It’s really easy to cry out to God for help when you’re in distress; but have you ever imagined yourself crying out to God when you’re not in a bind? Seriously, when was the last time you or I got on our face to beg God in prayer to come save us when we didn’t need saving? I mean, sure we pray on our commutes to and from work asking God to provide commuting mercies so we can travel in relative peace and not next to the smelly, crazy woman. But really, do we worship God or give Him any real praise as part of our regular, no problems lives? And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” -Matthew 21:9 “Hosanna” is not just a word used in praise songs on Sunday mornings. The word actually means “worship and praise,” it also means “save us, I pray.” I tell you this because the word loses meaning for us in the deluge of Christianese we use to pretend everything is okay. More than that, we miss out on the power and situations God gives is through language to initiate life change. Very simply, I am saying that we can cry to God in both reverent worship and longing salvation and we don’t use it nearly enough even though God wants us to do so. We are His children, saved and brought to Him by the blood of our Savior and His son Jesus. The implication of praying Hosanna in our daily lives is two fold: first, it postures our attitudes toward a humility before God in shouting worship and praise to our sustainer; and secondly, we ask God to save us from things we see and don’t see as the temptations looking to ruin our lives in the everyday. We need to be following Jesus in our daily lives anyways. We might as well follow him by saying: “save me because I worship you as the Lord of my life.” Praying “Hosanna” every single day is not quite like eating an apple to keep a doctor away; however, praying “Hosanna” everyday keeps our lives in perspective. It fully understands our position in life and at the same time asks for more. It causes us to follow Jesus harder and worship louder. Because we know that we all can use more voice to worship God and drown out the noise of life; and also because our lukewarm faith as convenience, doesn’t taste like what we imagined ourselves wanting. Therefore, I challenge you to pray “Hosanna” everyday.

I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. (Psalm 116:1-2 ESV) There are a lot of reasons a lot of us have for either loving God or hating God. If you don’t believe in God, a similar argument can be made about why we love or hate people. The argument is simple: I love a God (or people) because God does what I want and meets my needs, the way I want them met. In fact, if we think about it, most of us as kids hated our parents in moments when they met our needs in ways other than the way we wanted them to. So on my birthday, I thought about this reality– is the reason I love God motivated out of how He fulfills my needs and keeps me satiated, or is it because I know that God is there listening to my cries for mercy despite the fact that He doesn’t have to love me because I don’t fulfill the Biblical model of how He wants to be loved. If you don’t know what that model is, God wants to be loved unconditionally and earnestly– He wants us to be clingy and not cheat on Him. Human history teaches us that we are all cheaters and that we do our best to not be clingy and that our love is conditional at best. Yet, despite all of that, God still loves us and shows us His love by listening and inclining Himself to us. This is amazing! That we do not have a petty, self absorbed God, but a generously loving one whom patiently suffers injustice for us and ultimately walks with those who betray Him. This is our God and that is why I love Him. Why do you love God?

I was watching 30 Rock the other day and I became painfully aware of how hard it must be for Liz Lemon to love Jenna and Tracey. I totally love to hate them and their eccentric personalities. Now if you had to be their friend, brother, sister, cousin, colleague, boss, staffer, etc, etc (I’m sure you have an annoying, love to hate type of people in your life). Just think about it, there are certain people in our lives that we simple don’t want to love because they annoy us with whatever minutiae they consider important in their own miserable lives. Don’t lie to yourself by thinking Jonathan is the only one that can’t love people because of their “quirks.” You just have no problem because you don’t actually care about them enough to be annoyed and that is the same as not loving either. Because God knows you and I just want to take a bat and start swinging every time the unlovable are around us. But this is not a post for me to shame and guilt you. The real question is: How could we be Christ-like and actually love somebody unlovable? Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:3-4 ESV) The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Philippi, that the only way to truly love our enemies or our friends or simply our frenemies, because in our passive aggressive post modernist society, nobody really has enemies, is to be filled with humility. This isn’t any type of humility. This is the type of humility that becomes the object of hate in order to love. Paul is saying to love the unlovable, we must become like those we cannot love in being– that is in mindset, disposition and inclination. Now that’s humility! To see the world and feel the world as they do. To understand why they do what they do and help them do what they need to do. I mean if they are just jerks for the giggles and for no other reason but to be an annoyance, love them enough to beat them up. We do this because this is the type of humility God had to put on to love us. Jesus, who is God and was with the Father, had to lower himself to become a man born in a manger and eventually homeless so that we, who are unholy, unsaved and sinful could even have a chance at being loved by a just God. When you think about that, our little bit of humility for a frenemy is just a small thing. I want to say in light of becoming sin and sacrificed on the cross, as a scapegoat, we aren’t even being that humble when we love our passive aggressive frenemies. The reason I’m advocating this today? It’s simple, and not only because the Bible tells us to do it because it is the embodiment of true love; but rather, because in doing it, we begin to embody an understanding of purpose in our lives. We start seeing why God had caused our lives into being and why the things that happened to us shaped us the way it did and how we are supposed to leverage that for God’s purpose. So today and everyday, I want you to humble yourself by swallowing your annoyances and love somebody you love to hate in your life and witness the life changing power of God in their lives. Love thy frenemies.

We all know sticks and stones don’t hurt as much as another person’s words. If you didn’t know, then now you know. If you did know, then you know how your tongue is a lethal weapon and you will use it to lash at others, cutting them to shreds. Or perhaps you have been the victim of said lashing. But maybe we have more self esteem than that. Other peoples words have little to no bearing on us. In that case, our own words become our own mortal enemy– they betray us, often inflicting more damage to our psyche than our baby boomer parents. Yes, those poisonous words in our mouths serve more evil than good and cause more sabotage than anything else we do. Therefore the power of words shouldn’t be taken lightly; especially the power of our own words to ourselves. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. – Joshua 1:8 Joshua was the leader of Israel after Moses. He was the apprentice of the man that saw God face to face. He was the spy who witnessed first hand how words led to the demise of his mentor and to the entire first generation of Israelites leaving Egypt. What was probably racing through his mind as he began the Israelite conquest of Canaan– “you will never be able to conquer because God isn’t with you a like He was with Moses.” He probably doubted himself with the task at hand. He knew he wasn’t as educated, he wasn’t as prepared and he wasn’t as big as his enemies. He was just a slave boy when he left Egypt. He wasn’t a former Prince of Egypt. God tells Joshua an interesting thing: he says, “you may not have the words to make yourself prosperous in what you are about to do, but I do.” God tells Joshua, “repeat my words, let what I say I am dictate who you are and what you are capable of doing.” In doing so, he reminds Joshua, that the Book of Law starts with how God, his God was capable enough to create the universe. If words like these remind us to rely on a power not out own, what is it that we can’t do? If in my mouth are the words of God that create and finish, and this is what we tell ourselves, who are we to fear? A lot of us have a problem. We have damaging words, cheating words, broken words in our mouths. Those words cripple us and harm us at every facet of life. It’s time to stop damaging ourselves with the words of a liar in our mouths. It is time for us to keep the words of God in our mouths and recite them. To remind us of the glory and honor of who God is and what we are to become because of it. In your mouth right now should be the words of a loving God, who saves wretched souls like us. Be encouraged, have God’s words in your mouth.

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.”…. “Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:35, 40 ESV) Often times in our faith, you will be prompted by God to travel across to the other side of the very place you set yourself up. (I don’t mean death, when I say “other side” for you morbid people; I just mean a place you’re not used to). If you think about it, you’re on the side that you are on because Jesus prompted you there in the first place; but now, with all the work you put in, Jesus tells you, “let’s go to the other side.” I would tell you that it is a blessing to be traveling with Jesus from one side to the other, but you spent all your resources and put in work on the side you are on. I mean, how can you pick up and leave? Let’s forget that in essence God is telling you to pick up your stuff and directing you somewhere else entirely that you’re not familiar with; that’s because you’ll go, either from curiosity or obedience or through strong arming. However, when you got up and started to travel to the other side, bad things started happening. Things didn’t seem to be going right. In fact, if you didn’t know any better, you’d wonder why God fell asleep on his idea for this journey he asked/told you to be on. Your boat is sinking and water is coming on. This is how the Christian life feels more times than not! It’s sheer panic and God is sleeping through the storm that may take everything away from you. At least that’s what Peter was feeling when Jesus was sleeping in the stern of his boat while it took on water and was about to sink. The weird thing is how Jesus responds to Peter’s panic. He responds by saying, “don’t you trust me enough to take you where I tell you to go?” I mean, he did after all, tell the winds and waters to “be still.” He showed to Peter and the other disciples that he is Lord over all and proved it by commanding the waters and the winds. In fact, if you think about all your panic and every time you were stressed out about going to the other side, wherever that other side may be, Jesus commanded things through the turbulence and got you through, so the question is why do we still panic and act like we’re not going to make it? Maybe it is the uncertainty of what lies on the other side for us that causes us to panic. We know what is on the side we just left, but on the other side, there is nothing but questions and the only thing we got to go on is Jesus telling us to go. I understand that feeling, in fact, it is natural to feel that way and to have those fears. But perhaps that’s exactly why God wanted us to go to the other side in the first place– to shake up our comforts and send us on a totally new, awesome adventure that we will never forget. If God is calling you to pick up your things and travel to the other side with him, don’t hesitate, just get up and go. I can guarantee, you’ll experience a new side of you that you never knew you wanted.

Now, if you ever prayed to God for a breakthrough or for change or for some supernatural miracle or sign and waited listlessly without seeing or experience that which you prayed to God with all your heart and soul in the name of Jesus; then you know what it feels like to be stood up. Better yet, you know how not to put your faith in God. I mean, just think about it, ever since that last unfulfilling experience, you slowly and steadily put less into your prayers. They became long winded filler statements in the likeness of a college essay about Transcendentalism in the 19th century. Very frankly, only a handful of us even pray with the fire and earnestness of a child wishing upon a shooting star. We’ve all been let down too many times to even hope. We’ve lived too long in this life and know better. So while we pray with a grain of salt, knowing that there is a God who loves us out there; we don’t put any stock into His activities in our lives because we hardly experience it. You and I both know this is the reason we don’t sit down and pray for any length of time about specific things; and also why when we do pray, it’s in sweeping generalities. However, God tells us that our prayers are not unheard, we’re just unable to fathom what God is doing in our lives as a result of our prayers.

Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. – Habakkuk 1:5 Habakkuk had been praying to God about all the injustice in his country and specifically asked God to fix it because Israel is God’s chosen nation. We know Habakkuk prayed his heart out and he didn’t get any answers. He didn’t get what he expected in terms of answers anyways. We don’t know how long Habakkuk had been praying about injustice except that it was long enough for him to throw in the towel, but God replied to Habakkuk’s prayers in full. God just did an unbelievable work to fix a problem– that is me saying that the strategy was unorthodox at the very least. Some of us have been praying really hard for some type of change. We have been asking God for something to be fixed or healed. We have been patiently waiting for our God to show us, to lead the way, to give us redemption. But perhaps it’s time for us to expect the unexpected. It is time for us to pay attention to the things around us because God is working in an unorthodox way. He is bringing you answers to your prayers in ways you never expected and in ways that can’t be realized until you pay attention to them. Honestly, God has been doing this all our lives and it’s time for us to realize it. He is doing unbelievable work and I mean that literally, we need to understand that God’s working is unbelievable. Then and only then will we be able to find comfort in the God who answered and is answering all our wildly impossible prayers. It’s unbelievable work– look for God’s unbelievable.

The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. – Isaiah 50:4 I often wonder about why the nonsensical things that I go through have to happen to me. I mean, why would God, who loves me, want these crazy things for my life? It sometimes makes me question what the Bible means when it says, “God loves me.” In fact, it makes me exasperate, “if this is love, who needs the devil?” Yet, for every hard and ambiguous thing I live through, there is a silver lining that hits moments or in future times later. The experience becomes useful for something and that time spent wasn’t for waste. The prophet Isaiah spent an entire career giving God’s nation bad news. I mean, its only natural. Isaiah found himself in civil strife and economic turmoil, so he did the best he could, but much of the destruction and craziness, like we experience today, was suspect and questionable– that is, how can God expect me to get through these things? But it is clear, God wanted Isaiah to get through these things and experience these things with the skills and talents he was bestowed so that he could lead others through them. Isaiah did not have much natural ability according to him, but God gave him and pointed and prodded him so that a lack of natural ability wouldn’t stop him in his mission. We are provisioned with the right prods and experiences to make up for the lack of natural ability, talent or nurture that may disadvantage us for our mission in life. That is one reason why we have the craziest things happen to us. I understand that what I just wrote sounds like theologizing, making my reality fit my faith; but it is too convenient for our experiences to match up with our predicaments and relationships with others by coincidence. You were awakened by God to add value into the lives of other people who faced similar circumstances or are in similar circumstances that you faced. We cannot allow the callousness of, “if I can do it, xyz can do it too,” pervade our mindsets. You were sustained and brought to this point for the sake of offering hope, guidance and comfort to the person right next to you who travels weary. Do not believe for a moment that you were not provisioned with the skills, tools and wisdom to walk with people and shape their lives. You see and hear exactly as you need in order to provide relief and hope. Don’t ignore the people and don’t brush off your experiences.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. (2 Peter 1:5-9 ESV) Being nearsighted can be disastrous. I’m not making fun of you people who actually have physical nearsighted eyesight. I’m talking about an aptitude and attitude toward being a one-trick pony that can’t see anything else except that which consumes you for the moment. For example, when we become so obsessed over something like the next tech gadget– we spend our waking moments, our free time and our money on purchasing the luster that quickly fades away and then we realize that it was worth our money, our time or the stress we put ourselves through– yeah, I’m talking about those people who wait on line for days, weathering nature to buy something so unnatural. Maybe technology isn’t your thing, but relationships are. You get so consumed by a boy or a girl and you decide you are going to drop everything and everybody and chase after him or her and that person turns out to be a dud. Everybody could have told you that he or she was a dud, but you were too nearsighted to see it. In fact, you can say most of our failures and shortcomings are a result of some type of nearsightedness– a failure to see objectively, understand completely, and a lack of self-control. The Apostle Peter writes about the failures of nearsightedness as a problem with being obsessed with the wrong thing! The way he sees it, nearsightedness is forgetting what is important in light of everything else in life. If we were obsessed with the salvation we received in faith through Jesus Christ, we would understand our humble position and posture ourselves to see things in light of receiving grace and forgiveness. But because we take what we have in faith and then look somewhere else for effectiveness, we become unfruitful– that is, our faith becomes useless because of our inability to see the BIG picture. Being nearsighted keeps us from acting consistently and produces an irrationality unbecoming of people who received so much without the demands of anything in return. Yes, I’m saying that our faith makes us spoiled and causes us to be nearsighted because it is so easy to return to the ultimate forgiver in Christ. Don’t stick your head in your hands wondering why your last obsession failed you miserably. Understand that if you’re going to be obsessed with something, make sure it is an obsession grace upon eternity. It’s bad enough we are nearsighted with our penchant towards an impending physical death; do we really want to hang our heads on an obsession with petty ideas, cheap toys and virtueless people? I didn’t think so. If you don’t forget and if you obsess over the power that set you free from death and the slavery of sin, we won’t fail because of nearsightedness and that is where we want to live life today and for all eternity.

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. – 1 Peter 4:8 Somebody who recently was burned by a family member in a ponzi scheme recently asked me how to deal with that family member. I said coldheartedly, “Call the police and have him imprisoned.” Then the person said to me, “How can you advocate that position? You’re a pastor! I once heard that Jesus said to forgive seventy-seven times.” Therein lies the dilemma– rectifying the personal pain and hurt caused by another person’s mistake or intentions and the command by Jesus to forgive despite through an act of unconditional love. It is the one thing God exemplifies throughout human history and the hardest thing to emulate. If you or I could so easily forgive through unconditional love, we would be like God. But we can’t. So how do we navigate that; especially in light of passages like 1st Peter 4:8 that speaks to us from the perspective of one who has been hurt and betrayed by people closest to you? At the end of the day forgiving others or loving people who hurt us comes down to what we are personally able to swallow and weather, as an individual facing the very person/people who hurt us physically, emotionally or mentally, we can “get over” a particular transgression or series of transgressions. It is this very explanation that seems to be so weak for those of us who have been hurt and the impossible achievement that separates us from God. There are two steps to loving unconditionally in light of mistakes or sins committed against you. The first step is to put your life in perspective. What we see in this chapter of 1st Peter is when we put life in perspective, that is to know the “end is near,” we find ourselves able to better steward God’s grace because of the certain judgment that awaits us. So let’s be clear: we love unconditionally those who sin against us because we’re not better than them in regard to the emotional atrocity they caused us. We, in most likelihood, committed those same sins against somebody else and walked away like nothing happened because we were forgiven. The second step is to intend to do good. This step always pains me the most. It pains me because I know the intentions of people who sin and make mistakes around me weren’t good; and here I am trying to do good by them. It is totally unfair, like we are allowing them to walk all over us. Not at all. Our good intentions do not necessarily equate to forgetting the sins against us; rather they have the sinner’s well being in mind when we confront them to set the record straight. As people who faithfully believe God covered our mistakes and our transgressions against Him by the sacrifice and blood of his only son, Jesus, we have to find a way to love unconditionally through the mistakes and even up to the point of covering the sins of those who betray us. The implications will undoubtedly send waves of shock through a callous and unloving world. In fact, the covering of sins past is just the thing that launched the Christian movement in the first place. We forget that sometimes in our achievement based culture. We did not earn forgiveness and salvation. We were gifted it by God through an unconditional love. Let’s cover the sins of people who sin against us through our unconditional faith in God who unconditionally loves.

He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan). He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him. He struck down the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified city. – 2 Kings 18:4-8 Hezekiah was a mighty reformer and zealous lover of God. He tore down the idols and restored worship in Judah. Hezekiah, in his zeal refused to submit and rebelled against the status quo– that is to Assyria. As expected, Sennacherib, the Assyrian king, didn’t take kindly to Hezekiah’s rebellion and he sent an army to conquer Judah. But that’s what happens when you try to do the right thing. That is what happens when we stay true to our faith. When we zealously seek to tear down idols and remove compromise from our lives and wholeheartedly pursue God, our enemies come to attack us just like Sennacherib did. They’ll seek to intimidate us and seduce us with false claims of comfort. He’ll point out all others who have fallen away from God and back into sin in an effort to discourage us. Then he’ll mock the power of God to set us free from sin. All of that turmoil, the emotional and psychological suffering that comes with being attacked by an enemy looking to usurp the freedom God has given takes a toil on your decision making, and ultimately, your livelihood. But that didn’t bother Hezekiah from sticking with God whom he followed wholeheartedly. It’s so easy today to stop battling the principalities that look to seize our freedom in Christ and because it is so easy, we don’t battle. I don’t know what it is or who it is in your life that is searching to conquer your zeal for God, but I do know that if you and I battle and rebel against it/them through our faith in God, then we will be delivered by God who we put our trust in. We have a fighting chance because God is with us. We battle for our freedom because keeping with our Savior King is more worthy than whatever is being offered to entice us away from Him. We prosper in ways that fulfill us when we choose not to abandon God for a shadow or a fleeting mirage of God. When we have freedom in Christ through God, we battle despite the consequences.