God in the Dead Spots…

July 23, 2023July 22, 2023 / pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.
1 Samuel 3:1 (NIV)

You know what a dead spot is, right? It’s like cell phone companies spend millions if not billions of dollars erecting towers all over the country, but when you really need your cell phone, you can’t get coverage. A dead spot is that place where the signal doesn’t reach.

Life can sure make us believe we’re living in a dead spot when it comes to hearing God’s voice. We face one of the four D’s (death, divorce, disease, disaster) and God can seem so distant. Fortunately, we have the promise of Jesus Himself–“and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20 NIV).

Apparently, the nation of Israel was living in a “dead spot” during a very transitional period in its history. Verse one of 1 Samuel says, “the word of the Lord was rare in those days.” The transitional time the nation was living in was the period between the judges and the monarchy. Yes, the nation had been ruled by Judges. You may remember some of their names: Gideon, Samson and Deborah (yes! a woman!). Others you probably only know if you’ve recently studied the book of Judges in the Bible. There are twelve chronicled in the book of Judges, and the end of the book of Judges best sums up the state of the nation of Israel “in those days”: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit” (Judges 21:25 NIV).

Hope in the Dead Spots

Reading 1 Samuel 3 gives me encouragement and hope to know that though we may be in a “dead spot” God is still there and He is still calling. God is always present in the dead spots of life. The problem is not with God’s presence, but with our reception.

Let me shorten the story of Samuel for you. We read in 1 Samuel 1 & 2 that Samuel was born to his mother, Hannah, in answer to a prayer. Hannah was barren, so on one of her family’s annual pilgrimages to the Tabernacle, she offered a prayer for a child. The high priest, Eli, saw Hannah weeping at the door of the Tabernacle. She was crying because she had no child.

Eli joined Hannah in praying and God answered her prayer. In response to God’s faithfulness, Hannah dedicated Samuel to life-long service to God, and when he was old enough, she took him to the Tabernacle at Shiloh to serve with Eli, just as she promised she would do. Chapter 3 of 1 Samuel begins somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 years later.

²One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. ³The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the Lord, where the ark of God was. ⁴Then the Lord called Samuel.

Samuel answered, “Here I am.” ⁵And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

But Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down.

⁶Again the Lord called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

“My son,” Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.”

⁷Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord: The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

⁸A third time the Lord called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. ⁹So Eli told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

¹⁰The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!”

Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

1 Samuel 3: 2 – 10 (NIV)

Reception Inhibitors

Samuel was having a hard time figuring out what this call was all about. He knew someone was calling him, but he couldn’t quite figure it out because they were in a dead spot. What might have been causing that dead spot?

The first thing may have been sin. Eli, the priest, was a devout and compassionate man, but he had problems at home. Actually, what he had was a couple of problem sons. His sons were in the family business—they were priests just like their father. Now, that’s not the problem.

Actually, Eli was of the priestly line of Aaron. Aaron was the first to wear the priestly mantle in the nation of Israel. That mantle had been handed down from generation to generation, so it was a natural progression for Hophni and Phineas to go into the family business. The problem was they soon discovered they could get rich off the offerings the people were making for sacrifices. They also enjoyed the companionship of the women who served in the Tabernacle. They were in the family business, but it was for all the wrong reasons.

Day in and day out, Samuel witnessed this leadership in the Tabernacle, and maybe Samuel didn’t expect God to speak in the middle of all that. Sin may have been creating a dead spot for Samuel as God came calling.

Another issue may have been weariness. Verses 2 & 3 say that the Lord spoke to Samuel before the Lamp of God had gone out. That simply means it was probably the wee hours of the morning when the Lord came calling.

You know how it is when you get suddenly awakened in the middle of the night. It takes a moment or two to get your wits about you. Perhaps Samuel couldn’t hear the Lord because he was just tired.

Perhaps anger or abandonment were creating a dead spot for Samuel. Think about this: Samuel had been left as a little boy by his mother…literally, right after he was weaned. She would only visit him once a year when it was time for the yearly sacrifices. How do you explain to a little boy year after year that he can’t go home with you after your yearly visit? It must have been confusing to Samuel, and confusion, as it often does can lead to anger. Maybe Samuel was just angry, and that anger was causing his inability to distinguish God’s voice.

Another issue we could explore is simple ignorance. Verse 7 seems to indicate there was a little ignorance involved. Samuel is young and he’s been around the Tabernacle for a long time, but he had never experienced God. He knew he could serve God, but he didn’t realize God wanted a personal relationship with him. He didn’t quite understand that God was a personal God who desired to use him in a special way.

Fortunately for Samuel, he was able to eventually discern God’s voice in the dead spot–and it changed the nation forever. Samuel would rise to become Israel’s last judge/prophet and would anoint its first two kings, including its most famous one, King David.

God is still calling out in the dead spots. God is calling people to the Kingdom…to salvation. He is calling people to healing and wholeness. He is calling people to reconciliation. How is our reception? A better question might be: What is blocking our reception?

Maybe it’s our own ignorance. Many of us have been around the church for a lot of years and have come to equate service to God with a relationship with God. We’ve heard lots of sermons, sung lots of hymns and even served in official capacities, but we never understood that God wants a personal relationship with us.

How do I know? Because that’s exactly how I was. I grew up in church…had a drug problem…drug from one church to another, but not until I was 27 years old did I realize that God wanted a personal relationship with me. I was ignorant!

Is anger keeping us from hearing the voice of God in our lives? Sickness or tragedy strikes us or those we love. We go through a bitter divorce. We lose our job and financial security. We’re left with questions and confusion. We get mad at others, and we get mad at God because, after all, God should have done something. Our anger may keep us from hearing and understanding the only thing that can bring healing and wholeness to our lives.

Perhaps we’re just too tired to hear God calling. We live in such a fast-paced world with families, jobs and social activities that we’re just worn out. Hey? We even get tired working for God. Why does God want me to do something else? It is possible to weary in well-doing, you know? In our weariness, we may miss the voice of God. Every day Jesus calls to us saying, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 NIV).

Then, again, it might be a matter of sin that keeps us from discerning God’s voice. Sin surrounds us, friends. It might be our own sin, or it may be someone else’s, but sin casts a dark shadow obscuring the light of God’s love. Whatever sin you or I may be struggling with, we can know God has built a tower in our dead spot. That tower is Jesus!

The Greatest Cell Tower Ever

I love what the writer to the Hebrews says: “Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe (Hebrews 1:1-2).

Jesus shed his blood to forgive our sins so that we might be reconciled to him and to each other. Friend, God is calling to us…calling us to salvation, calling us to wholeness, calling us to service.

Sometimes we need help hearing that call, though. Samuel would never have understood God’s call without Eli. That’s the reason the church is so important. The sacraments of baptism and holy communion make us aware of God’s presence, and the community (fellowship with other believers) is imperative to understanding and clarifying God’s call or His voice. God will use others to help us, and he will use us to help others so that we might all find our way out of the dead spots.

God is calling you, too. He is calling each of us to salvation and to service. But, He is not calling us for ourselves. He’s calling us for others, to help them hear His call in their lives. Are you living in a dead spot? It’s time to simply say, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” Hear God’s call in a new way.

Until next time, keep looking up…

What About Us, Jesus?

February 21, 2017February 21, 2017 / pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

Of all the names/titles given to Jesus, i.e., Lord, Savior etc., this name “Healer” is perhaps the most challenging for us in the 21^st century. What do we mean when we say “Jesus is Healer?”

We survey the ministry of Jesus and depending on how one classifies the event, there are between 30 and 40 healing events in the four Gospels alone. We read a passage like Luke 4:40 that says, “As the sun went down that evening, people throughout the village brought sick family members to Jesus. No matter what their diseases were, the touch of his hand healed every one.”

So, what gives? After all, we pray for healing all the time, but far too often, the healing we seek never comes. If Jesus is Healer, where do we see this healing happening in our world today?

Who needs Obamacare? There certainly wasn’t much of a problem with healthcare with Jesus around. The folks in 1^st century Israel called their health care plan Jesuscare! Got a backache? Go see Jesus! Got the flu? Go see Jesus. Surgery? Who needs surgery? Just go see Jesus! One touch is all you need. Must have been nice, and no increase in premiums. It sure would have been nice to get in on some of those healings. Makes us want to ask: When did Jesus go out of the healing business? Don’t we rate as much as the folks back then? What about my friend with cancer? What about us, Jesus?

FAITH HEALING

I’m going to challenge us for one moment to take all the pre-conceived ideas of “faith-healing” out of our minds. Don’t think about Benny Hinn, and let your memories of Kathryn Kuhlman and Oral Roberts fade. But still it leaves us to wonder why we don’t just go down to the local hospitals and clear the places out in Jesus name.

Boy, I wish I had the power to heal! There are folks in the world who say that I simply don’t have enough faith, or that those who are sick don’t have enough faith to be healed. Just believe a little more—faith of a mustard seed and all that, right? Hey? That’s the kind of faith four friends had one day when they brought their friend to Jesus (see Luke 5: 17 – 26).

Luke tells us when Jesus saw “their faith,” his healing power went into action. Notice, Luke doesn’t tell us anything about the paralyzed man’s faith. Perhaps he had no faith at all, certainly none that was expressed in this episode. Yes, faith is often present when it comes to healing, but whose faith is most important?

Or more, the same people who would say today that I don’t have enough faith would also say the problem must be un-confessed sin. That’s part of the issue on the day Jesus was healing this paralyzed man. Jesus knew the Pharisees and scribes, who were a sect in Judaism who had a strong belief in the idea that if someone was sick or blind, there must be some sin in their life that caused it, were watching. Paralyzed? What did you do to deserve that? Confess your sin and perhaps you can get well. That was their attitude.

I wonder if that’s why Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “Young man, your sins are forgiven.” Jesus didn’t address the physical ailment first. He first addressed the spiritual reality, and man, that set the Pharisees off. “Who but God can forgive sins?” The Pharisees question and Jesus’ response might help us understand what was happening then, and what is happening now.

Jesus looked at the Pharisees and said, “Just so you know, I’ve got authority to forgive sins on earth, I’ll say, ‘Take up your bed and walk’.” At Jesus’ word, the young man jumped up, took his bed and ran out of the house. Jesus’ healing power was a sign.

Here’s an important point to understand those 30 – 40 healing accounts in the Gospels—the healings were signs designed to point to the eternal blessings Jesus was bringing, the kingdom of heaven that Jesus was bringing to earth. These healings pointed ahead to the ultimate healing that Jesus was in the process of accomplishing, and that ultimate healing was not limited to the folks back then. No, it is for all of us, too. Yes, every one of us here today–Jesus loves you and me as much as he loved those folks back then. We are at no disadvantage to the people who were healed in his ministry.

So, here’s the deal, as I see it—Jesus is still in the healing business, just not necessarily in the same manner now as then. What do I mean?

MIRACLES AND MORE

First, let me acknowledge that sometimes, for unexplained reasons, God chooses to miraculously heal someone. A tumor is present on one visit to the doctor, and the next scan shows no trace of a tumor. Poof! Just like that, and there’s no other explanation for it but that God did it. All we can say is God surprises us with His mercy, and in those times all we can say is, “Praise the Lord!”

Second, let’s also acknowledge the healing power of medicine. Advances in health care are astounding compared to the first century. There were physicians in the first century. Luke, the Gospel writer, was one. People who were sick sought out physicians for their maladies. Recall the woman with the flow of blood. Luke tells her story, too (chapter 8). She’d spend twelve years going to doctors, but none of them could heal her. The health care advances of just the last 25 years would likely have led to her healing. The Lord uses doctors and medicines to promote healing today in ways never known before. Medical care is a great gift that promotes healing, and we are right to view it that way.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, knew the importance of health care. He even penned a volume that was required reading for his assistants. Wesley’s Primitive Physick was the equivalent of a New York Times bestseller. It went through twenty-three printings and was used well into the 1880’s, decades after Wesley’s death. In that volume, Wesley encouraged the use of doctors, and even promoted the idea that his preachers should offer health care to those in their charge, thus his volume of remedies and advice on health and healing.

For all that healthcare does for our healing, we still face the question, “Why not everyone?” I remind us that Jesus did heal this paralyzed man, and he would heal many others, too, but I also remind us that every one of these persons he healed would later die. Their physical healing was only temporary. Was Jesus’ faith not strong enough? There must be an expiration date on miracles!

ULTIMATE HEALING

We come to Jesus seeking a cure for what ails us, and there is no cure for death…there is only healing. When we proclaim Jesus is Healer, it is a statement that reaches beyond the physical. We go beyond the temporal to acknowledge, even as Jesus did, that healing is first a spiritual process before it is a physical one. Curing the body is a physical process. Healing the soul is a spiritual one. Curing the body is temporal, but healing the soul is eternal. We come to Jesus as healer seeking a cure for something physical. What Jesus as healer offers is something eternal.

Jesus gains the ultimate healing for us, the eternal healing, by dealing with the root problem of sin. Sin. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that a particular disease or illness can be traced to a particular sin. That would be simplistic and wrong. There are a lot of unrepentant sinners who are perfectly healthy, and there are a lot of good, faithful Christians who are afflicted with chronic illness and pain.

I’m speaking, rather, of the general sinful condition that pervades this fallen world, ever since the time of Adam, and the sinful nature that we all inherit from Adam and pass down to our children is the root problem that results in all the damage and disease and misery that afflicts the human family. And to fix this, Jesus had to get to the bottom of it.

And, Jesus did so by carrying our sins in his body to the cross. When Jesus sheds his blood for the sins of the world, that my friends, is big medicine! As Isaiah 53:4-5 says,

“Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed.”

Do we know that? Do we know that it was our sins for which Jesus died? Yes, our sins–of not loving God, of not hearing and heeding his Word. Our sins of wanting to be our own god, to make our own decisions about what is right and wrong. Our sins of lack of love for our neighbor. Of being jealous of our neighbor’s success. Of grumbling about those the Lord has placed in our life. Of gossip and greed. Of selfishness and un-forgiveness. Yes, those are our sins that Jesus is bearing, bleeding on the cross.

The fact that Jesus is bearing our sins, that Jesus is shedding his blood for them–Jesus on the cross is purchasing our healing. Sins forgiven means curse lifted. Resurrection ahead. Healing ahead. For you. For me. Forever. It’s as good as Christ’s own resurrection from the dead. It’s ours, through faith in him. He shares his gifts with us.

Don’t misunderstand–death is not the ultimate healing as some have proclaimed. Resurrection is! Resurrection is the gift of healing that Christ offers us all.

How does this gift get delivered to our door, with our name on it? Two words—Word and Sacrament. The ongoing ministry of the church is God’s means of delivering the gift Christ won for you and me on the cross. Word and Sacrament are not clichés. They are God’s delivery system for life and salvation, for healing of the soul, and, yes, healing of the body, too.

God is not just interested in saving our soul. He has also promised to redeem our body. God is committed to restoring creation, and that includes our bodies. God is going to raise up our bodies on the last day. We believe in exactly what God has promised: the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

In the Word preached, the Gospel is heard with our ears and taken into the heart with gladness. In baptism, water is applied to these physical bodies, and in communion, the bread and wine represent the body and blood, and we receive the elements—we eat, we drink—and in so doing we receive Christ. Physical elements for physical people, yet working out an eternal healing that redeems both body and soul because Jesus is Healer. And, because Jesus is Healer, we pray—we pray for healing in the body and in the soul.