Category: Meditations

Getting to Know God

Posted on by Michael Wine

When we talk to each other, we talk about life. We tell stories and laugh at jokes. Sometimes, we cry at tragedies or get angry together about some injustice in the world.

A relationship where you are just always asking the other person for favors is not really ideal.

I like to read my Bible because it gives me stuff to talk to God about, other than just asking Him for favors.

I’m not saying we should not ask God for things, I mean He tells us to do that. I’m just saying there is more to talk to Him about than our problems.

For example, you could say, “God, remember that time when you saved Daniel from the lions?” And then just tell Him what you think about that.

I think prayer is a great way to know God better, because it is how we talk to Him. And talking is really the way we get to know anyone, right?

Read your Bible and listen to God. Pray, and talk to Him. Chat with him about rebellious Israel of old, about the adventures of Paul, about the amazing life of Jesus. Tell Him about your life, your concerns and worries, about your sins and mistakes. Ask Him to forgive you for those things, and He will. Tell Him how amazing you think He is. What about Him do you find truly amazing? Ask Him to help your friends and family and even, if you are brave, your enemies.

This kind of Bible-plus-prayer relationship isn’t some legalistic duty to perform. This is the heartbeat of the Christian’s spiritual life.

Sick Souls Need Better Diets

Posted on by Michael Wine

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.” Isaiah 55:1-3

Where is your soul getting it’s food? Today may we set aside the sawdust cakes that fill us up but provide no sustenance. Let’s go to God, who alone can fill our souls with what they really need.

What is Your Trust Foundation?

Posted on by Michael Wine

Trust is a funny thing.

Trust: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

I believe that every decision you have ever made, and ever will make, involved trust at some level.

I don’t really even need to prove that, because simply saying it seems enough to render it self-evident.

We do things, we act in this world, because we really believe in “the reliability, truth, ability, or strength” of other people or things we interact with. But be careful. What exactly you are trusting in may not be obvious at first. But it is always there.

Is trust the most important part of a decision? I don’t know. But I do know that it is involved in every decision.

The most interesting thing about trust though, at least to me in this moment, is that though we put our trust in many things (or don’t), we really only ever trust in one main thing.

It’s like a building. The roof rests on the walls, which rest on the foundation. Yes, the roof is resting on the walls, but it is really resting on the foundation.

Everything you trust in has a trust foundation.

If you trust in a seat belt to keep you safe, why do you? Is it because of a personal experience? Is it because of expert consensus? Is it because it makes you feel like you are part of the majority? Is it because it is illegal not to?

Once you answer the question, you can then ask it again one level down. If I wear a seat belt because of personal experience, why do I trust my personal experience?

And you can just keep going until you hit the main foundation of all of your trusts.

The funny thing is that two people can decide to do the same thing, without trusting in the same thing. One person may decide to wear a seat belt because of the statistical evidence that they make you safer while driving. The other may also wear a seat belt, but it is mainly because he was raised his whole life wearing one in the car, and does not feel safe without it.

The first trusts his reasoning powers, while the second trusts his instinct.

I think this is what it means in Proverbs 3:5 – “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

It means make the living God your trust foundation. Let the reality of His existence, holiness, power, anger toward sin, and mercy toward sinners be the solid rock you stand on. Let Him be more real to you than anything else. Orient your entire life around Him.

When you do that, it really changes your decision making process, because it changes your entire trust foundation.

I will leave you with the words of Jesus on this topic of trusting in God in the form of doing what He says.

 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” Matthew 7:24-27

How the Bible solves your daily problems

Posted on by Michael Wine

We go through life, dealing with our problems. We get so stressed out and spend most of our time thinking about the things we have to do, the kids who are sick, the budget that needs help.

In the morning we try to read our Bible if we think about it. It feels like a lower priority sometimes. When we do get a chance to sit down and read, many of us look for help for our problems in the pages.

We try to find advice for our lives from Isaiah.

But God’s terrifying speeches of judgement and wrath, sin and repentance do not touch on our seemingly pressing problems.

And maybe this is the real point. The Bible reminds us of our real problems. Our sin and our idols and our pride are the real problems of the soul.

When we read the Bible, we see the big picture. We see God’s people Israel, His plan for redemption, Jesus coming to earth to fulfill that plan, the establishing of the Church as the body of our Lord, and the promise of His return.

The Bible solves our problems by shrinking them in the light of these glories. It expands our view. As the earth seems small compared to the sun, so our issues and worries seem small when compared to the greatness of God and His plan revealed in the Bible.

So, don’t try to find advice in the pages of Isaiah. Go to Isaiah, and the other books, to see differently, to get a higher view, to be changed.

Selfish Usefulness

Posted on by Michael Wine

For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Galatians 1:10

When we try to be useful to other people, in a way that makes us feel valuable, we may actually be the least useful to them.

This is something I have been learning.

Yesterday, my 4 year old son wanted a glass of milk and asked me for it. Normally, I would have poured him a glass, wanting to be a ‘good parent’ but still somewhat begrudging at the interruption.

But this time I didn’t. I decided to not try and be useful to him. And the oddest thing happened inside. I felt like this act that outwardly appeared selfish, was really more loving to my son.

I was suddenly more interested in him than in myself and in feeling like I was doing what I was supposed to do.

I told him to pour himself the milk.

He looked at me curiously, and then he went the fridge. He pulled out the half gallon, got a glass, and poured the milk.

He spilled it, as I knew he would. But he cleaned it up, and in the process spilled it again. Then, he cried, so frustrated. He said he ‘always makes a mess.’ I was able to talk to him calmly about how it’s ok to make messes when we are learning.

He calmed down, cleaned the spilled milk, and was very happy once he had his freshly poured glass. I was happy for him and told him that this was the first time he had ever poured himself a glass of milk.

When we are so focused on proving our own worth, we try too hard to be useful to others. But this usefulness is not really selflessness. It is self-serving. It is how we earn praise from others.

When we refuse the temptation to ‘be useful’ in this way, we are actually more able to really love people in the way that they need, not just the way that they want.

And if we are servants of Christ, shouldn’t we care more about loving people, than proving our own value?

Seeing Pyramids at Midnight with Flashlights

Posted on by Michael Wine

For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light. Psalm 36:9

Practically speaking, the world you live in is the world that you experience. What you can see, hear, touch smell, and taste are what is real to you. Events in the news become real to us when they enter into our experience as we consume the news. Our world grows as we learn more about it through reading and education.

To be clear, I am not saying there is no reality outside our subjective experience. I am only saying that we live our lives as if our experience is an accurate map of the world. What other choice do we have?

Think about it. Our view of the world is so narrow. It is like a flash light beam on a pyramid at midnight. And yet we live our lives dependent on that beam of awareness. That small circle of light, our subjective insight into this universe, actually is our world.

Our world is limited because we are limited.

My mind then moves to this: God’s view of the world is total and complete. He is not limited. He sees everything, all the time. The pyramid is completely illuminated by the giant spotlight of his omniscience.

The world we live in, then, is both the one limited by our subjective lens, as well as the one illumined by God’s all-knowing lens.

Our subjective view of the world is vastly inferior to the objective reality of the world. However, God’s subjective view of the world, is exactly the same as the objective reality of the world.

This rambling of thought about subjective and objective knowledge makes me think of the verse above. “In your light do we see light.” What if we could tap into God’s spotlight on the pyramid? What if we could really know the world better through sharing his light, than we could on our own?

Now you see why the Bible is so important. It is the connection cable that allows us to tap into God’s knowledge. Before we can use it, however, we must abandon the false view that our little flashlights of knowledge are anywhere near being up to the task of revealing the pyramid of the universe to us.

Thankfulness and Worry

Posted on by Michael Wine

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? Matthew 6:27

Anxiety is a pointless emotion. It does no good. It comes from not trusting in the goodness of God. It is the signal, when we feel it, that we are trying to do too much. We are trying to control everything and make it all work.

But controlling the universe is not your job. It’s God’s job. Controlling your life, your health, your money, your time, your job, and your children is impossible. For you. But not for God.

In a world with an evil god, worry (however useless) would be understandable. But in a world with a good God, who can be trusted, loved and who listens to us, worry is a childish insult.

A person who worries is like a child who has been given a gift, does not say thank you for the gift, and yet lives in constant fear that gift might be taken away.

Maybe the first step to being care free is to be thankful.

Free Will – Seriously, Will’s been trapped all day and needs liberation.

Posted on by Michael Wine

Dad jokes aside – Life is a story. It is the first story. The ultimate story. The last story.

If life were a story, the experience of the story would be living it – inhabiting it. This is how we read novels. We use our minds and imagination to go inside the story in a way, observing the events unfold.

What is interesting is that when we read a story, we perceive the events happening chronologically, even though they do not happen that way at all. The whole story is already written from beginning to end. No passage of time is required.

However, to experience a story, we focus on one word at a time. We spend our actual time to make the story work. The story, in a way, receives time from us like a car receives gasoline. I think that this spending of time is actually what makes you so emotionally invested in a novel. It’s because you have, in fact invested yourself through your time.

This experience of the story that we live each day can be confusing. We can forget that it’s a story, with an author, and pretend like it is something else.

Maybe it’s a random collection of matter and energy somehow efficiently organized?

Consider for a moment that the story is already written. Let that boggle the mind as you wiggle your hand randomly (or so you think) asking, “Was this already written? What about… this?”

How can something already be written if I seemingly choose what to do each day?

I am attempting to write a novel. And until I attempted it, I thought the above was a valid question. I still had answers for it of course and I think they are good answers.

But when I started trying to write a story, I realized that the characters in my story really do make their own decisions. And if I try to force my plot on them without their consent, they object. If the characters don’t get to make their own choices, the story falls flat. But when I let them speak, the story becomes more of an adventure.

The author/character relationship is almost like a dance (I’m discovering). The characters take the paths available to them according to who they are, and the author works with those choices to move the story along. And yet, the story is still a complete work, requiring no time to pass. The words are already written.

It is as if every movement of the dance is captured and laid out like freeze frames of a movie. The lives we experience are the inhabitations of that story, the living of it in time.

What all of this means, it seems to me, is that there are no real contradictions between the simultaneous truths of our choice and God’s perfectly written story. Or to say it using standard theological jargon – our free will is compatible with God’s sovereignty.

And as far as boggling the mind goes, that idea goes a long way.

Are we faithful in a very little?

Posted on by Michael Wine

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. Luke 16:10

Jesus always seems very interested in our hearts. Here, he says that the heart of a faithful person will be just as diligent with the little things in life as he is with the large things.

It is not really about the size of the job, opportunity, or crowd. It is about whether or not our hearts are faithfully serving Christ in the place we are in each day.

Am I being a faithful employee?

A faithful dad?

A faithful renter?

Do I manage the resources God has given me with care and diligence?

Am I generous?

Am I a time waster?

Do I eat poorly?

Am I faithful to care for the body God gave me?

Do I interact with others in love?

Am I faithful to forgive?

Do I consistently confess and repent of sins God reveals in my life?

Am I a diligent witness of Christ and his grace?

How to have peace

Posted on by Michael Wine

The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace. Numbers 6:24-26

The LORD  – The letters are capitalized because the word is Yahweh. This is the God who spoke to Abraham, promising him a son in his old age, promising to bless him and the nations through him. It is the God who promises and is always faithful.

Bless – What we all want and need is blessing. We seek it every day. But many seek it from the wrong source. It is only the LORD that can really bless.

Keep – To be kept is the inverse (not opposite) of blessing. Blessing pours out good on you. Keeping protects you from incoming harm. To be kept by the LORD is to be ultimately protected.

Make his face to shine – The source of blessing is the face of God. The shining face of Yahweh gives us life. We must be near to God for his face to shine on us. He must be near to us.

Gracious – And yet for God to draw near to us, he must be gracious with us. For we have many impurities and sins that pollute our souls. God’s grace is the only hope to be near him.

Turn his face toward – This is beyond nearest to God’s shining face. This is speaking of God’s focused attention. It is eye contact, connection, relationship. To turn your face away is to ignore, to dismiss. To turn the face toward someone as low and unworthy as a sinful creature (like us), is to bless.

Give you peace – Peace is the result of God blessing, keeping, drawing near to us in grace, and focusing on us in our unworthy state to have a relationship with us. Peace is not the result of rule keeping, being perfect, pretending we don’t have any sin, or anything else we can do.

May God give you this peace today. May you receive it.