Author: Cherry Finamore

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Your Idols- My Idols

Dear sister,

Idols…Oh, how I see the guilty bowing before their objects of worship. Marriage, smart kids, desire for marriage and smart kids. Stuff, Amazon, E-bay, malls. Jobs, prestige, advancement, power, bank accounts. Beauty, exercise, firm biceps, smoothies, health, supplements. Clean houses, order, minimalism, or one more object to display. All good things gone wrong. Then there are pride, desire to control, self-righteousness in all religiosity. I can spot these things in others a mile away. Or is it simply Projection 101? My sins imputed to others? I get so sick of myself.

And then there is God. So holy. So clean. So above us all in every way. Impeccable and perfect. A God of love, yet hating, despising our sin—those things we cling to, reluctant to unclench our grasping fingers from our objects of adoration—a thing, a person, an attitude, a thought, so often justifying ourselves with, “It’s not so bad-I mean, look at her.”

Scrutinize Ezekiel 14…It’s hard to justify ourselves when we look at our Father in heaven and begin to understand His hatred for idolatry and His refusal to allow His people to remain in their sin. Not only will He chasten His own, but those who come hypocritically to God’s people, to His ministers, seeking a relationship with God by rules of their own making, continuing their love of sin, will be judged. And there comes a point in time when God’s patience ends and no amount of intercessory prayer, even by truly righteous people like Noah, Daniel, or Job, will avert chastening or judgment for those in ongoing, unrepentant iniquities. Simply put, sin is serious. Very serious.

Paul tells us in Romans 6:12-13:

“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness.” Do not…Do…Put off…Put on… By His grace.

Yes, it’s true our God remembers our frame, that we are dust. Yes, He is forgiving and filled with loving-kindness and tender mercies, but that does not diminish His hatred for our sin, our sin that nailed His Son, our Savior to the harsh, lonely, Father-forsaken cross. Too often we are cavalier about our wrongdoing. Too often we excuse ourselves or commit shallow repentance. Too often we gather well-meaning others around us who confirm us in wrong-doing, assuring us it’s not so bad, after-all, look at all the good you’re doing. This is deadly trade-off thinking, thinking which desensitizes us to the truth about ourselves or presuming upon His grace with a casual, “Oh, He’ll forgive me”, sometimes with a little comic-relief chuckle.

Let’s confess to God our love of idols, our distorted thinking. Let’s ask the Lord to show us more and more of His righteousness and beauty as we immerse ourselves in His Word and implore Him to make us more like Himself, hating sin, loving righteousness, submitting in glad obedience. And then, as we marvel at His glory, let’s repent again, more deeply, examining more profound layers of our inward beings. Let’s be honest. No white-washing. Let us thank Him for the blood of Christ poured over us, washing us clean.

And if you don’t know Him, if He is not the Savior and Master of your life, give Him your sin and yourself. Throw yourself on His undeserved mercy. Let Him take your sin and give you His righteousness. Come to Him in faith alone. You can never make yourself good enough. There is a lovely little hymn which states,

“Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded,
Sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love, and power.

Come, ye weary, heavy-laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.”

So come as you are. Poor. Needy. Unable. He loves to forgive and save—and it is forever.
Love because of His deep love,
Cherry

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Worthwhile Worship

Many churches divide their services into at least two parts, praise and worship as one, the other, the sermon. But, is worship just singing hymns and praise choruses? Might it include preparing my heart the night before for corporate worship with repentance and thanksgiving? Does it encompass entering the sanctuary reverently and joyfully? Giving a word of encouragement to the person God has placed next to me in the pew? Lifting songs to the Lord, with the choir, voicing adoration to Him? Anticipating the reading of the Word with respect? Listening eagerly to my pastor, prayed for often during the prior week, proclaim the message, diligently prepared in the power of the Spirit—with sheer wonder that God accomplishes in each individual heart exactly what He intends? Could leaving the sanctuary with sobriety and joy in my heart—and service to my neighbor in my resolve be an act of worship?

Worship is to be a way of life—formally, privately, in the mundane, in the consequential. Rising up, lying down, cleaning baseboards, teaching school, caring for the incapable, writing for blogs. All to God’s glory. It doesn’t come easily or naturally. We are so earthly-minded. We like ourselves so much. Worship is something intentional and must be practiced. It derives from being “in awe” of something or someone, transfixed—and awe transforms or intensifies our desires and dispositions. Awe focused on things or people is misplaced with exaggerated affections leading to improper attitudes or actions. Putting on Christ, seeking to know Him in all His beauty and magnificence, being consumed with Him will benefit every area of our lives as the overflow causes desires to become aligned with His will, thoughts and actions working toward putting Christ on display, appetites whetted for more of God.

How do we do this? By being in His Word, regularly sitting under sound biblical preaching, focusing on Him before His table, fellowshipping with like-minded others. If we neglect the Word we tend to create our own little comfortable rules for worship. If we really love Him, we will desire to know Him and love Him in the way which pleases Him. Scripture is our originating and final authority for whom God is and how acceptable worship looks.

Colossians 1 always lifts my heart to Him. It concerns the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, in pre-eminent splendor. It was written to demolish the false teaching that Jesus is not God nor sufficient for all we need. Paul is a master at concisely telling us who Jesus is.

Following instructions in how to walk in a manner worthy of our calling as Christ-followers—after telling us we can, with steadfast joy in God’s goodness face all the reversals and downturns of life without chafing, teeth-gritting, or grumbling because of His power, not our own—after telling us we have been given to Christ, the Son of the Father’s love (incredible thought)—Paul wants to assure our hearts regarding the authority undergirding these blessings.

Our hearts, already stirred to worship, are now directed to even higher thoughts. Not to the gifts, but to the giver Himself. If any confusion lingers in the recesses of the readers’ minds, the author zeroes in on exactly who this Son of the Father’s love is. Paul demands attention with our reasoning powers, our spiritual eyes, and points us relentlessly to this Son, the one who bought us back from the slave market of our true moral guilt before God, the One who alone is able to forgive our sins because of His death on our behalf, replacing enemy status for friend.

This Son is the exact image, the exact likeness of the Father, His manifestation in a human body. Not an imperfect image as we are. The exact image. He is God Himself, omnipotent and altogether holy.

He, being uncreated, ranks above all in creation—having created all that is visible and invisible, reigning supreme now and forever. Christ set the universe in motion, but has not left it alone, robotic-like to do its thing, but actively holds every atom, every molecule together, preventing explosion and chaos. He controls earthquakes and floods and every beating heart. For as long as He deems, His hand is upon night turning to day and the continually changing seasons in their cycles. He is God the Son and life exists because He holds it all together.

Paul continues his description. As the head and brain rule the body, Christ is head of His body, the church, guiding it, giving its members dynamic power, the same power which raised Jesus, the firstborn from the dead, the first one who was raised never to die again—unlike those other miraculous raisings in Scripture, those resurrected ones always dying again in time and space. And this forever resurrected Christ has brought all His children to Himself in right relationship and will reconcile all things to Himself on a certain day of His own choosing. Then, Jesus will give us who are in His kingdom, the Father’s love gift, back to the Father and we will live together, perfectly worshipping the triune God forever.

Dear sister, meditate on these things. Awe is transformative. Awe of Him enables us to be thankful for that wayward child, recognizing that it is God alone who does the rescuing. It empowers us to praise God in the middle of that turbulent relationship or fearful diagnosis knowing that God is up to something good in my life because He is good.

Some day every knee will bow before His majesty, some willingly out of love and gratitude, others by force, remaining in rebellion. May we be numbered among the true worshippers. Like Peter and John in Acts 4, may we live and breathe in such a way that others will realize we’ve spent time with Jesus as everything we are and do becomes an act of worship of our King, the Son of the Father’s love.

Worshipping Christ with you,

Cherry

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Rest for the Restless

Psalm 23… A favorite for many, but never mine in the past. It always made me think of funerals and those were dread-worthy. Every little memento from a memorial service had the deceased’s picture on the front with date of birth and death and “The Lord is my Shepherd” printed on the back.

That was before, but time’s march forward and more serious and difficult trials under my belt with the prospect of more to come, growth in Christ and the longing to see Him face-to-face have changed my perspective on this little gem from the Scriptures.

I’ve read and heard much about the stupidity of sheep. The other day a study leader was commenting on this very thing as he explained that goats are much smarter than sheep. In slaughterhouses, goats have been trained to literally lead the herded sheep to their place of death. When a goat has done its job, it steps aside as the foolish sheep meet their fate, and it returns to lead another bunch of unsuspecting woolly beasts to their demise.

How appropriate are the Scriptures when they liken us to sheep. Prone to wander we certainly are, scattering without a shepherd, but as believers, we are led by a Shepherd, not to death but to life—to a place, not of deprivation, but where our needs are met, where our longings are transformed to align with His desires for us, where He accompanies us in every venue of life, and promises to give us rest and tranquility, not from the trials of life, but for our souls.

The happiest sheep are those that are grazing and relaxing in green meadows, those that are ambling beside still waters, not resting in any false sufficiency of their own, but resting in the assurance that the Shepherd is close by. Content sheep are not curious wanderers, not those looking at a yonder field of weeds thinking it is luscious grass, not those seeing water from afar, only to approach it and find turbulent rapids seeking to destroy, not those sheep who hear a strange, yet alluring voice, leading them on to forbidden places of danger to the detriment of their souls.

If we are true sheep and not imposters, the Shepherd refuses to lose track of us. He is ever watching, watching, never letting us get too far from the flock, always seeing, though not always seen. He leads in paths of righteousness, the places in our hearts which please Him, as we are obedient to His Word.

When the hard things come to us, even the specter of possible death, the Shepherd is with us, relieving anxieties and tremblings. We feel His rod of correction in our hearts when we tend to stray, His shepherd’s crook around our necks returning us to His presence and safety. He is a good shepherd, giving us no cause to fear, unlike the hireling who has no vested interested in the sheep. When a wolf comes, he turns tail and runs, afraid for his own life, leaving the lambs to scatter and face peril. Our Shepherd is ever present, facing the lurking bear and wolf and lion, calling out our names with that lovely, familiar voice, calling us to the safety of His arms, never leaving us to scatter or be devoured. 

All the enemies of our souls sit there, watching, powerless, as we dine from the sumptuous bounty this great Shepherd has lovingly prepared for us from the Word, the Bread of Life. He blesses us in superlatives called goodness and mercy, and this chief Shepherd will grant His blood-bought sheep a crown of glory that never fades away as we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Dear sister, we would spare ourselves so much grief if we would refuse to tire of His voice, His call on our lives, His safe-keeping, His rest, His shade, His thirst-quenching water, His feast, even His chastening. It is in Him and Him alone where we find the tranquility of heart we so crave. Don’t resist His embrace.

Love in the Truth,

Cherry

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Foxes, Forgiveness, Freedom, and Romans 7-8

“O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—-through Jesus Christ our Lord!…There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus…”

And yet, I’ve been thinking a lot about sin lately. Partly because it’s the New Year and I tend to take deep stock of my life at the end of each 365-day turn of the calendar. How has God worked? Where is warfare necessary to clean up spiritual clutter and debris and re-establish a peaceful, clean, and glad soul? And partly because I have so much of it, sin, that is, and I hate it, though not as much as I want to. I tend to loathe it more in others than I do in myself. I can pinpoint it so easily in my husband and in my children, but when introspecting, I sometimes hurry through and make concessions and justifications and rationalizations for things God definitely abhors. Not the gray. Not the doubtful. The black versus the white. How many times have I asked the Lord to cleanse me, but did not follow with the hard work required for mortification of my flesh? Shallow and quick repentance is fairly easy, but it doesn’t get to the fundamentals of my heart—that it is deceitful and desperately wicked, often bearing false witness to me about my motives—making me proud with self-righteousness. So much so that God says, “Who can know it?” Certainly not I, the one who is sometimes able to be a master of hiding, deceit, refusing to be laid bare before the mirror of God’s Word. I get so weary of it, the doing, the glossing over, the confession, then the replay a few days or even hours later. I can blame it on no one else. It is I—I who chooses to sin instead of submitting to the control of the Spirit. Who will deliver me?

Which all brings me to Romans 8. And to Romans 7 before it. Chapter 7 tells me I’m double-minded about my sin. I have a love-hate relationship with some of my failings. And it tells me that Jesus is the only one who can free me from its mastery. It’s not in my will-power to do this. I’m grandly comforted because, believe me, I’ve tried on my own.

Then comes Romans 8. The pinnacle. It relieves my lingering fears, my doubts, my lack of assurance of being His. It gives me confident hope. It lifts my head, with Paul, to lofty praise for my Savior who frees me, not just from sin’s master/slave relationship but from ever being condemned for it. Because of what He did for me in His perfect life and substitutionary death, He and I now share life, He in me, me in Him. Praise to my Father in heaven who loved me so much He sent His Son to condemn my sin in His own flesh, not in mine. Praise to the blessed Holy Spirit who powerfully enables me to set my mind on Himself and holy things, giving me life and peace and the promise of being raised on the last day. I am no longer in slavery to the sin which deceitfully creeps in as I make, what appears to me in the moment, inconsequential wrong choices here and there. And sometimes the sin seems to charge in, as if unbidden, unannounced, with full fury. But sin is no longer my master, I’m told. I do not need to sin. The Spirit gives power to put to death these sins of the flesh. I need no longer be in dread of my Father. I need not hide nor dress myself in scant fig leaves.

I have been adopted into His family, my heart crying out to my benevolent Father, “Papa!” It is that intimate…that sweet. And when I fail again and again I am told that the Spirit helps me in my weakness, in my sometimes soul agony. Even when my lips fail me with words, I am told He intercedes for me with groanings too deep to utter.

The thing about true love is that it will not endure rivals. Sin is the enemy to true love on both sides. First, God, who loves and is jealous for His own children whom He has chosen, will not allow us to continue in iniquity because it displaces Him in our lives. He who is utterly sinless must reign supreme. Second, we ourselves will not keep allowing sin as the direction, the practice of our lives because that would signify we do not belong to the Savior. It is antithetical to whom we are. “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.” Praise God for the tension in me when sin rears its ugly head for it is a proof of my sonship. The Spirit in me creates that agitation, grants godly sorrow and repentance, cleanses and preserves me for the Father and the Son. (Study 1 John for more on this.)

Half the time I do not know “the why” of the Lord allowing these struggles of my heart, but I’m promised that no matter what His design, what the particular lesson to be learned, even in my sin, He is the Always Good, it is for my good, making me more like Jesus than the last struggle effected. Why? He chose me to be His daughter in eternity, He called me to Himself in time and space, He made me right with Himself, and He will make me fully pure and perfectly holy when transitory earthly life ends and I am ushered into His presence. He is readying me for eternity with Him, cleansing me, changing me, making me more and more into the image of His Son.

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” He won’t bring any charge against us. He won’t condemn us for our sin. After all, “Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, not things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Not even our sin, if we are His. God has set us free because He was satisfied with His dear Son’s life and death in our place. He took our sin and God’s wrath. In exchange, we wear His white robes of righteousness.

I still get frustrated. I still confess my sins. I weary of my weakness and imperfect love for my Savior, depleting me of the joy of my secure fellowship with Him—and so I ask Him to give me strength and conviction and discernment to notice the “little foxes” creeping into my heart which, if left unchecked, will eat me up. I repent more quickly and deeply. I take steps to avoid the pitfalls which lunge me into my favorite sins. I work hard to stop sinning, knowing that it is God who is working in me to even want to stop falling short of His glory, of grieving Him, and giving me the power to change lest I think transformation is from me. (Philippians 2:12-13) I pray for Him to overwhelm me with His love and patience and preserving power on my behalf, assured that nothing will separate me from His love. And because He will never condemn me due to my status in His Son, I desire to not sin. I want to please Him and put Him on display in my life as an evidence of gratitude and love.

We are “more than conquerors”, says Paul, when we are born again. More than? “Super conquerors”, says one pastor. He gives power through Christ to overcome our sin, our distresses, outward onslaughts, inward stresses and temptations, and keeps us for Himself, never, ever to be lost.

Tell someone what great things He has done for you.

Soli Deo Gloria

Love,

Cherry

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits—Who forgives all your iniquities…Who redeems your life from destruction, and crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies, Who satisfies you with good so your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” (Psalm 103:1-5)

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The Kindness of God in Christmas… Part II

Dear sisters,

Meeting or just seeing from afar a well-known or famous person can be a heady experience. In my younger years I went to a political rally and saw my presidential candidate from hundreds of feet away surrounded by bullet-proof glass and I was all a-flutter since I just knew he had actually looked my way as he waved to a crowd of thousands. That man received my vote and he was grateful for everyone’s ballot on his behalf, but it was not anything personal. He did not know me from the next person in a sea of blurry faces. He had not invited me in particular to his rally. He would never, ever remember me because he did not remotely know me nor did he ever see me.

I did sit right in front of one of my favorite on-line/radio pastors once as he preached a series of messages over a week’s time. This man did see me sitting there since he actually looked at all of us in the small audience and even conversed with many of us in group settings, but if I were ever to be in his presence again and have the opportunity to ask, “Hey, remember me?”, he would have to reply in the negative. For someone of great renown who meets countless people over a lifetime, he could not possibly remember every face, every conversation.

Our Lord Jesus is different. He is far bigger and grander than any other human being, no matter how famous, powerful, or influential. He is the Creator of the galaxies, the stars, the planets, the earth, the seas, and all inhabitants, animal and human. He designed all intricacies of every single thing—every molecule, every cell, every atom, every speck of dust. He holds the worlds together by the word of His mouth. He creates life and makes life cease. He is sovereign over all things and circumstances, for all eternity. And He has always existed, uncreated, self-existent, no beginning, no ending. My 9-year-old grandson says such thoughts make his head hurt. And yet, for all this otherness, this grandeur and unfathomable power, Jesus actually knows me, my name, every line of my face, every hair on my head, every thought in my brain. He recognizes me instantly in the throngs of humanity. In fact, He knew me before I was even conceived. He knew me and continues to know me through all eternity. He chose me from before the foundations of the world, from all the billions of faces that would ever be, and said, “You are my daughter.”

Sin entered the created world and the Godhead put the eternal plan in motion, the plan which would save me and all others chosen to be His children. And wonder of wonders, the plan was not one to be accomplished from afar, but a very personal and close-up plan, enabling His children to see Him, living in close proximity to them, living a perfectly obedient life to His Father, eventually incurring the wrath of the Father on the rugged cross in our place for all our falling short of the glory of God.

How could God do this? How would the plan be initiated in time and space so that we limited persons could understand His love for those He personally chose? How would a transcendent God, one above and beyond His creation, accomplish His saving work?

The Scriptures tell us God is good and compassionate, benevolent and kind in His sovereignty. A kind, tender-hearted God is not distant and aloof. Love does not stay away. Those who love want to be with the object of their affection. And so, when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, with a body like ours. He condescended to our fleshy weakness. God became man, made under the Law which He obeyed perfectly…to redeem those of us under the Law that we might receive adoption as sons.

And so, on that still night in the little town of Bethlehem, in a stable with smelly lambs and goats and mice and donkeys, God-pleasing, young Mary gave birth to the Son whom the Angel Gabriel had promised in that fearful encounter with the heavenly being— the One the Holy Spirit had placed in her womb—as Joseph must have wiped her brow, caressed her face, and looked on in wonder, remembering the gracious words of the angel, assuaging his fears about the origins of this child. And they named Him Jesus, because He would one day save His people from their sins. He has many other names and titles, ones old Isaiah had prophesied long before the baby’s coming. Wonderful Counselor. Mighty God. Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace. He is the unblemished Lamb, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, King of kings and Lord of lords.

Rejoice in the kindness upon kindness of God this Christmas. Tenderhearted. Gift of all gifts. Far above us yet with us. Immanuel. God Almighty condescended to dwell with us—“and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” And He continues to live with us by the indwelling Spirit of God.

Another kindness awaits us. Another physical coming. The resurrected Christ is returning to take us to Himself and He will live with us again and we with Him, forevermore, never to be parted. Maybe today.

Love,
Cherry