One More Comeback
In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
1 Peter 1:3 (NIV)
Nothing in this life can deny you one more comeback.
I don’t care how confusing this life gets. I don’t care how many walls you proverbially bump up against. I don’t care how busy the enemy has been lately in your life. Every time you get knocked down and somebody inches up beside you to whisper, “Is this the time that you’re going give up?” you can look up with whatever strength you have left and testify: “I don’t know how many more times I have, and I don’t know how my energy is going to stretch, but I know that if God woke me up this morning, then I’ve got at least one more comeback. And because I’ve got one more comeback, I’m going to give it my best.”
You may have heard of Louis Pasteur. He was the pioneer of immunology. He lived at a time when thousands of people were dying each year from rabies. Pasteur had worked for years trying to create a successful vaccine to that disease, and just as he was about to begin experimenting on himself, a nine-year-old boy named Joseph Meister was bitten by a rabid dog. The boy’s mama found Pasteur and pleaded with him to experiment on her son. Pasteur injected Joseph for ten straight days, and as a result, the boy lived.
Decades later, Pasteur selected the words that would be on his tombstone. Of all the things that he could have etched on it—including all his accomplishments, discoveries, accolades, and experience—he instead chose this simple inscription: Joseph Meister lived.
When I read about that story, my soul caught on fire because the message I’m trying to convey to you is that you’ve got one more comeback in you—not because Joseph Meister lived, but because Jesus lived and still lives. His resurrection is the evidence that there is life for you to yet live and work for you to yet accomplish. Because Jesus lives, you’ve got at least one more comeback!
An Unoffendable Faith
“Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Mark 7:28-30 (NIV)
In the region of Tyre and Sidon, a woman made a request of Jesus that He heal her daughter of demon possession. This woman was not a Jew, but was in fact a Greek—a Syrophoenician by birth. His response to her request seems harsh. “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” In other words, “Jews first, Gentiles later.”
What seemed to be an insulting shut-down by Jesus was actually a test of her faith—and it was a test that she passed. She answered, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
Jesus was impressed by her unoffendable faith, and He granted her request by immediately setting her daughter free from the demon.
This text is really an invitation to us all to expect from Jesus times when our faith will be tested. There will be times when Jesus will pull on and stretch our faith so that it grows and deepens and becomes stronger.
Life will offend you. Life will dismiss you. Life will disregard you. And if your faith is present but is too temperamental and easily offended to roll with the punches, then it won’t produce healing in the possessed areas of your life. It will not stimulate growth that goes deeper rather than wider.
When your faith is feeble and offendable, you will shout when you succeed, but then be unable to utter the name of Jesus when failure grips your life. You will praise the Lord for great days but then barely talk to Him on bad days. That’s not the kind of faith Jesus wants to see in you.
So the Lord will use life to test you. He is not just looking for the evidence of faith, but He wants to test its capacity and its enduring capabilities. God will test your faith even to the degree that, like the Syrophoenician woman, you can live confused about God’s action without ever doubting God’s character.
This woman was rewarded for staying centered while being stretched. And you will be too if you can pass the test by holding onto your faith in those times when it doesn’t make sense.
An unoffendable faith is what the Lord is trying to develop in us.
Knowing vs. Obeying
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”
John 14:23 (NKJV)
Do you know what brings weight and substance to your faith?
Obedience. We see in the life of David that what brought him victory was not just the fact that he prayed, but the fact that he obeyed.
I'll confess that I have, in my life, done a whole lot of praying and then finished my prayers and gone and done exactly what I wanted to do. David, on the other hand, not only prayed; he obeyed.
We’ve got to trust the value of being obedient. In whatever way God decides He wants to work, and no matter how I pray, what makes the difference is not only our trust, but our courage to obey.
- Don't give God passionate praise and then feeble obedience.
- Don't live your life being a heavy worshiper, but then acting in disobedience.
- Don't give God aggressive service and then be sloppy in following His instruction.
- Don’t offer God desperate prayers followed by casual obedience.
If you ask God to make a way, then do what He says. I agree with Eugene Peterson when he says “Obedience is the thing—living in active response to the living God. The most important question we ask of [a Bible] text is not, ‘What does this mean?’ but ‘What can I obey?’”
More than 90 people conducted an all-night search for an eight-year-old boy named Dominic, who, while on a skiing trip with his father, had skied off the run without realizing it. They hoped to find Dominic somewhere on the snowy mountain slope before it was too late, but as each hour passed, the search party and the boy's family became more and more concerned.
At dawn, they sent out helicopters to search from above. The helicopters spotted some faint ski tracks which changed to small footprints, which led to a tree where they found little Dominic. To everyone’s astonishment, the boy was in such good shape, he didn't even need to be admitted to the hospital to be checked out.
How did Dominic fare so well despite spending an entire night in the freezing elements? His father had had enough forethought to warn the boy what to do if he ever found himself lost: find a tree, snuggle up to it, and cover yourself with branches.
As a young child, Dominic never would have thought of doing this on his own. But his father told him what to do. Even though he had this lesson as part of his intellectual acumen, Dominic wasn't saved by his knowing; he was saved by his obeying.
The same is true for you and me.
Discernment
And try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
Ephesians 5:10 (ESV)
There are two sides of faith.
The first side says that you should get up every day and do the best you can. Use your creative imagination. Trust that your steps have been ordered. Test God's promises. Exercise your gifts. Trust that you are authorized, that wherever your feet tread is going to become holy ground. Don't you ever wake up and doubt your anointing. Make it happen. Make it work. Knock on the doors. Take the mountain. Give it your best shot because God is pushing you. God has promised to bless it. He'll arrange and position things when you offer Him your best.
But at other times, God wants you to wait. Wait for the sound of His presence. Yes, you are skilled, gifted, and anointed—but you’ve got to sit still before the Lord.
When God flanks you, you go ahead and make the attempts. Push your way through, make a decision and follow your ordered steps. Walk by faith and resist walking by sight. That's one side of trust in God.
The other side is when God fronts you. There are times when you can't rely on your skill, know-how, ability, or intellect. Your human connections don’t matter. Nor does it matter that you busted that door down the last time. It doesn't matter that you had the talent to walk in that certain sphere. This time He is calling you to sit still and let Him make a way.
You have to know the difference, and we call that discernment.
You must learn to distinguish between whether God is expecting you to wait while He arranges things, or if you are to arrange things while He's pushing you from behind.
I've been injured in some battles that should have been easy to defeat—emotionally, relationally, and professionally. But my problem was I was charging forward when I should have been listening for the sound of God’s signal. At other times, I have been hesitant to move, slow to make a decision, because I was waiting on God to front the preparation—yet God was waiting on me to make a move.
I don't want to make these mistakes anymore, and I know you don't either. So understand that sometimes God flanks and sometimes God fronts, and it is your prayers that will reveal which way to use your faith in each instance. To know the difference, pray without assumptions and assertions, and listen to what He is telling you.
Listen for the Sound
Then the Philistines went up once again and deployed themselves in the Valley of Rephaim. Therefore David inquired of the Lord, and He said, “You shall not go up; circle around behind them, and come upon them in front of the mulberry trees. And it shall be, when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, then you shall advance quickly. For then the Lord will go out before you to strike the camp of the Philistines.”
2 Samuel 5:22-24 (NKJV)
David and his men have already defeated the Philistine army in direct combat once. And now, for a second time, the Philistines are coming against him. But David doesn’t just assume that it will all play out the same way as before. Instead, David inquires of the Lord about what he should do. He doesn’t want to move until God grants him permission to do so. David is so spiritually connected that he seeks to be meticulously obedient.
It's apparent to me that David has no problem demonstrating what has been referred to as adaptive leadership. He advanced one way before, but he’s going to trust God to do it differently this time. It’s the same valley of battle. It's the same enemy that they previously defeated. David is flanked by the same strong army of soldiers. But this time he is instructed by the Lord to wait on a different confirmation, move along a different path, and engage the battle with a different strategy.
God tells David, “Don't advance directly toward the Philistines. This time, circle around them; position your army right in front of some mulberry trees. And when you get there, wait for My signal to you. This is the signal: when you hear the sound of marching in the mulberry trees, it'll be your time to advance. The fight is going to be easier for you and the victory will be secured, but you must be led by the sound. Be sensitive to the sound. Listen out for the sound, and then pitch your obedience to it. Hold your energy and restrain your passion until you hear the sound.
What separates victory from defeat for David has nothing to do with strength and everything to do with obedience to the details.
This text is asking the question of all of us today: Can you ignore your reflexes, your momentum, your emotional default responses, your instinctual proclivities, your prior victories, the pain of your past mistakes, the memories of your regretful defeats—can you ignore all of these so that you can make sure you are ready to listen for the sound of God's presence and intent in your life?
God is not necessarily going to give you victory in the same ways that He has done so in the past. Your past experiences do not dictate your present course of action. Don’t take for granted the fact that God works in different ways at different times.
Instead, listen for the Lord’s instruction and follow the sound of His leading.
