“Life is like a game of cards. Reliability is the ace, industry the king, politeness the queen, thrift the jack” (Edward Howe).

SIMPLE RELIABILITY IS A FAR MORE VALUABLE, AND POWERFUL, TRAIT THAN MANY PEOPLE REALIZE. It may well be the ace in life’s game of cards, as Edward Howe says. If people can’t safely and consistently rely on us, then whatever other admirable qualities we may possess, they won’t be of much use in the long run. Reliability is a major ingredient in the glue that holds everything else together.

Fact. Those who have to deal with us should be able to count on our reliability in matters of fact. That is, they should be able to take it for granted that we’ll deal truthfully with them, whether in word or in deed. It takes many years of honesty to build up a reputation for that kind of reliability, but there’s no more worthy goal we could have.

Follow-through. For every person who says he’ll do something, there aren’t many who can be relied upon to do it, come what may. These days, absolute dependability in the performance of one’s commitments is a rare quality. Everywhere we turn, people are making excuses for a failure to honor their obligations. But if follow-through is rare, that only means it will be more valuable when we acquire that trait. “Doing what we say” will distinguish us as being different.

Friendship. There have probably been few friendships that have not been tested at some point by adversity or conflict, and friendships that can stand the test are both refreshing and strengthening. Wouldn’t it be good to give our friends the gift of reliability? Wouldn’t they appreciate knowing that they can count on our friendship?

As Edward Bulwer-Lytton suggests in the quotation below, those who are “of consequence” in the world are those who can be relied upon. It’s true, just being reliable won’t win you the Nobel Prize, and it won’t get you nominated for “Person of the Year” at any of the major magazines. But being honest in what you say and do, reliable in the performance of your duty, and faithful in each of your friendships will make you a great person in most of the ways that matter very much.

“A man is already of consequence in the world when it is known that we can implicitly rely upon him. Often I have known a man to be preferred in stations of honor and profit because he had this reputation: when he said he knew a thing, he knew it, and when he said he would do a thing, he did it” (Edward Bulwer-Lytton).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“And they commanded the people, saying, ‘When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests, the Levites, bearing it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure. Do not come near it, that you may know the way by which you must go, for you have not passed this way before'” (Joshua 3:3,4).

I LOVE MAPS, AND THE OLDER THEY ARE, THE MORE THEY FASCINATE ME. Especially intriguing to me are maps of the world made in ancient times by cartographers who knew little of the world beyond their own immediate area. These mapmakers would draw the territory that was known at the time, and beyond that, they would just leave blank space and write, “Here be dragons.” It was assumed that if territory lay beyond the bounds of current knowledge, then dragons must surely dwell there, and any explorers who ventured into that mysterious zone should be on their guard.

Metaphorically speaking, there is a good deal of unknown “territory” in the lives of all of us. For example, the future lies off the edge of the map. Nobody has been there yet, and no one knows what that territory will be like. For all we know, “dragons” may dwell there. But even in the present, there are activities, endeavors, and experiences that lie beyond our present knowledge, and that which is unfamiliar often seems scary. Here be dragons!

If we are Christians, of course, God is our guide, so we don’t need to know what the territory is like through which we will pass. We only need to trust that He will see us through, possible dragons notwithstanding. No doubt He would say to us, as He said to Israel when they were about to cross the Jordan, that we should follow His lead, “for you have not passed this way before.”

But to my way of thinking, the thrill of the unknown is a great part of the joy of being a Christian. Yes, prudence counsels caution when we face the unknown, but faith counsels courage. Here be dragons, you say? Fine. I am eager to see them and, if need be, fight them. Whatever else it may be, life in Christ is never dull. Of all the adventures in this world, it is truly the Great Adventure.

Oh, the depths of the fathomless deep,
Oh, the riddle and secret of things,
And the voice through the darkness heard,
And the rush of winnowing wings!
(Sir Lewis Morris)

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her” (Genesis 29:20).

LIFE CAN BE HARD NO DOUBT, BUT WE OFTEN MAKE IT HARDER THAN IT HAS TO BE BY ATTACKING OUR PROBLEMS IN THE WRONG WAY. By the brute power of will, we try to force doors open that would yield quite easily to desire and affection and love. Driven only by “have to,” we lose the boundless energy of “want to.”

One of the most cherished of all Jesus’ sayings is the one in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” But how many of us really do find this to be true? Do we truly experience Jesus’ yoke as being “easy” and His burden “light”?

Loving God is the key to the easiness of His yoke and the lightness of His burden, because if we love God, we’ll also love to do His will. Even the concept of God’s law will be one we find congenial. “I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8).

What John wrote is true: “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). Those who love God will be diligent to keep His commandments, certainly. But more than that, it is only those who genuinely love God who will find His commandments easy. That which would be burdensome to willpower alone is found by love to be light indeed.

As we seek God, let us be sure that our seeking is energized by love. Our adversary will surely place obstacles in our path, and these will be difficulties that have been crafted by his shrewd intelligence. But while it is sobering to realize how much the devil knows about our strengths and weaknesses, the one thing he does not understand is love, and his strong-arm tactics are simply no match for that patient power. Just as the seven years Jacob served for Rachel “seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her,” the years of our pilgrimage in this difficult world will hurry by if it is love that moves us forward.

“Love has the power to give in a moment what toil can scarcely reach in an age” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 3:10).

AS CHILDREN, WE SOMETIMES EXCUSED OUR FAILURE TO KEEP A PROMISE BY SAYING THAT WE “HAD OUR FINGERS CROSSED.” The promise was not binding (we said) because we didn’t really mean it, as indicated by the secret crossing of our fingers. A lawyer would say the contract was not a “bona fide” (“good faith”) commitment — we never intended to do what we said.

In the days of Jeremiah, the people in Jerusalem and Judah had become guilty of idolatry just like the ten northern tribes of Israel. Having been called to repentance by the preaching of the prophets, there had been occasional reforms, but the repentance had not been genuine or thorough. “Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the Lord.”

Were their fingers crossed when they said they would return to God? Did they not even intend to repent? We don’t know. But in any case, the Lord said they did not return to Him with a “whole heart.” The person lacking a “whole heart” is one whose mind is not made up. He may not be deliberately dishonest in the statement of what he plans to do, but his plans are complicated by doubts. Like a man in a wedding ceremony who pledges to love his wife with “all his heart” but has not really closed the door of his heart to a previous relationship, the people of Judah only pretended that they had put away every “god” except God.

The opposite of wholeheartedness is double-mindedness. It is the problem of the person whose mind is torn between competing loyalties — and it is a problem we are told to get rid of. “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:8).

There is no damage to our souls that Christ cannot repair. But He will not be manipulated by fake repentance on our part. If we expect His forgiveness and help, we’d better lay it all down before Him, with extreme honesty. No exceptions and no excuses will be allowed, and if we have in mind anything other than complete repentance, we’d better not insult Him by saying that we’re sorry.

“Christ can do wonders with a broken heart if He is given all the pieces” (Old Saying).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“. . . then hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive and render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways, for you, you only, know the hearts of the children of mankind” (2 Chronicles 6:30).

SOLOMON’S PRAYER WAS THAT, IN THE YEARS TO COME, GOD WOULD HEAR THE PRAYERS OF ISRAEL WHEN THEY CRIED OUT TO HIM IN DISTRESS. “Render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways,” he said, “for you, you only, know the hearts of the children of mankind.” Solomon knew that one important facet of prayer is that God knows the thoughts and motives of our hearts.

Although it is not always true that our troubles are the result of God’s chastening for our sins, sometimes that is precisely the case (Hebrews 12:5-11). In regard to Israel as a nation, Solomon foresaw the same thing that Moses had warned about: if the people were unfaithful, God would bring calamity upon them (Deuteronomy 28:15-68). At such times, their prayers for relief would need to be prayers for forgiveness. So Solomon hoped that God would “hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive.”

When we pray today, three thousand years removed from the days of Solomon, what kinds of things does God know about our hearts when we pray to Him, especially for His forgiveness? It is to be hoped that He sees sincere hearts, truly penitent and willing to accept whatever requirements He has set for our forgiveness. Unfortunately, God often sees today what He saw in ancient Israel: careless, complacent hearts that are deep in denial of the truth.

It has cost God an enormous sacrifice to be able to forgive us. Knowing that, we should at all costs avoid presuming upon His grace, flippantly tossing off requests for His forgiveness as if such requests were a casual thing. We are told that, in Jesus Christ, we may come confidently before God’s throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16), but we had better not come with anything less than a no-strings-attached commitment to change our ways. “No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). We may fool others about our hearts, but God is not deceived. He knows our motives — and His mercy is a severe mercy that screens out the triflers and pretenders.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat.
(Julia Ward Howe)

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

GOD’S LOVE IS A STRONG THING, AND STRONG THINGS ARE NOT FULLY APPRECIATED UNTIL WE ARE SURROUNDED BY WEAKNESS. The ugly, painful hardship of human experience does not contradict or call into question the love of God. To the contrary, that is where we learn God’s love the best. The way to God is not over, under, or around our difficulties — it is through them.

Job is the classic example of how this works. He was not anything less than a godly man before his sufferings began (Job 1:8), but it was only afterward that he could say, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5,6). God’s trustworthiness had become so much more real to Job that he was ashamed to think how little faith he’d had before. Likewise, when Paul prayed for the removal of his “thorn in the flesh,” God’s answer was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

But if God’s love for us is best learned in hardship, the same is also true of our love for God. We value most highly those things that have cost us something significant, and it is not likely that we’ll love God deeply until we’ve passed through some serious suffering with His love as our guide. When Jesus explained to Peter that Satan would sift him as wheat, He said, “But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:32).

When we live for no higher goal than to be pain-free, supposing that God “loves” us too much to let anything “harmful” happen to us, what happens is something very harmful indeed: we lose our best chance to learn what God’s love really means. The best things in life get away from us when we grasp them too tightly. Life is found in the losing of it. “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake,” Paul said. “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

“The love of God is the ultimate reality, the deepest and strongest force in the universe; and it is revealed to the man who resolutely girds himself to the conflict” (David Smith).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

He flies through the air with the greatest of ease,
This daring young man on the flying trapeze.
(George Leybourne)

HAVING LEARNED HOW TO DO SOMETHING EASILY IS ONE OF LIFE’S MOST WONDERFUL SATISFACTIONS. Especially when the thing was very difficult or awkward to begin with, there is a wholesome gratification that now comes from being able to do it easily. And not only do we enjoy what we ourselves can do easily, but we enjoy the ease with which others can do difficult things. Just last evening, I watched again the amazing performance of Michael Flatley and his troupe in Lord of the Dance. Irish step dancing is no easy thing, but Flatley and his friends do it with such joyous, exuberant ease that the result is enthralling, especially to those who know how hard it is.

In each of our lives, there are a number of helpful things we need to be able to do, and we should be willing to pay the price (in terms of discipline, sacrifice, and hard work) to do these things graciously and easily. Most good things are hard before they’re easy; that’s just the way the world works. So we have to persevere through our various apprenticeships and not give up until we’ve gained the mastery.

When the word “ease” is mentioned, however, many people think not of learning to do difficult things easily but of avoiding difficulty altogether. Some seem to envision a “life of ease” as a life where nothing difficult or unpleasant ever has to be done. And unfortunately, our culture seems to be headed in the direction of worshiping that kind of ease. But as W. Somerset Maugham said, “Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.” That’s just as true for individuals as it is for nations.

But properly defined, ease is something we should pursue. We’ll probably do more of the things we ought to do when they’ve become easy for us. But when we see people who can do those things easily right now, it would be foolish to want their skill without accepting the work that went into getting that skill. The “life of ease” is not one of lazy leisure but one of easy action — a life where good deeds aren’t as difficult as they used to be. Getting to that point is anything but easy.

“A life of ease is a difficult pursuit” (William Cowper).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).

SAVING FAITH INVOLVES THREE THINGS: CREDENCE IN THE TRUTH, CONFIDENCE IN GOD, AND CONSTANCY IN OUR COMMITMENT. We must finish what we started when we confessed our faith and were baptized into Christ, and we will be lost if we can’t say what Paul said at the end of his life: I have kept the faith.

Reaching forward is an important idea, and most people would say it’s a good thing to do. But I hear some folks talking about it as if it were optional. It is, however, anything but optional. When we obeyed the gospel, we committed ourselves to reaching forward. We made what amounted to a public promise to strive for heaven the rest of our lives. And if we ever quit doing that, we’ve broken the most important promise we ever made.

But the promise to keep the faith and to keep reaching forward is like other promises in that it often ends up being harder to keep than we thought it would be at the time we made it. Even if we carefully “count the cost,” we can’t know all of what the future may entail. So our commitment to keep the faith is the signing of an open-ended contract: we must keep the faith . . . no matter what.

In the Scriptures, there is a steady emphasis on what we would call “following through.” Hear Paul, for example, urging the Corinthians to do as they said they would about the contribution for the needy saints in Jerusalem: “You also must complete the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to desire it, so there also may be a completion out of what you have” (2 Corinthians 8:11).

If we take God seriously, keeping our commitment to Him is going to involve some surprises. Some of these may be pleasant, but others will be difficult. (Imagine Abraham’s surprise the morning he got up and heard the Lord say, “I want you to sacrifice your son.”) But if the only promises we keep are the easy ones, what kind of character is that? When David asked, “Lord, who may abide in Your tabernacle?” (Psalm 15:1), one of the answers was: “He who swears to his own hurt and does not change” (v.4). If you don’t know what that means, then try this translation: “He who stands by his pledge at any cost” (Jerusalem Bible).

“Dependability: fulfilling what I agreed to do even though it requires unexpected sacrifices” (Bill Gothard).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Then Joshua said to the people, ‘You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him.’ And they said, ‘We are witnesses.’ He said, ‘Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel'” (Joshua 24:22,23).

HAVING CHALLENGED ISRAEL TO CHOOSE WHETHER THEY WOULD SERVE GOD, JOSHUA THEN CALLED ON THEM TO PUT THEIR CHOICE INTO ACTION. If it is your decision to serve God, Joshua said, then “incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.”

That is a powerful way of putting it, is it not? Incline your heart to the Lord. The NIrV renders it “Give yourselves completely to the Lord,” and the CEV, “You must decide once and for all that you really want to obey the Lord God of Israel.” In a related text, we read of David’s charge to Israel at the end of his life: “Now set your mind and heart to seek the Lord your God” (1 Chronicles 22:19). In all such passages, we hear God commanding His people to think of Him as more than a “maybe.” Their hearts must be inclined to Him. They must fix their minds on Him. They must — and here is the main idea — be devoted to Him. This devotion must be the result of a conscious, deliberate choice they have made.

Of course, there is language in the Scriptures where God is the one who is asked to incline the hearts of His people. For example, “May [the Lord] . . . incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his rules” (1 Kings 8:57,58). And, “O Lord, . . . keep forever such purposes and thoughts in the hearts of your people, and direct their hearts toward you” (1 Chronicles 29:18). There is no contradiction here. God will help us and surround us with good influences, but it is we who must make the decision. In the end, only we have the power to decide what (or Whom) we will incline our hearts to.

If we are deciding whether to obey the gospel of Christ, this is what it all comes down to: having alienated ourselves from God, will we or won’t we give Him back our ultimate loyalty? Had we never sinned, He would have always had our loyalty. But now, in Christ, He is making it possible for us to “incline our hearts” to Him once again. This is good news, much too good not to embrace enthusiastically.

“It is but right that our hearts should be on God, when the heart of God is so much on us” (Richard Baxter).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“When pride comes, then comes shame; but with the humble is wisdom” (Proverbs 11:2).

PRIDE IS THE ARCHENEMY OF WISDOM. For that reason, anything that stirs up our sense of pride and self-sufficiency is something that will hinder our wisdom, while those things that humble us and remind us of our dependence on God are those that increase our wisdom. Whatever increases pride, contributes to foolishness.

Ironically, even our learning can get in the way of our wisdom. The more we learn and the wiser we think we are in comparison to ordinary people, the less wise we become in actual fact. Paul wrote, “If anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know” (1 Corinthians 8:2). And he advised, “Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise” (1 Corinthians 3:18). Charles Haddon Spurgeon caught this insight with a vivid metaphor: “The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.”

We tend to think wisdom is the thing that enables people to “climb the ladder” in this life. Thus we generally expect the “master” to be a wiser person than his “servant.” If it wasn’t by working smarter as well as harder, how did he get to be the master in the first place? There may be some truth to that, but whatever may be wisdom’s role in enabling people to climb the ladder, it’s still a fact that the higher we go, the harder it is to hold on to our wisdom. The servant has some obvious disadvantages, but he does have one thing going for him: he has a better chance than his master to learn from life, simply because the humbler circumstances of life are those from which we can learn the most (Deuteronomy 8:3). Not only that, the humbler circumstances are those that keep us in a more open and teachable frame of mind.

In Ecclesiastes, there is this relevant observation: “Better a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who will be admonished no more” (Ecclesiastes 4:13). If wisdom is a priority with us, let us be careful about the things we aspire to in this temporary world. Wisdom comes from washing the feet of others, not from having our own feet washed by others.

“Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar” (William Wordsworth).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com