This morning on Facebook I read a post by David Whyte about honesty.  The article basically asserted that honesty is admitting where we are powerless and that we are often dishonest because we are fearful of loss.  The more I thought about this, it became clear to me that I absolutely disagree with this.  We must be honest about our circumstances but we are by no means helpless in them.  Honesty is being real and authentic with who we are.  We should not try deceive ourselves and others into believing we are someone who we are not.  However, I don’t believe we are powerless to change if we choose.  I tend to sit in the camp that we are more powerful than we think.  Every action we take affects another and can lead to a chain reaction of good or evil.  To not recognize this is dishonest.  We do not live in a vacuum.  Every decision matters.  Even indecision matters.  Often what we choose not to do can have far-reaching consequences.

I believe I am here to be a part of a bigger story.  I am a player on a team or an actor on a stage but the game/story is real life coached/directed by God.  We all play a part even if we don’t recognize it at the time.  Dishonesty is not acknowledging our role in the unfolding of history.  I am a powerful agent for good if I choose to be. This is a scary responsibility.  I don’t want to mess it up but the fact is, I will and I have.  It doesn’t mean that I am not redeemed to be an agent for good another day.

Peter fell hard when he denied Jesus the night he was taken to be crucified.  Yet he became one of Jesus’ most influential spokesman the rest of his life.  His recognition of his need for redemption made him powerful.  It freed him to be an agent for good.  He wasn’t mired down in the self-pity of helplessness.  After His resurrection, Jesus took Peter aside on the shores of the Sea of Galilee to commission him to care for and feed His sheep.  Jesus gave Peter the power to overcome his losses.  Jesus saw Peter’s potential.  He looked beyond who Peter was to who he could be.  Peter could have said, “but I’m only a fisherman.  What can I do?”  Instead he with the other disciples changed the world for good.

Don’t say to yourself, “I am only…”  Honesty says you are powerful.  Each one of us has the potential to change the world in our own sphere of influence.  However, if you choose to believe in your perceived helplessness, it will never happen.

My grandmother used to tell us that she made it a point to never expect life to turn out good so when it didn’t, she wasn’t disappointed.  I don’t know if this attitude came from living through the Great Depression but it unfortunately colored her viewpoint for the rest of her life.  She definitely was a glass half empty kind of person and there was no convincing her otherwise.  If life took a good turn she was surprised.  In actuality, her life was quite interesting.  Grandma was a great story-teller and the wonderful tales of her youth are still burned in my memory.  The majority of life was really good for her but her low expectations got in the way of her seeing it.

I’ve seen it so often that perspective is limited by low expectations. But it’s also true that it is constrained by time.  If we see life as a journey with the bookends being birth and death then all our decisions are based on this time frame.  But what if we were to view life from an eternal perspective?  We certainly wouldn’t be hemmed in by time because the span of a lifetime would be miniscule compared to eternity.  Our earthy expectations would be greatly outweighed by heavenly expectations.  It would be freeing to see life this way.

This is what I think Jesus meant when He said, “You will know the truth and the truth with set you free.”   Believing the truth that Jesus died to wipe away the sin in our lives certainly does set us free.  However if we take that truth to heart, it will change our whole perspective on life.  We will see all of life from an eternal perspective.  Things that normally would bother us, don’t have meaning anymore.  They are minor bumps in the road when you see that life’s journey goes on forever.  This truth frees us to love more and live more.  We don’t have to worry about what we have or don’t have here on earth because we know that this earthly existence is not all there is.  We can be content with what blessings we do have here and be grateful.  Heaven will be so amazingly wonderful that the best earth has to offer will pale in comparison.

Now I know life can be hard and keeping an eternal perspective can be elusive when the worries of this world bear down on us.  I catch myself when stress levels are high, falling into a narrow view of my life again.  I give up my freedom for worry.  It’s hard not to be anxious when we remember 9/11 or see gunfire in places we thought were safe like our schools.  But remember the bigger picture. This is not all there is. There is an eternity of peace and safety where there will be no need for doctors because no one will be sick any more. I’m going to have to get a new job!  Maybe God will let me be a gardener in Heaven.  I would so enjoy tending flowers with the Master Gardener someday!  Yes, eternity will be lived out someday in heaven but it’s already begun right now here on earth if we can only have the eyes to see it. I wish I could have convinced my grandmother of this.  Life could have been so much richer for her if only she could have had an eternal perspective.

In our women’s Bible study at church we have been studying the story of Gideon.  The study is facilitated by Priscilla Shirer who is the daughter of Dr. Tony Evans.  It has been very thought-provoking and convicting.  In our last week, Priscilla asked us, “Who is your king?”  In the book of Judges, after all that God did to deliver the Hebrew people from the hands of the Midianites, they wanted to give the credit to Gideon and make him their king.  They failed to give credit to the One who saved them through supernatural means.  If we are really honest with ourselves, do we do the same thing today?

We don’t bow down to idols as ancient people did, but we do have our idols even yet.  Money, power, acclaim, addictions…  What hits home with you?  For me the need for praise is my main idol and pride feeds this need.  Like many others, I become my own king.  I forget that everything I am or have is a gift from God.  I can take pride in the fact that I am a doctor and bask in the praise given me.  But who gave me the opportunity to do this?  I could have been born in Africa like Shadrach and never even have the chance to get an education.  I have never had to go hungry or worry about where I would sleep.  I act as if I somehow accomplished this myself. I have to stop myself and give credit where credit is due.  I would have NOTHING without God.

Now I don’t want to insinuate that blessings just fall down on us like rain and we have nothing to do with it.  Even Gideon had to be obedient to God’s plan of attack on the Midianites.  God whittled down the number of Hebrew warriors to 300, just so they would not be able to take credit for the victory but they did anyway!  Gideon and the Hebrews had to cooperate with God but He ultimately accomplished the victory.  In this same way, we have to cooperate with God to reap the benefit of His blessings.  The farmer’s fields don’t reap a harvest unless they invest the time to plow, plant, and fertilize their crop.  God provides the miracle of the seed that with water, sunlight and the right soil becomes the mature plant.  Together the harvest is accomplished.

Jesus spoke about yoking ourselves to Him and our burden would be light.  In this analogy, we’re still working but He’s bearing the bigger load.  We are weak but if we’re paired with Jesus there is no telling what we can accomplish. In the letter to the Philippians its says, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”  I am blessed that God saw fit to give me the opportunity to go to Medical School but the degree didn’t just fall in my lap.  I had to study and make an investment of 11 years of my life to get there.  But if not for Jesus working beside me and pouring His strength into me, it would not have happened.  When pride starts to creep into my heart, I must stop myself from believing the lie that I did any of this on my own.  I must take myself or any other idol in my life off the throne of my heart and allow Jesus to sit as my King.

The letter from Betty I shared earlier this week brought up a touchy subject that most of us would rather sideline.  Anger with God.  Have you ever had a situation so horrific that you didn’t just question God but you felt angry that God let it happen?  I think many of us have, no matter how long we have been Christians, but we often don’t admit it.  Why?  We feel guilty about our anger against God.  Somehow we have programmed ourselves to think that anger is not allowed.  However there is good evidence that God is OK with us expressing our rage toward Him.

Job is a very familiar character in the Bible who is famous for his anger against God.  Job had many reasons to be angry.  In a very short time he lost his children, his property, his standing in his community and his health.  His wife advised him to curse God and die!  But Job did not.  He contended with God and was angry with Him but he never stopped believing through it all.  He wanted an answer from God as to why he was being punished when he had not sinned against Him.  God never really answered Job but instead showed Him through His majesty that He was in control.  Job was left without answers to his questions but getting answers weren’t important anymore.  He was justified by God and his friends were chastised for claiming that Job must have sinned and caused his predicament. His property and standing in the community were reinstated better than before.  He had more children and lived a long life after his trials.

The story of Job is interesting in many ways.  It’s notable that there was evil behind the scenes testing Job and God allowed this for a time.  Job never was privy to this information ever.  Also God never chastised Job for being angry with him.  He praised Job’s integrity throughout all his trials.

So if we take this story to heart, we can make two assumptions.  The first is to recognize that there probably is more going on behind the scenes in the spiritual world than we’ll ever know in this life.  In other words, we can’t see the whole picture.  We live in a world that is broken where bad things happen to good people.  The second assumption is that God does not get upset with us when we get angry with Him.  He wants us to be authentic and honest with Him.  What seems to really upset God is when we try to deceive Him or ignore Him.  We can’t lie to God about how we feel or what we’ve done.  God’s heart is broken when we ignore Him or act as if He doesn’t exist.  Job could have said that there must not be a God or He wouldn’t allow him to suffer.  But he didn’t.  Job kept up his conversation with God throughout his whole ordeal.  He continued to believe even as he railed against what was happening to him.  Even though it appeared that God had abandoned Job, He hadn’t.

We’re never promised that life will be easy or equitable. If fact, Jesus said that trouble was ahead for all of us.  Whatever you are going through right now, know that it is OK to be angry.  Let your feelings be made known to God and in Him you will find comfort. You may be delivered in this life from your troubles but reality is, you may not.  But through it all remember, you will be delivered someday and God will move through this life with you all the way.  He will not abandon you. These are promises we can stand on every day to help us survive and flourish with whatever life throws at us.

Being a Christian today is not easy. There is so much negative press in the media. To believe in something that cannot be seen is almost anti-intellectual in many circles.

But let’s think about this for a minute. Don’t we believe in things that we can’t see all the time? Scientists are finding smaller and smaller particles within the atom. Some of these we can see with high-powered microscopes but many we cannot. We see evidence that they exist so we believe.

Are we able to see the wind? No, but we can feel it’s presence. We see it moving the leaves on the trees and the clouds in the sky. We know it exists even though we cannot see it.

So it is with God. We cannot visibly see Him but we see evidence of Him all around us.  We see Him in the complexity of the human body with each cell working together in magnificent ways.  We see the sun rising every day as it always does and the seasons come and go as they always do. The order of the world around us is comforting and mind-boggling at the same time.

There are “coincidences” that are timed so well as to be impossible to just happen randomly. Many of the stories in “Letters Out of Africa” are God “coincidences.”  I believe that there is no other explanation but that the events leading my friend, Shadrach to America were orchestrated by the hand of God. Nothing in my wildest dreams imagined I would be a part of this story. This was God’s plan. We were just willing participants as the plan unfolded.

Many people can say to the day when they began to believe in the existence of God. They had a special event, an “aha” moment when they came to know there was a God who cared about them. I never had a date in time that I could say was the beginning for me. It seems that I have always known that God was with me from my very beginning. I don’t remember a time that I didn’t believe. When I was very young, maybe 3 or 4 years old, I recall praying or really just talking to God and asking him to help me. I had done something that had upset my mother and she had sent me to my room. I never quite made it to my bedroom but was sitting at the top of the stairs asking God for my mom to forgive me and let me come back downstairs. Of course she did and she came to me moments later. All was right in my world.

Now yes, I would agree that this was an easy prayer for God to answer. He knew my mom and knew what her response to me would be. But no matter. I knew as a child that God was with me and He has stayed with me ever since. We have had our ups and downs. There have been times that I have been very angry with God. There have been times I have doubted Him but that sense of belief, that “knowing” down in my heart never left. As I look back on my life, through all my mistakes and wrong turns, I can see the hand of God guiding me back to the path he has set out for me.

I liken my journey with God to an old hymn that is a favorite of mine called “In the Garden”. The first verse reads, “I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses. And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own; and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.” The truth is though that others can walk with God and know Him too, just like me. Just open your heart to see the evidence of the unseen. Seek Him and you will find Him or rather He will find you. Will life be easy? No, it still will be tough. Will you never mess up again? No, we are still broken people who will never quite be fixed until we’re in heaven. But I can tell you that your life will be sweeter and richer than anyone could know. I wouldn’t give it up for anything.