John Fischer The Catch

I left home for the airport at 4:25 yesterday morning and as I pulled out of the driveway and turned down the street, a full moon came into view as if it were parked at the end of the block. I felt like I could drive right up to the moon. It was a clear path all the way.

At that hour, it was also a clear path all the way to the nearest freeway, and because of that, I chose to take the more direct route, but one I rarely take because of all the traffic and slowing signal lights.

This morning, however, all lights were green. Every one. All the way up Pacific Coast Highway, every light was a green swish as I flew on by. It was an incredible feeling to know that even the green lights I could see up ahead would most likely still be green when I got there. Swish… swish… swish. All signal lights were green swishes.

This is a little like what living on the promises of God should be like.

“For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us… was not ‘Yes’ and ‘No,’ but in him it has always been ‘Yes.’ For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God.” (2 Corinthians 1:19,20)

This means the promises of God are always “Yes,” without reservation. Not “Yes” some of the time, or “Yes” when you’re being a good boy, but “Yes” period.

The saying goes: life is tough, God is good, and I could use a lot more of the good part since it seems the tough has dominated as of late. But whose fault is that? The promises of God are still there even when life is difficult, so why not believe him, and act on them?

God is saying “Yes” over your life and mine. The lights are green. The word from God is “Go.” Be the one in your family to believe it for everyone else. Drive on, because the promises of God are all green swishes.

Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. (Acts 17:11)

“Truth seekers rarely take someone’s word for anything.” And what that means is that they have to find out things for themselves. That doesn’t mean they don’t trust people; it just means they have to do their own thinking and their own research, both of which are required in order to come to their own conclusions.

It’s always been a real boost to my belief in independent thinking that Paul commended the believers in Berea because they checked him out by the scriptures to see if what he was saying was true. In other words, they didn’t take even Paul’s word for it. And what’s even better about this is that the writer of the Book of Acts commended them for this and called them of noble character—more noble than the Thessalonians, who, by implication, didn’t check Paul out with the scriptures, but must have just taken his word as truth. Paul is basically saying here… “Don’t do that. Don’t just take anybody’s word for it, even if it’s my word.” How daring is that?

How contrary this is to so many today—myself included—who would love to have people eating out of our hands instead of constantly questioning us and measuring our words by the scriptures. So it’s more noble to think your own thoughts and to question things and to dig for answers that back up what someone says. Here, here, for the modern day Bereans who don’t care who you are, they only want to know what you are saying and how you are living it out in your own life, and how does what you say and do relate to the truth as it has been revealed in the scriptures and as God has revealed it so far to them.

I’m sorry, but this is revolutionary. This flies in the face of mass marketing, personality cults, and a follow-the-leader mentality that accompanies much of what goes on in our society today. You don’t really have anything to say until you are somebody, and once you are somebody, everything you say is golden. It’s the truth. It’s at least marketable. “Everybody line up and take notes. We’ve found the truth now. We’ve got it right here.”

Is that the way it’s supposed to be? I don’t think so. No, that sounds like what was probably going on among the less noble Thessalonians. Give me the Bereans. They’re scary. They’re not very good for my ego. But they are people who won’t be denied the truth. If you seek me with all your heart you will surely find me.

God wants an interactive relationship with us. He wants a relationship with someone who wants one with him. We’re all a big part of this.

The reason I know this is because he extended an invitation to us that calls for our participation. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).

Come on, God is God; he doesn’t have to do this. He could just as easily say, “Here’s what you get, here’s what you’re looking for, and this is where you’re going,” but instead he asks:

What do you want?
What are you looking for?
Where do you want to go?

It’s amazing to me that God wants to engage us in this manner. I’ve always got him so big and me so small as to be basically irrelevant. But here God is making us part of the action. He’s coming to our level. He’s involving us in the process. How about it? Could you answer these questions? I’m not so sure I could.

What do you want?
What are you looking for?
Where do you want to go?

Jacob once found himself wrestling with his fears all night and then realizing, half asleep and half awake, that he was wrestling with a form, and then a man, and then in the light of dawn, he saw the man’s face and it was the face of God. And a soon as he recognized this, he grabbed on even harder and said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

And God did.

The gospel is waiting. It is waiting not to be spoken, but to be lived. The gospel is waiting to be believed and to be put to use in your life and mine. It’s not just a static message; it’s a living testimony. The gospel needs much more than paper to be printed on; it needs a life it can imprint.

“Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Cor. 4:1-2).

The success of the Gospel in our present age does not depend on how attractively it is packaged, but on how honestly real Christians are living out their lives in the world. It’s not just the Gospel that does it. It’s not just a message. It’s the gospel in you and in me. Nothing needs to be done to the gospel except to be lived.

Nothing needs to be done to the Gospel. Everything’s already been done. But there is much that needs to be done in our lives by the Gospel. And this is the every day walking in faith that even the strongest and longest of Christians must do, too. There is hope to be expressed, sin to be confessed, forgiveness to be embraced, suffering to be endured, glory to be shared, love to be received, and love to be given. It is the presence of all this happening in our lives that we are to commend to someone else.

These last couple nights I’ve had the occasion to be up late. Tonight I decided to go running. It’s unique what you xpeience running at two o’clock in the morning.

First, you feel like you own the place. Dead quiet prevails. Streets that normally contain dangerous traffic lie dormant. You think you are in a ghost town.

Then slowly, another form of life begins to emerge. Three dark houses give way to one lit up like a firecracker. A television screen will peek through, or the sillouette of a person. Voices leak out, or maybe the sound of music. These are the night people who, for one reason or another, are up like you are. Suddenly it seems like another world takes shape, one you would not have known about any other way.

It‘s like an alien form of life, and you find yourself wanting to know how many other forms of life exist in your own neighborhood? God knows about all of this. We know only what we experience. But there’s so much more.

We had an awesome study last night. People are getting over their shyness and becoming more familiar with the teleconference format and we had some great sharing. Think of it as Marti and I are a phone call away on Wednesday nights and we’re loving getting to know you; and there’s always room for more. If you want to listen to last night’s recording, dial (218) 237-3850 and use 124393 as your access code and 092811 as the recording number. Our Catch today is taken from our study passage: “Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our competence comes from God.” (2 Corinthians 3:4-5)

So what are you good at? Where are your strengths? The prevailing thinking along these lines would be that these strengths would be assets. A person with twice the natural resources would be twice as effective. Or so it would seem. When in fact the opposite is the case.

Notice in this verse how far our own adequacy gets us. Nowhere. And yet we are in fact adequate to serve as ministers of a New Covenant. If you live with this verse for a long time, you begin to see what Paul is getting at. He is telling us there is a pathway to adequacy that first runs through our own inadequacy. This is not us drumming up some sort of motivational tool. This is us claiming our own inadequacy that we might step into God’s. We aren’t adequate but we are because God has made us adequate his way, apart from our schemes and manipulations.

So actually we need to beware our own strengths and adequacies lest we boast, by our own strength we got his victory. Our strengths can get in our way. Our weaknesses can lead to his strengths.

There she goes!

Tonight the world watched as Marti rode a bicycle down the length of the San Clemente pier and back, or so it seemed. Birthday girl in her long black dress and heels. In 37 years of marriage, I can’t ever remember her on a bike. It took a dare from Chandler to get her up and I must say, she did it and she looked great. All the way to the end of the pier, dodging old fishermen and tourists and back again with hair flying and bright eyes. The rest of us were dumbfounded, snapping pictures, trying to make sure this rare moment was documented. And it was a big bike, too. The old style beach cruiser with fat tires and fenders and wide, swooping handlebars.

They say that once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget. Marti took a big chance proving it in front of lots of people and a popular seafood restaurant.

Walking in the Spirit is like riding a bike. Once you learn how to do it, you never forget. You do have to get up and get going, however. You have to believe that the power and the presence are there. You have to trust the bike.  And I do have to say: once you get going, it’s a beautiful sight to see.

This weekend there was an article in the Los Angeles Times about a couple who are both entomologists from Riverside, California and they spend a good deal of their time traveling to far flung places seeking natural enemies of rare insects that have somehow made it to America and are playing havoc with our agricultural industry. An insect developing in a new habitat without its native enemy to keep it in check can jeopardize an entire crop.

Reading this article I couldn’t help but think about a family story that has now reached legendary status in Fischer folklore. It’s a story about what happened when our adult son, Christopher was but 3 or 4 years old and got entangled in his first undeniable lie. Marti sat him down at the kitchen table and asked him to tell her how this could have happened – how could he have told her such a straight up lie to her face.

As Marti tells the story, this was when she could start to see the wheels turning as Christopher casually leaned back in his chair and finally began to speak: “Well you see, Mama, it’s like this…. There are these five bugs in my head… two good bugs and three bad bugs, and what happed was… well… the two good bugs went out to lunch leaving no one to stop the three bad bugs from taking over.”

Now those entomologists from Riverside would certainly understand how this could happen. They deal with this in their lab every day. But we deal with it, too, because Christopher is exactly right, and I think he’s amazingly insightful about the odds, too.

Scripture teaches that the wherewithal to do both good and evil is present in all of us, and it would appear the odds are stacked against the good winning. Paul puts it this way in Romans, “Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it” (Romans 7:20).

The point here for all of us is that we need help making the right choices. If all God did was give us the law to show us we are wrong, he would only be condemning us to the odds that are obvious in us all. But if, as well as the law, he provides us with his Spirit that can empower those two good bugs to superpower status, giving them the ability to overcome the bad bugs, even if they are outnumbered, then he is really doing something for us.

This is exactly what it means to live a daily Christian life. There is a bug war constantly going on in all of us, and how we fare in this war is all about our choices. With the Spirit, there is power to do the right thing. Choose correctly and you’ll be able to walk correctly.

And one more thing: Whatever you do, don’t send all your good bugs out to lunch at the same time. Got to stagger those lunches.