The Master's Voice

Does anyone remember the old RCA commercials featuring the dog listening to the phonograph entitled "His Master's Voice"? It showed a pup named "Nipper" with his head cocked to one side as he heard his master's voice coming out of the speaker.

Have you ever noticed like "Nipper" that when you spend time with someone you very quickly can pick their voice out of a crowd? Several weeks ago I was in a noisy, crowded gym helping to coach a basketball game. I was sitting on the bench talking with one of the players when I heard a noise and I said to Kristin, "That's Eloise!" I looked across the court and there was my daughter and son-in-law with their daughter, Eloise. She had cried out and I was able to pick out her three-month-old voice out of a crowd.

The same thing happened when my daughter was six weeks old. My wife came into an auditorium of about 2,000 people and when our daughter cried, I looked down from where I was seated and immediately knew where my daughter was.

In John 10, Jesus talks about this phenomenon of recognizing another's voice. Notice John 10:4. "His sheep follow him because they know his voice."

The Bible is filled with the stories of people who followed Jesus because they recognized His voice: Noah, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Esther, Daniel, and Paul are just a few examples of people like you and me who recognized the voice of Jesus.

How did they know his voice? They spent time with Him. They lingered in His presence. They didn't allow distractions and "noise" to drown out the voice of the one they had come to love. And so when He spoke, they listened and followed.

The key to knowing where Jesus wants to lead in our lives is to spend enough time in His presence that we learn to recognize His voice, so that when He speaks we know it's Him.

With so many things clamoring for our time and attention, sometimes it's easy to let the time slip away that we could be spending in His presence, learning the sound of His voice.

Let's set aside time this coming week to listen to the Master's voice.

The Answer

Several weeks ago I was visiting with a friend whom I hadn't seen in a couple years. As we were updating each other on things like jobs, family, health, etc., he made a comment that went something like this: "It sure is hard to live out your beliefs." I agreed without knowing that his words would have a prophetic touch for me.

Within 36 hours I had the opportunity to interact with three people who had a role in decisions about me that I didn't see as being positive decisions. My challenge? How to react to these people. Outwardly, I suppose you could say I handled myself well. Inwardly? Probably still smoldering a little if the truth be known.

Just to remind you, the name of my posts is "Grace Notes." Unfortunately I find myself struggling at times to live out the grace that I care about so very much. That troubles me. The past few weeks have brought pointed reminders to me that for all I profess about grace, too often I don't live gracefully. I hurt people by the things I say and do. That's not being gracious. And while I want to be a "champion" of grace, I want my actions to be more consistent with my words. It pains me immensely when that's not the case.

I take solace in the fact that I'm apparently not the first one who has struggled with knowing how he ought to live, yet struggling with actually living that way. Notice as I quote a rather extended selection of Romans 7 from "The Message."

"What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise...I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me?...The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does."

Paul makes it exceedingly clear for those of us who find ourselves in the dilemma of doing what we don't want to do and not being able to do what we'd really like to do, that the answer to our dilemma is Jesus Christ. Without Him and His grace the dilemma would continue to haunt us until our dying day. But by His grace and His grace alone, my actions and my words can more consistently be in alignment, and when they aren't, I can be assured that His grace covers my sin.

The dilemma--my human nature. The anwer--Jesus Christ.

May you find to all your dilemmas that Jesus Christ is indeed, The Answer!

All The More

I just returned home within the hour from having a PETScan. For those of you who don't know what this is all about, let me give you a very technical (Ha!) description of what's involved in a PETScan. First you aren't allowed to eat for a period of about 12 hours prior to the test, nor are you allowed to drink anything for about 6 hours prior. Then you get the privilege of drinking this creamy liquid concoction that's supposed to have a slightly "coconut" flavor. It's a poor attempt to mask the metallic taste of this stuff that doesn't exactly go down like a milkshake. That's followed by the insertion of an IV that allows them to inject radioactive dye into your system. The theory is that the radioactive material will collect in places where there are cancer cells. If this is the case, then it should show up on the subsequent scan they do of your body. All in all, it's a 90 minute process. Fun, huh? Not!

Anyway, I got to thinking--what if something could be injected into your body so that figuratively speaking, a scan could be done to locate the cancer of sin in your life. What would they find when they did the scan of your body? Where would the cells of sin be clustered?

The truth of the matter is this--without getting into specifics, a scan of my life would find sin cells clustered in far more parts of my life than I want. Now I have to admit that this would have been a far more scary reality at one time in my life than it is now. I used to measure my spirituality by the absence of sin. Now I measure my spirituality, not so much by whether or not sin is absent in my life, but rather by whether grace is present in my life. Please understand, I desperately want to grow in grace and become all that I can be through the power of His grace, so I'm not trying to excuse sin's presence in my life. It's simply that I want to focus on grace rather than on sin. I want to focus on the positive rather than the negative.

I think this is the basic message of Paul in Romans 5. He acknowledges the presence of sin in our world and in our lives, but he also proclaims the superior presence of grace in our world and in our lives through the person of Jesus Christ.

Notice these words of Romans 5:20, "But where sin increased, grace increased all the more."

Isn't that great news! Sin may be present, but God's grace is more powerfully present. So join me in celebrating the increased presence of grace in our lives--all the more!