“You are the salt of the earth.” Trust me when I tell you that those 7 simple words were in reality the loftiest compliment, the highest praise, that Jesus could have conferred upon us, His people.
I promise you that you will be both encouraged and challenged as you listen to this week’s Safe Haven PODCAST.
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It’s one of the saddest verses in all of the Bible, and yet (ironically) one of the most encouraging. Especially for one very special junior high student.
The verse to which I refer is John 1:11, which reads in the New Living Translation,
Jesus came to his own people, and EVEN THEY rejected him (emphasis added).
In other words, Jesus wasn’t only rejected by His own people. Jesus was rejected by nearly everyone.
A sad verse indeed. Yet a verse that means the world to at least one junior higher who shared with me that if he was given the chance to ask God any question, he would ask Him this:
How did you feel when you were all alone, when your friends left you? What should I do when this happens to me?
Imagine those heart-wrenching words coming from a twelve year old. Far too young to feel the torment of rejection. But feel it, he did. He does. And truth be told, throughout his life, he will feel it again and again and again.
Just like us.
And I can tell you from personal experience spanning now some six decades, and having felt the rejection of more people than I can count, reeling from rejection never gets any easier. Especially when the person who rejects us is someone whose approval and acceptance we desperately seek, want, or need.
How would Jesus have answered this student’s question?
Before I attempt to answer on His behalf (something I am always hesitant to do), let me first frame the answer by pointing out the following:
The rejection of Jesus became for Him a fact of His troubled life, His entire life. From birth to death.
His own mother was ostracized by her community because the word was whispered around that she got pregnant outside of marriage. Knowing that Joseph was not Jesus’ father, some concluded that Mary had been raped by a Roman soldier. Others merely concluded that Mary had violated her engagement by cheating on her husband-to-be.
Jesus carried that stigma throughout his adult life. His enemies even used it to cheap-shot Jesus when they mocked Him by asking Him (John 8:19, Amplified Bible),
Where is this father of Yours?
They took another shot at Him in John 8:41,
We are not illegitimate children and born out of fornication.
Implication: We’re not illegitimate children, like you!
What a hateful and hurtful thing to say.
Next, imagine this: When Herod heard that Jesus had been born in Bethlehem, he immediately ordered every Jewish baby boy two years of age and under to be barbarically butchered in a vain attempt to kill the baby Jesus in His crib. You talk about rejection. Just imagine what it would be like a) to be hunted by the government as an enemy of the state, and b) to have on your conscience the deaths of dozens of baby boys, all because the authorities were trying to kill you!
We know that Jesus’ own brothers rejected Him (John 7:5).
The Romans, of course, eventually killed Him.
But what about the crowds? The masses of people who dogged His every step? Study the story carefully and you will discover that every single time a crowd formed to follow Him, they eventually walked away. As soon as Jesus failed to give them what they wanted, they turned tail and left Him all alone.
Perhaps the most poignant scene is in John 6, just after Jesus miraculously multiplied the loaves and the fishes. The thousands came back the next day in order to receive their next free meal. When Jesus basically told them that His purpose was not to be seen as some sanctified Meals on Wheels provider of free lunches, they walked. In the wake of the rejection of these thousands of freeloaders, Jesus sullenly turned to His twelve disciples and asked what must have been a gut-twisting question,
Will you also go away? And do you too desire to leave Me? (John 6:67, Amplified Bible)
I’ll give you just one more. Did you know that Jesus was even rejected by His Heavenly Father?
It’s true. When Jesus voluntarily took upon Himself our sins while hanging on the cross, in that terrible moment Jesus paid in our place the penalty that you and I deserve. God the Father, being so absolutely holy that He cannot even look upon sin, turned His back on His Son and abandoned Him to the white-hot fury of His wrath, as Jesus essentially went to Hell so that we wouldn’t have to.
In that moment of absolute agony, Jesus cried out from the cross these words that ought to send chills down our spines:
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? (Matthew 27:46, New Living Translation)
Put that all together, and let me ask you: How would Jesus answer a junior high student when asked this all-consuming question,
How did you feel when you were all alone, when your friends left you?
He would probably say something like this:
It hurt. It hurt me deeply. In fact, the pain I felt every time someone rejected me was by far the worst pain that I ever felt.
And that pain hasn’t stopped. Every day, all around the world, there are people who hear about me only to reject me.
Every day, all around the world, there are people who once claimed to love me, to worship me, to pray to me, who for whatever reason abandon me and walk away.
There is no greater pain in all the world than to love someone, only to have that love rejected. There is no greater pain in all the world than to have created someone, and blessed them with this miracle that we call life, only to have them reject their Creator.
So believe me when I say that I hear your question, and I “get it.” I know up close and all-too-personal the pain behind your question.
I never wanted the people I created to reject me. And I certainly never wanted them to reject each other. And I definitely never wanted them to reject you.
I can only promise you that I will never reject you. It’s a promise that I made to you, and a promise that I will keep forever. My promise goes like this: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake (or abandon) you” (Hebrews 13:5).
Let me ask you: How would Jesus answer a junior high student when asked this all-consuming question,
What should I do when this happens to me?
I believe that Jesus would answer that question something like this:
You are my friend. You will always be my friend. And as your friend, I am going to answer your question as honestly as I can.
I know that you are hurting. Pain is never pleasant. But your negative pain can be turned into a positive purpose if you’ll consider these few ideas:
First, allow the pain of your rejection to remind you of the pain you can cause others when you reject them.
The neat thing about pain is that pain keeps us sensitive to the feelings of others around us. Our pain can help us to be a little more patient, a little more understanding, a little more compassionate, and quite a bit more gentle in our responses to others.
So the next time you treat someone else in an insensitive, unkind, hurtful sort of way, you may be causing them to feel the same hurt that you are feeling now.
Second, allow the pain of your rejection to remind you of the pain that I feel each and every day. Your pain is a window into my soul. You will now be able to relate to me on a much deeper personal level than you ever could if you never felt the pain of rejection. You and I now share something in common. I know all about your pain, and now you know about mine. In a sense, you and I now share an intimately personal experience. The bond that we can now build between your heart and my heart is worth the pain of rejection.
And third, please, please, please allow the pain of your rejection to become a power motivation in your life never, never, never to reject me.
There will be times when you will be tempted to think that I have failed you, or let you down. Maybe there will be a prayer that I don’t answer, a relationship that I don’t fix, a problem that I don’t solve. You may be tempted to get mad at me, or fear that I am mad at you. You might even be tempted to think that I have rejected you. But know this: I haven’t!!! It’s just that my plans for you and my thoughts about you are so great that there will be times when it’s hard for you to understand them, or you will feel the need to question them. I get that. It’s OK. You have my permission to question all of those things, and to tell me exactly how you feel. But I promise you that I will never, ever reject you.
Please don’t make the fatal mistake of rejecting me. When times get tough, let’s hold onto each other like never before. And I promise you that together, we’ll get through it just fine.
Wow. Quite the question from a junior higher to God. Thank you for being brave enough to ask it. I only hope and pray that my answer gives you some measure of the comfort of God’s grace and peace in your life.
Is it really true?
That the gateway to God’s blessing in my life opens wide when people say hateful, hurtful, spiteful, or malicious things about me? Or when they treat me in a hateful, hurtful, spiteful, or malicious way? Simply because I desire to live a righteous life, rather than an unrighteous one?
In this PODCAST, you are about to learn how blessedly true that really is.
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A brief word of blessing from my heart to all of my many pastor friends, the unsung heroes of our faith… Pastors who selflessly, sacrificially, and tirelessly serve their flocks without ever expecting or asking for anything in return. God bless you all!!!
Get ready to be encouraged. Super-encouraged, truth be known.
I say this because THE THING that everybody wants (and I say “everybody” without any fear of contradiction, without any worry of exaggeration)… THE THING that everybody wants is readily available, and ours for the asking.
It’s just that so many people have no idea what it is they really want. But trust me, we all want this…
You could call it “The Search for the Holy Grail.”
The Holy Grail: defined in two ways by our friends at the Webster Dictionary website:
1. In its formal usage: The cup/chalice from which Jesus supposedly drank in the Upper Room during the Last Supper, sought after (some would say) protected throughout the Middle Ages by the Knights Templar.
Which is NOT the Holy Grail to which I refer.
2. Informal usage: Something that we all very much want, but that is very hard to receive or to achieve.
Which is indeed the Holy Grail to which I do refer.
However, I would dispute the part about “very hard” to receive or to achieve.
As we are about to discover in this PODCAST, it’s not hard at all to find and to enjoy that Holy Grail — that which we all so desperately want and need (even if we don’t realize what the “that” is for which we are so desperately searching).
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I could not be more proud of my darling daughter, Ashley. She just posted this on Facebook. And she generously gave me permission to hijack it for this blog. The kind of thing that would make any dad shed a tear or two. It is well-worth a read!
Nora slept in our bed last night.
While I was laying there, taking my sweet time to fall asleep, as I often do, I kept thinking about how much I loved the sweet, little bundle next to me.
Then my mind jumped from that warm, happy place to the worst place imaginable where I kept thinking over and over, “What if something ever happened to her?”
I then devised a plan, a series of plans, that I would, of course, never actually be able to follow through on. Plans like never letting her leave the house, interviewing every person that may come into contact with her to make sure they are worthy of her, or the most practical of all: simply not allow her to grow up.
As I slowly had to let those ideas fade away, I began to realize what a shame it would be if any of them were possible. I would never get to see my little girl become a woman, I would never be able to see her develop her own likes and dislikes, I would never have the privilege of hearing her opinions, I would never get to witness her fall in love.
I then began to wonder, and then ultimately decided I believe, that God must feel the same way when it comes to us.
How He must long to create a protective bubble around us, and how His heart must break when we do things that hurt ourselves and others.
And all the while He is waiting, just like I will always wait for Nora, with a heart full of compassion, forgiveness, and love.
Knowing that I have a Father God who cares for me even more deeply than I do my precious child is so comforting… not to mention humbling!
And then I took this thought process and applied it to a bigger picture. I have had people ask me in the past, and upon occasion wrestle with the question myself, of why an all-powerful, loving God would allow pain and hurt in this world. I know that I may never have a complete answer to that, and there are many who have a greater grasp on this subject than I, but I did get a clear look at a small part of the picture.
In the same way that I will have to let Nora grow up and have free-will, in the same way I will have to let her become the person she decides to be, and in the same way I will have to allow her to one day make her own decisions that may be potentially devastating to herself and/or others, God has given us free-will. He let’s us grow into the people that we decide to be, and allows us the opportunity to make decisions that could be potentially devastating to ourselves and/or others. And He does that out of love… just the way I will with Nora… Always waiting with a heart full of compassion, forgiveness, and love, ready to step in at a moment’s notice to help her pick up the pieces, and with the hope that she may learn, grow, and be better for it.
I know that some people don’t and will not agree with me, and that’s okay… These are just the thinks that I think in the middle of the night.
Why do some people say the earth is millions of years old, and others say it’s only thousands of years old? I am so confused. I hear one thing in church, and another thing at school. Why can’t science and the Bible agree?
What great questions, asked by a junior higher at camp. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE these kinds of questions.
Believe it or not, the answer can be found in one simple little verse buried in the 1st chapter of the 1st book of the Bible, Genesis 1:11 (New Living Translation).
Then God said, “Let the land sprout with vegetation—every sort of seed-bearing plant, and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit.
Do you see the answer there? I didn’t think so.
OK, then try this, Genesis 1:20-21.
Then God said, “Let the waters swarm with fish and other life. Let the skies be filled with birds of every kind.” So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird—each producing offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.
Still don’t see it? Well then, let’s try one more, Genesis 1:25.
God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.
Anything grab you about those three examples? What should grab you is this: God created a FULLY-FUNCTIONING (or mature) planet and universe.
At the moment God created plants, they were fully grown, bearing seeds, and able to provide food for the animals He would next create.
When God created birds and fishes, the oceans and lakes and rivers were instantly teaming with them. Birds were immediately flying through the air; fish were swimming in the oceans.
When God created the animals, they were immediately able to walk the earth, eat the food, and reproduce.
The same can be said of Adam and Eve who were immediately told to reproduce and populate the planet (Genesis 1:28).
Do you see it? God created a fully-functioning, mature planet.
This is what I want you to remember, one sentence that will absolutely harmonize what you hear in church and what you hear in school. Are you ready? Because when you read this next sentence, you will realize that there is absolutely NO CONTRADICTION between science and the Bible. Here it comes:
God created a YOUNG earth that looks very OLD.
Read that again:
God created a YOUNG earth that looks very OLD.
Think of this: If you had been onsite 5 seconds after God created Adam, you would not have seen a baby crying in a crib. You would have met a fully-grown adult, one who looked much older than he really was.
Same with the plants, fishes, and animals. And even the stars. Read it in Genesis 1:16-17.
God also made the stars. God set these lights in the sky to light the earth.
Now let me ask you a question. How could the stars, which are millions of lightyears away from the earth (which means that it should have taken millions of years for the light of those stars to reach the earth), be seen on the earth immediately after they were created? Unless the Universe appeared to be millions of years old, even though at the moment of its creation it was only a few seconds old?
God created a YOUNG earth that looks very OLD.
You might also be interested to note that the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world is Jericho. I’ve looked at the excavations. Archaeologists have taken that city down to bedrock. And guess what they found? Jericho dates to around 9,000 BC. Making the earth around 11,000 years old.
If you add up all of the years of genealogies in the Bible, and account for the fact that there are gaps in the genealogies (meaning that the genealogies in the Bible are not meant, and do not claim to be, 100% complete) you come to the same conclusion: The earth is around 11,000 years old.
Yet, if you date a rock or fossil, the test will indicate that it appears to be millions of years old. Why the difference? Because…
God created a YOUNG earth that looks very OLD.
No different than when people look at me and think I’m only 41, when I’m really 61! (Ha! Just kidding. If only that were true…)
You get the point.
So let not your heart be troubled, my friend. What you hear at church and read in the Bible is true: The earth is very young. AND what you hear at school and read in science books is true: The earth appears to be very old. No contradiction. No cause for concern. God had it all figured out right from the beginning.
He always does!
Hope this helps. And thanks for the question!
And by the way, here is a fascinating ARTICLE that goes right along with this one. Read and Enjoy!!!
Wanna take a guess? Then stop reading. Because the very next sentence contains a vital clue.
Leave it to Jesus to offer a blessing that includes the word “meek,” the word which the noted Bible scholar William Barclay called “the most untranslatable word in the New Testament.”
Dr. Barclay was right. As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, I know of no other statement made by Jesus that has been so universally mistranslated, misinterpreted, or misapplied.
Except that Jesus did not come up with this…
Believe it or not, Matthew 5:5 is a quote taken verbatim from the Old Testament, specifically the book of Psalms, even more specifically Psalm 37, and even more particularly Psalm 37:11.
Consequently, it is only in the understanding of that singularly significant psalm that we can correctly understand and apply Matthew 5:5, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” to our lives.
Let me assure you that the words of this beatitude were and are revolutionary. We are talking about a world view here, one that is not natural. No one by nature has a single strand of meekness woven into his or her DNA.
And yet, as we will soon see, meekness is essential for you and me to develop if we long to live dynamic, vibrant, victorious Christ-centered lives.
And since this is the only blessing out of the eight beatitudes that Jesus quoted from the OT, in order for us to fully understand, appreciate, and apply this third beatitude to our lives, we must first understand Psalm 37 from which it comes. A truly remarkable psalm! A genuinely heartwarming psalm. A psalm that will confer upon you the totality of the blessing that Jesus pronounced on the masses who gathered on that hillside that day to hear Him.
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Jesus pronounced this amazing blessing on His followers: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
An amazing blessing to be sure. But is it an empty one? Who of us is actually “pure in heart”? Did not Jeremiah pronounce our hearts “desperately wicked”? Yes, I’m afraid he did.
And who of us can actually see God? Did not God tell Moses that “no one can see Me and live”? Yes, I’m afraid He did.
So what gives with this blessing, and its corresponding promise? Is this a bankrupt blessing? A pointless promise? At least as far as this life is concerned?
Oh, my friends. As you listen to this PODCAST, you are about to see some things that you have perhaps never seen before.
If this podcast is a blessing to you, PLEASE share it with your loved ones and friends. PLEASE “Like” it and “Share” it on Facebook and/or Twitter. I’d be most grateful, and so would they!
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No junior higher should ever have to ask God a question like this. But that is exactly the question one middle school student asked when given the opportunity.
“If you could ask God one question, and knew that He would give you an honest answer, what would you ask?” One student’s response:
“Why is my mom a crackhead, and why does she choose drugs over me?”
As I often say when talking to students at camp, I hesitate to speak for God. But I have a hunch as to how He might answer this heart-rending question. I believe that He would say this:
There are many, many kinds of addictions — alcohol addiction, food addiction, pain killer addiction, pornography addiction, sex addiction, nicotine addiction, gambling addiction, so many others — including, in the case of your mom, drug addiction.
And the two things that absolutely break God’s heart about addictions are these:
1. Every single addiction causes things to break. Broken lives. Broken relationships. Broken hearts — your heart, and God’s heart. And once the pieces of our lives, relationships, and hearts lie broken, it’s so hard, if not impossible, ever to put them back together.
2. Addictions are so, so, so easily avoidable. No one is forced to become an addict. Meaning that countless lives, relationships, and hearts are so often broken needlessly.
Think of it this way: No one is born an addict. Your mom was not born a crackhead. Addictions were never a part of God’s plan for her life.
Addictions always begin in the exact same way: A person (your mom) made a choice. A seemingly innocent choice, or so it would seem at the time. A small choice. An apparently insignificant choice.
Of course, I don’t know the specific back story about your mom. But I do know, and over the years have met, scores of people with a variety of addictions. And so far as I know, every single one of them at some point in their past made a fateful choice.
Your mom was either at a point of desperation in her life, and thought that smoking or swallowing or inhaling or injecting a substance into her body would dull the pain for just a few precious moments. Or she was with a group of friends just out to have a good time. Her friends were making choices. And they somehow persuaded her to make the same choice. So wanting to fit in, while in her mind minimizing the consequences, she made a choice.
In either case, she made a choice that had disastrous consequences.
Disastrous because one choice will usually lead to a second, which will then result in a third, that then becomes a fourth. And as is true with every addiction, she eventually passed a point of no return. At some point, she yielded the control of her body to a foreign substance or improper impulse, something that God never intended for her to do.
And the result is a broken life, broken relationships (including her relationship with you), and broken hearts (including God’s and yours).
I say all of that to say this: It’s not personal. Your mom is not choosing a drug over you. She never did choose a drug over you. Please read that again because I want you hear that. She is not choosing drugs over you.
I have no doubt that if your mom could turn the clock back to the split-second before she made her first disastrous choice, she would make a different choice the second time around. Never have I ever had an addict tell me that they are thrilled that they became addicted, and that if they had it to do all over again, they would become addicted again. Never. And that “never” applies to your mom as well.
Now, I know that none of this can repair a broken life, broken relationships, and broken hearts. But it can do the following:
1. You need not think about your mom’s addiction in terms of acceptance or rejection, as if she is accepting drugs and rejecting you. Please believe me: It is not personal. If someone could wave a magic wand and release her of her addiction, your mom would jump at that opportunity. But as you’ll learn in life, there are no magic wands.
2. Your mom needs you now more than ever. Even if she seems to be pushing you away. She needs you to show her the highest form of love in the Universe. We call it unconditional love. The same kind of love that God has for you, and for your mom.
God loves your mom no matter what, addictions included. I mean, if anyone should feel rejection, as if your mom is choosing drugs over Him, it’s God. But He “gets” that it’s not personal with Him either. So in spite of her addiction, God loves your mom. You now have a golden opportunity to learn to love her in exactly the same way that God loves you. God will always love you, no matter what. As I learned a long time ago,
“People need love the most when they are the most unlovely.”
So does your mom.
3. Every time you feel the pain of your mom’s addiction, this can be your most powerful reminder and motivator to be very, very careful about the choices that you make. Choices about what you do with your body, and what you put into your body. Especially when you are tempted to think that you can get away with it, that you will beat the odds. The four deadliest words that I know for a Christ-follower are these:
“I can handle it.”
“I can handle it if I just take one drink.” “I can handle it if I take that one drug.” “I can handle it if…” I beg you, beg you to be very, very careful about what you do with your body, and what you put into your body. Because it’s a devastating thing to become a slave to any addiction.
I leave you with this. A simple instruction which, if your mom had read this and taken it to heart, would have protected her life, her relationships, and your heart from being broken. It may be too late for her; it is not yet too late for you.
The Apostle Paul was thinking of dear, precious people just like your mom when he wrote this:
Some of you say, “We can do anything we want to.” But I tell you that not everything is good for us. So I refuse to let anything have power over me… We are not supposed to do indecent things with our bodies. We are to use them for the Lord who is in charge of our bodies (1 Corinthians 6:12-13, Contemporary English Version).
If you will make a choice to live according to 1 Corinthians 6:12-13, then out of the ashes of your mom’s addiction will result the beauty of your God-honoring life.
The Latest News from Jerusalem
Dewey Bertolini 