When I was in Jr. High I ran for the President of the Student Council and my sister came up with a great idea for a campaign slogan that turned my strange sounding last name into an asset.  The night before the election, we sat up taping little one-cent suckers to three-by-five index cards on which we wrote, “Don’t Be A Sucker, Vote for Schmucker” and I passed them out to everyone the next day at school.  It worked.  I won the election.  But, not without paying a dear price.  By the day after the election some of my classmates were actually accusing me of having bought the election – with one-cent suckers!  They actually had the audacity to question my character.  Or, maybe they thought my slogan promised more than it could deliver.  Whatever, it was an early lesson that, without my knowledge at the time, was even helping to prepare me for ministry.  There is no way to give leadership without paying the price of having someone, at some time, question your integrity even when you believe your motives are as pure as the proverbial driven snow.

So, today, with our culture’s insatiable appetite for the tiniest tidbit of information about the flaws in a candidate’s character, I can actually appreciate why some of the finest potential leaders of our generation are simply choosing to invest themselves in the private sector for the sake of protecting - their privacy.  Yet, while allowing for all that, I still find myself asking how it is that one of the primary candidates running for the highest office in the land can say that, privately, he is a man of profound faith in Jesus Christ, yet, when it comes to public policy, he will not allow his faith to affect any decisions he makes while in office.  Is it true that it is possible to believe in Jesus Christ, yet, not allow that private faith to affect the public decisions we make?  Is that really possible?

Not according to Jesus.  Listen again to his words.  “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me . . ..”  By the time we get this far with Jesus, post-resurrection and pre-ascension, Jesus has so fused faith in him and love for him in his teachings that it is virtually impossible to separate them.  To believe in him is to love him.  To love him is to believe in him.  And, with this teaching, verified later by the writings of those who were his disciples, to love him is to obey him.  Jesus has just eliminated the possibility of faith never being anything more than some fact of truth we have memorized that serves no other purpose than to rearrange the function of a few brain cells that no one can see.  He is announcing that loving him will rearrange the function of everything we do, private or public.  He specifically said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  It is what we are doing, privately and publicly, that is the acid test of what we believe.

Now, he says this in the context of making a promise.  A promise that was not just for those disciples but for all who would ever choose to believe in him.  He had just returned from the grave but was about to leave again.  And, just before he leaves he promises, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.  This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.  I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you . . . on that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”  Two promises actually, Jesus makes.

One is that his disappearance does not mean abandonment.  He will come again.  Second, in the meantime, his spirit, the Holy Spirit, will be our guide to truth and life.  As an aside, isn’t this a wonderful promise that we find fulfilled every day?  Every time we learn something about God or God reveals himself to us that doesn’t just happen.  We learn and we see because of his spirit in us making it possible for us to see.  Every day, God makes good on his promise. 

And, because God has made good on his promises in the past, we can trust him to make good on his promises for the future.  Jesus did everything he said he would up to and including dying for our sins on the cross and coming back from the grave.  He has a perfect track record that is above reproach.  So, we can be sure that, because he promised to come back for us, he will.

What other way would you want God to be?  Only one who made promises but never acted?  When you prayed would you only want to hear God say, in response, “I’ll be thinking about you.”?  Or, when you pray for your daily bread don’t you expect to see food on the table?  When you ask God to deliver you from evil don’t you want directions to another place than hell?  When we pray we don’t just want good wishes from a heavenly Hallmark store.  We want action.  The acts of God, from creation to redemption, are proof to us of what kind of God he is.  Conversely, our actions are proof of something, too.  Not just what we say, but what we actually, physically, materially do.

We are reaching that delicate stage in the parenting process where we are having to do more and more letting go because our boys are getting to that place where, in the natural process of maturation, they are pulling away more and more from us.  There was a time in their lives when we knew where they were every single moment of every day.  Now, they are away from us at least as much as they are with us.  In time, the balance will have completely shifted to the point where they are away more than not.  So, though we have tried to all along, we are doing even more now to drive home to them the issue of responsibility in making choices when we are not there to watch and guide.  In ways that are almost frightening at times I will open my mouth to say something

and would be willing to swear I hear my father’s voice come out of my face.  How does that happen?  Anyway, the other day I actually heard myself saying to Griffin, “character is what you are when no one is watching.” 

That’s true.  But, it’s not the whole truth, according to Jesus.  While it may be true that character is what you are when no one is watching, Jesus is saying that if you are a person of true character, people won’t have to watch long to see it.  Character may be something that is more than skin deep but Jesus is saying that true character affects the way we use our skin as we literally flesh out what we believe into the ways in which we conduct all the affairs of our daily lives.  Those who “have” his “commandments,” Jesus said, will “keep” them.  Just as God has kept every promise he’s ever made because he loves us (the word of God became the flesh of Jesus) so it is that those who love him will keep their promises to be faithful to him as Lord by, literally, doing what they said they would.

Have you ever experienced a gnawing sense of unease about your relationship with God?  I have.  Nearly every day.  What is that growling in the cellar of our hearts that just won’t go away?  Well, it could be any number of things.  Maybe it’s underserved guilt in some cases.  The Bible tells us that one of Satan’s greatest weapons against us is to try to agitate our consciences for no reason at all.  (Revelation 12:10)  The truth is, Satan doesn’t have to work very hard on me.  When my guilt-capacitor was getting wired in my mother’s womb she must have been standing too close to a generator or something because something got cross-wired so that, now, my conscience has this incredible capacity for short-circuiting into the overactive mode in an instant.  I can not only feel guilty about things I did years ago that God has forgiven for eternity I have this incredible ability to watch someone else blow it and feel guilty for them, too.   

But, I have come to conclude that at least some of that unease is about something else that is well deserved.  Maybe you can identify with me.  Do you think some of that gnawing sense of unease in our conscience has to do with promises we’ve yet to keep?  Commitments we made to God, maybe years ago, but just never got around to fulfilling?  What do you think?  Are there any unkept promises in your spiritual inventory that keep you feeling uneasy every time you tell God you love him?   

When I was about ten or so I got into this routine of walking the aisle every Sunday to make a public recommitment of my life to Jesus.  I don’t know what someone else did that I was feeling guilty about but something kept me going down that aisle nearly every Sunday until one day, on the way home, my father asked me to consider another option.  I don’t remember his exact words but I do remember the spirit of them.  He said that public rededications were a wonderful thing.  But, maybe, he said, it was time for me to stop making so many promises to God and time to just start keeping some of them. 

It is true, isn’t it, that most of us would be much further down the disciple road if we just did what we said we would years ago.  That we don’t need to make any new promises to God as badly as we need to keep some of the old ones.  The apostle Paul said, “those of us who are mature should . . . live up to what we have already attained.”  (Philippians 3:15-16, NIV)   And, those unkept promises are as unique to all of us as our thumbprints.  We each have our own salvation to work out, our own relationship with God to grow.

For some it may involve repenting of behaviors that dishonor our Lord.  Perhaps in our sex lives or thought lives or in lying, stealing or cheating in other ways.  For others, it may mean crossing the street to apologize to a neighbor you  offended or crossing an ocean as a missionary to invest your life on another continent in bringing the good news of Jesus to lost souls there.  For some it may mean reorganizing their time so that Christ is central in it or reorganizing their finances so that they can finally honor Christ with their tithes and offerings.  Whatever it is, Jesus said, if we love him, it will show. 

Interestingly, Jesus also said that, to those who prove to love him, he would show himself.  “Those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”  The more you know him the more you love him.  The more you love him the more you know him.  Isn’t that something?  Knowing God is more a matter of serving him than studying him.  Or, said another way, if you want to see God’s face, study the faces of those for whom he also died but who are held in bondage to sin, shame and suffering.  The words of Jesus at another time come to mind.  “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”  (Matthew 25:40)  Every time we touch the face of a crying soul we wipe a tear from the face of God.

Brennan Manning says it this way.  “To follow Jesus is to take the high road to Calvary.  Littered along the Calvary road will lie the skeletons of our egos, the corpses of our fantasies of control, and the shards of self-righteousness, self-indulgent spirituality, and unfreedom.  The greatest need for our time is for the Church to become what it has seldom been:  the body of Christ with its face to the world, loving others regardless of religion or culture, pouring itself out in a life of service, offering hope to a frightened world, and presenting itself as a real alternative to the existing arrangement.  What separates the committed from the uncommitted is the depth and quality of our love for Jesus Christ.  Fidelity to (Christ) will take us along the path of downward mobility . . . in the midst of an upwardly mobile world.  We will find ourselves not on the path to power but on the path to powerlessness; not on the road to success but on the road to servanthood; not on the broad road of praise and popularity but on the narrow road of ridicule and rejection.”  (Brennan Manning, “The Signature of Jesus,”  Multnomah Books, 1996, pp. 7-8)

Every now and then someone will come off of the street and find their way into my office.  Sometimes they want a handout.  As often as not, they just want to talk.  More often than not, they are confused and dirty and don’t smell very good.  It’s so tempting to just send them away or send them somewhere else.  But, that temptation is always accompanied by something gnawing at me deep down inside.  So, I sit and listen and usually don’t do much talking.  I’ve never had this experience before coming to Cliff Temple.  But, I’ve had it so many times since.  I’ll be sitting there listening to these people and I have the strangest urge, looking deep into their eyes, to ask, “Is that you in there, Jesus?”

Wouldn’t it be something if one day, without me even asking out loud, “Is that you in there, Jesus?” one of those people said, “Yes, it’s me.  And, I’ve come to see you today because you have a promise you’ve yet to keep.” 

Wouldn’t that be something if Jesus stopped by one day?