The Unlikeliest of Heroines-Rahab the Courageous!

The book of Joshua tells the story of how Israel followed God’s commands and crossed the Jordan to take possession of the land promised to them by God.  Moses has died, the mantle of leadership passes to Joshua, whose job is to lead the people into the promise land!  Those other people who happen to live in this territory have got to go!  So, Joshua sends a couple of spies to scope out the territory around Jericho.  This is where things get interesting because the men of Jericho find out that there are a couple of men wandering around that are not from Jericho, so they go looking for them.  The spies end up at Rahab’s house on the outer wall of the city.

Rahab does something very interesting, she doesn’t turn them over to the men that are looking for the spies.  Instead she hides them on her roof and sends the townies off on a wild goose chase looking for them.  Now why do a thing like that?  If she’s caught, it means certain death for her!  I mean, she could have helped the town send a message to those upstart Israelites  by turning over the spies and allowing them to be executed.  As a prostitute, turning these men over probably would have upped her social status a bit.  She would be known as the woman who caught the spies.  Rahab is a smart cookie though.  She realizes, probably long before anyone else in the town, that the one true God is with Israel and Jericho is going down!  She may not know or fully understand the one true God but she knows who is in charge.  She courageously chooses a side-the one true God side.

Before she helps the spies escape the city she decides to negotiate a deal.  In chapter 2 starting at verse 12 here is what she says:

“Now then, since I have dealt kindly with you, swear to me by the Lord that you in turn will deal kindly with my family.  Give me a sign of good faith that you will spare my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.”

Prior to this, it is Rahab who recounts the Lord’s mighty deeds and  acknowledges God’s supremacy, not the spies!  And although Rahab asks “deliver our lives from death” whose lives does she specifically ask to be spared?  Her father, mother, brothers, sisters and all who belong to them.  Nowhere in that speech does she ask specifically for her life to be spared.  It is implied at the end, but not specified.  As a prostitute, being the lowest of the low in society, she probably didn’t expect her life to be spared.  But by golly, she was going to do all that she could do to save her family!  That’s pretty courageous!

Before the spies leave, they put some conditions on this agreement-the red cord has to be in the window, her family has to be in her house when they attack, she can’t tell anyone about them.  She agrees with no argument.  We know that Rahab was saved and that she is in the genealogy of Jesus written in Matthew chapter 1, listed  as the mother of Boaz (husband of Ruth).  Now if I counted correctly, Rahab is only one of four women listed in the genealogy of Jesus (not counting his mother Mary).  The significance of this is that women are not normally listed in a Jewish genealogy.  Rahab, a foreigner and known prostitute is listed.   That, my dear friends, is significant!

That great moral of the story is this:  God was willing to demonstrate his saving grace for outsiders even in the Old Testament!  Long before he sent Jesus in the world and commissioned Paul to take the good news to the Gentiles of the world, he was still acting as a loving God full of grace to those who believed.  And it is an important reminder to all of us to remember not to judge by appearances.  God looks at the heart, not the outside packaging.  How many people have we not talked to because we simply wrote them off as “not being someone that God would want to save?”  The guy in prison, the kid with the freakish hair cut and staple thing through the lip.  The power hungry social ladder climber.  I’m sure we could all come up with our own list of examples but the point is the same.  All of us, at some point in life, have judged by appearances.

How do we get beyond such judgments?   That is the question!  I think God gives us spiritual nudges when we least expect it and we have to learn to listen to those nudges.  It takes courage to follow through and sometimes that means we have to step out of our comfort zone.  What did God say to Joshua?  “Be strong and courageous.  I will not fail you or forsake you.”  Rahab, the unlikely heroine, embraced this message.  She trusted God and she chose to be courageous.  It is a lesson, that we all need to learn and embrace again and again and again!

Listen to the spiritual nudge and be strong and courageous!  God is still in the business of Saving Grace!

God Still Calls

Genesis, the one book in the Bible that everyone can find!  It is the Greek word for “beginnings,” which seems the appropriate place to start.  We are all familiar with the first part of the book, the creation story, where God created the heavens and the earth and all that is contained within it and then on the seventh day he rested.  I have read the story numerous times as I am sure many of you have done.  But there is great value in reading it again, because you would be surprised at what catches your eye.

So what caught my attention in Genesis 1 that I hadn’t noticed before?  God said.  God saw.  God called. God blessed.  We tend to just breeze over those phrases but let’s linger a little while because they are more significant than what you see at first glance.

God said.  Think about it.  God literally spoke creation in to being!  The notes in my Wesley Study Bible say this: “God creates effortlessly, simply speaking the universe into existence.”  Before time existed, God existed.  He created time and space and all the elements it contained within the universe.

God saw.  God looked at what he spoke into existence-at each and every stage of its creation.  This was not random and hap hazard, this was carefully thought out and constructed.  God saw that “it was good”.

God called.  He didn’t just stop at speaking, or looking, he went a step further and called the elements of creation by name.  He gave each thing a definition.  The properties of day and light, for example, are not the same as the properties of night and darkness.  It has it’s own separate roll to play within the whole creation.  Sky, earth, sea, day, night, all integral parts of creation, yet all distinct.

God blessed.  The living creatures that he created, he blessed.  The creatures of the water and the air.  Humankind, male and female.  He said, He saw, He called, He blessed.

Now, you get to verse 31 in Genesis chapter 1:

“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

It isn’t until the very end when God looks at all he had created and he calls it “very good.”  Prior to that he called it simply good.  But everything together as a whole is “very good!”

Why does this matter?  Well, if you want to understand Wesley’s understanding of Grace you need to understand the goodness of God’s creation in the first place, including us flawed and imperfect human beings!  Wesley believed that “humanity came from the hands of the Creator ‘pure from every sinful blot’…evil did not exist ‘at all in the original nature of things.”  Sin and evil came in to the world later, when Eve chose to eat from the tree in the middle of the garden and gave the fruit to Adam as well.  Free will existed, even from the very beginning.  And that was a risk that God was willing to take in creating the universe and all that exists within it!

God loves what he created!  He wants to have that close relationship again with those He created, because He is the same today as He was yesterday.  God was so close to Adam and Eve that he walked in the garden with them!  God knows your name and he calls you, just as he has called all his creation from the beginning of time!  And here is the beauty of free will-we all have a choice.  We can choose to answer the call or we can choose to hide ourselves from God’s presence.

Perhaps it would help us, if we would look at the universe from God’s perspective, rather than our own!  Your choice, your call!

If You Look for Him, He Will Let Himself Be Found

In chapter 15 of Second Chronicles Azariah goes out to meet King Asa to deliver a message.  Here's how The Message paraphrase words the Prophet's message:

"Listen carefully Asa, and listen Judah and Benjamin:  God will stick with you as long as you stick with him.  If you look for Him, He will let Himself be found; but if you leave Him, He'll leave you."

The story of Asa is such a great story!  (Seriously, if you have never read it, take the time today and read it for yourself!)  Asa made the decision early on that he was going to follow God, really follow to the best of his ability.  He tore down the pagan altars and shrines.  He even removed his mother from the throne because she had built an image of Asherah, which he tore down and burned.   Asa is a reminder to all of us that one good follower can make a difference!

Further on in the chapter we read about the people gathering together to offer sacrifices and to worship and it says that after the sacrifice was offered:

"They bound themselves in a covenant to seek God, the God of their fathers, wholeheartedly, holding nothing back."

 Asa and the people seeking God together.  Can you imagine that?  It must have been an awesome sight!  The power of the praise and the prayers going forth.  The expectant waiting to hear the word of the Lord.  The Message paraphrase goes on:

"Anticipating the best, they had sought God-and He showed up ready to be found."

Wow!  How cool is that?!

Reading this made me start to think about how often I truly seek the Lord.  Do I do it wholeheartedly?  Do I seek without holding anything back?  I'm not talking about those times when things are crazy busy and hectic and I have enough time to utter a 50 second prayer.  I'm talking about intentional times when I am determined to hear a message.  I have to be honest.  I think there are times that I hold back.  Why?  Because I'm not so sure that I want to hear the plain unvarnished truth.  I know that probably doesn't make a lot of sense but for those who know me well, they know that I am my own worst critic.  I am far harder on myself than I am on anybody else!  I know this because I have family and dear friends who have told me "cut yourself some slack!"  They are the ones who tell me that I am too hard on myself!  So when I talk about "the plain unvarnished truth" I mean being afraid of hearing love spoken, I mean being afraid of hearing that I am forgiven.  Criticism I can take, cause I know my laundry list of faults.  Knowing that God loves me, warts and all is hard!  Because I fail.  I fail so many many times, I don't deserve that kind of unconditional love!  Seriously, how can someone who knows all, and sees all; someone who has been, who is now and ever will be, perfect in all things, love someone as utterly flawed and imperfect as me?  It boggles my mind!

That's what grace is all about though, isn't it?  It's about accepting what I don't deserve and have in no way earned, simply because God loves me.  Sometimes it is harder to accept love and forgiveness then it is to accept criticism.  I expect criticism, but I most definitely do not, always, expect love!  For me, I have to say that I don't go into a situation expecting the best.  This is perhaps, what holds me back-my own flawed expectations.

As individuals, are we afraid of hearing the truth as far as our shortcomings or are we afraid of hearing the truth that we are loved, despite our shortcomings?  Do we seek God but only go so far?  Do we seek God anticipating the best, or expecting the worst?  How different would our spiritual lives be if we could just trust enough to seek God, without holding back and anticipate the best?

Asa's story reminds me that God is waiting to be found by those who earnestly seek him.  Am I willing to step out a little further?  How about you?

Look for Him because He wants to be found!  Because He loves you and He Loves me!

Love Came First-Prevenient Grace

If you spend much time in Methodist circles online you will hear the term "prevenient grace" tossed around quite a bit!  I know what you're thinking because I thought it myself when I first heard it-what does that mean?

Here's how my dictionary defines it: 

 "the grace which operates on a person's will and disposes him to repentance"

Dandy.  What does that have to do with love?  It's the starting point for understanding why faith is so important.  I think just about anybody who has gone to Sunday School or had a passing acquaintance with church can quote John 3:16:

 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

God loved the world then and he loves the world now-today!  In the beginning there was no need for faith because God was fully present.  Adam and Eve didn't have to imagine what God looked like because he walked and talked with them.  Wesley in his sermon The Law Established by Faith-Discourse Two said this:

  "...Let those who magnify faith beyond all proportion, so as to swallow up all things else, and who so totally misapprehend the nature of it as to imagine it stands in the place of love, consider farther, that as love will exist after faith, so it did exist long before it. The angels who, from the moment of their creation, beheld the face of their Father that is in heaven, had no occasion for faith, in its general notion, as it is the evidence of things not seen. Neither had they need of faith in its more particular acceptation, faith in the blood of Jesus: for he took not upon him the nature of angels, but only the seed of Abraham. There was therefore no place before the foundation of the world for faith either in the general or particular sense. But there was for love. Love existed from eternity, in God, the great ocean of love. Love had a place in all the children of God, from the moment of their creation. They received at once from their gracious Creator to exist, and to love.  Nor is it certain (as ingeniously and plausibly as many have descanted upon this) that faith, even in the general sense of the word, had any place in paradise. It is highly probable, from that short and uncircumstantial account which we have in Holy Writ, that Adam, before he rebelled against God, walked with him by sight and not by faith."

Love came first as well as free will.  Adam and Eve exercised their free will.  They made a choice and there were consequences-separation.  That's the point when sin came in to the picture.  But God so loved the world that he had a plan!  He sent His Son.  John 3:17 adds to the picture:

"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." 

 Let me bring this a little closer to home because lofty terms can be kind of hard to wrap your brain around if you're not a professor of Divinity!  God so loved you, and me, and everyone in his creation that he sent His Son to save us.  His love has been there right from the start and it is STILL here today!  Picture in your mind God holding his arms open wide saying "come to me and let me hold you  precious child because I've always loved you!"  You didn't do anything to deserve it or earn it.  You didn't have to get yourself perfect first.  It's not something you can buy.  It simply is as it is!  You have a choice.  You can accept it by faith through Christ.  Or, you can reject it.  But the opportunity to experience God's love is always there!  It has always been there, right from the very beginning.

Now I am sure that some learned scholar out there could probably give a much more detailed explanation.  From everything I've read either in the Bible or in Wesley's sermons the first step comes down to understanding three things.  First, you're not perfect (in other words-sinful nature).  Second, God loves you anyway, which is why he sent Jesus.  Third, it's your choice. 

Should you choose to say yes, repentance, justification and sanctification come next.  That my darlings, is a topic for another day! 

One last thing.  I'm no expert.  I just want to share and encourage others to believe and understand that they can take this journey as well!  I know the old English can be intimidating but I really encourage you, if you want to know more about the Methodist faith, read Wesley's sermons!  It will add so much depth to your Bible studies!  Be blessed!  Be well! Peace!