I was in the middle of making an excuse the other morning when suddenly I heard myself.  Yes, I was tired, I had a headache, and serious things were whirling around in my mind.  So surely my snappy tone of voice was understandable, wasn’t it?
            Let’s check this theory out.  Jesus is supposed to be my example.  Simply making the claim to be his disciple means I try my best to do what he would do.  So if I look at what had to be the worst time of his life on earth, the last twenty-four hours, then I can measure myself against the true standard.
            Over the Passover meal, when his disciples were once again arguing about who would be the most important in the kingdom, he finally lost his cool. “Shut up!  I have more important things on my mind than dealing with your petty concerns right now.”
            He was so concerned about the upcoming trials he would need to endure, he never once thought about what they might be going through, and left them to their fears and confusion.  “Grow up!” he told them.  “It’s high time you figured this out for yourselves.”
            When one of his best friends betrayed him, the other apostles were still murmuring among themselves about who it must be.  “Be quiet,” he said.  “This isn’t about you.”
            He was obviously in tremendous pain as he hung on the cross, so how could he even begin to worry about his mother and her care?  “Can’t you quit that sniveling?  You’re only making things worse.”
            Well, that’s how it might read if it were me going through those trials.  Instead, Jesus left an example that shows me there is no excuse for poor behavior.  Despite what he was going through, the like of which I have never had to endure, he kept his thoughts on others.  He kept his voice tempered.  He kept his actions loving.  Not even his enemies suffered a tongue-lashing of the type I find so easy to dish out when I am upset or do not feel well.
            For you see, God does not allow trials in our lives so we will have excuses for sin.  He allows them so we will grow and get stronger.  When I excuse my behavior because of what I am going through, I fail the test.  Unless I recognize where I failed and determine not to do it again, I will not get stronger; I will only get weaker.  In the process I will make it more likely that the next time I will fail again.  And again.  And again.  Till there is no more need for trials at all because Satan has me exactly where he wants me, and I am too weak to even think about fighting back.  Even those I claim to love will know to stay away from me when things are not going well, and so my last avenue of help is also gone.
            The sad truth of the matter is the one who is best at making excuses is one poor excuse for a Christian.
 
For hereunto were you called: because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow his steps:  who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:  who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered threatened not; but committed himself to him that judges righteously:  who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed.  For you were going astray like sheep; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls,  1 Peter 2:21-25.
 
Dene Ward

I have about given up trying to figure out what they are, a white flowering weed, one to three feet tall on a wiry stem with long blade-shaped leaves, most near the ground, but a few here and there along the plant's length.  The one-eighth to one quarter inch rayed white flowers, like tiny daisies, cluster at the top, sparsely, not in a close bunch.  I have found several "almosts" in my wildflower book, just like them but—wrong leaf shape or wrong color or wrong size bloom or wrong blooming season—nothing that matches in every single aspect.  But I suppose that's fine because I have been trying to get rid of them anyway.  I like wildflowers, but only those that give you a big bang for the buck, so to speak, phlox, gaillardia, fleabane, rudbeckia to name a few.  These white ones don't fill the bill and they shade out the lower growing prettier ones as well.
            These white things, which remind me a little of baby's breath but without the profusion of blooms, have just about taken over the field south of the garden, and threatened to take over my carefully planted wildflower patch.  They nearly covered a spot about eighty by thirty, a little wider in some places, a little narrower in others.  I stood there looking at that wave of white and thought, "I could never pull up all those weeds."  But then I thought, "Well, maybe not in one day."
            That was four days ago.  Since then, after my morning elliptical walk, I have gone outside and pulled a swathe from west to east, then back from east to west, every day.  That's about all this old lady can stand, especially in the Florida sun.  In fact, coming back to the house, though only a slight grade uphill, felt more like a forty-five degree mountain. 
            The first day, the only way I could tell I had done anything was my aching back.  But by the beginning of the third day, the browning piles of discarded weeds encouraged me on an extra half hour.  And today, watching what was left of that white patch get smaller and smaller, kept me at it until it completely disappeared.
            Was it easy?  No.  Not only did my back give me grief, but a time or two I didn't pay enough attention and grabbed a blackberry vine along with the weed, ripping my hand with its thorns.
            Did I completely rid myself of those unwanted weeds?  No.  In fact, this morning I was greeted by a couple of new ones in places I had already worked, probably because of a seed already planted or a stem I had merely broken instead of pulling up by the roots.  But those very few plants were obvious in that clean expanse of green and quick and easy to pull.
            And then, of course, there is the neighbor's property just over the fence, and he obviously doesn't care if he has a field full of white weeds which will inevitably spread our way unless I keep on top of it every time even one of them jumps the fence.
            So what is the lesson today?  Don't listen to the nay-sayers, the ones who tell you that you will never be able to overcome sin, that even the best of us "sins all the time."  Deity did not become flesh, live a humiliating life and die an ignominious death so we could all continue "sinning all the time!"  Anyone who tells you otherwise, leaving you discouraged and ready to quit, is a minister of Satan not the Lord.
            You may start out with a field full of white weeds that looks invincible.  Just work at it every day, yanking those tares out of your heart one by one.  Will it be easy?  Paul said that even he had to "buffet my body to bring it into subjection" 1 Cor 9:27.  It is hard work, but stop once in a while and measure your progress.  Pat yourself on the back just once or twice, and then get back to work before you get too full of yourself.
            Am I saying that it is really possible to overcome temptation, to grow spiritually to the point that you sin less and less?  No, but God is:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.  (1Cor 10:13).
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey the lusts thereof: neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.  (Rom 6:12-13).
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?  (Rom 6:1-2).
My little children, these things write I unto you that you may not sin…  (1John 2:1).
And I could fill up pages with these things!
           
            Will you still slip occasionally?  Probably, just like those white weeds still pop up here and there once in a while.  Sometimes a seed was sown or a root left in the ground.  But if you don't think it is possible to improve, that after twenty or thirty years you are still "sinning all the time," something is wrong.  Maybe it is a faulty definition of sin; maybe you are deceiving yourself about how hard you are really working at it; maybe you have so saturated yourself with the Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity that your friends, the television evangelists, and most of the commentaries espouse—the ones you think are harmless and "say some really good things"--that you can't see the truth God has written for you. 
            So start pulling your weeds today.  The first step is the most painful—really looking into our hearts and identifying the things we need to fix--specifically.  Then get to work, little by little, one day after the other, with determination and steadfastness.  You CAN do it, because the one who has the power to raise Jesus from the dead is helping you.
 
Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, (Eph 1:18-20).
 
Dene Ward

I took my first writing course as a junior in high school.  Our first assignment included stapling the rough draft to the final copy.  Imagine my surprise when the teacher handed back my paper with this written across the front of the rough draft:  This is too neat.  You didn’t make enough changes and corrections.  A rough draft should look that way—rough!
            Then I looked at my finished paper.  I saw words marked out, phrases circled and “pointed” by an arrow to another place in the sentence.  I saw other words added, and suggestions made with question marks beside them.  Whole sentences were bracketed and directions written above:  “make these phrases parallel;” “needs a concrete noun;” “get rid of the intensifiers.”  In fact, what I saw before me was a real rough draft, exactly how my own should have looked. 
            As the class continued and I learned better writing techniques, my rough drafts became messier and messier.  Sometimes at the end, it took me a half hour to decipher the code of scribbled notes and write what I wanted to turn in.  But inevitably, the rougher the draft, the better the finished product turned out. 
            I learned not to “fall in love with my own words,” as my teacher called it.  I took a red pen to my own creation and marked out words like a safari guide slashing through brush with a machete.  I kept a thesaurus handy to help with vocabulary choices, making nouns and verbs so concrete that few modifiers were even necessary.  I not only got rid of intensifiers, I deleted delayers too, then I worked on turning 8 word clauses into 4 word phrases, concentrating the effect of the writing, rather than diluting it.  Sometimes I even deleted whole paragraphs. 
            Before long I could write better the first time around, but still see places to improve on the read-through, smaller things that would have gotten lost in the obvious mess beforehand.  Even now, when reading something I wrote years ago, I automatically go into edit mode.  Even after it’s put on the blog, I notice things I wish I had changed.  What I said wasn’t wrong, but I could have made it just a teensy bit better, even after the half a dozen edits I always do.
            Today should be your life’s rough draft for tomorrow.  Every evening you should go over your actions, your words, your attitudes and see where you need to “edit.”  If you don’t see anything, you are obviously new to the idea like I was the first time I tried.  My first paper sounded pretty good to me, so I didn’t see the need to change much, but if you were to find it somewhere after all these years, I bet I could hack it to pieces in ten short minutes now.  That is how we need to get about our lives if we ever expect to improve as children of God and become spiritually mature.  We must learn to see the changes we need to make, the faults we try to hide from others and only wind up hiding from ourselves.  If I make the same mistakes every day, then my rough draft isn’t rough enough.
            Let me quickly say this: God doesn’t want you constantly discouraged, thinking you are never right with Him because there is always something you could have done “better.”  God wants us to know that we have eternal life, according to John (1 John 5:13), and that happens because of grace—not because you are perfect.  But that is a far cry from the complacency that believes it already has things figured out, doesn’t need to learn anything new, and always sees the faults of others without ever considering that it might possibly have one or two itself.
            Today, write your rough draft on the paper of time.  Do the best you can.  Then tonight, see what needs editing.  If you write the same thing tomorrow, you are still just a beginner in this class, no matter how old you are.  It’s time to get to work.
 
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, Eph 4:15.
 
Dene Ward

It is easier to be radical and extravagant in stating one's opinion than it is to be cautious and reserved.  (Robertson Whiteside, Doctrinal Discourses) 

"Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman [or anyone for that matter] without discretion. " (Prov 11:22).

Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!  Psalm 95:1,2.
 
            Psalm 95 is generally thought to have been one sung during the Feast of Tabernacles.  Meribah and Massah are used in its body, a time in the wilderness when God taught His people a hard lesson.  But this psalm starts just as you would expect a festival psalm to.  Come let us sing, let us make a joyful noise. 
            Just as an interesting point, the Hebrew word translated “sing” in this passage is not a musical word.  Ranan means to emit a stridulous sound (not exactly how I would want my singing described) or to shout, and is indeed translated shout, cry out, rejoice, joy, or triumph half the time in the KJV.  And that makes that opening couplet much more parallel to the second one, “make a joyful noise to him.” 
            About that “joyful noise:” that particular Hebrew word means to mar, especially by breaking, to shout, or to split the ears.  In our words we might say, “He burst my eardrums he was so loud.”  Think about standing at a football stadium in the middle of the game, or beneath a jet engine as it revs for take-off.  That’s the noise we are talking about.  In fact, this word is translated “blow an alarm [with a trumpet]” a couple of times.  As the second verse continues, we are to do this in psalms of praise so singing is involved, but the point of these two words is not the melody but the volume, caused by unabashed joy and celebration.
            You find this often in the psalms.  Noise and clamor seemed to be a part of the Jewish worship.  Perhaps the psalmist, and God as his inspiration, had noticed.  Right in the middle of the psalm, he throws what amounts to a cold bucket of water on all the festivities. 
            Their celebration of the feast had made them forget what the wandering was all about—and it wasn’t fun and games.  An entire generation died because of their faithlessness.  Toward the end of verse 7 he interrupts their self-congratulation that God loves them and cares for them with, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof.   
            Yes, God made a covenant that He would be with them and protect them, but only if they performed their half of the contract.  Their ancestors did not.  God goes on to say that He loathed that generation.  That English word, I am told, is far too mild for the Hebrew idea.  It means they disgusted Him, they nauseated Him, as in “I will spew you out of my mouth” nausea.  Because of that, they did not receive the promised rest, a rest like God’s, a Sabbath rest not because you are tired, but because have finished the task (Heb 4:1-11).
            Those people seemed to think, as the prophets testified, that all it took was loud worship to please God.  The tendency is to judge our own worship as lacking because of this, too.  We ask, “Why don’t we ever do that?” as if anything solemn and quiet is not sincere worship and certainly not acceptable to God.  It is easy to think, as they did, that volume is all that matters. 
            “If you hear his voice” the psalmist says and then makes it clear that hearing involves reverence and obedience.  In order to underscore this emphasis, the psalmist does not go back and say, “Okay, get on with the celebration now.  I just wanted to interject a warning.”  No, this is where he ends it.  He wants this to be the last thing on their minds as they finish singing this psalm:  “Therefore I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest.”
            What started out as a jubilant service ends up with the wrath of God.  I am sure their songs were not quite so ecstatic, their noise not quite so loud, for who can be carefree when he contemplates the wrath of the Almighty, the one the psalmist has already reminded us created everything and holds it in His hand? 
           
Take away from me the noise of your songs; for I will not hear the melody of your viols. But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream, Amos 5:23,24.
 
Dene Ward.

1. 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.
   • Refrain:
     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.
2. He speaks, and the sound of His voice
   Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
   And the melody that He gave to me
   Within my heart is ringing.
3. I’d stay in the garden with Him,
   Though the night around me be falling,
   But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
   His voice to me is calling.

 
This hymn was one of my Daddy's favorites, but I must admit that, as a child, I never really knew what it meant.  I finally figured out my own context, which we will get to later, but it is a far cry from the meaning the author intended.
      Charles Austin Miles was a pharmacist, and evidently a staunch Methodist.  One morning he was reading John 20, where Mary Magdalene comes upon the risen Lord.  In his own telling of how he came to write the song, he suddenly pictured himself as standing there with them watching their interaction as if he, too, were part of the action in a vision "sent from God."  Afterward he wrote the hymn, "by inspiration of the Holy Spirit," he believed.  I have my doubts about that and the vision, but he certainly wrote a beautiful song.
      When someone initially tried to have it included in the official Methodist hymnal the first time, it became apparent that people either loved it or hated it.  The haters made accusations that included "too erotic," which stunned me until I realized the problem. 
      As a musician we are taught the various historical eras of music—Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and then the Twentieth Century which has so many styles it is difficult to classify it, and the 21st?  It may take a few more years for it all to settle out.  Those same eras and characteristics were true of literature and art. 
     The Romantic Era began in the first few decades of the 19th century.  Beethoven was considered a transition composer between the Classical and the Romantic, if that helps.  A lot of people, who were used to the balanced, well-ordered, and impersonal Classical Era were a little shocked at the new music and poetry that was being written.  The poetry was extremely personal and it was full of lush description.  Look through the lyrics above.  "While the dew is still on the roses."  His voice is "so sweet the birds hush their singing."  That is Romantic poetry in a nutshell.  (Remember, we are talking Romantic as in a historic style, not as in romance novels.)
      So the song is about Mary and Jesus meeting together just after his resurrection.  "The joy we share as we tarry there none other has ever known," is a direct reference to the fact that Mary was the first to see him.  At that point in time, no other person had felt what she was feeling then.  If you have sung the newer hymn "Rabboni", this is the first version.
      One line might be a little inaccurate.  It seems fairly obvious that Mary and Jesus did not stay in that garden all day long, though the third verse mentions that "the night around them is falling."  But the point Mr. Miles makes is a valid one.  For Mary to stay there would have been contrary to the Lord's purpose in appearing to her.  She was to go tell the apostles.  She was the first witness.  And as a woman in that day and culture, the fact that the gospel writers chose to use a woman as a witness adds to the evidence of truth.  Women were considered unreliable witnesses.  If the whole story were made up, surely they would have chosen a witness other than a woman.
      So what had I been thinking before this as I sang this song?  I saw the garden as a metaphor for prayer.  When I pray, I am alone with the Lord in a beautiful place, but as much as I would like to stay, I have to leave him sooner or later.  Not that I can't speak to him whenever I want to during the day, as I often do, but that formal alone time has to end.
      I really don't see a problem with thinking of the song that way.  The Lord doesn't want us down on our knees cloistered away from the world all day long.  He wants us out in it, seeking the lost, serving others, and spreading his influence.  We have to go back to "the world of woe" eventually, but while we are there, isn't the experience just as wonderful as Mary's, spending time with our risen Lord, knowing his death has saved us and his resurrection has allowed us to someday spend that time with him forever?
 
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).  (John 20:11-16).
 
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

Israel's exodus from Egypt is one of the most significant events in the Bible and references to it recur throughout the Psalms and the prophets. Thus, it surprised me to learn that the New Testament uses the word, "exodus" only three times. Joseph commanded the Israelites to carry his bones from Egypt at their exodus (Heb 11:22). The other two references encourage us on to our triumph.

Translations often obscure a depth of meaning the author intended to convey. In Luke's account of the transfiguration, Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus "of his exodus which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem" (Lk 9:31). Most translations replace "exodus" with "departure" or "decease." With the use of exodus, Luke injected into the three-way conversation all the triumph of Jehovah God over the gods of Egypt, all the power of His emancipation of Israel from slavery to be His people, all the hope of a way opened through the sea all the way to the Promised Land.  Of course, we understand that through the cross and the resurrection, Jesus did triumph over all the forces of evil and did set us free from sin and death—the true exodus by which Israel's fades to insignificance.

Peter reminds his readers of basic truths to stir them up because he knows his death approaches and so that "at any time after my exodus you will be able to call these things to mind." (2Pet 1:15). Inasmuch as the very next thing Peter mentions is the mount of transfiguration, it seems probable that he intended a connection to the Lord's exodus triumph. In the last sentence before he spoke of his personal exodus, Peter exclaimed that just as the way was blasted through the Red Sea for Israel so also the way is prepared for us. "For as long as you practice these things … the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you." (2Pet 1:10-11). So heaven is not a wish or a dream. If we abound in faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly kindness and love the way to the Promised Land is as sure as the resurrection of Jesus and formed by the same power.

Thus, in speaking of his own imminent death as his exodus, Peter connects Jesus' triumphant exodus from this sinful world to our own sure hope of that same exodus.

"Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. "(2Pet 1:1-11).
 

When I did my internship as a music teacher in the public schools, I looked up one day to find my professor walking into the music room behind the fifth grade class scheduled for that half hour.  My heart sank.  I did have a lesson prepared, but it was not a wow-zer.  It taught a valid musical concept, one I could easily build on in future lessons—the first of what educators called a “unit.”  I had prepared a lesson plan with appropriate behavioral objectives.  It met all expectations and requirements.  But to me, it seemed so—well, ordinary.
            I taught that lesson twice in a row with no problems.  The students caught on quickly and I met the objectives with no difficulty.  After the second group left I approached the tall, slim, dignified looking lady, expecting her to meet me with, at best, a mediocre assessment.
            “Good job,” she said, and when my jaw dropped she added, “Listen:  they can’t all be showstoppers.  You taught an important lesson and you taught it well.  They learned exactly what you set out to teach them and they enjoyed it.”
            I learned something that day, something I keep reminding myself as I approach the computer day after day, struggling sometimes to find something to write.  Just do your best.  Turn in a good effort, be faithful to the Word God has entrusted you with, and let Him take care of the rest.
            Sometimes I hear from people telling me that what I wrote was exactly what they needed that day.  A few times it was a piece I almost deleted because I was so dissatisfied with it.  The same thing has happened to Keith.  When you preach two sermons a week, every week, you occasionally produce one just because you needed one to fill the time one Sunday morning, not because you were particularly enthralled with the subject.  Many times people have complimented those very sermons.  At least one of them led directly to a conversion.
            Many times we feel unnoticed and totally useless to the Lord.  We think we are doing nothing for God because nothing we do matters.  Nonsense.  More people are watching you than you know.  You need to learn the same lesson I did. 
             Every day can't be a showstopper.  Some days are so ordinary as to make you wonder why you exist.  You get up, you go to work, you come home and spend time with the family.  You pay your bills on time and help the neighbor with his ornery lawn mower, perhaps even mowing his yard for him.  You study your Bible, and then you hit the sack and get up and go again the next morning, an ordinary--you think--honest, hard-working Joe.
           Or you get up and down all night with the baby and barely know you are sending your older ones off to school because you are so tired.  But then you still do the grocery shopping and prepare the meals and launder the clothes.  You wash dishes and scrub floors and dust the countertops and shelves, change the sheets, then throw together an extra casserole for a sick neighbor, help the kids with their Bible lesson and then their homework, and fall into bed exhausted.
            Or you sit at home alone because you are too old and sick and frail to get out any longer, so you watch a little TV, read your Bible, call a few folks on the sick list (besides yourself), write a few get well and sympathy cards, then go to bed and start all over again tomorrow.
          And all of you wonder, what good is that to anyone?  Well, you never know, especially when you count God into the mix.  He can work wonders with the weak, the frightened, and the average.  He can take the smallest seed you plant and make a huge tree out of it.  Don’t you remember a parable along those lines?  In God’s hands, nothing you do is just filling up time.
          So get up every morning and do what you are supposed to do in the way you are supposed to do it.  Someone out there needs to see you do that, and if you do, God will take care of the rest.
 
I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that plants anything, neither he that waters; but God that gives the increase. Now he that plants and he that waters are one: but each shall receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow-workers...  1Cor 3:6-9.
 
Dene Ward
 

Keith has been keeping a journal since Lucas was born.  We always use a five subject spiral notebook, beginning a new page for every day, and come within a couple dozen pages of filling it completely.  That means we have stored up forty-three of those notebooks and are working on the forty-fourth.  Sometimes we pull one out and read it, usually laughing out loud here and there, occasionally cringing at something stupid we did or some ordeal we went through and can hardly imagine now. 
              Keith has made an index of "important things" in our lives, one manila cardstock page for each year, all clipped together.  If we need to know when we purchased something that has gone kaput, we can pull out half a dozen sheets from about the right time, and quickly skim them until we find it.  If we need to know when one or the other of us had a surgery or the last tetanus shot or any number of other things, five minutes will tell us all we need to know.
            At first, as a young mother who scarcely had time to think, and certainly not much time for myself, I hardly wrote in the things.  But as the boys grew up and no longer needed Mommy every few minutes, could dress themselves, bathe themselves, and entertain themselves, I began to add a page here and there—to get my side in, which is our inside joke about it.  For well over the past twenty years I, too, write in it every day.  The only problem I have is that now that we are together 24/7, if he tells everything we have done in a day, I have nothing left to write except, "Yep."
            This year we have had a bit of a problem.  Suddenly, usually on the edges of the page, the pen stops writing.  These are the same style and company's pens we have used for decades.  Occasionally I can pick up another pen and fill in the missing letters, but not every time.  It makes this usually pleasant chore a real aggravation. 
             The other night Keith left me to go study, carrying the same pen with him that had just refused to write not only on the edges of the page but smack in the middle, too.  He pulled out a sheet of cheap notebook paper to take notes as he studied and the pen wrote just fine anywhere on the page.  That made him think.  He came back to the journal and pulled it out.  We have always used Mead notebooks.  This was one we found on a super-cheap sale, a Stellar—which it evidently is not!  The problem was not the pen; the problem was the paper, some sort of finish that kept the ink from writing on it in scattered places.  Unfortunately, we bought two of the things.  That second one will go somewhere else, not as our next journal, and we will just have to suffer through the rest of the year with this one.
            For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  (Jer 31:33).
           In this time of the new covenant, God is writing his law upon our hearts.  He expects that our "obedience of faith" as Paul calls it twice in the book of Romans, will be "obedience from the heart" (Rom 6:17).  That heart will "delight to do his will" (Psa 37:31; Rom 7:22).  That kind of heart will "know righteousness" (Isa 51:7).  That kind of heart, pure and sincere even as it follows God's rules carefully, is what He demands from His people. 
            God writes on our hearts through the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 3:3).  As we fill ourselves with His Word, our hearts are being etched with a marker far more perfect than the ones we use.  God's writing implement works just fine.  If He is having trouble writing on your heart, it's not the pen that is at fault, it's your heart.
 
And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts  (2Cor 3:3).
 
Dene Ward

My little boys used to bring me bouquets all the time.  Sometimes it was Queen Anne’s lace.  Sometimes it was a bright blue spiderwort.  Sometimes it was a rain lily or a stem of pink clover.  Sometimes it was just a dandelion bloom.  All of these are wildflowers, what any suburban lawn grower would call “weeds.”  Yet I put them all in vases of various sizes because they were all precious to me.  My little fellows had no idea the difference between domesticated flowers and wildflowers.  All they knew was “flowers,” and out here in the country we are surrounded by them.
            But even they would never have gathered a bunch of them, ripped off the blooms and handed me a fistful of stems.  The problem with religion today, including some of my own brothers and sisters, is they value the stems and not the flowers. 
            A few months ago someone told me how listening to a certain teacher had made his day so much better.  I anxiously awaited the lesson he had heard, but he never once said a word about the content.  All I heard was the teacher’s name, at least three times, and how that person had made his day better.  What he had done was throw away the flower and put the empty stem in a vase of water to admire.
            I understand having favorite speakers and teachers.  Nothing makes me happier than to hear someone compliment my husband and my sons.  But none of them teach for the glory.  They teach to help people. If all people remember is their names, then they haven’t been much help, have they? 
            If I can’t tell you what a person taught me, did I learn anything, or was I just entertained for a few brief moments?  One of my favorite teachers isn’t much of an entertainer, but I always go away with a new way of looking at things, even things I have been looking at for decades now.  He makes me think, and he makes me see the possibilities.  He makes me want to go look at it again myself, and I often do.  He makes me examine my life in ways I never have and want to change for the better.  Can your favorite speaker do those things, or does he just make you laugh and feel good?
            There is absolutely nothing wrong with going to someone for help with your Bible study.  God did ordain the role of teachers in spiritual things (Eph 4:11).  He meant for us to have brothers and sisters we could go to with questions and problems.  Paul told Timothy to pass on what he knew to “faithful men.”  He told the older to train the younger.  But God also holds us individually accountable for what we do with what we hear.  “Work out your own salvation,” Paul told the Philippians, well after Jesus had already said, “If the blind lead the blind, they shall both fall into the ditch.”  It is up to each of us to be careful to whom we listen and to examine what they say against the Word (Acts 17:11).
            A good teacher doesn’t care if he receives praise or not—that is not his purpose.  All he does is hold up the Word of God and present it to you.  “What is the straw to the wheat?” God asks in Jer 23:28.  That word “straw” has several meanings according to Strong’s, and one of them is the wheat stalk, or stem.  Which is more important, God is saying, the stem or the wheat it holds up?
            I knew a man once who nearly tore a church up because he insisted on “his turn” to teach when not only was he a lousy teacher, he didn’t even know the Word of God accurately enough to teach it.  Clearly, it was all about the glory of teaching to him, and clearly he needed the admonition in Rom 12:3:  For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
            I know the temptation.  So did Paul.  I refrain from [boasting], so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited, 2 Cor 12:6,7.  It shouldn’t matter to me what people say about my speaking or writing.  What should matter is how many I reach, how many are helped and encouraged and how many souls are saved.  And that is what should matter to those who listen and read too. 
            And do you know why this is so important?  If you value the who above the what, then someday, sooner or later, you will be deceived into believing a lie.  Even good teachers make mistakes, and you might be deceived by an honest error too.  That is why James tells us in 3:1 that teachers will receive the “greater condemnation.”  Teaching is a responsibility, and anyone who craves the glory is manifestly unable to handle that burden.
            Most of the preachers and teachers I know will tell you the same things I am now.  If you want to make me happy, then use what I give you, remember it and grow.  Share it with others who might need it.  Even if you forget where you got it, just pass the good news along.  That is what really matters.  Give them a bouquet of flowers, not a handful of stems.
 
For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself, Gal 6:3.
 
Dene Ward