DAY 333 - Does God Still Guide

I Samuel 10:1-7 (NIV) Then Samuel took a flask of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s head and kissed him, saying, “Has not the Lord anointed you ruler over his inheritance? ² When you leave me today, you will meet two men near Rachel’s tomb, at Zelzah on the border of Benjamin. They will say to you, ‘The donkeys you set out to look for have been found. And now your father has stopped thinking about them and is worried about you. He is asking, “What shall I do about my son?”’ ³ “Then you will go on from there until you reach the great tree of Tabor. Three men going up to worship God at Bethel will meet you there. One will be carrying three young goats, another three loaves of bread, and another a skin of wine. ⁴ They will greet you and offer you two loaves of bread, which you will accept from them. ⁵ “After that you will go to Gibeah of God, where there is a Philistine outpost. As you approach the town, you will meet a procession of prophets coming down from the high place with lyres, timbrels, pipes and harps being played before them, and they will be prophesying. ⁶ The Spirit of the Lord will come powerfully upon you, and you will prophesy with them; and you will be changed into a different person. ⁷ Once these signs are fulfilled, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you.

Faced with so many decisions in life how many of us have come to recognize the limits of our wisdom and then found ourselves wondering if God will offer us any help. And, if God is willing to guide us how can we know what He is saying to us? How do we hear and recognize God’s guidance? I want to share with you three channels through which God guides us.

The first channel is through God’s word in the Scriptures. God can speak a specific word to us through a specific verse, but all of Scripture provides a general framework for guidance. It lays out certain principles that God’s guidance does not violate, such as to deal honestly and lovingly with other people. Guidance from Scripture comes from continually involving our life in it. The second channel of guidance through which we receive a more specific word is the inner working of the Holy Spirit in our life. That guidance is available to you and me through the inner nudgings, convictions, and feelings that come from the Holy Spirit. Paul reminds us that we need to test the Spirit to see if the feelings are of God, for it is easy to mistake our own feelings for God’s. The best way to test these feelings is to weigh them against Scripture. Is the thing we feel guided to do in keeping the message and the spirit of the Scriptures? The third channel of guidance is the confirming and correcting experience of outer circumstances, or signs as they are called in Scriptures. God has a way of saying well done good and faithful servant to us through the things that happen to us when we have faithfully followed His lead. We also need to be careful of seeing adversity as God’s way of saying no to us. The Scriptures call Satan “our Adversary,” not God. We need to be asking if something or someone is trying to keep us from following God’s guidance by making it difficult for us.

God’s guidance comes to us in a general way as we regularly immerse our lives in the Scriptures. His guidance comes in some very specific ways through the inner nudging of the Holy Spirit, and is confirmed or corrected by the results of our following God’s guidance.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope May 18, 1975

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 332 - Transformed Hypocrites

Mark 7:1-2, 5-6 (NIV) The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus ² and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. ⁵ So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”⁶ He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

Matthew 23:25-28 (NIV) ²⁵ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. ²⁶ Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. ²⁷ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. ²⁸ In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

James 5:16 (NIV) ¹⁶ Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Originally the word hypocrite had no negative connotation and was used to refer to an actor who pushed aside his own personality to play the part of another. But, it is not a long jump from play acting to pretense, pretending to be someone we are not and to be someone who conceals real motives, real feelings, the real self. The hypocrite is someone who by pretense seeks to deceive another person.

Are we the people we appear to be to others or are we role playing hypocrites? Are we phony in our relationships? Are we afraid to be the person we really are, to let what is in our hearts be expressed in our daily behavior? God is not shocked by any wrong thing we ever have done or will do, but is put off by our hypocrisy when we conceal our hearts. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of our hypocrisy is that it not only cuts us off from God and from other people, but ultimately also from ourselves. We play the role until we believe our own pretense. It is no wonder that no sin is more strongly condemned than hypocrisy. 

But there is hope for the hypocrite when confronted by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. God has a special place and purpose in His Kingdom for transformed hypocrites. They are the most powerful, influential representatives God has in this world. When we receive God’s grace and confess our true sins to Him in the presence of another person who has discovered God’s grace and acceptance, forgiveness becomes real. We need someone present with us to incarnate the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ and help us discontinue our self-deceiving ways. It’s Biblical and it works, bringing inward unity, peace and reconciliation.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 23, 1975

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 331 - The Christian Response to Anger

Isaiah 48:9 (NRSV) ⁹ For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, so that I may not cut you off.

Ephesians 4:25-27, 29, 31-32 (NRSV) 25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another. ²⁶Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷and do not make room for the devil. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. ³¹Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Mark 3:5 (NRSV) He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

Let’s look at what Paul says about anger and how to handle it. There may be some surprises. First, he says be angry which stands in direct contradiction to what many of us think is the Christian belief about anger. God Himself gets angry. Jesus got angry as seen in the passage from Mark. We feel what we feel.

The second part of Paul’s statement is crucial, for that is where is tells us what we should do with our angry feelings - Be angry but do not sin. It is ok to feel angry, but it is wrong to express angry feelings in such a way that we hurt or harm other people. It is a sin to unload our anger on another human being, whether we unload with an outburst of temper or fighting or whether we unload it in subtle and sophisticated ways like sly and cutting remarks, snide criticism, jokes that drip with the poison of anger, or cool and polite rudeness.

Paul also says do not let the sun go down on our anger and do not harbor angry feelings where they are nursed and grow sour. That’s when the devil has the chance to work on us. As we continue to store hot angry feelings it is hard to show loving feelings.

We seem caught. If we express our angry feelings we hurt others; if we repress them, we hurt ourselves.  It is ok to feel angry, but what do we do with our feelings of anger? The answer lies in looking to Jesus as our example, for He is the way God resolved His anger toward you and me. Jesus is the expression of God’s judgment and love at the same time. As we live in Him and continue to look to Him we can discover ways of expressing anger that are not destructive to ourselves or to other people and that will, in fact, be constructive. Jesus has promised we shall receive power, and that includes the power to deal with and to constructively express our angry feelings. When we join our lives to Christ we begin a pilgrimage. Part of that pilgrimage is discovering healthy, constructive ways of expressing our angry feelings.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 16, 1975

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 330 - Too Tired To Push

Hebrews 6:1-3, 9, 11-12 (NIV) Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, ² instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. ³ And God permitting, we will do so. ⁹ Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are convinced of better things in your case—the things that have to do with salvation. ¹¹ We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. ¹² We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

Laziness covers a much broader area of life than we may realize. There is personal laziness, which is represented by doing as little as possible or by idleness. This is a kind of laziness that most of us were warned against as we were growing up, that we would not want something for nothing or would shy away from the responsibility of earning our daily bread. Another kind of laziness that has been given less attention over the years is one we might call social laziness, not caring about the rest of the world as long as our little world is safe. It is neglecting our responsibility to the community, the society, the world of which we are a part. This is the kind of laziness Jesus spoke to in the parable of the Good Samaritan. A certain man came to Jesus wanting Jesus to draw some line of limitation as to whom he was responsible. The man did not get the answer he was looking for as Jesus threw the door wide open and in effect said our neighbor is anyone who is in trouble.

Still another kind of laziness is one that is the key for understanding and dealing with laziness in every area of our life. It could be called spiritual laziness. This is the kind of laziness to which the writer of Hebrews refers when he says we do not want you to become lazy. Literally, the word lazy here means “not to push.” We are not to stop pushing in our efforts to grow and develop in the Christian faith. Have we stopped pushing?

Spiritual laziness is not new. The early church called laziness a deadly sin. Life has a way of kicking dirt on us, dust naturally builds up in the home with no effort at all. Work piles up on us. And life has a way of kicking dirt on our spiritual lives as well. I am convinced that once we become spiritually lazy it is not too long before we become socially and personally lazy if we do not “push back” the dirt.

We push back by looking for examples of Christians who are growing, discovering anew God’s love and will for their life, who are still excited about sharing in the adventure of the Christian faith. We are to be imitators of those who believe and are patient. The implication of this passage is that God always provides us with examples to raise us up, to re-kindle hope in our life and to challenge us to grow spiritually.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 9, 1975

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 329 - How to Accept Our Suffering

II Corinthians 12:7b-10 (NIV) ^7 b Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Few of us are able to accept suffering when it first hits us, and most of us will go through an initial depression or embitteredness before we can accept suffering and offer it to God.  The good news for us is that acceptance of our suffering does not depend on us. It depends on God and God’s willingness to work in our lives.

How can we get to the point of accepting our suffering and offering it to God in the same way Paul did? Paul drew from the resources of his faith to deal with his thorn, resources that had been placed in his life by his knowledge of the Scriptures, his confidence in prayer, and by his complete love and devotion to Jesus Christ. The important thing for us is similar, that we keep coming to God with our suffering. We keep directing our thoughts toward Him as Job did and as Paul did - Three times I pleaded with the Lord. And when we run out of steam and strength to offer our suffering to God, hopefully we will have friends around us who will do it for us.

We can offer our suffering to God in many ways. We can ask to be delivered from it or request the grace to accept it. We can complain to God about our suffering. We can offer up our suffering simply by sharing with God what we are honestly feeling. We can offer up our suffering by committing our lives anew to Him and by surrendering to Him the pain and agony of our suffering. We can also offer up our suffering to God by thanksgiving, particularly by offering what is sometimes called a believing prayer, thanking God for what He can do even if He has not yet fulfilled that promise to us. We can thank Him for His healing, comforting power. We can thank Him for the good He brings out of suffering as He did with His own Son on the Cross. We can thank Him that ultimately we know we cannot be defeated by suffering.

Ultimately, acceptance of suffering comes not because of anything we do but because of what God does. Acceptance came to Paul when he heard God say My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. And though Paul gained a new sense of humility and tenderness because of what he had suffered, the thorn still harassed him.  Acceptance of suffering does not necessarily ease the pain, but acceptance does redeem our suffering.

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

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 328 - The Awesome Power of the Listening Ear

Luke 5:12-16 (NIV) ¹⁶ But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

With the crowds pressing around him, Jesus withdrew. He did not wait until they left when He would have a few moments of peace and quietness. He withdrew from the crowd to pray. How many of us have ever needed some guidance for our life and we could find no one who had the time to help us? Or perhaps we were sick and needed a doctor and could not find one. Didn’t He care that people needed the guidance of His word and the healing of His touch? Obviously Jesus cared. His whole life says that He cares about every little thing that happens to us. That was one reason why people were attracted to Him and why His message was called Good News.

We can know that Jesus withdrew from the people only because He knew He could ultimately accomplish more by praying than by staying. If we are going to have effective lives, if was are going to aim our lives according to God’s will and accomplish everything in life that God wants us to do, we too, will have to withdraw from the crowds and our crowded schedules to pray. Jesus’ power came from God because of who He was, the Son of God. His power came also because of what He did. He prayed daily, regularly. He checked in with His Father to hear what God was saying and to receive power.

Jesus knows that you and I have many demands and responsibilities pressing on our lives. He is sympathetic with these pressures and the difficulties that often go with them. And He reminds us that the way out, the way to lessen these pressures is to do one thing – listen to what He has to say about our life.

Yet despite this example of Jesus’ life and the obvious benefits of prayer, there seems to be in most people an almost built in resistance to setting aside time for prayer. I have felt this resistance within myself. Why this resistance? Why this resistance to doing something that has proven for centuries to be of such tremendous benefit and value to our life? 

The flow of life drives us away from discovering God’s daily plan and purpose for our life, leaving us with only sporadic, superficial time of listening to God. But, we do not find time to spend listening to God. We take the time, and that means leaving undone some things that we feel like we need to do. Jesus withdrew to pray. Will you do it?

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope October 27, 1974

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 327 - One Thing Is Needful

Luke 10:38-42 (RSV) ³⁸ Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. ³⁹ And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." ⁴¹ But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; ⁴² one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her."

We are the kind of people who believe in giving it our best with every responsibility we have. And we believe in God. We want to do God’s will in our daily lives. But when we become distracted by all of the activity of our lives we push God to the outer edge. We are just too busy to see what God’s will may be for our daily round of duties and responsibilities. Listen then as Jesus speaks His word to the busied, hurried Martha who still lives in you and me: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful.”

Jesus does not deny the importance or the value of our daily responsibilities that fill our life. The family has to be fed. The children cared for. The work done. But Jesus says, only one thing is needed, that we sit for a minute and listen to His word, that we come and seek His guidance for our life. How may of us are able to recognize that our most basic and most pressing need is to hear and to do God’s will for our life as it is daily revealed to us through the present power of the Holy Spirit?

Martha, Martha, you are troubled and anxious about things. Does that pretty well describe you and me? Inwardly uptight, easily upset when things do not go our way? And yet, with all our hurrying about from one responsibility to another there lurks that gnawing feeling that somehow, for some reason, we are really wasting our time and our lives?

Mary chose to listen to what Jesus had to say, and was prepared to fix the most elaborate of meals if Jesus said the word, but first she waited for the word. “One thing is needful,” that we listen, that we tune in, that we seek God’s will for our life. No one ever used time more wisely or accomplished more than Jesus Himself. And one thing that stands out about His life is the way it was carefully aimed by His desire and commitment to doing what God was telling Him to do.

What He lived, He also asks you and me to do, to seek first the kingdom of God, followed by the promise that all things will be added to you. “One thing is needful.” That is not only a command but a promise. When we have listened, truly tuned our lives in to what He has to say and are willing to obey whatever directions we receive, then we have done all we need to do. We can work in peace, play in peace, rest in peace, and we do not have to be anxious and troubled over many things.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope October 20, 1974

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)