“I urge you, my brothers and sisters, for the sake of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to agree to live in unity with one another and put to rest any division that attempts to tear you apart. Be restored as one united body living in perfect harmony. Form a consistent choreography among yourselves, having a common perspective with shared values.“
Have you ever been to a symphony concert? Before it starts, the first chair violinist walks out on stage and plays a note so that the rest of the orchestra can tune their instruments. It sounds awful. There’s a lot of commotion and noise. No one is playing the same thing as each musician seeks to make sure that their individual instrument is in fine working order. If you didn’t know any better, you might get up and walk out thinking that this concert was a nightmare! But if you wait, the conductor will walk out onto the stage and every musician will suddenly play the same song. Each will have its unique sound and part to play, but together they will be in such harmony that the result is beautiful music!
That’s what it should be like in the church. Yes, there will be times when we are exercising our individual gifts when we can get into tough spots. Our differences have the potential to create serious discord. If we allow petty grievances and offenses to grow, they can derail us. We will sound like that symphony orchestra tuning their instruments. No one will want to be around us. But when we let the Holy Spirit act as our conductor, we can play our parts in tune. We let go of petty grievances and offense. We play our part. Yes, we are all different. We are all gifted in different ways, but just like that symphony needs every single individual instrument, the church needs every single member of the body of Christ.
When we play in unity and harmony together, we create a symphony for the Lord. We make beautiful music, and people want to stick around and listen. Let’s work to cultivate that mindset in our churches and in our homes. Let’s seek unity and harmony so that our lives can play beautiful music to the Lord.
Father, I thank you that you have given me unique gifts and talents. You didn’t make me to be like anyone else. In your wisdom, you designed all of us as individuals, but you also gave us a calling to work together. Just like those musicians can only make music when they’re on the same page following the conductor, help me to be on the same page with the other members of the church and help me to follow the direction of your Holy Spirit. I want my life to play beautiful music to you. I can’t do it alone. I was made to do it as part of a community. Teach me to let go of petty differences and to overlook offense, and instead to focus on unity and harmony in you. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.“
It’s amazing to me to think that Jesus, when He prayed for His disciples before His death, looked into the future and saw me as well. He saw you, if you are a disciple of Jesus. He saw all of us, and He included us in His prayers for His disciples. Why? Why did He include us? Because He knew that once He had ascended, the world would only be able to know Him through our continued testimonies of what He has done in our lives.
When the church is fractured and there is in-fighting and a lack of unity, it looks no different from a regular social club. Those who are on the outside looking in see nothing that would draw them to want to be a part of this group. There is nothing special there. It’s just like any other group. But when the church is in unity and harmony, when we reflect the sacrificial love of the savior, the picture is completely different. Then the church no longer makes sense to those who are on the outside looking in. It looks different. It looks special. It looks unique. The Bible says that it is the goodness of God that lead us to repentance. It isn’t His judgement. It isn’t fear of His wrath. It is His overwhelming love for us and His goodness that makes us seek to change how we live our lives.
Are we doing a good job of showing Jesus to the world? Are we living in love and unity with each other to show those on the outside the goodness of God? That’s the testimony Jesus wants us to give the world. Not just our words about what He has done in our life, but our actions that demonstrate how his love has changed us from selfish people into a unified, selfless, loving body that accurately reflects Him to the world.
Father, I thank you that when Jesus prayed for His disciples, He also prayed for me. How humbling to think that even then, I was on His mind. Father, I pray that you would help me cultivate a humble heart. Help me to not esteem myself more highly than I ought to, but help me to see others the way you see them. Help me to know what is essential truth and what is nonessential. Help me to stand up for what you want me to stand up for and to let go of everything else in the pursuit of peace and unity. Be with our churches. Help us have such unity, peace, and love in our midst that we draw in those who need you most. Help me reflect You to the world around me. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
If you live in America, like me, chances are that you are spending your day today home from work, cooking out with your family in celebration of the unofficial start of the summer season. Today is Memorial Day in America, and while most of us don’t give a passing thought to what this day is actually about or why it’s a holiday in the first place, if you come from a military family or your served yourself, this day holds special significance for you. Memorial Day, or Decoration Day, as it used to be called is a day set aside to honor the memories of all the men and women in uniform who gave their lives in military service.
Originally Memorial Day was celebrated on May 30th each year. This tradition lasted from 1868 to 1970. After 1970, the date was changed to the last Monday of May. Some veterans groups argue that the change muddied the waters of what the day was really about. For citizens not connected to the military in any way, it became a three-day weekend for grilling out and enjoying parades and friends. For military families, members of the military, and those who have lost loved ones in battle, this day means so much more. How should we view this day as Christians?
Well, we don’t want to confuse allegiance to our country with allegiance to God. There are great things about our country. It was founded on Christian principles, and it upholds things like freedom and human rights. Blind allegiance to our country is not the answer, but allegiance to godly principles no matter which nation espouses them is always a good thing. When we think about the cause of freedom that our military members fight to uphold, we can be proud of each and every one of them. That doesn’t mean we support every military campaign waged by our government, but it does mean that we can be proud of the individual soldier who felt the call to defend freedom on our behalf.
It isn’t incompatible with Christianity to be a soldier. In fact, the Bible uses metaphors of military life to explain what God wants from us. We are called soldiers in the army of God. We are told to put on the full armor and to use our weapons in warfare against the enemy. If we serve as soldiers in the military of our nation, we should serve as unto God. We should make sure that we uphold the highest standards of integrity and honor. We can honor those who serve in our place if the military life is not our calling. Matthew 25:40 reminds us that: “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Those who serve on my behalf due me a great honor. They allow me to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without having to serve in a military capacity if I don’t want to. They fight so that I can have the freedoms I currently enjoy, including the freedom to worship God where, when, and how I choose. I have always found it honorable that the military does not encourage blind obedience, but allows the soldier to answer to a higher law when faced with orders that they cannot in good conscience carry out.
Many people will serve in our military and retire, but some give the last full measure of devotion. They die on our behalf, fighting in defense of the ideals that this nation stands for. On Memorial Day, we remember their sacrifice. It’s a sacrifice very similar to the one that Jesus made on our behalf. John 15:13 says: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Each and every member of our military recognizes that they may be asked to lay their life down for their fellow Americans, and they are willing to do so because they believe the ideals our nation upholds. We don’t get it right all the time. We’re far from perfect, but those ideals are worth living up to and holding on to, even when our government is off course.
We know Christ’s love for us because He willingly died on our behalf, and not because we deserved it or we were good people or even because we were citizens of the same nation. Christ died on our behalf when we were still his enemy. Romans 5:7-8 reminds us: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were sinners….while we were enemies of God, Christ died for us. It’s a far higher price than the one we ask of our military, and yet it’s the price required for our salvation and reconciliation with God. Through Jesus’ sacrifice we gain dual citizenship. We are citizens of whatever nation we are born into on earth, and we are citizens of the Kingdom of God. When we hold to the values of the Kingdom of God and defend them here on earth, we help to do our part to raise the standards and values of every nation until they match up to God’s standards.
1 John 3:16 says: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” So this Memorial Day, while we’re spending time with family and cooking out on the grill, let us take a moment to remember all those men and women of the military who died on our behalf, defending our ideals and our freedoms against any enemy foreign and domestic. When we honor their memories, their sacrifice, and the ideals our nation stands for, we are thinking on honorable things like Philippians 4:8 tells us to do: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
I’m going to end with a quote from Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr. that he delivered in a speech on Memorial Day in 1884:
“Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death — of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Let us honor those who died fighting for us, but less us also think of life. Let us think of life inside a nation built on the ideals of the Kingdom of God. Let us do what we can to honor those brave men and women who fight to defend those ideals, and let us raise the bar of our nation so that one day our ideals will match those of the Kingdom of God.
“Now may the God Who gives the power of patient endurance (steadfastness) and Who supplies encouragement, grant you to live in such mutual harmony and such full sympathy with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may [unanimously] with united hearts and one voice, praise and glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah). Welcome and receive [to your hearts] one another, then, even as Christ has welcomed and received you, for the glory of God.“
God is not the author of chaos and confusion. God is a god of peace and unity. Unity doesn’t mean we have to all agree with each other in every facet or detail. It doesn’t mean we have to behave as robots and show no individuality whatsoever. Unity means that no matter our differences we work together to accomplish the same goal. Because we are all different, it takes patience and empowerment for us to come to a place of unity with each other. It takes humility and a commitment to God’s purpose and plan to be able to find away to lay aside what our flesh wants in order to honor what God wants.
Ultimately, it requires us to put ourselves in a position where God can work through us to accomplish His purpose. It is God that supplies the power. It is God that supplies the patience. It is God that supplies the humble love for one another. It is God that allows us to live by the Spirit, crucifying our flesh. When we live in that position before God, unity can be accomplished through us. When outsiders take a look at the level of unity we operate in before God, they can’t help but recognize God at work. That’s because Satan is a god of chaos and confusion. There’s no way to achieve true unity without God involved. At best, you can get superficial cooperation. But true unity displays God to everyone around us. Let’s work to cultivate that spirit of unity and acceptance in our hearts by positioning ourselves before God and allowing Him to work in us!
Father, I thank you that you receive all of us who come to you with a humble and contrite heart. If we repent, you are faithful to forgive us. You operate in unity, Lord. There is unity and oneness within your trinity. We are called to reflect that unity to the world around us, but we can’t do that without your help. Father, humble us so that we approach your throne of grace with the right attitude so that you can fill us up with your patience and your love for others and your power. We want to be vessels of your grace and demonstrate your unity to the world around us. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
If you’ve been following along, we’re on week five of our seven week series about the letters to the churches in the book of Revelation. This week, we look at the letter to the church of Sardis. You can catch up with weeks one through four here, here, here, and here. The book of Revelation was written by the apostle John while he was exiled on the island of Patmos. It includes Christ’s warnings to the seven churches as well as prophetic visions of the last days when God will restore the created order to the world and bind Satan for good. As we’ve said before, it is difficult to interpret prophecy because some things are meant to be taken literally and some things are meant to be taken figuratively. Without an authoritative statement by God on which is which, we need to exercise caution and use discernment when we’re trying to study prophetic texts.
The seven churches of Revelation are not a list of all the churches in existence at the time of John, nor are they a list of all the churches in existence at the end of time. They appear to be symbolic. These are actual churches that underwent actual events and had an actual cultural setting, but the letters written to them seem to also provide a framework of correction to various attitudes and mindsets present in the last days among all churches. By studying the letters to the churches, we can keep our hearts in order before God and insure that we are finishing our race as strongly as we can.
Sardis was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia. It served as one of the important cities of the Persian empire, was the seat of a Seleucid satrap, the seat of a proconsul under the Roman empire, and later served as the metropolis of the province of Lydia in later Roman and Byzantine times. Sardis is located in the middle of the Hermus Valley at the food of Mount Tmolus about 2.5 miles south of the Hermus. It’s 32 miles from Pergamum and 27 miles from Philadelphia. Sardis was important because of its military strength. Located as it was, it was thought to be impregnable; however, a lack of watchfulness resulted in its capture more than once. Sardis was located on an important highway leading from the interior region of modern day Turkey to the Aegean coast. As such it had huge economic importance. Likewise, the city of Sardis commanded the wide, fertile plain of the Hermus, making it important agriculturally as well.
Legend says that the city of Sardis was founded by the Heraclides, the sons of Hercules. The earliest reference to Sardis is in The Persians of Aeschylus from 472 BC where it was referred to by the ancient name Hyde. Under the emperor Tiberius, Sardis was destroyed by an earthquake in 17 AD. It was rebuilt at the emperor’s expense and exempted from paying taxes for five years in order to recover; however, Sardis never regained its previous importance. Sardis was ultimately destroyed in 1402. A small village known as Sart is located among the ruins of the ancient city.
Sardis became famous for it’s unparalleled ability to purify gold and silver. Its coins were trusted throughout the known world for their purity. It was famed as the place where modern currency was invented. Gold found in the Pactolus river made the city wealthy. There were gold and silver mines in the surrounding region as well. Sardis made lavish use of semiprecious stones such as fire opal and banded agate and was known for its jewelry. It was also noted for its fruits and wools. Sardis boasted a temple to the pagan goddess Cybele whose worship was very similar to Diana/Artemis of Ephesus. Sardis was the first area to be converted by the preaching of the apostle John. There are no known Christians in the village of Sart today.
Let’s take a look at the letter to the church of Sardis:
“These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.”
Revelation 3:1a
As we’ve seen in past letters, Jesus always addresses the church in a way that has meaning for what they are dealing with or what He is going to correct them on. To the church of Ephesus (the educated church), he was “him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands.” To the church of Smyrna (the suffering church), he was “him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again.” To the church of Pergamum (the compromising church), he was “him who has the sharp, double-edged sword.” To the church of Thyatira (the tolerant church) he was “the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.” Now we see that his greeting to Sardis is similar to that of the church of Ephesus. The seven stars are the seven churches of Revelation, but was are the seven spirits of God (in some translations, the sevenfold Spirit of God)?
Isaiah 11:2 gives us a possible clue. It says: “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him–the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord.” So it looks as if these are the seven ministries of the Holy Spirit. Seven, of course, represents completion and perfection. We have:
The Spirit of the Lord
The Spirit of wisdom
The Spirit of understanding
The Spirit of counsel
The Spirit of might
The Spirit of the knowledge of the Lord
The Spirit of the fear of the Lord
Why would Jesus mention the sevenfold spirit in his letter to Sardis? Because Sardis is the “dead church.” It’s the church who makes a good start, but never fully completes things. It’s a church that looks good on the outside, but lacks the vitality of the Holy Spirit on the inside. In short, the church of Sardis was all about image and not about substance.
“I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God.”
Revelation 3:1b-2
It seems that the church of Sardis had some type of deeds. Whatever they were doing, it had given them a good reputation in the surrounding area. They had a reputation of being alive because of their works, but Jesus saw them as spiritually dead. It seems that what they had was works of the flesh rather than works of the Spirit, but there was hope. Not everything was dead, and so Jesus admonished them to strengthen those things that remained alive and were about to die. They could fan the embers back into flames if they woke up and took things seriously. Jesus said that their deeds were unfinished. They had a good start, but they hadn’t brought it to completion in the sight of God.
“Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out of the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Revelation 3:3-6
Jesus calls on the church of Sardis to remember the pure gospel that was taught to them, to hold fast to it and repent. The works they are doing may be good works, but they are being done for the wrong reasons. They may have a good reputation with the world around them, but their reputation before God is what matters most. Jesus’ call to them to wake up before he comes like a thief in the night would have reminded the church of Sardis of some of that cities most stunning defeats. If you recall, Sardis was located in a strong military position. It was thought to be impregnable. However, a lack of watchfulness resulted in its capture on more than one occasion. In 219 BC and again in 549 BC, Sardis was captured at night by an army that scaled the walls while the city slept. Jesus is reminding them that their lack of watchfulness will result in defeat.
Again, all hope is not lost. There are members of the church who are holding tight to God’s truth and are doing works with the right motivation. They are still clothed in purity and righteousness. Sardians as a whole recognized the significance of white clothing because in order to enter the presence of their pagan goddess, Cybele, they had to dress in white robes. Jesus is telling them that as the only true God, He will clothe them in the white robes of purity if they will hold fast to the gospel and rise to maturity in Him.
Jesus reminds them of His words in Matthew 7: 21-23: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” The works of Sardis may be giving them a good reputation. These works may seem to suggest that they have are alive and bearing good fruit. They may be casing out demons, prophesying, and performing miracles, but Jesus is saying that they have lost relationship with Him. It is relationship with Jesus that is of the utmost importance. Without relationship, works are meaningless.
CORPORATE APPLICATION
With churches so focused on outreach and ministry opportunities, it’s easy to get caught up in the things we are “doing” as a church. It’s easy to associate our identity with our works and to focus on those as the “fruit.” The letter to the church of Sardis reminds us that unless we are doing those works out of an outpouring of relationship with God and through the power of His Spirit, we are doing them incompletely. It isn’t about our reputation with the world around us, with our community, or even with other churches. It’s about our reputation with God.
We need to be sure that we have the right motivation for what we are doing. We need to be sure that our services are focused on the Spirit, on the gospel, and on relationship rather than on works of the flesh that look good. What we start, we need to complete. It isn’t enough to have a superficial Christianity in our services. We can’t just go about doing good and converting people. We have to be committed to maturity in God. We need to complete the work God has given us to do. That kind of discipleship requires each of us to look to our individual relationships with God in order to pour that relationship into others.
INDIVIDUAL APPLICATION
It’s very easy for me to look at the things I do as a checklist of sorts and to evaluate my spirituality based on those things. It’s easy to say, “Well, I read my Bible every day. I pray. I go to church. I do such and such. Therefore, I am doing well in my Christian walk.” But the truth is that God never looks at outward things. God isn’t as concerned with my doing as He is with my being. I can follow a check list of good deeds all I want to, but if I’ve neglected right relationship with God, then I am spiritually dead.
That’s a hard truth. It’s a scary truth because if we only ever look at what we do, we may end up in the group that Jesus tells, “depart from me, you evildoers, for I never knew you.” I can see the truth of this when I consider some of my friends who are atheist or pagan. They do good things. They may give to the poor. They may do random acts of kindness to strangers. They believe in “being a good person,” but they have absolutely no relationship with God whatsoever. The motivation for their works is just to make the world better. They don’t have any kind of higher purpose.
God calls me to more. God calls me to love Him so deeply and so closely that I pour my heart out to Him and then allow Him to pour His heart into me. That’s the key. That’s the core of what He calls me to be. And when I do this, His love so fills me that it overflows into the places I go, the people I encounter, and the things I do. Will I do good works? Absolutely! But not in my own power. I will do them because I can’t help but allow God to flow out of me when I am filled to the max by His love and grace. It’s important that I look less at the checklist of things that I’m doing and more at how much I time I am spending with God. It’s more important that I look at how much I am being filled by Him, rather than what I am doing with my day. If my heart is focused on relationship, the rest will fall into place as it should.
“Those who are loved by God, let his love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love. Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of him. The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love.“
Love is an abstract concept. We use the word to describe many different levels of emotion. We love that new coffee shop on the corner. We love our pets. We love our favorite TV show. We love our family or our spouse. Love can mean anything from “we really enjoy” to actual love. Some of us will readily admit that we don’t even know what love really is. If you’ve never experienced love, it’s hard to have any concept of what it is.
But the Bible makes it very clear what love means. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul spells out all the characteristics of agape love. This is God’s love. It is unconditional and all-consuming love. It’s a love that will go any distance, pay any price, just for the chance to be near us and have a relationship with us. It’s a love that is far beyond anything we as humans can ever hope to feel or understand. So the truth is that we only really know anything at all about love because of our experience with God. If we keep God at a distance and treat Him as a nebulous possible higher power somewhere out there, then our experience with love is going to be very superficial and flawed. If we don’t believe in God at all, we would not know love except for what has been shown to us by other, broken humans. We know a love of limits, but we don’t know real love.
The only way to know real love is to know God. When we have an intimate, personal relationship with God, we come to know love in a way that we never experienced before because love is who God is. Our experience of God’s love in our own lives changes the way we express love to others. We have a deeper understanding of what it means to love and what it means to be loved, and we can’t help but pass that deeper awareness on to those around us. God’s love fills us up to overflowing and pours out of us onto the world around us. It’s God’s love pouring out of us that draws others to Him.
Father, I thank you that your love is not like mine. It isn’t fragile. It doesn’t break. It isn’t conditioned on what I can do for you. Your love, Father, is something else entirely. It is strong. It is deep. It is unconditional and never ending. There is nothing I could do to make you love me more than you love me right now. There is nothing I could do to make you love me any less. Your love is sacrificial, agape love. Father, today I pray for a deeper, clearer understanding of your love and your character. Give me a bigger picture of who you are. Pour your agape love into me until I overflow onto the people around me. It is your love and your kindness and your grace that draws men to repentance. Thank you for such a wonderful gift! In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
It’s taken me a long time to write this post. On Mother’s Day (2020), my husband and I got into an argument. It was an argument we had had before. Ever since our children were put into foster care in January of 2019, there has been intense pressure from the foster care system for us to divorce. Since day one, there has been an emphasis on the policy that parents who live together must both make progress with the agency’s plans in order for to children to be returned home. If only one parent makes progress, the parent that fails to comply can drag that parent down. End result: termination of parental rights. And who decides what constitutes progress? Oh, your individual case worker does. Absolutely nothing is evaluated objectively. It’s not like you can check a box and prove that you did what was asked. It’s all the subjective opinion of your worker. They decide if you’ve done enough or “benefited” from all the hoops they have you jump through. Their word is law. Judges hardly ever go against the recommendation of the agency.
In previous posts, I’ve talked about the bias in the system. I talked about how difficult the agency made it for my husband to make any kind of progress. They refused to allow him to do online parenting classes. They refused to give him parenting time on weekends. They tried to get the court to rule against his ability to do personal therapy via Skype, but that did not prove successful. Then, they decided that he was guilty of domestic violence, an accusation they came to based on him being irritated during a meeting and telling me to stop trying to calm him down! They demanded we do marriage therapy, but they didn’t want us to do so with pastors at our church. After all, they can’t control the content of the therapy that way. So they got the judge to rule against us and order therapy through one of their pet agencies.
Needless to say, the stress on our marriage was becoming harder and harder to ignore. It’s very difficult to navigate a system that after a year and a half finally admits that they have screwed up your case and dealt unfairly with you but then announces you will now have to restart all your services in order to prove to your new (third!) worker that you are not bad parents. The new worker finally agreed to online parenting classes….mostly because COVID-19 made in person classes impossible for anyone to attend. But COVID-19 also resulted in video visits only with our children. Let me tell you that Skype visits with a 4 yr old and a 2 yr old are frustrating and difficult to navigate. They’re hard for me as a mom to keep my kids interested and interacting. After all, I’m just a face on a screen on someone’s cell phone. I can’t hug them. Can’t kiss them. Can’t play with them. They did okay for the first two weeks, but after that they were dealing with their own feelings of frustration and anger and the feeling that all the adults in their lives were lying to them about this coronavirus no one seemed to have and lying about our being able to see each other again. To them, they were abandoned again. Mommy and Daddy just didn’t want to come see them and play with them.
My husband couldn’t handle it. He’s not a very strong communicator to start with. He doesn’t interact with our kids verbally. He’s more hands on. He likes to rough house and play and wrestle with them. He likes to teach them how to build things. He doesn’t do a lot of talking. Now his parenting ability was being judged solely on how well he could get them to talk to him. Then, he made a comment that foster mom didn’t like. After that, she quit helping him engage with the kids. She quit encouraging them to tell him stories or answer his questions. The system has been rigged against him since the beginning.
So the first visit in May, the boys had had enough. They didn’t want to talk. They didn’t want to stay in the small area visible on the cell phone. They wanted to run off and play and do their own thing. After all, he’s only a face on a screen. My husband took it personally. He felt the kids were rejecting him as their father. He felt the system was alienating him from his children. He lost his temper and his patience. He hung up after only 15 minutes of an hour long visit. These visits are supervised by foster care workers, so you can imaging how they spun that against him. The pressure on me to divorce or separate increased. My husband’s pain caused him to lash out at me, yelling and screaming and just dumping on me in general.
Finally, I had had enough. I told him how it felt to be in the middle. I told him how unfair it was to feel like I was in a place of choosing my children or my husband. I told him how I felt like no matter what I did I was going to lose relationships that were important to me. My husband checked out of the conversation. He refused to respond at all. And suddenly I wondered if he wanted me to make the decision. I knew that if I chose the kids and filed for separation or divorce, he would point the finger of blame and claim that I had never loved him and didn’t have enough faith in God to work things out for us. I knew that if I chose him and didn’t file, I would lose my parental rights, our children would be placed for adoption and I would struggle to forgive him. It was also probably that he would point the finger of blame at me and say it was my fault the kids were put in care to start with (something he was already doing) and walk out on me anyway. I told him how this all felt, and what I thought.
He accused me of having no faith. And he’s right. I don’t have faith. I don’t believe God waves a magic wand and rescues you out of difficult situations when you have the ability to do something. If we had both been giving 100% effort in meeting the hoops that foster care put in front of us, I believed God would honor that. I believed that if the system ignored our cooperation, then God would step in and handle things in our favor. But I struggled to believe that God would step in to handle things with my husband so frustrated and angry that he was actually starting to actively work against the treatment plan from the agency. My husband was beginning to refuse to do anything. He couldn’t have a conversation with any of the workers without losing his cool.
I felt so hurt and angry that I told my husband that I didn’t want to fight for our marriage any more. I told him I was tired of feeling as if I was the only one. I asked him to give me a good reason to keep fighting. He said that he thought our marriage was God’s plan. I told him that I didn’t think God’s plan for our marriage included him treating me badly. I asked him for some space. Asked him to sleep somewhere else just for the night. He refused. So I left. I’ve never done that before. I’ve never walked away and left for the entire night. When we argue, I am always the one to run after him and apologize. I am always chasing after him. My stomach gets tangled in knots when there is discord in my home. I am always the one who tries to make peace. I think he counts on it.
I don’t know what happened in his mind after I left the home. I don’t know if I hurt him so badly that he decided to up the ante on lashing out in pain or if he really had given up on our marriage a long time ago. All I know is that he packed his things, left his keys, and sent me a text saying that he was done being held hostage by me, done playing games, and just done with me. He hasn’t spoken to me since. No phone calls. No nothing.
So I struggle. I struggle with wanting to do anything to fix this and knowing that I really can’t. I struggle with the fact that if he continues to let his anger vent on our worker, I will have to file legal paperwork documenting our separation….paperwork that may very well drive him over the edge to file for divorce. I struggle with the fact that all my worst fears are coming to fruition. I struggle with not knowing what God is doing here. I felt like my husband and I were meant to be together. I still feel that way. I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love him. Even now, I would take him back and gladly forgive him. I just love him. I struggle with the fact that this is my third marriage and maybe I’m not meant to be happily married (although I know this last one is a lie from the accuser). I struggle with all of it.
As I cried and prayed and poured out all my hurt and pain to God in bed the next night, I heard a whisper. It was so soft I almost missed hearing it under the sounds of my sobbing. It said, “I will restore.” That was all. “I will restore.” And I cling to that promise because I believe it is God’s promise to me that He will restore all things. He will restore my children to me–that’s almost guaranteed now that my husband is gone. “Just file that paperwork,” my worker says, “and you’ll have the kids home entirely by Christmas.” And I pray and hope that He will restore my husband to me. Not the man who left my house, because that man is a different person than the one I married, but the man that I married. I pray that in this time of silence, God is healing his heart and turning him back into the man I know and love….the one who told me I was beautiful. The one who thanked God for me every time he prayed. The one who promised that nothing would ever keep us apart. I want that man back in my life. I want to pick up the pieces from there and grow forward together.
So I hope. I hope and I pray and I fast and I ask others to pray as well. Because I believe that God is a God of resurrection power–even over dead marriages. I believe that He can do exceedingly abundantly beyond anything I could ever think, hope, or imagine. And because I know that God works all things for the good of those who love Him. I love God, so God has to work this out for my good. I just hope that my idea of good and God’s idea of good are the same.
It’s week four of our seven week series on the letters to the churches in the book of Revelations. We’re a little more than halfway through! Revelation was written by the apostle John when he was exiled on the island of Patmos. It includes his vision of Jesus Christ, who gave John instructions to carry to seven churches. It continues with John’s vision of the end times and God’s ultimate plan for the earth and for the church. When John encounters Jesus in his vision, Jesus gives him messages for the seven churches. We know that there are more than seven churches in the world, but as with most prophecy we also know that we cannot interpret the book of Revelation in a literal sense. It’s very difficult to deal with books of prophecy because we can’t know precisely what they refer to unless God Himself reveals that to us. The number seven in the Bible is a symbol of completion and perfection. I believe these seven churches symbolize the predominant thinking and the attitudes of the church as a whole in the last days.
In our first week, we looked at the letter to the church of Ephesus. The church of Ephesus is considered the “educated church.” Ephesus had a lot going for it. It had prominent men and women of the church. It had a lot of knowledge of God. Miraculous signs and wonders were performed in Ephesus, and the believers there sacrificed all their previous pagan knowledge in exchange for more knowledge of God and His plan of salvation. But for all its education, Ephesus fell away from its first love and devotion to Christ. The church was so busy learning and doing that it had neglected an intimate relationship with the Lord.
In our second week, we looked at the letter to the church of Smyrna. The church of Smyrna is considered the “suffering church.” Unlike in His message to the church of Ephesus, Jesus doesn’t offer correction to the church of Smyrna. Instead, He offers praise and words of encouragement. Smyrna also had a lot of prominent men and women, but Smyrna was a place of severe persecution. The cultural climate of emperor worship made it nearly impossible for the believers in the area to participate in any kind of commerce unless they renounced Jesus. In His letter, Jesus commends them for their faithfulness in suffering and offers them a victor’s crown if they remain faithful, even faithful unto death.
In our third week, we looked at the letter to the church of Pergamum. The church of Pergamum is considered the “compromising church”. In Pergamum, the church had embraced a dangerous teaching of a group of people known as the Nicolaitans. This teaching said that it was perfectly okay to keep parts of pagan life after you became a Christian. These were believers trying to live with one foot in the Kingdom of God and one foot in their past life of darkness. Jesus had extremely harsh words to say about this particular heresy. It is only strict adherence to the double-edged sword of the Word of God and to God’s standard of Truth that can protect us from this trap of the enemy that leads to an ineffective and nonexistent church.
This week, we’re going to take a look at the church of Thyatira. Thyatira is the least known of all the churches from the book of Revelation, but it has the longest letter written to it. Clearly Jesus had a lot to say to this church. If Ephesus was the educated church and Pergamum was the compromising church, then Thyatira is the tolerant church. This is a church out of balance with the gospel. Let’s see what we can learn from Jesus’ letter to this church.
Thyatira is located in the far west of Turkey, south of Istanbul and almost due east of Athens. It’s about 50 miles from the coast of the Aegean Sea. Thyatira located a position along the border between Lydia and Mysia. It’s about 45 miles southeast of Pergamum. The name Thyatira has some controversy. Scholars believe that the name is derived from the title “castle of Thya.” Stephen Byzantium, author of an important geographical dictionary around the 6th century AD, declared that the name Thyatira could mean “daughter.” Ironically, the name of Thyatira in Turkish roughly translates to “hill graveyard.” That’s a pretty fitting name for the tolerant church!
Thyatira was built on flat ground without any natural defense, making it vulnerable to attack. It was the center of the dye industry in the area and the headquarters of many ancient guilds. These guilds were incredibly, incredibly important to the city. In order to ply a trade, you had to be a guild member. Guild members were expected to participate in elaborate guild feasts which involved the worship of the emperor, various pagan deities, and sexual immorality. The city of Thyatira primarily worshipped Apollo. The most famous believer from Thyatira was Lydia, the seller of purple cloth mentioned in the book of Acts. Lydia is credited as being the first Christian convert in Europe. The church of Thyatira lasted until 1922, when the population of Orthodox Christians was deported. There is no church in the area today and no known believers in the surrounding region.
“These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.”
Revelation 2:18-19
This image of Jesus would have resonated with the bronze guilds of Thyatira. It seems the church at Thyatira was doing some things right. They had love and faith. They had service and perseverance, and they were growing in those things. Jesus says that the were doing more now than they had at first, which demonstrates that they were content to stay where they were but were pressing forward to do more and more in His name.
“Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.”
Revelation 2:20-23
Now Jesus gets to the heart of the problem with the church at Thyatira. They are tolerating a false prophetess, Jezebel. There’s a lot of debate as to whether or not this was an actual person named Jezebel leading the church at Thyatira or whether this could just be a Jezebel spirit at work within various members of the church of Thyatira. I don’t think it really matters. It could actually be both. The real point, in my opinion, is what the result of this leading was doing. So who is Jezebel?
If you recall from the books of 1 and 2 Kings, Jezebel was the wife of King Ahab of Israel. She served the Baals and succeeded in leading Israel into Baal worship right along with her. She had the prophets of God killed and was responsible for a lot of bloodshed. She came against the prophet Elijah, especially after he showed Baal to be a false god on Mount Carmel and slew 450 of Jezebel’s prophets. In the Bible Jezebel represents a spirit of tolerance, a spirit of apostasy, a spirit of unhealthy and ungodly dominion, and an anti-prophet spirit.
If we assume that the Jezebel of Revelation 2:20-23 was a real person, what we have is the picture of a woman who has taken over leadership of the church in a way that God has not authorized. That isn’t to say that God doesn’t intend for women to do things in the church. There were several women who ran churches in their homes, provided financial support to the ministry, and led godly lives. Women have always been among the disciples of Christ, but there is a pattern to the authority God has instituted in His church. This woman would have gone against that, and by claiming to have “deep secrets” known only to herself, she was actively leading the church away from correct doctrine. There is also a strong likelihood that this Jezebel was encouraging the members of the church to engage in the guild feasts in order to maintain their position in society. The activities of the guild feasts would have been in direct contradiction to a Christian lifestyle.
If we assume that the Jezebel of Revelation 2:20-23 is a spiritual entity, what we have is an overarching spirit that leads people into an attitude of compromise and tolerance toward things that should not be tolerated. This is a spirit who comes against proper biblical authority and that delights in setting traps for believers in the area of idolatry and sexual immorality. It’s a spirit that says anything goes in the name of Christian love. If the church of Ephesus had sound doctrine but lacked love, then the church of Thyatira had the opposite problem: an outpouring of love with no sound doctrine. An analogy would be to think of the chemical composition of salt. Salt is made up of sodium and chloride. By themselves, each of these substances is incredibly toxic, but mixed in the correct balance they form a substance needed to maintain life. The same is true of the church. We need correct doctrine mixed in the right balance with Christian love in order to stay healthy. Too much doctrine without love is just as toxic as too much love with no doctrinal backing!
“Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets, ‘I will not impose any other burden on you except to hold on to what you have until I come.’ To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations–that one ‘will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery’–just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give that one the morning star. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Revelation 2: 24-29
Apparently, some of the teachings of Jezebel included deep secrets. The people of the church who had not fallen prey to her influence were encouraged to hold on to what they had until Jesus returned. They were to hold on to the true doctrine of the church and persevere in that. The reward would be ruling authority and glory. It was the fulfillment of the promises of Christ.
CORPORATE APPLICATION
It’s important for the church to hold the proper balance of correct, sound doctrine, and also of unconditional love. Sometimes it’s easy for us to fall for the temptation that plagued Thyatira. There are voices that say that we need to love each other unconditionally, and those voices are correct. But we aren’t called to love thoughtlessly. True love doesn’t allow another person to do something that would be harmful to themselves or others. True love comes with healthy boundaries. When we see brothers and sisters engaging in sin, we need to love them enough to bring them back to the sound doctrine of Jesus Christ. Otherwise, what we think is love is just tolerance in disguise. What will we say as a church if we accept an anything goes mentality when we stand before the Judgement Seat of Christ? How will we feel knowing that a fellow believer may have lost his reward or not obtained the crown destined for them because we didn’t teach sound doctrine? There’s a saying that says: hate the sin, love the sinner. I think that holds true here as well. It takes both parts, a complete understanding of sin and how God sees it as well as a loving attitude to be disciples of Jesus Christ.
It’s also important for us to watch the types of people we put into positions of authority. Not everyone who claims to be a Christian is a true disciple of Christ. Not everyone with leadership capabilities should be placed in leadership positions. As a church body, it’s important for us to make sure that those in leadership positions are showing good fruit and teaching sound doctrine. If a person does not show the fruit of the Spirit in their lives, or if they begin to teach a different doctrine than the Bible, we should remove them from a position of authority. As we get closer and closer to the end times, the subtle deceptions of the enemy in the form of false teachers and false doctrine will get harder and harder to detect. We must hold to the message that Christ gives us in the Word if we expect to walk in the authority He has given us.
INDIVIDUAL APPLICATION
Again, this is an area where I’d like to place all the responsibility at the feet of my pastor. After all, isn’t it his job to make sure I am learning sound doctrine? Well, only so far as he is responsible to teach it. It’s really up to me, though, to make sure that I am listening to sound doctrine, that I’m in the Word regularly so that I can discern God’s truth from the counterfeit illusion that Satan offers me, and to maintain a teachable spirit. If I refuse to do my part, my pastor can’t take over for me. I have to be the one to cultivate discernment. It’s my job, also, to be sure I’m helping to hold the leadership of my church accountable. If the people of Thyatira had been spending time learning sound doctrine, they would have quickly recognized the work of “Jezebel” in their midst. They could have worked to remove her from her position of authority within their church body.
I also have to be careful that I don’t get enticed by the correct desire to know God more and follow the rabbit trail of secret knowledge. Everything I need to know about God, His character, and His promises are in my Bible. If I’m praying while I’m studying, God may illuminate a specific passage to me and give me deeper insight into how I can apply that passage to my life, but “new knowledge” or “secret knowledge” that does not align with His Word is a trap of the enemy. That’s why it’s so important that I take any prophetic word or any revelation back to His Word to see if it aligns. If it does, it’s from God. If it doesn’t, time to throw it away. It’s a trap! Studying the Word of God for myself is the best way for me to learn the voice of my Shepherd, so that the voice of a stranger I will not follow.
And now here come the hard part for me, am I growing in acts of love and service, or have I been content to stay at the level I’m at? In growing and maturing in acts of love and service have I crossed the line into tolerating sin? That’s a dangerous place, and it’s one I don’t want to find myself in. I want to express the agape love of God. I want to be sure that I am correcting sin and not allowing a brother or a sister to stray into dangerous territory where they are risking their spiritual well-being with their behavior. It’s hard to offer correction to a fellow believer, but if God places us in the position to do so, we need to be faithful to speak the truth in love. God wants us to grow in acts of service and love but also in a mature knowledge of sound doctrine. We need both parts of the equation in balance in order to succeed and grow.
“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.“
Do you know why they station spectators all along the marathon track? It’s because the shouts and cheers of those people spur the runners to keep going. There are times in life when things get hard. We need an encouraging word to lift our spirits, restore our tenacity, and help us to persevere. We need this in physical races, and we need it in our spiritual race as well. Sometimes life gets in the way of things. We lose our focus. The responsibilities of life, our families, our jobs, the world’s idea of success, they all try to steal a piece of us away and distract us from where our true focus should be: doing God’s will.
It’s easy to get so busy on a weekend that you forget to go to church. It’s easy to let things slide. Maybe you watch online or on TV at home. If anything, the coronavirus pandemic has taught us that meeting together wasn’t just a nice idea. It was a necessity. Now that we can’t meet together at church even if we wanted to, we realize how much those interactions with others meant to us and to our spiritual growth. We may be worshiping still. We are still hearing the same sermon, but there’s something about doing it together with others that changes the entire dynamic.
As we come closer and closer to the return of Jesus, it becomes more and more important for us to be together as a church family. We need the encouragement. We need the human contact. We need to be spurred on to good works…just like those runners in a marathon need to be spurred on to the finish line! Let’s not neglect how important actually meeting together at church can be.
Father, I thank you for my church family. Right now, I’m not able to meet with them in person, and I realize how much I miss doing that. I miss seeing my brothers and sisters in Christ. Thank you for the technology that we have that allows us to still worship together in some form. Thank you that we can still hear a sermon together in some way. Thank you that with things like Facetime, What’sApp, Zoom, and Skype, we can see each other’s faces, but Father, at this time I am starting to see how necessary it is for us to be physically present with one another. Thank you for this time to realize how important it is and how your word told us it was important all along. Help us to come together when all this is over with renewed purpose and gratitude. Help us to spur each other on to good works. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
“Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody. Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody.“
The great thing about Paul’s letters to the church is that they’re filled with practical advice for how we are to walk out our faith in Jesus Christ. In this section of Romans, Paul is talking about how we can walk in love with other people. He gives us instructions on what love looks like in various relationships. When we do things God’s way, we know we will always have a good outcome. Sometimes God’s way of doing things makes sense, like the instruction to laugh with our friends when they’re happy and cry with them when they’re sad, but other instructions go against our natural tendencies like blessing our enemies and not cursing them under our breath.
Ultimately, when we walk in love towards others we open the door to peace in our lives. When we take the time to show love to everyone around us, we can diffuse situations that would normally result in strife and discomfort. It doesn’t mean everyone will get along with us, but it means that we can feel happier and more peaceful in our hearts because we have gone about things in the right way. When we discover beauty in everyone, when we give time to people who others might consider as nobodies, you increase the chances that you will be a person they turn to when they have a need, and that opens the door for you to share with them the message of Jesus Christ.
Father, I thank you that you don’t just leave us to figure out what our Christian walk is supposed to look like in our every day lives. You took the time to direct the writers of the Bible to show us in practical ways how we can walk out your love for others in our every day actions. When we follow your rules and ways of doing things, you step in to bring peace in our relationships. We also act as witnesses of your love without having to say a word when we live our lives according to your way of doing things. Thank you that you fill us up with love so that we can shower your love on those we come into contact with each and every day. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
A Beautiful Mess 