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I Will Praise You, Lord

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by Brian Waple

I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all the marvelous things you have done. I will be filled with joy because of you. I will sing praises to your name, O Most High. (Psalm 9:1–2, NLT)

I have to admit, it’s kind of hard to find comfort in those words in recent days. We have a pandemic that just seems to be getting worse; the 2020 presidential election has left the country more divided than ever; for Elim, our pastor search doesn’t seem to be panning out as we had hoped; the governor’s latest announcement seems to be affecting churches in a way that is constricting how we worship; and flu season is upon us. There are many reasons to be discouraged.

Yet it is during these hard days that God calls us to cling to Him. In the Book of Psalms, we read how David, a man after God’s own heart, went through discouraging (and downright terrifying) times. He spoke to God often about his fears, his disillusions, his failings, God’s failings (as David saw it)—often as a result of things he had no control over. But David also acknowledges God’s grace and mercy and sovereignty in all things.

Psalm 10 begins as many of David’s psalms begin: from a place of anguish. “O Lord, why do you stand so far away? Why do you hide when I am in trouble? (Psalm 10:1).” But David knows in his heart and soul that God is greater than his troubles, as we read in Psalm 11: “But the Lord is in his holy Temple; the Lord still rules from heaven. He watches everyone closely, examining every person on earth (Psalm 11:4).”

I believe in my own heart and soul that God is greater than all that is happening right now. I believe that none of this has caught Him by surprise, and I believe that God is working through it all, although I may not see it. Still, I find myself experiencing periods of anguish and asking God, “Lord, when is this going to end?”

David finds his solace in praising his God. When he turns his attention to praise, he doesn’t dwell on what’s happening. It’s still happening, but his attention is focused on the One who is greater than all his troubles. It’s hard for me to want to praise when things are falling apart, but isn’t that what I am called to do? Throughout the Scriptures, God tells His people to “trust in Me.” I know that sounds too simple and naive, especially in these very, very complex times when we are desperately searching for answers. But as we read in Psalm 18, “God’s way is perfect. All the Lord’s promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to him for protection (Psalm 18: 30).” Now, isn’t that worthy of our praise?

So, in many ways we can’t control what’s going on around us, whether it be this pandemic, or the election, or the pastor seach, or anything else. But, like David, we are called to trust and praise the One who can end this sickness . . . who can unite this country . . . who can bring a pastor to this church . . . and who will one day reign supreme!

I will exalt you, my God and King, and praise your name forever and ever. I will praise you every day; yes, I will praise you forever. Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise! No one can measure his greatness. (Psalm 145:1–3)

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And the Winner Is . . .

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Jeff Foerster

Odds favor that on January 20, 2021, the United States of America will inaugurate Joe Biden as our 46th president. Presidential Election Day falls on the first Tuesday of November every four years and, approximately 10 weeks later, the first day of the presidential term begins. Our republic has an organized system of governance and election protocols. While I won’t dig deeply into detail, here are a few key dates to be aware of:

  • November 3: Election Day
  • December 14: Electoral college voting
  • January 6: Congressional counting of electoral college ballots
  • January 20: Presidential Inauguration Day

Currently, we have a contested election. This means for most of us in the general public, a period of waiting. Waiting for legal issues to be resolved, waiting for state ballot counts to be certified, waiting for the electoral college to meet, waiting for those ballots to be tabulated in Congress, waiting for Inauguration Day.

At Elim, we know waiting, and we know there can be some discomfort in the process. We await God’s revealing of a permanent lead pastor. In this time of not knowing, we do well to rest in the trust of God’s continuing provision and, therefore, His preparation of the man who will serve Jesus, in our midst, into the future.

In this world, there will be legal battles. There will be wars of words. There will be tumult and tempests. This is certainly true when it comes to our political environment. And to put it lightly, God has some knowledge and experience in this area.

Jesus, facing the greatest “political” battle of his life, stood before Pilate, Governor of Judaea. He spoke these words:

My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm. (John 18:36, my emphasis)

Did you catch that? Jesus’s fight is not a political one and neither is that of His followers. The kingdom of Jesus, of which every born-again Christian is a part, neither rises nor falls with the fortunes of any political party. Though there are significant differences between party platforms and candidates, the will of God is sovereign over all, and we can have peace in the midst of the storm because our King is the King of Peace.

We don’t fight like men fight, with destruction and division, but we are to wage war. We war in ways which sinful man cannot understand, nor can he comprehend. Our weapons are truth and faith and prayer and submission and trust—not to human outcomes, but to our God and Creator who rules over all, and that, forevermore. And the result? Peace. A peace that none can take away.

So I urge you to draw near, in this time of waiting, not to television sets or iPhones for the latest political update, but draw near to God, and love one another as He has loved you.

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Dust, Ashes, and Joy

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By Jason Comerford

Have you ever noticed any patterns to when you experience joy? Does it come after a Sunday-morning service? Or after singing a timely worship song? Maybe it’s after an evening with your community group studying the Bible, or perhaps in praying with a close friend.

Well, after being a Christian for 13 years, I’ve really started to notice one peculiar pattern for when I experience joy: it’s when I discover clearly that I’m wrong about something. Usually, something significant.

The first time I can remember this happening to me was when I got saved. I was reading a book about how God as Father deals with His sons. The picture was of such a loving, good, kind, and faithful parent that, in a moment, it struck me how my view of God had been horribly twisted my entire life. The cruel, overbearing bully in my head gave way to an incredibly patient, good, tender, and loving friend. I literally got to my knees and wept in apology to my Heavenly Father, confessing how wrongly I had been thinking of Him.

And that’s what really struck me: my wrongness about what God is like. And I felt awful about it—all the ways I had resented God, hated Him, delayed in obeying Him. He deserved none of that! In prayer, I apologized and apologized again and again.

I felt so awful.

And yet, I also felt really happy.

Sure, I had discovered how terribly I had lived and behaved. But the sorrow of such behavior only struck me because I discovered how GOOD God is. Guilt and shame had never produced any kind of faith or obedience in me. But discovering how good God is? That did it. Let me tell you, discovering for the first time how wonderful God is? That’s a very happy moment.

But don’t miss this. My first real taste of joy came through a tiny death. A lifetime of religious learning and the accompanying ego were struck down to bring me this newfound happiness.

 In our culture, we feel ashamed to admit we’re wrong. We spend hours on social media trying to prove to others that we are the right ones. We will fight and argue for the right to be right.

But when we recognize we’re wrong about God, He doesn’t shame us. He shows us He is so great that we can’t fully know Him. And He’s so good, even when we thought otherwise, so much better than we can fully understand.

Job spent most of his book defending his righteousness, and he technically was righteous. He never cursed God, even when his children, wealth, and health were torn from him. But even in the midst of his uprightness, the Lord enters into the conversation and shows him that he does not even begin to understand his God. God speaks to him for several chapters, revealing how little Job actually knows. And Job’s response?

I know that you can do all things,
    and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
“Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?”
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
    things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
“Hear, and I will speak;
    I will question you, and you make it known to me.”
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
    but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
    and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:1–6)

And God responds by blessing him. He defends Job against his unloving friends. He restores Job’s wealth and family even beyond what he’d originally enjoyed. (Job 42:7–17)

I’m not saying that when you realize you’re wrong, God will give you material riches. But I am saying that God means good for us when He shows us we’re wrong about Him. He means to bring us joy, not shame.

 But we have to recognize we’re wrong before we can find joy in knowing God better.

I challenge you to ask God to expose the ways that you’re wrong about Him. Ask Him how you’ve misrepresented Him and how you’ve misunderstood Him. Be willing to be wrong, that you might find joy in believing what is right.

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Sweetly Broken

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By Larry Short

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. (2 Corinthians 4:7)

I write for a website called Quora. People visiting this website submit questions about faith, science, and almost every other topic you can imagine. Anyone can respond to these questions, and the more your responses get upvoted as helpful by those reading them, the more you will be asked to provide answers to similar questions.

I get lots of questions, primarily about faith, but also about mushrooms! (Who knew?)

This week someone asked, “What does Paul mean by ‘jars of clay’ in 2 Corinthians 4:7?”

I thought that was a great question, so I began digging into it. I wanted to share with you what I learned, because I think it relates very closely to the challenges we are currently experiencing.

Actually, if you look carefully at that verse, “jars of clay” isn’t the only interesting metaphor there. Perhaps even more important is the phrase this treasure. What is the significance of these two metaphors? And what do they have to do with us here on earth, battling COVID and isolation and social injustice and upheaval and political quandaries and economic problems and everything else that we have been struggling through?

It’s All About the Treasure

As I looked at verse 7 and its context, I realized that Paul first defines this treasure in the verses that precede verse 7. Verse 4 refers to the treasure as being the “light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” And verse 5 adds, “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” Verse 6 says that the God who declared that the light He created would “shine out of darkness” also has “shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

“This treasure” is the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news that He loves us and gave Himself for us so that we could live forever with Him! And like any light that God has created, it has to shine out of darkness. Unless impeded (thinking here about Jesus’s words in Matthew 5:15, “Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house”), light can do naught but shine.

Our job, therefore, is to not impede the light that otherwise wants to shine out, overcoming darkness! The problem is, there are distinct similarities between our jars of clay and the basket Jesus refers to. Both can impede light and keep it from shining.

So What Exactly Is a Jar of Clay?

I think the verses that follow verse 7 help us understand what Paul means by the phrase jars of clay. These verses focus on who we are as Christ followers. We are afflicted but not crushed, perplexed but not overcome by despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. Death is at work in us, so that God’s life can be at work in others.

In other words, we are (and forgive the pun) a basket case! But we are God’s basket case.

One thing about jars of clay is that they are fragile. They are made of dirt and are easily cracked and broken.

Another thing about cracked and broken jars of clay is that the light can shine out of the cracks!

Brokenness may not be something we say we aspire to. It hurts to be broken. And in these days of pandemic, social chaos, financial difficulties, and political conflict, I think we are all feeling pretty broken.

But—if we allow it—brokenness is exactly something God can use to shine His gospel light brightly out of the cracks in our lives! As songwriter/worship leader Jeremy Riddle sings:

At the cross, You beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees
And I am lost for words, so lost in love
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered

Let’s not just be cracked and broken. Let’s be sweetly broken, wholly surrendered!

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When Healing Hurts

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By Larry Short

Given some of the painful woes of our current situation, many of us have learned afresh how to lament the many challenges we face.

Some are more serious than others. Many have family members or friends who are struggling to recover from COVID-19—and as we know, not all such struggles end well. Or perhaps they are struggling with the prospect or fear of a potentially fatal illness and not the reality.

Others have lost jobs or income streams. They may have children at home who must be shepherded through the new learning process, requiring great and unaccustomed sacrifice of time and trouble.

Others, like me, face smaller challenges: The weight of isolation from family and friends. The inconvenience of restrictions on the way we go out, shop, or worship. Or perhaps the loss of retirement investments we had really hoped would “be there” for us in our sunset years and the prospect of possibly having to continue working after we would otherwise have retired.

All of these things, and more, to which each of us are subjected in these days of pandemic and societal upheaval, are painful.

Timothy Dalrymple is the president of my favorite magazine, Christianity Today. They have been taking a consistently hard, honest, and thorough look at the challenges presented by the current cultural context to us as Christians and to the churches we invest our lives in.

In the September issue, he took an interesting look at our pain, what is causing it, and what God might be doing in the midst of it. In an editorial titled “When Healing Hurts,” he recalled the story of Jesus healing the paralytic by the Pool of Bethesda and the fascinating question with which our Lord initiates that interaction: “Do you want to get well?”

It seems almost absurd. The man had been paralyzed for nearly four decades of his life and daily lay out with other very sick folks hoping for a long-shot chance at a miracle. Who would not look at such a person and think, “Of course he wants to get well!”

But Dalrymple spoke about what many of us realize upon deeper reflection: “Suffering, especially chronic suffering, can become precious to us. When suffering persists, we sculpt our lives around it. We craft an identity that encompasses our suffering until we scarcely know who we would be without it.”

On the other hand, Dalrymple acknowledges that God often allows suffering for our instruction and betterment and for His glory. The Apostle Paul learned this when he sought for God to remove his infamous “thorn in the flesh.” He then acknowledges this torment was given to teach him humility, to help him realize the sufficiency of God’s grace for him, and to show him that God’s power may be made perfect in his weakness (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

But in John 5, Jesus singles out the longsuffering paralytic for healing. First however, He asks if healing really is indeed what the man wants. And interestingly, the paralytic really doesn’t respond in faith to Christ’s question. Instead he makes excuses as to why he has remained so long unhealed!

In the midst of our current problems—political, racial, financial, and health challenges—I wonder if God would ask us the same question: “Do you want to be whole?”

Healing can be painful. We may have to humbly acknowledge our error, ask forgiveness of others, and prepare to embrace a new identity given by God, which seems risky and frightening to us. God may be calling us to slam the door shut on our habit of using social media as a weapon to broadcast our own rightness. He may be asking us to do a truly hard thing in listening to others and exalting their needs as higher and more important than our own. Or He may be simply asking us to trust Him implicitly—with finances, career, health, reputation, family, and friends—when we can’t see clearly the landscape into which He is asking us to follow Him.

In his current sermon series, Pastor Steve is sharing principles on how to get “disentangled” from sin’s deceitful web. I suspect that as Jesus (through His Holy Spirit) approaches us, as we struggle with the pain of our own sinful habits and behaviors, He will ask us the same question He asked the paralytic:

“Do you want to get well?”

I would suggest we respond to that question without making excuses. Simply bite the bullet and say, “Yes, Lord. Here I am. I need Your healing!”

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Can We Pass the COVID-19 Test?

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By Interim Pastor Steve McCoy

Tests are dreaded by most students, but teachers have been using them for years because they work. Students strive to learn their lessons so they can advance, pass the test, and move on to the next level.

God also administers tests. Jesus writes to the church at Philadelphia about testing the whole earthly population: “Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth” (Revelation 3:10).

The good news is that this church is going to be spared from that test. The bad news is God is going to test those who call this planet home.

Interestingly enough, our world is going through a planetwide test right now since God has allowed COVID-19 to sweep the globe.

How do we and the rest of the world pass the test?

Do we pass by coping and hunkering down?

Do we pass when we discover who is to blame and hold them accountable—China, politicians, virologists?

Do we pass the test when we wear a mask, socially distance, or get a vaccine?

Just how do we pass the pandemic test?

When God was leading Israel through their wilderness wanderings, Moses disclosed to them the purpose of their trials: “to test you in order to know what was in her heart” (Deuteronomy 8:2).

God is testing me, our church, other believers, unbelievers, and the whole world with COVID-19 to see what is in our heart:

  • Do I love God more fervently than before?
  • Is my service for God as passionate as before?
  • Is my obedience more complete than in previous days?
  • Is my character more reflective of Jesus?

I want to pass the test with a heart hot after God.

Perhaps God is preparing His church to come roaring back with more vitality and passion than ever before!

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