If God Is “I AM”,

then Who Am I?

a look at human nature

through the eyes of God

Randall Stewart

To

Cathy, Mary Catherine, and Allison

my three favorite humans

I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

INTRODUCTION

Finger pointing – we all do it. Americans, Norwegians, Japanese, Aussies, and Peruvians practice the art. So did the ancients of Sumer, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Young and old, rich and poor, healthy and ill, male and female, all with the index finger of their dominant hand outstretched. Sometimes it is an accusatory finger. More often it seeks to instruct or direct. Regardless, the focus is always on something out there. The extended second digit is the universal sign of a mind in telescopic mode.

Self-reflection – we all need it. And, to some extent, we all do it. The recent popularity of self-help books is evidence. To seek help we must first recognize our need of help, and this requires introspection and self-analysis. We gaze into the mirror of our lives, determine if we like what we see, then take steps to correct any distortions in the image before us. This is the mind in endoscopic mode, index finger flexed and at rest.

Finger pointing is more fun than self-reflection. This explains why we tend to practice the former so much more. To honestly evaluate ourselves is not a pleasant task, quite often a painful one. To lessen the pain, we are inclined to rationalize our weaknesses by comparing ourselves to others. Thus, if we are not careful, self-analysis can lead us right back to finger pointing. We never get around to looking exclusively inward. Almost everyone agrees this is not healthy for us. We have heard since junior high that the unexamined life is not worth living. We know our minds should be endoscopes more than telescopes. We think it no accident when our index finger is extended that three others are flexed and pointed back to the heart.

When I say that finger pointing, in comparison to self-reflection, is over-used, I am not implying that it is always bad. In fact, we use it for good every day. The teacher pointing to her notes on the classroom board and the garage attendant giving directions to a local destination are just two of many examples. Another is the theologian who, by pointing at the universe, tries to relay to us the existence and nature of God. His ultimate goal for us is self-reflection—a transformation of the heart and an inward embrace of God. But, with this end in mind, the first thing the theologian asks of us is to look out there at the universe. This is why the first verse of the Bible is a finger-pointing verse. Theology, ironically, begins in telescopic mode.

As we begin the third leg of our religious journey, we stand at that point where our theological focus turns inward. We have discussed both the existence and nature of God; now we must explore the nature of humanity. We must honestly assess who we are, what we are doing, and where we are going. Rest assured, we will not abandon nor forget what we have previously learned. Indeed, we will rely on the same five arguments to enlighten us. This time, however, we will use them not only to point us to God. We will also use them to turn the spotlight upon our own hearts and souls. As we do, we will correct the imbalance in our perspective by spending time in personal endoscopy. We will temporarily rest our index fingers and explore the depths of our being. The only finger pointing allowed will be into the mirror. We will stand face to face with our very selves, stripped of all that would hinder our introspection, refusing to let education, wealth, status, health, or lack thereof, shield us from the truth. Naked will our hearts be before the God who fashioned them. Then, and only then, can this book begin to achieve its intended purpose.

We will spend the majority of our time standing before the mirror in self-analysis and self-discovery, sometimes troubled but just as often uplifted by what we see. Toward the end, we will turn our attention to some people in the Bible and see if their lives can speak a message we need to hear. Along the way, the readers of volumes one and two will discover a familiar format. Other than the addition of self-reflection questions, the basic structure remains the same.

Readers of my books on the existence and nature of God will recognize that this is the simplest of the three volumes. There is good reason. To explain why I believe in God’s existence, I had to relay a great deal of information unfamiliar to many of my readers. This, of necessity, increased that book's complexity. The subject matter of the second volume, God’s nature, was much broader in scope and included a rehash of the arguments of book one. And, for reasons stated in its afterword, any discussion of God's nature requires the use of extensive analogy and metaphor. All of this served to make that volume somewhat cumbersome as well. In contrast, the subject matter within these covers requires little, if any, background information. If you and I know anything at all, we know what it is like to be human. We all belong to the same species. We are at once singing off the same page. For this reason, my task in this book is much more to remind than to instruct. This, not the relative importance of the message, accounts for its simplicity.

My appeal to you, then, is to join me for some remedial work. My goal is to allure you from your finger-pointing endeavors and convince you to focus on yourself. Sadly, many of you spend so much time in telescopic mode that you have lost touch with your own soul. There is no richness to your faith because you have taken your eyes off the treasure within you. Wondering about the other person, you have lost the sense of wonder in your own life. In all honesty, it may have been years since last you stood in the spotlight of the Spirit of God.

Join me as I guide you back to that Source to discover anew who you really are. Every one of you is eligible to come along. This includes pregnant women, small children, the elderly, and those with back and neck injuries. Please strap yourself in securely, for the journey at times may be bumpy. Be warned that any worldly possessions considered valuable are at risk of being lost. No ticket of admission is needed. All that is required of you is an honest and open heart, ready to listen and obey. What better time than now to seek His opinion?

One thing more before we proceed. Please heed the sign posted above the door of your heart: NO TELESCOPES ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT.

FIRST STEPS

Day 1 – lenses and lights

Day 2 – the lens of supernaturalism

Day 3 – our presuppositions

Day 4 – uninvited experts

Day 5 – a divine spotlight

Day 1 – lenses and lights

On a wintry Thursday afternoon,

I stepped into His presence,

not for applause, but for warmth.

“I feel naked.”

“You are. And you have been for a long time.”

MAX LUCADO

Have you ever thought about all that is involved in self-analysis? Have you ever reflected on self-reflection?

At first glance, self-reflection seems to be a simple exercise. Just think about yourself, analyze your strengths and weaknesses, then stand to your feet and do something about it. Diligence would appear to be the only prerequisite. "Just do it!" would seem the appropriate slogan. "I already understand self-analysis," you say. "My only problem is that I don't practice it.”

The truth is we neither understand nor practice self-reflection enough. And since understanding most often should precede practice, we must seek to learn what we are trying to do before we take our first glance inward. We must study the art of personal endoscopy.

Consider for a moment the physician's endoscope, the instrument he or she uses to visualize the stomach or colon. It is a long fiber-optic tube with multiple lenses. Now it matters greatly that these lenses are the correct ones. Anything other than the exact specifications will result in a distorted image and a worthless procedure. But even if the lenses are perfect, nothing will be accomplished unless the doctor has a source of light to shine on the area of interest. He cannot visualize an ulcer in the esophagus, a cancer in the stomach, or a polyp in the colon without it. He cannot know which areas to examine more closely, which he should biopsy and which he should leave alone, without such illumination. That’s why all endoscopes come with a built-in source of light. Without it, the physician could be blessed with perfect lens-aided visual acuity and still have no idea of the inward health of his patient.

In the same manner, it is impossible for you to self-reflect without some sort of "lens" to bring your life into focus. Almost everything you do is filtered through a set of "lenses" called presuppositions (prior assumptions). If you use the wrong lenses in self-analysis, the image before you will be distorted and you may never see the truth about yourself. It is imperative, then, before you engage in self-reflection to make sure your presuppositions are the ones that can bring clarity and truth.

But there's one thing more. Like the endoscopist, you must have a light source to show you the way. Your life must be illuminated in order for you to see its inward parts. You need this light source to see what areas should be “treated” and which ones should be left alone. In short, you must have a spiritual spotlight to examine the state of your own soul.

Self-reflection, therefore, is not as simple as it seems. Some preparation is needed. Are you looking through the right lenses? Do you have a light to show you the way?

SELF-REFLECT

1. Which statement below best describes you?

a. I tend to look outward more than

I look inward.

b. I tend to look inward more than

I look outward.

c. I tend to look inward and outward

equally.

2. At the present time, which statement below best

describes you?

a. I believe there is a God.

b. I am not sure there is a God.

c. I do not believe there is a God.

3. Which statement below best describes how you view yourself?

a. I am a child of the universe.

b. I am a child of God.

4. Your answers to #2 and #3 are two of the “lenses” you use to look inward. Which of the statements below seems right to you?

a. It is important which lenses I use

to self-reflect.

b. It doesn’t matter which lenses I use

to self-reflect.

5. Finish this statement: “As I look inward in this book, I will…

a. change what needs changing.”

b. ignore what needs changing.”

Day 2 – the lens of supernaturalism

These alternative belief systems—theism and atheism—offer radically different perspectives on life… They are opposing, mutually exclusive views, delivering opposite conclusions about the meaning of life and our existence as human beings.  –R. E. SIMMONS III

When an atheist and a theist examine the universe, they do so through different lenses. The atheist looks at the world through a lens called naturalism. In other words, he or she never entertains the possibility that anything other than nature exists. The theist, on the other hand, views the world through the lens of supernaturalism and thus permits the existence of both nature and God.

With self-reflection, the pattern holds true. Atheists and theists look inward through the same two lenses. The atheist views himself as a product of nature alone. The theist sees herself as a creation of the supernatural. Depending on which lens is used, we are either children of the universe or children of God.

The lens I will use in this book is the supernatural one. I will presuppose on every page that there is a God behind the universe and that you and I, as parts of this universe, are products of this God. Having embraced on the first leg of our journey the existence of God and explored on the second His multifaceted nature, I will use this as the foundation of the third. I will examine our existence with God's existence in mind. I will explore our nature with His nature in mind.

In summary, this leg of our journey is an exercise in self-reflection through the lens of supernaturalism.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Which of the statements below best describes you?

a. I believe the natural world is all there is.

b. I believe a supernatural world exists.

2. Are you aware of the evidence in favor of the existence of God?

a. yes

b. no

(The first book in this series, 5 Reasons: Why I Still Believe in God, gives some of the evidence.)

3. Think of three questions about yourself that you would like answered.

Day 3 – our presuppositions

Let us then, my friends, beware lest our opinions come between us and our God, between us and our neighbor, between us and our better selves. Let us be jealous that the human shall not obscure the divine. –GEORGE MACDONALD

These, then, are our assumptions as we begin this leg of our journey:

1. God exists.

2. God created the universe, including us.

3. God is omnipotent, active, volitional,

sovereign, omniscient, moral, righteous,

holy, revelatory, relational, transcendent,

gracious, just, loving, purposeful, omnipresent,

relevant, experiential, and transforming.

These are the conclusions we reached during the first and second legs of our journey. Now, on the third, we will use them as the springboard to our study of human nature. As we self-reflect, we will assume that God exists and that His nature is as summarized above.

By starting with these assumptions, we may at times find ourselves in direct opposition to what many textbooks of psychology, sociology, and anthropology tell us. The reason is simple: all too often these textbooks are written from the naturalistic point of view. The existence of God is assumed false throughout the writing process, and man's belief in Him is attributed to a combination of ignorance, instincts, and illness. These books—more accurately, the authors of these books—self-reflect through the lens of naturalism. They may not say it directly or even indirectly, but do not be misled. Many of them do not believe in God. Their analysis of human nature is based on this creed: the atheist is right and the theist wrong.¹

I cannot go in that direction, for I have a firm and abiding belief in the existence of God. I believe that reality includes both the natural and the supernatural, and this will color every page hereafter. Unlike the atheistic textbooks, I will acknowledge my bias openly and unashamedly. I respect the scholarship of the naturalists and will embrace the points on which we agree. But when their view of human nature contradicts my belief in God, I will head in another direction. I will tightly embrace the three statements at the start of today's reading, for I do believe in God and in such a God.

That I will use a supernatural lens in the pages to follow should come as no surprise. I have written two books explaining the reasons why.

SELF-REFLECT

With each of the statements below, answer one of the following:

a. I believe this.

b. I don’t believe this.

c. I’m not sure about this.

1.  God exists.

2.  God created the universe.

3.  God created me.

4.  God is omnipotent.

5.  God is active.

6.  God is volitional.

7.  God is sovereign.

8.  God is omniscient.

9.  God is moral.

10.  God is righteous.

11.  God is holy.

12.  God is revelatory.

13.  God is relational.

14.  God is transcendent.

15.  God is gracious.

16.  God is just.

17.  God is loving.

18.  God is purposeful.

19.  God is omnipresent.

20.  God is relevant.

21.  God is experiential.

22.  God is transforming.

(For more information, read Dear God, You Sure Don’t Act Like You’re Alive, the second book in this series.)

Day 4 – uninvited experts

A society that denies the supernatural usually ends up elevating the natural to supernatural status.  –PHILIP YANCEY

Sigmund Freud explored human nature for most of his life. His psychoanalytical approach transformed the twentieth century's view of man and woman. But you will not find his philosophy in this book.

Charles Darwin for years compared and contrasted simple and complex forms of life. His Origin of the Species became the foundation of modern biology. Not surprisingly, he had a lot to say about the nature of humans. Yet you will not find him in the pages to follow.

In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx's assessment of human nature paved the way for the advancement of socialism. Today, in China and Cuba and other places where communism reigns supreme, his philosophy is the undercurrent of all politics and practice. You will not, however, encounter his ideas in the days ahead.

For those familiar with the biographies of these men, no explanation is needed. Freud and Marx were atheists, Darwin an agnostic. None of them believed in the existence of God.¹ Each man gazed at humanity through the lens of naturalism. I, on the other hand, am different. I believe that God exists. I use a different lens, the supernatural one.

To find the philosophies of Freud, Darwin, and Marx, you must go elsewhere. I discarded their presuppositions years ago. How they and I look at the universe—and at humans, in particular—is mutually exclusive. They never acknowledge God in their writings. I assume God throughout mine.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Are you ready to examine yourself through the lens of God’s existence?

2. Do you think it matters whether or not you examine yourself through this lens?

Day 5 – a divine spotlight

Our knowledge of God and our knowledge of ourselves go hand in hand. Every view of what it means to be human implies a certain understanding of what God is.  –DANIEL L. MIGLIORE

Readers of volumes one and two should be familiar with these five arguments for God's existence:

1. Argument from Design

2. Argument from Fairness

3. Argument from Supernatural Belief

4. Argument from Human Characteristics

5. Argument from Personal Testimony

We used these to proclaim that God is real (book one) and to determine who He really is (book two). Now, as we seek to find out who we are, we will use them once more. If you are new to this journey, do not worry. I will summarize each below so that you will not be left in the dark as we proceed ahead.

Argument from Design

1. There is design all around us; therefore, there must be a Designer.

2. God is the Creator behind that design.

3. God is the Power behind that creation.

4. God is the Activity behind that power.

5. God is the Volition behind that activity.

6. God is the Sovereignty behind that volition.

7. God is the Omniscience behind that sovereignty.

Argument from Fairness

1. There is a Moral Law within us; therefore, there must be a Moral Lawgiver.

2. God is moral. (He is concerned about right and wrong.).

3. God is righteous. (He is on the side of right.)

4. God is holy. (His morality and righteousness are infinite.)

Argument from Supernatural Belief

1. There is a supernatural message inside us; therefore, there must be a Messenger.

2. God is revelatory. (He reveals Himself to us.)

3. God is relational. (He establishes a relationship with us.)

4. God is transcendent. (He reaches beyond us.)

5. God is gracious. (He shows us unmerited favor.)

Argument from Human Characteristics

1. There are positive traits within us; therefore, there must be a positive Source.

2. God, the Source of our purpose, is purposeful.

3. God, the Source of our fairness, is fair and just

4. God, the Source of our love, is loving.

5. God, the Source of our personhood, is personal.

Argument from Personal Testimony

1. There is real testimony about God; therefore, there must be a Reality.

2. God is experiential.

3. God is relevant.

4. God is transforming.

5. God is One.

6. God is Three in One.

This is what we have discovered about God. Using this knowledge as our reference, we will now begin our exercise in self-reflection. As we do, we will use a supernatural lens to bring everything into focus. In other words, we will assume on every page that God exists. Furthermore, we will use a divine light to show us the way. We will measure our nature in the light of His nature. We will look at our lives in the spotlight of the Spirit of God. Our primary goal will be to see ourselves as He sees us.

Having thus addressed the two preliminary questions from Day 1, let us now proceed to the most important question before us. What kind of beings are we in God's eyes? Tomorrow, God permitting, we will venture some answers.

SELF-REFLECT

1. The two preliminary questions of Day 1 were:

a. Through what ______ are you

self-reflecting?

b. With what ______ source are

you self-reflecting?

2. The answers in this book are:

a. You should self-reflect through a

__________lens.

b. You should self-reflect in the spotlight of the

_____________ of _______.

3. Are you ready to start?

One Nature under God

Day 6 – creations

Day  7 – creations (II)

Day 8 – dependent

Day 9 – finite

Day 10 – loving

Day 11 – compassion

Day 12 – compassion (II)

Day 13 – purposeful

Day 14 – our business with the Father

Day 15 – created for communion

Day 16 – divinely gifted

Day 6 – creations

God is in charge of the earth. He is the Creator. He empowers it.  –WALLY ARMSTRONG

Allow me today to dispel a few myths. The Wright brothers did not create the first airplane. Michelangelo did not create that famous sculpture of King David. American scientists did not create the atomic bomb. Jim Henson did not create The Muppets, and Steven Spielberg did not create the movie ET. Ancient Egyptians did not create the pyramids, nor did the Greeks and Romans of old create the Parthenon and Coliseum. In the world of fiction, Gepeto was not the creator of Pinocchio, that mad scientist did not create Frankenstein, and the men of Troy did not create a wooden horse.

Allow me also to make a few predictions. Today you will not create one solitary thing, even if you set your mind to do just that. Tomorrow and the next day will be no different. In fact, when you take your last breath on this earth, you will have created nothing. Nor will have I. Fashion something? Yes! Construct something? Indeed! Invent something? Of course! Create something? Never!

To create something, you have to bring it into existence out of nowhere, including all of the materials involved in construction. No creating has been done if the component parts existed beforehand. That's why that sculpture of King David was not Michelangelo’s creation. He used a large rock or stone, already at hand, to fashion (not create) the statue. In the same way, the ancients who built those seven architectural wonders used materials already at their disposal and thus were not doing any creating.

The act of creating, therefore, involves bringing something from nonexistence to existence. This is why theologians often use the Latin ex nihilo ("out of nothing") to describe Creation. God took nothing and made the universe appear. He alone is Creator. In fact, He is 100% Creator and 0% creation. You and I are just the opposite―0% creator and 100% creation.

Does this make you feel small and dependent? Good, because that's actually what you are. Does this make God seem great and self-sufficient? Good, as well, for that's who He is. Does this seem to put you, Michelangelo, those scientists, and everyone else in the world on the same level? Yes, indeed! We all are creations of the one and only Creator. In the words of the psalmist, we are His "workmanship."¹

These, then, are God’s first words to us as we stand before the mirror in self-analysis: "Before you were, I AM; because I AM, you are."

SELF-REFLECT

1. Think of five things you are proud of in your life.

2. Thank God for His role in your accomplishments.

Day 7 – creations (II)

The most important contextual question you will ever ask—and it must be asked over and over of every sentence and every paragraph—is, “What’s the point?”  –GORDON FEE and DOUGLAS STUART

Conservative and liberal theologians often perplex me as they wage verbal war against each other. They seem to focus on their differences and disregard their similarities, a formula that leads to disrespect and mistrust. Granted, many points on which they disagree are irreconcilable, but thankfully this is not the whole story. In the midst of their squabbling, obscured by the noise of rhetoric and debate, are areas of common ground that need not be ignored. In fact, acknowledgement of these mutually held beliefs just might be the seed that leads to cooperation and fellowship between the left and the right.

Take, for example, the story of the creation of man and woman in Genesis, chapter two. Biblical conservatives tend to take the account literally. They believe that God fashioned Adam from mud, then anesthetized him and used one of his ribs to form Eve. Liberals, on the other hand, consider the story to be figurative, not literal. They believe the narrative is Hebrew legend, an ancient story that serves only to depict God as Creator of human life.

Whichever side of the fence you find yourself, I would ask you to stop throwing stones long enough to consider the common ground upon which we all stand. Differences exist between us, and these areas should be discussed and debated. Nevertheless, as hard as this may be for some, the concession must be made by all parties that they agree on the two main points of Genesis chapters one and two: (1) God created the universe, including humans; (2) humans created nothing. Whether this divine creative activity spanned six literal twenty-four hour days, followed by a seventh of divine rest, or took billions of years to complete is very much peripheral to the Biblical writer's main point. His central theme, stated at the start—"God created the heavens and the earth"—is a belief held by conservative and liberal theologians alike.

I'm not going to tell you where my theology falls on the conservative-liberal spectrum. That is a subject of no consequence to today's discussion. What I will do instead is offer my hand to those on both sides and ask them to sing in unison with me of God's creative power.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Which statement below best describes your position on creation?

a. God created the world in seven

literal days.

b. God created the world over billions

of years.

2. If, in heaven, you find that the other view is true, would you still praise God as Creator?

Day 8 – dependent

We give Thee but Thine own,

Whate’er the gift may be.

All that we have is Thine alone,

A trust, O Lord, from Thee.

WILLIAM W. HOW

Let's consider the fictional character Pinocchio. At the beginning of the story he is a wooden puppet, totally dependent on someone else for his every move. Later, though still a puppet through and through, he is given the unique opportunity to act on his own. This independence leads to bad choices and the consequences thereof, the most noticeable being a foot-long nose. Eventually he learns his lesson and earns the ultimate reward: he is transformed from puppet into person, wood into flesh and blood.

The question I want you to consider today is this: for what can Pinocchio take credit? Can he boast of his existence? No, he owes that to the puppet-maker Gepeto. Can he brag about his accomplishments while tied to those strings? No, someone above him is responsible for them. Likewise, Pinocchio’s freedom of choice is a gift, for he cannot choose freely unless free will is first granted him. Lastly, his transformation from puppet to person is not something he does himself. His heroism in saving Gepeto's life precedes the change, but an outside force actually brings about the transformation. The conclusion here is obvious: Pinocchio, as puppet and person, is a dependent creature. He has to rely on something outside himself for his existence, his freedom of choice, and his personhood.

Some people today believe that we have no free will, that all of our actions are predetermined. We are like puppets on strings. Others contend that we are free to choose this or that in life. We are like Pinocchio the puppet, cut loose and free. Christians say they have been transformed into a new creature, akin to Pinocchio's wood-to-flesh metamorphosis. Regardless, can you and I agree that we all are dependent creatures? We truly depend on God for everything. Our existence, freedom of choice, and spiritual rebirth are ours because they were granted to us from above.

Yes, we are dependent creatures, no matter our theological persuasion. (If you disagree, let me remind you that you are dependent upon God for the breath of your argument.) Dependent creatures, indeed!

SELF-REFLECT

1. Think of five good things you do not want to give up or lose.

2. Think about how you depend on God for each of these things.

Day 9 – finite

Knowing his limits, man knows himself.  –PETER R. JONES

In my book on God’s nature, I bucked a recent trend in theology by proclaiming God to be infinite in all His attributes. For example, He is not just greatly powerful, He is infinitely so. The same can be said of His knowledge, justice, and love. Even when these attributes seem paradoxical, I refuse to abandon God's infinity. Instead, I embrace the paradox. To limit Him in this or that attribute is tantamount to moving off-course. God, I again declare, has no limits.

A quick look in the mirror should reveal who, in fact, is limited. Unlike God, you and I are finite beings. We are chronologically finite, physically finite, and intellectually finite. In plain English, there is a definite end to what we can experience, do, and know.

In a few days, we will look at evidence in favor of life after death. We will state outright that our obituary may not be the last page of our journal. We will embrace the hope that we will live on when death has destroyed our flesh. This will not, however, signify that we are infinite creatures. Instead, it will be further evidence of our total dependence on God. Our subsequent existence, like this earthly one, is an extension of His infinity. We have eternal life only because He—the Infinite Source of life—makes it possible. Were He to withhold His sustaining power from us, life as we know it now and could experience it later would come to an abrupt end.

To summarize the last two days’ readings, we are finite and dependent beings. We have no reason to boast, for everything we hold dear has its source in God. As the Bible phrases it, "Every good and perfect gift comes from above."¹

SELF-REFLECT

1. Write down five things that remind you that you are finite.

2. Write down five things that remind you that God is infinite.

3. Offer a prayer of thanksgiving to God for “every good and perfect gift.”

Day 10 – loving

“Have I told you about the tension of opposites?” he says.

The tension of opposites?

“Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.”

Sounds like a wrestling match, I say.

“A wrestling match.” He laughs. “Yes, you could describe life that way.”

So which side wins, I ask?

“Which side wins?”

He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth.

“Love wins. Love always wins.”

–MITCH ALBOM,

quoting MORRIE SWARTZ

Using a supernatural lens and a divine light source, we have looked inside ourselves and made three initial observations:

1. We are creations, not creators. (God alone is Creator.)

2. We are dependent, not independent.  (Everything we have, including our free will, comes from above.)

3. We are finite, not infinite. (All of us, unlike God, have limitations and boundaries.)

Another characteristic shared by all humans is love. We may not always show or feel it, but each of us possesses it. God, the fountainhead of all love, has placed a current of love within us.

C.S. Lewis writes of four kinds of love: affection, friendship, eros, and charity.¹ Affection is typified in family relationships, the parent-child bond being the best example. The root of friendship, he says, is a common interest between two or more parties. Erotic love, as the name implies, is sensual and sexual. Charity (agape in the Greek) is the highest love, described by Paul in his first epistle to the church in Corinth:

Agape is patient and kind;

agape does not envy or boast;

it is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice at wrongdoing,

but rejoices with the truth.

Agape bears all things, believes all things,

hopes all things, endures all things.

Agape never ends.

–1 Corinthians 13:4-8

The way we express love is as varied as love itself. Gary Chapman talks of five love languages—words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch—which apply to all sorts of relationships, including husband-wife, parent-child, and friend-friend.²

Other writers have subdivided love into three basic expressions: love if, love because of, and love in spite of. The first two are conditional, finite loves: "I love you if you love me; I love you because you are pretty; I love you if or because you are healthy, wealthy, pleasant, courteous, or faithful." In contrast, love in spite of is unconditional and infinite. It endures in the worst-case scenarios: "I love you in spite of your hatred, ugliness, sickness, rudeness, poverty, or unfaithfulness.” In short, "I love you, period!" Agape and love in spite of are synonymous.

This does not mean that agape is always a soft love. It is tough when toughness is needed. If there is recurrent sin in the beloved, agape will desire that sin removed and will do what is necessary—including appropriate discipline—to accomplish the task. But agape's discipline always comes with a personal cost. It longs for the best and suffers when that best is not manifest. Its discipline is always mixed with sorrow.

Yes, you and I are loving beings. In its various types and expressions, our love is a gift to us straight from the Source. We love because God is love.

SELF-REFLECT

1. For whom in your life do you possess eros, the love of romance?

2. For whom in your life do you possess affection, the love of family?

3. For whom in your life do you possess the love of friendship?

4. Which of the five love languages do you use the most? Which do you need to improve the most?

5. Think of agape as the umbrella over all the other loves. Do you think your romantic, familial, and friendly relationships should also be “in spite of” relationships?

6. Thank God that He has loved you with an “in spite of” love.

Day 11 – compassion

When a person feels from his or her very center of physical being a strong awareness of caring identification toward another human being, that caring is called “compassion”.  –EARL F. PALMER

Let's start today with a short anatomy lesson. The internal organs of the human abdomen have a unique nerve supply, the splanchnic nerves, which carry impulses to and from the liver, pancreas, stomach, small intestine, colon, kidneys, and spleen. Visceral pain is perceived through these nerves. A patient with acute appendicitis, for example, experiences discomfort in the right lower quadrant of the abdomen via the splanchnic system. Likewise, we sense through these fibers gastric burning, intestinal cramping, and gallbladder colic. The splanchnic nerves thus send a signal to us about what is going on in our gut.

The Greek word for compassion is splanchnizomai, found twelve times in the New Testament.¹ It is derived from the Greek word for bowels or intestines. Compassion, then, is not superficial emotion nor sentimental attachment. It is love at the gut level. Similarly, the Hebrew word that is often translated compassion is rachamim, found 131 times in the Old Testament.² It comes from the root word rechem, meaning womb or uterus. In this context, compassion is similar to a mother's feeling for a child in her womb.

Splanchnizomai in the New Testament is a verb. It is always accompanied by action. The Good Samaritan, Jesus said, "showed compassion." His was an active, inside-out type of love.

Is your love deep enough to be deemed compassionate? Is it gut level, not just skin deep? If not, your love is something less than compassion.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Compassion is more than sympathy (feeling sorry for another) or empathy (feeling another’s pain). Why?

2. Recall two acts of compassion rendered by you recently.

3. Recall two acts of compassion rendered for you recently.

4. The Bible repeats over and over that God has compassion for you. How has God acted in your behalf?

5. Offer a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s compassion toward you and a prayer of commitment to be more compassionate toward others.

Day 12 – compassion (II)

O want of bread! want of bread! Who can tell what this means unless he has felt it himself?  –JOHN WESLEY

One night an angel appeared to a man and said, "Come with me!"

She escorted him down a long hallway that ended at a heavy, ornate wooden door. Opening the door, the man stepped forward into the most glorious banquet room he had ever seen. The lighting was perfect, the music grand, the decorations breathtaking, and the food five-star.

"This is wonderful!" the man exclaimed.

"Look again!" the angel responded.

The man looked again and, to his surprise and dismay, saw that every guest sitting at the tables was malnourished and emaciated, literally skin and bones.

"How can this be?" the man wondered aloud.

"Look and see!" replied the celestial guide.

The man looked again and saw that every person had a splint on each arm from shoulder to wrist, making it impossible to bend at the elbows. So when the forks went into the food, no one could get the food to the mouth.

"This is terrible!" the man exclaimed

“Come with me!” the angel said.

Immediately the guide took him to the end of another hallway. Stepping through the door, he found himself inside a banquet room eerily similar to the first. As before, he observed the finest decor and food imaginable. And the guests? Yes, from shoulder to wrist there were splints on both arms.

But these people were well fed, smiling, laughing, having the time of their lives.

"How can this be?" the man asked.

The celestial being replied, "Look and see!”

The man looked again, and he saw. The forks went into the food, and they reached out and fed each other.¹

SELF-REFLECT

1. Think of an instance recently when you acted like the people in that first banquet room.

2. Think of an instance recently when you acted like the people in that second banquet room.

3. What kinds of “splints” in your life try to rob you of your happiness? Do these “splints” excuse you from showing compassion?

4. Make a conscious decision today to practice compassion tomorrow, no matter your lot in life.

Day 13 – purposeful

A purpose is not created; it is discovered. You already have a purpose. You have always had a purpose. It has always been the same purpose. Your purpose will—for the remainder of your lifetime, at least—remain the same.  –JOHN-ROGER and PETER MCWILLIAMS

Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life¹ struck a chord with people across the geographic and social spectrum. Millions of copies were sold to individuals. Thousands of churches launched 40-Day campaigns. Scores of translations were made available due to worldwide demand. In the United States the book received national fame when a Georgia woman, held hostage by a judge-murdering fugitive, used it to convince the man to surrender. From teen to octogenarian, pauper to prince, benevolent to malevolent, Asian to Caucasian, the book's theme has rung true: God has a purpose for your life.

This punctuates a point I made in my second book: we humans are creatures of purpose more than creatures of habit. We have received from God a sense of purpose, so much so that we consider lack of it—as seen in the depressed—pathologic and in need of correction. In the mundane and monumental of our lives, a purposeful drive is omnipresent.

As we continue our gaze inward, we must underscore the importance of our life’s purpose. We must, like Jesus, keep it forever before us. At age twelve he turned to his parents and said: "I must be about my Father's business." His mind was set, his course determined. Nothing, not even death on a cross, would deter or distract him.

So should you and I mimic his tenacity and focus, refusing to neglect or redirect God’s purpose for us. We, too, must be about our Father's business.

SELF-REFLECT

1. What talents or gifts has God given you?

2. What do you think God wants you to do with these talents and gifts?

3. In what specific ways this year can you use your talents and gifts for His purpose?

4. Start each morning this week with this thought: “I must be about my Father’s business.”

Day 14 – our business with the Father

The whole human race was created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Sin has switched the human race on to another track, but it has not altered God’s purpose in the tiniest degree… I am created for God; He made me… Beware lest you forget God’s purpose for your life.  –OSWALD CHAMBERS

When Cathy and I decided to have children, we never expected parenting to be 100% pleasure. We knew that unspeakable joy would be sprinkled with pain and sacrifice. We were aware of the expenditure of time and money and the risk of illness and rebellion. We had no guarantee that all would go well. We could have avoided any of these potential negatives by remaining childless, yet we forged ahead nonetheless.

Why did we take the risk? The answer is very simple. We chose to have children because we valued the parent-child relationship above the inherent risk. Our overarching goal—to relate as mother and father to our two daughters—was worth more to us than the potential of heartbreak. Observed in this light, every single adversity we have faced as parents has been a testimony to the primacy of that relationship.

The same is true with adoptive parents. Take, for instance, my wife's sister and her husband. A few years ago Tracy and Oscar embarked on the challenge of a lifetime, adopting three brothers, then ages two, four, and six. They did so with full awareness of tough days to follow. Their joint, willful act guaranteed for them sacrifice and suffering. They chose this route because a relationship with those boys was more important to them than any incumbent negative.

In the same way but to a greater degree, God highly values His relationship with us. Why else would He create us as free, moral beings? Why take the risk that sin and suffering would enter His universe unless the joy of divine-human rapport was of paramount importance?

God created us for communion. He brought us into existence, despite all the potential negatives, that we might have fellowship with Him. This is our business with the Father, and we must be about it.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Estimate the amount of time you spent the past seven days focusing in some way on your relationship with God.

2. God’s desire for you is fellowship with Him. What does your answer to question #1 say about your desires?

3. What steps can you take to bring communion with God to a new level?

Day 15 – created for communion

Our spirit is given to us by God to enable us to respond to Him.  –WATCHMAN NEE

We have come across a sublime truth on this leg of our religious journey. The Infinite Creator so values a loving relationship with us that He is willing to risk the entrance of sin and its consequences into His universe. Since God’s desire is that we commune with Him in mutual love, and since true love can never be coerced, He gives us the freedom to choose or reject Him. That is the inherent risk.

Many people tend to look at this from the negative side. Why create us with the potential to sin? Why arrange the universe in such a way that all this misery could enter? But please remember: it's not all negative. The glass is at least half full. The presence of sin and suffering is glorious testimony to the importance of divine-human rapport. If nothing else, our present sorrows expose the primacy of our relationship to God. Communion with us is His eternal desire; communion with Him is our eternal purpose.

God's love, then, comes to us with a risk and a cost because it can come to us in no other way. Like love itself, the cost is mutual. We suffer when we scorn God's love, but so does God. As a Christian, one look at the cross tells me how much.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Think of the people you love the most. What risks do you take by loving them? Is your relationship with these people worth the risk?

2. Consider the fact that God loves you infinitely, more than you love others. What risks did God take in loving you?

3. Thank Him now for loving you that much. Thank Him for considering a loving relationship with you worth the risk.

Day 16 – divinely gifted

[T]here is within each of us something of the divine.  –OWEN GINGRICH

God's ultimate purpose for us is communion—a "coming-to-one" with Him. To this end, He has created us in such a way that relating to Him is not only possible but natural. He has placed within us several of His divine attributes that serve as channels through which we may interact with Him. God, who inherently loves, has given us the capacity to love. God, who by His very nature is just, has created us with a longing for justice. Holy and righteous, He has placed within us a moral bent, a Moral Law. He, the Source of all purpose, has given us a purposeful nature. He did not have to do so. He could have fashioned us, His highest creatures, with none of these attributes. The fact that we possess them is affirmation of how important divine-human rapport is to God. God placed within us a dash of His love, a parcel of His justice, a pinch of His morality, and a whiff of His purpose that we, through these traits, might have fellowship with Him.

I want you to picture in your mind a vast ocean of clear blue water teeming with many species of beautiful fish. Now imagine two miles inland a large dry hole. Suppose a trench is dug from the ocean to that dry hole, transforming it into a salt-water, fish-filled pond. This is analogous to what God has done for us. He, the Source of all life, has channeled His water of life into us and has shared with us some of His wonderful characteristics.

Some people—in particular, the New-Agers—have viewed these divine attributes within us as evidence of our own divinity. This, however, is far from the truth. These beautiful traits do not make us into gods any more than channeling water into that dry hole made it into an ocean. Just as a serving of peas, when sprinkled with salt, remains a serving of peas, we remain human even though God has sprinkled us with some of His attributes.

The take-home point today is that God so wants to commune with us that He has chosen to "flavor" our lives with some of His qualities. He has cleft a channel and poured Himself into us that we might have fellowship with Him. This, in a nutshell, is His purpose for us. To relate to Him is our reason for being.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Name five of your good qualities that are reflections of His character.

2. If God’s purpose for you is a loving relationship with Him, how well (on a scale of 1-10) are you fulfilling your life’s purpose?

3. Determine now to fellowship with God through the wonderful traits He has given you.

Human Nature and Morality

Day 17 – moral

Day 18 – moral (II)

Day 19 – life inside the ER

Day 20 – sinful

Day 21 – sinful (II)

Day 22 – our sin and God’s love

Day 17 – moral

These students, like increasing numbers of people in the modern world, sensed—however vaguely—that there was something fundamentally inadequate about moral relativism… [T]hey realized that some things—torturing children, for example—were “just plain wrong” no matter where you were coming from.  –HARVEY COX

Let me give you a snapshot of some of the patients I treated in the emergency department today:

1. sixty-year-old male with chest pain and arrhythmia, stabilized and transferred to a cardiologist

2. a forty-year-old female with atypical chest pain, scheduled for outpatient testing

3. a female in her sixties, assaulted by her intoxicated husband, discharged home after five staples to a scalp laceration

4. a 22-year-old bee-stung female with a life-threatening allergic reaction, admitted to the hospital after treatment

5. a 54-year-old motorcyclist who luckily walked out of the ER with only a fractured finger and a few abrasions after colliding at fifty miles per hour with a dog

6. a 3-year-old boy sent home after having a plastic bead removed from his right nasal passage

7. a 91-year-old female in severe pain from a massive myocardial infarction (heart attack), admitted to the ICU

8. a fourteen-year-old Hispanic girl with pelvic pain, diagnosed with a complex left ovarian cyst

9. a nineteen-year-old male with seizures caused by amphetamine use, discharged to a rehabilitation and detoxification facility

10. a thirty-eight-year-old male with multiple trauma from a head-on motor vehicle collision, med-flighted to a trauma center after life support measures.

Now let's pretend that you are a reporter assigned to follow me today as part of a newspaper series on life in the local ER. Instead of the treatment described above, imagine that I refused to give the man with chest pain the medicine needed to correct his rhythm problem; that I gave that medicine instead to the lady with atypical chest pain who did not need it; that I called the intoxicated husband and told him his wife's whereabouts so he could assault her again; that I watched TV for one hour before seeing the lady with the life-threatening bee sting allergy; that I left the motorcycle rider's fractured finger unsplinted and his wounds uncleaned and undressed; that I pushed the plastic bead further up the nose to punish the child; that I injected into my own veins the pain medicine intended for the lady with the heart attack; that I ejected from the ER the teenage girl with pelvic pain because of the color of her skin; that I offered some amphetamine stashed in my locker to the drug-crazed teen (if he could come up with $100); and that I took a 30-minute joyride on the helicopter before transferring the MVC patient to the trauma center. Then, at the end of the shift, suppose I placed fifty dollars in your hand and, with a sly wink, told you to write something favorable about me.

If all this happened before your eyes in the ER, what would your reaction be? What opinion of me would you have at day's end? If you reported the truth in your newspaper article, can you predict the public's response? If you took my bribe money and ignored my actions, how would you feel deep down about yourself? What sort of reputation in the community would you have if your involvement in the cover-up were exposed? You know full well the answers. You would be appalled at my behavior, as would the general public. If you took my bribe, they would consider you equally the villain. Even you and I would know that our actions were out-of-line.

Now suppose that this story made the national news and a panel of experts gave commentary. I predict every one of them would condemn my actions. Granted, those on the political left and right would disagree on a few peripheral issues, such as the extent of my punishment, but they would be unified in outrage against the acts themselves. They would know, like everyone else in the world, that what you and I did was wrong.

This is not an isolated phenomenon. All cultures, continents, civilizations, and classes have an innate sense that some actions are right and some are wrong.¹ We humans, it appears, have a moral dimension to our nature. An infinitely holy and righteous God has planted a divine Moral Law within us.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Think of three criminal acts on the local or national level that you consider absolutely wrong.

2. What activities in your life would a holy God consider absolutely wrong?

3. What should your response be when these wrongs are exposed?

Day 18 – moral (II)

We ourselves do not always know what is right, what is just and fair. At times we agonize over decisions having moral overtones. “What is the right thing to do?” we ask. God, of course, never faces this predicament. His perfect knowledge precludes any uncertainty on what is right and wrong.  –JERRY BRIDGES

Yesterday we described ourselves as moral beings, created with an awareness of right versus wrong and an innate sense that we should choose the right over the wrong. We declared our moral nature to be God-given, derived from the absolute moral purity of the Righteous and Holy One. God wrote on our hearts the Moral Law and placed within us the sense that we should obey it.

Moral relativists, however, disagree. They state plainly that there are no moral absolutes, that nothing is absolutely right or wrong. Perhaps the best way to understand their argument is to look at their response when confronted with the Ten Commandments.

Commandment: Thou shalt not kill.

Relativist: We all know that there are exceptions to this rule. We send troops to foreign lands and propel bombs toward specific targets with the expressed intention to kill, and no one seems to think this is wrong. We execute criminals every month and do so under the law. In fact, to refuse to kill the enemy or the inmate is considered the wrong thing to do. Therefore, "Thou shalt not kill" is relative, not absolute.

Commandment: Thou shalt not steal.

Relativist: What about stealing secrets from terrorists to protect our national security? What about the Department of Human Resources taking a baby from negligent parents without their consent? What about stealing the get-away car of bank robbers to aid in their capture? This is right, not wrong. Therefore, "Thou shalt not steal" is relative, not absolute.

Commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Relativist: Imagine that you are a mother whose three children have been taken hostage by a gunman. The kidnapper tells you he will release the kids unharmed if you have sexual intercourse with him. If not, he will kill all three. What would you do? Isn't this evidence that "Thou shalt not commit adultery" is relative, not absolute?

Commandment: Honor thy father and mother.

Relativist: Sometimes it is best to go against your parents, especially when they encourage you to act selfishly and irresponsibly. "Honor thy father and mother" is relative, not absolute.

Commandment: Thou shalt not covet.

Relativist: Certainly, you shouldn't covet your neighbor's wife, but you'd be better off if you coveted (and copied) his good work ethic, personal fitness, and benevolent disposition. "Thou shalt not covet" is relative, not absolute.

The mantra of moral relativists is, “A given action always has an acceptable situation.” That's why the term situation ethics is synonymous with relativism. In a real world with real situations, they argue, there is no such thing as absolute right and wrong.

I tend to agree with the moral relativist to a certain point. I believe that morality, indeed, is often situational. But I disagree that it is always so. My mantra is, “A given situation often has an unacceptable action.” You and I can easily come up with instances where killing, stealing, committing adultery, and coveting are absolutely wrong. What about those white supremacists who killed a Latino youth simply because of the color of his skin? What about the corporate executive who greedily stole millions of dollars from his company's shareholders by falsifying annual reports? What about that scam artist who depleted the retirement savings of hundreds of elderly couples? What about the adulterous minister who recently solicited a male prostitute to satisfy his sexual appetite? What about Susan Smith drowning her children in an attempt to preserve an extramarital affair? We all know that these actions are wrong and that, given the situation, they are absolutely wrong.

Another way to try to explain away morality is to attribute it to our natural instincts. A dog protecting her master or nurturing her puppies may appear to be doing what's right, but she is acting only on biological impulses. Similarly, say moral biologists, we humans could be acting instinctively instead of morally. If this is true, no God-given Moral Law exists.

Once again, this view is too simple and one-sided. Dogs and cats never go against their instincts. Humans, on the other hand, buck these biological urges every day for selfish gain. Mothers and fathers ignore their parental instinct and neglect their offspring, temperamental teenagers refuse to eat in order to get their way, and depressed patients forfeit perhaps life's most basic instinct—the will to live—by committing suicide. If human actions were merely biological, driven by instincts, this would not happen. The fact that we often disregard our instincts is evidence enough that something more than instincts is at work inside us. There is within us a Moral Law and a moral choice, both God-given.

In summary, some aspects of ethics are indeed situation-dependent, but morality also has a firm, unyielding, uncompromising side to it. Moral absolutes do exist.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Think of three situations in your life where you knew the right thing to do and did it.

2. Think of three situations where you knew the right thing to do and did not do it.

3. Determine now to do what God wants, regardless of the situation. Ask Him to help you know what is right when things are uncertain.

Day 19 – life inside the ER

If anyone will take the time to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own.  –C. S. LEWIS

Let's play You Be the Doctor.

1. A 30 year-old male comes to the emergency department complaining of right back pain of two hours duration. He gives a history of frequent kidney stones. He is moaning in pain during your exam. A urinalysis confirms the presence of blood in the urine.

The diagnosis is:

A. gallbladder stones

B. kidney stones

C. drug-seeking behavior

2. A fifty-year-old female presents to the ER complaining of a migraine headache. You order an injection for relief of pain; then you write her a prescription for ten capsules of a narcotic pain medicine.

Which of the following do you not write on the prescription?

A. No refills

B. Dispense: 10

C. the patient's name

D. today's date

3. A factory worker sees you in the ER. He complains of flu-like symptoms that began yesterday. His exam is normal. You treat him and offer him a work excuse for yesterday and today. When the discharge clerk asks him for a picture ID, he says he left it at home.

What do you do next?

A. notify the police

B. tell him to bring his ID to the ER later

C. demand an ID before giving him the medicine and work excuse

D. call his work place to confirm that he works there

4. An elderly female with confusion and agitation is brought to the ER by ambulance. A list of her daily medications includes Valium (to decrease anxiety) and codeine (a narcotic pain reliever). Her urine, however, shows no Valium or narcotics in her system.

What is the best explanation?

A. drug overdose

B. drug withdrawal

C. drug allergy

D. lab error

Now, the answers:

1. C (drug-seeking behavior)

The patient, a known drug abuser, was asked to give another urine specimen under direct observation by a staff member. There was no blood in that urine. When confronted, the patient confessed to pricking his finger and letting his blood drip into the first urine specimen. His goal was to make it look like he had a kidney stone so he

could receive pain medications.

2. B (Dispense: 10)

All doctors who prescribe controlled substances must be alert to the potential for patients to alter a prescription. With one stroke of a pen, "Dispense: 10" can become "Dispense: 100". For this reason, it is always best when prescribing addictive medications to spell out the number of pills: "Dispense: 10 (ten)".

3. C (demand an ID before giving him the prescription and work excuse)

It is not uncommon for a patient to pretend to be someone else. In this case, the man was trying to get a work excuse for his friend, an illegal alien. Only by looking at an ID could it be known that the name given did not match the face.

4. B (drug withdrawal)

The patient's daughter sold her mother’s Valium and codeine to drug addicts, producing drug withdrawal in the patient. That's why her urine drug screen was negative and why she was confused and agitated. And that's why the local police arrested the daughter later that day.

My intent here is to reinforce the reality and universality of sin. Every day in our ER sin lurks its ugly head, and we as caregivers must be alert to it at all times. If you deny the existence of sin, you must somehow justify the acts above. You must explain how faking a diagnosis, altering a prescription, falsifying an identity, and stealing a medication for selfish gain are not sins. You must keep your head in the clouds and carefully avoid the trenches, for it is in the trenches – in places like the halls of the ER – that sin is palpable and undeniable. Here you will rarely, if ever, find a worldview that denies sin.

Day 20 – sinful

The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.  –JO PETTY

If you consider yourself sinless, it would be best if you skip today’s reading before you commit the sin of wasting your time.

I want everyone else to consider two statements of Paul to the church in Rome: (1) All have sinned. There is no one righteous. (2) Our sins have separated us from God.

What is the basis of this belief? Why is sin our number one problem? Why is it so disruptive? Why would it cause such a breach in divine-human rapport? Why, God, have our sins separated us from You?

Our mission today is to answer these questions, and a brief look at ER wound protocol will perhaps help. When I suture a laceration, I follow a set pattern. First, I don sterile gloves that are free of bacteria and potential pathogens. Next, I anesthetize the wound with a local injection of sterile 1% lidocaine; then I clean the wound and surrounding skin with a sterile solution of sodium chloride and a sterile antibacterial soap. Then, with a sterile hemostat, I grasp a sterile needle attached to a sterile nylon thread and suture together the edges of the wound, occasionally removing blood with sterile gauze.

At all times during this repair, I must protect and maintain the sterile field around the wound. If I have to leave during suturing to handle another emergency, I put on new sterile gloves when I return. If I drop a hemostat or needle on the floor, I ignore it and ask for a sterile replacement. The mere presence of bacteria on that needle or instrument automatically makes it of no use to me. Its unsterile nature separates it from the procedure at hand.

What an appropriate parallel to the state of our relationship with God! He is holy—infinitely pure and righteous, without hint or speck of contamination. We (yes, all of us) are His contaminated instruments—sinful, dirty, and unrighteous. Just as filth on a hemostat separates it from a sterile tray, our sinfulness and ungodliness separate us from a holy and sinless God.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Place your name in the blank and read this verse aloud:  “________ has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

2. Place your name in the blanks and read this verse aloud: “God showed His love for _________ in this way—though _________ was a sinner, Christ died for __________.”

3. Place your name in the blank and read this verse aloud: “Thanks be to God, who gives __________ the victory through Jesus Christ.”

Day 21 – sinful (II)

No one who reads these words is free from the treachery of sudden sin.  –MAX LUCADO

Yesterday we discussed the universality of sin and the consequence of sin. We are all sinners and thus have separated ourselves from a holy God.

To drive this point home, imagine the following experiment:

Place a one-liter container of “Sterile Water” and three sterile specimen cups on a table. Fill each cup with water.

FACT #1: Because the cups are sterile, the water inside them remains sterile.

Now pour the water inside each of the cups back into the container.

FACT #2: Because the cups are sterile, you can pour water back and forth between cup and container and the "Sterile Water" label still be true.

Now sprinkle one-fourth teaspoon of field dirt into one of the cups, a full teaspoon into the second cup, and a tablespoon into the third. Then fill all three again with sterile water from the container.

FACT #3: No longer can you pour the water back without changing the nature of the container. The contamination within the cups has ended unlimited access. The water's filth has separated it from its source.

Do you now see why sin is such a big problem? God, the Pure and Holy One, created us and poured Himself into us. His purpose for us is communion with Him, a wonderful relationship of unity in which He flows into us and we into Him. But we have polluted our lives with sin, changing everything. We have become filthy vessels living contaminated lives. As a result, we have separated ourselves from our very Source. God's holy nature cannot and will not change, so we must once again become pure if communion with Him is to be restored. Our filthy nature must be dealt with.

What, then, can we do to end our self-imposed estrangement? A bucket-load of good deeds will never rid us of sin, nor is ritualistic fervor the answer. Good deeds and piety can only dilute our filthiness; still, the pollution remains. Comparing our sins with others won’t help either. Those three specimen cups were unequally contaminated but shared a similar plight. The mere presence of filth, not its relative volume, made the water in them unsterile. Similarly, all of us are unfit for communion with a holy God, no matter the weight of our sins. The problem is not how contaminated we are, but that we are contaminated.

It seems, then, that we are in a hopeless situation. We are created to commune with God yet separated from Him by our sins. Our benevolent deeds, religious faithfulness, and moral comparisons cannot help restore that fellowship. Sin, it appears, is the victor and we the loser. A miracle would be needed to turn the tide. For us to be made right, God would have to somehow intervene on our behalf.

Is our relationship with God of such importance that He would provide a path of restoration for us? We Christians, of course, answer in the affirmative. We believe that Jesus, through his death and resurrection, makes us clean again and restores communion and fellowship with God. He is truly the Door and the Way back to God. The only remedy for sin is Jesus.

SELF-REFLECT

1. If you had terminal cancer and a cure was found, how would you feel?

2. If we are hopelessly sin-sick and God provides a remedy, how should we feel?

3. What good would that cancer cure be to you if you did not take it?

4. What good to you is God’s remedy for sin if you refuse it?

Day 22 – our sin and God’s love

[N]ot only was the participant mentally disabled, he was also blind! When he suddenly fell, every single runner stopped to comfort him and make sure he was all right. Only when the young man got up did they resume the race.  –football coach GENE STALLINGS, recalling a Special Olympics race in which his son JOHN MARK participated

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me;

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind but now I see.

– JOHN NEWTON

What we have discovered about ourselves the past few days is at the same time encouraging and discouraging. On the positive side, God has chosen to reveal Himself to us so that we might have a loving relationship with Him. He has also placed within us some of His own traits—reason, morality, purpose, love, etc.—as channels through which communion with Him may occur. Because true love must be free and not coerced, He has given us the choice to participate in this relationship or go our own way. The discouraging part is that all of us have often spurned His love, going 180 degrees from His Moral Law and purpose. We have done an about-face before Him, turning our backs and walking away. In short, we have sinned. Unrighteous, we find ourselves hopelessly separated from a righteous and holy God. No amount of benevolence or ritual on our part can cleanse us and make things right. Our only hope of restoration is in the One we have forsaken.

This leads us straight to a wonderful paradox described by Paul in his epistle to the church in Rome. Early on, Paul declares that we are separated from God by our sins.¹ Later, he proclaims that nothing can separate us from God.² According to Paul, we are separated from God but never separated from Him. How can this be? The answer is this: our sins may separate us from communion with God, but they can never separate us from His love.

Jesus, in his two most famous parables, punctuates this point.³ He describes a rebellious young man who succeeds in distancing himself from his father, only to find it impossible to flee beyond the reach of his love. Likewise, Jesus tells of a fallen traveler, reminiscent of the handicapped boy in Coach Stallings’ story, who discovers that true love refuses to ignore—nay, it stops and come alongside—the outcast and the broken. So it is with God and us.

Paul's apparent contradiction, then, is no contradiction at all. Yes, our sins have separated us from God. We all are prodigals. We have fallen by the wayside. Still, the loving Father waits patiently for us to come to our senses and, when once again we desire His embrace, would fain meet us halfway down the road to pick us up and welcome us home. For nothing can ever separate us from His love.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Place your name in the blank and read the verse aloud: “Nothing can separate _________ from the love of God.”

2. Think of two people you love who are separated from you by distance. Think of how much you love them regardless of the distance between. Now think of God’s love for you even though you have distanced yourself from Him.

3. Offer a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s unending love.

Human Nature and Eternity

Day 23 – eternal life

Day 24 – eternal life (II)

Day 25 – eternal life (III)

Day 26 – body and soul

Day 27 – a balanced life

Day 28 – past, present, and future

Day 29 – life in the balance

Day 30 – a review

Day 23 – eternal life

God’s going to call you home sometime… I’m going to a special place when I die.  –U.S. Open golf champion PAYNE STEWART

If God created us for the purpose of communion with Him, then to be separated from Him by our sins is a monumental issue. Looking at it this way, it is life's only issue, all others being mere corollaries. Even if fellowship with God were limited to this earthly life, such a rift in divine-human rapport would be important enough. It would be even more so if our relationship with God continued after death.

This leads us straight to the question of the day—is there life beyond the grave? Everyone, even the most skeptical, has to admit that historical opinion favors an afterlife. Indeed, denying life after death places one solidly in the ranks of the smallest of minorities. But the majority is not always right, so we must today honestly and objectively address the question of eternity. Is there really existence beyond death, or is this just wishful thinking? Do we have any evidence that life continues beyond the grave, or must we accept or reject this on blind faith?

To no one's surprise, belief in an afterlife tends to mirror belief in God. The atheist, convinced that reality consists only of the natural world, smirks at any suggestion of eternal existence. The true agnostic grudgingly admits the possibility of an afterlife, if perchance the existence of God be true. The theist, or believer, embraces a supernatural realm and speaks of life after death as likely or certain. Despite this polarity, I think everyone would agree that, if it were to exist, life after death would be no small matter.

So why do I personally believe in an afterlife? Do I have any reasons beyond my subjective feelings; or is it just my intuition versus yours, a battle of presuppositions and opinions? Admittedly, there is much about my belief in an afterlife that is purely subjective. But there is more! I cannot offer definitive proof, but I do not come into this argument empty-handed. In fact, I will submit five pieces of evidence that clearly point in the direction of eternal life. Taken together, they make a formidable case in favor of life after death, one not easily rebutted by the skeptic and unbeliever.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Think of three benefits of life after death.

2. Think of five people you would like to meet after death.

3. Think of three things you would do today if you knew your life would end tomorrow.

4. Would it help your faith if evidence existed in favor of eternal life?

5. Place your name in the blank and read this promise of Jesus aloud three times: “I go to prepare a place for ________; that where I am, _________ may be also.”

Day 24 – eternal life (II)

I died in that accident. The next moment I stood in heaven.  –DAN PIPER

My first reason for believing in life after death is the testimony of those who have met death itself and lived to tell about it. These near-death experiences, or NDEs, first received popular acclaim in 1975 when Raymond Moody summarized 150 firsthand accounts in his book Life After Life. Two decades later Michael Sabam, a Florida cardiologist, took a more scientific and less subjective look at near-death testimonies. He was skeptical when he began his research. "I suppose," he later recalled, "if someone had asked me what I thought of death, I would have said that with death you are dead and that is the end of it."¹ But during his investigation he changed his mind, coming to believe these stories to be actual glimpses into the life hereafter.

Dr. Sabam's work is just one of several reports on near-death experiences that have been published since Moody's bestseller. Some authors have penned their own personal testimonies of an NDE. Others have sought to analyze and compare the experiences of others. To be honest, some of the testimonials are far too subjective, a bit too fanciful, and much too commercial to convince me of their legitimacy. On the other hand, many contain features that are hard to dismiss as hearsay. They are inexplicable, unless the explanation is that they are real and true. Consider, for example, the following:

1. An Air Force veteran, hospitalized after a heart attack, suffered a cardiac arrest in the ICU and was successfully resuscitated on the third defibrillation attempt. He later recalled that during his resuscitation he had floated out of his body and observed the whole ordeal from a vantage point at the foot of his bed. He described in detail how the defibrillator was charged and used by the medical team, even noticing the movement of two voltage needles as it was charging. Although he had no prior medical knowledge, his description during an interview twenty years later—when defibrillators no longer had voltage needles—fit to a tee those used in 1973, the year of his heart attack and arrest.

2. Another man, after a successful resuscitation, reported that he left his body and traveled out of the room, observing his wife, his eldest son, and his daughter entering the hospital. Security footage confirmed that the three had indeed entered at that very moment, unaware that the loved one they had come to visit had just suffered a cardiac arrest.

3. A little girl named Katie was resuscitated at a swimming pool. She later claimed to have visited her home during the resuscitation and to have observed her parents and two siblings. She accurately described the actions of all four at the very moment of her arrest—her father in front of the television, her mother cooking in the kitchen, her brother playing with a G.I. Joe and a jeep, and her sister busy with her Barbie doll. She even related to them what clothes they were wearing and what food her mother was cooking.

4. An eleven year old boy was successfully revived then described in detail the actions of the medical personnel from a vantage point above the events. When compared with the actual medical record, the child's testimony read like an eyewitness report.

5. After being defibrillated, a man described his resuscitation in detail. He related floating to the ceiling and watching his body jump about a foot off the bed as he was jolted by the current. He even described the tops of the heads of the doctors and nurses in the operating room, details he could not have ascertained while prone on the table, even if he had been awake and alert.

In addition to seeing earthly details, many NDE patients describe entering another world, most often a realm of light, where they are greeted by a Being of unconditional love. After a brief but exhaustive review of their lives, they are told to return, reluctantly obliging. In almost every case, these individuals are transformed by the NDE. They are more compassionate than before; they no longer fear death.

In each case above and numerous others described elsewhere, interviewers found no hint of deception, bias, or exaggeration. Almost every investigator came to the conclusion that these NDEs were actual events. Most became convinced that life after death is real. Among them was Raymond Moody, the pioneer in the field:

Everyone is going to have to look at this and make up his own mind in his own way. All I can do is speak for myself and my many colleagues in medicine who have looked into this, and we're all convinced that the patients do get a glimpse of the beyond.²

So what, you may ask, is my interpretation of the data? In my twenty-seven years as a physician, I have witnessed and participated in hundreds of resuscitation attempts. I have seen patients over and over again in ventricular fibrillation. I know that such patients have no heartbeat and no level of consciousness whatsoever. I know it is impossible for a human body during a cardiopulmonary arrest to be cognizant of anything. For these reasons, the only way I can explain NDEs is to acknowledge that something outside the body is doing the observing. How else could an unconscious patient give details of his defibrillation, including the charging of the machine? How else could these patients relate events coinciding with their demise—events ranging in distance from the resuscitation room to places miles away—unless there was a separation of body and soul? Could there be a natural explanation? Possibly, but thus far nothing definitive has been offered in rebuttal. There is not one theory that can credibly account for the phenomenon. The explanations proposed by skeptics are not persuasive and often outlandish. I have concluded, therefore, that Moody is right. I believe what we are hearing from these near-death patients is evidence in favor of our continued existence.

Patrick Glynn, a Harvard-educated scientist and a former atheist, gives a whole chapter to near-death experiences in his wonderful book God: The Evidence. He ends that chapter with these words:

I suppose it is possible that some alternative explanation could be found for people to perceive things out of body that they could not have physically seen—how I don't know. I suppose it could be merely accidental that people who claim to have died and return come back with elaborate narratives and messages about ethics and life that are by and large more coherent than what one often hears in church on Sunday—even while being perfectly in line with those values. All this, one could argue, is merely the result of some accident of evolution that structured the brain to respond in a certain way to the circumstance of death. Could it be accidental? I suppose. But it would be a very strange accident indeed.³

Tomorrow, I will relate those four additional pieces of evidence that compel me to believe in life after death.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Which of the near-death experiences mentioned in today’s reading was the most compelling to you? Why?

2. If you had a near-death experience, what things about your life would change?

3. True or false: “I tend to live my life with eternity in mind.”

Day 25 – eternal life (III)

I may not have a date with my dad here tonight, but there’s one thing I know for sure. And that is: I’ll have a date with my daddy when I get to heaven.  –CHELSEA STEWART, Payne’s daughter

Yesterday, I offered near-death experiences (NDEs) as evidence in favor of life after death, suggesting they give us a hint and a hope of eternal existence. Though by no means confirmatory, many of these testimonies have features difficult for skeptics to dismiss wholesale or scientists to explain away. They come from the mouths of innocent children and seemingly sincere adults, all relating events that happened while undergoing cardiac resuscitation or while comatose. Included are details impossible to ascertain from their particular vantage point at the time—prone, unresponsive, and surrounded by medical personnel and equipment. As a whole, these NDE testimonies are devoid of exaggeration and boastfulness. In fact, researchers conducting interviews have noted how these people tend to relay their stories with a characteristic reluctance and restraint, as if cherishing a private memory. For sure, a few near-death stories seem a bit fanciful and adorned, but most—particularly those accepted by impartial investigators—are just the opposite. They appear to be real experiences that happened to real people at real moments of real death, and they all point to the same conclusion: the reality of life beyond the grave.

Besides NDEs, additional evidence can be offered in support of an afterlife. Today, I will briefly summarize four more reasons I embrace the life beyond.

1. The Resurrection of Jesus

I believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the tomb. I think this is by far the best interpretation of the historical data presented us, far more rational and reasonable than any other explanation. I will not at this time outline the evidence in favor of its veracity. That is a later topic. All I will do now is state the obvious: if Jesus did rise from the dead, then life after death—in his case, at least—is real.

2. The Post-Resurrection Appearances of Jesus

It is not disputed, except by the most rabid critic, that the disciples of Jesus claimed to have seen him on numerous occasions after his death. According to Paul, he and over five hundred people were eyewitnesses of Jesus post-resurrection. All four gospel writers describe in some detail his appearance and activities during these days.

Again, I believe these accounts to be true. To trust their historical reliability seems to me the most sensible conclusion. All other explanations, in comparison, are illogical or improbable. If I am right, the answer to the question of life after death becomes rather obvious.

3. The Fulfillment of Eternal Desire

According to atheists, everything about us has to be explained by nature, for nature is all there is. We are mere human machines, a conglomeration of chemicals. At death our machines simply stop running, and our molecules are reabsorbed into nature. There is no life afterward.

But a philosophical weakness exists in this line of thinking. If nature is all there is, then everything—even our desires—must come to us from nature. This includes our desire for eternity. Nature must the source of that longing, too. Therefore, to be consistent, the atheist must believe that nature is lying to us, deceiving us, giving us a desire for something that does not exist.

This, of course, goes against all we know about human desires. In the natural world there is no desire for which fulfillment is impossible. Humans hunger (desire food); food exists. We thirst (desire drink); drink exists. We crave sexual pleasure; sexual intercourse exists. There is a valid object to every desire. Why, then, do we humans, almost every one of us, desire eternal life? Shouldn’t there be an object for that desire, too? Shouldn’t eternal life exist?

Herein lies one of the problems with atheism. It claims that all our desires are products of nature, then it proceeds to say that our desire for eternal life is unnatural.

The other option, the one I espouse, is the supernaturalist view. I claim that there is a Reality beyond and above nature. I believe that this supernatural Reality, or God, is infinite and eternal and has created me and given me life. I believe that I long for eternity because eternal life exists, that my desire has an obtainable object, a potential fulfillment, a reachable end-point of satisfaction. This afterlife I yearn for is not a dream, a myth, or a mirage, but a premonition of and movement toward Reality Itself.

4. A Personal Experience

In over a quarter century as a physician, I have observed hundreds of people at death or immediately afterwards. I have not, however, witnessed firsthand any near-death phenomena. This may come as a surprise to you, but it should not. There are reasons such testimonies are rare. For one thing, most patients do not survive cardiac resuscitation and therefore do not live to speak of a near-death experience. Add to this the tendency of those with NDEs toward privacy, and you can see why most physicians have not witnessed such events in their medical careers.

This notwithstanding, I do remember an odd incident over a decade ago in our local ER, one that is hard to dismiss as a coincidence or fabrication. I was on duty late one afternoon when paramedics brought in an elderly man in the midst of cardiac resuscitation. The patient, it turned out, was the uncle of one of our local family physicians. Despite our efforts he could not be revived, so I pronounced him dead and telephoned his nephew. While I was on the phone, a nurse interrupted me with some startling news: the man’s heart had begun to beat again! (In my years of directing cardiac resuscitation attempts, this is the only time I’ve declared a patient dead and then had to reverse the pronouncement.) Amazingly, the man lived long enough to be admitted to the ICU, where he died an hour or two later.

By this time, the nephew was at the bedside of the patient. From there he called his wife, who had not yet heard of their uncle's ambulance ride and ER visit. When told of the events, she was surprised and perplexed. She said she had driven by his house a short while earlier and had seen him walking in his yard beside the barn. On further questioning, it was determined that she had observed him in his yard during the very minutes I had pronounced him dead, just before his unexpected revival.

Coincidence? Fabrication? A near-death phenomenon, a hint of a life beyond? I'll let you be the judge.

In summary, then, the weight of the evidence supports the afterlife. I embrace life after death because this is the best explanation of near-death testimonies, including the one above from my own personal experience. I believe in the life beyond because the historical reliability of Jesus' resurrection and post-resurrection appearances points precisely in that direction. I think eternal life is real because, philosophically, our desire for eternity would not exist unless something existed to fulfill that desire.

What do you think?

SELF-REFLECT

1. What aspects of life after death excite you? What about life after death frightens you?

2. Paul, the apostle, may have had a near-death experience. He later said, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for His loved ones.” Do you believe this?

3. Ask yourself again: “Do I live my life with eternity in mind?”

4. Offer a prayer now asking God to give you purpose and peace in this life. Thank Him for the promise of eternal life.

Day 26 – body and soul

Through my soul I will ascend to him. I will arise above the force by which I am bonded to the body… It is not by that force that I find my God.  –AUGUSTINE

Do we humans possess a soul? The three greatest philosophers of ancient Greece believed that we do. They all defined the soul as the essence of the individual, the core of one's personal identity. Their opinions differed, however, on just how the body and soul are related. Socrates and Plato argued that the two are separate entities and that the soul lives on when the body dies. Aristotle, Plato's understudy, disagreed. He believed that the soul is tightly linked to the body and perishes with it. The essence of a knife, he argued, is cutting. Destroy the knife, and its essence is also destroyed. In the same way, death of the body brings about death of the soul as well.

When it comes to the body-soul debate, I line up squarely with Socrates and Plato. I believe we each possess a soul that continues to live when our body dies. The five-fold evidence for the afterlife offered the previous two days seems to point squarely in this direction. Near-death testimonies almost universally feature a body-spirit disconnect. What’s more, the resurrection of Jesus and his post-resurrection appearances seem to hint of a new, glorified body that will house the soul post-death. Fulfillment of our eternal desire, taken to its practical conclusion, would mean that something other than what lies in the casket inherits eternal life. And, from my own personal experience, the woman’s vision of her dead uncle while his body lay in our ER refutes Aristotle and supports Plato and Socrates.

In summary, then, I believe we are both body and soul, separate and distinct. I believe the two coexist during our earthly lives but separate at death, the soul living on as the body decays. I believe the existence of an afterlife gives this present life more meaning, purpose, and hope. And I believe I owe my existence before and after death to the eternal Creator and Sustainer of life itself.

SELF-REFLECT

1. What should you do each week to take care of your body?

2. What should you do each week to take care of your soul?

3. Commit now to do the things necessary to nourish your body and soul.

Day 27 – a balanced life

In order to feel content, we must find a way to merge our spiritual selves into our material world. We are, after all, spiritual beings having a human experience.  –KRISTINE CARLSON

We are body and soul. God gave us a body so that we could relate to the physical world. He gave us a soul that we might relate to Him. He wants us to commune with Him, to participate in the mystery of divine-human rapport. Perhaps it would be better to reverse the order and say we are soul and body, for the former is the truest essence of humanity and continues after the latter dies. In short, the soul is our vertical, eternal pipeline to God.

But, in lauding the soul, we should not fail to give the body its due. History is peppered with individuals who have valued the soul and devalued the body to the extreme, saying it acceptable to neglect or abuse the body in deference to the soul. Consider, for example, the Gnostics of the first and second centuries A.D. They considered the body evil through and through. Only the spirit or soul was considered good. As a result, a subset of Gnostics did not think it wrong to mistreat the body by living for pleasure alone. For them, drunkenness, sexual immorality, and raucous behavior became the norm. Other Gnostics took the opposite approach, punishing the body by abstaining from drink, sex, or anything worldly. The paradoxical end result of extreme Gnosticism, therefore, was either hedonism or asceticism.

Paul deplored such disdain for the body. "Don't you know," he challenged the believers in Corinth, "that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?"¹ He valued body as well as soul and consecrated both to the service of God. He seemed to have no inclination toward asceticism. Although single himself, he condoned marriage and sexual expression therein. He also took a liberal stance concerning eating food that had been offered to pagan idols. Furthermore, he was found in frequent association with the heathen, a sharp contrast to the public avoidance manifested by the ascetic.² But he decried the other extreme as well, lashing out at those who live for pleasure alone, even listing in his epistle to the Romans all sorts of hedonistic practices as abominable sins.³

Paul’s advice, then, is that we revere both soul and body and yield each to God. We should forsake deification of pleasure, for this is too self-serving. We should shun the temptation toward ascetic withdrawal, for this amounts to community avoidance. And we should forsake those humanists in our culture who embrace both self and community but have no room whatsoever for a relationship with God. In short, we should strive to live a balanced life.

SELF-REFLECT

1. What tends to throw your life off-balance?

2. Have you sought God’s help in balancing your life?

3. Think of two things you can do to improve your body. Think of two things you can do to improve your soul. Ask God to help you do these things.

Day 28 – past, present, and future

Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  –Hebrews 13:8

Are you a past, present, or future person?

Past persons look at life through the rear-view mirror. They consider what’s behind them of paramount importance. They filter today and tomorrow through yesterday. They are life’s history majors. Are you a past person?

Present persons look at life through the side window. They consider what’s next to them of paramount importance. They filter yesterday and tomorrow through today. They are life’s daily news reporters. Are you a present person?

Future persons look at life through the windshield. They consider what’s ahead of them of paramount importance. They filter yesterday and today through tomorrow. They are life’s long-range planners. Are you a future person?

Having some trouble identifying yourself? Answering some questions may help.

Do you enjoy looking at old photographs and going to family reunions? Are you a fan of TV reruns? Do you keep up with old friends? Does remembering past projects seem more fun than planning or starting them? Is it hard for you to forgive yourself or others? Do you often wish that today was yesterday again? Do you dislike change? If so, you are probably a past person.

Do you enjoy looking at new photographs? Are you often glad it’s today, not yesterday or tomorrow? Do you place a lot of importance on having friends and being a friend? Do you tend to start a project and complete it the same day? Are you a good listener? Do you tend to watch the newest and hottest TV shows? If so, you are probably a present person.

Do you dislike looking at photographs, new or old? Are you a to-do-list keeper, an event planner, a goal setter? Has it been months since you contacted old friends? Do you hate reunions? Is it hard for you to focus on the conversation at hand? Have you been accused of being a dreamer? Do you look forward to tomorrow? If so, you are probably a future person.

Now that you know your time tendency, realize that it is a two-edged sword. It can be used for good or for evil. Commit now to use it wisely.

If you are a past person, accentuate your positive tendencies—loyalty, faithfulness, enduring love, and gratitude—and repress your negative ones, such as lack of forgiveness and resistance to change.

In the same manner, you present people should focus on the good that comes easy to you—completing a task, being a good listener, making new friends—while shunning the bad things that come just as easily, such as living for pleasure and avoiding a legacy.

And we future people (yes, I fit this category) should maximize our bent toward goal-setting, project-starting, and organization and minimize our tendency to procrastinate and be detached from the conversation at hand.

No matter your particular bent, God should be your strength and source. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He is Alpha and Omega (and every letter between). He is the Beginning and End (and the Middle, too). He is Yahweh—“I AM THAT I AM”—forever present in your world and your life.

SELF-REFLECT

1. What aspects of your past do you need to embrace? What do you need to leave behind?

2. What in the present needs to be given greater priority? What needs to be put aside?

3. What worthy goals do you need to set? What worries about tomorrow should you let go?

Day 29 – life in the balance

I will give this land to your offspring.  –GOD, to ABRAHAM

Send someone else.  –MOSES, to GOD

You are the man.  –NATHAN, to DAVID

Are you more like Abraham, Moses, or David?

Moses tended to live in the past—always aware of his prior shortcomings, repeatedly using his failures as an excuse. David was inclined to live in the present—writing hymns during times of devotion, falling prey to the temptation of the hour, gathering friends and associates about him, fighting the foe at hand. Abraham was more of a future person—dreaming of a new journey and a new home, focusing on being a blessing to generations to come, sometimes (as with Hagar and Ishmael) taking the future into his own hands.

All three of these men had to become more balanced to accomplish their tasks.

Moses was able to put the past behind him, but this required him to trust God’s provision each day and His promises for tomorrow. David learned to make the most of the present by preparing for tomorrow (the temple was his dream) and remembering his past mistakes. Abraham did become a blessing to future generations, but he did so by remembering God’s divine call and acting it out daily.

So must we try to live a balanced life, giving as equal weight as possible to the before, the now, and the after.

A person who lives entirely in the past becomes stagnant and accomplishes little. He becomes Moses before the Exodus, stuck in the wilderness with no purpose for today or hope for tomorrow. That person needs a burning bush experience that gets him looking forward.

A person who lives entirely in the present becomes short-sighted and lets emotions rule. He becomes David during his affair with Bathsheba, enjoying the present with little regard for his past or his future. That person needs a prophetic utterance that causes him to embrace his heritage and his legacy.

The person who lives only in the future becomes out-of-touch, leaving tasks unfinished and relationships abandoned to start something new. He becomes Abraham sending his son Ishmael away because of the arrival of Isaac on the scene. That person needs to realize that today matters and that what happens in it is the proper foundation for future endeavors.

Of all people in the Bible, Paul had perhaps the most balanced perspective. In many ways he looked like a past person. He often referred to his early years, testifying before Felix and Festus of his life before Christ and his Damascus Road experience. He kept up with past friends and wrote to churches he had started. But he was also a present person, using each day to spread the message of Christ throughout the Roman Empire. And no one can deny that he was future-oriented, always planning ahead. His offering for the Jerusalem church was collected in anticipation of a visit there. His letter to the Roman church mentioned his plans to come and fellowship with them in person. He was always “pressing toward the goal.” Like his Master, nothing would take him off course.

So where are you now? If you find yourself stuck in the past, secluded in the wilderness, paralyzed by your failures, God is not through with you. If you are living only for today with little regard for the consequences, God is not pleased with you. If you are dreaming your life away with nothing to show for it, God has work for you. Determine to live a balanced life for God.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Have you ever been like Moses in the wilderness, paralyzed by your past?

2. Recall a time when you, like David, were mired in sin and in need of repentance.

3. Can you remember when you were so worried about tomorrow that you were of little use today?

4. Where are you now? Are you where you should be, where God wants you to be?

Day 30 – a review

Don’t concentrate…on the number of years we have left on earth. At best, life is short, and its duration is unpredictable. Instead, concentrate on how we live—looking into our heart and soul and focusing on the most important questions: Who am I? Why was I created? And what am I doing to make my life on earth as meaningful as possible?  –JIMMY CARTER

We have attempted in this book to resurrect the lost art of self-reflection so that we might rediscover our true nature. On every page we have presupposed that God exists and that He is infinite in power, knowledge, love, justice, and righteousness. We have asked ourselves this question: "If this is God, then who are we?" Our answers are as follows:

1. We are finite creations of the infinite God, dependent upon Him for all things.

2. Our overarching purpose is communion with God, a "coming-to-one” with Him.

3. To make divine-human rapport possible, God "made us in His image," placing in us some of His own attributes and giving us the choice whether or not to express them.

4. All of us have contaminated our lives with wrong choices (sin) and thus find ourselves separated from a holy God with no recourse of our own to bridge the chasm.

5. Our only hope of restoring perfect communion with God is in God Himself. He must do for us what we cannot do—purify our souls—so that we may have true fellowship with Him once again.

6. Though separated from God by our ungodliness, we are never separated from His love.

7. We are both temporal body and eternal spirit, our existence continuing after death.

8. While on this earth, we live in community with other human beings, our treatment of them revealing how we think of God.

Now let’s solidify our view of human nature, summarized above, by looking at some real-life characters from the pages of the Bible.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Read these statements about human nature.

“I am God’s creation.”

“I am finite; God is infinite.”

“I am dependent on God for everything.”

“I am a moral being, endowed with a God-

given sense of right and wrong.”

“I have often chosen the wrong path and

need restoration of fellowship with

God."

“I am a loving person, sprinkled through

and through with the love of God.”

“I have a God-given purpose on this earth.”

“God’s ultimate purpose for me is

Communion with Him.”

2. On which two statements above do you need to focus most?

Human Nature in the Bible

Day 31 – Abraham

Day 32 – Jacob

Day 33 – Moses

Day 34 – Ruth

Day 35 – David

Day 36 – Jeremiah

Day 37 – John, Simon, and Judas

Day 38 – the three women at the tomb

Day 39 – Barnabas

Day 40 – Luke and Demas

Day 31 – Abraham

In the Bible we have…the nature of boys and girls, of men and women, more accurately charted than in the work of any modern novelist or playwright. You can learn more about human nature by reading the Bible than by living in New York.  –BRUCE BARTON

Around 2000 B.C. a man named Abram began a journey that changed history forever. Traveling northwest from the Sumerian city of Ur (in what is today southern Iraq), he settled for a while in Haran (southeast Turkey), then headed southwest to make Canaan (Israel) his permanent home. When he sought refuge in Egypt during a famine, he had managed to traverse the full length of the Fertile Crescent. The sharpest turn Abram made along the way, however, was not geographic but religious. Without historical precedent, he discarded the gods of his father and began to worship a single deity separate from nature. Credited as the father of monotheism, he is revered today by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike.

Yet Abraham—his name changed along the way, too—is also a man of deep mystery. The Genesis narrative of his life is more like an impressionist painting than a photograph. Much is left to the interpretation of the reader. With so many details omitted, believers of every faith have tried to fill in the blanks with legend. The result is that Abraham, like many great men of the past, has become to us a figure larger than life, almost superhuman. And, to no one's surprise, many mere mortals can no longer relate to him.

Ironically, we begin to see Abraham’s greatness most clearly when we view him as flesh and blood. Behind the hype, beneath the legend, beyond the mystery, is a real person who speaks to us in our humanity as surely as God spoke to him in his heart. As he becomes one of us, we are able to connect with him and are more apt to make a similar journey ourselves. With this end in mind, may I reintroduce you to Abraham, the man.

His father was Terah, a resident of ancient Ur and a worshiper of many gods, particularly the moon god Sin. Archaeological digs in the area have revealed that one-fourth of the land within the walls of this city was dedicated to this lunar deity. The metaphoric connection between moonlit night and physical death made Ur a favorite burial spot for royalty and subject. In all, 1850 cemetery plots have been excavated there, including sixteen royal graves. In this fairly sophisticated city—replete with an irrigation system, a favorite board game, a fabulous multi-tiered temple, and a thriving commerce on the southern end of the Euphrates—religion permeated almost every endeavor. Here or in its immediate surrounds, Abraham spent his entire childhood and early adult life. Here he married his half-sister Sarah, a practice not uncommon in his day. Here, upon the untimely death of his brother, he assumed the guardianship of his nephew Lot. And here, from familiarity, his father uprooted him and the whole clan.

The exact reason Terah made the move is unclear, but it may have been political and economic instability. According to cuneiform records from Ur, neighboring Elamites and Amorites began to plague the city around 2000 B.C., marking the end of the great city’s zenith and the beginning of its decline. Terah may have sensed this unrest to be a harbinger of things to come—indeed, Ur fell to Elam in 1950 B.C.—and thus moved elsewhere. If so, expedience rather than faith was the motivating factor. Consistent with this, there is no mention in Genesis of a divine voice urging Terah to move from Ur.

Of all Mesopotamian cities, Haran was the obvious choice for Terah to relocate. For one thing, a commercial relationship had existed for years between Haran and Ur. In addition, the two cities shared the same focal deity: the moon god Sin. Once settled there, Terah and his sons flourished, their herds becoming so large that servants had to be hired to manage them. For Abraham, life was prosperous and stable. Other than Sarah’s infertility—a heavy burden for the couple to bear—his future looked bright and secure. The furthest thing from his mind was leaving Haran.

Then God called.

God’s voice seems to come to the most unsuspecting individuals. So it was with Abraham. Just as Haran was beginning to feel like home, he received a call from a different God, a deity without name and above nature, urging him to move away “to a land I will show you.”  Unable to shake the inward directive, he led his perplexed wife and nephew in the direction of Canaan. Many people in Haran, like those of Noah’s day, were skeptical, even derisive. Included among them was Abraham’s brother Nahor, who remained behind as caretaker of Terah’s agricultural empire.

Abraham’s first stop in his pilgrimage was Shechem, which literally means “shoulder,” located just south of the Sea of Galilee where the central hills of Canaan descend sharply to the plain below. There he built an altar to his new God. He then continued southward to Luz—later renamed Bethel by his grandson, Jacob—where a second altar was erected. During his nomadic wanderings, he would often return to these two sites for worship. His devotion to God, even in the infancy of his faith, seemed all-encompassing and unflappable.

Finally, after the aforementioned refuge in Egypt, he settled for good in Canaan. In one of the most selfless moments recorded in the Bible, he gave the pick of the land to Lot, who—in contrasting selfishness and ingratitude—chose the fair and fertile Jordan River Valley adjacent to the Dead Sea. With no apparent ill feelings, Abraham headed once again to the hills, this time with God’s blessing and promise. He purchased from the Hittites a parcel of well-watered land beside a large oak tree at a place called Hebron. Directly in line with Shechem and Bethel to the north, it became for him the place he called home. Eventually, in a nearby cave, it also became the place of his burial. In the interval between cave purchase and cave entombment, Abraham bequeathed to the world monotheism—to Judaism and Christianity through Sarah’s long-awaited son Isaac and to Islam through his eldest son Ishmael.

Sadly, in what was by far the weakest point of his life, he also gave birth to the strife that remains so prevalent in monotheism today. At the urging of Sarah, increasingly impatient in her childlessness, he impregnated her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar. Nine months later, Ishmael was born. Abraham loved the boy and made plans for him to carry on both family and faith. This is why, when Abraham initiated the rite of circumcision thirteen years later, Ishmael was the first candidate chosen.

But Sarah’s late-in-life pregnancy changed the entire landscape. Once Isaac arrived, Hagar and Ishmael did not fare well. The treatment they received was harsh and inexcusable, enough to make any fair-minded reader wince. At Sarah’s urging, Abraham reluctantly expelled the two into the wilderness to fend for themselves. As a result, Isaac became Abraham’s sole heir, a Hebrew patriarch revered by future generations of Jews and later by Christians. But, thankfully, the story did not end there. The God of Abraham did what Abraham himself would not do. Displaying a sense of justice that would later become the battle cry of many a prophet, he took up the cause of Hagar and Ishmael and embraced the two outcasts. Though shunned by his father, a great multitude also rose from Ishmael’s seed. Muhammad would later claim Ishmael as the father of Islam, the third religion to link its family roots to Abraham.

Hebron, Abraham’s home, is today called the “City of the Patriarchs.” There, surrounded by walls built by Herod the Great, is the cave where Abraham and Sarah are laid to rest. Thousands of worshipers from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam visit the site every year. This peaceful convergence at Abraham’s tomb is a testimony to his greatness and goodness. But the animosity and war that plague the region also expose his weakness and sin. He was, underneath all the hype, a human being like you and me—shaped by his background, called by God to walk by faith into the unknown, often obedient but sometimes not, bestowing many blessings but also sharing some blame.¹

SELF-REFLECT

1. Do you share any positive traits or negative traits with Abraham?

2. What do you need to leave behind to enter a deeper relationship with God?

3. Pray now that God will lead and guide you. Determine now that you will follow His lead.

Day 32 – Jacob

Ultimately, rather than try to win this struggle, or succumb to this struggle, I realized that the struggle itself was the goal. I had, like Jacob, wrestled with an adversary I never saw, whose name I never learned, but whose presence I deeply felt.  –BRUCE FEILER

Imagine the fear gripping Jacob as he camps by the river Jabbok. Emotions long ago repressed pierce his heart as he ponders tomorrow's reunion with his twin brother. Submerged guilt gushes to the surface of his soul. Twenty years ago he had fled Esau's wrath, knowing full well what the rugged outdoorsman would do if given the chance for vengeance. Could Esau still be awaiting the opportunity? That's why dread seizes Jacob as he sits in the darkness by the brook. In the morning he must obey God's command and walk straight toward his brother as steadfastly as he once ran away from him. "Surely," Jacob predicts, "Esau's anger tonight is similar to my shame, erupting like a volcano long dormant. He must feel as much hate as I do regret."

As he sits by the brook, he reenacts in his mind the unfortunate series of events that led him here. The blow-up never would have happened were Jacob not his mother's favorite. That plot of deception and thievery was her idea. Rebekah first convinced Jacob that he, not Esau, deserved the major portion of the inheritance reserved for the firstborn. Then she came up with the master plan. Jacob would dress, even smell, like his older brother, taking advantage of his father Isaac's failing eyesight. The paternal blessing meant for Esau would be given to Jacob, the imposter. And Rebekah's plan worked to perfection. Jacob became the illegitimate heir, Esau the helpless victim.

Jacob briefly pauses his reminiscing, as if to delay for a moment reliving the painful years that followed. Rebekah's plan had one serious drawback: Esau's angry reaction. Why didn't she—why didn't they—think of this beforehand? What made them assume Esau would passively accept having his birthright stolen? What they got in return was the end of their interaction as mother and son. Rebekah was forced to give Jacob the most gut-wrenching advice imaginable. He must leave her and flee to Haran to stay with her brother, Laban, until Esau's emotions cooled. When he left home that day, little did Jacob know he would seldom, if ever, see his mother again.

The years living with Uncle Laban were filled with passion and poison. Before one month passed, Jacob found the love of his life. Rachel was Laban's youngest daughter, and Jacob adored her more than life itself. She was well worth the seven years of labor Laban required of him before giving blessing to their marriage. Even when Laban tricked Jacob into first marrying his oldest daughter, Leah (in one of history's greatest "what goes around, comes around" moments), Jacob remained undaunted. He would work seven more years (which he did), seven times seven if need be, to have Rachel as his bride. When at last that day came, all the pain of the past seemed like a bad dream from which he had awakened. His fairy tale ending had come. Rachel was his wife.

As if the wait to wed each other wasn't frustrating enough, the years of childbearing were not kind to Jacob and Rachel. They soon became the dreaded barren couple. Despite all efforts, Rachel could not give Jacob a son. Leah, on the other hand, seemed to always be pregnant. Four times Rachel heard the announcement ring through the land, "Leah has borne Jacob a son!" The only consolation for Rachel was the knowledge that Jacob loved her more.

Overcome with jealousy and frustration, Rachel came up with a plan of her own. She convinced Jacob to twice impregnate her personal maidservant Bilhah. The result was a pair of sons Rachel could take credit for and Leah could not claim. Not to be outdone, Leah offered her maidservant Zilpah, who bore Jacob two sons as well. Then, to add insult to injury, Leah herself gave birth to two more sons plus a daughter for good measure. The scoreboard indicated a rout: Leah, eight sons (including two by Zilpah) plus one daughter; Rachel, two sons (both by Bilpah). In the culture of the time, it was a defeat almost too great for Rachel to bear.

And then, just when hope had almost vanished, the unexpected happened. Rachel became pregnant and gave birth to a son. Jacob named him Joseph, and from day one he became the favorite. Such partiality would later cost father and son dearly. In light of what had happened to him and his mother, Jacob should have known better.

Jacob heard a divine summons shortly after Joseph was born. The message to his soul rang loud and clear: "Leave Haran and go back to Canaan!" Yahweh, the God of Abraham and Isaac, was ordering him to return home. But there was one major problem with Yahweh's command: Canaan was also the home of his brother Esau.

Now, on the eve of his return, Jacob sits in fear by the river Jabbok contemplating his next move. Earlier today he had lavished his brother with gifts, sending wave after wave of servants to Esau with the same message: "These gifts are from Jacob, your brother. May he find favor in your eyes." In case this doesn't soften Esau's heart, Jacob plans to protect his family from total onslaught by dividing them into two separate camps as they approach Esau and his kinsmen. If an attack ensues, perhaps one group will be able to escape.

There is one detail, however, that Jacob has not yet finalized. A single question remains unanswered in his heart. "Jacob, will you really obey God's command tomorrow and risk everything? Will you, Jacob, put yourself and your family in harm's way, no matter the cost?" As he searches his soul for an answer, Jacob's spiritual wrestling turns physical. He receives a wound to one of his thighs, compliments of "God's messenger," a tear of tendon from bone from which he will never fully recover. But he also receives a blessing from God, a promise of future generations that will ensure his legacy. Most important of all, he receives a transformation of his deepest self, an inner paradigm shift. He limps away from the brook that night saying, "I will obey!" For the first time in his life, Jacob completely surrenders his will to God's will.

The next day Jacob will have a poignant reunion and reconciliation with Esau. Living in Canaan once again, he will father a twelfth son, Benjamin, the second borne to him by his beloved Rachel. Tragically, she will die during childbirth. Jacob will honor her memory by elevating his love of Joseph and Benjamin above the rest of his sons. When Joseph grows old enough to flaunt this special treatment, the elder ten will retaliate by kidnapping him and selling him to foreigners. In Egypt, Joseph will receive acclaim as an interpreter of dreams and will rise to the second highest office in the land. His once adversarial brothers will travel from Canaan to Egypt and bow before him, requesting famine relief. Joseph will offer forgiveness to them reminiscent of that given by his uncle Esau to Jacob years earlier. Before dying, Jacob will experience one more reunion, perhaps the most touching of all literature. He will tearfully embrace his most favored son, long assumed dead, and will live his last days in luxury in Egypt. In his final hours he will bless all twelve of his sons, assured that in them the promise of future generations will be fulfilled.

Yes, these subsequent events will prove riveting drama indeed. But never forget—Jacob never did—that the pivotal moment of his life was the night he wrestled with God by the river Jabbok. There, alone in the dark, he had his point of clarity.

Jacob was by no means perfect before or after that wrestling match. His main flaw, inherited and/or learned from his mother, was an almost pathologic tendency toward favoritism. At birth, he exited the womb clutching Esau's heel as if trying to propel himself ahead. As the pride of Rebekah's eyes and a willing participant in her plan, he succeeded in gaining favored status. As a husband and father, he elevated Rachel and her sons above the rest. Even on his deathbed Jacob spurned tradition by crossing his arms and placing his right hand— the one carrying the highest blessing—on the head of Joseph's youngest, Ephraim. Manasseh, the oldest, became Esau's protégé.

Ironically, the one who played favorites has become one of the most highly favored men in history. Jacob, along with his grandfather Abraham and father Isaac, form the trunk of the Jewish family tree. His twelve sons are its lowest and most prominent branches. The name given to that nation, Israel, is Jacob's nickname, the one bestowed upon him by God at the river Jabbok. It is a combination of two Hebrew words—sara and el. Fittingly, it means "struggle with God."¹

SELF-REFLECT

1. What relationships have been injured by your own actions or by the actions of another?

2. Before Jacob reunited with Esau, he had a “close encounter” with God. Is a relationship with God important in maintaining and repairing human relationships? Why or why not?

3. Jacob, the liar and thief, later becomes the “father of Israel." God delights in granting second chances. Ask Him now for forgiveness. Then offer to Him the most powerful prayer of all: “Use me, Lord!”

Day 33 – Moses

The voice from the bush is the voice that whispers to you. It reminds you that God is not finished with you yet. Oh, you may think he is. You may think you’ve peaked. You may think he’s got someone else to do the job. If so, think again.  –MAX LUCADO

Perhaps the most wonderful feature of epiphanies is their unpredictability. They seem to come at the oddest places to the most unlikely individuals. No person ever seeks and finds them; they seek and find the person. Though characteristically brief and intense, their effect lingers a lifetime and beyond. They literally transform their recipients, propelling them to deeds of greatness theretofore impossible.

Take Moses, for example. Born to Jews and raised by Egyptians, he leaves both groups after murdering an abusive Egyptian taskmaster and flees to the Sinai peninsula. Trading plush palace for rugged pasture, he seems resigned to tending his father-in-law's sheep the remainder of his life. No meaning, no purpose, no five-year plan, no hope of promotion or reassignment, no thoughts of ever returning to Egypt. As he traverses the slopes of Mount Horeb, he looks anything but a religious reformer and national hero.

That's the marvel of the burning bush. An unimaginable and unsought divine revelation comes to the most unsuspecting and reluctant person. Indeed, the epiphany that transforms Moses defies all logic and prognostication. Moses appears ill-suited for the task at hand. As he crouches before the warmth and brilliance of that fiery desert shrub, he feels woefully inadequate. Never mind that the Voice from the bush says otherwise; Moses is convinced he lacks the eloquence, religiosity, and charisma to be God's man. "Send someone else!" he cries. Forget divine guidance; he demands divine reconsideration.

Ever so patiently the Voice reaffirms His confidence in Moses and garners Moses' confidence in Him. He reveals to Moses who He is ("I AM") and what He can do (signs and wonders). Unrelenting, He calls the fugitive back to Egypt to lead the Hebrews to the land of their forefathers. Then He appoints Moses an assistant and spokesperson: his younger brother Aaron. Armed only with a shepherd's staff, the two unlikely revolutionaries head northwest in the name and power of Yahweh to confront mighty Pharaoh.

Such heavenly visions usually invoke passionate personal testimony. The apostle Paul, for example, recounted his epiphany on the Damascus Road to Roman procurators and consuls and to others. Likewise, the disciples of Jesus told and retold the glory of the Transfiguration. But, surprisingly, Moses never directly refers to the burning bush in any subsequent discussion with Pharaoh or the Israelites. Nevertheless, we must never underestimate its impact upon him. What happened on that mountain became the underlying story of his life, a reminder of God's sovereign grace and transforming power. All subsequent miracles—the plagues upon Egypt, the parting of the sea, the bread from heaven, the cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, the second epiphany on Horeb where the Law was given—were merely sequels. They were the evidence of God's call upon Moses' life. The burning bush was the call itself. It had to happen first.

Have you ever felt the call of God? Is He now summoning you from your circumstances into His will? Do you find yourself second-guessing His call on your life? Do you consider yourself unqualified for your appointed mission? Does the memory of past failures cloud the road before you?

God’s call to you stands firm. He will not accept any excuses. He will not relent until you agree with Him. Only then can you begin to walk in obedience to the call.¹

SELF-REFLECT

1. What excuses keep you from following God’s direction?

2. How do you think God would respond to your excuses?

3. Moses was a fugitive murderer, yet God called him to a great task. He gave Moses a second chance. Pray now for God’s forgiveness and His direction.

4. To be used by God, Moses first had to agree with God about the call on his life. What areas of disagreement do you have with God? Determine now to agree with Him and to act accordingly.

Day 34 – Ruth

Ruth…is a woman beloved by all who read her story. Some have found more in her than perhaps they might… But what a story!… Reading it, studying it, never fails to yield something new and enduring, robust and inspiring, sobering and compelling.  –EDWARD F. CAMPBELL, JR.

The most important demographic information about Ruth is her ethnicity. She is from Moab, a country adjacent to Israel. Hold on to this nugget as we consider the details of the Old Testament book that bears her name: Ruth is 100% Moabite, 0% Jew.

The story begins in Israel in the thirteenth century B.C. in the small town of Bethlehem. A severe drought plagues the whole region, forcing Elimilech, his wife Naomi, and their two sons—a family 100% Jewish—to seek refuge in Moab. While there, both boys marry Moabite women. The oldest, Mahlon, takes Ruth as his wife. Orpah becomes the bride of Kilion, the youngest.

Shortly thereafter, the bottom falls out of Naomi's life. All three men die in Moab, leaving Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah widows. To add to her woes, Naomi is years past childbearing age and has no male heir to carry on the family name. It is, indeed, a tragedy for her beyond words.

Naomi decides to pick up the pieces of her life back in Bethlehem, where the famine has now passed. She departs Moab with Orpah and Ruth at her side, but a short distance down the road she lovingly encourages them to turn back. Orpah takes her advice, but Ruth remains determined to go with her to Israel. "Your people will be my people," she promises her mother-in-law, "and your God my God."

A few days later the two women receive a warm welcome from the townspeople of Bethlehem. Naomi, however, is in no mood for gaiety. She recounts her misfortune in Moab and asks that her name be changed from Naomi ("pleasant") to Mara ("bitter"). The first chapter ends with this summary verse: "So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning."

Needing food, Ruth receives permission from Naomi to go to some local fields and gather leftover grain from the harvest. She works from dawn to dusk with only a brief rest, so persistent in her duty that even the foreman of the harvesters takes notice. When the owner of the field inquires about her, the foreman compliments her diligence. That landowner, a Jew named Boaz, has compassion on Ruth and gives her preferential treatment. He allows her to pick grain with the servant girls, orders his men to look after her, even offers her refreshment from his water jugs and supper at his table. When asked by Ruth about his kindness toward her, Boaz makes it clear she has earned it. "I've been told," he explains, "all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done."

At day's end, Naomi can hardly believe the amount of grain (22 liters plus) that Ruth brings back home. Then delight turns to amazement when she hears that Boaz is Ruth's benefactor. "That man," Naomi tells Ruth, "is our close relative, linked by blood to my deceased husband Elimilech!"

Naomi sees in this good fortune a golden opportunity. She knows under Jewish law that the next-of-kin is obligated to father a male offspring for a childless widow, thereby ensuring continuation of the family line. Although Naomi herself is too old to become pregnant, she sees in Boaz and Ruth the possibility of restoration. With this end in mind, she devises a plan. She instructs Ruth to wash and perfume herself then to boldly lie beside Boaz as he sleeps on the threshing floor. When he awakens, she is to remind him of his obligation to be Naomi's kinsman-redeemer.

Naomi's plan works to perfection. Boaz does agree to assume the kinsman-redeemer role, but only after a relative closer than he to Elimilech declines the offer to fulfill the obligation. He takes Ruth as his wife. She bears him a son and gives Naomi, at long last, a male heir. They name him Obed. Here is where Ruth's ethnicity becomes so important. Obed, this son of Boaz and Ruth, is of mixed blood—50% Jewish and 50% Moabite.

The book of Ruth ends with this verse: "Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David." Yes, that David! The shepherd who becomes king, the ruler of Israel's golden age, is none other than Ruth's great-grandson. This means, of course, that flowing through David's veins is some Moabite blood. Future nationalistic generations would choose to ignore this fact, but Jewish history reveals King David to be part Jew, part Gentile.

Now fast-forward one thousand years to the genealogy of Jesus recorded in the first chapter of Matthew's gospel. Among the list of Jesus' ancestors are "Boaz, the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king." Jesus, Matthew reminds us, is also part Moabite.

Isn't it gloriously ironic that the Great Redeemer was born in the same town in which Boaz played kinsman redeemer to Naomi? And isn't it just as fascinating that the Savior of the whole world is linked by race to every person? Jesus shed on the cross a mixture of Jewish and Gentile blood, thanks to a young Moabite woman and middle-aged Jewish man who chose to restore Naomi's family line.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Faithfulness was one of Ruth’s best traits. On a scale of 1 to 10, rank your faithfulness to God and others.

2. Resilience and persistence describe Naomi. On a 1 to 10 scale, rank your resilience and persistence in serving God.

3. Boaz was charitable and compassionate. On a 1 to 10 scale, how charitable and compassionate are you?

4. All three characters took the initiative at some point in the story. How and when did each take control? Commit now to act in faithfulness, persistence, resilience, and compassion when the situation arises.

Day 35 – David

The paths of history are strewn with the litter of heroes who forgot to walk carefully along the narrow ledges of the heights.  –CHARLES SWINDOLL

David, it seemed, had it all. As a boy, his talent with voice and harp was so amazing even King Saul requested a private concert. Coupled with this artistic genius was the rough courage of a warrior, evidenced in childhood by his brave joust with the Philistine, Goliath. Good looks he had aplenty, and beneath the surface was something equally beautiful: a kind, warm, and sensitive personality. In short, David had that intangible called charisma. He was the whole package—glamour, guts, giftedness, and goodness.

As king, David used these gifts to the uttermost, elevating Israel to heights theretofore unseen. First, he ended once and for all the threat of the Philistines to the west. Then he built in the central hill country of Palestine the city of Jerusalem, centralizing his government there. Before he died, he initiated plans for a temple on Mount Zion, thus cementing his place in history. His reign would be proclaimed for years to come as Israel's golden age, and David himself would become the standard by which every subsequent king would be measured. What he accomplished during his thirty-three years on the throne was never forgotten or equaled. David, the "man after God's own heart," secured for himself and his country the power, prestige, privilege, and possession typically reserved for Israel's enemies.

With such immense power and popularity, David constantly lived on the edge of a spiritual slippery slope. His desires were always given highest priority. What he wanted, he got—a formula for disaster that eventually led to his moral downfall. It was difficult for him to realize his need of God when every need of his own was granted. Slowly, gradually, his spiritual foundation crumbled. His mantra changed from "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want" to "I am the King; I'll get what I want!" His position became his poison.

It isn't necessary here to recall the sordid details of David's affair with Bathsheba, except to reemphasize the hideous nature of his sins. Unfortunately, familiarity with his subsequent repentance has dulled many of us to the horror of his crime. Lust begat coveting, coveting begat adultery, adultery begat illegitimacy, illegitimacy begat plot and deception, plot and deception begat murder. David, the king of Israel, arranged the death of Uriah— one of his soldiers and the husband of Bathsheba—to cover-up their affair and her pregnancy. In the process, David directly or indirectly disobeyed all Ten Commandments. No later remorse should ever dilute the wretched vileness of the king's actions. Anyone who would minimize or marginalize David's sins should consider his victim's immediate family. If you want the truth about David and Bathsheba, ask Uriah's mother.

The prophet Nathan took up Uriah's (and God's) cause. He complained to David of a very rich man in Israel, an owner of "exceeding many" flocks and herds, who had stolen a poor man's one and only lamb and used it as meat for his dinner guest. "This rich man shall surely die!" David decreed in righteous indignation. "You are that man!" Nathan replied, revealing only then the parabolic nature of his story. In the briefest trial on record, David had considered the evidence and found himself guilty of a capital offense. God, through Nathan, then laid out explicitly the nature of his crime:

I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul... I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. 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. – 2 Samuel 12:7-9

What followed was true repentance, the depth of which David recorded in Psalm 51, a prayer of brokenness. His sin was public; likewise, his confession. There was no hint of modern-day rationalization, blaming his parents or Bathsheba or the stress of his rule. He placed the onus entirely on his own shoulders, referring to "my transgressions" and "mine iniquity". He prayed for unmerited mercy (v. 1), inner cleansing (vv. 2,7,10), and divine communion (v. 11) and longed for God to “restore the joy” of his youth.

On his knees that day, David rediscovered that his relationship to God was what really mattered. He exhibited for the first time in years a childlike walk of faith reminiscent of days gone by:

He makes me lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside quiet waters;

He restores my soul.

He guides me in paths of righteousness,

for His name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley

of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil, for You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me…

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

And I will dwell in the house

of the Lord forever.

Psalm 23:2-5

Can you remember a time in your life when you were in closer communion with God than now? Has power, prosperity, or pride separated you from Him? Has sin broken your spirit? Do you need restoration of soul? If so, consider King David. Your life's purpose, like his, can be resurrected and given new life. The only prerequisite is a contrite heart, truly repentant, longing to be clean again. No shortcut or detour is possible. The road back to the twenty-third psalm runs straight through the fifty-first.¹

SELF-REFLECT

1. Find Psalm 51 and read David’s prayer of confession. Take a minute to reflect on your own shortcomings and transgressions. Then read the psalm again as a personal prayer of confession and cleansing.

2. Read Psalm 23 as if you are standing before a group giving a testimony about God’s guidance in your life. Then offer a prayer of thanksgiving for His loving care.

Day 36 – Jeremiah

This world will be redeemed through and through—not by this or that political means, but by God.  –DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, to his congregation in 1931

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a twentieth-century Jeremiah. A German Lutheran minister, Bonhoeffer witnessed firsthand the rise of the Nazi regime but, unlike many of his colleagues, refused to embrace Adolf Hitler's ideology and charisma. Many churches in Germany went so far as to display a portrait of Hitler at the altar alongside the crucifix of Christ. Bonhoeffer would have none of it. He boldly proclaimed from a Berlin pulpit in February, 1933: “We have only one altar in the church and that is to the Most High Lord, to whom all honor and worship belongs. We have no second altar for the honoring of men.”¹

Bonhoeffer recognized the moral absurdity of Nazism, how antithetical it was to the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ. His sermons were laced with appeals for justice, compassion, repentance, and hope. Even when the Gestapo forbade him to preach or teach, he continued to work behind the scenes in the resistance movement, covertly distributing sermons, letters, and poems to likeminded Christians. He challenged the Church to become an active weapon against evil rather than its appeaser. So passionate and persuasive were his sermons that, when he was imprisoned during World War II, inmates in another location attempted to smuggle him into their area of confinement so that they might hear him in person. With courage and resolve Bonhoeffer maintained his faith, even celebrating the church festivals in prison every year until, after a brief trial, he was executed by hanging on April 9, 1945. His last words were, “This is the end— but for me the beginning of life.” Six days later, the Germans surrendered.

Jeremiah, often called the “weeping prophet,” lived his childhood in the small priestly village of Anathoth, three miles north of Jerusalem. As a young man, he became aware of God’s call on his life. Akin to Moses at the burning bush, he fain would have dismissed that call, but something inside compelled him to obey:

If I say, “I will not mention Him

nor speak any more in His name,”

Then there is in my heart as it were

a burning fire shut up in my bones,

And I wear myself out trying

to hold it in, but I can’t!

Jeremiah 20:9

Jeremiah prophesied during the sunset of the seventh century B.C. and the dawn of the sixth. Over one hundred years earlier a succession of prophets—first Amos and Hosea to the northern kingdom, then Isaiah and Micah to the south—accused Israel of shirking her covenant responsibility and her covenant God. Jeremiah stood squarely on the shoulders of these eighth century prophets. He exposed the people’s sin, demanded their repentance, and predicted their judgment. He decried the nation’s bent toward religious syncretism and idolatry, labeling it spiritual adultery. Although the places of worship were filled to record capacity, Jeremiah saw beneath the rituals a hollow core. The heart had gone out of religion, and he called the people once again to look inward. Even the hallowed rite of circumcision, he warned, was meaningless to God unless it reflected something deeper. “Circumcise yourself to Yahweh,” he said, “and remove the foreskins of your hearts” (4:4). Consistent with this attack on externalism, he longed for a future time when a new, inner covenant would replace the old:

“The time is coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”  –Jeremiah 31:31-33

Early on, especially during the reform of King Josiah, Jeremiah seemed to hold out hope that the Davidic dynasty could right the ship. But when King Jehoiakim, Josiah’s grandson, gave his full political consent and aid to paganism, Jeremiah denounced the state and predicted its doom. Before an incredulous audience, he took a clay pot and shattered it on the ground to punctuate his prediction: Israel would fall to Babylon, the rising power in the east, and the hallowed Temple on Mount Zion would be laid to ruin. The hired prophets, whose job it was to sooth the king’s fancy, were so furious they attempted to execute Jeremiah by hanging, only to be dissuaded by cooler heads within the palace.

Many plots against Jeremiah’s life followed, and more than once he was imprisoned. The cumulative toll on his spirit was great. In words reminiscent of Job, he cursed the day he was born (20:14-18). No doubt, his despair was due in part to the persecution he faced, but the grim reality of his nation’s plight multiplied the misery. “The wound of the daughter of my people,” he lamented, “is my heart wounded… Oh, that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night over the slain of the daughter of my people” (8:21-9:1).

Jeremiah considered himself a citizen first and foremost of God’s kingdom. Everything else, including secular governments, he judged by that standard. The kingdom of Israel, he declared, was anything but God’s kingdom. In fact, Jeremiah went so far as to say that God was actively on the side of the Babylonians and nothing could steer Him off-course. Defeat was inevitable.

In 587 B.C. the siege of Jerusalem and the leveling of the Temple went from prophetic prediction to historical fact. Many of Israel’s leading citizens were deported to Babylon. Others, Jeremiah among them, fled to other lands. He lived his final years in Egypt, and there he was buried.

John Bright, an Old Testament scholar, praises Jeremiah “for violence of passion and tenderness of feeling, for agony of spirit and plain raw moral courage,” and goes on to say that “he has few peers in the history of religion.”² Several men and women, Dietrich Bonhoeffer among them, have subsequently emulated his character and taken up his cause. Bright describes the link between the Old Testament prophet and the twentieth century German pastor this way:

[Jeremiah] was a man who had confronted the awful realization that God and the plain moral right of the matter were no longer on the side of his country. He was, in this respect, somewhat in the position of an anti-Nazi German or an anti-Communist Russian who, dearly loving his country as he may, nevertheless feels obliged to break with it. The leaders of his country will no doubt brand him a traitor, but perhaps he may be accorded a higher sort of patriotism… Here was, more, a good man who suffered because of a sinful people and, in his suffering, conferred on all posterity an inestimable benefit.³

SELF-REFLECT

1. Jeremiah and Bonhoeffer held to their convictions even though they faced the risk of ridicule and persecution. Do you face potential scorn or suffering in any arena of your life? Pledge now to hold to your convictions without wavering, no matter the cost.

2. Jeremiah was bluntly honest with God. He knew that God was already aware of his feelings, so he was willing to voice them in prayer. Do you come to God in prayer without pretense? If not, try this the next time you pray.

Day 37 – John, Simon, and Judas

Make no mistake: You are a life manager, and your objective is to manage your life in a way that generates high-quality results.  –TV psychologist PHILLIP McGRAW

Every few pages in the New Testament we encounter someone named John, Simon, or Judas.

As to the latter, there's Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Then there is Judas, surnamed Thaddeus (Luke 6:16), also one of the Twelve. In the Acts of the Apostles there's a reference to Judas the Galilean (5:37) and to another Judas, also called Barsabbas (15:22).

The most famous Simon, of course, is Peter (Simon Barjona), but a second disciple also bears that name. He is referred to as Simon the Zealot or Simon the Canaanite. In the gospels we meet Simon the leper, with whom Jesus dined (Mark 14:3), and Simon of Cyrene, who bore his cross. Then, in Acts, there's one more Simon, the tanner (10:6). An interesting piece of trivia is that the name of the father of Judas Iscariot was—you guessed it!—Simon.

As for John, we all know of John the Baptist and John the disciple. But don't forget John, surnamed Mark, who wrote the second gospel, and another John who was the father of Peter and Andrew. (Simon Barjona means “Simon, son of John”).

Jesus was related by blood to a John (the Baptist). Of Jesus' four brothers, one was named Simon and another Judas. The latter was the author of the next-to-last book in the Bible. In fact, a Simon, a John, or a Judas wrote the last seven books of the New Testament.

To explain this phenomenon, we must go back 160 years before the birth of Jesus to Modein, a small village seventeen miles northwest of Jerusalem. A Jewish priest named Mattathias is standing before the local altar facing the decision of a lifetime. Armed Syrian officers are commanding him to offer a sacrifice to a pagan god. To obey is public blasphemy; to refuse is certain death.

This scene is part of a life-and-death drama unfolding across the whole nation. Antiochus Epiphanes—the supreme ruler of the eastern half of the Greek empire, a man pathologically obsessed with the spread of Greek culture—has gone so far as to make worship of the Greek gods mandatory in Israel. Already, thousands have remained true to Yahweh God and been slain. Women who have defied Antiochus and circumcised their babies have been executed with their dead infants draped over their necks. In Jerusalem, the sacred Temple has been desecrated by an offensive act: a pig, of all things, has been sacrificed to Zeus on its altar.

This wave of persecution has now come to Modein, and Mattathias the priest is ordered to offer the first heathen sacrifice. The year is 167 B.C. As a crowd of nervous worshipers looks on, he makes his final decision:

Even if all the nations that live under the rule of the king obey him, and have chosen to do his commandments, departing each from the religion of his fathers, yet I and my sons and my brothers will live by the covenant of our fathers. Far be it from me to desert the law and the ordinances. We will not obey the king’s words by turning aside from our religion to the right hand or to the left.  –1 Maccabees 2:19-22

Another Jew, fearing mass execution, steps forward and volunteers to offer the sacrifice in his behalf. In a violent rage, Mattathias slays the Jew and the king's officers and levels the altar. Then he takes to the hills with all who would join his new cause. From the wilderness of Judea he wages guerilla warfare on the forces of Antiochus Epiphanes. Among those at his side are his five sons. The three oldest are named John, Simon, and Judas.

Upon the death of Mattathias a year later, Judas assumes leadership of the rebel forces. He is able to use his cunning military genius to full advantage because Antiochus is busy dealing with problems elsewhere. Though vastly outmanned, Judas defeats the Syrian general Appolonius at the Battle of Samaria, then gets the better of General Seran in the valley of Bethbara. To top it all, he leads six thousand ill-equipped warriors to victory over fifty thousand enemy troops at Mizpah.

Such sudden, decisive blows earn Judas the nickname Maccabeus, translated “the hammer.” They also attract the undivided attention of Epiphanes, who quickly dispatches General Lysias, sixty thousand foot soldiers, and five thousand cavalry with specific instructions to annihilate the Jews. By this time Judas is down to a mere three thousand fighters. Incredibly, he beats the odds again and secures another victory at the Battle of Emmaus, a mere seven miles from Jerusalem. Then he proceeds to liberate the capital and purify the Temple. The date is December 25, 165 B.C., celebrated every year thereafter with the eight-day Festival of Lights, better known as Hanukkah. Within a few months the Maccabean revolt succeeds in liberating almost all of Palestine, and Judas and his brothers become national heroes. Not surprisingly, every mother and father want to name their son John or Simon or Judas.

When Antiochus dies in a military campaign in Persia in 163 B.C., General Lysias—no doubt with revenge on his mind—gathers a massive force of 120,000 just south of Jerusalem. At his disposal are thirty-two war elephants, to whom he offers grape and mulberry wine before unleashing them toward the Jews in a drunken stampede. Judas has no recourse but to retreat into Jerusalem. Lysias surrounds the city on all sides, and it seems only a matter of time before the Jews must surrender or die of starvation. Just when the last vestige of hope is evaporating, Lysias learns of a threat in another area of the empire and quickly makes peace with Judas. The Jews are granted freedom to worship their own God in exchange for political loyalty to Syria.

The popularity of Judas, now at fever pitch, is magnified all the more by his premature death in 160 B.C. while attempting to squelch civil insurrection. His older brother Simon, an able diplomat, is successful in gaining complete political and religious independence in 142 B.C., the first taste of true freedom the Jews have enjoyed in four hundred years. Simon himself becomes both high priest and supreme ruler of Israel. After his death, the Hasmoneans (descendants of the Maccabees) rule seventy years more, eventually falling to the rising power of Rome. Even then, the adulation of John, Simon, and Judas continues unabated. In fact, it increases to new heights during a resurgence of nationalistic zeal at the turn of the first century. No wonder we meet so many Jewish males in the New Testament with these names!

Fast-forward now to modern history. Think with me of famous people named John or Simon. There’s John Kennedy, John Glenn, John Lennon, Johnny Carson, Elton John, Pope John Paul, and Johnny Unitas. Consider Paul Simon and Carly Simon in the musical world, Simon Cowell of American Idol, Israeli politician Simon Peres, the television show Simon & Simon, book publisher Simon and Schuster, and the childhood game Simon Says. Add to this list all the Johns and Simons in your own family, community, school, or workplace.

But what about Judas? I personally don’t know of one person, famous or not, who today bears this name. Do you? If a Judas can somewhere be found, he must indeed be the rare exception. That moniker, once so popular, has completely lost its appeal. History reveals that by the end of the first century few boys are given the name. You can easily guess who is responsible. With a kiss in Gethsemane, Judas Iscariot did more than secure the death of Jesus. He crucified the good name of Judas Maccabeus as well.

Do you see the message for you today? Before you is a lifetime of opportunity to do good or ill. The choices you make will have far-reaching effects. Heed the words of Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The evil that men do lives after them.” That’s true, but also remember that the good lives on as well. When you die, will this world be a better or worse place because you lived? Will you be a Maccabeus or an Iscariot?¹

SELF-REFLECT

1. Think of two choices in your life that have had far-reaching negative effects.

2. Think of two choices in your life that have had far-reaching positive effects.

3. What epitaph do you want written on your tombstone? Determine now to write that epitaph with your words and actions from this day forward.

Day 38 – the three women at the tomb

This was no way for a prophet to end. Except for a few women, courageous to the point of foolhardy loyalty, his followers—the tax collector, the fisherman, the crowd-control experts, indeed the whole raft of self-important male strategists and thunder-thinkers who attached themselves to the prophet—fled as far from the scene as their uncertain legs would carry them.  –THOMAS CAHILL

They arose early that day, just before the sun's rays gave birth to the post-Sabbath dawn. Gathering the spices they had procured the previous night, they headed back to the tomb where just thirty-six hours ago his lifeless body had been placed. As they made their way in the dark, grief slowed their pace and limited their speech. It was still almost incomprehensible that he was dead.

They had adored and respected him, this prophet from Nazareth. He was wonderfully different than anyone they had ever encountered. His kindness transcended gender; his rebuke targeted pedigree and position; his teaching eclipsed rabbi and Pharisee. He, the friend of outcast and sinner, was their present help and future hope. They had provided him food and lodging and had often accompanied him on his travels. Then suddenly, in a matter of hours, it had all fallen apart.

How brutal and unjust his death had been! Standing a short distance from the executioners, they had seen and heard it all—lacerations on his back and thorns in his scalp; spikes in his extremities, a spear in his side; ridicule from all sides; the pleasure of his enemies and the paradox of his compassion; the stripping of all clothing and dignity, at least outwardly; the lament of his spirit at his Father's absence; the yielding of his spirit to his Father's embrace; the decree of death, no bones broken; the haste of burial, no spices applied.

Determined to finish the task, the three women—Mary Magdalene, the grateful demoniac transformed by his healing and message; Salome, the wife of Zebedee and mother of James and John; "the other Mary," mother of James the Lesser (also one of the Twelve) and possibly the aunt or cousin of Jesus—marched that morning through the shadow of Golgotha toward Jesus' tomb, united in his death as they had been by his life. Little did they know they were walking into the intersection of all history. Not one of them in the least expected to be a player in the first Easter.

What if these women had not made that short journey outside the walls of Jerusalem that day? What if they had remained in isolation, paralyzed by fear and grief? Then they never would have seen an empty tomb nor heard an angelic message, and Peter and John would never have hurried to the tomb to confirm their story. The only firsthand account of the grave scene would have been that of the Roman guard, and the Jewish leaders' charge of grave robbery would have been hard to refute. Because of the devotion of these women, just the opposite is true. Their testimony of an empty tomb and a risen Lord contradicted Roman spin and gave Easter instant credibility.

May I ask you something, Mary Magdalene? Isn't it possible that the disciples fabricated the resurrection by stealing the body of Jesus?

“No! The disciples were in hiding. They were clueless until we told them.”

Salome, some people say the tomb was empty that morning because you women went to the wrong site.

“That's ludicrous! Two days earlier we stood there while Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus in that tomb. We knew where to go on Sunday.”

Then what about the swoon theory? Is it possible, Mary, that Jesus was not really dead when he was placed in the tomb, then recovered enough to walk out on his own?

“No way! We were at Golgotha. We watched him suffer. We heard the centurion pronounce him dead. We witnessed the spear pierce his side. We observed his lifeless form as he was carried to the tomb. And when we saw him on Sunday, he was not a recovering victim but a resurrected Lord!”

Well, ladies, couldn't it all just be a convenient story made up later, a Resurrection hoax? Couldn't the early church have concocted the whole thing to convince others to join the movement?

“Does our story seem fictional to you? Do you think we could have come up with this on our own? And why would the early church make up a story where women, especially common women like us, were the first eyewitnesses? Wouldn't they have placed someone at the scene other than a healed demoniac, a fisherman's wife, and a female relative of the deceased?”

Then what is your explanation of the Easter story?

“Jesus died on Friday and was hastily buried in Joseph's tomb. We saw it all happen. When we returned the morning after the Sabbath to complete his burial anointing, the tomb was empty, and an angel told us that Jesus had risen. Then we ran to tell the disciples. Peter and John came and verified an empty grave. Most glorious of all, we were the first to see the resurrected Lord! That morning, we went from grief and despair to joy and hope, and our lives have never since been the same.”

One hundred years from now—unless the world somehow ends in the interim—theologians, historians, and philosophers will continue to debate exactly what happened the Sunday after Jesus died. New arguments and evidence will emerge for and against the Resurrection. One thing about the discussion, I assure you, will not change. Just as it has been every day since that fateful morning, faith will cast the final and decisive vote in the heart and mind of the individual.

Whichever side of the fence you now stand in large part reflects your view of these three women. If you deny the Resurrection story, you must believe that Salome and the two Marys were either wrong—themselves malicious, mistaken, or mad—or wronged—misrepresented or misused by others. For you, it will always be Saturday. But for us who claim the Resurrection as truth, our faith rests not only in God and in Jesus, His Son, but also in the integrity of Mary Magdalene, Salome, and Mary, mother of James. We believers have followed these women through the darkness into Sunday's light.¹

SELF-REFLECT

1. The death of Jesus was a devastating blow to his followers. The cross to them was not yet a symbol of victory but a gruesome, crushing loss. Read the four gospel accounts of Jesus’ death on Friday. Picture yourself as an eyewitness. Offer a prayer of thanks to Jesus for what he endured on the cross.

2. The women’s devotion to Jesus was so strong that they risked their lives by going to the tomb that morning. What risks are you willing to take for him?

3. Sunday is the day we set aside for praise and worship. What did Sunday mean to those three women the rest of their lives? What does Sunday mean to you?

Day 39 – Barnabas

The role of Barnabas as a genuine pioneer in establishing the Antioch base must not be overlooked.  –ROBERT CRAPPS, EDGAR MCKNIGHT, DAVID SMITH

If you are the head of a group, Barnabas is your model of right conduct. If you are working behind the scenes in relative anonymity, he is likewise your example. In the greatest game ever, he was a total team player: a leader at his best and a follower second to none.

Barnabas was not one of the twelve disciples. He is never mentioned in the four gospels and, as far as we know, never met Jesus face to face. When the time came to replace Judas, his name was not included on the short list of candidates. (Most likely, he had not yet become a Christian. Even if he had, he would have been disqualified because he was not an eyewitness.) But he quickly rose to prominence in the infant church and was instrumental in the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. To the average churchgoer, he is the least familiar of the New Testament giants and has never received the credit due him.

Barnabas had many wonderful personality traits. First of all, he was a charitable person. As recorded in the fourth chapter of Acts, he sold a plot of land he owned and gave the entire amount as an offering to the young Jerusalem church. He was also a compassionate person. Indeed, his public embrace of Saul was the deciding factor in the acceptance of the persecutor-turned-Christian by the Jerusalem fellowship. Like Saul, Barnabas was a cultural person. A native of Cyprus, he had experience with life and people beyond the borders of Palestine. With such broad backgrounds, these two cosmopolitan men were the natural choices to carry out the church’s first missionary enterprise. At the time of commissioning, everyone referred to the team as “Barnabas and Paul,” a testimony to the former’s importance and respect.

With this, we come to the most commendable attribute of Barnabas: his consistency. More than any other person in the New Testament, he remained the same no matter the occasion. When Paul's charisma and public speaking brought him greater and greater acclaim, Barnabas never wavered in preaching the gospel. It seemed of no consequence to him when people began to refer to the duo in reverse order, as Paul and Barnabas. When Barnabas' cousin and assistant, John Mark, quit during that first missionary journey and went back home, Barnabas went steadfastly on. When the same John Mark, in sincere remorse, asked to rejoin them for the second journey, Barnabas welcomed his company, exhibiting the same compassion toward him as he had toward the young convert Saul. Unfortunately, Paul—in perhaps one of the lowest moments of his marvelous career—refused to give the quitter a second chance. Barnabas, forever consistent, split with Paul over the matter. He took John Mark with him to his home country of Cyprus to preach the gospel. Nothing is known today of what transpired there or afterwards. After the split from Paul, Barnabas fades from history.

Paul, on the other hand, continued to grow in influence and importance. During his second and third missionary journeys, he replaced Barnabas with Silas, and together they spread the gospel to the European soil of Macedonia and Greece. Along the way a physician named Luke, the same man who later recorded the life of Jesus and the growth of the early church in a two-volume work, joined them. Guess who else eventually was at the apostle’s side? In one of his later epistles, Paul mentions as one of his companions none other than "Mark, the cousin of Barnabas" (Col. 4:10), an indication that eventually he did extend the hand of forgiveness to the quitter. And, yes, this is the same Mark who later wrote what scholars believe to be the earliest of the four gospels.

If Barnabas had not come to Paul’s defense, the great apostle’s ministry and correspondence may never have happened and Luke’s two volumes may never have been written. If Barnabas had not forgiven his cousin and invited him to minister in Cyprus, there may have been no gospel of Mark. If you do the math, that's sixteen of the twenty-seven New Testament books for which Barnabas, at least indirectly, was responsible. That few Christians today give him his due is, in my opinion, a tremendous oversight. Something tells me, however, that Barnabas would have wanted it this way.¹

SELF-REFLECT

1. Are you willing to work for God even if others get the accolades?

2. Are you willing to work for God when relationships turn sour?

3. How charitable and compassionate are you?

4. How much of a team player are you?

5. On a 1-to-10 scale, what kind of Barnabas are you?

Day 40 – Luke and Demas

Luke, our beloved doctor, and Demas send their best wishes.  –PAUL, to the Colossian church

In a small house in Rome sits the prisoner. His eyes are closed, his head tilted upward as he dictates to Tychius a letter of encouragement to the church in Colossae.

In mid-sentence a Roman guard enters to inform him that a guest has arrived. Paul is accustomed to such interruptions. Visits from friends and co-laborers are frequent in the house. They come from far and wide to fellowship with the great missionary and to bring news from churches in Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, and Jerusalem. Upon leaving, many carry letters from him to encourage and instruct the young congregations.

Paul immediately stops dictating his correspondence. He turns toward the door to welcome his guest, but the beaming of the noonday sun into the dark room obscures his view. Not until the visitor is three steps inside does Paul recognize him.

"Doctor Luke! Come in, my dear friend!"

Since Paul was brought under house arrest three months ago, the physician has seldom missed a chance to converse with him. Yet today, as always, Luke embraces his mentor with all the emotion of a long-awaited reunion.

They first met in Troas in Asia Minor, just after Paul received the call from God to carry the gospel into Europe. Through Paul’s persuasion, Luke became a follower of Christ.  Based on Luke’s commitment, the apostle deemed him worthy to be one of his traveling companions. Since then, they had never been apart. Accompanied by Silas, Timothy, and Titus, they crossed into Macedonia, starting churches in Philippi and Thessalonica. Then they proceeded on to Greece, establishing a fellowship of believers in Corinth, even preaching the good news in Athens. The next two stops were home bases, Jerusalem and Antioch; then it was off to the mission field again. On this, Paul’s third missionary journey, they returned to Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece and then settled for eighteen months in the city of Ephesus. At every stop the forward-looking apostle was preoccupied with preaching the gospel and collecting an offering for the struggling Jerusalem church. He kept in touch via letter with churches he had established and wrote to believers in Rome announcing his plans to visit them for the first time. Eventually he did arrive there, but he was in chains. While in Jerusalem to deliver the offering, he was arrested and brought to Rome to await trial.

Now, in a house under Roman guard, Luke stands once again at Paul’s side, just as he had in shipwreck, suffering, and sickness.

Paul is so delighted to see Luke that he fails to notice a young man standing immediately behind him. He apologizes for his oversight and asks the physician to introduce his companion. He is told that the man's name is Demas, a fellow Christian and a key player in the growth of the church in Rome. In an attempt to rectify his unintentional discourtesy, Paul spends more time than usual with Demas, inquiring of his background, of his conversion, and of his subsequent ministry.

In the course of that conversation, Demas asks him a question: "I saw, when we entered, that you were busy dictating a letter to Tychius. With whom, may I ask, were you corresponding?"

"To the Christians in Colossae in Asia Minor," is Paul's reply. "Epaphrus tells me that some of them are being led astray by false teachers. These people need to be reminded of the primacy of Christ.  Jesus is all they need! Tychius, read to Luke and Demas a section of my letter."

The young scribe scours the unfinished document to find words that best fit Paul's theme.

For though I am a long way away from you in body, in spirit I am by your side, watching like a proud father the solid steadfastness of your faith in Christ. Just as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so go on living in him – in simple faith. Grow out of him as a plant grows out of the soil it is planted in, becoming more and more sure of the faith as you were taught it, and your lives will overflow with joy and thankfulness. Be careful that nobody spoils your faith through intellectualism or high-sounding nonsense. Such stuff is at best founded on men's ideas of the nature of the world and disregards Christ! Yet it is in him that God gives a full and complete expression of himself.¹

Tychius finishes, but Paul wants to make sure Luke and Demas understand. "They need to get back to basics," he explains. "And they need encouragement, a lot of encouragement. It's not easy for them, you know. It's all so new, and they have so many pressures inside and out."

"Tell them," Luke exclaims, "that I am behind them all the way!"

"So am I!"  echoes Demas. "Send them encouragement from both of us."

The apostle pauses briefly to reflect, then nods to Tychius. The scribe grabs his pen, ready to transcribe. Paul assumes once again that familiar posture—eyes closed, head tilted toward the ceiling:

Tychius (a well-loved brother, a faithful minister and a fellow-servant of the Lord) will tell you all about my present circumstances. This is partly why I am sending him to you. The other reasons are that you may find out how we are all getting on, and that he may put new heart into you. With him is Onesimus one of your own congregation (well-loved and faithful, too). Between them they will tell you of conditions and activities here.

Aristarchus, who is also in prison here, sends greetings, and so does Barnabas' cousin, Mark. I believe I told you before about him; if he does come to you, make him welcome. Jesus Justus, another Hebrew Christian, is here too. Only these few are working with me for the kingdom, but what a help they have been!

Epaphras, another member of your church, and a real servant of Christ, sends his greeting. He works hard for you even here, for he prays constantly and earnestly for you, that you may become mature Christians, and may fulfill God's will for you. From my own observation I can tell you that he has a real passion for your welfare, and for that of the churches of Laodicea and Hierapolis.

Luke, our beloved doctor, and Demas send their best wishes.²

Paul pauses and looks at his two guests, seeking their approval. They smile. Caught up in the inspiration of the moment, the apostle arches his head again, intent on finishing his letter. As he restarts his dictation, Luke and Demas quietly turn and head toward the door, the sound of their feet on the stone floor muffling the words of the apostle. Then, just before they exit—at the very place their countenance once again becomes distorted by penetrating sunlight—they notice that Paul has stopped speaking. They turn, thinking he is done, only to witness something rare indeed. Paul leans toward Tychius and takes the manuscript and pen into his own hands. His diseased eyes are inches from the papyrus as he writes. Even from across the room the largeness of his printing is evident. He speaks aloud, as if dictating to himself.

My personal greeting written to you with my own hands.

Then, as the shackles around his wrists rattle, he pens his final exhortation to the Colossians.

Remember my chains.

Again he pauses and looks toward Luke and Demas. To them and to the church at Colossae, he gives a farewell blessing.

Grace be with you.³

Now, the rest of the story. The tale of Luke and Demas does not end here. Their paths soon go in opposite directions. In a letter to Timothy, written after the Colossian epistle, Paul reports that “Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world” (2 Timothy 4:10). He then adds, “Only Luke is with me” (v. 11).

Yes, Luke carries on the work of Christ. After Paul’s death, the good doctor authors the third gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, the latter focusing on the ministry of his friend and mentor. Demas, on the other hand, moves to Thessalonica and disappears from history.

All of us, created by God to commune with Him, should take heed. In the story of these two men is a message we need to hear. You and I are in a race called life. What we do today, at this very moment, matters to God. But so does our performance over the long haul. Tomorrow matters, too. If we do not reach the finish line, we fail miserably.

When your race is over, which will you be: a Luke or a Demas? The choice is yours…today and tomorrow.

SELF-REFLECT

1. Luke can be described as a race-finisher. Demas, in contrast, was a race-quitter. Think of people you know who are race-finishers and race-quitters.

2. Paul relates that Demas quit because he loved the present world more. In other words, his ultimate priority changed from the heavenly kingdom to the earthly kingdom. What perspective do you have?

3. Today and tomorrow you have a chance to build on yesterday’s foundation or tear it down. Commit now to continue your work until it is done.

AFTERWORD

We have completed three legs of our religious journey. In the first, we considered whether or not God exists and concluded that He does. That was the subject of book one, 5 Reasons: Why I Still Believe in God. In book two—Dear God, You Sure Don’t Act Like You’re Alive—we honestly explored God’s nature and found Him to be more alive than we ever imagined. Now, in this volume, we have used God’s existence as a lens and His nature as a spotlight to examine ourselves.

Our next task is to look at Jesus, in whom God’s nature and our nature (as it was created to be) were perfectly united. He was Son of God and Son of Man, infinite Spirit in a finite frame. Jesus was not just a point in time, but the focal point of all time; not just a life, but the wellspring of life itself. The three years of his ministry, culminating in his death and resurrection, form the heart and soul of our faith.

Jesus walked on this earth in first century Palestine, so it would stand to reason that Christians everywhere would benefit from an in-depth study of his life and times. This, however, is neither easy nor attractive. There are too many hurdles to jump, too many scheduled events in the way. We would rather experience him in our own time and manner. We peer at him through the latest Christian video, CD, book, or preacher, not once considering the possibility that the Jesus we are worshiping could be removed from Jesus of Nazareth. The result is a Christian walk that distances itself from Christ. Granted, this myopic faith has its redeeming qualities and is better than no faith at all, but it is a far cry from the radical kingdom citizenship Jesus described and intended. This is why we desperately need in our day and time to refocus on his first coming.

We find ourselves in the interval between the first and second appearances of Jesus, our eyes directed both to the past and to the future. But the way we view Christ now often obscures our look behind and ahead. He has become too human to some of us, and we need to bow before him like Thomas and declare, “My Lord and my God!” To some of us he has become too divine; we need to kneel at the cross and hear him cry, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” Somehow, someway, someday, we need to encounter Jesus with the awe and apprehension of the gospel eyewitnesses. We need to experience in our hearts what it was like following Jesus that first time.

For this reason, I have written Before the Trumpet Sounds, the fourth book in my Religious Journey series. As a prelude to it, let me pose a preliminary question: if Jesus came to us today wrapped in a blanket, would the story be any different?

ENDNOTES

Day 3

¹Richard Featherstone from the University of Northern Iowa and Katie L. Sorrell from the University of Wisconsin published online in 2007 a comparison of sociology textbooks. The following is an excerpt from the abstract:

This article provides a content analysis of 31   introductory sociology textbooks published between 2003 and 2006… Our analysis reveals that 20 (65%) of the 31 textbooks in our study present only secularization theory, while seven (23%) of the textbooks cover both secularization theory and religious economies theory. We assess the ramifications of such a lopsided arrangement and conclude by encouraging a more open dialogue on this issue.

Anthropology textbooks also have an atheistic bias, the extent of which is summarized by Ohio science professor Jerry Bergman:

Probably one of the most serious and common areas of censorship of support for the intelligent design world view and theism in general is from textbooks. The writer’s review of over 200 textbooks found that virtually all of them assume a priori that God does not exist, rarely even adopting the agnostic position.

In Theistic Psychology (an online publication), Leon James, Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii, admits that “an atheistic science and an atheistic psychology literature has developed… The effort has been very intense to eradicate the concepts of God and the afterlife from science.”

Day 4

¹Freud: “Neither in my private life nor in my writings have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever.” (quoted in Austin Cline, Freud, Atheism, and Judaism, about.com: atheism/agnosticism). Darwin: “I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic would be a more correct description of my state of mind" (quoted in Charles Darwin’s views on religion, en.wikipedia.org). Marx: "The proofs of the existence of God are nothing but proofs for the existence of the essentially human self-consciousness… Man is the supreme being for man… Atheism and communism…are but the 1st real coming-to-be, the realization become real for man, of man's essence." (quoted in David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace, Biography of Famous Atheist Karl Marx, Trivia-Library.com).

Day 6

¹Ephesians 2:10.

Day 9

¹James 1:17.

Day 10

¹C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1960).

²Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages, 1995.

Day 11

¹Matthew 9:46, 14:14, 15:32, 18:27, 20:34; Mark 1:41, 6:34, 8:22, 9:22; Luke 7:13, 10:33, 15:20.

²Psalm 86:15 and 103:13 are two of the verses that use the word rachamim.

Day 12

¹I first heard this modern-day parable in 1975 on a tape of a Sunday School class taught by George Schweitzer.

Day 13

¹Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002).

Day 17

¹In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis argues convincingly that all civilizations throughout history have adhered to a universal code of morality. He called this the tao (the way).

Day 22

¹Romans 3:23, 6:23a, 7:24.

²Romans 8:35-39.

³Luke 15:11-32, 25-37.

Day 24

¹Michael Sabam, Reflections of Death: A Medical Investigation, (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 2.

²Raymond A. Moody, Jr., author of Life After Life (New York: Bantam, 1976), quoted in Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence (Roseville, Calif.: Prima, 1999), 137.

³Glynn, 137.

Day 27

¹1 Corinthians 6:19.

²1 Corinthians 5:10, chapters seven and eight.

³Romans 1:21-32.

Day 31

¹For the Abraham narrative, see Genesis 11-21.

Day 32

¹For the Jacob narrative, see Genesis 25-50.

Day 33

¹The account of Moses and the burning bush is found in Exodus 3:1-4:17.

Day 35

¹The story of David and Bathsheba is located in 2 Samuel 11-12.

Day 36

¹Edwin Robertson, tr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 12.

²John Bright, The Kingdom of God (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), 99.

³Bright, p. 118.

Day 37

¹The story of the Maccabean revolt is found in the apocryphal books of 1 and 2 Maccabees.

Day 38

¹The visit of the women to the tomb is recorded in Matthew 28:1-10, Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24:1-12, and John 20:1-18.

Day 39

¹The account of Barnabas can be found in Acts 4-15.

Day 40

¹Colossians 2:5-9.

²Colossians 4:7-14.

³Colossians 4:18.

Bibliography of Quotations

Day 1

Max Lucado, The Grip of Grace (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1996), xii.

Day 2

R. E. Simmons III, Remembering the Forgotten God (Atticus Press, 1992), 16.

Day 3

George MacDonald in Michael Phillips, ed., Your Life in Christ (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2005), 213.

Day 4

Philip Yancey, Rumors of Another World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 31.

Day 5

Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 78.

Day 6

Wally Armstrong and Jim Sheard, Playing the Game (Nashville: Countryman, 1998), 35.

Day 7

Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 27.

Day 8

Quoted by Patsy Clairmont in Simple Gifts (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999).

Day 9

Peter Jones, Capturing the Pagan Mind (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2003), 129.

Day 10

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie (New York: Random House, 1997), 40.

Day 11

Earl Palmer, Laughter in Heaven (Waco: Word, 1987), 100.

Day 12

Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., Good News to the Poor (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 51.

Day 13

John-Roger and Peter McWilliams, Life 101 (Los Angeles: Prelude Press, 1990), 211.

Day 14

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (Uhrichsville, Ohio: Barbour,1963), September 21.

Day 15

Watchman Nee, The Release of the Spirit (Sure Foundation, 1965), 25.

Day 16

Owen Gingrich, “More Than Machines,” in Kelly Monroe, Finding God at Harvard (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 272.

Day 17

Harvey Cox, When God Came to Harvard (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 7-8.

Day 18

Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 2006), 24.

Day 19

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001), 6.

Day 20

Jo Petty, An Apple a Day (Norwalk, Conn.: C. R. Gibson, 1979), May 28.

Day 21

Max Lucado, On the Anvil (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1985), 99.

Day 22

Gene Stallings, Another Season (Boston: Little Brown, 1997), 163.

John Newton, Amazing Grace (Public Domain).

Day 23

Tracy Stewart, Payne Stewart (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2000), 310.

Day 24

Dan Piper, 90 Minutes in Heaven (Grand Rapids: Revell, 2004), 125.

Day 25

Quoted in Tracy Stewart, Payne Stewart, 315.

Day 26

Henry Chadwick, tr., Saint Augustine Confessions (New York: Oxford, 1991), 185.

Day 27

Kristine Carlson, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Women (New York: Hyperion, 2001), 203.

Day 28

Hebrews 13:8

Day 29

Genesis 12:7

Exodus 4:13

2 Samuel 12:7

Day 30

Jimmy Carter, Sources of Strength (New York: Times Books, 1997), 204.

Day 31

Bruce Barton, The Book Nobody Knows (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926), 17.

Day 32

Bruce Feiler, Walking the Bible (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 423.

Day 33

Max Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name (Dallas: Word, 1994), 18.

Day 34

Edward F. Campbell, Jr., Ruth (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), 3.

Day 35

Charles R. Swindoll, The Finishing Touch (Dallas: Word, 1994), 77.

Day 36

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Edwin Robinson, tr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 41.

Day 37

Phillip C. McGraw, Life Strategies (New York: Hyperion, 1999), 170.

Day 38

Thomas Cahill, Desire of the Everlasting Hills (New York: Anchor Books, 1999), 105.

Day 39

Robert W. Crapps, Edgar V. McKnight, David A. Smith, Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Ronald, 1969), 243-244.

Day 40

Colossians 4:14 (Phillips)

Table of Contents

Dedication

INTRODUCTION

FIRST STEPS

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

One Nature under God

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

Day 13

Day 14

Day 15

Day 16

Human Nature and Morality

Day 17

Day 18

Day 19

Day 20

Day 21

Day 22

Human Nature and Eternity

Day 23

Day 24

Day 25

Day 26

Day 27

Day 28

Day 29

Day 30

Human Nature in the Bible

Day 31

Day 32

Day 33

Day 34

Day 35

Day 36

Day 37

Day 38

Day 39

Day 40

AFTERWORD

ENDNOTES

Bibliography of Quotations