Category: Repentance

Do we really understand the mercy of God?

Posted on by Michael Wine

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23

This is the prophet’s conclusion when considering all of the works of God. Immediately before this often quoted verse, the prophet Jeremiah lists some of God’s deeds:

  1. God has afflicted him with a rod of wrath (vs 1).
  2. Driven him into darkness with no light (vs 2).
  3. Been against him all day long (vs 3).
  4. God has wasted away Jeremiah’s skin and broken his bones (vs 4).
  5. Besieged him with bitterness and tribulation (vs 5).
  6. Has made him live like a dead man in the dark (vs 6).
  7. God has trapped Jeremiah in walls without escape (vs 7).
  8. Has ignored all Jeremiah’s prayers for help (vs 8).
  9. Made all his plans crooked (vs 9).
  10. God acts like a vicious wild animal toward the prophet (vs 10).
  11. God has torn Jeremiah into pieces (vs 11).
  12. God uses Jeremiah for target practice (vs 12-13).
  13. God has made the prophet forget what happiness means (vs 16-17).

The result of all of this is that Jeremiah despairs saying, “…so I say, “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord” (vs 18).

If anyone could question God’s love, his goodness, his faithfulness, it would be Jeremiah. And yet he does not. Instead he says:

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth in the dust— there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults. For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. To crush underfoot all the prisoners of the earth, to deny a man justice in the presence of the Most High, to subvert a man in his lawsuit, the Lord does not approve. Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins? Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the LORD!

Lamentations 3:21-40

God’s mercy and faithfulness, wrath and justice, towards us, must never be divorced in our minds from our sin and rebellion against him. Notice how Jeremiah mentions man’s sin, and how it leaves him no excuse or defense.

“Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?“

When we forget the magnitude of the offense we have given to God with our wicked ways, we cheapen his mercy, and run the risk of not accepting it from his hand. When that happens we must take his wrath. God will give one thing or another. He will give either his great wrath because of our sin, or he will give his great mercy and grace to cover our sin and accept us when we return to him.

The mercy of God is not a free pass. It is not sparkly fairy dust sprinkled on your life to make your dreams come true. It is the only thing that will keep you safe from the mighty wave of God’s wrath. Let us not complain when that wrath is manifested in our world.

Earthquakes, plagues, buildings falling, fires eating away homes and lives, panic and riots and hate – these are all results of our sin, and God’s wrath towards that sin. They are signs that we must return to God, and receive the mercy He freely offers to us in the cross of his Son Jesus.

Don’t Miss the Warning of Each Day

Posted on by Michael Wine

The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:10-12

Death – something no one wants to think about. What a downer. If you ever want to leave a social gathering without being too abrupt, start talking about the fleeting nature of life and watch people think of excuses for you to leave.

The author of the passage above is Moses. The Moses who wrote the first five books of the Bible. The prophet God used to start everything from the perspective of God’s revelation to us.

That is why it is important to listen to what he says here about death.

Essentially, Moses is saying that we should pay attention to our life and its temporary nature by numbering our days, and not choose to ignore it as is so easy to do. Why? “That we may get a heart of wisdom.”

What does that mean?

According to the Bible, wisdom begins with the fear of God. See passages like Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10. In this very passage, right before saying that we need a heart of wisdom, Moses talks about the fear of God.

“Who considers the power of you anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?”

Then he says, “So,” linking his next statement with the concept that there is a lack of people who have appropriate fear of God’s power, anger and wrath. “So, teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

Putting this all together, Moses seems to be saying that we need to pay attention to our mortality, so that our hearts would grow wise as we learn to live in awe and reverent fear of God’s mighty wrath.

We have all won the lottery, so to speak. We are alive! We have been given this gift of life by God. But, because of our sin in Adam, we provoked God to anger and in his wrath He shortened our life. He made it finite.

Unfortunately, like most lottery winners, many of us live as if our life is an unlimited resource. We pay no attention to the years ticking away. We pay no attention to God’s anger or His wrath, the reason for our mortality. And then, finally, we die. Our years are spent, and we face the one we have ignored. The one who gave us seventy years of life to repent and return to Him. The one who warned us everyday that we were going to die. For every day is a new warning that the last day you will live is coming. It is closer to you today, than it was yesterday.

I think that is what this verse is about. Moses is saying to wake up. Stop spending your life so heedlessly. Pay attention to God’s warning of mortality. Consider God’s anger toward sin. Cry to Him for the mercy He freely gives through Jesus Christ.

The Call of Salvation

Posted on by Michael Wine

For ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved.’ Romans 10:13
And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved. Acts 2:21

Have you known the quiet echo of fear, in the moment of solitude, when you recall that you are mortal?
Life is temporary, fleeting. Then, it is gone.

We have fleeting time to live. So, one would think that we might make the best of that time, but we do not. We waste it with selfishness, trivialities, addictions.

We addict ourselves to alcohol, food, sex, drugs, work, social media, entertainment, the recognition and praise of other people. We go to college to end it with debt. We get married and start families to end them with divorce. We set goals and meet them, if we are lucky. But the goals are never enough. We have to make more.

We are all in trouble. It is no wonder that when a global pandemic breaks out, fear goes up. We are afraid to die, of course. Maybe we are afraid to die because we know, deep down, that we haven’t really lived yet.

For the deeply depressed and those who are suffering greatly, the thought of death may bring some comfort. At least it is an end to the pain. Is it?

No one really knows do they? If you are thinking about it scientifically, no one has proven that those who die do not live on in some sense. All we know is that their bodies come to an end. And if a human being is only a body, that would be an end to the debate, wouldn’t it?

But are we really just bodies? Can the depth of our feelings, loves, hates, desires, dreams, and despairs be summed up in the interactions of colliding atoms on a microscopic level?

I think not. If that were so, the more our knowledge of the human body increased, the greater the decrease would be in so called ‘mental health’ problems. But that is not the case.

One study found that the rate of depression in teens in America increased “from 8.7 percent in 2005 to 12.7 percent in 2015.”

But, some might say, while the rate of depression is increasing, so is our ability to treat it. However, everyone knows that a problem is not fully understood until it can be prevented from happening again, that is cured. All we can do to combat depression, it seems, is to treat the symptoms, but not cure the disease.

There is much we do not understand about what humans really are. I believe that we do in fact live on even after our physical death. And I am not the only one who thinks that. NBC reported in 2016 that “80 percent of Americans said they believe in an afterlife in 2014, up from 73 percent in 1972-74.”

If that is true, why are we so afraid of death? I think it is because we know that we will be judged based on our lives on this earth. We are afraid to meet Christ – “Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead.” (2 Tim 4:1). He will look at us. His eyes will pierce our souls. He will see everything we’ve done, thought, said, and wished for. We are afraid the verdict will be damning.

So we scramble in this life. Some invent other ‘religions’ that they can follow to try and convince themselves that they will pass the test. Some of us pretend that God doesn’t exist, so that we can live as stress-free of a life that we can cobble together. We try to get our act together. We try to find meaning. And, for some reason, we resist approaching the Judge Himself. We resist asking Him for mercy.

But that is exactly what he promises.

Peter the Apostle and first preacher of the Church declares as the crescendo to his sermon at Pentecost, “And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved.” (Acts 2:21)

Paul the Apostle and great missionary of the Church quotes the very same thing in Romans, the greatest of all letters, “For ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved.'” (Romans 10:13)

The one who sits on the throne, the judge of the living and of the dead, promises to save those who call on Him. His name is Jesus. The call of faith to the one who judges and offers grace, is a call of surrender to the Lord Jesus. And that Jesus promises to save those who ask Him. It is a call of salvation.

It is time to stop running from Him. Stop chasing every other thing in life that you possibly can. Go to Jesus. He is alive. He is good. He will save those who call on His name.

The Unmatched Jesus!

Posted on by Michael Wine

Far above the thin skies, and down below near the dark earth, God is. He is here, in the pain, in the struggle, in the sweat. He smells the sick and the dying. And he is celebrating in heaven with the countless angels over the sinners who are coming to him in repentance every day.

He is with us, as we worry about getting sick, getting others sick, dying and watching others die. And he cares about our suffering.

He is above and outside us, busy running the entire universe.

God is sorrowful with us.

God is, fundamentally, wondrously, happy. He needs not our weakly worded belief in him to make him so. As if he was not the source of life in the universe. As if our explicitly worded or implicitly lived denial of Him caused him one shred of anxiety. No, He is imperviously joyful. He delights to save his own. He controls the stars in their orbits through space with a divine, holy, glorious belly laugh.

He is ever present with all that he is in every place where he is – which is everywhere. He is one hundred percent focused with all his mental faculties on the ant crawling on the sidewalk outside, on the nuclear power – impossible heat generator – of the sun, on you – little you, and me.

This God we refuse, by rebellion or neglect, to think about, pray to, read about, love, rejoice in, worship; this God inflates and deflates our lungs out of pure, wondrous, amazing, and terrifying love.

This God is the one who became a man. He was beaten and whipped until his blood spilled. He slipped on it as he stood and had a thick wooden and splintered cross laid on the ripped flesh of his back. Then, he walked. He walked through a city and up a hill, and on that hill, they hung him up, nailing him to his tree. And there he died, to take the sin from our backs.

And you know what he was thinking about while this was happening? He was thinking about joy. All he could see was the ever-approaching glorious salvation that he was going to accomplish for the ones he loved. Oh, Jesus! He went to the agony of death to win his bride, out of pure, joyous, love. And now he lives and enlivens our hard hearts, risen and conquering, ruling and saving his people.

Is there another God like my Jesus? Did Allah die to save his own? Can the countless gods of Hinduism compare to His singular excellence? Do our earthly idols of money, fame, power, beauty, and self-fulfillment appear as anything more than flecks of dust in the brilliance of His glory? No.

Jesus, the Savior, the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of God: Praise him for his wonderous love, life, joy and grace! Lift him on high and worship him! He alone is worthy of praise. He alone is worthy of glory, of all things.

Amen

The Best Thing To Teach Our Kids

Posted on by Michael Wine

My 4 year old son, Caleb, is turning 5 soon. He will be starting kindergarten next month and is so excited!

Today he showed me his new flashcards that he will use to learn numbers (he already knows them…not bragging just the truth). He loves minecraft and robots and trucks and LEGOs.

My 2 year old son, Noah, is a soft-hearted terror half of the time, and a crazy goofball the rest of the time. He loves cuddling, fighting, robots, trucks and LEGOs.

They are so awesome… I can’t believe they are my kids!

Going through a divorce, I thought the hardest part was the initial emotional pain from the loss of the marriage relationship. And it was hard. It was hard like I imagine losing an arm is hard. It’s intense, painful, horrifying. But it’s also over relatively fast.

But there is a different kind of hard that comes when I look at my boys. Being an unmarried co-parent is hard like living every day with only one arm is hard. It never goes away. It never changes. And even in cases where remarriage to another person occurs, those kids will always be affected by the separation of their parents.

Man… it hurts. When Caleb tells me about how we could be together if we just lived in the same house, that hurts. When Noah suddenly cries because he missed his mom, or because he misses me, it hurts too. I want to fix it for them and make it better. I don’t want them to hurt like this.

The hardest thing is knowing that what they need the most, their parents together and loving each other, I cannot give.

But God, in grace does give me a part to play. I can try to be a model for them. A model of coming back from failure? A model of success and power? No.

But I can teach them how to fail. Period. Not the simple mistakes like tripping or getting a math problem wrong. I’m talking about the deep failure we make on a personal level that impacts the way we see ourselves.

I believe that starts with teaching them that I actually do fail. I failed at being a husband, which also means a failure at being a dad. I fail in all sorts of little ways everyday that add up over time. From yelling at them to be quiet (how ironic), to being too tired after work to spend enough time with them.

That means being honest with them and asking for their forgiveness. It means helping them see that they fail all the time too. And that the best response to failure, is to own up to it.

This is not enough, though. After the failure, you have to also have grace. The grace of God in Christ’s death and resurrection is the only lasting solution to my failure because it allows me to exchange my brokenness with Jesus’ perfection. I can wear his failure-free record like a garment even as he takes on the nails of my own sin.

This righteousness is ‘other.’ It didn’t come from me. But it was given to me as a free gift. Even though I never earned it, it is fully mine as I receive it by faith.

This is the most valuable thing anyone can pass on to their children.