“Return, and tell Hezekiah, the captain of my people, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David, thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears; behold, I will heal thee. On the third day thou shalt go up into the house of the Lord” (2 Kings 20:5).

Hezekiah, the king, the captain of God’s people, was a godly man but he had great troubles heaped upon him. His country was under siege and he was deathly sick. National crisis is bad enough but to have a personal crisis is trouble piled high.

What do you do? He turned to the Lord with tears and used the means God had given him for healing. Sometimes God will alter things in His universe just to meet our needs. Sometimes God heals on earth and other times He heals in glory.

Friend, we do not know when we will die, but we do know we will. It is up to us to live and to live well in the power of the Spirit of the living God. To live in lethargy, complacency, or self-sufficiency, is to live with the threat of settling down in a world that is cursed with sin and death.

This is not God’s best. God’s best is to allow our needs to continually drive us to Him upon our knees and for each of us to stay close to Him. Let your troubles drive you to Christ. This is the power of the third day. And by the way, we are all terminal, for we do not know when or where, but we do know we will not live forever in this body of clay.

There was a bothersome headline a while back from the USA Today, “Old Faithful Gets Fickle.” What? The famous geyser in Yellowstone National Park was not as faithful as it once was. The 140 foot tower of steam erupted faithfully about every 66 minutes, but something was not right as the report continued. The eruption could be predicted for 12:11 p.m. But it didn’t occur until 12:18 p.m. The one predicted for 2:46 p.m. jumped the gun at 2:38 p.m. The problem was that underground shifts by minor earthquakes occurred, plus vandalism by visitors. The “Tommy Tourists” would come by and throw things into the geyser’s hole, from chicken bones to underwear. What? Most of us have had something or someone that was kind of our “Old Faithful”, but they became “Old Unpredictable.” It might have been a job that you used to have and depended upon for a long time. Or it could have been a mate that took off and left you holding air and nothing but hopelessness. Maybe it was your parents’ marriage that hurt you deeply that caused a rift for your growing up days. Maybe your church or your spiritual leaders have let you down and they were once your “Old Faithful.” It hurts when an “Old Faithful” isn’t anymore. It leaves us disoriented, and afraid, and even unsure of ourselves or unsure of others. Our future can seem so drear and so uncertain. But don’t let it bring you down. While others let you down, you don’t have to go down. Remember this for today. Jeremiah says, “I remember my afflictions and wandering, the bitterness and the gall, I well remember them and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail, they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him” (Lam. 3:19).

“…Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad” (Acts 26:24)   Francois Fenelon said, “To just read the Bible, attend church, and avoid “big” sins – is this passionate, wholehearted love for God?” Is the church missing what God intended her to be? In many ways, and I’m nervous about it, the church is not doing so well.   It used to be that “Good Christians” avoided drinking, drugs, sex, swearing, and fought their desires in order to please God. That is the way many were brought up during the Christian culture of the day. In reality and hindsight, I don’t believe the church’s teachings were incorrect, just incomplete.   If we would get into the Word of God and think Biblically instead of conventionally, it would change our paradigm. Our thinking would explode and it would be exhilarating. We have all we need. We have all of Jesus we need. What we don’t have is to want Jesus more.   Are you bored with American Christianity and that which it offers? Do you want to rise above the plateau of the American style of doing church? Would you want to get to the place where you would rather die than let go of your convictions in Christ?   “More God” and “more life” follows. Not to be immune from self-giving is to realize how wonderful God is. To not hold back anything but to give all is the utmost way to live. To be totally abandoned is to be totally absorbed.   God wants to lead a group of comfortable people into lives of risk and adventure. He wants us to love people like we never have before and to go to extremes to do just that.

“Therefore, my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved” (Phil. 4:1). We as a society have been conditioned to believe in the big, the fast, the expensive and the far away.  Whatever is big, fast, expensive, and away is the life of joy and happiness.  I am convinced that if you have to move ten inches from where you are now in order to be happy, you never will be. Paul was in prison for Christ, yet he was content.  Joseph was indeed in a mess down in Egypt, yet he was aware that God was working.  John the Baptist had stumbled over the timeline that God had for him, but he was learning.  The Lord Jesus operated by faith and not by feelings, and never moved from where His true peace was located. One can live with joy in their present circumstances and still live with expectation.  Life becomes more precious and more special to us when we look for the little everyday miracles and get excited about the privilege of simply being human. There is a powerful story of a young man who was seeking God.  He sought out a wise man who lived in a nearby beach house and posed the question:  “Old man, how can I see God?”  The old man who knew God at a depth few experience, pondered the question.  At last he responded quietly:  “Young man, I am not sure that I can help you–for you see, I have a different problem. I cannot not see him.”

“And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds, as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain” (2 Samuel 23:4).

The political parties are at extreme odds with one another. One is considered to be dark while the other is considered to be light. One is negative while the other is positive. The Democrats say our country is up. The Republicans say our country is down. We are living in a clouded day, a day of confusion.

The Lord Jesus was neither an optimist nor pessimist but a realist. He saw things as they were and one day we will too. There is coming a day when there will be no more clouded days and heaviness of heart. God will take away away the clouds and the rain and the Light of Day will forever shine without clouds in the sky.

We are going to a land of unclouded day and it is not just a pie in the sky mentality. It is God’s forever provision for His people who may weep through many a dark day but who are bound for the world where not only darkness is not present but even tears are passed away.

A New Start

“For which cause we faint not, but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).

Paul went through much of living in a culture that was antagonistic toward Christ. So many problems came and went against him, trouble on every side of him, problems that pressed hard against him, and yet he learned the secret of contentment.

Look at yourself in the mirror. Tell me what you see? I see in the mirror a man who is aging and breaking down externally. But, again,  take a look in the mirror of the Word. What do you see? Do you see the eternal springing up within you, the everlasting joy that comes from looking away from the obvious to the real?

Paul did not faint because he kept his eyes on the eternal and the internal. His daily focus was disciplined upon Christ and His Word. He learned that the outward things were temporal and could be discouraging. The things not seen were eternal and were an eternal weight of glory. What is discouragement? It is a temporary loss of perspective.

Focus on that which is unseen, the truths you know in your heart, for it is that truth that is a reality. We need to focus on the inner man. Life is passing us by. We have the opportunity to focus on the eternal and internal daily for the next 364 days of the year.