Eat the Meat. Spit Out the Bones.

There's an uncomfortable truth about the human species:

Ain't a single one of us that's perfect. Well, except the Creator God who became fully man; He is and was perfect, but other than him nobody is actually perfect.

"As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one." [Romans 3:10]

And that means that it is inappropriate (and a waste of time) to expect perfection from any member of the human species. Excellence is good (and there is a lot of that), but don't waste your time looking for perfection in people.

• None of our leaders (political or religious) are perfect leaders.
• None of our teachers teach perfect truth.
• No book or class or video is perfect in all its content.
• No fellowship of humans will be perfect; there will be mistakes and failures in 'em all.

Does that mean that we should give up on leaders, teachers, fellowships, and just go solo, "Me & Jesus, and nobody else"?

That won't work. You're not perfect either. (Me neither.)

So we quit expecting perfection, and we look for the good.

"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things." [Philippians 4:8]

Pay attention to the good. Overlook the imperfect. Which, of course, means the need to test things, to discern truth.

(Does this mean we never strive for improvement? Heck no.)
(Does this mean we overlook persistent sin, our own or our brother's? Heck no.)

Eat the meat. Spit out the bones. "Even a dumb ol' cow knows enough to eat the hay and spit out the sticks."

Testimony: God the Electrician

Some of the lights in the living room stopped working suddenly. Testing showed they had no power to them. No circuit breakers were tripped. No wiring had changed in the past several months. And they didn't know an electrician they could call on for help.

So they prayed. She heard the phrase, junction box. He saw a picture of a junction box in a particular place on the attic floor.

Sounds like a clue, he thought. So he crawled up into the attic, flashlight in the hand, looking for the junction box on the floor that he saw as he was praying.

But there was no junction box on the floor, and no junction box that looked like what he saw in prayer. But there was a different junction box on a post nearby, and it did what the junction box in his vision look like it would have done.

So he fiddled with some of the wires, jiggling them carefully, and when he did a light in the attic flickered on. Aha! A clue.

So he fixed the loose wire nut, made sure it was tight, and headed back downstairs.

Sure enough, everything was working fine now.

Lessons learned:

1. God is a pretty good electrician (although this is much less voltage than he usually works with).

2. He is willing to help homeowners with electrical problems in their homes.

3. Spiritual gifts are useful for practical matters, too.

4. A word of knowledge may be correct in its content, but incorrect in some of the details.

God Reveals His Secrets

“Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.” [Amos 3:7]

I woke up with this on my mind recently and I’ve been chewing on it for a while.

The phrase, “his servants the prophets” suggests there are some prophets who are not submitted as servants to him. He apparently doesn’t reveal his secret to them. The gift is not enough; I need to be fully on-board with him.

Application: I don’t need to listen to prophets who are not God’s servants, whether they’ve anointed themselves or they’re servants of something else (Money? Sex? Power?), or they’ve just fallen off the wagon. Discernment (personal & corporate) is a big advantage here.

The same phrase also suggests that there are some servants who are not prophets. In the days of Amos, there were just a few who had God’s spirit and spoke for him; in our days, well he’s instructed every believer to earnestly desire to prophesy [1Corinthians 14:1].

Application: being fully his is not sufficient; prophets need to speak what God says and when he says to. They need to be called for the purpose of speaking his word to the community. More than that, I need to not pay attention to the “prophecies” from God’s people who are not actually anointed by God to speak for him at this time. Discernment is a big advantage here, too.

I'm going to over-simplify this and say that there are things that he doesn’t reveal, except to people who are comfortable hearing his voice and who are fully committed to him.

The other thing that’s captured my attention is the Hebrew word “sôḏ,” which is variously translated “secret,” “plans,” “counsel.” A couple of translations render it “secret counsel” in this verse, which I think is pretty interesting.

Hold on, this might get nerdly for a minute.

Strong defines H5475 (our Hebrew word “sôḏ,”) as “a session, that is, company of persons (in close deliberation); by implication intimacy, consultation, a secret,” and

Gesenius points out that outside of the Bible, the word speaks of a couch, cushion, triclinium, on which persons recline, hence, (1) a sitting together, an assembly, either of friends or of judges, (2) deliberation, counsel, (3) familiar conversation, or (4) a secret.

In any case, this strikes me as a complex word; no wonder there are so many ways to translate it.

But the imagery in Amos is getting clearer: he invites individuals who are fully his and who are comfortable hearing his voice into a quiet place with himself, where he discusses what’s on his heart. And the imagery is pretty clear: this is not one “big guy” dictating what’s going to happen; this is peers in conversation, in dialog, in deliberation together.

And according to Amos, he doesn’t do anything apart from this sort of counsel, without discussing it with these people in this setting.

It could be argued that he has required that it be this way. In the Psalms, he declares that "The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to mankind." [Psalm 115:16] If he takes that seriously, then he has delegated authority for this planet to us, and no good leader delegates authority to someone else and then steps in, usurps the delegate, and does things on his own authority.

So for God to take action in the affairs of Earth, he needs to first discuss his secret counsel with his human friends, who now carry the authority for action on the Earth.