Either I’m just more aware of what’s always been happening, or there is a tendency this time of year to be bombarded with commercials advertising products that promise a transformation in the body. There’s something encouraging about fresh beginnings isn’t there? New Year’s resolutions are all about taking inventory with the desire to see positive change in our lives.
Back in the day when my knees could handle the torque from playing golf, there was something relieving about hooking a tee shot several fairways over close to the course ranger, then hearing my buddy shout, “Mulligan!” Second chances…or third…or fourth (you get what I mean) are a sweet sound to the ear of a frustrated soul.
But there comes a time when those second chances don’t bring relief, but instead bring memories of past failures to take advantage of those mulligans. I may not be alone in this because it seems that as my circle of friends age along with me, the idea of New Year’s resolutions are met with less enthusiasm than in my youth. We’ve all been around that block too many times haven’t we?
I’ve said so often in my work as a probation officer that there are not many things that separate me from being on the other side of the desk sitting in the role of the probationer. I’ve made some of the same bad decisions as my clients. I have no doubt that if I’d been stopped by law-enforcement while driving home from a holiday party, or a Friday night dinner out with friends, that an officer would smell whiskey on my breath and invite me out of the car to do the roadside dance. And the likelihood this dance could end in cuffs could have been a realistic outcome. Irresponsible? You bet! Just being honest here.
We can get mulligans in life, but if we continue around the same block we’ve previously traveled, chances are likely we’ll wind up relatively close to where we always wind up….bad cycles that continue over and over and lead to bad outcomes. Something has to change or the second chances no longer are viewed as blessings but instead as burdens, because we know the patterns and we know how things will turn out.
So its 2015 and with it, a fresh start…I’ll take that mulligan for 2014 in some areas of my life…time to recommit to pursuing God. I’ve been avoiding Him now for well over a month…but if you ask Him, He may say it’s been longer.
A couple days ago, I blew the dust off my bible, opened it up, and sat there thinking, “okay…now what?” I felt no clear direction and thought maybe some spiritual hocus-pocus would happen if I just closed my eyes, randomly open up the bible and ”Poof!” something would jump off the pages at me. I opened the bible and Psalm 37 stared back at me. I’m not a Psalms kind-of-guy so I thought about taking a mulligan in this situation, closing the book, and opening it again…but after a couple seconds I decided to stay the course and see where this led.
I grabbed a blank pad and a pen and decided I was just going to write verses and thoughts as they stood out to me and see if a clear direction emerged. Psalm 37:4-5 caught my attention so I wrote these verses down. “Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it.”
I’m in my 50’s now and a cynical attitude gets mixed in with my perspective. Anymore, I become nauseous when I hear people quoting scriptures from the bible in efforts to create some cheap imitation of hope and encouragement… It’s not that I doubt the word of God, it’s just that it seems like we manipulate it to fit our needs. There are always conditions tied to those promises and it doesn’t seem like we want to include the conditions when we start quoting those scriptures…possibly because that would create some inner conviction within us. But, I found myself thinking about the words of that verse which says we will get “the desires of our heart.”
Like I just said, the way I see it, nothing is free…anything of any lasting value is going to cost something…so what’s the catch here to this verse? (At this moment I’m so thankful I don’t serve an insecure God who becomes threatened at my honesty…He’s big enough to handle this doubting Thomas.)
So I found myself staring at that word “delight”. I’m not an excitable kind of guy so when I think of “delight” I get this picture of some silly kind of emotionalism in my head…which doesn’t really compute with me. I’m not trying to be critical here…I’m just trying to understand if I’m the one missing something. I decided to find out more about what that word “delight” really means so I looked up the Hebrew word and found that it translates to “be soft and pliable“.
The Eternal Potter
Hmmm….soft and pliable… It’s in this moment I think about the Potter and the lump of clay. There is a condition which needs to be met before I can get the desires of my heart. See! I knew there was a cost. The cost is that I have to be willing to allow the Eternal Potter to place me on the potter’s wheel and mold me into the original design He intended when He formed me in my mother’s womb. This is no small condition when you really consider what it means.
This process will certainly make me very dizzy at the least because those wheels spin fast you know. You think I’m joking huh? I’m speaking metaphorically here, because as I search deeper I feel that to continue down this path in following the Lord, there will be many times when I feel like things are spinning out of control for me…flinging me out of my comfort zone.
Trust is required as I submit to the grand design of the Potter. Will I trust the process? Will I trust His nature? Will I trust His words that He is for me and not against me (Romans 8:31); will I trust that He has plans for me that will bring hope and purpose (Jeremiah 29:11); or will I jump off the wheel when I see things turn in a direction I’m not comfortable with? Will self-sufficiency rise up inside and cause me to say, “I got it from here Lord.” If it comes down to that, both God and I know what I’m really saying…“Sorry Lord, I don’t trust you.”
This is a characteristic I find to be so cool about God….He loves me enough to allow me to jump off that wheel at any time. Sure He desires the very best for me…but He’s willing to honor and respect me enough to allow me the choice to submit or not. He desires a relationship with us…He created a partnership and elevated us to a status that will make an impact on outcomes around us…beginning with us and moving outward…and He ultimately allows us to make the choice of whether we want to go for it or not.
It’s so incredibly cool when I open the bible, clueless about where I’m going, and as I hang in there, a path becomes clear, along with the invitation to follow. The direction on this morning then turned toward the great Shepherd.
The Great Shepherd
This story is found in Psalm 23. Most people have heard at least some of the words in this short Psalm beginning with, “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing…” The reason this story comes to mind is because a few minutes ago I was questioning whether I would stay on the Potter’s wheel when (not if) things turned a direction I’m not comfortable with.
Psalm 23:4-5 paints a picture of Believers following the Lord even as the path leads into dark places described as “the valley of the shadow of death.” I picture walking a path through a deep valley with steep walls on all sides. This valley is winding, so its unclear how far I will have to travel to get to the other side. It could be just around the next corner or it could be several miles long…I don’t know.
Along the steep recesses of the cavern walls were hideous creatures spewing hateful threats and making statements intended to create doubt and fear in me….will I continue on or will I turn back? The Shepherd is out ahead of me and as I pause to look up at the creatures, a gap extends between the Shepherd and me. I can picture the Apostle Peter right now as his strong faith, which only minutes earlier led him out of the boat, was now failing him as his eyes moved from the Lord to the waves of the sea. Fear began to seep into his heart.
But back to the valley… With the distance growing between me and the Shepherd comes the all-to-familiar words…”Did God really say…” Doubt and fear…which began as an occasional drip have now become a small stream filling up my heart. If I continue to pause and listen to the words spoken by these creatures along the cliff, the gap will increase between me and the Shepherd. Will I continue to pay heed to what they say or will I place my eyes back on the Shepherd, trust His leading and walk this thing out one step at a time?
Wait a minute! That one creature is repeating the words spoken by an old basketball coach years ago that devastated me…and it sounds a lot like his voice too! Huh? There’s another one reminding me of how I didn’t step up to a challenge by another boy in 6th grade in front of a bunch of classmates… Hey! Is that Uncle Charlie up there too! (Okay, that was stupid, but I have a way with inappropriate humor at times like this…I don’t even have an Uncle Charlie anyways…)
The Shepherd pauses to look back…”stay close to me Gordon and trust me; they cannot hurt you.” What will I do though? Will I believe Him and run up close, or will I take matters into my own hands and turn, running back the other way taking matters into my own hands? Will I remain soft and pliable to the Potter? Or will I jump off the wheel? I hear the words of the Shepherd…”Gordon, he who seeks to save his life will lose it…but he who is willing to lose his life for me, will find it.” (Matthew 16:25). “Stay with me Gordon.”
I begin question the leadership of this Shepherd…Why do we even need to go through this valley anyways? I bet what’s on the other side is very similar to what’s on this side…right? Hmmm….Maybe not.
Years ago there was a swimming pool located at the country club close to my neighborhood. Every once in a while, friends would invite me with the limited passes they had each summer.
But there was this…”thing” at the pool that created a lot of fear in me. In fact, when I was invited to go swimming, some degree of anxiety would enter my heart as I thought about this……..this “thing”. Most people call it a “high-dive” but the picture of this…”thing” would elevate my anxiety. On a few occasions at the pool I would muster the courage to climb the ladder only to freeze up in my fears and follow the path of shame by climbing back down the ladder…in front of my peers.
There came this day though when a different kind of courage welled up inside of me and I climbed that ladder, closed my eyes, and ran off that board. Bam! Belly-flop! Who cares! I did it! In that moment everything changed for me…I was never the same, and going to the pool never again brought that anxiety. For a 2nd or 3rd grader, that was my valley of the shadow of death, and once I came through on the other side…life was different. That act became a building block to future decisions when it came to facing my fears.
My point here is probably obvious by now, but as we make the choice to remain close to the Shepherd…as we choose to trust the hands of the Potter, I believe we will never be the same when we come out on the other side….and I believe we will never want to go back. I also believe we will wonder why it took so long for us to see this.
No 15 Yard Penalty Here
Oh! And there is another reason to go through that valley; read the 5th verse. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows”. Think about this for a minute. In the NFL, if you celebrate in front of your adversary after doing something great, you risk a 15 yard penalty. But the Lord…the great Shepherd, he doesn’t tell us after we successfully come through that valley, “Hey, let’s go celebrate the victory!” Nope! We celebrate right here; right now!…right in front of our adversary (who is not flesh and blood), and there ain’t a damn thing that adversary can do about it! What a statement! The ultimate taunt. There is no fear…no intimidation…no more!
The Exodus
Let me quickly tie one more story in here. In the story of the Israelites exit out of Egypt, God understands that His people have been subjected to slavery for 400 years. If 40 years is typically considered a generation, then this is 10 generations of identity-shaping bondage which has no doubt had a profound effect on how His people view who they are.
In Exodus 13:17, God makes the decision to take His people the long way to the Promised Land because, to take the shorter way would take them through the land of the Philistines where His people would face war. God knew that although He was bringing His people out of Egypt, He had yet to get Egypt out of them. Walking out into the wilderness, His people’s identity was still skewed, distorted…..inaccurate! They still thought as slaves and not as the Children of the Living God. To be the people God created them to be, to be the people who stepped into the destiny created for them, they would have to see themselves much differently…they would have to see themselves as warriors, powerful, dangerous.
For anyone familiar with the story, the Israelites continually resisted embracing who God created them to be, and when it came time to take the Promised Land, they still saw themselves as small…mere “grasshoppers” up against their adversary (Numbers 13:33).
There were grave consequences for this because God ultimately allowed the people to hold tightly to their identity, despite how wrong it was. He didn’t force them to give it up…He gave them the choice to keep that wrong identity or receive the identity He gave them, and they kept theirs. He allowed things to play out according to the small perspective of His people and He raised up another generation who were willing to see themselves as God saw them and step into the role the earlier generation refused.
I believe there will be consequences as well for us and those within our sphere of influence if we are unwilling to release our false perspectives and embrace the truth of who God created us to be.
Wrapping It Up
For us to step into our destiny, our calling, into that place that brings hope, passion, and purpose, much is required. We must be willing to abandon self-preservation and self-sufficiency and place ourselves into the Potter’s hands. We must be willing to ask the Potter to make our heart soft and pliable and make room for the bigness of His vision for our lives by cleaning house of our smaller vision.
We must be willing to stay right by the side of the Great Shepherd as he leads us through places that will bring fear and doubt….and we must stay the course trusting that our Lord will bring us through to victory…
We must be willing to shed an identity as slaves, as small people…an identity that limits who we were created by the Eternal God to be and embrace the fact that anyone who makes the decision to accept the gift made by Jesus when He died on the cross, are no longer people of this world but are now Children of God.
Transformation Manifesting:
It’s as we move closer to this destination that it seems to me our prayers will begin to change, because our hearts are being transformed…we are becoming a new creation…we are becoming the original design we were meant to be…we no longer see this world through a “fallen-world perspective” but instead through the perspective of God….and I can only wonder if it’s in this transformation that we find ourselves receiving the desires of our heart.
Hmmm…Nothing is ever free is it? Jumping off the wheel or turning and running the other direction in that valley comes with a price….just like if I would have turned and climbed back down the ladder that day at the high-dive so many years ago.