Author: michaelmalanga2013

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

—Romans 15.5-6

Dear Travelers,

The apostle Paul often included benedictions in his letters—sometimes more than one. In fact, Romans 15.5-6 is the first of three benedictions Paul writes in the chapter (15.13, 33). A benediction is like a well-placed rest stop along a well-traveled road. It refreshes the mind and encourages the heart by feeding the soul and energizing the spirit. A benediction renews our hope by empowering us to carry on and complete our journey. A benediction breathes into the assurance that if we endure the journey will end happily.

So when Paul writes, “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” his goal is to inspire us to keep following Christ by reminding us of what is our ultimate responsibility: to glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The journey between the first breath of our confession of faith and the last breath we take on earth as a believer is long and sometimes arduous.

Even the faithful Christ-follower will grow weary. And weary Christ-followers, like weary travelers need rest stops. They need places where they can refresh themselves and receive encouragement so their strength can be renewed enough to complete their journey. Just as weary travelers need rest stops, weary Christ-followers need benedictions.

Several years ago, my family and I drove back to our home in Canada after visiting family in Northern Virginia. As if the fourteen hour drive was not long enough, we were trying to outrun a snowstorm. Despite the fact that we would share the driving, neither I nor my wife were looking forward to the intensity of a long drive home in bad weather.

By the eleventh hour we reached St. Catherine’s, Ontario. We were three hours from home, and the snow was increasing in intensity. We were hungry, tired and in need of a break. So we exited the highway at a familiar rest stop to refresh ourselves and grab a snack.

The snow continued to fall as we ate our soup and sandwiches. The rest and the food had its desired effect. So with our bellies full and our hope renewed we set off for home. As we walked back to our van we noticed the snowfall was letting up. As we got closer to home the snow stopped altogether. And by the time we were an hour from home, the sky had cleared so much we could see the stars.

Obviously, our stopping to rest did not cause the skies to clear and the snow to stop. However, by taking the time to eat and refresh ourselves we all noticed an improvement in our attitude as well as our behavior the rest of the way home. Before we stopped to rest we were tired, hungry and short of patience. After the stop we were in a much better frame of mind. That rest stop was the benediction we needed to encourage us to carry on.

We who follow Jesus need rest stops, too. We need benedictions such as the one Paul writes in Romans 15. We need the refreshment that comes from God’s word. We need the encouragement to endure as we follow Jesus through sunshine and storms.

Paul’s benediction from Romans 15 also reminds us that since we do not travel alone, we must try our best to live in harmony as we make our way toward our eternal home. We are reminded that the God we serve is the God of endurance and encouragement. When we need endurance He is our source. When we need encouragement He is our supply. When we need to learn how to live in harmony He is our teacher and our example.

Compared to eternity we spend a brief time on this earth. Still, from our perspective life can be a very long, very lonely, and very tiring journey. We all need rest stops at which we can revive our endurance and renew our encouragement. How good it is to know that the God we serve is the God who gives both without limit to those who trust in His Son.

You think about that.

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives to his beloved while he sleeps.

– Psalm 127.1-2

The daily liturgy I use to approach God each morning tells me that today is a day of provision. Today I remember to worship God as the LORD who provides. According to Psalm 127.2, the LORD provides for His children while  they sleep.

There are two images here.

The first and most obvious is that despite the fact we rise before the dawn or stay up into the wee small hours of the morning, unless our effort is aimed at glorifying God our work will leave us empty-handed. No matter how much we eat of it, the bread of anxious toil does not satisfy, nor does it bring us the peace of a good night’s sleep.

Only those who put God at the center of their life and work will enjoy the mini-vacation of a good night’s sleep. To the person chowing down on the bread of anxious toil sleep is unproductive down time. Yet to the person who puts God at the center of their life, sleep is His reward for a hard day’s work.

There is another image here and it has to do with the alternate translation of verse 2 mentioned above:  “For He gives to His beloved while he sleeps.” The traditional translation has, “for He gives to His beloved sleep.” A good friend, far more skilled in Hebrew than I, tells me that since the Hebrew here is uncertain either translation is correct.  That said, let’s go with “He gives to His beloved while he sleeps.”

My friend tells me that support for this translation can be found in 2 Samuel 12.24-25 and Deuteronomy 33.12. In 2 Samuel 12, the prophet Nathan gives Solomon the nickname Jedidiah (which in Hebrew means beloved of the LORD). In Deuteronomy 33, the beloved of the LORD is said to rest between the shoulders of God. So the image here is of the beloved of the LORD riding piggy-back on God’s shoulders while he sleeps. God is thus pictured as carrying us on His shoulders through the night seeing to it that when we wake up with the dawn He will give us our daily bread.

Understood this way, the simple act of going to sleep becomes an expression of faith in future grace. Rather than staying up late to eat the bread of anxious toil, God encourages us to take our rest. To sleep is to declare our trust in LORD who knows what we need before we ask and who provides for His beloved children while we sleep.

There is a balance to be struck between work and faith. That balance is found when we put God at the center of what we do. If the LORD is not at the center of our work, our work is in vain and we will eat the bread of anxious toil.

However, when the LORD is at the center of all we do; when He is at the heart of who we are, we can sleep well at night knowing He will carry us on His shoulders through the night. And when He greets us at the dawn He will give us our daily bread; a living bread that satisfies.

You think about that.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Your presence, and take not Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.

   Psalm 51.10-12

Dear Travelers,

The Valley of Vision is a collection of prayers expressing the passionate spirituality of the Puritans. The Puritan movement swept through the Church of England in the 17^th and 18^th centuries producing giants of the faith such as Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim’s Progress, Isaac Watts, composer of hymns such as When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, and John Owen. If you have not read Baxter, Bunyan, or Owen you owe it to yourself to do so. Ditto for singing Watts’ hymns. It is not hyperbole to say that to ignore them is to worship God with an impoverished faith and limited view of His glory.

The Americanized caricature of the Puritans depicts them as stern, severe people who wore funny hats, big-buckled shoes, and large King James Bibles. Additionally, they were thought to be extremely suspicious of anything that might be fun. It is a false image. The Puritans of 17^th/18^th England including those who settled in Massachusetts were joyful, stout-hearted folk who loved God. They had an ardent desire to bring all of life under the authority of Jesus Christ. They lived with a passion for the sovereignty of God in all things. One outlet for this passion was prayer. You can hear it in the opening lines of a prayer titled Morning Needs:

 O God, the Author of all Good. I come to Thee for the grace another day will require for its duties and events. I step out into a wicked world, I carry about within me an evil heart, I know that without Thee I can do nothing that everything with which I shall be concerned, however harmless in itself, may prove an occasion of sin or folly unless I am kept by Thy power.

The first two lines worship God as the Author of all Good as well as declaring our dependence upon Him as the Giver of all grace. The third line is an honest assessment of the world into which the saints of God live and move and have their being. The fourth line reveals the honest humility of the Puritan conscience: “I carry about within me an evil heart.”

This confession is what prompted David to cry out, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me,” (Psalm 51.10). The knowledge that he carried about with him an evil heart kindled David’s passionate request for God to create in him a clean heart. The LORD declared David to be a man after His own heart, and we see here the proof of that. After confessing his sin of adultery, the Shepherd-King cries out to the Author of all Good to create within him a clean heart.

The apostle Paul expressed his need for a clean heart when he wrote, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me,” (Romans 7.19-20). We do not do the good we want for one simple reason: we carry about within us an evil heart. That is, even though at conversion  we have already received a heart of flesh, we are not yet fully free from the temptation that plagued the stony heart it replaced. Paul’s dilemma demonstrates our need for the Holy Spirit to create in us a clean heart. We cannot obey God without the Spirit’s help. We cannot be holy, nor can we be kept holy apart from the Spirit’s power and protection, guidance and instruction. How do we gain this help? With prayer that God would continually remind us that He has given us a clean heart so we can live a clean life.

A clean heart will seek God’s guidance in any our endeavor. A clean heart will keep us from sin or folly. A clean heart will direct our worship to its true Creator—God, the Author of all Good. Best of all, a God-given clean heart will keep us from the slow death of a self-righteous spirit. The last lines of Morning Needs express this desire for a clean heart to direct our behavior with typical Puritan passion:

May every creature be made good to me by prayer and Thy will. Teach me how to use the world, and not abuse it,to improve my talents, to redeem my time, to walk in wisdom toward those without, and in kindness toward those within, to do good to all men, and especially my fellow Christians. And to Thee be the glory.

Amen.

You think about that.

Matthew 14.29b-31

So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, O you of little faith, why did you doubt?

Dear Travelers,

Until I saw the film Apollo 13 I had never heard the phrase a successful failure. NASA considered the mission of Apollo 13 a successful failure because although the mission failed in its main objective: to land on the moon; the mission succeeded in that all three men returned to earth safely despite spending several days in a damaged spacecraft.

Sometimes failure in the past can be the prelude to success in the future. In an article that appeared in the August 2002 issue of the Harvard Business Review IBM exec Thomas Watson, Sr. said, “the fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate.”

For most people in the competitive corporate world this is naive advice. It is almost certain not to be their personal experience. But the article went on to say that failure-tolerant leaders know that while success is good, failure is not necessarily all that bad. Failure-tolerant leaders view success and failure as complements rather than polar opposites.

Failure is seen as a necessary prerequisite of invention since it requires risk taking. Failure also provides insights that cannot normally be gained from success. Failure also encourages creativity and innovation.

Some of the greatest people in the Bible have been successful failures. Abraham listened to Sarah and slept with Hagar, when he should have trusted God’s promise that Sarah would give birth to a son. Moses was a murderer. David was an adulterer. Jeremiah faithfully proclaimed the word of the Lord for 40 years with little to show for his effort. All these experienced extraordinary failures, but because God is a failure-tolerant leader His grace helped them become successful failures.

In the New Testament Jesus emerges as the perfect failure-tolerant leader. And the New Testament is filled with stories of people who experienced extraordinary failure. However, by the grace of Jesus they moved beyond them to achieve great things for the kingdom of God. One of my favorite stories about a successful failure is Peter’s failed attempt to walk on water to Jesus in Matthew 14.22-33.

There is no doubt Peter was passionate in his desire to follow Jesus. However, when he failed Peter learned that passion for Jesus may get you out of the boat, but it is faith in Jesus that gets you all the way to where He is.

When Jesus called Peter out of the boat He gave the fishermen permission not only to try the impossible, but to do the impossible. When Jesus called Peter out of the boat He gave him permission to succeed. He also gave him permission to fail. The good news is that Peter’s failure, as embarrassing and terrifying as it was is, in retrospect, a successful failure.

 A successful failure teaches us to put more faith in Christ than in our passion for following Him.

At what point did Peter’s fear override his faith in Jesus?

I believe it was when Peter reached what he believed was the point of no return (PNR) or at least the point at which he determined to be the PNR.

Once Peter reached the PNR he cannot turn back. That would be embarrassing. You don’t want to fail in front of your peers.

Once Peter reached the PNR he did not want to disappoint Jesus especially when the whole “walk on water” thing was his idea.

What would success look like in this passage?

Success would be Peter walking all the way out to Jesus then joining in as they both stroll across to the other side.

What would it have meant if Peter succeeded?

But he didn’t succeed. He failed.

Passion for Jesus may get you out of the boat, but it is faith in Jesus that gets you all the way to Him. When Jesus called Peter out of the boat He gave the fishermen permission to do more than try the impossible. Jesus gave Peter the permission to do the impossible by trusting in the word of Jesus not his zeal for following Jesus.

When Jesus called Peter out of the boat He gave him permission to succeed. He also gave him permission to fail. The good news is that Peter’s failure, as embarrassing and humiliating as it was, in retrospect, a successful failure.

A successful failure teaches us to put more confidence in Christ than in our eagerness to obey His word.  

Was Peter’s faith in Christ or in his passion for Christ?

Sometimes Jesus will call me into places I don’t want to go. Peter chose this moment. Jesus taught him that zeal is good, but zeal without wisdom is folly.

Still, at least Peter took the risk. There were twelve men in that boat, but only one was brave enough to step out on to the stormy sea.

It is also worth noting that we read this text differently depending on our age.

As a young man, I was right there with Peter. As an older man, and a parent, I would say, “Peter, you may want to think about this decision.”

Successful failures teach us the importance of balancing zeal and wisdom. It’s better to try to do the impossible than play it safe. You cannot fail if you do not try. And if you may fail, at least you will have failed in making an attempt to glorify Jesus.

And if you succeed, well that’s a story for another day….

You think about that.

Dear Travelers,

Hebrews 6.10-12 says,

For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

We must listen to Jesus because when we hold fast to our confession, when we stand firm in our faith despite the heat of suffering, “God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.”

Ultimately God proves Himself to be just in that He will take note of our good works and reward us for them. God can be trusted to take account of what we do for His sake for the benefit of others. God can be trusted to remember what we have done in obedience to His Son. Our message to our Christian brothers and sisters in crisis is this: God can be trusted to reward you for your work done on behalf of others in His name. God will not forget what we do for Him. There is a sense in which God puts Himself under contractual obligation by virtue of establishing His covenant with us. By so doing, He establishes the terms by which He will bless “those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

But what of our unchurched friends who are in crisis? What is our message to them? It is the same message, but it is delivered in a series of questions:

• For whom are you working?
• For whose glory do you labor?
• For whose praise are you giving every ounce of time, talent and energy you have?

When the crisis comes, our unchurched friends must come to grips with an unyielding but liberating truth: “God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.” The context into which the message is spoken may be different but the message is the same. God rewards those who labor in trust/obedience for Him.

The promises in view here are all the promises God has made throughout the ages, including and especially the promise that all who receive Jesus Christ, all who confess their trust/obedience in Him “will not perish but have eternal life.”

We must listen to Jesus because He is the guarantor of a better covenant. He is the underwriter of the sure and certain promise that all who put their faith in Him will endure to the end and be saved. 

This is good news indeed both for the churched and the unchurched.

You think about that. 

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for to You do I cry all the day.

–Psalm 86.3

Dear Travelers,

I listened to a sermon recently based on Psalm 86. Before reading the psalm, the preacher described it as a foxhole prayer. If you wonder why just read it and you’ll know why. During the message we were asked to list four things we would ask God to give us and then three things we know to be true about God. Now for those of you who prefer symmetry, I don’t know why we weren’t asked for four things we know to be true about God but you can certainly add a fourth, as I have.

Here are my four things: Hope, Joy, Steadfastness and Grace. Here are four things I know are true of God: He is Gracious. He is Compassionate. He is Faithful. He is Patient.

What four things would ask of God? What four things do you know to be true about God that will help you get out of your foxhole? Maybe you’re not in a foxhole. Maybe you’re in a rut. The exercise still works. Maybe life is good and you are doing well. Even so, the exercise still works because it packs truth into the soul giving it ballast to withstand the storms which may come.

Most of us are very good at writing down things that are true about our current situation. That said, we tend toward not doing so well at remembering what we have learned to be true about God. So here is good news: Psalm 86 is a God-given crib sheet. For in it God tells us what are those three or four things that are true about Him. The powerful and comforting thing about God’s character is not it is not dependent on what we think or feel. Whether I am happy or I am sa, God is always gracious, always compassionate, always faithful and always patient.

Psalm 86.15 tells us five things about God that the psalmist (David) knows to be true about God, “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

What five things does David know to be true about God?

God is merciful.

God is gracious.

God is patient (He is slow to anger).

God is faithful (He is abounding in steadfast love).

God is trustworthy (He is a God of faithfulness).

So whether you are in a foxhole or standing on level ground, whether you are riding the wind or holding on for dear life in the midst of a hurricane of difficulties, whether you stuck in a rut or perched upon the mountaintop, it is good to remember and say with the psalmist, “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”
You think about that.