a good marriage, a happy home, close friends. Furthermore, if we have ever looked deeply into what it means to be secure we also know that real security cannot be found in things that we can lose or that can be taken way from us.

So for many of us it begins to dawn on us that there just may be a God who stands beyond this fleeting and temporal world, and that the way to real security is to be found by having our life anchored in God. We hear this person Jesus promise that if by faith we belong to God, are adopted through His death and resurrection as children of God, then nothing in life can hurt us permanently, no loss is lasting, no defeat more than for the moment, no disappointment conclusive. We begin to believe this, or at least begin to want to believe, but time and time again that sense of security we had hoped to find in God eludes us. Our lives neither know nor reflect the joy, the confidence, the boldness of the early disciples who knew without a shadow of a doubt that their lives were permanently and totally secure in God.

What has happened? Why the breakdown? Why can’t we know the security Jesus promised and the security the early disciples discovered? Jesus puts His finger on the problem: we seek security in both God and money - we know money cannot buy security and yet we are not totally convinced that God is the only security we need. It is a mystery, yet when we decide to seek our security in God, and God alone, all things necessary for real security is somehow provided for us.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)