psalmthing to chew on: psalm 53

this is a really short psalm and i don’t have a lot to say about it… seems like another bad day in the office for David, starting with:

‘The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is no one who does good.’ [verse 1]

i mean, come on now David, that seems a little overly dramatic… and are you including yourself in that or is this another typical everyone-else-sucks-but-I’m-good that we’ve seen so much of?

but the first line is at least true. i’ve said this before and i will probably say it again – i believe that it takes a lot more faith to not believe in God, than to believe in God.

i get this from looking at my little finger. just stop and look at yours for a second. now bend it. i mean that’s a little finger and it freakingly amazingly brilliantly designed. creation speaks of a creator. to think an explosion happened and somehow that resulted. now add in your whole body. now look at it under a microscope and start thinking about atoms and DNA and smaller and more intricate and you have to go WOW, something is happening. something has happened here. the fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’

you can come up with the conclusion that it’s not the same God i believe in, but there has to be something. and that’s a start.

and he continues with this:

‘God looks down from heaven on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.
Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt;
there is no one who does good, not even one.’ [verse 2,3]

this reminds me of the story of Elijah, who after seeing God pour fire from heaven on his water-drenched sacrifice in 1 Kings 18 and the death of hundreds of Baal worshipers, ends up fleeing from one woman and alone and depressed in a cave:

‘He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”’ [1 Kings 19, 14-18]

woe is me, it’s just me, i’m the only one who gets this… No, you’re not David. No, you’re not Elijah. No, you’re not [insert your name here]. I have this. It is My kingdom and I care about it more than you do. That person you are so concerned about, I love them more than you do.

Trust Me. Give me your hand, get up off your face and let’s do this thing…

[To return to the Intro page and be connected to any of the other Psalms i have walked through before now, click here]

if God doesn’t pitch up…

one of my favourite freaky stories in the bible [and there’s lots of them – 2 kings 2.23 story of elisha and the baldyhead bear-mauling incident] is the story of elijah found in 1 kings 17.

now a bunch of things happen here – there is elijah being fed miraculously by ravens, there is the miracle of the flour and oil of the widow not running out and then the widow’s son mysteriously dies.

it is one of those crisis of faith moment stories many of us have experienced – having just witnessed this crazy miracle of the continuing food supply, the widow is now accusing the prophet [and God by association] of having it in for her.

what comes next is incredibly dangerous and as with so many bible stories, we have lost the edge of the danger because we know how it ends – shadrach, meshach and abednego risking being tossed in the fiery furnace, daniel risking the lion’s den, david heading out to take on the giant goliath armed with a slingshot, gideon with his muchly reduced army taking on an army whose tents were described as ‘swarms of locusts’ [judges 6.5] armed with torches and musical instruments and peter stepping out of the boat on to the water…

we know how they end so we read them and get excited by God and what He has done, but i think it is important to go back and read this stories as the person really desperately hoping that God is going to make a dramatic appearance…

so you have this widow and her dead son and elijah is taken to the room with the dead son and in 1 kings 17.21 it says this, ‘Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, let this boy’s life return to him.”

why is that a cool story? because it worked. God heard elijah’s prayer and resurrects the boy and he lives again. yay God, well done elijah.

but what if he hadn’t? if God didn’t pitch up then you have a grown man, climbing on to and lying on top of the body of a dead boy… now i’m not sure we can tell from the story if he did that twice with no results and then the third time God answered because that would add in a whole other dimension, but from elijah’s point of view it has to be coming from a point of ‘i really believe this is what God wants me to do and i am going to risk reputation and possibly life to be faith-full and obedient to what i have heard God say.’

“yeah, but it’s elijah”

the same elijah who goes on to witness another robe-wetting moment on top of mount carmel where if God doesn’t show up with the sacrifice then he will lose reputation and life for sure… but also the same elijah who shortly after that incident runs away because a woman threatens him and ends up moping to God that he is the only one left [when God secretly has thousands of other faithful followers stashed away in a cave] and so clearly there were times when ‘but it’s elijah’ was not good enough to guarantee success and bravery in the face of consequences.

there are so many others like this – noah builds a giant boat in the desert, Jesus spits into a blind man’s eye, peter and john tell a crippled man to get up and walk… so many miracle stories that only took place because someone was faithful and obedient to what they heard God calling them to do… if you have known me long enuff then you will have probly heard the story of the safe house for kids in cape town that was birthed out of a worship meeting [http://www.uthandolenkosi.co.za] – a lot of people called them crazy, even some pastors took action to try and protect them from the foolish thing they were going to do… and yet because God said it, and because people responded faithfully it happened.

i think it is important to finish off by saying that the point is not to go out and do stupid things… if you go to the local swimming pool and step out on the water you will sink. why? because God did not invite you to. the key here is listening out for what God is saying to you and acting on it regardless of whether it makes sense or not to those around you. [altho seeking good counsel from strong Jesus-following people around you to make sure it is God’s thing He is calling you to and not just a hare-brained scheme is worth doing]

but if God does call you to lie on top of a dead kid and call out to Him three times, and you’re sure it’s God speaking, then you had better act on that and you will only know whether God is going to show up or not the moment it is too late if He doesn’t…

jARS of cRACKEd

“i believe Lord, help me overcome my unbelief.” [Mark 9.24]

a verse i am really drawn to in the Bible that falls nicely alongside my life themesong of ‘there must be more than this’ – the knowledge that God can do it, but will He choose to…?

and the other day, altho it’s not very CC (Christianly Correct) as i lay with my wife crying out in immense pain with the hugest of mammoth headaches to end all headaches and i prayed and cried out to God and prayed in tongues and asked and begged and pleaded and and and…

silence of the lamb.

my faith cracked. it didn’t shatter or break and i don’t not believe in God and i’m not going to walk away from being a passionate God follower or anything… but in the moment that i, we, really needed God to do something that,  for a being who can speak a universe into being in a word or breath, is the smallest kind of thing imaginable, we just didn’t see it… and i didn’t really know what to do with that, not with my wife crying out in agonising pain.

you see the theory is quite easy. it’s very easy to believe in God and speak about God and trust in God and all of that. but when you need God, you need God and it would be so very nice if He would appear in the way you would hope and expect.

‘able to do immeasurably more than all we can hope or imagine?’ – it was one headache…

Elijah witnessed one of the greatest miracles in the Bible when God sends fire down from heaven to obliterate his offering after the prophets of Baal have spent all day cring out to their ‘god’ and cutting themselves and dancing and performing, but the very next moment he is sitting in a cave feeling sorry for himself crying “kill me God, i am the only one left” and yet God had reserved 7000 somewhere else in a different cave… God’s plan was already in action.

altho to be honest, i still have largely to see the fire from heaven miracle before the “where are you God?” question… but i hear of other peoples all the time.

and so “i (do) believe Lord, help me overcome my unbelief.”