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Have you ever thought about King Solomon’s heart? I hadn’t until recently when I was asked to give a talk about Solomon’s errors in life, and what we can learn from them. Ever since then I have been thinking about Solomon’s life, and it is a complicated one.
Growing up I would attend Sunday School, and it seems, at least once a year I would hear the story of Solomon asking God for wisdom, and the teachers would tell us students that it was a wonderful thing that Solomon asked for and that we should be like Solomon and ask God to make us wise.
Considering Solomon’s foolish ways toward the end of his life, one naturally is prone to ask, “Hey Solomon, what happened? You started out wise and ended up a dummy.”
My initial answer to that question, is that when God asked Solomon what he wanted, he should have said he wanted a heart that would be dedicated to God and follow him all the days of his life. While wisdom is important, whole hearted devotion to God is sublime.
The story of Solomon asking God for wisdom is found in two places in the Bible, in 1 Kings 3, and 2 Chronicles 1. I think the Sunday School version is from 2 Chronicles because in verse 10 Solomon specifically says, “Give me wisdom and knowledge that I may lead your people.”
In the 1 Kings account, Solomon doesn’t specifically ask for wisdom. Instead he talks to God about his father David, who had a righteous and upright heart, and then Solomon asks God in verse 9 to “give your servant a discerning heart”. God was pleased with Solomon’s request and responded to him in verse 12 saying, “I will give you a wise and discerning heart.”
Following this encounter with God we see examples of Solomon’s wisdom:
Two women have a dispute over a baby and Solomon says, “Cut the child in two and give half to each women (1 Kings 3:16-27)
He spoke 3,000 proverbs (1 Kings 4:32)
From all nations people came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom (1 Kings 4:34)
He builds the temple (1 Kings 6)
He dedicates the temple saying, “You keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue whole heartedly in your way.”
Martin Luther said that if someone came knocking on his heart and asked who lived there, he would say, “Not Martin Luther, but the Lord Jesus Christ.” I think that at this point in Solomon’s life, that if we went knock – knocking on the door of Solomon’s heart and asked who lived there, he would say, “Not Solomon, but the Lord God Almighty.”
Let’s fast forward to 1 Kings chapter 11, toward the end of Solomon’s life. Verse 4 tells us that as Solomon grew old, his (700) wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of his father David had been.
The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. Although he had forbidden Solomom to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. (9,10)
If someone were to knock on Solomon’s heart at this stage of his life, and asked him who lived there, I wonder what the wisest mortal who ever lived would have said. Maybe, “Solomon the mighty lives here.” Or “Solomon the wise” or “Solomon the great”. Whatever it would have been, it would not have been “the Lord God Almighty.”
How tragic. How depressing. How did it happen? It makes me think that if this happened to the wisest person who ever lived, a man that God appeared to twice, what hope is there for me? What hope is there for any of us?
It helps me to consider the words of Jesus from Matthew 18:3-4, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
I find it hard to see Solomon taking the lowly position of a child. I find it hard to imagine him humbling himself to serve like Jesus served, or to wash feet like Jesus did. I see his great “wisdom” leading him to be arrogant, haughty and proud, and in the end his Godly wisdom became the wisdom of the world, which as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 is foolishness. In the end, his heart became hard toward the things of God.
So what about us. What do we say when someone comes knocking on our heart, asking “Who lives here?”
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. Romans 10:9,10
A lot of times, when Christians talk about salvation, they talk about that one point in the past where they had their eyes open to God’s love and decided accept Jesus as their Savior and Lord, and follow him. This is certainly one aspect of salvation. It is the aspect that Jen Wilkens, in the quote above, refers to as going from “wretch to redeemed in an instant”. But salvation is not only something that happened to us one time in the past, but it is also something that happens to us on a daily basis (sanctification), and something we will experience ultimately when we are in the immediate presence of God our Father (glorification).
The apostle Peter writes about salvation in the first two chapters of his first letter. In chapter one, verses four and five, he says, “This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”
This is the Believers great hope for the future, and ultimate salvation – the inheritance that is kept in heaven for us.
In chapter two, verse one and two, Peter writes, “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
Here Peter is describing salvation as sanctification, a process. Not a one time thing, but a daily thing, where we grow like babies. Babies grow big and strong and develop because of their mothers nutritious milk. Baby Christians grow strong in the faith by constant ingestion of the Father’s milk, the Word of God. By taking in the the holy scriptures on a regular basis, we change from being conformed to this dark and wicked world, full of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander, and are transformed into God’s likeness, being able to recognize the good, the beautiful and the true (Rom. 12:1-2).
It’s kinda like the picture of Chambers lake above. At first glance it seems a beautiful scene with sunshine streaming through puffy white clouds onto a great body of water. But if you look closer, you can see that the trees on the big hill are black, not green. That’s because of a huge fire that passed through the area last year and burned hundreds of thousands of acres.
Living in this world can sometimes scorch our souls, leaving us burned over and lifeless. But when we encounter the wonderful, redeeming, healing love of Jesus, we begin to recover. We begin to see what life was intended to be. We start living life to the full and we have an eternity to glorify God and enjoy him.
One year later it is on the road to “salvation”.
“Because they love me”, says the LORD, –
I will rescue them
I will protect them
I will answer them
I will be with them in trouble
I will deliver them
I will honor them
I will satisfy them with long life
I will show them my salvation
Psalm 91
Now that’s a delightful thought.
“Give us this Day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us. Deliver us from the Evil
One; save us from the time of trial.”
In Christianity we talk about salvation. It’s not uncommon when one Christian meets another Christian for the first time, to ask, or to be asked, “When we’re you saved?” Sometimes, when asked this question, I want to say, “Today.”
Of course we understand the meaning of the question – When did you begin to trust in Jesus with your life and experience salvation from Sin? Some people can remember the day and hour that they were “saved”. Other people, like me, can’t remember an exact time or place that “salvation” occurred, because we were brought up in the faith and as far as we can remember, we always believed that God loved us and that Jesus died for our sins and rose again so that we could have eternal life. That was me. Sure I remember a time when I was about five years old and said “the sinners prayer” at Vacation Bible School, but I trusted in God’s saving grace before that, even though I had never verbalized it in such a formal way. Later at age eight an evangelist came to our little farmhouse in Colorado and talked to my parents and my sister and I about “salvation” and once again I prayed a prayer that he wanted me to pray, which I prayed as sincerely as I could and seemed to make everyone happy.
Some people are looking for a great emotional experience when they talk about salvation. I had one of those as well at Summer Bible Camp one year when I was about 12. I cried and then felt spiritually “high” for about a week afterwards. It was a wonderful experience that I will never forget.
Some years later I began attending Bible College and experienced other spiritual, emotional and mentally transforming times that had, to various degrees, an impact on my life. In one sense or another, these were all “salvation” experiences. I was “saved” each time. Sometimes I was saved from Sin, other times I was saved from sins. The ultimate Salvation is being made righteous in the sight of God. Other times salvation is a changing of a wrong attitude, or an incorrect perspective on some aspect of life. Sometimes we are saved from an unforgiving spirit. In short, some of us need to be saved everyday! Especially me.
The greatest commandments are not things we shouldn’t do, but things we should do. “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind soul and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.” If we disobey God’s commandments we sin. Not a day goes by when I am apathetic in some way or another to those around me. Not a day goes by but that I turn a deaf ear or a blind eye to the needs of my wife, children, brothers and sisters in Christ, or strangers that cross my path. Many times I am much more like the priest and levite that ignored their fellow man in need, than I am like the good Samaritan who showed compassion on the poor man lying naked in his own blood along the road. By neglecting my neighbor I am also neglecting God and disobeying his commandment to love him with my entire being. Truly I need to be saved everyday.
Martin Luther has said that we are continually struggling against the World, the Flesh and the Devil. That is why Jesus taught us to pray daily to be delivered from the Evil One. Satan prowls around like a hungry lion, seeking to destroy and kill us- mentally, spiritually, socially and physically. Our flesh and the world are bent toward sin, thus when we pray to be saved from the time of trial, we are praying for God’s power and intervention in our daily lives. We are asking him to maintain a hedge of protection around us, our family and our community of faith. Indeed we need salvation everyday.
***** ***** ***** *****
Oh, what’s going on inside of me?
I despise my own behavior
This only serves to confirm my suspicions
I’m still a man in need of a Saviour
Charlie Peacock
Elaine
Elaine and her husband Ian are long time volunteers from Canada, here at the home for needy children in Oaxaca, Mexico. The other day I asked Elaine if she believed God loves her and wants her to be happy. She said, “Absolutely!” Then I asked her why she thought God allowed her to lose her hearing.
Happy Children Playing
Artwork by Elaine
She had had perfect hearing most of her life. About 28 years ago she gradually began to lose her hearing do to menieres disease, losing her hearing first in one hear, and then in the other until she was totally deaf. She thought about my question. She told me that she never thought a lot about why God allowed her to lose her hearing. She told me about difficulties she experienced as her hearing became impaired. With tears in her eyes she recounted a recurring nightmare she had regarding her hearing loss and her increasing need to depend on devices used to help the hearing impaired. A few more tears appeared as she told me about how much she loved music, and that she can’t go into a music store now.
Thinking more about my question, she mentioned that with her hearing loss she has learned to depend more on God. She rests more in God. Sometimes God takes things away from us, things that we enjoy, to help us focus on Him so that we can enjoy Him more.
God has made Elaine happy and uses her in a tremendous way at the mission, in the community and in three Oaxacan prisons. She is an artist and has painted many beautiful pictures and murals that inspire everyone here at the children’s home. She received a cochlear ear implant almost three years ago and partial hearing has returned to her life. That helps her to teach art classes at the mission school. She also has a sewing talent and ministry that reaches out to poor and incarcerated women, both physically, with quilts, and spiritually, with words that flow from her compassionate and joyous heart. She glorifies Him and enjoys Him in many different ways everyday.
Thinking about Elaine and her spiritual journey, I was reminded of two different scripture passages from the book of John. One is from chapter nine, the account of the man born blind. In those days, most Jews thought that physical maladies were a result of sin. The disciples asked Jesus, “Who sinned?”
Jesus told them that the blind mans affliction was not a result of sin. He was blind all his life so that one day the master healer, Jesus himself, would come along and restore his sight, and that God would be glorified through the miracle. Surely, the man who could now see, glorified God and enjoyed Him forever.
I also thought about John 15, where Jesus speaks of God the Father as a gardener of a vineyard. Jesus says the gardener cuts off every branch that bears no fruit. It is a basic principle of horticulture that to get more, you cut more. I do most of the gardening and landscape maintenance here at the mission. While we don’t have any grape vines to prune, I am constantly pruning roses and other flowers in order to get bigger and better flowers. Lately I have been pruning some overgrown citrus trees in order to get more, high quality fruit. In the same way, God prunes things from our lives, in order that we may produce more fruit – fruit of the Spirit. In the case of John 15, the spiritual fruit in question is JOY. In verse 11, Jesus says, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” God loves us and wants us to be happy, and many times He prunes away one aspect of our live to ultimately produce more joy fruit in our lives.
Elaine misses her ability to hear perfectly. Daily her thoughts turn toward heaven and the time that her hearing will be restored. In the meantime, she thanks God for the gifts he has given her and the compassion she is able to show others who have suffered loss.
Art
When I first met Art, he was dying of a brain tumor. He was a middle aged man, gray hair, balding. He had once been an active Episcopal priest. I met him at a Lutheran church that I had just begun attending in Northern California. As I recall, he told me a joke. He loved to tell jokes. It was hard for me to understand him, because the brain tumor had caused his speech to be a bit slurred at times. He also had trouble with his sight, and needed a cane to get around. All of this didn’t stop him from enjoying God and telling jokes.
He told me about the time he told God a joke. Immediately afterward he said he was plagued with guilt. Who was he to be joking around with the Almighty, Holy God. He was in turmoil, he told me. He prayed. He cried. He begged forgiveness. He repented. After some time in this anguished state of mind, he heard a voice. The voice said, “Art, tell me another one.”
I think that because of this experience with a God who likes to laugh at jokes, Art began bringing much joy and mirth into peoples lives by telling jokes and funny stories. It didn’t matter so much that you couldn’t always understand him or get the punch line. What mattered was, here was a man who believed that God loved him and wanted him to be happy, despite his painful circumstances. As a result of the joy he experienced, he naturally wanted to spread the joy, and the best way he knew was telling jokes and hysterical stories. After I gave Art my email address, not a week went by that I didn’t receive at least one new joke or funny story. I always laughed and thanked God for Art. I miss him.
Anita
Anita was born into poverty. She was born at home because her parents couldn’t afford a hospital. She had a brother that was stillborn. One of her sisters died at six weeks, and another who died before her tenth birthday. Her youngest brother has Downs Syndrome.
Anita is a lady who suffered much as a young girl growing up poor in Mitla, Mexico. Her parents couldn’t afford a house, so they lived with an oppressive grandmother who treated them like servants or slaves. When that environment became too much for them, they decided to move to a small piece of land they owned on the edge of town. They constructed a “house” of bamboo sticks and a tin roof. Some days all they had to eat was tortillas with a bit of salt or pumpkin seeds for flavor.
Their only hope, so it seemed, lay in the syncretistic, Catholic religion that combined Christian orthodoxy with ancient, pagan, Zapoteco traditions. They prayed to saints, built a shrine to dead loved ones, and put out offerings they couldn’t afford , to celebrate the “Day of the Dead.” All of this brought nothing to their souls by way of peace, joy and happiness.
Fortunately, protestant missionaries lived nearby, and helped Anita and her family financially by giving them jobs. More importantly, they helped spiritually by giving them the gospel, the good news, that God loved them and wanted them to be happy. One by one, Anita and her family gave their lives to Jesus. One of the happiest days of Anita’s life was when she surrendered to God and embraced His love. The burdens and oppression she had suffered all her life, lifted away. She felt light as a balloon. She felt she was floating on air. And oh the joy that flooded her soul.
Anita, The Happy Cocinera
Anita is my wife. I met her my first day at the mission. She is an incredible cook and was working in the kitchen at the time. The first thing I noticed about her was her smile and sense of humor. My Spanish wasn’t so great then, and I didn’t understand half of what she said, but I did understand that she was glorifying God by enjoying Him!
We married two years later, and she continues to light up my life, our daughter’s lives, and all those at the mission, with her cheery attitude, generous giving of herself, and her contagious sense of humor.
I thank God everyday for this ray of heavenly sunshine that He has shined in my life. I also thank God for the inspiration of Elaine and Art, people who show me how to enjoy God in the midst of unpleasant life situations. People who know that God loves them and wants them to be happy.
* * * *
“One day our Sovereign Father and Friend will allow us to grasp His reasoning. Until then, we must trust Him. He is filled with love for you and me, and He uses the things we don’t understand to bring us closer to Him.” Letter from Bob Vander Plaats to his severely disabled son – from his book Light From Lucus.
To Enjoy God 