Oh, My!   Here’s my dilemma, I’m working in an office that has two ladies whose adult children are having their first child.  Yep, two of those at one time.   I mean where do you hide from that?  Or, should you hide from that?  It’s been over a decade since Jane and I went through those kinds of emotions.  Where does that ‘I already love them, but they’re not even here yet’ come from?   I’ve been thinking about that question and therefore this letter.  Are we just good people that are able to create that kind of devotion on our own or is there another story to that story?

My perspective is that that kind of love, that natural-quick response to love our children and grandchildren so easily, is actually a hint of the Spirit of God in the earth.  Much of the time I’m not sure we recognize some of the subtle ways God is in the middle of our experience.   Seems we’re always looking for the ‘super signs’ and perhaps missing the little signs in our lives.  We seem to be comfortable seeking miracles; but in limiting it to the miraculous we sometimes overlook the less obvious witnesses of God’s place in our everyday.   I like to think the Kingdom of God is pressing in on our lives in many different directions.  His Kingdom Life isn’t dormant and only working at our command, but is a vibrant, eager force in our lives, sometimes when we might not even be expecting it.  Occasionally, God merges His Kingdom into our worldly to try and convince us of His presence in little ways, not just the big stuff.

In some ways humanity is stuck in its teenage years.  You remember yours don’t you?  If not, at least you remember your kid’s.   Teens know it all.  They, like humanity, think they determine what’s right and wrong, create their own good and evil, or maybe no evil at all. For the most part they think they have the corner on the answers to the world’s problems.  When we were teens you could talk directly to us, look us right in the eye, yet seemingly we never heard a word.  Mark Twain is quoted as saying that when he was 15 years old he could not believe how stupid his father was; when he was 21 he couldn’t believe how much his dad had learned in 6 years.  That’s kind of our position with the Gospel.  Our Father is trying to get a message to us, sent His Son, wrote a book, and we still have a hard time listening.  Some of the time, He’s forced to go about His business just working the ‘Godly’ things into our lives as best He can while we stumble alone doing our thing.

Jesus’ attempt is to convince us that ‘Dad knows best’.  And just like Bud and Kathy of the TV show, we generally learn that the hard way.  God’s best way to convince us of that was to send Jesus Christ.  Jesus came to encourage us to see The Father like Jesus saw the Father.  It was His grand attempt to change humanity’s vantage point of looking at God.  Not only is what Jesus did of prime importance, but also his witness to the nature of the Father plays a vital part in learning to ‘Live’ the God kind of Life.  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus actually told us that he alone knew the Father; in essence he was uniquely able to show us The Father’s nature and character.  Jesus came specifically, not to rule and reign in an earthly kingdom, but to show, to reveal, to unveil the heart of God.  From childhood to crucifixion Jesus showed us how we’re to relate to the Father, how to hear, to believe and to trust Him.

Part of that was to come to the cross and die for us, a profound step to show and prove God’s Love.  But, that death was not just an Easter moment, a holiday moment, not a page in the book of Jesus’ life story moment, it was the monumental moment.  Nothing is as it was after that moment.   No moment before that and no moment in the future will set out the whole of the Gospel like that day did.  It requires hesitation on our part to consider that Paul taught not only Christ’s life, death and resurrection, but just as significantly, about us being in Christ.  That was a profound change from before resurrection.  That day all believers died and all were raised again to a new life.  According to Scripture, that resurrection delivered to all that believe:  Justification, Salvation, Adoption, Reconciliation, Redemption, Forgiveness, and Holiness in Christ.  As believers we’ve entered into the relationship of Father and Son.  By ourselves, we can’t really stand alone in a relationship with God.  We don’t measure up to that, ever!  It’s our ‘in Christness’ that makes the way for us to enter into that relationship.  We’re unqualified except for being in Christ.

There’s a caveat to receive Justification, Salvation, Adoption, Reconciliation, Redemption, Forgiveness, and Holiness.  Jesus addressed it on the cross by saying to only one of the three crucified with him, (the one that believed) ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’   We’re summoned to believe and to repent of our hardheadedness toward the Father, Son and Spirit.   For His gifts to be in our lives, we must receive Jesus’ call to believe that those gifts are true in our lives.  Not believing that violates the whole purpose and plan of the Gospel.  To not believe that does great violence to our true identity; that we really are in Christ and receive the sacrifice it took to get those gifts to us.  When we resist ‘Father knows best’ and His invitation, just like the lessons we and our children learned in our teens, it hurts, it harms, it fails, it destroys.

Christ’s resurrection made huge differences in our lives that I think sometimes go unnoticed.  Truly, God works in our lives, and sometimes with miracles, but some of the times in His whispers and gentle touches.  God’s fingerprints in our everyday can appear without our being aware.  Our imaginations, our plans, our expectations interrupt our ability to see the hand of God that’s mingled into the loving of a grandchild and that even before that grandchild is here.  Where does that come from?  Is the creature (us) just wonderful that way?  I don’t buy that.  Jesus taught that there’s only One Good.  That Good One can produce that in people.  We’re not that wonderful, we’re not a people that can muster that up on our own.

God seems to do little things that go un-interpreted.  I’ve talked to a few artists about songwriting.  With only a few exceptions, where songs just flooded their hearts, they generally implied that their trash can is full of lyrics that just didn’t work.  How did they know that those lyrics were just not right?  Something inside us knows when something is right (a yes in us).  Actually, as far as I can tell, we have two knowledges.   We have head knowledge and heart knowledge.  Most of the time, we’re trained to respond to what we think, ignoring something buried deep inside that knows better.   That knowing, that ‘just in my heart’ knowledge is from God, it’s the stuff that tells them when the song is finished. It’s the ‘Christ in us and us in Christ’ knowledge.  I’ve had people ask me (some of them friends and family that have known me a long time and know my weaknesses) how do you know how to do ministry at WBVN?   How do you know what and when to do the things that can make a difference in people’s lives?  If I’m pushed into a corner about it, I’d say it like this:  I have a Friend that loves music, loves people, loves encouraging people.   Most of the time, He gives subtle advice in my insides.  That Friend, I believe, is the Heart of God that persuades us to care about our listeners.  I remember starting the two-year process of creating WBVN and ‘thinking’ this probably will never work.  Thinking it wouldn’t work because of how little knowledge I had in the science, the lack of talent or natural skills to do radio, a lack of financial resources, and yet something inside said, ‘Yes, We can do this.’

God’s in our living, not just in miracles and wonders but in the love for a grandchild.  I watch my wife with Parker and Zach (grandsons) and I see an un-natural love for them.  Except that it’s not un-natural at all, that’s the natural character of God.  The God in her that provides for them, it’s the Spirit of God in her that provides that through her.  I see it in the care she gives her mother and father, in her love for our three girls.  I see it in the support she gives to friends, even supporting her husband, and I see the enormous amount of money she spends on all them at Christmas (well that part is tongue-in-cheek a bit).  None of that’s because she’s super human, but because God’s a Super God.

Significantly, our Justification, Salvation, Adoption, Reconciliation, Redemption, Forgiveness and Holiness don’t produce our own relationship with God; they follow in us as a result of being connected to Christ.  God produces those in us because of the power of Jesus’ resurrection.  Faith, repentance, prayer, works, and obedience are a result of having believed that that first list of gifts are actually gifts through Christ.  Faith, repentance, prayer, works, and obedience are all very important in order that we experience the most of the Christian Life.   But, we don’t to strive for them to appear in our lives.  We’re to rest in what Jesus has done, that cross, the empty tomb, that new Life. We’re to believe, and as a natural sequence of knowing that, faith, repentance, prayer, works and obedience come about.  Jesus said knowing God is the beginning of knowledge.   He taught:  Believe that He is, believe what He did, and step into that newness of Life that He promised.  That Father: He really does know best.