The Out of Sight and Out of Mind Works of God

This week, we had a costly and much-needed repair project take place at our home. Our old sewer line needed replacing. It was not something we had in our budget, but such is life. 

Our house was moved onto our lot in 1948. It was a small officer’s dwelling from a World War II military base here in southern Oregon called Camp White. When the base was decommissioned, the houses were sold off at auction and moved to various locations in our valley. Over the last seventy years, the sewer pipes had become compromised. Roots from our trees would fill the line requiring a twice-yearly de-rooting. 

We contacted a plumbing contractor who specializes in trenchless technology. They employ something called a bursting head. It is a pointed steel device pulled by a cable through the old clay pipe cracking the pipe and towing into place behind the bursting head a new plastic pipe. It is all done underground and out of sight. No surface trenching is required. Lawns don’t get torn up. Trees don’t die because their root system was severed. The plumbing contractor pulled a hundred feet of new sewer line underground. Our new pipe should last long after Jan and I are gone.

As I watched this unique way of replacing an underground pipe, I thought of how God can work in our lives.  Some of His most profound work is done out of sight and literally, out of mind. We think we need to always be aware of what He is doing or that He only does things we have prayed about or can understand with our intellect. I used to think that way until I understood something deeper about the nature of God.  Many times His love will not burden us with the details of a process of restoration. He just does it - out of sight and out of mind. When these projects of restoration are finished all we can do is worship Him and thank Him.

Like our old sewer line, some of what has worked in the past in your life may no longer be working. Parts of your life might have become clogged. You know God is doing something new and you may see the beginning of that work like I did when I saw the bursting head first enter the old pipe in the trench. I would not be able to see what was taking place underground that would eventually install the new pipe. It reminded me of those times in my life when God did something for me simply because He loves me without requiring my moment-by-moment participation or my understanding. 

These hidden works of God inch along unseen toward the other end of a problem where a new connection is finally made and a miracle takes place. At that moment, we realize all the work was being done under our feet, unnoticed, as we went about the daily affairs of our lives. That is how God will, at times, accomplish a seemingly impossible task just because He loves us.

The Passion of a Protector

All my life, I have been a protector. I once protected my little brother from a neighborhood bully. In the 6th grade, I got in a fight defending a Native American friend who was surrounded by mocking white kids who were issuing racial slurs. When I married Jan, I have always wanted to stand between her and danger. The nine years I spent as a police officer, I protected the citizens of each community where I worked. Once, as a SWAT team member, I was assigned to a security detail for the President of the United States. I protected celebrities at concerts who were unaware of my presence in the crowd. For 35 years, I was a pastor protecting God's flock. I don’t know what it would be like to live a life without protecting other people.

Each of us is called to protect the innocent and the unaware. It is easy to get angered at people who have no clue about the dangers of life, both in the natural and spiritual realm. If you are going to be a protector, you will have to deal with these judgments and resulting emotions because they can detract you from the attention needed when you are called into action. Watch a Secret Service agent guarding the President, and you will see a cool and collected demeanor of a person focused solely on the task of protecting.

As I get older, I am no longer able to do the things I did as a young man. As the changes of aging become a reality, protectors have to adjust their thinking and their tactics. These adjustments do not mean a person becomes a less effective protector. It means we must find new and creative ways to protect. A mom must learn how to let go of her immediate protective presence when she sends her child off to school for the first time. A father must trust his daughter to live with the integrity he instilled in her when she goes on her first date. A pastor must put more trust in the Lord’s ability to protect the flock that any theology, warning, or religious structure he or she might put in place.

At the core of any protector who remains effective over time is a deepening trust in God. This trust comes when we are fully assured that God is able to protect the ones under our care even when our abilities or a circumstance of life no longer allows us to protect them up close and personal. 

Trust in God is ultimately the most effective form of protection we can offer our loved ones. Having done all we can do we must learn to trust God with all things, including the safety of those under our care. Trust has the ability to defeat an assault before it begins because trust displaces the fear that empowers and emboldens the very thing we feared. 

From Above

If we are not speaking the truth in love, we need to stop what we are doing and disengage our voice from the conversation. To continue on with an agenda other than the sound of love, we will end up doing more harm than good, all in the name of God. 

Paul wrote the Ephesians and said the evidence a person has been matured under the influence of the five equipping gifts – apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher – is their ability to speak the truth in love, not parrot a political party line or allow their voice to be molded by fear in conversations around the latest hot-button cultural issue. 

A follower of Christ is not left, right or center on the political spectrum or the issues of culture. We are from above. Our citizenship is in Heaven and so is the source of our information. Our passport to walk the Earth has been issued from above – above petty and demeaning arguments and mocking statements and a never-ending series of gotcha pictures or statements taken out of context to prove our point. We are diplomats of another Kingdom. The solutions we bring to the table are not yet on the table. They are Kingdom solutions to complex issues that only love can solve. 

Today, recheck your spiritual passport. Confirm your identity and your place of allegiance. Those from above will not always align with the demands of a religious or political spirit. Every alignment must be examined by love. This love may cause us to step away from the line of an assumed position to go and stand in places of opposition where our loyalty to the party line will be questioned. Speaking the truth in love is dangerous. It was so dangerous it got Jesus killed and most of His early followers. This happened while the Church was in its purest form and nearest to its source of Life. 

Seasons Departing and Arriving

The last of our grapes have been harvested

their sweet fruit a memory of summer.

Straggling tomatoes linger on the vine, 

little green ones too late to become red.

Leaves have taken on color just before they fall

carried by a chilled wind

forming lofty piles kicked by children.

Wood smoke tendrils fill the morning air 

with the fragrance of hearth, home and hope.

Geese fly south in honking formation

clearing the sky of summer’s traffic.

A season-ending has arrived,

its slow progression now wholly upon us.

A new season in the Spirit is also here

having stood in the wings, waiting patiently

to be revealed.

Living on Borrowed Time

Nowhere in your life are you living on borrowed time. God will grant you all the time needed to accomplish His will. Yet, it's not more time that will turn things around. Your turnaround will come because you serve a loving God who is faithful to perform what He has promised. Your job, while God is working things out, is to remain faithful in your place of obedience. Ultimately, it will be the Lord who will call forth a miraculous intervention on your behalf. He is the one directing the clock of your life, not your circumstance. 

Don’t buy into the mindset of living on borrowed time. It makes for a nervous faith where fear is calling the shots. Fear will have you looking at clocks and calendars instead of the Lord. Fear creates a distorted view of the nature of God. God doesn’t loan us time with a payback required like a crooked loan shark who will send a thug to break your legs when you default on your loan. 

Time has a purpose. It is the place where our faith in God's goodness has a chance to develop and reveal our level of trust.  That is the purpose of time. In the situations of life where time seems to be pressing in on us from all sides is where we have an opportunity to discover a deeper understanding of the nature of our loving Father – the Giver of Life.  

Right now, the Spirit is hovering over your life waiting to release Heaven on Earth at the command of the Father. Stay put. Remain faithful and continue to look up. Eternity is about to invade your timeline and make all things new.

It's Never All Figured Out

A man named Jerry Cook radically changed how I view the Church. Over a span of thirty years, I listened to Jerry speak at conferences and read his writing. I also had the opportunity to sit in several small group settings with Jerry and glean his wisdom. Toward the end of his life, he spoke in our church. Each contact was an honor.

Jerry’s first book, “Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness,” was the seedbed of my understanding of how the Church should function in both heart and deed. That book had a significant impact on the Church across denominational lines and a wide variety of theological opinion. It was one of those rare books that can reveal the heart of God and simplify our calling as people who follow God. Years after writing his first book, Jerry wrote another book titled, “A Few Things I’ve Learned Since I Knew It All.” The title caught my attention. 

I was only a few years into pastoring at the time and still developing, so when a noted man of God admits he doesn’t have it all figured out, I want to listen to that voice. It seems we all can get to a place where we think we have this life of faith all figured out. We become confident that our current version of God, Scripture and the Church is the purest. 

Somewhere on our journey, we will hopefully encounter a new depth of God where our all-knowing attitude gets lovingly knocked off its prideful pedestal. At that point, our greatest Kingdom potential can be discovered if we are willing to re-label our testimony to read, “A Few Things I’ve Learned Since I Knew It All.”

As someone who is seen as a spiritual father and an elder in the faith, I want to publicly say, I am still working some things out. While it is wise to have an informed position, never forget our position today on matters of faith may differ from the position we hold ten years from now. That is the nature of revelation. We only see parts of a much larger truth. Appearing all knowing to a naïve audience might sell books and secure speaking engagements, but it does not reflect a depth of spiritual maturity. 

One of the most mature things we can do is keep our hands open to change and the discovery of a new depth of truth. That openness does not dismantle our essential beliefs. It just takes us deeper to a simpler and less sectarian place where the Spirit is revealing aspects of God and His Kingdom that our current level of understanding cannot discover.

Found Innocent

God’s acquittals are far more powerful than hell’s accusations. When your character and reputation are under attack, and it seems as if you are about to be found guilty of an unrighteous charge, never forget that God has already adjudicated your case in Jesus Christ. He has presented your case before the Highest Court and found you innocent. No charge formed against you will prevail. In the end, the Lord will turn the barrel of accusation upon your accusers exploding their folly and revealing your freedom.