Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from the “Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide”, is titled “Extreme Heat”. In Sabbath’s lesson, the question is asked, “How much do you think God is willing to be misunderstood in order to mold you into the ‘image of His Son’?” This question forces us to consider the real issues in life. Who are we? Who is our God? What is the point of it all?
If we have eyes to see, it is evident that something is terribly wrong in our world. Because something is terribly wrong in each of our hearts and minds. And we can see it. We are perverse and selfish to the core. And this selfishness is an evil that we realize in almost all our thinking, all our motives, all our lives. We act toward others in ways to bolster our own selves. In this, we can be disingenuous, manipulative… or worse. All to bolster self. Perverse. In reality… sick. And this is a key to understand God’s use of “Extreme Heat”, as this week’s lesson states.
We use descriptive models to help us understand and even describe concepts and relationships that are hard to describe and understand. We can use the model of “family” to help us describe the relationship we have at work with those who are with us most of our waking hours. We can use the model of “sports” to describe those with whom we cooperate. We can use the model of “war” for those with whom we are at-odds. We often use the model of “Father/child” to describe the relationship of our God with ourselves. And we can also use the model of “Physician/patient” to describe that relationship, too. This model of “Physician/patient” can help us understand the “extreme heat” that is so often necessary for us hardened sinners.
Have you ever had a physician who said you needed to change your ways? To give-up your most favorite thing to eat? How about introducing activity you find distasteful? How about giving you medication, whose side-effects are horrible? How about a surgery that will have a long rehabilitation time? How about surgery that removes a limb to save your life? As I escalate these medical treatments, it is like increasing the heat of the “crucible”. This model of “physician/patient” is a somewhat accurate descriptor covered in our lesson this week. We sinners are sick unto death with sin and self. A sickness we barely recognize as the terminal disease it is. Because we like our selfishness. We like our stubbornness. We like our pride. We like self-aggrandizement. So, our “Great Physician’s” cure for us is seen as a threat. Is seen as a horrendous intrusion upon us from a megalomaniacal god. A god who wants what he wants and will sacrifice our individuality, our autonomy, our very selves to have it his way.
But not so. He is also our “Father” who is the very embodiment of love. And like the “Great Physician” He is, He must often use the scalpel. He does not wield the sword. And there is an infinite difference between a scalpel carefully used to excise the cancerous tumor by a loving Physician-Father; versus a sword wielded by a megalomaniacal tyrant. Each cuts us. Each can cut us to the point of death. But one is used to heal, the other to kill.
Do you need “extreme heat” to heal your deadly sin malady? Do I? Only our Fatherly Physician knows. And the question to each echoes down the corridors of time, “Will you submit to Him” … “Will you trust Him”? The good news is that He is ever with us, especially as we experience and endure that “extreme heat”, that intense surgery. I pray each of us gladly, willingly submit all to Him for the very precise healing we need. We are sick unto death. And His loving precise relationship with ME is the only cure there is for MY selfish loveless-ness... and for yours, too. Let us surrender all… with rejoicing and thanksgiving for the wonderful love of our wonderful Physician, Father and Friend.
With brotherly love,
Jim