real words

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon you hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on you foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:5-9    

There’s been a lot written about the first part of this passage, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all you strength.” But, it doesn’t end there. Even Jesus added to it when He called it the Greatest Commandment. And He said the second part was like, or just as important as, the first, “…love your neighbor as yourself.”

In other words, when you love God with all that you are you can’t keep it to yourself. Others will know you love Him, even if you try to keep it hidden (though for the life of me I can’t figure out why some people say they do). My son, Jordan, had never realized how many times Jesus had to people not to let anyone know who He was, but the Word still got out. You can’t keep eternal life a secret.

Take a close look at how the writer of Deuteronomy tells us to live this commandment outloud…to let people know about your love for God.

First, tie it on your hands. We see our hands and others see our foreheads. When everything we do is God first it’s like writing His promises and commandments on our hands. When we put our hands, our strength, to work for Him it’s a reminder of who we live for.

And second, put it on your forehead. The face is the first thing people see when they look at us. And the forehead is usually the most noticeable.

Our hands remind us and our foreheads show everyone else. And one is useless without the other. When we only use our hands for God, and don’t let anyone else know why we do what we do, then we live a sectarian and isolated life that no one can’t relate to. People don’t understand it…they’re not mind readers.

And when we only tell others about God’s commandments, but don’t have His word on our hands to remind ourselves, we become judgemental and legalistic…shoving our open Bibles in someone eles’s face while all we can see is its cover. I don’t know about your Bible, but I’ve never learned any of God’s promises from the its cover. To find out how to live a God first life, I need to have the pages opened toward me.

“God, tie your commandments to our hands so that we never forget your promises. And bind the word of your love to our foreheads so that the whole world will know how much You cherish them.”

“I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up!” Revelation 3:1-2   

How many of us think that our past deeds make us alive? We rest on our laurels shouting, “Look what I’ve done!” But it’s not what we’ve done that matters, all of that is as dirty rags, it’s what we’re doing that has life. I’m proud of the twenty years of experience I have, but where I’m going it doesn’t count for anything. What I’ve done to get here isn’t going to take me where I’m going.

Where am I going? I’m going to the future. No matter how hard I try, I can’t go to my past. God and time make it a matter of physics that I constantly move toward the future. And a living faith is about the future, not the past or victories gone by.

Yes, it is true that traditions are a foundation for building, but a foundation all by itself is useless. As good a job as the builders did on the foundation of my house, we couldn’t live on the foundation alone. We wouldn’t have been safe from storms or the scorching sun. We wouldn’t have been able to entertain guests. In short, we can’t live on a foundation alone.

And if we didn’t live in the house we wouldn’t have been able to comfort a young man having an epileptic seizure on the sidewalk. We don’t keep a clean floor so that it would be free from danger as he thrashed about, but it was ready for him. We don’t have carpeting so that he wouldn’t have to lay on cold cement during the seizure, but he’s glad it was there when he needed it. We didn’t have phones installed so that we could call an ambulance for him, but he may not have survived without it. When we moved our couch into the house we had no idea it would be needed as a place for him to rest comfortably after the seizure had passed, but he appreciated it.

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“Fools are put in many high places, while the rich occupy the low ones. I have seen slaves on horseback, while princes go on foot like slaves.” Ecclesiastes 10:6     

What is it that makes a leader? I’m not asking about positional leaders…by definition positional leaders aren’t leaders. If they were, the position wouldn’t be necessary.

Maybe the better question is: How do I make myself a leader? Honestly, you don’t. The Bible echoes a theme that says anyone who seeks to be a leader isn’t fit to be one. It’s like the old Groucho Marx line, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”

You may ask, “why are there so many people in positions of leadership that aren’t leaders? If there is no authority other than what has been established by God, why are there so many ‘dunces’ in leadership?” I dunno…even the writer of Ecclesiastes says with a sense of exasperation, “I have seen slaves on horseback, while princes go on foot like slaves.”

As I look back over the landscape of my life I realize that more often than not I was the “slave on horseback” while princes walked all around me…and I was clueless.

One of the very first times I ever led worship it was at a large, established church with over 2500 in attendance. I don’t say that to inflate the position I had. To the contrary, I point out the size of the congregation to set the stage for how far my ego was about to deflate.

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