The Sad Prophet

Jeremiah was called on by God to be the prophet who spoke the truth of Judah’s impending captivity. God was not asking Jeremiah to call the people to repentance, like Isaiah had done. Jeremiah was simply stating the truth of the consequences of their refusal to repent when urged by God to do so.

It would not be a pleasant task to do what Jeremiah was asked to do: to stand before God’s people and pronounce the loss of their land, their freedom, their homes, and their place of worship. Predictably, the people did not want to hear what Jeremiah had to say. Denial abounded in Judah during that time. People were asserting peace when there was none; false prophets were claiming God would never take the land away from His people (in spite of prior warnings and opportunities to repent); the nation believed in a false security of birthright instead of recognizing the consequences of their actions and choices. They felt “entitled” instead of responsible. They rejected righteousness of heart in exchange for hedging their bets with false gods – pretending to still worship the One True God but failing to see the hypocrisy in that position. Simply put, the people of Judah were living in lies. Here is what God told Jeremiah about the hearts of the people:

3 "They make ready their tongue
like a bow, to shoot lies;
it is not by truth
that they triumph in the land.
They go from one sin to another;
they do not acknowledge me,"
declares the LORD.
4 "Beware of your friends;
do not trust your brothers.
For every brother is a deceiver,
and every friend a slanderer.
5 Friend deceives friend,
and no one speaks the truth.
They have taught their tongues to lie;
they weary themselves with sinning.
6 You live in the midst of deception;
in their deceit they refuse to acknowledge me,"
declares the LORD.
7 Therefore this is what the LORD Almighty says:
"See, I will refine and test them,
for what else can I do
because of the sin of my people?
8 Their tongue is a deadly arrow;
it speaks with deceit.
With his mouth each speaks cordially to his neighbor,
but in his heart he sets a trap for him.” (Jeremiah 9:3-8)

Look at the repetition of the lies, the deception, the deceit, and the lack of truth! “You live in the midst of deception” brings to mind an image of people living in a cesspool and calling it a garden. Darkness covered them, embraced them, cloaked them, oppressed them, and choked the life from them.

Are we now, in this time, in a similar state to those in Judah at the time of Jeremiah? I am reminded of II Timothy 3, where Paul also predicts a time when mankind will descend anew into the cesspool: “ 1But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. 6They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. 8Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth—men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected.”(II Timothy 3:1-8)

I look around our postmodern, relative truth-believing, secular humanistic, blaming, responsibility-rejecting, and so-called (man-made) “social justice”-focused society and see exactly what Paul was describing, and I feel like Jeremiah must have felt. Jeremiah called out to the ones God called the remnant – those who would still be following God, even in captivity. In the same spirit, I call out to those whose hearts still desire the truth of God – the real truth, not the false prophecies of “peace peace” and the cheap, loveless grace we so often see now – and I urge you to stand firm. As Paul wrote, “¹³ Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. ¹⁴ Do everything in love.” (I Corinthians 16:13-14)  And, “⁵⁸ Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”  (I Corinthians 15:58). 

Seek out others who also desire God’s truth, share in love and growth and the strength of prayer and God’s presence, listen to His voice and His voice alone – and in all things, stand firm, as Paul repeatedly calls us to do. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1).  “¹⁰ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. ¹¹ Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. ¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. ¹³ Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. ¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, ¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. ¹⁸ And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” (Ephesians 6:10-18). 

Remember: there is no truth apart from God.  Humans are incapable of goodness or decency or peace without God’s Spirit within our hearts, since “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father” (James 1:17).  Keep Love as the highest value.  Jesus is everything - and He is the only thing.

What Does It Mean to Love God?

Mark 12: 28One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
32"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
34When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

What does it mean to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength? We have reduced this most important commandment to something more akin to acceptance than love. It is as if we think it is enough to believe God exists. But these words of Jesus reveal a much deeper meaning, an all-encompassing oneness with God that includes some significant statements to us about us as well. So what can we uncover in a deeper examination of this commandment?

First, in order to truly love God with all of our hearts, souls, minds and strength, we must be whole ourselves. While on the surface, this may sound like a simple element, the presence of sin in the world due to the fall of man results in internal fragmentation and disconnection. For most of our lives, we are striving to find ourselves – what is termed “self-actualization” in psychological terms – and to create a sense of being whole. We spend a lot of our lives presenting facades, putting on masks, and trying to be what we think people want to see or expect us to be. We can lose ourselves in the process of trying to be acceptable to others, or good enough ourselves to feel worthy of love. Additionally, difficult and painful experiences in our lives are like rocks hitting against our personhood, chipping off pieces of ourselves that get left behind. For some extreme cases, the trauma is so severe, they lose themselves completely, resulting in the soul going into hiding in a protective internal “cave” that becomes a prison. On top of that, we have the “18 inch division” between our head and heart that is considered the longest 18 inches known to man. What we “know” in our heads we often do not “know” in our hearts; in other words, what we think is true often feels false to us, and what we know in our heads is false often feels true to our hearts. And ultimately, we cannot be whole without our Creator, so we need God to complete us, to pick up the pieces of our soul, and to make us whole again.

Second, the only way we can love God with our whole selves is to be our true selves, as God created us to be. We can re-translate the first and greatest commandment as God saying to us, “Be who I made you to be.” Within each of us is some aspect of God’s nature, as we are all made in His image. None of us, except Jesus, holds the entire nature of God within us, which means we are imperfect in our nature. This limitation also means we experience the “downsides” of the element of His nature that He placed within us. As an example of this, in my case, my warrior nature (the face of Jesus standing on the steps of the Temple confronting the Pharisees with their hypocrisy) can be harsh toward others, lacking in the balance of His grace; however, in Jesus the warrior was completed and balanced by His mercy and compassion. Still, my warrior nature reflects one aspect of the face of God. That light, or “diamond” within me, is who He created me to be. When I am born into this sin-based world, my diamond begins to be covered over with dirt – lies from others, false interpretations of my experiences, and generational false beliefs of my family are all examples of the dirt that can cover the diamond within me. If I am living another life, another self, another “face” then I am unable to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. I need God’s help and His truth to uncover my diamond and to remove the dirt that has piled onto my heart from the world. This is the “transformation” offered to us through an intimate relationship with Jesus. Thus, I have two needs toward being my true self in order to love God with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength: I need Jesus to provide through the presence of His Spirit within me the aspects of God’s nature that I lack (in the above example, the mercy and grace that I lack as a warrior woman); and, I need Jesus to remove the dirt from my diamond. We need to be aware that it is God’s deepest desire that we be fully and wholly who He created, and diligently seek Jesus to meet those needs. It is His truth that sets me free.

Third, if we are to fully love God, we need to hate sin. Again, this may seem a simple concept, but I hear Christians and non-Christians alike talking about what they must “give up” to be a believer, including the statement that it is “hard” to be a Christian. My contention is that if we feel like we are “giving up” something to be a Christian, that “something” is an idol that displaces our love of God. Therefore, our hearts and souls and minds are not fully invested in God. What are we really “giving up”? What of the world is better or greater or more worthy than our Lord? What does it really provide for us? I do not have an answer for these questions. Loving God means being “all in” for Him, and Him alone. Knowing God’s love and His provision, I am unwilling for anything else to supplant His love, peace and joy – anything, period. Nothing I have known compares to being with Jesus. There is nothing I want more, or even coming close, to His presence with me. I am told to “fix [my] eyes upon Jesus” – and this is truly the primary desire of my heart. 

One of the “idols” we put before God is self. We want to be god for ourselves, sometimes knowingly, like when we choose to pursue a sin based on fleshly desire instead of pursuing Jesus; and sometimes unconsciously, which is the source of our sin nature from the original sin of man in Genesis 3. Honestly, many people would deny that they want to be their own god, but this is the foundational element of the sin nature. It is a belief we all share. As with the rest of the dirt on our diamond, we need Jesus and His Spirit within us to transform the sin nature. Our part in this transformational process is willingness to partner with Jesus and willingness for Him to change us.

Remember Jesus’ response to the teacher of the law: if we truly understand what it means to love God with all of our selves, we are not far from the kingdom of God.

Now putting it all together: Our "moment of truth" occurs when we come face to face with Him, when we let go of our strangle hold on ourselves as god of our own lives, and when we face our whole selves, the good and the bad, the diamond and the dirt, the upside and the downside, before Him and give our whole selves to Him - it is only then that we can be truly free. It was this face to face encounter that Paul experienced on the Damascus road, that Peter experienced when the cock crowed and when Jesus asked him, "do you love me?" This experience, looking into the eyes of Jesus and honestly seeing ourselves through His eyes, is the "moment of truth" - maybe the first truth we have ever known.  It is surely the truth we need in order to love God with all our hearts. 

Satan's Dollar Store

Satan is the owner of a special kind of “Dollar Store,” filled with all kinds of unnecessary plastic objects and worthless trinkets and trappings. His advertising claims he offers great values and incredible experiences at bargain prices – he is under no compunction to tell the truth, so he simply lies about the true cost to us – yet we believe him. Our first mistake is walking into his “store.” Perhaps it is curiosity; perhaps it is our fleshly, worldly desire; perhaps it is lies we already believe. He doesn’t care why we come – he only cares that we are there for him to influence, and that we bring our greatest prize, the “jewel” of our God-given nature, which we willingly trade for Satan’s wares.

Imagine taking a beautiful, priceless, one-of-a-kind jewel, like a flawless diamond, and using that gem to buy cheap garbage at the dollar store. You would never consider doing such a thing!!! Would you?

Actually, you may be doing the equivalent right now. Without realizing the value of what God has given you (the treasure of who you are), you may be trading it in to the enemy in exchange for a few cheap thrills, momentary pleasure, the acceptance or approval of others, and things which are of no benefit or gain in the long run. You may be cluttering up your “house” (heart) with a whole load of dollar store fluff – while you are ignoring the presence and love of Jesus. For once you enter Satan’s “store” of darkness, you quickly lose sight of what really matters. You can no longer see (in that darkness) the true worth of what you are being shown. He entices you with cheap, fake costume jewelry – and you have so devalued your own precious gem within you that you willingly trade it in for the glitter and glitz of Satan’s offerings.

Our last and fatal mistake is buying into Satan’s contention that what he offers us is good for us in some way, instead of resulting in our destruction. So not only does he entice us with worthless nothings, he conceals some type of slow-acting poison within the trinkets we have bought – almost like they are radioactive, and we slowly over time die in our spirits.

Consider the cost. Remember the value of God’s wonderful gift to you. Because there has never been before, and there never will be again, another YOU. Nothing that Satan has to offer is worth that price.

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” Matthew 13:44-46.

What Do You Value?

What is it you value? Money? Power? Approval? Self-preservation? Security? Status? Pleasure? An easy road? Avoiding pain? If you are unsure of the answer, pay attention to where you spend the majority of your energy and time. Also, notice where your thoughts are focused.

Jesus taught us to value one thing above all else: love. Matthew 22: 36-40 shows us this value in His response to a question from the Pharisees:
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

In this response, Jesus presents the values by which He would have us live. He also tells us His values and how He lives. Of course, He demonstrated this value to us when He gave up His life so that we may live. The cross represents this value to us each and every day. What we may easily forget is that He still lives according to these values. Everything He does with us and speaks to us is based on His love for us.

Paul offers us a list of values: “22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and temperance. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23).

Paul’s list begins with, of course, the one Jesus prized most highly. The rest of the list flows out of love, as Jesus taught in His response to that most important question. Consider this: this entire list deals with matters of the heart. Nothing of the worldly realm (meaning those things that are not found within the heart) is mentioned as a value or “fruit” of the Spirit. Why is that?

Jesus teaches us this answer also, in Matthew 6:
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Jesus knows that all worldly things, including such illusions as power and control, security and self-preservation, and status and approval, are subject to the rules of the world. The law of physics called “entropy” tells us that all worldly things tend toward chaos and destruction. Only “treasures” in heaven (and remember, the heart is the kingdom of God within us – where the Holy Spirit resides) are not subject to this law. As Paul says, “against such things there is no law.”

So, with the help of Jesus, may we reject all worldly values and accept His values and live by them: “…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2). May we, with His help, fix our eyes upon Him – and upon His love for us. And may we allow the fruit of His presence within our hearts to direct our course in this life. Amen.

Whatever is Beautiful

My daughter’s soccer coach through most of her teen years had an interesting saying that he said in praise of his players: “Now that was beautiful soccer!” I had no idea what he meant. What exactly was beautiful soccer? All soccer looked the same to me – you kick the ball down the field, you shoot it into the net, you get a goal – so what was I missing? I realized that in order to understand, I had to learn more about soccer, I had to find out from him what he was referring to, and I needed to see examples of what the coach called “beautiful soccer.”

When I asked her coach where I could watch “beautiful soccer,” he suggested watching the Brazilian World Cup team. When I asked for a brief description of what I was looking for as I watched Brazil play, he said to watch how they spread the field, how they pass the ball, and how they work together as a team. So I set out on a search for a new understanding of soccer, and to learn what differentiates “beautiful soccer” from all others. After quite a bit of study, observation and experiencing soccer of all kinds, here is what I found:

1) It is not about the outcome – it didn’t seem to be the end result of the game or of any play that made it something beautiful; instead, it was how it was played (the process) that matters.
2) It involves relationships – beautiful soccer cannot be created by an individual; instead, it is all about how the team works together.
3) It is not easy – the easy road of soccer appears to be individual talent on display; instead, if anything, beautiful soccer may be more difficult to create, requiring coordination and constant movement, practice and discipline, and such a profound connection with those on your team that you sense where your teammates are without seeing and you know where they will be well before they get there.
4) It is simple and clean – my understanding of soccer was simplistic, focused mainly on the obvious; instead, beautiful soccer is deep and meaningful in its simplicity, and graceful and smooth in its execution, focused mainly on what is unseen.
5) It does not always make sense – my simplistic view said go to the goal and score; instead, players of beautiful soccer sometimes go backwards to go forward, sometimes deny themselves the shot for the sake of a higher play, and sometimes wait for support instead of driving ahead alone.

I began to recognize the difference. I was able to identify and even understand what was going on during a beautiful soccer moment. I came to appreciate how wonderful and enjoyable it was to witness such beauty in action. Soon, other soccer paled in comparison. I was able to truly appreciate beautiful soccer because of what I learned.

This experience came to mind as I read Paul’s admonition in Philippians 4: “4Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:4-9)

I wondered how many individuals read these words without having any real understanding of what Paul was referring to by whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. We tend to be unsure of what is true. We don’t seem to have any idea of what it means to be noble. We eschew what is right for what is convenient. We embrace what it tolerable instead of what is pure. We equate lovely with physical appearance. We tend to admire those who are self-serving, who capture the spotlight. To us, excellent means easy, and we tend to avoid anything that is difficult. And praiseworthy? We hand out praise without cause, to make ourselves feel better, to appear to be “fair” or to protect a false self-image, or to assure our so-called acceptance by others. So I applied my five precepts of beautiful soccer to Paul’s writing, to see what my experience with soccer had to say about the more global application of whatever is “beautiful”:

1) Paul is not evaluating an outcome – if so, the outcomes in his own life because of his faith would appear to make his belief foolishness; instead, Paul is referring to a state of the heart, an inner transformation that brings great joy and peace.
2) Paul is speaking in relational terms – he points to our connection with God through prayer, and he speaks specifically about his relationship with the brothers and their relationships with him and each other; these are the things that are important.
3) Paul is not saying it will be easy – he explains the need for focus and putting what was learned into practice, but comforts us with the knowledge that God is with us in everything and His peace will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
4) Paul is referring to what is simple and clean – peace and joy, and the presence of God with us; however, these truths are profound in their simplicity and depth, and they are anything but simplistic, like a list of things to do would be.
5) Paul is not suggesting something that makes sense – in fact, he is going contrary to how we normally live our lives, with a self-centered, self-protecting, and self-serving focus.

If you think about it, the cross doesn’t make sense. It certainly was not easy. It is simple (a death) yet profound (victory over death). It is undoubtedly the greatest expression of love known. And it results in a process – a process of ongoing connection and relationship with Jesus that transforms our hearts and creates in us a new life.

I encourage you, as I did when seeking to understand “beautiful soccer,” to seek Jesus to reveal to your heart what is genuinely true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. I hope you will focus on those things He reveals and put what He teaches you into practice, as Paul suggested. I pray that you find through that relationship the peace that guards your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, and that you will always know Jesus is partnering with you in everything in your life. As a result, I pray you will begin to personally and deeply understand, and experience, the beauty of this kind of relationship with Jesus.  This relationship is worthy of our complete and undivided focus - "think about such things."

The Parable of the Talents

The Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30 is one in a series where Jesus is teaching about the “coming of the Son of Man.” There are many lessons in this teaching, but one I want to focus on is how the “wicked, lazy servant” burying his talent relates to our relationship with Christ in our daily lives. Do we invest ourselves in our relationship with Christ in all things? Or do we bury ourselves in self-protection out of fear, carry the burden of daily life alone and lose everything of value in the end?

Many individuals have divested or compartmentalized our day-to-day lives from our "spiritual and religious" lives such that we see "everyday life" as separate from "religious" life. The first two servants saw the gift of the Master as entrusted (this is the key word) to them, and they responded by investing totally in the gift. However, many believe, much like the wicked servant, that our everyday life is separate from God and completely up to us.  We don’t recognize the gift of relationship with Christ for what it is, but instead, exclude the Master and bury the relationship under our religious responsibilities. Instead of a loving husband, we see a harsh taskmaster. Like Adam and Eve in Eden after the fall, we hide ourselves from God. Those who take this view bury our relationship with God (our “talent”) out of fear just like in the parable, because we believe God to be a “harsh taskmaster”, or a “hard man”, and we don't want to do it wrong and be punished. This fear tells us to protect our life experiences, so we don't "invest" our whole selves in our relationship with Jesus. We even feel sort of a "beyond possible" response to the thought that He would care about or be involved in our everyday lives, and that leaves the burden squarely on us. We want to do well, to choose good things, to get it right (like the Pharisees did in their attempt to follow the letter of the Law) but we cannot without the presence of God to guide and share with us in the experience through an active relationship (the Word of God written on our hearts). Our choices made apart from God are therefore fruitless (or the fruit is bad, like the Pharisees' fruit). Of course, a relationship buried does not and cannot grow. Thus, even what we have is taken away by the fear, and, of course, we create what we most fear: we have failed the Master. The paradox here, in fact, is that our own view of God precludes the type of relationship He desires to give us. We have missed the element of trust completely.

We turn everything from relationship to task because we are still looking for a standard to meet. “How do I stand before the Master?” “How do I measure up?” We want to know how we are doing. We use the Law as our measure for moral issues and our tasks (works) for everything else. Cody once observed, at every site where a building project is proceeding, there seems to be a compulsion to “dig a hole and make a mound.” When we watched the progress of the project together, we laughed about how one mound is used to fill in a hole and another hole is then dug to make another mound, in an endless series of pointless exercises that accomplish nothing. I relate this process to our accomplishing tasks for a harsh taskmaster. In essence, we are enslaved to “tasks”—shoveling dirt from one pile to the other. There is no value in the task, but at least we can measure our progress. “Look! I moved that whole pile from here to there!” We feel good about that as if that measurement buys us a sense of accomplishment, which feels like purpose. We then make that false sense of purpose a measure of our worth.

Whether it is the Law or tasks, it is still an attempt on our part to measure ourselves, to “measure up” so to speak, and to replace our lost identity in Christ (who we really are, and our real worth and value in His eyes) with the accomplishments of life on one side and the accomplishments of the Law on the other. Both exclude Jesus ultimately, don't they? But somehow we've convinced ourselves that we are OK as long as we have included Jesus in the area of religious stuff (albeit a distant, observing Jesus, checking us out to make sure we are getting it right). We believe we aren't even supposed to bring Him in on the mundane, everyday stuff. Yet, in this parable we are told the result is much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Ultimately, we cannot know fully about our relationship with Him except from Him. What He would desire to give us includes the true knowledge of Who He is, and how He sees us or who He says we are; in other words, an intimate connection or “oneness” with Him.

Humility and Hope

Romans 5:1-5 - 1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Romans 5:1-5 is an often misinterpreted Scripture, sometimes used to support the idea that God produces suffering to teach us a lesson...specifically humility. However, a more careful reading in context tells us this writing of Paul is a discussion of the irrelevance of circumstances, because of the hope we have through God's love being poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we can also rejoice in the suffering of our circumstances, because in the face of those circumstances, we continue to abide in the love of God in our hearts while He redeems the suffering through His hope.

Benedict (6th century), founder of the Benedictine Monastic order, developed a ladder of humility – including:
reverence for God, obedience to God’s will, enduring affliction, confession, contentment, self-reproach, silence, seriousness, simplicity. Notice where Benedict began his ladder (similar to Paul): reverence for God. To have reverence means "honor; profound enduring awe and respect" (Webster). Perhaps in our use of language, where love is diminished to an emotion, the description of reverence for God as something profound and awe-producing captures the feeling of being in His presence better...as long as it doesn't intimate distance or a feeling of shame. Just out of personal interest, I compared Benedict's ladder with Cody's life style and beliefs. I thought I would share my own thoughts, for what they are worth.

Cody loved (loves) God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. He certainly revered Jesus, but His relationship with Jesus also held a quality of familiarity that Benedict's "reverence" might not capture. So I choose to make the first step on Cody's ladder to "adore God with your whole being."

Cody demonstrated obedience to God's will but not in the sense of making himself go against what he felt or wanted, like obedience itself was a struggle. Instead, he found that God's love and presence in his heart produced a desire to live as God does - to be close to Him and stay there. So I choose to make the second step on Cody's ladder to "follow God in your heart and listen to Him all the time."

Cody certainly endured affliction; yet, he always disagreed with people who described it that way. In fact, he openly scoffed that he was not suffering, and fully believed nothing was "wrong" with him and he could do anything his heart desired. This belief came from living in the kingdom with Jesus instead of living as a part of this world. So I choose to make the third step on Cody's ladder to "live with both feet in the kingdom of God within your heart."

Confession, many believe, is a "requirement" of forgiveness; however, Cody saw it as something provided by God for our sakes so that our own feelings of shame could be overcome. Cody knew Jesus' blood was sufficient for all of his sins, from the beginning to the end of his life. So I agree with the step of confession being on the ladder as long as it includes the understanding that confession is for our sake, and not a requirement of God's before He will offer forgiveness. So I choose to make the fourth step on Cody's ladder to "confess in order to realize and recognize God's forgiveness so you can look Him in the eye with no shame."

Peace was Cody's constant state of being. Contentment doesn't quite capture the level of peace Cody felt, so I choose to make the fifth step on Cody's ladder to "live in the peace that passes understanding through knowing the truth of Jesus."

Self-reproach was not something I ever saw in Cody or heard him say. So I choose to change this step to one that would more reflect Cody's life and belief. Cody's sixth step would be to "realize I need God and I cannot be my own god."

Silence, in the context of listening, would be something Cody would completely agree is crucial to humility. So I choose to make the seventh step on Cody's ladder to "listen in silence to the voice of Jesus in your heart in all things."

Seriousness would not be a word I would use to ever describe Cody. In fact, his incredible joy and amazing sense of humor, the blazing smile on his face, and the depth of feeling he brought others with his wisdom, his comments and jokes and his individual perspective on life was anything but seriousness. So I choose to change the eighth step on Cody's ladder to "feel everything deeply and share yourself completely." Cody never ever hid his heart.

Finally, simplicity would be something Cody would agree was a huge part of knowing Jesus. Jesus can share truth in one image or a simple phrase that seems to encompass the universe in a word. Truth is indeed a simple thing. So I choose to make the ninth step on Cody's ladder to "live in the simple truth of Jesus."