Saturday, August 25, 2018
Dancing With God
It
was a life-saving dance of sorts that unfolded on July 13, 2018, as the pilot
of a Chinook helicopter hovered dramatically near the slope of Oregon’s 11,240-foot
Mount Hood. With incredible skill the pilot maneuvered the aircraft so that two
wheels touched down on the side of the mountain so rescuers could drop a ramp and
exit and enter the helicopter as they rescued a man who had apparently planned
to commit suicide, but then changed his mind.
According
to Global News, “The rescue was triggered after a
27-year-old climber in distress called for help on Thursday afternoon... But he
didn’t answer his phone when officials with the Clackamas County Sheriff’s
office tried to return his call. Searchers managed to track his phone call to
Mount Hood’s summit. A search and rescue team took some time to find the man,
locating him when it wasn’t safe to escort him off the mountain...The rescuers
had to lower themselves to all fours in order to avoid the chopper’s rotors.”
So,
the dance went something like this:
·
The
climber put himself in danger.
·
Recognizing
his plight, he called for help.
·
The
rescue team traced the climbers call and came to where he was.
·
A
helicopter was dispatched to the scene.
·
With
the help of the rescue team the climber entered the chopper and was airlifted
to safety.
The
climber could not save himself. Without a search and rescue team the climber
may have perished. However, if the climber had not called for help and cooperated
with the rescuers, he may have perished. So the climber would not have been
saved without reaching out and cooperating. He was saved by the coast guard through
his cooperation.
Human
beings are rescued from sin and eternal destruction in much the same way. There
is a dance that goes on. God provides the grace and man provides the faith. God
gives grace and power, believers trust and obey. Grace is what God provides, faith is man’s response.
God leads… man follows.
This
topic has been discussed and written about for centuries, but there are two
scriptures that sum it up nicely:
·
Ephesians
2:8 KJV: For
by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is
the gift of God:
·
James 2:17
NIV: In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied
by action, is dead.
Salvation is not an event, it is a
dance. It is a place of safety based on
one’s relationship with The Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
A believer’s dance with God goes something
like this:
·
With
God’s help, a person recognizes they need saving.
·
Recognizing
their plight, they call for help.
·
The
rescue team (God and his people) track down the person in need and go to where they
are.
·
God
dispatches angels, His word and His people to the scene to lead them to
salvation.
·
With
the help of the rescue team the believer repents of sin, washes those sins away
in baptism and is empowered to live free by the infilling of God’s Spirit
God
leads, we follow. Then we dance with him all the way to heaven!
Friday, August 03, 2018
Son of God
Two
ants pause on a twig. By engaging their antennas and making gestures, they
begin a life-changing conversation. The larger ant is balancing a dead bug, eight
times his size, on his back. The other is holding a cube of sugar.
The
ant carrying the bug initiates the conversation. “Hello, my name is Joe. I
haven’t seen you around here before. What is your name and where are you from?”
“Hi,
my name is Jes,” answers the second ant, as he lowers is load to the ground. “This
is the first time we’ve formally met, but I’ve been close by. You wouldn’t recognize me, because I used to
be a human being. I became an ant, so I could warn other ants of a deadly
poison that could destroy them all.”
Dumping
the bug on the ground Joe queries, “What in the world are you talking about?
What are humans and what is poison?”
Thankful
for the segue, Jes answers, “Humans are omnivorous giants, millions of times
more massive than we are. They build humongous structures, incredible gadgets
and they even travel in massive machines that fly through the air. They live in
a whole different dimension than we do.”
“I’ve
heard tell of huge beings,” admits Joe, “but I’ve spent most of my time
underground and haven’t seen anything of the sort since I’ve ventured out. I
figured it was just mythology. It’s a little flaky as far as I am concerned.”
With
concern Jes urgently continues, “No, it’s all true. I know because I used to be
a human. Do you see those big brown
clumps that are about the size of a small bug over by that rock? They look like
food, but they are laced with poison. Humans make poison in factories. They mix
natural resources in such a way that if you eat it, it will kill. Their real
goal is to get you to take some of that poison to your queen, so she will eat
it. They are hoping your whole colony
dies.”
Joe
pauses for a few seconds and then re-engages his antenna with Jes’s to express
his skepticism. “Your story seems pretty
far-fetched. If you needed to communicate to us ants why didn’t you just use
antennae?”
“Humans
don’t have antennas,” Jes patiently explains, “they use voices and ears. A
human being could yell at us and it would just feel like a gust of wind. It would be meaningless to us ants. Someone
had to become an ant in order to give every ant an opportunity to understand
the big picture.”
Joe
then asks a very logical question: “So then, are you an ant or a human?”
“I
am a human, living in ant,” answers Jes. “I call myself the ant from above.”
Joe
suddenly stiffens and asks “Why should I believe you?”
“Well,”
Jes says, confidently, “I just told you things about the human world no ant
could ever know. And I could tell you plenty more if you will give me the time.
Besides, what would I have to gain by duping you. I am just trying to help
you.”
“So,
I guess you’re supposed to be some kind of Savior?” quips Joe.
“Exactly,”
Jes responds.
“Well,”
Joe replies curtly, “you can keep your wild stories, and I don’t need saving.
So, good day!” With that he abandons the bug he had been carrying, picks up the
nearest brown lump of “food” and heads toward his ant hill.
As
Joe turns around to shoot one more caustic glance, he sees Jes float up into
the sky and disappear.
When God came to earth and lived in a human
body in order to save mankind, He got pretty much the same response, only he
was eventually executed for his teachings. And, although it is hard to believe
a man could become and ant, it is easy to see just how limited and naive the
world is from an ant’s perspective.
If you were God and could do anything, how
would you communicate with man? How would you remedy the sin problem? God did
it by becoming a man who we call Jesus, the Son of God. The Bible says, “For
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting
people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of
reconciliation.” (2Corinthians 5:19 NLT) It would be foolish for us to ignore
his message just because it is beyond our understanding.
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