Coffee With The Lord

As a young man growing up my Father would always encourage me and say, “LeRoy, use your head!  That’s why the Lord gave you one!”  Now, you just need to know my father was a devout follower of the Lord and reverenced [“feared”] the Lord.  He wasn’t encouraging me to strike out on my own and make decisions independent of the Lord… He wasn’t saying that I should trust my own cognitive, problem-solving abilities without seeking God’s guidance or living by Godly principles… He was saying that good, godly decision making is a healthy interplay between God given abilities and a Scripturally trained mind and God’s direction, leading and will.

Proverbs 3:5-6 puts it this way [Bartel’s expanded paraphrase based upon the original languages]… “Trust the Lord completely – with everything within you!  Don’t try to figure out everything on your own.  In every decision you make be able to say, ‘God, I put You and Your will first!  And when you do that, He’ll lead you, guide you, and work out all the details – in fact, He’ll turn the rough trails you have to navigate through life into a super highway!”  (Check it out for yourself… that seems to be what is being said in those verses!)  It was one of my mother’s favorite verses… she’d quote it often to her sons!

Today, during my devotions – “Coffee with the Lord” – I read a passage that seems to support that “human – Divine interplay” in decision making!  The passage? Deuteronomy 1:9-18.  The Children of Israel are on the border, ready to enter the “Promised Land” and receive what God had promised them.  God told Moses, “Break camp and advance!”  Moses felt overwhelmed and cried out to the Lord saying, “These people are too heavy a burden for me to carry alone!”  So he used his problem solving ability and proposed a solution – a solution that involved delegated leadership to “thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens.”  Moses then charged them to use God’s commands and Biblical principles to help him govern and judge God’s people.  God’s (and the people’s) response?  “What you propose to do is good!”

Hey, the road of life is too tricky and filled with dangerous potholes, to navigate all by myself!  I need the Lord leadership and guidance!  I need to follow the Biblical principles He has established!  But I can also hear the echo of my father’s advice, “LeRoy, use your head – That’s the reason God gave you one!”  I also recall the wise counsel of Scripture repeated over and over to the Bartel boys by our mother, Proverbs 3:5-6!  (Hey, find it in your Bible and underline it!)

Here is the opening statement introducing the “Coffee with the Lord” group on Facebook… “I post uplifting reflections on this site from my daily devotions.”

I really try to focus on following that statement… “I post UPLIFTING reflections!” I have a concern however that surfaced during my devotional Bible reading today…

Positive, uplifting messaging, whether in writing or oral communication, can become almost a fixation! In fact, it can actually end up distorting a healthy Biblical message! I know – and I believe you are aware, if you think about it – of professed messengers of the Gospel (the “Good News”) who actually present an unbalanced, unhealthy, misleading and dangerous message by their myopic focus only upon the “positive.”

I love the positive message as much as anyone! It encourages, it soothes, it comforts, it heals… it “feels” good! But it may also distort what God actually wants to say that removes guilt, brings salvation, and wholeness. A case in point is the message to Judah from God through the prophet Jeremiah. There were prophets at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah’s exile to Babylon that were predicting a period of “brief unpleasantness” – only two years and then restoration. Jeremiah’s message was more severe – but it was God’s message – 70 years! If you take the popular positive verse from Jeremiah 29, and read it devoid of its context, it becomes a distorted message: “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plan for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope!” The context however is not simply encouragement – it is also warning, and a presentation of God’s purposes for His people through the Heavenly Father’s discipline (read verses 1-23 of the chapter and compare it with Hebrews 12:5-11)

So again today I read another of Jeremiah’s prophecies – one that put him in the deep, dangerous muck of the “cistern of Malkijah!” Jeremiah actually proclaimed and prophesied, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians will live! … This city will certainly be handed over to the army of the king of Babylon, who will capture it!’” (Jeremiah 38:2-3) Not the positive message you’d like to hear if you lived in Jerusalem at the time! But it was God’s message!

So here’s the personal note I jotted in the margin of my Bible this morning… “It is not God’s will for God’s messengers to always share a positive, uplifting message! Sometimes it is important to deliver “reality therapy” and call to repentance and warn others as their pathway to healing, help, and hope!” Listen, as God’s messenger I want to post “uplifting reflections” in “Coffee with the Lord” as much as I can. But hear me, I also want them to reflect what God wants to say, without distortion!?