I should fear my blindness: I can’t see past my own fat ego. I haven’t really died to self at all. What a disappointment. I thought I had progressed farther than that in my Christian life by now. But holding down my ego is like trying to keep a fully-inflated beach ball submerged; it just keeps popping back up, with a vengeance. I can write about self-denial until my hand cramps up, but until I can model this concept in real life, I don’t really understand it at all. Jesus was right: denying self is the most difficult, unnatural, and yet crucial thing that we need to do before we can really be of service to Him. To reach out to others, it helps to be looking at them, not at our own navels.

When will I ever learn?

Lori Fiechter
January 24, 2001

#274 Grapefruit Juice, Sashimi, and Other Acquired Tastes

I bought some calcium-fortified grapefruit juice today. I bought it for myself but my sons have a way of confiscating any new food items they find in the house. This time they were sorry. So was I. They wasted not only two cupfuls of juice (one went down my nine-year-olds’ T-shirt) but another half-cup of sugar trying to sweeten the "bitter" taste. I suppose I could have cooked down that concoction and made grapefruit jelly, but that didn’t sound appealing even to me.

Of course, there was a time when I didn’t like grapefruit juice, either. Or tomato juice, carrot juice, spinach juice, or mung bean sprout juice. Some tastes are acquired. Some tastes are acquired under duress. Some tastes we never acquire, to our detriment. How many nutritious foods do we refuse to sample because of some unreasonable prejudice, like the prejudice to not eat any animal that has more than four legs? (I’m thinking here of a photo my brother sent me from either Thailand or Sri Lanka, of a jumbo-sized platter of crunchy fried cockroaches. I’m sure they were delicious. To someone else. )

Try it, you’ll like it. Or maybe you won’t, not even after the fifteenth try. (Remember "courtesy bites" Or was that something my mother dreamed up on her own?) Maybe you won’t even be able to tolerate it. Perhaps the food brings back bad memories. I used to love a recipe for Stuffed Flank Steak until I got sick once after eating it. Now just the memory of the smell is unpleasant. Or is it the smell of the memory? Some things just leave a bad taste in my memory. Like sashimi. I learned that this is the proper name for what most of us non-aficionados call sushi. I tried it a few months ago. It might not have been so bad without that alien-green dipping sauce. (called "Wasabi". I learned that from a friend who considers the stuff ambrosia)I still don’t know what raw fish tastes like, only raw green horseradish paste. I don’t care if that paste does help prevent cavities (according to recent studies),the stuff is awful. Piquantly awful.  I don’t even want to try to learn to like it.

It would seem that some spiritual attributes are acquired tastes as well. The natural man, or carnal man, more than anything else, wants to have his own way. He doesn’t like the taste of self-denial or holiness. He can’t even understand why anyone would. (See I Corinthians 2:14) Preferring others before self is not candy for the soul. It’s not even chicken soup. And we need more than chicken soup. We need beef jerky. Or turkey jerky, if you shun red meat. Or tuna jerky. That would be a quirky sort of jerky. But we need something to chew on, not just something to slurp. And chewing is hard work. Not all of us have the teeth for it yet.

What am I suggesting? Practicing tough love—on yourself. Just because you don’t like spending time studying the Bible, do it anyway. I don’t care if the sports page or comics page is much easier to digest, read the Word first. Maybe giving up your own way is as distasteful to you as that green horseradish paste is to me; too bad. Practice doing it anyway. Perhaps in time, doing things God’s way will be more like second nature to you. If not, do it anyway. If the taste is just too bitter, ask God to help you swallow. No. Better yet, pray for new taste buds, the kind of taste buds that hunger and thirst after righteousness; the kind of taste buds that are trained to prefer the items on God’s menu.

You want to acquire that taste.

Lori Fiechter
January 9, 2001

#273 The Rock that Won’t Roll

"I will not." Those are God’s words in Hebrews 13:5. What is it that He will not do? When I looked up that passage in my Amplified Bible, I was struck by the force of this verse. Listen:

"Let your character be free from love of money…
and be satisfied with your present [circumstances and with what you have];
for He Himself has said,
I will not in any way fail you
nor give you up
nor leave you without support.
[I will] not, [I will] not, [I will] not in any degree
leave you helpless nor forsake nor let you down (relax my hold on you)
[Assuredly not!]"

The Greek is vehement in its three negatives before the verb. The verse is meant to comfort us, encourage us, and strengthen our faltering faith. Paul could be content in spite of his present state (Philippians 4:11); we can too, for the same reason: God will not fail us. He will not desert us, leaving us to our own devices. He will not leave us dangling like a tightrope walker who lost his balance. He will not wash His hands of us and walk away; no, not even when it seems He has. Not even when we cannot feel His presence, not even when our prayers seem to be gathering dusty cobwebs.

This is something you must believe; for what good is it to have a God whom you cannot trust? Shake off your feelings and cling to the Rock that will never fail. You are not trusting in mere horses and chariots (Psalm 20:7), or money, or luck, or good health. You are trusting in the One who can never be shaken, in the One who remains when everything else on earth gives way. (Hebrews 12:27) He is your refuge in the day of personal earthquakes; we all have times when the earth seems to give way under our feet.

We have been studying earthquakes, fault lines, and seismic waves in science. A major earthquake soon shows how weak most of our supports really are. How solid is that highway, that bridge, that house? The rock underneath is not as rock-solid as we’d hoped. It is sliding around on a semi-liquid blanket of upper mantle. (The word for this is hypothetical jelly is "asthenosphere" –Greek for fragile ball. The lithosphere—" Stone Ball" is the crust on top. Impress someone today by using one of those in a sentence. Don't trip on your tongue.)

But our Rock doesn’t slip or slide on anything. He has Himself as support. He is, in a way that nothing on earth can claim. He is a Rock that does not weather, crack, or fall. You can build your hope on this solid Rock; He will never fail. Never. Lean on Him. Get used to leaning on Him before the earthquakes come.

Lori Fiechter
November 29, 2000

#272 Peacocks Can’t Talk Worm

The reason that some of us can’t see eye to eye is that our eye levels aren’t level. One is too high, the other too low; I call it the peacock/worm syndrome. I am sometimes high, sometimes low, but my tendency is toward pride; I don’t really understand people whose main problem is doubt. They don’t understand me, either. My problem is not that I don’t know how much God loves me; my problem is that I tend to love my own comfort and self too much. I’ve fallen for one of Satan’s schemes.

The devil has several different bags of tricks; they aren’t new, but they are still effective after all these millennia. He’ll either tell you how great you are or how worthless. You are sun or scum. He will play to your pride or your doubt. It doesn’t matter, just as long as you are focusing on self instead of on God. I was once firmly in the "woe is me" camp so I understand the temptation to believe that if we hate ourselves, we must be very humble. No, that is a lie of Satan. He has a good handle on pride, it is his sin after all, but he has no idea about true humility. We are not worthy, but we aren’t worthless either. If Satan starts whispering "God is very lucky to have you on His side" or conversely, "God doesn’t love you anymore; how could He after what you’ve done?" find appropriate Bible verses to stab at Satan. If he tells you how great you are, throw in Isaiah 40:22 about how we are like grasshoppers in God’s sight. If he says you have absolutely no redeeming qualities, remind him that Jesus has redeemed you anyway.

It helps to have a sense of humor no matter which camp you are in. When you get too big for your britches, people are going to notice that your trousers are splitting. It is not an attractive look. If you are feeling overly pleased with yourself, it may help you regain perspective by exaggerating your importance. "Where will I put that Pulitzer?" "Really, now, I do believe I’ve made the shrewdest deal since Jefferson bought the Louisiana Purchase." "Why, if Betty Crocker were a real person, she’d be knocking on my door to get that recipe." Keep forcing more air into that balloonish ego of yours until it pops. Then you should feel properly sheepish.

On the other hand, if you are feeling low, so low that you’d have to get on a ladder just to crawl on your belly, console yourself with: "So, you’ve been picked on, overlooked, feeling unloved and unlovable. You are feeling like a drab house sparrow instead of a peacock. Nothing wrong with sparrows. As I recall, God cares about sparrows so much that He keeps track whenever one of them plummets to the ground. God still loves you and He is much smarter than all those other people anyway."

In a family, you can’t treat all members equally. I didn’t say that you couldn’t treat each fairly; there is a distinction. Some of us have a daily requirement for being whittled down (what are friends for?) while others need almost daily reassuring and lifting up (again, what are friends for?) It would be nice if we were all perfectly balanced, no realignment needed, but it doesn’t work that way. Instead, we go to extremes, either thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought, or else castigating ourselves until we dissolve into a puddle of goo.

The goal is to consider ourselves soberly, objectively. (Romans 12:3) The goal is to be neither a pompous, proud peacock nor a wretched, woebegone worm. As long as our primary focus is on self, either for good or bad, we cannot be of much use to God. If we focus instead on Him and what He would have us to do; on obedience, not outcome; the devil will have a harder time with his dart gun. That is, as long as you put down that mirror--right now--and grab hold of your shield of faith. That’s a good worm. (I didn’t overlook you, Mr. Peacock. No need to get your feathers ruffled.)

Lori Fiechter
November 17, 2000

#271 Don’t Take Away my Alligator Pie

I thought of a nonsense poem that I used to read to my sons when they were small. The first verse went like this:

"Alligator pie, alligator pie;
If I don’t get some, I think I’m gonna die.
Take away the green grass, take away the sky
But don’t take away my alligator pie."

(I will spare you the second and third verses regarding alligator stew and soup. But I wish I could remember the author.)

What is the hardest thing that God has ever—or could ever—ask you to do? I’m not talking about giving up alligator pie or chocolate or french fries. I’m talking about letting go of your security blanket. I think that each one of us has a security blanket that we cling to, if not an outright idol that we guard in our heart. We won’t give up that blanket without a fight. We don’t mean to hold something back from God; we sing as heartily as anyone "I surrender all", but deep down we beg, "Just don’t ask me to do that, Lord, anything but that."

What is your "that"?

I started to think about people in the Bible and some of the things they had to give up. I was surprised to find that every person I considered seemed to fit into this category of surrendering in faith--or in refusing to do so. You may be surprised to see yourself in a few of these examples yourself; human nature doesn’t change much over the centuries. This list may seem long but I’ve barely scratched the surface.

(Notice also how nearly all of these—if not all—fit Jesus Himself in His humanity.)

1. Are any of you singles unhappy with your present lot in life? Jeremiah was not permitted to marry (16:1-4). It seems he could have used the support of a loving wife; nearly everyone else seemed to be against him. (The Ethiopian, Ebed-melech, was one exception. See Jeremiah 38)
   
2. Hosea had to love an unfaithful spouse, acting out the picture of God continuing to love an unfaithful Israel. Can you forgive a spouse, co-worker, or friend who has betrayed your trust? I mean really forgive, as in never bringing the situation up again?
   
3. Esther was asked to risk her own life ("if I perish, I perish") that her people might live. I wonder also if she felt hurt that the king seemed to be spending more time with Haman than he did with his queen. ("He hasn’t called for me these thirty days.") If so, she showed no resentment, unlike some of her modern sisters. (Golf or fishing widows?)
   
4. Job had to give up his wealth, his health, and his children, all without knowing why. He even admitted in chapter 3, verse 25, "The thing which I greatly feared is come up on me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me." Our worst worries often do not come true. All of Job’s did, within a few days. And yet, later on, Job made this amazing statement:
   "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." (13:15) Is our hope and trust in God greater than our fear of earthly trials and losses?
   
5. Stephen freely forgave his enemies, looking to Christ as His example. These enemies were not just people who had maligned him, or cheated him, but were in the very process of stoning him.
   Stoning him.
   Whereas we have a hard time forgiving a fellow brother or sister in Christ over an earthly trifle or misunderstanding. Maybe it truly is easier to be magnanimous in serious injuries than in slight ones.
   (See Matthew 18:23-35)
   
6. Gideon was asked to rely on God’s strength and timing, not on his own methods or tactics to win the battle against the Midianites. It was not the world’s way of doing business or waging war. The world’s methods may seem to work great miracles of victory and growth in the short run, but the roots are often shallow. God’s methods have a great track record.
   
7. Elijah wanted to quit, even begged to die, but God required further service of him. Your work is not over until God says it is. Retired saints are found only in the grave. Some of the greatest prayer warriors are often the bedridden or elderly.
   
8. Hannah had to give up the son that she promised to God. It is a good reminder for all of us that our children do not belong to us in the ultimate sense; they belong to God. We are to nurture them, love them, and train them up in the Lord, but they are God’s. He has merely loaned them to us; sometimes the lease is shorter than we expect it to be.
   
9. Ruth left familiar surroundings to go with Naomi. She left behind relatives and friends to live as a stranger in a foreign land. Abraham had to do the same thing when he left Ur for a place he’d never seen.
   In a different sense, when we repent and are converted, we too are leaving the familiar territory of the world and self for the uncharted territory of God’s kingdom. Lot’s wife failed in this test; she couldn’t fully surrender that past life. When we are just escaping from Satan’s grasp, the desire to look back is a powerful temptation; indeed, that temptation is impossible to resist without God’s grace.
   
10. .In contrast to Ruth and Abraham, Joseph and Daniel did not leave their homes on their own volition, but were carried as captives to a strange land. Both men made the best of less than desirable environments; neither compromised his faith and upbringing when given the opportunity to do so. Though in the midst of a heathen land, they did not act on the thought, "No one can see me here; I can cross the line a little."
    If God places you in a setting that is hostile to your faith and beliefs, that is no excuse to go along with the crowd and "do as the Romans do." Perhaps, like Esther, you have been called into such an atmosphere for "such a time as this" to be a light and example.
    
11. .Abraham had to let go of God’s promise, manifested in his beloved son Isaac. He was asked to prove that God reigned supreme in his heart, that he would not hold back his most precious possession. God’s promises and blessings are wonderful, but to know God Himself must be our main desire. (See Philippians 3:10 and also Psalm 27:4)
    
12. .John the Baptist was asked to do just the opposite of Elijah. He was asked to accept the end of his own ministry when it was in full bloom. He did so gracefully, saying of Jesus, "He must increase; I must decrease."
    How many of us enjoy our little sphere of influence in the church so much that we relinquish our job with extreme reluctance? Perhaps we feel that we alone can do the job properly. Will they have to pry us out of office with a crowbar? (King Saul is in that category; he did not gracefully hand over the reins to David—far from it--even when Samuel told him that God had torn the kingdom from him and his descendants.)
    
13. Joseph did the right thing in resisting the temptation offered by Potiphar’s wife. Instead of being rewarded for his integrity, he ended up being cast into prison for a long time. In like manner, Corrie Ten Boom was imprisoned in WWII for harboring and protecting God’s chosen people. Is your integrity that strong? Or will the bitterness of suffering such injustice poison your attitude?
    
14. Moses had to accept a leadership role he did not desire, after forty years of being "put on the shelf" by God. He had to lead a most stiff-necked, whining, and belligerent group of people and he did so with meekness and grace. (See Deuteronomy 9 and Numbers 12:3)
    
15. David was given a promise, anointed as king-elect. Not only did he have to wait many years to receive the promise but that promise also endangered his very life. David’s life got a good deal worse after the promise (and after the giant-killing) before it got any better.
    
    Maybe the hardest thing you would have to do is to publicly admit that you were wrong, that you’ve failed morally. Or do you fear more than anything being found out--that some secret sin or shame will be brought to light? (See John 3:20)
    
16. Noah obeyed God’s command; he was a preacher of righteousness for perhaps 120 years with no converts outside his immediate family. He kept on building that huge barge in his back yard, in spite of any scoffers and hecklers. He was willing to be thought a fool for Christ. That is not a natural thing, to be willing to be thought a fool. At least, it isn’t for me. (see I Corinthians 1:18, 3:18, and 4:10)
    
17. Paul gave up relying on his considerable head knowledge of the Law to rely on the Holy Spirit’s direction and the simplicity of the gospel. That is not to say that his knowledge and pedigree was useless, but that he had no confidence in his flesh; knowing Christ was far more important to him than knowing every nuance of theology. (See Philippians chapter 3 again.)

This was just a small sample. Does it bring to mind any security blankets of your own? What are you still clutching tightly with both hands? What do you fear that God will ask you to give up? Trust Him; He is a loving God, full of goodness and tender mercy. If He asks anything of you, it is not out of a desire to make your life uncomfortable, but to draw you closer in fellowship with Him

No one said that this faith thing is easy, but it is rewarding beyond your dreams. I’ll let Job have the final word, spoken after he had been fully restored,
"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee."
I had heard, but now I see. That is the spiritual progression; faith always comes before sight. (Hebrews 11:1 and John 20:29)

Are you ready now? Go set that piece of alligator pie on the altar.