Isaiah 30:15, 18 “For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, 'In returning [repentance] and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.'But you were unwilling...Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.”

Bad days happen. You know what I mean when I write about a bad day. I mean a day in which nothing went right, when nothing happened as planned, when everything I did just went wrong. Bad days happen, and they happen to all of us. Sometimes these bad days happen after having an amazing day when everything went right and sometimes bad days just pile up on each other. From my experience, when I have a bad day, I dwell on it and think about it. I can't get it out of my head. I go over and over the events during the day and wonder what went wrong, what would have happened if I had done something different, how could I have been so stupid (also how the ubiquitous “they” could have been so stupid). I fume about the day and just get upset.

I recently had a bad day and while I won't give details (I have had worse) I will say that things just went from bad to worse. When I finally got around to reading my Bible after having this horrible day, I read the above chapter and these verses popped out at me.

I have noticed something. I have these bad days when I am not paying as much attention to God as I should be. I have these horrible times when I am just coasting in my daily walk with Christ. Please do not misunderstand me, I have unpleasant days when I am paying attention and pursuing Christ daily, hourly, and even minutely but I don't notice it. God takes care of things and I am paying more attention to Him than to what is happening and things are not so bad to me. God does not mind waiting. He waited for who knows how long to create our world and then after the fall He waited for several thousand years before He sent Christ. He can wait a couple days or weeks or months or even years for me or you to realize that we need more of Him. When we return to Him, we need to spend the time beneficially in quietness trusting completely in Him with everything. This means not complaining or whining, not talking about it to our friends, but instead telling Him what we need and then letting Him take care of it in His timing.

We fail in complete and utter dependence on God. We fail in even trying to be completely dependent on Him. Often, we are so set in our own ways and ideas that we have no time to return and center ourselves in the word, and in quietness learning to trust Him. He can wait though. He can wait. We are the most precious thing in the world to Him, but He will wait for us to learn (the hard way usually) that we need to return and rest in His arms and to rely on Him for even the smallest of needs.

So, where are we in our need for Him? Where are we in relationship to God? Are we taking a nap in the lap of Papa God or are we striding away fuming at the stuck-in-the-muddness of “that senile old man in the sky.” Let us return and repent, let us rest and relax full in the knowledge that He has everything taken care of.

Be not dismayed whate'er betide,
God will take care of you;
beneath his wings of love abide,
God will take care of you.

Matthew6:19-21 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

I have my prized possessions, everyone has them. I have my treasured objects, my beloved hobbies, and I have experiences which I enjoyed exceedingly. We all do. And so far, one-by-one every single thing in my life has come under scrutiny and I have been placed into the difficult task of testing each and every above mentioned item, as well as everything else in my life. What do I treasure more? Do I treasure example A or God? How about exhibit B? And so forth. Not everything has been brought to this test, but slowly and surely they all will be and I find myself sorely lacking in certain respects in this too. I love my music, and that comes up again and again and again to be tested; I cannot treasure both music and God. I enjoy being with my friends, but I cannot have my friends and God on the same level. This also applies to serious relationships as well. What we treasure, every jot and iota of it, will be tested against our treasuring and desiring of Christ.

We treasure all the wrong things - money, stocks, long weekends off, a lake-front house, longevity, that perfect someone, even to be an international rock star. Yet, all of these things come to an end. With this period of economic turmoil, our bank or stock broker can go bankrupt and we loose all our stocks or fund (even both). We could find ourselves in too much debt and have the bank foreclose on that beautiful two/three story house on the beach. We could be diagnosed with cancer or Lou Gherig's Disease. We can learn that the perfect someone has found their perfect someone and it isn't us, everything is fleeting, everything is passing. But we desire things, all sorts of things, and most of them are bad for us. We desire Christ. This is a problem for us because we are continuously in the middle of a tug of war match between both Christ and the world. If we could only have one desire in us it would be so much easier, and yet we find that our fallen, earthly bodies which desire so much of the world (all of which God intended for good, and yet has been warped by Satan) are pulling us away from our spirit which desires only Christ! How many of us walk that line where we desire both things? Yes, it is hard! If we Christ, certainly we will get the desires of our heart, but our heart's desires are His desires and to our fallen sinful ideas, Christ's desires are not much fun. Conversely we know that the worldly desires are hurtful to us and will only bring us pain, yet we do not want to give up our apparent freedom!

What sort of treasure the is this? We go looking for treasure and we find a box, buried in the sand, but instead of containing gold and jewels, it contains rags, manure, and glass baubles! Looking deeper we will find that some of the occasional rag is actually fine gold cloth, some of the manure is in reality pure soil, and some of what we thought was glass are actually precious gems, and then we must take and test each and every item in that treasure chest. What do you want? The rags, manure, and baubles, or the cloth, the fertile soil, and the gems? Its up to you to decide, but remember that we will all face the test of Peter (John 21:15)over every desire in our lives. Christ will look us squarely in the eye and say “Do you love me more than these?” Whatever your answer is, it is between you and Him. For me, I desire it to be “Yes, Lord, you know I do” and I will treasure every minute of feeding His lambs or whatever it is He tells me to do, for that is a pursuit worthy of a lifetime.

Spirit of God, descend upon my heart;
wean it from earth; through all its pulses move;
stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art,
and make me love thee as I ought to love.

Psalm 107:25-29 “For He commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their evil plight;
they reeled and staggered like drunken men
and were at their wits’ end.
Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and He delivered them from their distress.
He made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.”

As I write, a tremendous storm has just finished battering the coast of Texas. Ike is currently a category two hurricane and has caused more destruction than 1998's Hurricane Charlie and Ike is bigger than Hurricane Katrina, spanning over 275 miles in radius. Ike was and is a dangerous storm. It is the storms that occur throughout life that mold and make us. It is the storms which test us, and it is the storms which show who we really are to others.

During the evacuation from Galveston, Texas immediately prior to Ike's landing there, traffic was gridlocked on the roadways out. The coast guard and army brought helicopters and began ferrying people away from Galveston. Finally the winds grew too strong for the helicopters to remain. They only had room for one more flight, and they would have to go. There would be eleven cars full of people who would have to be left behind. A Baptist evangelist and his family volunteered to stay, as did 10 other cars. As the last helicopter was taking off, instructions were given to the people left waiting, “Go to high ground and write your social security number on your body.” After the helicopter left, the evangelist turned around and invited all the others to go back to his house for the storm. After the storm, none of that group was damaged or injured, but they had had an amazing praise and prayer service.

The Lord will bring storms into our lives that threaten to wreck us and destroy us. The storms wreck all the others around us, but when we plant our strength in God and draw sustenance from Him, suddenly the storm isn't so bad. Suddenly all the worries and fears just fade away like the hype of a sports tournament. Sure the winds are damaging and the waves are punishing, tearing off the mast of our little boat and splintering the rudder, but we don't really need those anyways. God will get us to where we are going. And then the winds die out and the waves quietly subside at the moment when our little craft is about to be capsized or crushed.

Our breaking strain is known, and Christ is there with us to bolster us. We need only faith, but let us not forget the other important aspect. We need to take our worries and our fears to Him. We must cry out in all honesty and littleness of faith, “Lord! Don't you know that we are drowning? Please do something!” and He shall at the right time and in the right place. The winds and the waves heed His voice, as also the angels and the demons obey Him. Let us do likewise. The storm which blows so rapidly in will show who we really are. The storm will remove whatever veneers we have and display us for all to see. For myself I fully intend to show Christ.

Till the storm passes over, till the thunder sounds no more,
Till the clouds roll forever from the sky;
Hold me fast, let me stand in the hollow of Thy hand,
Keep me safe till the storm passes by.

Matthew 6:16-18 "And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Pretentious Holiness. One of the few things that Jesus really dwelt on in his ministry. He spoke about aiding the poor and the homeless and the alien. He spoke on loving your neighbor, He spoke on seeking after the Father, and He spoke on being pretentiously righteous. He would take the pharisees to task over this over and over and over again. I earnestly think that He did it because He really loved them and wanted them to understand what true righteousness was, what true holiness was, what true Godliness was, and what true love was.

We as a church body are severely guilty of this same sin. We drive around in our cars with the fish logo and a bumper-sticker from our local Christian radio station. When we are with other believers, we posture and strut saying things and doing things that shows just how much we are seeking after God. We throw ourselves into the church events, we mow the church lawn, we clean the windows, we donate towards ministry opportunities, we go to seminars, we teach seminars, we teach Sunday School and yet we seem to miss the whole idea. It is not what we do when others are watching, but what we do alone that is important. It is not how much church stuff we do, or what our outreach is. What matters is are we going about everyday life constantly the same? Are we helping the poor? Do we volunteer to mow the grass or edge the sidewalk at the homeless shelter? Do we help at the soup kitchen, and then say nothing about it Sunday morning while we “fellowship” with other believers in the foyer over coffee and cookies? That is what matters.

We are lacking in this. We practice a pretentious Christianity when we should be living out to the best what Christ asked us to do. What can we do now to be a more true believer and stop the unintended hypocrisies of our daily walk?

O Love, thy sovereign aid impart
to save me from low-thoughted care;
chase this self-will from all my heart,
from all its hidden mazes there;
make me thy duteous child that I
ceaseless may "Abba, Father" cry.