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Exchanged Glory III: Wise as Serpents
An evil and wanton generation wants the servants of God to dance to their tune. They make up rules about how God should speak, and then they expect His ministers to play along.
I remember a conversation I had with a Christian college student who had taken a course on youth evangelism. She told me that while evangelizing young people, if you criticize their culture they tend to stop listening. I found that insight depressing, but I decided to remember it for future reflection.
A few days later, I was talking to the same student about the difficulties young people were having with school. After going back and forth about the problem, we decided that a good deal of their trouble was rooted in the breakdown of Christian values in our culture. I suggested that what we needed was a revival that would transform our culture, but if what she had heard about youth evangelism was true, there was little chance of that happening. It is hard to transform a culture without criticizing it.
I see this kind of difficulty all of the time. We want answers, but we are unwilling to question the mindset that leads to the problems. We have many deeply held fairytales about how life works, and we expect God to fit into our way of thinking rather than us into His. We assume that we know what He will and won’t do, and we overlook Him when He refuses to meet our expectations.
And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
God wants to reveal Himself to us, but He will do it on His terms, not ours. We may believe that He will make His word easy for us to accept, but He doesn’t always work like that. He often requires us to humble ourselves and search for Him with all our heart until our faulty ideas are broken down. Then we are ready to find Him as He is rather than as we want Him to be. Wisdom shouts in the streets, but until we let go of our naivety, scoffing, and foolishness, we are often deaf to her voice.
Many of our popular electronic devices have sensors. A light in the back of my house turns on whenever something moves under it. My car makes a terrible racket if someone violates its rules for what can and can’t be done with a locked door. My house has thermostats that decide which rooms need to be warmer.
Sensors can be adjusted to respond to different levels of input. If I set the light in the back of my house to respond to small movements, it might turn on every time the wind blows the grass I haven’t mown. If I set it to need larger movements, it may only shine when I do jumping-jacks in front of it.
I believe that each of us has a “God sensor” in his or her heart. It is a part of us that responds to the presence and word of our Creator. It causes us to focus our attention and say, “God is moving here; I need to find out what is going on.”
As with electronic devices, our God sensor can be sensitive or insensitive. A person with a sensitive God sensor will pick up His word in all sorts of ways. For example, he or she will look at the earth and sky and think, “You are amazing to have created this universe.”
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge.
When the Bible is read, a person with a sensitive God sensor will recognize the Lord speaking in it.
The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes …
People with insensitive God sensors see the same sights and hear the same words but don’t recognize Heaven speaking. They need big demonstrations to open their eyes and ears.
Jesus criticized the people of His day because their God sensors were insensitive. He spoke the message His Heavenly Father had given Him and confirmed it with miracles, yet they demanded bigger confirmations.
Some Pharisees and Sadducees were on him again, pressing him to prove himself to them. He told them, "You have a saying that goes, 'Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning.' You find it easy enough to forecast the weather — why can't you read the signs of the times? An evil and wanton generation is always wanting signs and wonders. …” (emphasis added)
(Matthew 16:1-4, The Message)
Jesus told them that there were more than enough indications of what God was doing. The problem wasn’t that the demonstrations weren’t big enough; it was that the people wouldn’t read the signs of the times. God was speaking an incredible message through His Son. He was saying it with powerful words, healings, and miracles, but their eyes and ears were dull. Rather than adjusting their God sensors to match the bright light before them, they put on “Son glasses” and demanded an even greater sign from heaven.
Jesus refused to play along. He told them that God was going to do what He had chosen, and it was their job to discern it.
When a generation of people chooses not to work with Him, they are an evil and wanton generation. They are trapped in sinful habits that keep them from discovering the truth. God is speaking, but they won’t open their eyes and ears in order to repent and escape judgment.
Jesus gave more detail about His generation in Matthew 11.
"But to what shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their companions, and saying: 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we mourned to you, and you did not lament.' For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' …"
An evil and wanton generation wants the servants of God to play their tune. They make up rules about how God should speak, and then they expect His ministers to play along.
The generation who lived at the time of Jesus wouldn’t listen to John the Baptist. He was too weird. He ate locusts, had fashion issues, and spoke with nasty sounding words like, “Repent.” They thought he was a madman and concluded that God couldn’t be with him – “He has a demon.”
When Jesus came, he wasn’t like John. Aside from the large number of miracles, he was a normal guy. Even the tax collectors and sinners liked him. The evil and wanton generation demanded someone a little more religious. The down to earth preacher with the funny accent from Galilee wasn’t otherworldly enough – “'Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”
Both men were bringing a message from heaven. Wisdom was shouting in the streets like an antenna blasting on two different frequencies, but the people were tuned to the wrong stations. They thought they knew what kind of person God would use, and neither John nor Jesus fit the mold. The evil and wanton generation had made their God sensors insensitive, and they missed their chance to receive God’s greatest gift!
What about our generation? Are we listening, or are we demanding that God speak to us on our terms? I cringe when I hear people talk about how boring church is. In some cases, those who are complaining are hearing the Bible preached. Churches are not perfect, but they also may not be the main problem; the problem may be that people’s hearts have become dull.
We often don’t realize that we are letting our culture kill us. We have become trained to hear the entertainment industry, popular music, and advertisers rather than the word of God. Our expectations and personalities have become shaped around an excitement level and style that few churches can duplicate. We think that if God loves us, He will talk to us in a way that inspires us to pay attention, but He often has other ideas.
Some of us also expect answers that are well packaged and easy to apply, like products from a supermarket. Though there are some answers like that, others require us to take journeys into the unknown. Tough choices are involved, and we must experiment so we can learn through experience. We slowly piece together an understanding of God and His world.
To be honest, when I first learned the lessons of this book, I was looking for something quicker and easier than this approach. Fortunately, I had learned to tune my God sensor to the level of revelation He was giving. I laid down my fairytale view of how His love should work and sought to do whatever was necessary to receive from Him.
A fairytale view of God’s love can shut our hearts into a self-imposed box. God is speaking; His wisdom is shouting in the streets, but it doesn’t penetrate the walls we have created. An occasional minister may be able to stick his head in and speak some insight and encouragement, but on the whole, we have deadened our ears.
Our culture can shape us in dangerous ways, but my goal in writing isn’t to convince anyone to separate from it.
I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn't make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous. I didn't mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of that sort. Or with crooks, whether blue- or white-collar. Or with spiritual phonies, for that matter. You'd have to leave the world entirely to do that!
(1 Corinthians 5:9-10, The Message)
I don’t have many rules to restrict my contact with the world. My life comes into contact with non-Christians in many ways: business, coaching, speaking, entertainment …. How do we live among those who are under the influence of the devil without becoming like them? How do we love them without falling under the world’s spell?
I have found that a key is to make our God sensor sensitive. This allows us to recognize the difference between our Father’s voice and that of the father of lies. It helps us to find Jesus in the middle of the mess. He is pouring out a waterfall of His wisdom from heaven. Whether we are out in the world, in church, or by ourselves – if we are not getting wet, it’s probably because we haven’t done our part to stand under its flow.
How do we make our God sensors sensitive? I don’t know of any formula, but I can describe what I do. I check whether I am spending time seeking Him, learning His word, and praying. I ask whether I am crying out for discernment and lifting my voice for understanding (Proverbs 2:3). Am I remaining desperate for Him? Am I spending time with His people and opening my heart to what He is saying through them? Have I dealt with my love of simplicity, scoffing, and foolishness (Proverbs 1:22)? Am I using repetition, reflection, and practice to treasure what He has given me (Proverbs 2:1-2)? Am I practically seeking His word? If not, this is a good indication of why He seems far away.
We can’t wait for God to speak our language; we have to learn His. We must humble ourselves and adjust our God sensors to the point where we recognize Him and respond. When we do, we won’t be like those who call for Him to play our tune. We will be those who dance to His, and we will demonstrate the value of His wisdom by the way we live.
“But to what shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their companions, and saying: 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;…’ But wisdom is justified by her children." (emphasis added)
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