Tuesday, February 18

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Acts 17:22-23

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found one with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

Somewhere along the line I developed a very healthy respect, bordering on pathological fear, of electricity.

I think it was when I worked for an electrician for part of a summer when I was in college. One day he was up on a ladder leaning up against the outside wall of a house. He was working on some wires coming out of the house and he asked me to get a tool for him. As I was heading toward his truck I heard a strange sound and turned around and he was on the ground with blood coming out of his mouth.

I ran to him and he grinned and said, “Workin’ too fast!”  Evidently he had grabbed the wrong wire and the jolt caused him to almost bite his tongue in two. I decided then and there that God was not calling me to be an electrician.

I’ve been terrified of electricity ever since. If my boys break a light while playing in the basement, which at one time was a relatively common occurrence, usually the bulb shatters but the base remains stuck in the socket. I not only turn off the light, and then shut off the entire circuit-breaker box, but if I could, I’d call the electrical company to shut down the entire midwestern grid before I try to reach in there and untwist that thing. That’s because while I know next to nothing about electricity, I do know that it can make you bite your tongue in two!

Sometimes I feel that same fear when I hear people, even myself, refer to God in informal or flippant ways.

I hear someone refer to God as “The Man Upstairs; or The Big Kahuna; or The Big Guy; and I wonder if they have any idea who they are talking about.

In her book, “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” Annie Dillard writes:

“Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats ... to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” 

The Apostle Paul noticed something similar as he walked around the great ancient city of Athens.

For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found one with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

In other words, Paul is saying, “You were created to worship, and you give your extravagant devotion to all kinds of gods, even gods you do not know. I’d like to introduce you to the God who created you and makes himself known to you through Jesus Christ!”

The writer of Psalm 100 says it very simply:

Know that the Lord is God.

The God revealed to us in the Bible is distinguished from any and all “lesser gods” we may be tempted to worship by three characteristics and one demonstration.

He is sovereign; that is, there is only one God who is creator and sustainer of all things; only one God who possesses the authority to establish both truth and judgment.

He is holy; meaning God’s purity, perfection and power is like electricity in that we must not approach him on our terms but only on his, lest we be consumed.

He is good; meaning that in his mercy and love he offers grace and forgiveness to all who humble themselves to seek it.

Finally, God demonstrates his nature most clearly in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So, how do we respond to this God who is unapproachable in holiness, but who came to us in absolute humility? How do we respond to the God who could rightfully consume us in judgment but offers his grace instead?

In Hebrews Paul writes: 

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12:28-29

Brian Coffey

Monday, February 17

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Psalm 100

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.

Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.Know that the Lord is God.It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

So, are you watching the Winter Olympics in Sochi? The Olympics, especially the winter Olympics, are a phenomenon to me. For 2 1/2 weeks we pay attention to sports we don’t really care about and haven’t watched for four years (since the last Winter Olympics in Vancouver).

For example, I find myself watching the figure skating competition. Normally, I wouldn’t watch figure skating if you threatened to stick knitting needles in my eyeballs, but during the Olympics I watch. Before I know it I’m talking about how Gracie Gold executes a perfect “triple toe loop” or didn’t quite land her “double Lutz” as if I know what I’m talking about.

Or maybe we watch an event like “Skeleton”; which looks vaguely like the sledding we used to do as kids - only on steroids. It’s sledding taken to the level of complete insanity. These guys jump onto high tech death traps on steel runners and plunge head-first down a tube of sheer ice, reaching speeds of up to 90 MPH. The winner is the one who goes down the fastest and lives.

Then there’s something called “Curling,” which is quite possibly the funniest sport in the world. It’s kind of like human shuffleboard on ice mixed with sweeping out your garage. It’s the one sport in the whole Olympic games where every non-athletic person watching can say, “I could do that!”

Along with watching the events, we also learn about the life-stories of some of the athletes, most of whom we’ve never heard of before.

We’ll learn about a ski jumper from Kyrgyzstan; or a bobsledder from Latvia; or a cross country skier from Togo. Yes, Togo, as in, Africa. Togo may be located almost directly on the equator but there’s a woman who was born in Togo who has lived in the French Alps most of her life and she exactly half of the entire Togolese Olympic team.

When asked why they have spend most of their lives training and competing for the chance to be in the Olympics, these athletes will inevitably say something like, “I was born to do this!”

We all might not be born Olympic athletes, but the Bible teaches that we are all born worshipers!

The ancient book of Ecclesiastes says:

He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  Ecclesiastes 3:11

Anthropologists tell us that of all the creatures on the face of the earth, only human beings build altars and create objects of worship. I think we can also go so far as to say that every human being worships something.

One of my favorite definitions of worship is: “Offering extravagant devotion to someone or something.”

By that definition, the question is not if we worship, the question is who or what we worship.

A football fan might offer extravagant devotion to his or her favorite team. An athlete might offer extravagant devotion to the gold medal he or she dreams of winning. Or, on the other hand, we might offer our extravagant devotion to the God who created us to long for something bigger than ourselves; who made us with an ache in our hearts that is only satisfied with himself.

As we start our study on growing in worship, let me just say, “You were made for this!”

Brian Coffey

Friday, February 14

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I can answer anyone who taunts me, for I trust in your word.

— Psalm 119:42

If they gave out medals for Olympic viewing, I just might be a contender. It doesn’t matter that I’d never watch a curling match or a skeleton competition under other circumstances; as soon as I hear that unmistakable Olympic theme song, my pulse quickens, and before I know it, I’m pulled into the drama of the Games. I admit to falling for the shamelessly sappy back stories of young athletes overcoming injury, loss, poverty, or other challenges on their way to the top. I watch the opening ceremonies, long and drawn out though they may be, and on occasion, I even get teary-eyed during some of those Tide commercials.

When I was a kid, I adored watching the figure skaters and dreamed of having the grace and courage to do a triple axle myself. In years when the Games were held in a different zone and they showed the events on a time delay so they could air during prime time, the results were already in by the time I watched. The medals had been distributed, the appropriate anthem had been played, and the winners and losers had been decided. I just didn’t know the outcome yet.

I’d sit on the edge of the couch, desperately hoping that Tara Lipinski would nail her triple lutz combination or that Michelle Kwan would land all seven of her jumps. My dad would tease me the whole time, saying, “You know, I could make this a lot less painful and just tell you who won.” Because here’s the thing: when you know how things are going to end, the little things along the way seem a lot less scary.

When we follow Christ, there will no doubt be people along the way try to knock us down, criticize us, or taunt us, as the psalmist described. But we have an advantage our detractors don’t have: we know how the story ends. We’ve read the last chapter of the book, and—spoiler alert—God wins! As 1 Corinthians 15:57 says, “Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

We don’t need to be fearful or defensive when we are mocked for our beliefs, because we are secure in God’s promise of salvation.

Elisabeth Elliot, a missionary in the 1950s, knew what it was like to face detractors. She studied Greek at Wheaton College, with the goal of translating the Bible for people groups that didn’t have God’s Word in their own language. As a single woman in her twenties, she went to Ecuador to work with the Quichua people. A year later, Jim Elliot went to the same area as a missionary, and they were married shortly thereafter.

They worked together there, serving the local tribes, but Jim had always dreamed of reaching a people group that had never heard the gospel at all. When he heard about the Aucas (now known as the Huaorani), he knew his calling. No Westerner had ever met someone from the tribe without being killed, but Jim and his four missionary friends would not be deterred. After reaching out to the tribe and making an initial friendly contact with three of the members, the missionaries were speared to death.

Anyone would have understood if Elisabeth had fled back to the United States in her grief. She had just lost her husband, and she was left to raise her ten-month-old daughter alone. But she sensed that God still had a plan for her in the jungles of Ecuador. After working with the Quichua tribe for a couple of years, she met two Auca women who taught her the language and customs of the Auca people. And in 1958, just two years after her husband’s death, Elisabeth and her three-year-old daughter went to live with the very people who had killed her husband.

So what motivated Elisabeth to keep pressing on, despite persecution, despite hardship, despite extreme opposition? She knew that even if it appears we are losing battles, God will ultimately win the war. She had personally experienced the Lord’s unfailing salvation, and she was willing to share that message at great risk to herself. We don’t need to fear when we know how this story ends: God wins.

Have you ever faced criticism as a result of your faith? How does it give you perspective to remember that in the end, God and his people are victorious?

—Stephanie Rische

Thursday, February 13

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Never take your word of truth from my mouth, for I have put my hope in your laws.

—Psalm 119:43

My friend’s mom once told me the story of waiting for her son to return home from the Gulf War. He had enlisted in the army during a time of peace in our nation, and he was a good-hearted guy who had no thought of being involved in actual battle. He simply had dreams of developing some discipline and funding his college education.

Then Desert Storm happened, and suddenly he was being shipped to the Middle East, weapon in hand. After being stationed overseas for several months, he was told he’d be able to go home. His mother was beside herself with relief and joy. He’d be home for Christmas! But the week before Christmas, she got a call. His return date had been postponed—he wouldn’t be home in time after all. “No problem,” she told him bravely. “We’ll just wait to celebrate until you get home.”

But around New Year’s, another call came. There had been another delay. He and his unit were needed in Kuwait for several more weeks. Back home, the radio stations stopped playing Christmas songs, and the neighbors took down the lights. But still his mother waited, holding on to the hope that her son would come home to Christmas, even if it was delayed.

After more weeks of waiting, her husband told her gently, “Honey, the needles are all falling off the tree. I think it’s time to take it down.” But she was insistent. Her boy would come home to Christmas. In some way that tree had become a symbol of the hope she clung to that her son would return to her—safe and whole and soon.

January turned to February, and still their son was some seven thousand miles away. With each passing day, more needles fell off the tree and the brittle branches became even more of a fire hazard. One evening as she was heading up to bed, the mom glanced at the tree in the shadows. Now that the tree had lost so many of its needles, she was able to see the outline of the branches underneath. Her hand flew to her mouth when she realized its shape: it looked just like a cross.

Underneath all the brittle hopes that fell lifeless to the ground stood something solid and secure. There was a deeper hope she could cling to that couldn’t be shaken by any military delays, human plans, or even enemy attacks. Her hope was ultimately in a faithful God. She could say with the psalmist, “My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word” (Psalm 119:81).

It’s a good thing to have hope in this life—in fact, it’s part of the way God has wired us. He encourages us to wait and hope and pray for good gifts from him—for a broken relationship to be mended, for a son or daughter to come home, for a long-desired baby, for true love, for healing. But after waiting for that thing for so long, our hope can become brittle and frail, like two-month-old pine needles. They fall to the ground, and we wonder if there’s any point to hoping anymore.

But underneath these hopes is the cross. Regardless of whether our hopes for this life come to pass or not, underneath it all is the security of the salvation Christ offers. That doesn’t mean we stop hoping and waiting and praying for those other things that weigh on our hearts, but we have the assurance that the source of our hope is unshakable. As Psalm 25:5 says, “You are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you.”

When our hopes seem to be falling down all around us, may we see the cross underneath and remember that God and his Word are our only hope.

What are you hoping for right now? Take a moment to bring that hope before God, and then thank him for being your ultimate hope, whether or not those smaller hopes ever come to pass.

—Stephanie Rische