A Tragic Quietness Feb.

23, 2005

From time to time I sit back and marvel at how patient God is with me. I try to
put myself in His shoes to try and comprehend His love for me, yet no matter how hard I
try I just can’t understand. What is it about me that is so appealing to Him? What is it
about me that He is willing to continually discipline me and try to grow me up? What is
it about me that is deserving of His love? I don’t get it. I even compare my being a
father and the love that I have for Collin to His being my Father and His love for me, yet
it still doesn’t quite compare. I lose my patience with Collin from time to time and just
need everything to be quiet for minute. I try to discipline him and at times he laughs in
my face, and I get frustrated. Think of that scenario for a second. How often does God
discipline us and we ignore Him and laugh in His face? How long will His patience last?
I believe that His patience for me will last for the rest of this lifetime simply because of
the commitment I have made to Him, but what about the rest of the world? How long
will His patience last for them.
Last Saturday I walked down the stairs to my work laptop. I brought up my e-
mail and took a look at the turnover report from the night before. This is a report that we
put out at the end of our work shifts to let the guy coming on shift next know what has
been done, and what still needs to take place. I noticed that Paul had a report out there,
which was odd. He was on 2nd shift the night before; which meant that all calls were
supposed to be routed to another guy before they came to him. The thought that came to
mind was that it must have been an extremely busy night. I continued to look through the
e-mail, but did not come across a report from Adam. Although he was on 1st shift the
previous night, this really didn’t surprise me. “What a slacker”, I said to myself. And the
thoughts continued; “just because this guy is leaving the break/fix team, he thinks he can
get away with ignoring all the calls”; “they really need to fire this guy”, etc.
I am sure you can fill in a thought or two that you may have had if you were
sitting in my seat. We all work with those people who just never seem to place a sense of
priority in anything they do. If they spent half the time doing their job that they spend
trying to avoid it, they would be good workers. You know that person. There is at least
one at all our jobs. What made Adam tough for me was that we worked the exact
opposite schedules. The days that I worked, were the nights that he worked, meaning that
I would turn cases over to him, as well as he turning cases over to me. Trust me when I
say that there has been more than one occasion that I shared my frustration about Adam
with Ang; “can you believe I had to go over there and do a job that he blew off”, “guess
who didn’t do his job right, so now I have to be here finishing it the right way”. What
was I doing through all that complaining? I was complaining about him, and through
those complaints building myself up to my wife. Yeah, it’s OK to vent every once and
awhile, but after some time we just need to let it go and accept that everyone can’t be just
like me; and thank God for that. Although I didn’t come out and say the words “look
how great I am”, I did say, without saying the words, “look how great he isn’t”.
Bragging? I don’t know, what do you think?
It turned out to be a good Saturday for me. I didn’t get called into work. It was
my first Saturday off in quite some time and I didn’t let ‘the Adam thing’ get to me
because he was changing his schedule. He would no longer be working opposite me, so
his lack of attention-to-detail would no longer affect me directly. I could not have been
more wrong. It was his lack of attention-to-detail that I believe will affect me for the rest
of my life; not his attention to the details of work, but his attention to the precious details
of life.
I got a call on the way back from church last Sunday from a co-worker named
Mike. “Did you hear about Adam?”, he asked. ‘Finally,’ I thought, ‘they fired him’.
Then I comforted myself with a nice thought; ‘Gosh, I hope he finds another job. He has
a wife and two kids to support’. “No”, I said, knowing that I was about to get all the
details. Mike is known for disseminating all of the important information within the
office. (That is how we guys refer to gossip). “Adam is gone”, he said. I almost started
to pat myself on the back for guessing correctly, and then came the shocking truth.
“Adam killed himself,” Mike said. “He shot himself in the head at a customer site Friday
night”.
My world stopped. Not a word could exit my mouth as I tried to understand what
I had just heard. I felt this feeling in my gut that I just was not accustomed to feeling, a
feeling that I can only refer to as a pit; this emptiness that I could do nothing about. As
Mike was spewing all the details of what he knew, one thought entered my mind, and has
not left yet; A thought that will stay with me for the rest of my days. ‘Chris, you never
told him the Truth’. Jesus says, “I am the way, the Truth, and the life…” Adam was so
lost in the world that he believed the lie told to him by the enemy’s forces. A lie that
stated that he could no longer deal; that life was not worth living; that he was better off
dead.
I knew the truth that is Jesus, yet I never told him. I talked to him almost every
day that I worked, and I never explained to him how God left the comforts of heaven to
come and save him. And what is eating me, is that God has been telling me to open my
mouth; to tell of what I know.
In many different ways God has led me to speak, and has told me in ways that I
know could only have been from him, through the translation of the Holy Spirit. The
most evident is one from a few months back. As I was reading in Matthew about Jesus’
feeding of the five thousand, God spoke to me very clearly.
If we remember, some time before this incident though, Jesus gave us what we
now refer to as The Sermon on the Mount. At the beginning of this preaching, Jesus
teaches us the Beatitudes, which for my wife and I, was a life saving teaching. It was
through Pastor Chris Dixon’s preaching on these words given to us by our Lord, that Ang
and I came face to face with Christ and we were given an opportunity to respond. On our
first visit to Northside Community Church, we heard these words, and within a month’s
time, Ang and I had submitted our lives to Christ.

Blessed are those who hunger

and thirst for righteousness,
because they will be filled.
Matthew 5:6

If we look into this awesome piece of scripture and spend a little time with it, we
can really see the picture that Jesus painted for us. He promises that those who hunger
and thirst will be filled. I think we take this too lightly here in America. We say we are
hungry if we missed breakfast in this morning and are too busy to hit a drive thru on the
way to work; or we are thirsty if we walk out to the mailbox on a hot summer’s day and
have a hint of perspiration on our brow. Let’s put it in the perspective of one who is
literally starving; one who if he doesn’t get food or drink will die. If we take our longing
for righteousness with that perspective, then God says we will be filled. We will be
satisfied. We will have enough. How much is enough? I don’t know; so that tells me
that my perspective isn’t where it should be.
Now, as we move up to Matthew 14, we see as Jesus performs the only miracle,
besides the resurrection, that is recorded in all four gospels. He demonstrates with the
use of food how God will provide. This multitude of people was hungry and thirsty to
the point that the disciples told Jesus “…send the crowds away so that they may go into
the villages and buy food for themselves (v.15b).” Imagine that. They told Him. The text
does not say that they suggested or asked, but that they told. They told Him to send the
people away so that they could care for their own needs. (How often do I have an
attitude like that?) And how does Jesus show His sovereignty? He says, “They do not
need to go away. You give them something to eat (v.16).” Can you imagine their
confusion? I can. I get confused every single time God directs me without giving me the
specifics. I fight it, make excuses as to why it can’t be done, and try to get around it by
doing something that is a little less uncomfortable for me. “…We have here only five
loaves of bread and two fish.”(Matthew 14:17), “…That would take eight month’s of a man’s
wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?”(Mark 6:37b),
“…We have only five loaves of bread and two fish-unless we go buy food for all this
crowd.”(Luke 9:13b), “…eight month’s wages would not buy enough bread for each one to
have a bite!”(John 6:7), “…but what can I give them, there is nothing I have that they
want.”(Nix) Jesus outlines for His followers that their concern for the people’s well being
should be so great that they not send the people away, but care for their needs themselves.
As I read this account, the spirit moved within me and had me take a good, hard
look at myself. I saw (and still see) myself as one of these disciples. Here are these
people who are hungry, all around me. They don’t know what they are hungry for, but
they are definitely hungry. If they weren’t, would they be slaving day in and day out for
the almighty dollar? Would they be caught up with all the addictions that this world has
to offer? Would they be trying to get their fill from all of these places that cannot give
them what it is that they promise: fulfillment?
I know who makes that exact offer and comes through with what He promises, yet
I still make excuses. ‘…I can’t witness to him, because I don’t know the Bible well
enough’; ‘He won’t listen to what I have to say because he lives with his girlfriend and
will think I am putting him down’; ‘that guy will just laugh in my face’; ‘I don’t want to
push him away’, etc. Yet Jesus himself shows us with this miracle that it isn’t us who
does anything. We are to just be willing to hand out the bread. He will do the rest.
I lost that chance with Adam. The only thing that is holding me together through
this is the hope that Adam may have been saved sometime earlier in life. Pastor Chris
spent some time with me and graciously answered some questions and gave me some
insight. He took me to the book of Jude.
I have to honestly say that Jude was a book I read thru without paying much
attention to the words. It is one of those books that we fly through because of the length
of it. We see it is only a chapter in length, the only thing keeping us from the great book
of Revelation, so we subconsciously fool ourselves into thinking there is no meat to it.
There was a person who made reference to the same type of thing while giving his
testimony a month or so ago and I was so relieved to see the heads of many people
nodding in agreement with his statement.
Pastor Chris showed me where the Word says that He will keep us from
stumbling. My translation uses the word falling instead. I then questioned what he
showed me by asking, “If Adam stumbled into a sin so great as to take his own life, does
that mean he never had salvation?” Chris then brought me to the second part of verse 24
where it states that He “…will present you before His glorious presence without fault and
with great joy…” You see, it is not that He will keep us from stumbling into sin, but that
He will keep us from falling into hell. Once we have salvation, we will not lose it. He
will not lose grasp of us again, Praise the Lord.
But what if Adam wasn’t saved? What does that mean? From the little bit of
knowledge I have of the scripture, I have come to the conclusion that Jesus Christ died
and hung on a cross and paid for the sins of all people, not just those who were to be
saved one day. That means that He paid the ransom for Adam and will not get the return.
That means that he took a beating that I cannot comprehend, had the flesh ripped from
His body, had spikes driven through his hands and feet, was hung on a cross to die under
the weight of His own body, just to say to Adam, ‘This is how much I love you!, there is
nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”, but the response he got was, ‘well, I didn’t ask you to do
anything.’ That means that someday, I will have to not only stand before God to answer
for my actions of this life, but I believe, I will also have to answer for my lack of action
as well. Who is the Adam in your life?
Why is He so patient with me? So patient that He will allow me to stand by and
watch as He needlessly pays the price for the sins of people who won’t accept His gift.
You see, that is what I am doing if I stand by with my mouth shut as people fall closer
and closer to an eternity of separation from Him. So why is He so patient with me? I
believe it comes back to the thing about Him that I just cannot comprehend. The attribute
that makes God who He is: Love. What I think I know about love, I’m sure, doesn’t even
touch the surface of what it really is.
I remember sitting with the praise team one Wednesday night sharing with them
the urgency that God has shown us to further His kingdom. In hindsight, I see exactly
why He spoke so clearly, I just wish He didn’t have to show me so clearly.
In the very first book of the Bible, we find what is probably the clearest picture of
just how patient God really is, as well as the fact that in time, His patience will run out.
Genesis 5 begins with an outline of the lineage from Adam (through Seth) to Noah.
What really kind of caught me off guard was that Enoch was the only one listed who was
to have walked with God. Even Adam, the first, was not known to have walked with
God. It took seven generations, 687 years, before we see man walk with God. Yes,
that’s patience, but not what God showed me.
Enoch is known to have walked with God for 300 years (Gen 5:22), yet it was not
until after the birth of his son Methuselah that we see this. The miracle of child birth is
definitely a life changing experience.
I can relate. The birth of Collin was the most unbelievable thing I think I will
ever witness, and it was not until after his birth, that I began following God. Was it there
that I finally realized how precious life is? Was it then that I got the first glimpse of
God? I’m not sure, but looking back today, I think so. It was a life changing event for
me, without a doubt.
We know nothing else of Enoch, at least from what I can tell. But what we do see
is tragic. Here is Enoch, walking with God. Picture him. He got it; he came to the
realization that the relationship was what it was all about. I mean, you don’t walk with
someone for 300 years without an investment; a relationship. How proud God must have
been of this child. In fact we see just that. We see the bond; the closeness of their
relationship. “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him
away.” (Gen 5:24)
But how is this tragic? It seems like such a victory. We see the tragedy of it
unfold almost a thousand years later. “Altogether, Methuselah lived 969 years, and then
he died.”(Gen 5:27) Methuselah, whose birth (I believe) changed the life of Enoch, never
walked with God. We can speculate one of two things from this. The first being that
Methuselah was too stubborn to accept a relationship with God, or the second, which I
lean toward, which is that Enoch did not take the time to explain to his son who God
really is and how he longs for a relationship with all His children. I mean, in the 300
years of walking with the creator, you have to think that God let on to what is important
to Him. Did Enoch not share what he was told, or did he just not share the urgency of it?
I don’t know, but none the less, the outcome is the same.
Look how long God waited for Methuselah; 969 years. He waited longer for this
man than He did for any other before him. Then there came a time when He had to let
go. His patience ran out, but not just for the son of the man who walked with Him for
long.
Let’s do some math for a second as we look further into this:
Methuselah was 187 when he became the father of Lamech. (Gen 5:25)
Lamech was 182 when he became the father of Noah. (Gen 5:28)
If we add those two numbers together, we see that Methuselah was 369 years old
when Noah was born.
Now let’s jump over a couple chapters to an event that we are all very familiar
with. “Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. (Gen 7:6)
If we add that 600 to Methuselah’s age when Noah was born, we see that
Methuselah was 969 years old at the time the great flood came to the earth. God literally
waited for him as long as He could. There was a day coming when God had to pass
judgment on the world, and when that day came, only “…Noah and his sons and his wife
and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. (Gen 7:7)
Yes, God is patient. But more importantly to recognize, as it is pointed out to us
from time to time, God is just. Guys, I got comfortable and because of that, I have to live
with a question for the rest of my life. ‘Was Adam ever saved during his short life on this
earth, and if not, was it God’s will for me to present His salvation to Him? Did I miss the
boat on this one?’ Because I never opened my mouth and shared with him of the peace
offered to us in this lifetime through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that question will not be
answered for me in this lifetime. Yes, people may comfort me with kind words, and
some of them may be back up by scripture. That is great, and I am sure those words will
be used to give me a peace about this, but the fact still remains that the question will not
be answered until I bow my head before a Holy and Righteous God and He answers it for
me.