Government; July 11, 2019

Posted on July 13, 2019 by jgarrott

1 Kings 10:9 “Praise be to the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and placed you on the throne of Israel. Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you king, to maintain justice and righteousness.”

I am a bit distracted, because in Japanese “to make king” is a homophone for “to vomit.” I type the Scripture phonetically, and that was the way Microsoft insisted on rendering it! I may have “Pun Disease,” but in Japanese it’s unavoidable! With that aside, there really is an important truth here. The queen of Sheba was not Jewish, but she had heard enough about Yahweh, and Solomon, to want to check things out for herself. What she saw impressed her so much that she wanted all of it that she could get. There is a very strong tradition that included a child with Solomon, and that is where Ethiopian Jews come from. The world naturally loves that angle, but we need to focus on just what she saw that impressed her so much, and she says it here. Human societies have always had governments of one sort or another, and they are all over the place in both style and quality. Seeing how Solomon governed, the queen of Sheba realized that it was all because of the love of God. Paul also realized that governments are God’s idea, even though he lived in a time of persecution. (Romans 13:1) Anarchy and chaos are out of line with God! In America and a number of other countries we have representative democracy, which is pretty new in terms of human history. In that, we are given the opportunity and the responsibility to choose those who will govern us. We need to be very aware of human imperfection, and seek God’s will in every detail. The freedoms that are enjoyed in America are a direct reflection of the free will God gives every human being, and as such they have much the same result, with some people using them for good and others misusing them for evil. In terms of government, we need to seek those who will indeed “maintain justice and righteousness,” for the benefit of all.

I was never particularly political until about 10 years ago, but at this point I am pretty involved, at least emotionally. Since I live in Japan and don’t have excess funds for donations, my participation is in signing online petitions and praying. I do plenty of both of those! (And, yes, I do vote absentee.) I need to keep my focus on God and love, as well as His holiness, rather than on human beings, either admirable or otherwise. As I often tell others, people will always disappoint us in one way or another. God alone is totally righteous and faithful. I’ve got to keep my heart fixed on the One who will never disappoint, and rest, relax, and rejoice in Him.

Father, thank You for this reminder. Thank You for all that You are doing, both right here and around the world. The devil is really stirring things up, but You alone are God. May Your name indeed be recognized as holy and Your Lordship be manifested as Your will is done, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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Things vs. People; July 10, 2019

Posted on July 13, 2019 by jgarrott

1 Kings 8:27 “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!”

For all of his failures, Solomon did say some pretty wise things. Here he shows that he knew he really did worship the infinite Creator, and that’s something we today lose sight of at times. Even when we do realize it, we have trouble figuring out how that fact should impact our daily lives. The temple that he had just completed was indeed magnificent, and the remaining foundation wall is an object of extreme veneration in Israel today. We tend to get fixated on physical objects, but Solomon had a revelation of the insignificance of anything physical compared to the Creator. That’s why the whole Bible emphasizes the people of God, rather than buildings and the like. This temple Solomon built was in many ways a distraction, because people tended to fixate on the building even more than on the One who was worshiped there. That’s why Jesus said, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23-24) Because we inhabit physical bodies, physical things are important and useful to us. However, it is important that we keep things in perspective, to understand what is really important. Too many leaders develop what has jokingly been called an “edifice complex,” wanting bigger and better buildings, when buildings are never more than a means to an end.

I struggled with the idea when we were being led to build this building, but the guidance seemed pretty clear. In the process we learned some pretty painful lessons, and I’m sure those were more important than the building itself. At this point in my life I am finally learning, as more than just words, that people are what is important, because people have eternal souls, and nothing else I encounter is genuinely eternal. I have always enjoyed machines, and was a geek before the term was popular. (I still react negatively to “nerd,” since that was the term applied to me at the time.) It has been a long road to realizing that all such things are ultimately insignificant, since God didn’t need anything like that when He created the universe. I’ve not been much of a “people person” most of my life, but thankfully, God is still growing and changing me. My interactions with people are the most important thing, because I have been given the incredible privilege of representing Christ to them. Like Paul, I am sharply aware of my own imperfection, but I know that God is greater than all of that, and He can use even me. (2 Corinthians 4:7) Jesus told us to “lay up treasure in heaven,” (Matthew 6:19-21) but the only thing I can take to heaven with me is people. I need to grasp, on the deepest level, that each person I meet is someone for whom Jesus died, and is therefore more valuable than everything physical put together.

Father, thank You for this Word. I’m not sure I’ve ever expressed it like this before. Help me indeed live it out, valuing people above and before everything else, so that I may treasure what You do, and so be a pleasing son and servant, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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Giving God the Credit; July 9, 2019

Posted on July 11, 2019 by jgarrott

Joshua 23:10-11 One of you routs a thousand, because the Lord your God fights for you, just as he promised. So be very careful to love the Lord your God.

The NIV inserts the word, so, between these two verses, but I think that in context that is quite justified. The Israelites had experienced many consecutive victories, and there was a huge risk that they would feel it was their own prowess that had achieved that. Joshua wanted to stand against that tendency, so he said this. In the first place, he says that their victories have been because God was fighting for them, but then he reminds them to love God, since God is the source of all the good they experience. We actually run the same risk. Mankind has progressed remarkably in many areas, notably science, medicine, and technology. The problem is, we tend to think we deserve all the credit, instead of being grateful that God has guided us and given us understanding and wisdom. As a result, some doctors, for example, develop a “god complex,” since their decisions and actions are literally life and death for their patients. (Surgeons seem to be particularly susceptible here.) Some scientists feel that given enough time, they could understand the whole universe and answer all the questions. Honest scientists realize that the more they learn, the more they discover they don’t know! When it comes to technology, it is clear that many people, both inventors and consumers, have idolized it, making it into a “god substitute,” forgetting that all technology eventually fails. The more God enables us to do, the more careful we need to be to love Him and keep Him first in our hearts and minds.

This has been a risk for me personally. I was blessed with good genes and a boundless curiosity, and I have brought many headaches, and worse, on myself and those around me by feeling I either had the answer or I could figure it out, to almost anything. By God’s grace I now know how foolish that attitude is, but I still have to be careful! Victories and accomplishments are nice, but I’ve got to keep in sharp focus the reality that none of them are possible without God. My heart must be given to and fixed on Him, because otherwise I will be deceived, and even deceive myself. (James 1:22)

Father, thank You for this reminder. You’ve been doing some good things recently, and I’m grateful. Help me never take personal credit for them, before others and especially in my own mind and heart. May I be so in love with You that nothing interferes with the flow of Your Spirit through me, for the sake of Your kingdom and for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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Love and Obedience; July 8, 2019

Posted on July 10, 2019 by jgarrott

Joshua 22:5 “But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to obey his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul.”

Repetition certainly helps with memory, and this particular content is repeated many times throughout the Bible. Some people might try to dismiss it as “Old Testament,” but Jesus not only referenced the original statement of this as “the greatest commandment,” (Matthew 22:37-38) He also was very explicit that loving Him includes obedience to Him. (John 14:15) We tend to relegate love to feeling and emotion, but all these passages make it clear that it’s an act of the will. (Don Francisco wrote a song about the marital relationship that says this explicitly.) When we consider love to be an emotion, we make all sorts of excuses for ourselves, because it’s very clear we don’t always feel loving. Families fall apart because people get married on an emotional high, but don’t know how to handle it when the emotions ebb. When the commitment of the will is there, the emotions return! The marital relationship is indeed a good metaphor and parable of our relationship with God, as Paul wrote about in Ephesians 5 and is mentioned many times throughout the Bible. When we depend on emotions for our Christian walk, we encounter the same problems a couple does when they try to depend on emotions. Far too many people have essentially divorced God! We don’t like to obey when “we don’t feel like it,” and that certainly takes the bloom off of the relationship. The problem is, God’s commands are all for our benefit, and the abundance of His blessings comes only with obedience.

This is something I have experienced first-hand. I well remember when we were really struggling financially (our younger daughter’s birth was covered by Medicaid) but felt we were supposed to tithe. We never had a tenth of our income left over at the end of the month, but we finally decided to bite the bullet and tithe as soon as the money came in. What do you know, we had a little left over at the end of that month! It has been over 45 years since then, and as we have tithed, God has supplied. Emotion has nothing to do with it. There have been a number of other things that we didn’t feel like doing – including forgiving people – but God has always blessed our obedience. God has demonstrated His faithfulness to us in so many ways that the emotion of loving Him comes very easily! As the Bill Gaither song says, “The longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows.”

Father, thank You indeed for Your gracious love toward us. Thank You for the privilege of being channels of that love to others. Thank You for all that You did here yesterday, for all who attended and for how they were blessed. I do pray that the Body of Christ would be built up as You intend on every level, for the salvation of many and for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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Evangelism; July 7, 2019

Posted on July 10, 2019 by jgarrott

Deuteronomy 30:19-20 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In a very real sense this is the proclamation of every evangelist. The difference is that for Gentiles, we don’t have the physical Promised Land to possess. Also, we know that in Christ the promise isn’t simply for a long physical life, but for eternal life with God. How good is that!? The problem is, most evangelists today only talk about the blessings and life, and leave out the little detail that apart from Christ people are already cursed and are headed for death. We quote John 3:16 and even 17, but leave out verse 18: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” Recently the term, existential threat, has come up in the news a good bit, but we don’t like to accept that our sins are an existential threat to each of us. We don’t like to accept that the wide road that everybody seems to be on leads to destruction. (Matthew 7:13-14) At this point, only those who have some reason to be forced to consider their own imminent mortality seem eager to choose life. It has long been said that “There are no atheists in foxholes.” We need to realize that every one of us is in a pitched battle for our soul, if we haven’t surrendered already to the enemy who wants to destroy us. The choice of life or death, blessings or curses, is ours.

I have never been a “hellfire and brimstone” preacher, but I keep running into passages like this one that indicate I need to be more clear about the consequences of refusing Christ’s offer of life. It’s not politically correct to tell people they’re headed for hell, but failing to do so is totally irresponsible. This is a struggle for me, because I have a strong tendency to conflict-avoidance. I greatly prefer telling people nice stuff! I’m not to stop telling them all the nice stuff that is in Christ, but I am never to sugar-coat the reality of hell and destruction. I have always operated on the basis of absolute honesty. I must not draw back when the honest truth might be unpalatable.

Father, thank You for this Word. Give me wisdom in following through. May I always speak Your truth in love, even when that truth is that someone is headed for eternity in hell. Thank You. Praise God!

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Repentance; July 6, 2019

Posted on July 8, 2019 by jgarrott

Deuteronomy 30:6 The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.

This chapter as a whole is talking about repentance, and that is something that never goes out of date. The phraseology in this verse gives us pause, because circumcision isn’t something we normally talk about. It is a particularly foreign concept in Japan, so the Japanese for this verse renders it as “cut off the skin that wraps your heart.” I don’t think Moses was talking about the pericardium! What he was talking about is the accretion of all sorts of things that come between us and God, things that grab our attention and make us insensitive to Him. Getting rid of such things might logically seem like a good thing, but it requires a choice on our part to “return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today.” (Deuteronomy 30:2) That is repentance. We are all too used to regretting what we have done without actually returning to God to do things His way, instead of our own. One of the saddest songs in the catalog is My Way, made famous by Frank Sinatra. What is most tragic about it is that it is a song of pride, as though ignoring God were something admirable. That song is, sadly enough, very popular among Japanese, but then, very few of them have faith in a personal God who cares what they do and guides them in His best way. We all have such trouble getting it through our minds and hearts that God really does love us, and that because of that love He has given us rules to get the very best out of our time on this earth, not to mention set us on the path to eternity with Him. We may pay that lip service, but our actions all too often betray the fact that we don’t really believe it. We have to get rid of our My Way attitude and return to God in all humility, to receive the incredible blessings that He has prepared for us.

Of course, this applies to me as much as it does to anyone. I have done plenty that required repentance! I had the huge advantage of being raised in a home where God was loved and His Word was read and honored, so I knew well about the blessings of following Him, but I still fell into foolish pride, thinking I had the answers and ignoring God. By His amazing grace He gave me an opportunity to see the state of my own heart and repent, and I did. It’s been a long road since then, and not without stumbles, but I have an assurance of salvation that is more valuable than everything in the world put together. I live each day with my Lord, fully aware of my own weaknesses but increasingly aware of His strength, delighting to be used by Him and looking forward to when nothing at all will get between me and Him, as I rejoice before His throne.

Father, thank You indeed for Your truly amazing grace. Thank You for the day yesterday, and especially for the good response I felt as I invited people to our evangelistic event Sunday afternoon. I pray that those people would follow through and not only come, but be touched by Your presence and be hungry and thirsty for more, leading to their repentance and faith for their salvation and Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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Influence; July 5, 2019

Posted on July 8, 2019 by jgarrott

Deuteronomy 13:6-8 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him.

My first thought in reading this section was that this was another part of the Bible I wanted to skip! However, this makes an excellent point, and it is one that tripped up even Solomon years later. That is, it is those closest to us who have the most persuasive power, either for good or for bad. Solomon, who started out so well by asking God for wisdom to govern Israel, (2 Chronicles 1:10) later showed total stupidity by allowing his foreign wives to lead him into idolatry. (1 Kings 11:1-10) It takes great strength of character to resist when a person we love and trust entices us into evil. However, the flip side of that is also true. When two people are united in the truth of God, either in marriage or in some other close relationship, they are far stronger against the attacks of the enemy than either is alone. (Ecclesiastes 4:12) It is ironic that it was Solomon, who failed so terribly, who recorded that truth! It is said that evangelism is most difficult within your own family, but that is because of the barriers within ourselves more than because of barriers between people. If we are demonstrating the Lordship of Christ in our daily lives, those closest to us will see that best, and will be most open to persuasion to receive Jesus as Lord in their own hearts. That falls apart, however, if we aren’t being faithful in our own walk, because those closest to us see that best as well. One of our church members has won her younger daughter, her brother-in-law, and most recently her husband to the Lord simply by living out her faith, and in the process overcoming severe clinical depression. All three of those family members have testified that it was seeing the reality of God in her life that convinced them He was real for them as well.

As something of a loner, my forays into rebellion against God have been all my own responsibility. However, that “loner” tendency has blunted my evangelism as well. In Japan, the strong sense of racial identity makes almost everyone see me as “other,” someone perhaps to be admired but not necessarily to be emulated. That has been a major frustration to me. I keep remembering my wife’s close friend who rejected Christ because “My ancestors weren’t Christians, and when I die I am supposed to go where they are.” When I know about heaven and hell, that is heartbreaking! Sadly, she has lost her opportunity, since she dropped dead a few years ago. I am never to stop speaking the truth in love, because I cannot know whether the Holy Spirit might use my words to get through to someone. I am to seek to be an influencer for Christ, whatever I am doing, so that as many as possible may be drawn into the kingdom of God, into His family, for their salvation and His glory.

Father thank You for this reminder. May I indeed be the “aroma of Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:15-16) to all, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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How We Treat the Bible; July 4, 2019

Posted on July 7, 2019 by jgarrott

Deuteronomy 11:18-19 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Just recently I heard an American Christian leader speak about a trip he had made to China to teach leaders of the underground Church there. Those leaders endured hardship just to attend the meeting, not to mention the danger of being arrested and imprisoned again. (Most of them had already experienced that.) After the conference, as they were getting ready to leave, some of them asked the American to pray for them that they could be like him. He said no, he would pray that American Christians could be more like them, committing everything to Christ and memorizing the Bible so that it couldn’t be taken away from them in prison. In the message that I heard, the American pointed out that Americans have an average of two Bibles per household, and yet they don’t read them, much less live by them. Those Chinese Christians had passed around scraps of paper with Scripture on them so that they could memorize them and not risk losing the Word. It’s hardly surprising that the Chinese believers are standing strong in the face of increasing persecution, while all too many American Christians wilt in the face of accusations of “homophobia” or “Islamophobia.” My grandfather, a seminary professor, often asked his students how big their Bible was. When they responded in terms of printed matter, he said, “No, how much is in your heart?” Memorization by itself doesn’t guarantee the content makes it into our hearts, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. What is essential is applying the Word in our daily lives, letting it percolate through all that we say, do, and are. I think that’s what Moses is talking about here, and it makes all the difference in the world.

I was blessed to grow up in a household that was steeped in the Word, reading through the Bible for myself for the first time by the time I was 10. I became very knowledgeable about the Bible, but that didn’t mean I was applying and living it out. I was a prime example of what James warned against. (James 1:22) God has had to deal with me many times in many ways to knock some sense into me, to help me really grasp that “hiding the Word in my heart” (Psalm 119:11) is far more than remembering the words in my head. Interestingly, it was the same American I heard talking about China that came up with the SOAP system of devotions that I’ve been using for many years now. In my experience, it’s the A of that acronym, Application, that has made the most difference for me, as I have had to think of how to apply the things I have read each morning. With my background, it’s always been easy for me to explain what a passage was saying (the Observation of that acronym) but far too often in the past I’ve stopped there, thinking that intellectual understanding equaled compliance. That’s just not the case. It’s only as I live the Word out in full obedience that it accomplishes that for which God sends it into my life. (Isaiah 55:11)

Father, thank You for this reminder. Help me indeed be a doer of Your Word and not just a hearer, or even a knower. May I be an agent of Your kingdom indeed, as Your Word, Your will, is accomplished in and through me, for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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If, Then; July 3, 2019

Posted on July 7, 2019 by jgarrott

Deuteronomy 11:13-14 So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul—then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and oil.

We often lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of the promises in the Bible are conditional. It’s not that we could ever earn all of God’s goodness to us, much less eternal life itself, but we can certainly cut ourselves off from all of that by our rebellion and disobedience. We want God to be like Santa Claus, who supposedly “knows if we’ve been bad or good” but gives us stuff regardless. God (not Santa) is genuinely omniscient, knowing everything, and He is also totally righteous and holy; we can’t pull anything over on Him. He loves to do good things for us His children, but He also knows what is genuinely best for us, and spoiling us rotten certainly doesn’t fill that bill. Perhaps the most precious thing He’s given us is our free will, but we have to be trained in using that correctly. (Hebrews 5:14) That’s where all His conditional promises come in. It is precisely because God wants us to be happy, mature, satisfied, fulfilled, and all of that, that He tells us to choose for ourselves those things, those actions, that lead to those desirable outcomes. Every one of His commands has that purpose, but we have to choose to obey. As John said, “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.” (1 John 5:3-4) If we believe God enough to obey Him, regardless of what the devil, the world, and even our own senses and intellect tell us, then we will experience victory beyond our wildest imaginations.

Well! I’m certainly preaching to myself this morning! Looking back over my life I can see countless times I’ve made major choices, both good and bad, but I realize that I’ve made far more unconscious choices, and often those have the bigger impact. That said, the unconscious choices generally start from deliberate choices, like my choice to start every day with the Bible and prayer. That’s now automatic, and I feel considerable frustration when things get in the way. As a pastor, I desire to instill the habit of right choices in each of the believers. However, they have to choose to receive instruction! That’s where coaching can be very helpful, because it focuses on helping the one coached to recognize things themselves, and not be spoon-fed instruction. With my Teacher gifting, that takes some deliberate choices on my part! However, James gives us a very encouraging promise: “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5) By God’s grace I continue to discover how much I lack wisdom, and I have certainly found James’ words to be true.

Father, thank You for this reminder. I constantly need Your wisdom for my own life and for the sake of those to whom I minister. I pray that by Your Spirit I would make the right choices, in full obedience to You, for Your will to be done for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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Praise!; July 2, 2019

Posted on July 3, 2019 by jgarrott

Deuteronomy 10:21 He is your praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes.

The first phrase in this verse jumps out at me: “He is your praise.” In Japanese it says, “The Lord is your praise,” explicitly using the term that is used to apply to singing to God. That brings to mind the famous line from Psalm 22:3, “Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel.[enthroned on the praises of Israel]” The King James says, “inhabits the praises of Israel.” Something very special happens when we praise God. It can’t really be explained in human terms, but when our hearts are turned to Him in praise, omnipresent God manifests Himself in a special way. I think that’s why Moses said what he did. If you want to encounter God, try praising Him from your heart! Just going through the motions doesn’t do much good, but conversely, failing to praise God because “you don’t feel like it” is self-defeating. It is interestingly true that choosing to praise God, especially when you don’t feel like it, can really change your attitude and draw you close to Him. The devil will try to discourage that, telling you it’s hypocritical, but it works. Many people have discovered that reading through some of the Psalms can be powerful indeed, especially when you are depressed or lonely or afraid or in any of a number of negative states. As I tell people frequently, being self-centered never leads to peace and happiness because it blinds us to our Creator who loves us. Conversely, praising Him changes our focus to Him and opens us up to all that He has for us on every level.

This is something I really started understanding after I was exposed to the Charismatic Movement in 1973. I’ve always loved to sing, and particularly to sing to God, but I hadn’t understood the mechanism of it all before that. Since then, I couldn’t begin to count how many times I’ve “sung myself out of a slump,” so to speak. My wife and others who have been to heaven report that everything there, even the grass and trees, sings praise to God. That’s really something to look forward to! I am greatly blessed from having been raised in a musical family, but others haven’t had that experience. I’ve read that true tone deafness, being physically unable to distinguish between different frequencies, is an extremely rare phenomenon. However, environment has a very great influence. We once had a young man (an American) ask, “How do you make your voice go up and down like that?” He was certainly not tone deaf, but he had no idea how to sing. That was sad! It is my experience that there are many musical styles, and virtually all of them can be used to praise God. (There may be exceptions!) As I try to encourage the people in this congregation, the important thing is heart focus. Beautiful performances can be completely sterile. As the song says, “I love You, Lord, and I lift my voice.” When we sing out of faith and love for God, He manifests Himself for our blessing and His glory.

Father, thank You for this reminder. It’s something I practice constantly, but something I want to be more effective in leading others into. I ask for Your wisdom and anointing so that we may be a praising people indeed, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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