WALK IN FAITHFULNESS
Psalm 26
10/05/03
Runners of all distances know that the key to success, the key to improving times, improving form, improving strength, is endurance. To build endurance, dedicated runners scrunch into their sneakers and sweats — early on a weekend morning; in the middle of a blazing hot summer afternoon; during sleety, miserable winter nights. Admiration for this kind of a determined exercise regime is what led to the runaway popularity of the Nike ad campaign, "Just Do It!"
The truth is that all of us are subjected to grueling tests of endurance every day, every week, every year of our lives. These endurance races we are locked into aren't usually measured in kilometers or shoe leather. Instead these tests of stamina sneak up on us.
Over the course of your lifetime you will spend at least five years waiting in lines and two years just trying to get in touch with people by telephone. You can also look forward to spending eight months opening nothing but junk mail and six whole months sitting and staring at traffic lights that refuse to turn green. In fact, if in order to get to work, your time behind the wheel averages 60 minutes a day, you will spend six 40-hour work weeks just getting yourself to and from your workplace (taken from Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Managing Time [New York: Alpha Books, 1995.]).
Now that takes endurance!!!
What you do with yourself while you are "enduring" the daily grind to your soul and sanity of these daily tests reveals just how faithful you are to God. A tremendous amount of life is just waiting. Being faithful when nothing much seems to be happening is what it means to "keep the faith."
David, the writer of many of the Psalms, is one example of endurance. In Psalm 26, he is declaring his faithfulness and loyalty to God. All throughout David’s walk with God, he consistently stayed in fellowship with the Lord, clearing his record when he sinned by asking forgiveness, asking for God’s help when he needed it, and praising God for his mighty deeds.
As I read some selections from Psalm 26, listen for phrases that remind you of your own walk with God: “Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. Prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and mind. For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in faithfulness to you.” (v. 1-3)
“I wash my hands in innocence, and go around your altar, O Lord, singing aloud a song of thanksgiving, and telling all your wondrous deeds. O Lord, I love the house in which you dwell, and the place where your glory abides. Do not sweep me away with sinners, nor my life with the bloodthirsty…” (v. 6-9)
“…as for me, I walk in my integrity, redeem me and be gracious to me. My foot stands on level ground, in the great congregation I will bless the Lord.” (v. 11-12)
As I studied this text, I wondered about David’s claim, “I walk in my integrity,” which he says twice. From what I know of David’s escapades in the Bible, there are a lot of words I would use to describe him and “integrity” wouldn’t be one of them. So I decided to dig a little further and I discovered that integrity is not only honesty and virtue, goodness and morality. It also means wholeness, completeness, and unity. I believe David is saying he walks in completeness and wholeness because of his unity with the Lord.
The second lesson for me personally in this text is that as I studied it, I realized that the verse quoted on the front of your bulletins today has been translated in very different ways in different Biblical translations. One version says, “I walk in faithfulness to you.” And another says, “I walk in your faithfulness.”
Now, those are two very different sentences! One describes our faithfulness to God and the other is about our walk in God’s faithfulness to us. As I pondered this revelation, I realized that the two meanings are intertwined. God is sooo faithful to us, isn’t he! And when we recognize just how faithful He is in our lives, we can then grab onto that and walk in that faithfulness. And our response then becomes returning faithfulness to God.
But we easily lose sight of faithfulness in our day to day grind. David is an excellent example of enduring the ups and downs of life. Sometimes he reflects on God’s goodness and greatness, as in the Psalm Allan read to us earlier. “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4)
Moses is another unexpected, unlikely example of endurance. "Unexpected" and "unlikely" because if any biblical figure can claim to have lived a life filled with divine intervention, it was Moses. Like David, here was a man to whom God appeared and spoke in no uncertain terms. Here was a leader who could call on God to rain curses down upon his enemies and perform great acts of deliverance for his people.
Here was an individual who had experienced a life of privilege in Pharaoh's household, a life of hardship and rejection in the desert, and a life of power and respect as the divinely appointed leader of the Israelites as they moved out of bondage and toward the Promised Land. Moses just isn't the first person that comes to mind when you think about someone finding ways to fill time when God doesn't seem to be showing up, when nothing happens.
I think about how blindly Moses followed God’s instructions to meet Him at the top of the mountain. Halfway up, he told the group of priests and leaders who were climbing with him that God wanted Moses to continue up to the top alone. Moses knew his reputation was at stake.
Imagine Moses' state of mind, then, when after his dramatic departure and the arrival of a mysterious cap of clouds on this mountaintop, Moses then experiences ... six days of nothing. Camped up within this cloud cover, Moses didn't even have a view to take his mind off his waiting…and waiting.
How different the story would’ve been if instead of sticking it out until that seventh day, Moses had given up in embarrassment and disgust on the fifth day or the sixth day. Despite the hardship, Moses stuck it out. Moses endured. The riches-to-rags-to-righteousness experiences that had unfolded in Moses' personal life history had taught him that if he wanted to hear God's voice, he had to be willing to wait.
Because sometimes when you least expect it ... Nothing Happens.
As the cloud of God's glory continued to fog that mountaintop and enfold him in silence, Moses was faced with the problem of how to fill his days during this lengthy weather delay. Though God's presence was near, God's voice was silent. It was up to Moses to fill this silence with evidences of his faith and acceptance of God's inscrutable will.
Canadian geese have always been some of God’s creatures without explanation for their teamwork and devotion to each other. I read about a pair who chose a rather unfortunate nesting spot located close to a road. Maybe they were trekking to their own Bethlehem and the female goose’s time came. Anyway, a few days after laying her eggs, she wandered into the path of a car. Luckily for her, all she suffered was a broken leg. But while she was whisked off to a veterinary clinic and admitted into the vet's recovery ward, her faithful mate was left alone to tend their nest.
The male not only continued to do all the nest-sitting; he also established a unique "coffee break" ritual for himself. When he periodically left the nest to eat and drink, he returned by way of the road where his mate was injured. There he settled down and patiently waited for his wounded mate to reappear. When the call of the nest finally overwhelmed him, the male reluctantly made his way back to his solitary incubation duties.
Isn’t this a lovely example of true faithfulness and devotion? What does it mean to be faithful? What does faithfulness require in order to exist? How do you do it? Those of you who have steadfastly walked in faithfulness to God and walked in His faithfulness, maybe for your entire life, how do you trust in the daily grind? How do you handle life when ... nothing happens. How do you fill up those hard-to-endure dry spells that choke your days?
How do you keep faith when God seems to be keeping secrets instead of keeping promises? God's directives to all of us, leaders or followers, powerful or humble, self-assured or shaking in our boots, is that we respond in four simple ways.
Try praying. David knew that just because God seems to be silent doesn't mean we have to keep silent as well. One of the greatest comforts, the greatest privileges, we enjoy as children of God is the ability to turn to God in prayer at any time, in any place.
•Caught in traffic? Instead of punching every button on your radio or reaching for your cell phone, what if you used that moment as a time to pray?
•How many decisions would go begging if the first thing words out of your mouth each morning were directed toward God?
•Instead of reaching for the Maalox or Pepcid AC to calm your churning stomach, what if you poured out your deepest fears and longings and dreams to the always attuned ear of God, as David so often did? Perhaps you, too, could write a psalm to God.
And don't pray just to get an answer. Pray because it is the only answer we have to get. In the words of Jeffrey D. Imbach, "Prayer is essentially the expression of our heart longing for love. It is not so much the listing of our requests but the breathing of our own deepest request, to be united with God as fully as possible" (The Recovery of Love: Christian Mysticism and the Addictive Society, 1991.)
Next, try thanking. When plans and programs we had counted on seem to stall out and even unravel before our eyes, it is hard to recall that everywhere and at all times God is deserving of our praise. You say - thank God during those times when our jobs are sagging or our dreams are dragging? How can giving thanks to God help resuscitate a seemingly dead marriage or an anemic church-health project?
The very act of thanksgiving may begin like slipping into those still soggy sneakers for yet another endurance run. But as we gather our inner resources, remember and rejoice in the thousands of reasons why we should be praising God, the feelings of genuine joy and thankfulness begin to well up inside our sorry little souls. Praising God primes our pumps and prepares us to hear the words that will come in God's time.
We can also try witnessing. Even if God keeps quiet, that doesn't mean we don't have plenty to say. Every preacher in America has gotten into the pulpit on a Sunday morning with his or her spiritual tanks flat empty. This is when our endurance is put to the test. On dry days we can do nothing more, or nothing less, than rely on the memories in long-ago learned lessons from Scripture and church tradition. We can proclaim those lessons even when our mouths and spirits feel like cotton. Sometimes it is by preaching the gospel to others that we preachers are the ones who experience that "heartwarming" that signals the flame of the Spirit has finally caught in our souls anew.
And last but definitely not any the less, try enduring. Even when nothing happens, or worse yet when nothing good happens, that doesn't mean we have permission to fold up our tents and go home. God's schedule is the only calendar that counts, and none of us are privileged to see its pages.
When in doubt;
when at a loss;
when nothing you try seems to work -
Go on. Endure.
Sometimes when you least expect it ... Nothing Happens. One last reminder: The ultimate example of God’s faithfulness to us is demonstrated by His gift to us of Jesus Christ. In the coming of Christ, God is faithful. And faithfulness is one of the defining attributes of the Divine. The righteousness of God, in fact, is an expression of God's faithfulness to God's own self. Without faithfulness, the righteousness of God cannot participate in redeeming us. God's steadfast faithfulness is something other than a biblical doctrine. It is a loving, saving power working in our lives every day, even when all around us, it looks like nothing happens.
Oh! The mama goose? She mended nicely and was released back to her family within a week of her accident.
Let us pray:
Father God, your steadfast love is always before us as we intentionally try to walk in faithfulness to you. Accept our pitiful responses to your faithfulness and remind us to sing songs of thanksgiving and to tell others of your wondrous deeds. Thank you for giving us Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.
How has God's faithfulness been made real in your own life? How has God's faithfulness been documented in our congregation's life? I encourage you to discuss your reflections with one another over lunch today and share with others who sorely need to hear about your walk in faithfulness.
BENEDICTION: And now, the words from Psalm 9: give thanks to the Lord with your whole heart, tell of all His wonderful deeds, be glad and exult in Him; sing praise to His name, O Most High. And those who know God’s name will put their trust in Him, for the Lord has not forsaken those who seek him. Amen. (Psalm 9:1,2,10) .
