Day 110 - Tough and Tender

II Samuel 12:15-16, 19-23 (NIV) ¹⁵ After Nathan had gone home, the LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife had borne to David, and he became ill. ¹⁶ David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and went into his house and spent the nights lying on the ground. ¹⁹ David noticed that his servants were whispering among themselves and he realized the child was dead. "Is the child dead?" he asked. "Yes," they replied, "he is dead." ²⁰ Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped. Then he went to his own house, and at his request they served him food, and he ate. ²¹ His servants asked him, "Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!" ²² He answered, "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, 'Who knows? The LORD may be gracious to me and let the child live.' ²³ But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me."

Psalm 51:1-4, 17 (NIV) ¹ Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. ² Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. ³ For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. ⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. ¹⁷ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

When we rationalize that our actions can’t possibly hurt anyone, the truth is that they hurt Jesus Christ. In Psalm 51 David confesses the wrong he has done: the iniquity of distorted thinking, the transgression of deliberately going against God’s gracious will, and letting his life be sabotaged by powers bent on destruction. He accepted the hurt, but he did not stay stuck. The servants were shocked and disturbed that David got over his grief so soon. People who take their sin to God, honestly acknowledging them and humbly accepting God’s work will sometimes appear almost callous to those who have never experienced grace and forgiveness, removal and restoration.

If it takes a certain kind of tenderness to ask for God’s help, it also takes a certain kind of toughness to believe that our sins are forgiven and then to get on with the responsibility that is ours. For it is God’s will and desire to fill us with joy and gladness so that the life that has been broken by sin may once again report for duty to God. This is the life we see in Jesus. He lived under the shadow of the Cross, yet called life good. He was surrounded by the blundering confusion of the disciples, yet called them His very best friends. He was beset by temptation, harassed by opposition, yet uttered no complaint. And Jesus told us about a God who saw His child returning home beaten and bruised and empty in soul, and had compassion for the child who had chosen to come home. This, too, was the spirit David brought to God, a broken and contrite heart still confident in a God of steadfast love and tender mercy.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope August 4, 1991

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles

Day 109 - A Hole in the Soul

II Samuel 12:5-7, 9a, 12-13a (NIV) ⁵ David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! ⁶ He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity." ⁷ Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. ^9a Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own… ¹² You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.' " ^13a Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." Nathan replied, "The LORD has taken away your sin.

Matthew 16:26 (NIV) What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?

King David did not want “the whole world.” He only wanted one woman, Bathsheba. Unfortunately, she was married to another man. But never mind, where there is a desire, there is a way, and David found it. He’d let Uriah make a valiant sacrifice for the army, then comfort the grieving widow. Sure, it bothered David at first – the lies, the trickery, the hypocrisy, the treachery, and the fear of being found out. But all of that was behind him now and Bathsheba was his wife. Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. David condemns himself and finds that in his headlong desire for Bathsheba he had lost his sense of compassion, his sense of mercy and pity for underserved affliction he caused to come upon someone.

Compassion is a saving attribute of God, and describes the caring of Jesus for people. Compassion is to hurt with someone else’s pain. When we lose the ability to hurt with the hurting of others we invariably cause harm, becoming tuned out to the needs of wife, husband, children, friends, parents. We simply do not see the needs in others we care about, and we do not see the hurt, whether caused by ourselves or by vagrancies of life. We also become turned off to what is happening inside us, handing over our soul to deceit and compromise.

When compassion is lost, God in compassion sends a Nathan to crack the concrete that has grown slowly but surely over our heart. How many of us have had a Nathan come into our life? How many of us welcome him or her with regular visits? Do we recognize these agents of God’s goodness and saving grace to us? Jesus not only forgives sin but raises awareness of sins that we have successfully anesthetized in our soul. Repentance is the honest recognition of the wrong we have done. It is the cracking of the concrete, the recovery of the hurt we have caused others and the harm we have brought on ourselves. It may not be a very pleasant experience. Surgery of this sort seldom is. But it is necessary if we are to remain sensitive to God and compassionate toward one another. And, most of us are not very good at doing surgery on ourselves. Will the Nathans that God sends find us ready and willing to recognize the wrong we have done?

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope July 28, 1991

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles

DAY 108 - What Is the Meaning of This?

Matthew 9:35 (NIV) Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.

Matthew 10:1, 8 (NIV) ¹He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. ⁸Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.

Matthew 12:22, 24 (NIV) ²²Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. ²⁴But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, "It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons."

Miracles were part of the mission of Jesus, but the Pharisees were skeptical, thinking Jesus was the devil in disguise trying to trap the people into believing He was the Messiah. Can we blame the Pharisees for their skepticism? Do we not often do the same? What we call the Fall of man and woman from the Garden of Eden not only alienates us from God, making God seem unreal and irrelevant, but infects all of life with the destructiveness of sin. Physically, we are subject to disease and death. Emotionally, we are driven to do things that bring hurt and harm to others and to ourselves. Intellectually, our minds distort the truth and feed our pride or brand us with low self-esteem.

As Jesus walks down the back roads of Palestine healing the blind, feeding the hungry, and raising the dead, we are given a sneak preview of God’s intention for human life. Whenever Jesus makes a twisted body whole with His touch, or releases one possessed with a demon of destruction, whenever He forgives a sinner, we see what God desires for human life. But, why do we get only a glimpse of the way God wants life to be? Why doesn’t God go ahead and restore the whole thing so that there is no more sickness, disease, hurt and harm between people, death and destruction?

For right now Jesus wants to give us the responsibility to be agents of the power of that Kingdom and calls us to be co-workers with Him. Jesus gives us modern day disciples the authority to do something about all the suffering and pain and distortions of life. He gives us the authority to be what He has been. You and I have been vested with the power and the authority of the Kingdom of God. What exactly are we supposed to do? We are to exercise the authority Jesus has given us, to bring healing to relationships, to raise dead hope into new life, to break through the paralysis of present disappointment and past regrets, to set the prisoners free from pride, greed, and fear, whatever Jesus gives us to do by opportunity, by promptings, by a community who cares for us, by power within us. We limit ourselves only by our refusal to accept.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 3, 1991

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles

Day 107 - Down and Out As The Way To Get Up

Matthew 5:1-3 (NIV) ¹Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, ²and he began to teach them saying: ³"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus constantly encountered people on their futile search for happiness. He offered them hope for what they were looking for and a new way of finding it, but that way was met with skepticism, puzzlement, and rejection. The Sermon on the Mount is a summary of the happiness that Jesus offers which is so radically different from what we have been taught by our culture. Jesus says we are to hope for the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven speaks to that joy we find in living under God’s rule, like the experience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before sin came in. The Kingdom of Heaven is like those moments when we experience life just like it should be, as we hope it always will be. The moment may pass, but it leaves a residue of hope in our life.

The Kingdom of Heaven brings to us more than a fleeting moment of happiness. It builds into our life a kind of permanence that no hell on earth can destroy. The pains of failure and disappointment may be great but they cannot squash our confidence in God’s providential care. We may hurt with the emptiness of being single or the frustration of being married, but nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. We may not have achieved our potential. We may be broken in body or cripple in spirit and yet still know that life Jesus called abundant.

Those who experience the Kingdom of Heaven are the poor in spirit, which is the opposite of what the Scriptures call pride. Pride is an inner attitude of overconfidence in ourselves. Pride is a kind of stance in life that says we can handle life by ourselves, fight the battles by ourselves, and that we want no handouts.

Poor, in this passage, literally refers to a beggar, who in Jesus’ time knew survival was utterly dependent on the generosity of others. Each day was lived in dependence on unearned gifts received from others. The poor in spirit are those who recognize that they are helpless without God’s help. They are dependent on God in whatever way God provides for them.

To be poor in spirit is to recognize our beggar status before God. To some of us that may sound like having low self-esteem, an inferiority complex, or a lack of confidence. But, that is not the way the poor in spirit look in real life. All around us are calls to recognize the truth about ourselves. There is the sheer drudgery of life. No matter what status the world gives to our work or life, the sheer wear and tear of the routine can begin to make us poor in spirit. When we realize how fragile the gift of life is, when we see our hopes and dreams go unfulfilled, when we have achieved all or most of what we hoped for and realize we have come up empty the experiences of life will constantly be giving us notice that we are poor in spirit. Will we heed the message? Will we give in to the truth?

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope April 7, 1991

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles

DAY 106 - Temperance

Hebrews 12:1-3 (NRSV) ) ¹Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ²fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Temperance is not a goal in life, but the way of reaching a goal. Temperance is what we do so we can run with endurance the race that is set before us, to accomplish the will of God in all of our life and to follow the example of Jesus. Finding and fulfilling the will of God seems to be the only goal large enough to encompass our whole life and challenging enough to bring our life into balance.

It would be great if the race alone brought such order and balance to our life that we never had to give a second thought to falling prey to excess that our human spirit is vulnerable to. But, most of us know from experience that this is not the case. Our commitment to do the will of God gives us the motive and the desire to lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, but it’s like trying to run a race with a long flowing robe on. We are committed to the race but keep tripping over the flowing robe. We may even like the comfort of the robe despite the problem it gives us, and is a fair description of those habits that so engulf our life we cannot shake them off.

We need some power if we are going to run the race with joy. We can do it because we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, heroes of the faith meant to give us inspiration so that we might be faithful in doing God’s will and discover the joy. They are like the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day that went before the people of Israel on their journey to the Promised Land. We have a cloud of witnesses in the special people God provides for each of us who inspire us, encourage us, and empower us with a sense of God’s commitment to us.

But, to lay aside these encumbrances and sins we need the power of Jesus Himself, fixing our eyes on Him in devotionals and scripture reading, looking at Jesus intentionally and as intently as possible. Watch the economy of His language and the potency of His action. React to His reactions to people, to friend and foe alike. Get a feel for His emotions, the reason for them, and the way they are expressed. Experience the peace, the joy, and the heartache of His life. And most importantly remember that no matter how well we get to know this Person, there is always more to know, and that knowledge will open up new vistas and vision for our life. And, look to Jesus in public worship. Surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, we neither deny nor focus on our personal weaknesses. We simply ignore them and give our attention to God, pushing aside all the clutter in our life for a moment and making room for God at the center.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope February 3, 1991

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles

DAY 105 - Truth or Tolerance

I Corinthians 8:1-4, 7-8 (NIV) ¹Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. ²The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. ³But the man who loves God is known by God. ⁴So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. ⁷But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. ⁸But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.

II Timothy 2:15-17a (RSV) ¹⁵ Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. ¹⁶ Avoid such godless chatter, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, ^17a and their talk will eat its way like gangrene.

Is it possible for truth and tolerance to meet? Can we give expression to our convictions in ways that also show respect for the rights and views of other people? That task requires the skills of a moral artist of the highest caliber. Paul is helping Timothy develop the skill of truth and tolerance when he says, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.“ Truth refers to God’s master design for human life, and the moral artist begins here, with the conviction that truth about the way we are to live is found in Scripture as a whole, and in Jesus in particular.

I believe the key to rightly handling the word of truth is to stand under the Word of God. To stand under the word of truth is to discover that the Scriptures do not step politely into our life and sit down where we direct. Rather, we find that Scripture is often “the troubler of Israel,” and we are Israel. When we stand under the word of truth, it can wreak havoc with our comfortable faith, overturning our pet truths, and piecing our best-laid defenses.

If standing under the Word is the key to rightly handling it, how then do we do that? It requires vulnerable listening. We all come to the Word with pieces of armor on. Vulnerable listening is the willingness to let the Word strip that armor from us. The most common piece of armor we wear is sheer “busy-ness.” We become so wrapped up in all the things we have to do that we forget to give first and foremost attention to listening to the voice of God in the Word. Paul himself is an example of truth and tolerance meeting. He could denounce in some of the strongest language found in Scripture those who were vying for personal power and undermining the gospel of grace just as it was beginning to bear fruit in the lives of men and women for years lost to the love of God. At the same time he could call for tolerance of those who ate food offered to idols for the very same reason. Don’t damage the delicate flower with something that is not important.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope January 27, 1991

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles

DAY 104 - Acquiring A Taste For Humble Pie

Philippians 2:1-9a (NIV) ¹If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ²then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. ³Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. ⁴Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. ⁵Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: ⁶Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, ⁷but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. ⁸And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! ⁹Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name

Jesus did not grasp for the power, prestige, privileges or popularity that could have been His. He did not pull rank because He would not buy into the ranking system of this world. Rather, He emptied Himself that He might humble Himself and submit Himself to whatever God wanted.

To be humble is to submit our life to God. Humility does not grasp for rank, nor feed on the empty opinion of others. Humility has an attractiveness about it and a power to it. The main power is to make peace, because humble people are not vulnerable to many of the weaknesses that make for conflict. It is hard to drive wedges of blame into the hearts of humble people because they are ready to absorb the blows and to accept whatever fault is really theirs. This is the irony of humility. By submitting to God we rise above the pettiness of people.

Now, lest I paint too perfect a picture of the humble, it does not mean to be without struggles. Moses was said to be the most humble person upon the face of the earth, but he had his struggles with Pharaoh, he had struggles with the people of Israel, he had some struggles within himself, but the struggle that redeemed him again and again was the struggle to remain submissive and compliant to the will of God.

Don’t try to be humble. Just remember what you have received from God and that will make you humble enough. Look back and remember. Look ahead in obedience and praise, and the gift of humility will come gently and genuinely into your life.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope January 13, 1991

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles