knowledgeofgoodandevil

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him:”Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other criminal rebuked him, “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But his man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Luke 23:32-36

I love the story of the thief on the cross. This thief was dying for crimes he had committed. He hung on one side of Jesus Christ. Another thief hung on the other side. That thief decided to use the last minutes of his life on this planet to mock Jesus and tell Him to save Himself. He’s about to die, and he’s taking the minutes he has left to hurl insults at Jesus.

In the midst of this, the other thief doesn’t go into a deep theological discussion with the man. He just asks a simple question that reveals his heart. “Don’t you fear God…” This thief, in his final moments, is acknowledging Who hangs beside him. He knows. How do we know he knows? He turns to Jesus and asks Him to remember him when He goes into His kingdom. He is essentially telling Jesus Christ, I know who you are…have mercy on me.

And then Jesus says something that answers so many questions. In that one sentence, Jesus announces what He is doing on the cross! He is telling the thief, the crux of the gospel.

He is also answering the question about what happens to believers when they die. In those eight simple words, Jesus has answered that question, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

The beauty of the gospel is that it is nothing we can do. Jesus paid it all. The thief on the cross had no time. He had minutes before he would depart this world forever. He was paying the price for his crimes while he hung next to Jesus who was paying the price for all of our sins. Somehow this thief knew it. He knew who Jesus was.

There was no time to do any good deeds. There was no time for him to pray or sing or feed the homeless. He couldn’t repay all the people he robbed. He couldn’t tell the people he wronged that he was sorry. THERE WAS NOTHING HE COULD DO. Except, to believe on Jesus Christ. In that moment, he did what God asks all of us to do. God never tells us to to do good deeds. Our righteousness is as filthy rags. All we are asked to do, is to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior. And that’s exactly what this thief did. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

And Jesus answers him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Yep, that’s all it takes. No good deeds. You won’t be able to cleanse yourself with good deeds. You can’t make yourself righteous. Just simply accept Jesus Christ as your Savior. He paid the price. What a glorious thing!

This isn’t easy to write about. A young pastor in our church just committed suicide this past Monday. The church is reeling from this. He left behind his wife and two small children.

It’s hard to wrap our minds around things like this. Questions race through my mind. Why did he do this? Why would he deprive his two young boys of a father? Why would he deprive his wife of a husband? He was a pastor, couldn’t he get help? What’s going on here?

As I’ve thought and thought about it, a thought keeps occurring in my mind. We are in the last days. Jesus is coming soon! We have an enemy that prowls around like a roaring lion. He wants to take us out. It’s what he does. And because of these two facts: WE NEED TO BE CAREFUL! We can’t grow complacent. We can’t let our guard down. God warned us in His WORD, that the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour.

I wrote about suicide before. Another guy who I followed on social media, attempted suicide. I talked about the enemy there.

We can’t wander away from our Shepherd at any time. We are helpless sheep. That’s what God calls us – sheep. Sheep need to be led by the Shepherd. And that’s exactly what a shepherd does. He spends his whole day, outside, protecting his sheep from predators. And just like real sheep, we need protection. And the only way we’re going to have protection is if we stay close to our Shepherd. We’ll get hurt or killed if we wander off.

And because we are sheep, we can’t assume we can take on the predators all by our lonesome. Sheep can’t take on a wolf and expect to live to tell about it. So we too, can’t expect to take on the enemy all by ourselves. We are sheep. We have no defense system on our own. Wolves and lions are excellent predators. They know how to hunt and they’re physically stronger and capable of taking down sheep.

I’m not trying to be sensational here, but if a sheep wanders away, THE ENEMY WILL HUNT YOU DOWN! God would not have warned us if this wasn’t an issue.

These are the last days. Protect yourself. Stay close to the Shepherd – Jesus Christ. Stay in the Word. Constantly pray. Keep yourself in fellowship with other Believers. Don’t, for a second, let your guard down. You can’t afford to. None of us can. WE ARE HELPLESS SHEEP!

This pastor allowed the enemy to take a bite out of him. And then another and another. And when it was too late, He was already gone. Don’t let this happen to you, Believer. Just like a warrior has to get ready for battle, we need to do the same. We need to put on the armor to protect ourselves. We need the helmet of salvation. We need the breastplate of righteousness. We need the sword of the Word.

I don’t mean to sound like a pessimist, but things are only going to get worse. STAY CLOSE TO THE SHEPHERD, SHEEP! You can’t afford not to.

God is unexpected. I like to think and plan in my head, how I think things should go. But walking with God for all these years, He’s completely unexpected. What I think should happen, almost never does. God always has a better plan.

I think of when I wanted a mini van to haul our kids and their friends around in. We didn’t have the money, so I started praying for one. A couple of months later, one of our cars is stolen. Completely unexpected. I was praying to get a mini van, not to get our car stolen! It turns out, God knew exactly what He was doing. The car that got stolen was a lemon. We thought it was the good car. But it wasn’t. It was also a newer car, so we got money from our insurance when it got stolen. It all worked out that we ended up with a new mini van. But getting our car stolen was not exactly how I saw that.

When Jesus walked the planet, the Jews and even the disciples were thrilled that He had come. They thought He would overthrow the Roman Empire and become King. They were very excited about this. And then the unexpected happened. Jesus was brought to trial. He was accused and given over to be crucified! Die? He can’t die. How will He be King if He dies? This isn’t the plan. He can’t die!

But He did die. He was crucified. The disciples scrambled to get away, they thought they were next. Their dreams of overthrowing the Roman Empire-gone! Jesus died and was buried in a tomb. The disciples were completely confused. What would they do now? Their Messiah was dead. He had taught them so much. And for what? He was dead. For three days they agonized over His death. This wasn’t supposed to be the plan.

And then, the unexpected happened! He rose from the dead! Jesus came back to life and walked out of the tomb! He came back to the disciples. Thomas didn’t even believe it. He wanted to see the nail prints in His hands before he would believe. So Jesus reappeared and showed Thomas the nail prints in His hands. Now Jesus was alive.

God is the God of the unexpected. We see it one way, but God usually has other plans. We think we know how it should go, but we can’t see ahead. We can’t see the big picture. So just when you think you’ve reached the end of your rope. Just when you think you’ve had too much, God will come in and do something completely unexpected. When we can’t see it for what it is or predict how it’s going to turn out, then you can place the outcome completely on God’s shoulders. You turn around and look back and see God’s fingerprints all over your situation. God is completely unexpected. So put your faith and trust in the One who can see it all, knows it all, and is powerful. His ways are not our ways, and that’s a really good thing.

Looking back at this past year and all my struggles, I see more clearly God in my life. When we walk through the valley, we can’t see anything. It’s not until you come out the other side, that you can look back and see God’s hand on your life. You can see God’s fingerprints all over the place.

Life isn’t easy. It’s no fun to have struggles and problems. But it is so worth it to struggle. Think of an athlete. My husband likes to lift weights. When he was in high school he really got into it. He said he would push himself so hard, he would feel sick after the workout. He said, as you increase the weight you lift, you create tiny tears in your muscles. This opens up the muscles to get bigger and stronger. But that doesn’t sound pleasant, creating tears in your muscles.

A runner must run hard and fast to get faster. They must push themselves and push themselves. Each day they run until their lungs burn, their hearts pound out of their chest and their muscles ache. But everyday that they push themselves, they get better and better. The runner gets faster.

So too, our lives are like training to be athletes. Our faith would be flabby and weak if it weren’t for struggles. Each struggle is like the regimen the athlete pursues to get better and better. We have to experience pain before the gain. Struggles strengthen us. It pushes us harder. As we make it through the struggle, we come out the other end, stronger, our faith, deeper.

That is what God wants for us. He wants us strong. He wants us powerful. But that only happens with struggle. It doesn’t happen any other way. Wouldn’t that be nice if it did. But it doesn’t. Just like an athlete, we only get stronger with the pain. Our lungs have to burn, our muscles need to ache, and our hearts need to beat out of our chests in order for us to become stronger in our Christian walk.

I think of Peter, just before Jesus was crucified. Jesus told him that he would deny Him three times. Not one of Peter’s finest moments. As Peter denied Jesus Christ for the third time, the rooster crowed and Peter remembered Christ’s words to him. The agony, of what he had done went deep into his soul. The pain of realizing he had denied His Savior was probably almost too much to bear.

There was also the pain of seeing his Rabbi, crucified upon the cross, dead. The feeling of hope dying and the shame of what he had done, was a deep scar on Peter’s heart.

Then He rose from the dead! He came back to life! Hope was restored. Then Jesus confronts Peter. In that moment, he doesn’t reprimand him, he commissions him! Peter would now build the church. He was ready now! He had suffered through much, and now he was ready.

So when that pains comes, when the struggles hit you in the face, don’t lose heart. It will make you stronger. It will make you better. The pain is momentary. We are like athletes. We must endure, only to get better in the end.

I want to brag about God’s kindness. I have a temporary full time job right now. That sounds like a contradiction. What it means is that I’m working full time, but only for about two months. It’s good that I have this job. I’m grateful for it. But like all new things, I’m having to adjust and get used to the routine and new people I’m working with.

And like all things, not everyone in the world is easy to work with. Here is where God’s kindness comes in. On Friday, I arrived at work. I got out of my car, and just as I did, I heard a loud noise above me in the parking structure. I looked up to see a dove, flying off and landing on a lamppost near by. I smiled at the dove. God is always sending me birds to remind me of His presence in my life. As I walked into the office, I wondered what the dove meant. What was God saying to me?

That morning, I had to deal with the difficult person at work. I was feeling frustrated. I had appointments with several families that day. As I was feeling frustrated, a family walked in and the father looked me straight in the eye and asked me if I remembered a family I saw last week. He mentioned their name, but I couldn’t remember the name. I would only remember their faces. This father said I needed to hear this. He said that that family met me last week and said I did a fantastic job. They really liked me. Then he said it again. “You need to hear this.”

I didn’t catch on, in that moment, as to who was really speaking to me. But after they left, the realization began to creep into my mind. The guy had said, “You need to hear this.” That was God telling me, “You need to hear this.” My God. My Savior. The One who loves me despite me. He was reminding me that He had my back. He was there with me at work. He will always be with me. And when problems come or problem people, I know I can trust God. He really has my back.

Now I knew what the dove was for. It was a little love note from God, telling me that He was there, with me. He was telling me no problem was too small or too great for Him to handle. At the moment, when I temporarily forgot, God reminded me. “You need to hear this.” He reminded me that I’m okay.

And that is God’s kindness. Even in the seemingly little things in life: frustrations or frustrating people. God is there, to tell the believer that we are okay. God’s love notes to us can take any kind of form. But if you are going through a problem or frustration, look around for those notes, believer. They are there. God loves His own. And every aspect of our lives is important to Him. Yay God!