DayBreaks for 4/04/19 – The Hidden Victory

From the DayBreaks archive, April 2009:

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. – Colossians 2:15 (NIV)

God has always had a strange way of winning.  Sometimes His victories are more spectacular than you can imagine: the great flood as a judgment on sin, crossing the Red Sea and the Jordan, the victory at Jericho, the shepherd boy with the slingshot, Gideon’s brave 300, Samson’s bringing down the roof.  All of these things must have been very spectacular to witness.  How I do hope God has instant replay in heaven so we can see them!

Sometimes, however, God’s victories don’t look so much like victory as like defeat.  In 1939, a young pastor, Helmut Thielicke, took his first pastorate in a church in Germany.  Thielicke was young and full of vigor, and he arrived with full confidence in Jesus’ words, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”  Thielicke told himself that Hitler was just a paper tiger, soon to be consumed by his own arrogance and greed and pomposity. 

After Thielicke arrived, he called for a Bible study.  A whopping three people showed up – two ladies who were so old that they looked like they were made of brittle parchment that could be destroyed by a tiny gust of wind, and an equally old man who had played the church organ, but who was now so old that his hands hardly worked at all.  They sat in a small group inside the church, studying the Word, while all the time they could hear the sounds of the jackboots of Hitler’s Youth Corps hammering on the streets as they marched and drilled. 

Thielicke’s confidence shattered.  Hadn’t Jesus said “ALL authority?”  What about the raging authority that Hitler wielded like a club against his opposition? 

In time, Thielicke came to understand what I hope most of us eventually come to realize: either Jesus’ words had a meaning far deeper than we have yet to grasp, or else his words were a blatant exaggeration…perhaps nothing more than the boastful bleatings of madman.  Was Jesus just a Lamb masquerading as a Lion for the sake of His disciples?

Hitler is gone – fallen in shame and disgrace.  Jesus is still on the throne.  When the last king or queen, the last President, the last dictator and prime minister has passed into the pages of history, Jesus will go on, reigning and ruling in majesty and glory such that the world has never seen.  When the last enemy, Death, has been obliterated forever, Jesus will go on.  When tears are forever banned, Jesus will rule.  When ten trillion years have passed in eternity, the celebration of His reign will only be beginning and it will never stop. 

You see, the Lion is the Lamb, and the Lamb is the Lion.  In any case, the victory that was hidden in the death on the cross will sway all of eternity.

Prayer: Hallelujah, Lord Jesus, for You reign now in glory above and You welcome us to the great celebration of victory!  May we proclaim the victory of the Lion Lamb throughout all our days on earth and in heaven above!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2019 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

 

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DayBreaks for 2/21/19 – I AM #7: The Resurrection

DayBreaks for 2/21/2019: I AM #7: The Resurrection

John 11:25 (CSBBible) – Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.

We often think about powerful people or things. At least I do. There is a saying that “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That was never less true than in the case of Jesus.

As the mourners were gathered around Jesus as he stood outside of Lazarus’ tomb that day, they weren’t just in the presence of a craftsman’s son from Nazareth – they were in the presence of the greatest power the world ever has or will see. They were in the presence not of the one who would bring the resurrection, but of the One who IS the resurrection. The mourners gathered at the tomb never expecting to see Lazarus again for he was dead – certifiably dead as he’d been in the tomb long enough that, according to Jewish thought, the spirit would have left because the corpse was no longer identifiable. Yet standing shoulder to shoulder with them was the power of life over death, the power to turn corrupted flesh into vibrant, pink tissue, the power to restart a heart.

The Jews had a very troubled history by the first century: defeat, captivity, slavery, oppression and no or very little vindication, yet they had an unshakeable conviction that they were the people of God and given His character, they reasoned that there must be world beyond where all would be made right and the dead would live again in peace.

This raising of Lazarus is a foreshadow, but a poor one, of what our resurrection will be. Lazarus was going to die again. Our resurrection (and his second one!) will be into immortality.

I don’t know about you, but I need that kind of power in my life not just for the future, but for the now as well. I need the power of one who can transform my sinful self into something new and living. And the one who can do that is not just standing shoulder to shoulder with me at a graveside, but he lives within. All I need do is to hear his voice and “come forth”.

PRAYER: Lord, let us live in your resurrected power not just for eternity, but in the now as well! In Jesus’ name, Amen.  

Copyright by 2019 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

 

DayBreaks for 1/09/18 – A Morsel or a Feast?

DayBreaks for 01/09/2019: A Morsel or a Feast?

From the DayBreaks Archive, 01/05/09:

“If I can only touch his robe,” she thought to herself.  The poor woman had been bleeding for years.  No one had been able to alleviate her suffering.  There was one more hope, one more chance – and she knew she had to take it.  The Rabbi was coming to town and he was the talk of the village.  The things he’d done elsewhere were incredible – or at least the stories of them were!  He’d healed the lame, given sight to the blind – even those blind since birth!  There were even stories about him raising the dead.  It was worth a chance – it was the last option she could think of.

But the crowds were so large – and she was so embarrassed by her condition.  How could she ever talk to him?  And then it dawned on her, “Maybe I don’t need to talk to him.  Maybe he doesn’t need to touch me.  Maybe it’ll be enough if I can just touch his robe.”  And so, casting caution to the wind and subjugating her fears, she pressed into the crowd.  It was hard to see where he was through the many bodies, but suddenly, there he was – right in front of her.  Did she dare reach out to touch him?  Others were.  He was being bumped and jostled.  But did she have the courage? 

Finally, she stretched out her arm and barely touched the hem of his robe.  And immediately, he stopped and turned, and she was in the spotlight – the very last thing she ever wanted.  “Who touched me?” he asked.  “It was me,” she stammered, eyes wanting to turn down to the ground in shame, but somehow she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his.  But she was healed.

In this miracle, recorded in Mark chapter 5, there are several things worth grasping:

FIRST: the part of the woman in what happened was miniscule.  She just reached out.  What she did isn’t as important as the fact that she did something.  She wasn’t content, in her need and misery, to just sit and hope Jesus would bump into her.  She was tired of being sick and wanted to be healed – now, today.  We are often far to content to remain in our sickness.  After a while, it becomes a part of our identity – and some even seem to revel in their misery and telling others how miserable their life is.  None of that for this woman.  There should be none of it for us, either!  Her healing started when she reached out to Jesus.  It’s the same with us.

The next two lessons are unique to this story in the Bible.  It’s not recorded that they happened anywhere else, but Mark took the time to point them out for us, and I’m glad he did:

SECOND: Jesus healed the woman before he even knew it.  I suppose this could be debated – being God, he certainly knew she was there, but his statement, “I felt power go out from me” is only made here and not in any other case of healing.  There wasn’t any fancy light show, trumpets blaring, or public pronouncements of “Watch this, folks…just watch what I’m going to do for this woman.”  It just happened before Jesus could even apparently think about it.  As Max Lucado put it, it seems as if the Father short-circuited Jesus for a moment – the Divine Christ was a step ahead of the human Christ.  No hoopla.  Just healing.  This tells me that God/Jesus are eager to heal…perhaps just waiting for us to reach out and make some effort, as did this woman.

THIRD: when Jesus addresses this woman, he calls her “Daughter.”  He never says that to anyone anywhere else – not to Mary Magdalene, not to Mary or Martha, not to anyone that we know of.  If you were that woman – full of fear and trepidation, singled out in front of the entire crowd who has grown silent, listening to the interchange – how do you think it would have made you feel to hear him tenderly call you, “Daughter” and not “Woman…” or “You…”?

Tolstoy wrote of a time he met a beggar on the street.  Tolstoy reached into his pocket to give the man some money, but found there was nothing there.  Tolstoy said, “I’m sorry, brother, but I have nothing to give you.”  The beggar’s face lit up and he said, “You have given me more than I asked for – you have called me brother.”

To the loved, to the desperate, to the lonely and love-starved, a single word is not just a morsel, but a feast!

Prayer:  Almighty Creator, Loving Father – thank you for wanting to heal us.  Give us the courage to reach out.  Help us hear your Son’s voice as he calls us “son” or “daughter”.  May we rest in Your everlasting goodness!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2019 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 01/01/2019: Live the Power

Generators inside Hoover Dam. See the tiny human to the lower right. 

From the DayBreaks archive, December 2008:

I am fascinated by power – not political or positional power, but energy. I’ve never been to Niagara Falls but only seen it from flying overhead. I’ve been told by those who’ve been there that the power of the water rushing over the falls is awesome. Hoover Dam houses 17 generators that are over 70 feet tall weighing over 2000 tons each. It takes about three years to assemble each generator. The moving part of each generator weighs over 800 tons and spins 3 times per second (180 times a minute!) Together, they generate over 2000 megawatts of energy (unless my math is wrong, that’s 2 billion watts). Pretty heady stuff. But it’s nothing compared to what’s being built just over the hill from us at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It’s call the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and will be by far the most powerful laser in the world. Actually, it will be composed of 192 lasers when completed. Get this: the NIF will be able to generate 500 TRILLION watts of energy, a figure that is 100 times the total US generating capacity as of today. But there’s a tiny catch…that level of power will only be sustainable for 4 billionths of a second.

Here’s a story about another kind of power: “Christian Herter was the governor of Massachusetts, running for a second term in office. After a busy morning kissing babies and chasing votes, he arrived at a church BBQ in his honor. Late in the afternoon, he was famished. Moving down the serving line, he held out his plate to the woman serving chicken. She put a piece on his plate and turned to the next person. “Excuse me,” Governor Herter said, “do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?” “Sorry,” the woman told him. “I’m supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person.” “But I’m starved,” the governor said. “Sorry,” the woman said again. “Only one per customer.” Governor Herter, a modest/unassuming man, decide that this time he’d throw his weight around a little. “Do you know who I am?” he said. “I’m the governor of this state.” “Do you know who I am?” the woman said. “I’m the lady in charge of the chicken. Move along, mister.”

This lady had power and authority because she knew who she was and what she was supposed to do. Have you ever thought about what the world would be like if we Christians ever really understood WHO and WHAT we are in Christ?! If we ever grasp the truth of our sonship/daughtership – look out world! In Titus 2:15 Paul encourages Titus to teach, encourage and rebuke with all authority and not to let anyone despise us. We need to be courageous and take a stand and refuse to be despised! Then, 2 Tim. 1:7 says God’s Spirit doesn’t make cowards out of us. The Spirit gives us power, love and self-control. Do you live like you believe that?

When Satan comes through life’s serving line and wants things from us – let’s agree to tell him to “move along, mister!” We don’t have to take (or give) anything to him! Live in the power of the Spirit in 2019!

PRAYER: Father, may we come to appreciate and realize who we are, and what we are becoming, in Christ!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2019 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 10/26/18 – The Hunger to Be Somebody

What does success look like to you?

Winning the championship over all the other teams in your sports league?

Checking off every item on your to-do list?

Getting that new job or promotion you were hoping for?

Putting the kitchen in order after making a homemade meal from scratch?

To James and John, success looked like sitting next to Jesus, each on one side of their Lord, basking in his reflected glory. And that’s not particularly bad, is it? Don’t we all long to be next to Jesus? But there’s a problem: perhaps they imagined him as a king seated on a great throne with themselves as his trusted advisors on thrones that were just a little less glorious. Whatever their mental image, their longing for success was so strong that it overcame any reluctance they might have had in approaching Jesus.

At least the way they opened the conversation suggests some hesitation on their part. “Teacher,” they began, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Instead of asking Jesus directly, James and John seemed to test him out first. Like children coming to Mom and Dad with something they know isn’t quite right, they apparently hoped that he would say yes first and ask questions later. But Jesus wisely and quite rightly responded with a question of his own: “What is it you want me to do for you?“

Finally the two brothers made their request, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” No wonder they had tried to approach Jesus in such a roundabout way. They hoped to be singled out for places of honor above everyone else, even above their fellow disciples.

Everybody wants to be somebody. Since the dawn of history, human beings have been trying to move up the scale of importance. The clincher used by the serpent to tempt Adam and Eve was “when you eat of [the tree of good and evil], your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). Henri Nouwen says that ever since then, we have been tempted to replace love with power. “The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led.” This is a theme running through the Bible, through human history and through our own psyche. Do you see it in yourself?

PRAYER: Lord, help us to be content with our identity as your beloved children and choose love rather than dominion or favor!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2018 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 10/4/18 – The Problem Wasn’t Him

DayBreaks for 10/04/18: The Problem Wasn’t Him

From the DayBreaks archive, October 2008:

Get the scene: Jesus has been crucified and buried and has raised from the dead.  He’d met with his 11 remaining disciples in the upper room and they’d seen him, and at least Thomas had also touched him.  He’d met them on the shore of the lake and fixed a fish breakfast – and restored Peter.  And now, the time has come for him to return to the Father. 

Matthew 28:16-20 (NIV) – Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

You’d think that after all the time they’d spent with Jesus and all that they’d witnessed, they’d have it down by this time, but as verse 17 says, “some doubted.”  (Mercifully, the names of those “some” are not revealed to us, or we’d probably criticize them severely.)  There were still some who doubted and wondered and were fearful.  And so, Jesus has a message for them, a message about God having given him ALL authority in heaven and on earth. 

What was it that Jesus wanted them to understand?  That they needn’t fear even one single thing (or any thing) for one simple reason: He has all authority – and control.  He has healed the sick, given sight to the blind, strengthened feeble legs so that they could walk, filled the ears of the deaf with the song of birds and laughter, brought the dead to life and even rose from the dead himself.  And yet, they still doubted – they still feared.  You see, their doubting problem wasn’t caused by some failure in Jesus and how he’d prepared them – it was humanity’s problem of believing what they’d seen and heard him do and not accepting that all authority resides in him.  There is no need to fear anybody on earth or in heaven.  Why?  Because He has all authority!

Are you a doubter?  Are you fearful?  The problem isn’t his – it’s yours – and mine – for not remembering His authority! 

PRAYER: Lord, quell our fears and doubts, and help us to believe in the full authority of Your Son!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2018 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 7/05/18 – A Better Use of Energy

From the DayBreaks Archive, July 2008:

Energy – the discussion is everywhere these days, mostly due to the price of oil.  Should we drill in ANWR?  How about offshore?  Should we be tapping into the strategic petroleum reserve in an effort to lower prices and drive down costs?  How about the bio-fuels that have been touted, such as ethanol, etc., that once seemed to hold such promise but which now are becoming more and more suspect as part of the solution?  Should Congress allow building more oil refineries?  How about nuclear power?  Hydrogen fuel cell cars?  Solar powered vehicles, or other forms of electric vehicles? 

Not all energy gets pumped out of the ground.  There’s the energy in our human hearts and in our bodies.  As we get older, it is a standing “joke” about how we are more tired than we used to be and how we have less energy than when we were younger.  Sadly, our spiritual energies can get taxed and worn, too. 

Some of our expenditure of energy is due to trying to be something that we aren’t.  That always takes more energy than being genuine.  In Waking the Dead, John Eldredge wrote: “We at least know this: we know that we are not what we were meant to be.  Most of us spend our energy trying to hide that fact, through all the veils we put on and the false selves we create.  Our first parents thought they could hide behind fig leaves and in the bushes, and we do the same – only with more sophistication.  Far better to spend our energy trying to recover the image of God and unveil it for His glory.”

Adam and Eve spent time and energy trying to hide from God.  I want to spend the remaining years of my life trying to recover the image of God that I’m meant to carry.  It’s a much better use of energy!

PRAYER:  God, empower us through Your Spirit to do what we were created to do and to be!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

COPYRIGHT 2018 by Galen C. Dalrymple. All rights reserved.