When it Rains, it Pours. Psalm 129.

When three or four bad things happen in a row, Americans trot out the old cliché, “When it rains, it pours.” This rich line was not created in any of the usual organic ways—as a famous line in a novel, song, play, or film, or perhaps spoken by a politician or celebrity. This pithy proverb was created by advertisers. To sell salt!

Table salt clumps in damp weather. But in 1912, Morton Salt added an anti-caking agent to its product and with an eye-catching painting of a junior baker and a great slogan, the company quickly conquered every kitchen in the country. The company has used the slogan for over 100 years! When it rains, it (the salt) still pours. Clever![1]

When was the last time you spoke these words? I think I spoke them today, recognizing that for me, next week promises to be quite a challenge. The cliché is an easy way to acknowledge that sometimes things are hard and seem to hit all at once. But the other side of the coin is also true: we know the rain will stop.

Although clichés have their place, I pray I take the time to offer Godly wisdom to those in need. God has given us so many incredible passages in His word. Today, as my wife faced a crisis of her own, I sent her several, which I will place in a footnote.[2]

Throughout history, the rain has fallen hard on God’s people. The children of Abraham have been a special object of the devil’s wrath for millennia. And 2000 years later, the Body of Christ continues to endure some of the same abuse that Jesus, the Head of that Body endured on earth.

Psalm 129 addresses the endless persecution of the people of Israel:

“‘Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth,’ let Israel now say. ‘Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth. Yet they have not prevailed against me. The plowers plowed upon my back. They made long their furrows. But the Lord is righteous, He hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked’” Psalm 129:1-4.

The Apostle Paul describes persecution he and other Christians endured:

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you” 2 Corinthians 4:7-12.[3]

Did you know Christians continue to suffer what the U.S. government and human rights groups describe as “extreme persecution”?

Although we hear little of it in the United States, our Christian brothers and sisters are regularly tortured and killed for their faith in such places as North Korea, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Eritrea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, among others.

Sadly, the global persecution of followers of Christ is often met with a cliché that amounts to a collective shrug of the Body of Christ’s shoulders: “Well, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

While it is true that God will build His church and pour out His grace even during times of persecution, there is no Biblical evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship! Our duty is to do all that we can to stop the persecution of fellow Christians.

How? Read Voice of the Martyrs magazine to stay informed. Donate to VOM or similar ministries. Call or write your congressmen and senators, because US law requires our executive branch to raise these issues in discussions with persecuting nations—but that law is only followed under public pressure. Volunteer or donate money to help the cause of asylum for those who can demonstrate legitimate claims of persecution. (I was honored to discover a paper I wrote on this topic was cited to the US Supreme Court in just such a case.)

And in the meantime, yes, “when it rains, it pours.” Life is hard. But God is merciful. The Psalmist is right: “‘Many a time have they afflicted me … Yet they have not prevailed against me … The Lord is righteous. He has cut the cords of the wicked” Psalm 129:2-4.

Dear God, thank you for your mercy! We need the Balm of Gilead. Thank you for healing, counseling, comforting. May we run to you in the hardest times and the times that are not so hard. Help those of us living in the fat, easy American life to have compassion for our hurting brothers and sisters around the world. Show us how to help and where to donate. Use our abundance to bless the persecuted as they endure struggles most of us cannot comprehend. We love you.

AΩ.

[1] Other great slogans: DeBeers: a diamond is forever. Timex: it takes a licking and keeps on ticking. U.S. Army: be all that you can be. KFC: finger licking good. AT&T: reach out and touch someone. The slogans are endless. But I found only one that has shed its advertising roots as completely as Morton Salt, the 2003 public relations campaign to enhance the image of Las Vegas: What happens here, stays here. The campaign was an instant success and received a raft of awards and positive reviews.

[2] My wife asked me to send her something practical to help with worry. The worry concerned her search for her next position as a secondary school Bible teacher. Now, I am well aware that sometimes it might be insensitive to simply send a person a list of Bible verses. But because she asked, I had the green light to offer the four that came to mind:

“It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” Philippians 2:3.

“He knows the way I take and when He has tried me I shall come forth as gold” Job 23:10.

“He will accomplish what concerns me” Psalm 138:8.

“Faithful is He who calls you and He will also bring it to pass” 1 Thessalonians 5:24.

[3] Paul, the persecutor who became the persecuted, records a staggering list of his personal sufferings: “I have been in prison … been flogged … been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked” 2 Corinthians 11:23-27. I love this passage so much; I post it every chance I get.

Shadows, Figures, Analogies. The Earthly Temple is a Frontier Outpost. Hebrews 9:24.

The week of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ included some of the most mysterious events in all of Biblical history.[1] One that must have been shocking was that the veil of the temple was split from top to bottom. This was not just some gauzy curtain of sheer linen, the tearing of which you might blame on the wind or an earthquake.

The huge veil was an estimated sixty-feet high and four inches thick. Four inches thick? That is more wall than curtain. This thing could stop arrows. What kind of force would be required to tear such a fabric? Whatever those forces might measure, they would be much more likely to tear the curtain down from where it hung, dropping it to the floor in an immovable, thousand-pound heap, than to tear the curtain neatly from top to bottom.

The tearing of the temple curtain was the delicate work of the finger of God.

And why? To illustrate that the dividing wall between God and man had been torn down by the death of Christ. The Holy of Holies was no longer beyond reach. Jesus put His blood on the altar for us and we can now enter God’s presence for all time.

The Old Testament speaks in great detail about both the tabernacle and the temple. There is chapter after chapter about curtains and tent pegs and gold-plated cedar panels and manatee skins and purple fabrics and bronze basins and golden candlesticks and altars and angels. Speaking of the “colors, textures, furnishings, embroidery, and lighting,” Beth Moore jokes “Who knew God had such a flair for architecture and interior design?”[2]

And yet for all the temple’s magnificence, the crucifixion and resurrection rendered the earthly temple obsolete. The gold, the carefully crafted furnishings, all of it instantly became useless because Jesus went to the real altar—the real Holy of Holies—and made one sacrifice that would last for all time. When Jesus died, the veil was torn, and God moved out of that place never again to dwell in a temple made with human hands, Acts 17:24. In fact, the temple itself would be destroyed a short forty years later.

The author of Hebrews puts it plainly: the temple was never more than a symbol. It is an analogy for a greater temple in Heaven. The writer calls the temple a “figure of the true” Hebrews 9:24. He calls the things on earth “the patterns of the things in heaven” and not the “heavenly things themselves” Hebrews 9:23.

That is the world we live in—a world of patterns. Of shadows, figures, analogies. Things on earth illustrate things in heaven. Things on earth help us understand the things of heaven. The temple on earth is an analogue, a model, a replica of a temple in heaven.

Just as an earthly marriage is an illustration of our future relationship with God in heaven, so was the Old Testament temple an illustration of our relationship with God before Christ came. It is not the same, but it is an illustration. If you try to apply a symbolic meaning to every aspect of an earthly marriage, you will end up with the analogical fallacy, or a false analogy. The same goes for the temple. Any metaphor can be pushed too far. We must exercise restraint when deriving meaning from Biblical symbolism.

The temple in Jerusalem is symbolic, but every item in the temple may not have its heavenly analogue. Not everything in Solomon’s temple symbolizes some other thing in heaven.

The earthly temple is a frontier outpost, far removed from the presence of God. That fact alone dictates that Solomon’s temple will include some things that heaven may not and vice versa.

After all, heaven itself is God’s dwelling place.

“For Christ entered not into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the things true, but into HEAVEN ITSELF now to appear in the presence of God for us” Hebrews 9:24.

Moreover, heaven does not seem to include a literal temple, but God Himself is its temple.

“I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” Revelation 21:22.

My point is, though the Old Testament temple and its veil are symbolic, they do not necessarily represent literal counterparts in heaven, as though there is a golden building in heaven with a veil hanging from the rafters. The earthly temple with its courts, outer rooms, and inner rooms, symbolized the state of our relationship with God under the Old Covenant. That is, we could approach Him, but we could only come so far.

I noted above that the veil in the temple symbolized the dividing wall between a Holy God and His unholy people. The rending of the veil symbolized that the dividing wall had been torn down. However, the veil carries a second layer of symbolism.

“We have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body” Hebrews 10:19-20.

The curtain—the veil—symbolizes the body of Christ. That body was torn and through His sacrifice, we can now enter the Holy of Holies. Think of that: God abides in the Holy of Holies and God’s children can never be holy enough to enter that Most Holy Place. But Jesus, standing between the two in the place of the veil, is able to bring the two sides together.

This is, by definition, exactly the role of a priest—to mediate between two sides. Jesus connects man with God and in so doing, He tears His body as a sacrifice for us and He tears the veil marking our separation from God. Because of the sacrifice of Christ, God and His children are brought together.

“God is on the one side and all the people are on the other side, and Christ Jesus, Himself man, is between them, to bring them together by giving His life for all mankind” 1 Timothy 2:5-6.

How’s this for a mystery?

Jesus is both the offering and the priest, both the sacrifice and the sacrificer.

“Christ the high priest of good things to come, entered by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not this building, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered once into the holy place, having obtained redemption for us” Hebrews 9:11-12.

AΩ.

[1] In addition to the torn veil, consider the mysteries of the darkness that covered the land from noon to 3:00 (Matthew 27:45), graves opened up and once-dead saints came into the city and appeared to many (Matthew 27:52-53), and the unrecorded conversation between the resurrected Jesus and two unnamed followers in which He explained everything that had happened (Luke 24:13-35).

[2] ALL MY KNOTTED UP LIFE, Beth Moore.

The Book of Job Refutes the Prosperity Gospel. Job 17.

Image: Jim Bakker in 2025.

“If I want to believe God for a $65 million dollar plane, you cannot stop me.” –Creflo Dollar, as quoted in God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel: How Truth Overwhelms a Life Built on Lies, by Costi Hinn, Zondervan, 2019.

It is true that we reap what we sow. Sowing and reaping is a Biblical rule.

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” Galatians 6:7.

Life coaches, personal trainers, business mentors, and motivational speakers encourage hard work and chasing after goals. I do too.[1]

But some twist the doctrine of sowing and reaping to make themselves rich. False teachers abuse the scripture so they can tell themselves that God’s will for their lives is boundless riches. And conveniently, sowing and reaping no longer involves such disciplines as eating right or exercise or personal Bible study or feeding the hungry. These men preach on sowing and reaping in every message, but the only sowing they talk about is giving money. That is, giving money to them.

Prosperity preachers make millions encouraging the suffering to “sow a seed,” or to “plant seed money,” promising that if you support what God is doing (by making a donation to their ministries) then God will support what you are doing. The “ministry” becomes a vending machine promising to dispense packages of your best life now.

HOWEVER.

This is not like the law of gravity. There are exceptions to the rule of sowing and reaping. You studied but failed. You dieted but lost no weight. You worked hard and were still laid off from your job. You hustled in every way you could imagine but still had to ask someone for financial help.

These things happen. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes God is at work in His own mysterious way—bringing us through experiences designed to accomplish His purposes. Perhaps the suffering will cause you to grow in some critical area, and that growth may be more important than the satisfaction of reaping (harvesting) the thing for which you sowed so faithfully. Or perhaps God will use your suffering to magnify His ministry in your life–the way He has so abundantly used the quadriplegia of Joni Eareckson Tada. People will grow closer to Jesus because of your faithfulness during your struggle.

It is not just you and I who have quietly done everything “right” and seen no benefit.[2] There is more to this than experience and common sense. An entire book of the Bible is dedicated to this truth. In fact, it is the oldest book of the Bible—the first written scripture. And it teaches that when it comes to sowing and reaping, sometimes it’s complicated. The book of Job gives the lie to health and wealth, name-it, claim-it, prosperity preaching. God gave us an entire book of the Bible to prove it:

You cannot GIVE things to God in order to GET things from God.

Yet, we hear this lie preached on television every day. Here’s how it goes: if you want something from God, you must either perform some great service (such as volunteering for the ministry) or you must donate a sacrificial amount of money. (The speaker is much more interested in your money than your volunteer hours.)

Whatever you want from God is available to you, if only you give enough money to the ministry.

You can BUY your blessing. Of course, it is not phrased that way.

The transaction is described in terms of faith and sowing and reaping. If you sow (often in preferred $1,000 gifts), then God will give to you in response to your faith. The larger the seed that you sow, the larger the “harvest” you will reap.

It gets worse.

If you are sick and need healing, you can get that too. They preach that “it is God’s will that everyone be healthy.” But you must sow sacrificially to get your miracle. Give a big gift! The greater the sickness, the greater the gift.

And don’t forget to think positively. Speak only positive words. Do not say words like “sick” or “cancer” or “tumor.” Speak of the ill as though he is already healed. Ignore the negative people, negative test results, and often even the doctors, the medicine, and the entire medical establishment. Ignore all of that and focus on your faith and giving.

Why the emphasis on positive thinking? Does positive thinking result in more money for the faith-healer? No. But it allows them to deflect blame from themselves to the sick when the healing never comes.

If you gave sacrificially but the sick person died anyway, well, you did not have enough faith. It is your fault because you entertained negative thoughts, you spoke a “negative confession,” and you surrounded yourself with negative people. You did not have enough faith and the illness won because of you. (You probably should have given more money.) When a pastor and member of Benny Hinn’s family died of cancer, the family soon began whispering that “Uncle George” had too little faith to be healed.[3]

This is a demonic heresy.

Is demonic heresy too strong a phrase? No. This is a doctrine of demons being taught on television every day by false teachers. The truth is that Jesus loves you. Jesus has grace for you—and for the sick and dying around you. But God is SOVEREIGN. He heals when He chooses to heal. He does not heal everyone. And He cannot be bought, manipulated, coerced, or controlled.

The health and wealth message focuses on me and my body and my bank account and my seventy-years on earth. But the true gospel focuses on eternity. The true gospel focuses on Jesus and His grace, His will, His sovereignty and power, and His glory.

When Costi Hinn, nephew of Benny Hinn, finally discovered this, he wrote:

“I had traveled the world, seen all there was to see, and lived like royalty, but this moment outshone the brightest diamonds we’d ever owned. The words seemed to leap off the page, and the once-blurry picture of who God is and what the gospel is suddenly came into sharp focus. Coach Heefner’s words from Dallas Baptist baseball days came back to me: God is sovereign … God is in control. He’s not some cosmic genie who exists to give me what I want and do what I command him to do. He is the majestic Creator of heaven and earth whom we exist to worship … The gospel suddenly made sense. My life existed for the glory of God, not my own glory. God’s highest purpose was not to make me happy, healthy, and wealthy. It was to give Him glory!”

The oldest book in the Bible begins by describing Job, the most prosperous man in the world at the time. He had seven adult sons and three adult daughters. He owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East” Job 1:3.

Then the scene changes. Satan appears at God’s throne and God reminds the “accuser of the brethren” about God’s all-star, Job. “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” Job 1:8.

Satan, ever the accuser, argues that Job only serves God because God has blessed him. In response, God—who knows He can depend on Job—tells the devil, “Do your worst,” and soon the enemy kills Job’s children, and sends raiders to steal all Job’s flocks. But Job remains faithful, uttering his first of two great statements of faith:

“At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said:

‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return.The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” Job 1:20-22.

Job did everything right. Job “sowed all the right seeds.” But God soon trash-talked Satan a second time, rubbing the devil’s face in the fact that he could not make Job curse God. Satan argued Job served God because he still had his health. So God gave the devil permission to rob Job of his health too.

(Do you see that God is SOVEREIGN? This is not the weak, genie-in-a-bottle that can only act in response to our prayers and our gifts—though a LONG list of TV preachers have described God that way.)[4]

“So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes” Job 2:7-8.

Then the devil sent Job’s wife, his only surviving family member, to do what husbands and wives do so well—to goad him into saying something he would regret.

As if perfectly on cue, Job’s wife said to him,

“Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”

So many men would respond to their wives in anger at this moment. Job controls his words. He tells his wife her words are foolish. And then Job speaks his second statement of faith:

‘Shall we indeed accept good from God, and not accept adversity?’ In all this, Job did not sin in what he said” Job 2:10.

The devil lost.

He lost, by the way.

He tried to destroy Job’s faith, to force Job to compromise his integrity, but he failed.

The rest of the book—the next forty chapters—are simply God giving humanity a lesson in suffering well. We will all suffer. We will all be sick. We will all die. Most of us will experience poverty of one kind or another. The book of Job shows us how to suffer well.

But first, consider this:

God used Job to show the devil that some people will not compromise their integrity. Some people cannot be bought—not for health and not for wealth.

When word of Job’s tragedy reached four of Job’s friends, they came from distant cities to sit with Job and grieve his losses. They came to comfort him. They wept aloud when they saw him. And they sat with him for seven days without speaking. Don’t miss that—how many of us could sit in silence for a week? These are true friends. Confused, perhaps, about the nature of good and evil, of sowing and reaping. But I consider them to be excellent friends with only the best intentions.

Job’s friend Eliphaz begins by endorsing the doctrine of sowing and reaping in Job 4:8. The doctrine is correct. Eliphaz’s error is that he looks at Job’s suffering and concludes Job must be wicked. “All his days the wicked man suffers torment … He will no longer be rich and his wealth will not endure, nor will his possessions spread over the land” Job 15:20, 29. Using a classic circular argument,[5] Eliphaz assumes Job is evil because Job is suffering. Eliphaz also says the wicked will no longer be rich—because Eliphaz believes everyone who is wicked ends up poor.

Job’s friend Bildad is no better. Rather than considering that Job might be an exception to the rule of sowing and reaping, that he might be a Godly man who is suffering, Bildad assumes Job is wicked. And then he says the wicked end up childless (what a thing to say to a man who just lost ten children!). “He has no offspring or descendants among his people, no survivor where once he lived. People of the west are appalled at his fate; those of the east are seized with horror” Job 18:19-20.

When Job said he was innocent before God, Bildad doubled down, arguing Job was filled with pride and telling him he was human and thus no better than a sinful worm or a maggot, Job 25:4-6. When it comes to sowing and reaping, Eliphaz and Bildad cannot see exceptions. Then Job’s friend Zophar speaks up, telling Job that as horrible as things are, God is punishing Job less than his sins deserve, Job 11:6.

Job responds to his “judgy” friends with one of the most famous lines in the book:

“Miserable comforters are you all!” Job 16:2.

Then he addresses their ignorance: “I cannot find one wise man among you” Job 17:10. Job argues that he knows he is innocent and says God knows it too:

“He knows the way I take, and when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold” Job 23:10.

Job, a man who regularly performed prayers and sacrifices on behalf of his children, has absolute confidence:

“I will never admit you are in the right. Till I die, I will not deny my integrity. I will maintain my innocence and never let go of it. My conscience will not reproach me as long as I live” Job 27:5-6.

Yet God has allowed this innocent man to suffer while the guilty do not suffer. Job asks, “Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment? Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?” Job 24:1. (In other words, when will God punish the wicked?)

Unlike his friends, Job can see the exceptions to the law of sowing and reaping. Like David and so many psalmists, like Solomon in Ecclesiastes, Job complains that the wicked keep getting away with it, while good people suffer.[6] There is truth and wisdom here: sometimes bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. There are exceptions.

Nevertheless, I suspect that before he lost everything, Job shared the simple opinion of his friends. He lived a holy life and God blessed him beyond measure. But when he lost everything, Job instantly realized there must be exceptions to the rule of sowing and reaping. He was the exception!

Job also discovered that God was so much bigger than anything Job had ever imagined. Where his friends (sounding a bit like prosperity preachers) speak of God as something of a holy Santa Claus, keeping a naughty and nice list, Job takes a step back (or a step up, as it were), looking at the earth from a “ten-thousand-foot view.” He speaks about the weather, about the continents, the heavens.

“And these are but the outer fringe of His works. How faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of His power?” Job 26:14.

Job praises God for His creation in a manner that foreshadows what God Himself will soon say.

But first, Elihu, the youngest and fourth friend speaks up. Some have written that where Job’s first three friends said Job’s sin caused his suffering, Elihu says his suffering has caused him to sin, by becoming arrogant as he repeatedly protested his innocence.

“Job has spoken without knowledge and his words are without wisdom … He adds rebellion to his sin” Job 34:35,37. “Job opens his mouth with empty talk. Without knowledge he multiplies words” Job 35:16.

Then Elihu begins to speak as though he knows what is coming. He takes up Job’s earlier theme: the wonders of God’s creation.

“God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’ … Listen to this, Job; stop and consider God’s wonders. Do you know how God controls the clouds and makes his lightning flash? … The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power” Job 37:5-6,14-15,23.

And suddenly, God breaks in.

“Who is this who obscures My words of wisdom by covering them up with his words of ignorance? Gird up your loins like a man. Get ready to do battle. For I will ask you questions and see if you can answer Me” Job 38:2-3.

When God enters the scene, the conversation is no longer about Job, but about Himself. After all, this story is about God. The whole book—the whole Bible—is about God. Job is a bit player.

God steps into the scene and educates Job, his friends, and all of us about God Himself. He is so big. So creative. So sovereign. So much more infinite and mysterious, inspiring awe and wonder and reverence and the holy fear of the Lord. The ‘Word of Faith’ preachers have underestimated God in a thousand different ways. He is not a heavenly genie in a bottle, some religious granter-of-wishes, some saintly Santa Claus.

And God rebukes Jobs friends.

And in doing so, He rebukes all those who fail to see exceptions to the rule of sowing and reaping, who prey on the poor and the desperate, promising them outrageous rewards if they will send money to purchase another jet plane for the ministry or whatever.

I believe the entire book of Job is a rebuke of Prosperity preachers.

The book of Job rebukes the “Health and Wealth” preachers.

The book of Job rebukes the “Name it-Claim it” preachers.

The book of Job rebukes the Word of Faith movement.

The picture above shows Jim Bakker in 2020 selling a “silver solution,” an arguably dangerous supplement of liquid silver that presents known risks. Bakker was charging $125 per bottle for his alleged COVID cure, yet received warning letters from the state of Missouri telling him to stop peddling the snake oil. Not only would it not cure COVID, the product was dangerous because liquid silver can cause known harms to those who consume it. But he sold it anyway.

Jim Bakker and his first wife, Tammy Faye, were famous preachers of health and wealth in the 1980s. The two secured millions of dollars in donations primarily through their PTL (“Praise the Lord”) television show. But after a hush-money payment to a secretary-turned-mistress came to light, the financial empire suffered a high-profile implosion. Jim Bakker ended up in prison.

Later a young pastor visited Jim Bakker in prison and asked him a question:

“Jim, when did you fall out of love with Jesus.”

“Oh, I always loved Jesus. But I never feared him.”

The book of Job reminds us to fear the Lord. He is sovereign. He is almighty. He is the Creator of the universe. He is holy.

How do you NOT fear God?

“It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the Living God” (Hebrews 10:31), for “Our God is a Consuming Fire” Hebrews 12:29.

Wow.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” Proverbs 9:10.

AΩ.

[1] I can put on the motivational speaker hat too. After all, I wrote a book of 150 tips for success in college! I have a never-ending store of motivational-speaker energy and pithy proverbs for success. But I will always be the first to admit that there are exceptions. You cannot put God in a box and expect Him to perform because you prayed the right words (like some witch’s incantation). God Almighty is sovereign! He is not your puppet on a string.

[2] They say, “You can’t out-give God!” Oh, yes you can! If you are giving to God in order to get from God, sometimes He will just let you do without for a while. Surely I am not the only person who has experienced this! Again, God is NOT a puppet on a string. You cannot use your giving to manipulate God. Instead, honor Him! Praise Him for His sovereignty. Bow down and worship God and tell Him you want to be completely in submission to HIS WILL and not your own!

[3] More specifically, the story goes that George made a “negative confession,” using negative words about his condition, he surrounded himself with negative people, he did not have enough faith, and worst of all—he listened to those who would criticize “the Lord’s anointed” a perversion of 1 Samuel 24:6 in which David explains why he refuses to attack Saul. Benny Hinn regularly cites these verses to suggest that those who speak ill of him will not only not be healed but may become sick unto death as punishment for criticizing him. See GOD, GREED, AND THE (PROSPERITY) GOSPEL, by Costi Hinn. It was reported elsewhere that Benny Hinn responded to criticism from John MacArthur by saying, “I wish God would give me a Holy Spirit machine gun. I’d blow your head off.” Apparently, “touch not Mine anointed” only applies to Prosperity preachers.

[4] Benny Hinn, for example, said something so ridiculous and heretical, I hesitate to write the words. He said, “God will not move unless I say it. Why? Because He has made us coworkers with Him. He set things up that way.”

[5] A circular argument is a fallacy in which the conclusion proves the premise, which is then used to “prove” the conclusion.

[6] Solomon writes that sometimes “the righteous get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked get what the righteous deserve” Ecclesiastes 8:14.

Suspicious Minds. 1 Chronicles 19.

We can’t go on together
With suspicious minds (with suspicious minds)
And we can’t build our dreams
On suspicious minds
–“Suspicious Minds,” written and recorded by Mark James (made famous by Elvis Presley).

Following the death of Charlie Kirk, some of Kirk’s fans immediately began to “question the narrative.” Having watched the video, they insisted Kirk was shot not from the front but from the back, that there were multiple shooters, that the conspiracy had the backing of the French Foreign Legion (I am not making this up!) and a circus of other ideas. The so-called “internet sleuths” decided they knew more than the combined forces of the FBI. So they questioned everything, even going so far as to suggest Kirk’s wife was behind his murder.

When I saw a post about this yesterday, I clicked on the comments. I was shocked. It seemed as if everyone in the comments defended those asking “hard questions” and advancing ridiculous theories, such as the suggestion Kirk was shot from the back.

One said, “We are supposed to ask questions. That is what Charlie told us to do.” Another wrote, “Charlie said to question everything. Asking if his wife was behind his death is exactly what Charlie would want.”

I disagree.

There is a place for skepticism. Questions must be asked. Charlie was right to encourage people to think for themselves. But like the song says, We can’t go on together with suspicious minds. Suspicious minds are destructive. Suspicious minds poison relationships.

Skepticism has its place, but we must understand that thinking well involves more than just asking questions that upset people.

It requires the wisdom to listen to answers, the wisdom to recognize expertise—not to kowtow to it, necessarily—but to recognize the years of training and experience experts (such as FBI ballistics experts) bring to the subject at hand. Be an internet sleuth if you must. But recognize your weaknesses.

Have you toured the crime scene? Have you had the opportunity to review confidential files, to watch interviews with key witnesses, to review the evidence that is not being disclosed to the media? Do you have training? Do you have not just common sense, but actual experience? You will not be ready to discover anything until you know what you don’t know. Clear thinking (finding answers) involves more than I can address here, but I will put a quick summary in a footnote[1].

In my opinion, the notion that Erika Kirk was involved in her husband’s murder does not pass the smell test. I won’t be investigating the evidence—I can leave that to the FBI, and frankly, they will never make public enough evidence for me or any other internet sleuth to conduct a reliable investigation. More importantly, my role in a public event like this is to love people, to do what I can for the grieving—or to at least avoid making their suffering worse.

When internet sleuths with no real access to the evidence publicly accuse Erika Kirk of plotting her husband’s murder just to increase their “likes and follows,” it strikes me as not only offensive, but violently abusive. How can you treat a widow that way?

Consider 1 Corinthians 13:7. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Reflecting on this passage, John Piper writes “The very least that Paul means when he says ‘love believes all things’ and ‘hopes all things’ — the very least — that he means is that we should not be unduly suspicious about other people’s motives. Love hopes for the best from people, not the worst.”[2]

When the Ammonite king Nahash died, King David decided to honor his memory. Nahash had been kind to David, so David sent a delegation to pay respects to the son of Nahash, the new king Hanun. But Hanun’s counselors were men of suspicious minds. They told the grieving king that David’s men were only there to spy out the land so David could conquer them. In response, Hanun humiliated David’s messengers, shaved off their beards and “cut off their garments in the midst hard by their buttocks, and sent them away” 1 Chronicles 19:4.

When David heard how badly his men had been treated, he advised them to “tarry at Jericho until your beards are grown” 1 Chronicles 19:5 (isn’t it interesting how ashamed they were to be clean-shaven!).

Meanwhile, the Ammonites realized “they had made themselves odious to David” 1 Chronicles 19:6. Did they apologize, perhaps sending gifts and offering terms of peace? No. They remained suspicious of David–and continued to make decisions based on that error.

Considering David the villain, the Ammonites paid a thousand talents of silver to hire the Syrian army to help them battle Israel. How do you think that turned out? Not well.

Seeing their preparations, David went to war and defeated both armies. Suspicious King Hanun lost the war. David killed 47,000 Syrian soldiers and the rest of the Syrian army ended up in chains as Israel’s servants.

Suspicion is a poison. It leads to wars. It ruins relationships. It will rob you of your joy. It will leave you unable to appreciate the kindness of others.

Be skeptical if you must. But remember the lesson of Ecclesiastes: there is a time to be skeptical and there is a time to put your skepticism aside.

There is a time to search for alternative answers, and a time to stop searching.

“There is a time to search and a time to stop searching” Ecclesiastes 3:6.

Moreover, there is something evil about obsessive suspicion.

“An evil man is suspicious of everyone and tumbles into constant trouble” Proverbs 17:20 (TLB).

God, please deliver us from suspicious minds. Guide us in our search for truth. Show us whom we can trust. Give us wisdom. Show us answers in Your word. Deliver us from the bitterness of suspicion and fill us with Your hope and Your grace.

AΩ.

[1] If you wish to think clearly and track down and verify the truth, consider this inexhaustive list of strategies: You must (1) examine evidence (which means having meaningful access to all relevant evidence, not a few seconds of a single videotape) and you must spend significant time engaging in a thoughtful and systematic review of that evidence); (2) review the arguments and opinions from multiple sides (for example, you cannot fully comprehend news events if you only consume news from right-wing or left-wing sources, because BOTH sides omit things they do not want you to consider); (3) recognize experts and evaluate expert opinions from both sides—and recognize that there are often competing schools of thought, both of which can shed light on complex subjects; (4) know what you don’t know—and ask others to tell you what you don’t know, because without them, you will miss things (another reason you must consume news from the “other” side); (5) employ thinking tools such as Occam’s razor, a sort-of theorem that instructs us that “the most likely explanation is probably correct,” (there are dozens of these, you may wish to begin by mastering informal fallacies); (6) recognize that the survival of a conspiracy is inversely proportional to the number of conspirators—if your theory requires dozens or hundreds of people to have pulled it off, then your theory is probably wrong, because large groups of people cannot keep secrets (a related truth is that the life-span of any secret gets shorter as the number of people keeping the secret increases); (7) never lose your common sense, your intuition, your “gut,” but don’t mistake indigestion for cognitive dissonance, that is, sometimes you may need to ignore your gut.

[2] https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/four-ways-to-kill-the-sin-of-habitual-suspicion

King Solomon and the Oops Babies. 1 Chronicles 2 and 3.

Shakespeare’s KING LEAR includes an interesting subplot. Edmund, the son of the wealthy and powerful Earl of Gloucester, is not an heir to the Earl because the Earl was not married to Edmund’s mother. The Earl had had an affair. Thus, Edmund’s half-brother Edgar is the heir. Edmund bitterly resents the stigma of illegitimacy and hatches a plan to kill both his brother and his father, leaving him the new Earl of Gloucester.

In an Elizabethan drama about lords and ladies, none of this is remarkable. What makes it remarkable is William Shakespeare’s flourishing way with words. He knows where to insert a great monologue, and he fleshes out a speech like nothing we have seen before. It begins with Edmund asking why those born out of wedlock are labeled ‘bastard’ and their morals considered to be base…

“Why ‘bastard’? Wherefore ‘base’?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With ‘base’? With baseness? Bastardy? Base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got ‘tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word, legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow, I prosper:
Now gods, stand up for bastards!”

After arguing that his body and mind are as true as the legitimate son’s, that the circumstances of his conception were no worse than the legitimate son’s, and that he knows his father loves him as much as he loves the legitimate son, Edmund concludes with a prayer:

“Now, gods stand up for bastards!”[2]

I’m not sure how sincere this prayer is, being Edmund’s ready-set-go to himself before he launches his murderous scheme. But either way, God—the real God—answered Edmund’s prayer long ago.

Throughout the Bible, God blessed not only second-born sons, but sons born to forbidden relationships. God blessed Abraham’s son Ishmael and made him a great nation. God blessed Perez, one of two twins born to Judah through Judah’s daughter-in-law Tamar—and Perez became an ancestor to King David. God blessed Jephthah the son of a prostitute and made him the Judge of Israel.

And the great King David was Jesse’s overlooked seventh son, see 1 Chronicles 2:15. When Samuel came to anoint one of Jesse’s sons, Jesse did not even send for David, assuming it had to be one of the six older sons. But God chose Jesse’s seventh son. And who would succeed to the throne of David a generation later? Amnon was David’s firstborn, then followed Daniel, Absalom, Adonijah, Shephatiah, Ithream, Shimea, Shobab, Nathan, and Solomon. 1 Chronicles 3:1-5. Solomon was David’s tenth son! Not only that, Solomon’s mother was Bathsheba.

Solomon was born to a forbidden marriage.

In fact, this thing with Bathsheba was so much worse than a forbidden marriage.

David and Bathsheba had an affair, leading David to murder David’s deeply loyal friend and Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite. The fact that David married Bathsheba later is almost beside the point. Solomon’s life will forever be associated with David’s great sin.

Think of it: David and Bathsheba should never have been together, under any circumstances.

There should not have been a Solomon.

Solomon is sort of the ultimate ‘Oops Baby.’

After all, the sins of his father and mother nearly destroyed the entire kingdom, leading to the rebellion and treasonous insurrection of Absalom, to war, to David and his family running from the palace as fugitives, to a bloody civil war.

Solomon had never known a world where his father was not a morally questionable hero.

David had been wearing a scarlet letter during Solomon’s entire life. He was a fallen man, at least in terms of his reputation. And Solomon, a tenth son and worse, the son of Bathsheba, must have worn some of that shame around his own neck.

But God gives grace. God gives grace to Solomon. God gives grace to so-called ‘oops babies.’ In the words of Edmund, God stands up for bastards. Why?

Why did God choose Solomon? To reveal His glory. To show us His grace.

It happens every day: young people give birth under less-than ideal circumstances, and fall in love with the baby. Grace is God stepping “outside” His rules by making the baby such a blessing that the parents cannot imagine their lives without that child. THAT is God’s grace: the supernatural transformation of mistakes into miracles. Such amazing grace!

As I’ve asked elsewhere, does God see unplanned children as—if you’ll pardon the harsh, trendy term— “Oops Babies”? That is, maybe He had a plan for the parents, but they messed up, so the children are doomed to be mistakes forever, a living monument to their parents’ sin?

Will children conceived out of wedlock forever be “damaged goods” because God had other plans? No! God’s grace is bigger than that.

No matter who you are, God planned you before He made the world. It may never make sense to us—but God’s grace is beyond our comprehension.

In fact, this may be one of the clearest examples of the astounding, inexplicable nature of grace: God’s law forbids premarital or extramarital sex. Yet to the children born of such a union, God often shows extraordinary grace, choosing them for great things.

Where human logic, with it’s unfeeling, mathematical calculations, might regard a child’s origin as “illegitimate” and outside God’s plan, thus that child’s entire future is unplanned and nothing good will ever come, God’s grace transcends brutal human logic.

Don’t believe me?

David and Bathsheba should never have been together. Never. Yet God chose their son Solomon over nine older brothers and half-brothers. God chose the son of Bathsheba not only to wear the crown but to build Solomon’s Temple, the greatest house of worship in history.

God’s grace is so much bigger and more mysterious than brutal, mathematical, human logic.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” Isaiah 55:9.

Praise Him for His amazing grace!

AΩ.

[1] KING LEAR, Act 1, Scene 2.

[2] I hope you will pardon the language and understand why I find this one of the funniest lines in Shakespeare. (I suspect it was not intended to be funny, but that only makes it funnier.) For related insights, you may wish to consider this provocatively titled sermon/blog: https://www.refugeutah.org/matthew-6-7-9

Word of the Day: SHIBBOLETH. Judges 12.

Image. Print for sale here: https://www.etsy.com/il-en/listing/1866609281/houston-street-art-print-manhattan

New York City has a great shibboleth. Locals can instantly tell a tourist from a native by hearing them pronounce one of the prominent streets in Manhattan: HOUSTON STREET. Tourists will pronounce it like the city in Texas, “HUGHES-tun,” while the locals pronounce it “HOUSE-tun.”

“Shibboleth” is one of those five-dollar words it pays to know[1]. Google the word and you will see: there are novels entitled Shibboleth, there are articles and essays using the word in all sorts of ways, and there are special uses of the word in fields as disparate as online security, modern art, and freemasonry. I like to see the word crop up as a metaphor in a discussion having nothing to do with word pronunciation. But of course—word pronunciation is the whole point of shibboleth.

During the period of the judges, a saying arose: “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes” Judges 17:6.

One of the worst examples of this terrible statement of the status quo is the civil war (better, the civil battle) that broke out between the tribe of Ephraim and a group of men led by Jephthah (of the tribe of Manasseh). When the Ammonites began attacking Israelites living in Gilead, Jephthah led an army into battle and won a great victory. But the men of Ephraim were upset.

“Then the men of Ephraim … said to Jephthah, “Why did you cross over to fight against the sons of Ammon without calling us to go with you? We will burn your house down on you” Judges 12:1.

In today’s age of draft-dodgers, I find this story ironic. The men of Ephraim were angry because there had been a dangerous, bloody battle—one in which Israel was ultimately victorious—and they were upset to have been left out.

Remember the stories of wealthy, privileged young men of the 1960s who found their way to Canada or to England to avoid going to Vietnam[2]? These Ephraimites felt differently, and attacked Jephthah for robbing them of their chance at glory. Unfortunately, the Ephraimites were serious about the attack, and after some peace talks, Jephthah and his men fought them with the same fervor with which they had defeated the Ammonites. –Remember, these are fellow Jews. These are Jephthah’s Israelite brothers. But if they wanted a war, he would bring them a war.

Jephthah and the Gileadites quickly gained the upper hand. Then before the Ephraimites could escape back into the land of Ephraim, the Gileadites took control of the low water crossings on the Jordan River.

“The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan opposite Ephraim. And it happened when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead would say to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he said, “No,” then they would say to him, “Say now, ‘Shibboleth.’” But he said, “Sibboleth,” for he could not pronounce it correctly. Then they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Thus there fell at that time 42,000 of Ephraim” Judges 12:5-6.

Because of this Bible story, Shibboleth, a Hebrew word meaning an ear of grain or a flowing stream, has represented a kind of password for thousands of years. The original shibboleth involved the physical ability to pronounce the ‘sh’ sound. Other shibboleths distinguish people who may have ability, but lack the insider knowledge of how to pronounce a word, such as Houston Street in Manhattan.

A third kind of shibboleth involves non-verbal communication, such as identifying a spy whose spoken English may be perfect, but who uses the German rather than the English gesture for the number three (when he holds up a thumb and two fingers), or who crosses the written number seven in a manner practiced on the European continent, but not in England or the United States. These basics are the foundation for the rather intellectual concept of the shibboleth.

So how does this apply to me and you? Think about this story. Who goes to war over a perceived slight? And this was a civil war!

The nation of Israel lost over forty thousand fighting men because the tribe of Ephraim felt left out.

(And this is a nation that STILL has not conquered all of the Promised Land. There are plenty of battles yet to fight, if Ephraim is so bellicose.)

Why go to war against your own people? And to lose! To lose forty THOUSAND men? Over a perceived insult? (By the way, Jephthah claimed he did invite Ephraim to the fight. See Judges 12:2.)

This was a failure of leadership. Israel had no king. The nation had a judge—but the judge was Jephthah, and he should have negotiated a settlement with his brothers from the tribe of Ephraim. Scholars describe Jephthah as a straight shooter, but after brief negotiations failed to resolve the problem, he did not hesitate to fight.

“In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes” Judges 17:6.

I can’t help but think a king would have found a way to fix this problem—because a king would not be willing to lose forty thousand soldiers. Again—this is a civil war! Every death costs Israel, no matter which side the man is on. And forty thousand men died over an insult?

As the Apostle Paul put it centuries later: “Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?” I Corinthians 6:7.

Dear God, teach us to be peacemakers. Teach us to resolve conflicts. Teach us to forgive. Teach us to love our brothers, our churches, our people, our families, our friends, our co-workers. I know “sheep bites are worse than wolf bites.” Forgive us, Lord, for fighting with the sheep in our flock. May our churches be places of peace, love, kindness, humility, and forgiveness.

AΩ.

[1] Funnily enough, Mark Twain coined the phrase “five-dollar word” when he wisely suggested avoiding such words: “Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.” That is excellent writing advice. But some five-dollar words have no fifty-cent alternatives. Shibboleth is such a word.

[2] The list of suspected draft dodgers includes four future presidents: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and many celebrities: Muhammad Ali, Ted Nugent, Rush Limbaugh, Chevy Chase, Mitt Romney, and Bernie Sanders. (The facts of each case are complex and I do not presume to judge them here, hence the word ‘suspected.’)

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. Judges 5.

You have probably heard the expression, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. The cliché is so popular, there is even a 1992 movie called The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. The idea is that women rule the world. More specifically, mothers rule the world. After all, mothers are the first and arguably primary influence on the lives of small children. And that is the idea in the poem that first made this phrase popular. Here is the first of four verses:

“Blessings on the hand of women!
Angels guard its strength and grace,
In the palace, cottage, hovel,
Oh, no matter where the place;
Would that never storms assailed it,
Rainbows ever gently curled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.”

–from The Hand that rocks the Cradle Is The Hand That Rules The World by William Ross Wallace (1865).

We know this somehow. Instinctively. We know the power of women. We know the importance of women. You had a mother. You’ve seen how hard women work. You’ve seen the way they singlehandedly run the holidays. Every celebration in the world owes its life to women. From Thanksgiving through New Years, hardly anything happens apart from the herculean efforts of women. If a man hangs Christmas lights or decorates the tree, he might crow about it for days, while his wife continues to outdo him.

Women work. Women organize. Women schedule. Women plan. Women cook and bake and roast and chill and brew and pour. Women buy gifts, make gifts, wrap gifts, give gifts. They clean, organize, and beautify, throw the party and clean up afterwards.

What do they not do?

My mother was an operating-room nurse and was she ever capable. She could handle anything, including her sons. And many of her friends were equally impressive. In fact, I grew up in a church filled with extraordinary women.

And look at the women who run schools, who run businesses, who run massive corporations, who run nations. Did not Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher strike a blow for women when she led Great Britain from 1979 to 1990? And Queen Elizabeth occupied a difficult, nuanced role (not quite the monarchical dictator of generations past, but not quite a meaningless figurehead)—and she executed her duties with professionalism and wisdom for seventy years (!), from 1952 -2022. It is no stretch to suggest that few men could have endured the spotlight that long without doing something stupid.

Early in the period of the Judges God raised up Deborah, a prophet and judge. She would sit under “the palm tree of Deborah” and the people would “come to her for judgment” Judges 4:5. When God gave her a word for Barak, instructing him to gather men and go to battle against Israel’s enemies, Barak agreed to go, but only if Deborah would come with him. She agreed to come—but added one condition.

“I will go with thee, but the honor will not be yours. The Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman” Judges 4:9.

During the battle, Israel’s enemy, Sisera, sought shelter from the woman Jael. She gave him milk and a place to sleep. Then she pounded a tent stake through his temple and into the ground. Thus, the honor of conquering Sisera went to a brave and resourceful woman.

In response to this wonderful news, Deborah, the prophet and judge, took on another role. She composed a song and led the nation to worship God for what He had achieved through the woman, Jael. The song includes a portion dedicated to honoring Jael for bravely killing Sisera:

“Most blessed of women be Jael,
    the wife of Heber the Kenite,
    most blessed of tent-dwelling women.
He asked for water, and she gave him milk;
    in a bowl fit for nobles she brought him curdled milk.
Her hand reached for the tent peg,
    her right hand for the workman’s hammer.
She struck Sisera, she crushed his head,
    she shattered and pierced his temple.
At her feet he sank,
    he fell; there he lay.
At her feet he sank, he fell;
    where he sank, there he fell—dead” Judges 5:24-27.

Question: which is more common in the Bible, second-born sons that God promotes over their first-born brothers, or women who out-do and out-rank men? 

I don’t know. There are an awful lot of both. So many of both. It is as though God wants to constantly remind His people: the second-born sons matter too. Never underestimate the second-born. And you know who else matters? Women. Never underestimate women.

Some of the Amazing Women of the Bible:

  1. Mary the mother of Jesus. When the angel told her she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit and would give birth to the Messiah, she said, “behold the bondservant of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word” Luke 1:38. That is an amazing attitude of obedience and trust in God. How many of us—men or women—trust God that fully? How many of us do not?
  2. Esther. When she realized she had to risk death by approaching the king unbidden, she said, “If I perish, I perish” Esther 4:16. Again—do we have that kind of faith?
  3. Ruth. When Miriam sent her home, Ruth refused to desert her destitute mother-in-law. “Entreat me not to leave thee” Ruth 1:16. Her words of loyalty and faithfulness are quoted in weddings every single day.
  4. Hannah. When she could not conceive, she made a vow to God—and she fulfilled it, entrusting her beloved son Samuel to the high priest Eli, a sacrifice for which God rewarded her—not only by using Samuel greatly, but by giving her more children. Hannah knew God had answered her prayer. She was so convinced her son was a gift from God that she named him “Samuel,” a name whose Hebrew meaning suggests “God heard my prayer” 1 Samuel 1:20.

God used many other Biblical women in powerful ways, including: Eve, Mary Magdalene, Priscilla, Bathsheba, Leah, Rebekah, Elizabeth, Sarah, Abigail, Rahab, and more.

Proverbs 31, one of the Bible’s most popular passages about women, paints a picture of a strong woman with an entrepreneurial spirit:

“She works with eager hands … She gets up while it is still night … She sets about her work vigorously and her arms are strong for her tasks … Her lamp does not go out at night … She is clothed with strength and dignity. She can laugh at the future. She speaks with wisdom and faithful instruction is on her tongue. She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness … Charm is deceitful and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised” Proverbs 31:13-30.

God, give us a wise understanding of women. Bless your church with wisdom. May we embrace a Godly view of women. Enlighten us with Your word. May we love and welcome the women around us, honoring and cultivating their gifts, and providing opportunities for them to bear fruit for Your kingdom and store up treasure in heaven.

AΩ.

Organizational Leadership: Pray for Pastors! Judges 1.

The company I work for was started by Joe D. some 75 years ago. By the time I was hired, the baton had been passed to Joe’s son, Jim D. Jim was a slight, white-haired man. He was extremely nice, a great storyteller, and a talented networker. Mr. D. had powerful friends all over Texas. He was a gifted rainmaker, regularly bringing in millions of dollars in new business. When Jim retired, the partners voted to sell the civil engineering firm to a national company.

Now that the dust has settled, daily life under the new regime is not that different. But I receive a lot more email, sometimes a dozen messages a day from Pennsylvania and other places, most of which I skim at best. But once a week I get an email from the president of the new company, or as I think of him, the new Jim D.

His name is Mike. Mike is much younger, taller, and balder than Jim, but seemed friendly enough the one time I met him. I try to read Mike’s emails. I am not interested in the constant updates from I.T., H.R., and the “Ladies Who Lunch.” But something about President Mike does capture my attention. Because he is the man, you know what I mean?

A risk facing any growing organization, whether school, church, business, or nation, is the decentralization and diffusion of leadership. The larger an organization grows[1], the more it needs a strong, individual leader who can cast a vision for the organization and channel the energy and creativity of the people toward a few key goals[2].

When Moses died, Joshua became the new leader. Under Joshua’s leadership, Israel moved into the Promised Land, fought many battles, and established its claim to a great deal of territory. But when Joshua died, Israel did not appoint a new executive. Instead, authority was decentralized and tribal leaders ruled the nation. There was no king, no President Mike, and not even a judge.

Left to themselves, the tribal leaders were not that successful.

“Judah could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley … The children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites … Neither did Manasseh drive out the inhabitants of Beth-Shean … Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites … Neither did Zebulun drive out the inhabitants of Kitron … Neither did Asher drive out the inhabitants of Accho … Neither did Naphtali drive out the inhabitants of Beth-Shemesh … And the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountains, for they would not allow them to come down into the valley” Judges 1:19-34.

There may be several reasons the tribes struggled to free themselves of the Canaanites. But one of those reasons is surely the lack of focused, executive leadership. There was no Moses. There was no Joshua. There was certainly no King David. There was not even a judge like Samson or a prophet like Samuel.

Instead, “after Joshua’s death, power and authority were decentralized to the tribal leaders, and the tribes were no longer unified in purpose.”[3]

There was no President Mike sending weekly emails.

There was no Pastor Gregg preaching 30 minutes a week from a single location but being “livestreamed” to three other locations.

The 12 tribes were on their own. What happened? They fell into sin and idol worship, “whoring after other gods,” (Judges 2:17), and were soon captured by Aram, King of Mesopotamia.

These people who had finally—FINALLY—gotten into the Promised Land were forced to stop working on their own houses and farms and had to serve one of the evil kings they had failed to defeat.

But God was merciful and after eight years, raised up Othniel, brother of Caleb, to deliver Israel and serve as its first judge, Judges 3:7-11.

And who were these Old Testament judges? Did they wear black robes and adjudicate cases, rapping on the bench with an oaken gavel, a mahogany mallet? No. The judges decided cases, of course. But these were not judges as we use the term today.

The Old Testament judges were executives.

Each Old Testament judge was a single, national leader. The judges were often military leaders and battlefield strategists. But they were also national figures, celebrated leaders of a sort that could cast a vision for the nation, give the people wisdom and goals for the days ahead, encourage them in hard times, and congratulate them in good times.

The Book of Judges is really a book of Executives.

We need to appreciate our leaders. They carry heavy burdens.

Today a line from Shakespeare is paraphrased: “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” So true.

One of the crowns King Charles wears weighs over four pounds. That must get heavy after a while. But of course, we are speaking metaphorically. Being king is a heavy responsibility. So is president. Or CEO. Or principal. Or head coach. Or pastor.

I once spent about two years working as a church youth director. The work was hard enough. But the burden I felt for the souls of those students was so much greater than the nine-to-five work. Pray for your pastors!

Dear God, give us great, gifted, wise, humble leaders. Bless our churches with men who put God first and their family second. Bless us with wise leadership. Bless us with praying leadership. In this new day of multi-site churches, raise up gifted preachers, and especially raise up humble men of God who are content to play a vital supporting role. Bless us with bold but humble leaders. Make us grateful for each of them—and help us to show it!

AΩ.

[1] A related risk is the Pareto Principle. The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, states that in many situations, 80% of the results are generated by only 20% of the causes. As most understand it, the Pareto Principle says that eighty percent of sales are generated by twenty percent of customers, or eighty percent of job tasks are accomplished by twenty percent of the employees.

But looking more closely into the mathematics, Jordan Peterson (former Harvard professor and well-dressed internet personality) explains that for a growing enterprise, the Pareto Principle may be more devastating than it sounds. “The actual [Pareto Principle] is, the square root of the number of people involved in an enterprise do half the work. If you have ten people who work for you, three of them do half the work. Now that seems understandable, right? But if you have a hundred, ten of them do half the work. And if you have 10,000 employees, a hundred of them do half the work. So what that means is that as your enterprise grows, the number of people who are engaging in counterproductive activity scales much faster than the number of people who are being productive.”

In other words, the Pareto Principle indicates that the larger an institution becomes the more its people are drawn off-task, losing sight of institutional goals.

[2] Consider the United States. When the thirteen colonies won independence from England, many wanted to operate as a loose confederacy of nation-states, linked only by a weak central government. But it soon became clear that if this nation were to survive, it would require a strong federal government. I say this as a tenth-amendment advocate: we cannot ignore states’ rights. But the federal government will always have superseding authority.

[3] Chronological Life Application Study Bible, Tyndale House, Carol Stream, 2004, p366, note on Judges 1:21.

You Are Stronger Than You Think You Are. Joshua 16 & 17.

One day in sixth grade, we attended a school-wide assembly. Everyone gathered in the lunch room to watch a display by a local Taekwondo school. I knew that Paul, my buddy across the street, took classes there, so I was on the edge of my seat.

For about forty-five minutes, the men punched and kicked and snapped boards and broke bricks. The children were so excited, cheering everything that happened[1]. Then one of the highly decorated, black-belted Korean instructors took the microphone:

“And now, we have something special for you. We would like to call Paul Schmalz up to the stage … Paul? Are you here?”

Paul’s class began cheering and pointing and Paul (who is not shy!) proudly strutted to the stage. I’m not sure what he was expecting. But it was not what happened.

The man put his hand on Paul’s little shoulder.

“Children, does everyone know Paul?”

More cheering.

“Well, what you may not know is that Paul is a student at our school. Paul is a … what are you now, Paul, a green belt?”

“Green belt, blue stripe.”

“Ah, yes. Green belt, blue stripe. Well, children, Paul did not know we were going to call him up here today. And what Paul also does not know is that he is going to break his first board for you this morning.”

Suddenly Paul looked pale. I was in the back of the room, but I could tell he was terrified.

Paul had never broken a board in his life.

I was positive because if he had, I would have heard the story over and over. As I watched, Paul and the teacher had a quiet little conversation. Paul was trying to get out of it, but the master was not changing his mind. He gave Paul a little pep talk. Then he made him take a few practice punches.

I recognized everything that was happening because Paul constantly showed off all his skills on the kids in the neighborhood. There was the snap kick, the roundhouse kick, the snap punch and others. On stage, Paul began practicing snap punches, one fist shooting forward while the other snaps quickly back toward the body. He repeated the pattern over and over, warming up. Finally, the teacher decided he was ready.

Paul lined up in front of a man who was kneeling, holding a one-inch pine board in front of him. Paul let out a huge yell and gave that board his best punch—and nothing happened. The kids laughed. Then the master gave Paul a quiet little pep talk. Second try: huge yell, big punch, nothing. This time the crowd cheered and jeered. You could feel the shame in the air. This was about to become a moment of public ridicule–something the kids at our school had mastered. The instructor gave Paul another pep talk. Then Paul screamed like he was on fire, struck that board like his life depended on it, and his fist went right through it.

The crowd went wild!

For the rest of the day, everywhere Paul went kids wanted him to break boards and snap things. That meant mostly pencils, being the only wood available. There were broken pencils everywhere. For one day, one brief shining moment, Paul got to be the hero. And that night a hundred mothers must have called the Taekwondo school to ask how much the classes would cost. I know I begged to sign up. (My mom wasn’t having it.)

Sometimes all it takes is a good pep talk.

When the people of Israel moved into the land of Israel, they obeyed God and removed from the land many of the pagan Canaanites. But they did not remove them all. The tribes of Joseph suffered this failure of the will.

First Ephraim failed:

“And [Ephraim] drove not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer, but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites unto this day, and serve under tribute” Joshua 16:10.

The half-tribe of Manasseh also failed:

“The children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants … but the Canaanites would dwell in the land. Yet it came to pass … that they put the Canaanites to tribute” Joshua 17:12-13.

Both tribes managed to subjugate the evil Canaanites, making them serve as forced labor (much as Israel had served the Egyptians). But they were unable to rid themselves of the Canaanites entirely, complaining that these idol-worshipping locals had “iron chariots,” Joshua 17:16.

But Joshua told them they were underestimating themselves. That is what we do, is it not? We get discouraged, assume we will never be able to break the board, and we try to quit.

We think too much of the challenge in front of us. We think too little of ourselves.

Joshua encouraged them:

“Joshua spoke unto the house of Joseph, even Ephraim and Manasseh, saying, ‘Thou art a great people, and hast great power … for thou shalt drive out the Canaanites, though they have iron chariots and though they be strong” Joshua 17:17-18.

We all need encouragement sometimes. We need great coaches, teachers, and parents to remind us of the power we possess, to remind us of our gifts, our talents, our strength. We need to be reminded of our Savior, who overcame the world, conquered the devil, and gives us new life. We can do all things through Christ!

As adults, we need to develop the skill of being our own encourager.

“David encouraged himself in the Lord” 1 Samuel 30:6.

Like David, you CAN learn to encourage yourself. Turn off the negative self-talk. Stop discouraging yourself. Stop worrying. Stop imagining the worst that could happen and make a choice to imagine the best.

Remind yourself of the power inside you, the way Joshua reminded the descendants of Joseph. Quote scripture to yourself!

Speak positively into your own heart, the way the taekwondo master spoke into Paul’s heart. Memorize these verses so you can recite them and pray them this way on your own behalf:

Dear God, remind me that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me! (Philippians 4:13). I know that greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4). I know that in all these things I overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loves me! (Romans 8:37). I am going to overwhelmingly conquer! Thank you, Lord. I will not give in to the temptation to quit because You will provide a way of escape (1 Corinthians 10:13). God, I fix my eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God! (Hebrews 12:2). I am focusing on Him who endured such hostility by sinners against Himself so that I will not grow weary and lose heart (Hebrews 12:3).

AΩ.

[1] Actually, the students did not cheer for everything! If I had two best friends at the time, they were Paul and Chris. (Happily, we remain close almost fifty years later.) This story is about Paul, but it involves Chris too. One of the boards that was snapped broke in half and a big piece flew into the audience and hit Chris’s sister Heather in the face. She had to be taken to the nurse and probably went home (she was fine). The medical emergency nearly stopped the show. When the hour was over, our teacher asked Chris if he wanted to go to the nurse to check on his sister. He nearly got himself sent to the office when he replied, “No. I’m glad she got hit. I hope they hit her in the eye. She lied about me this morning and got me grounded for a month.” Mrs. Osborn was so upset, smoke was coming out of her ears. Years later, Heather told us stories of all the times she would punch holes in her own clothes (among other things) just so she could blame Chris for it and get him grounded. Their parents never seemed to suspect her.

“Thou Art Old and Stricken in Years” Joshua 13.

My father took aging in stride. He would laugh and say, “I don’t care what color my hair turns, long as it don’t turn loose!” In the end, most of his hair abandoned him. He would laugh about candles on his birthday cake and all the kind and sometimes unkind jokes. “Nothing wrong with a birthday,” he would say. “It sure beats the alternative!” In the end, he celebrated 88 birthdays.

My generation does not handle aging as well as he did. I read yesterday (on a screen in an elevator, of all things) that among those of a certain age, four people out of ten have made attempts to look younger, whether with hair color, hair growth treatments, Botox injections, plastic surgery, or more drastic measures.

And my generation did not grow up with smart phones, social media, and cameras in our pockets 24-7. We are not as obsessively visual as those who were raised with these things. My father—a serious photographer—would be shocked to know the number of daily selfies many young people snap, trying to capture that perfect look (one study says Americans spend an average of seven minutes every day snapping, editing, and posting selfies).

The amount of time and energy we devote to our “online presence” is staggering. And many of us spend an excessive amount of time working out, dieting, and otherwise attempting to modify our appearance. Today’s fixation on youthfulness will only get worse.

The King James translation of Joshua chapter 13 begins with an interesting comment on aging:

“Now Joshua was old and stricken in years, and the Lord said unto him, ‘Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed….” Joshua 13:1.

My Bible contains a note, defining ‘stricken’ as ‘advanced.’ Thou art old and advanced in years. But I like stricken. It’s honest.

As positive as he always was, my father would also admit: “It’s tough getting old.” My mother would say, “It’s not for the faint of heart.” Why not? Because sometimes you feel stricken. Because as one of Shakespeare’s youngest heroes puts it, every day we face “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune … the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” You’re going to suffer. Your body is going to fail. At some point you will die. And you may endure many pains and indignities along the way. We should be honest with ourselves and face things directly:

Getting old is tough. It will test you and challenge you in unpredictable ways and at inconvenient times.

But God is sovereign. At his mother’s memorial service, my cousin Bobby began about a dozen paragraphs this way: “God is sovereign. He took care of this… God is sovereign. He provided for that… God is sovereign. He knew we would need the following…”

Joshua was old. He was stricken. But he was not finished! He continued to lead the nation. God came to him reminding him of his age only as a way of saying, ‘let’s get on with it! Time is running out!’

In the chapters that follow, Joshua leads the tribes to take control of more and more of the land allotted to them. Finally in chapter 19, the people give old-man Joshua a city. They gave him a whole city! And Joshua moved in, “he built the city and dwelt therein” Joshua 19:50. This man who is old and stricken led battles, then led a building program to refurbish his own city. And let’s not forget Moses—he was 80 years old when he met God at the burning bush. He was 80 years old when he began his forty-year ministry.

God is with the aging.

“Listen to me, House of Jacob, and all who have been sustained from the womb, carried along since birth. I will be the same in your old age, and I will bear you up when you turn gray. I have made you and I will carry you; I will bear and save you” Isaiah 46: 3-4.

God can use the aging.

“Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not understanding come with long life?” Job 12:12.

“They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green” Psalm 92:14.

God will reward the aging.

“Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness” Proverbs 16:31.

As you grow older, God will always have something for you to do. Keep bearing fruit. Keep loving people. Keep spending time with God.

As you decrease your physical activity, increase your spiritual activity.

Study the Bible more. Spend more time in prayer. Serve people where you can, even if it is something simple like sending them a note in the mail. Create a more complicated prayer list. Challenge yourself. Memorize some Bible verses. Make it your mission to love people better, and also to love Jesus better. Spend more time in His presence. Store up treasure in heaven. God is not finished with you!

AΩ.