P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

A MIDNIGHT VISIT FROM THE ANTI-THIEF

Have you ever been robbed? That is one scary feeling. About four years ago, one of our staff members here at the Voice of Prophecy decided to go down to Dodger Stadium with his kid. It was one of those promotion nights where some pop band was playing after the game was over, so by the time the amps were all switched off and the fans were filing out to their cars, it was around 11 at night. The band not being a particularly good one, many people had already headed home, so the parking lots were kind of sparsely filled and deserted.

And just as this employee got to his car, he and his daughter sucked in their breath. A window was busted. There was glass everywhere and the right-passenger window was just clean busted out. How come? What’s going on? Nobody was around, so it looked like a case of pure-and-simple vandalism. Some punk with a rock was just having a good time.

So they climbed into the car, blood boiling in the veins, as we say, and headed home. The blood was boiling but the night air was chilling, of course, with a window out, and so those two temperature flows kind of canceled themselves out.

They were a good five miles down the road and already onto the Golden State Freeway before he suddenly realized something. “Hey, the CD player’s busted.” It was dangling in the dash still, but it was thrashed. And suddenly he realized the truth: this was no simple case of vandalism. Some thief had actually been sitting in his car, sitting right there in the driver’s seat, and unsuccessfully trying to wedge that stereo out and take it from him. That was his car, his personal space, his sanctuary, where father and daughter enjoyed moments of close communion . . . and an alien force had invaded it.

That little story reminded us of an essay in one of Bill Hybels’ early books, this one entitled Who You Are (When No One’s Looking). Over in John 10:10, he points out, Jesus explains the obvious, that a thief breaks in just to steal and kill and destroy. And then Hybels adds this marvelous thought:
“[Jesus] is not a thief but an ANTI-thief. He knocks patiently until you open the door, and then He fills up your house with a whole truckload of life’s most precious commodities.”

Have you ever thought of that? It would be like someone tapping on the door of your 1971 Datsun, and saying, “Excuse me, can I come in?” And after scratching your head, and finally saying, “Sure, I guess,” He climbs into the passenger seat and installs a brand new eight-speaker Bose system with a 10-disc changer, Dolby all the way around, bass amp in the trunk, and a leather-bound CD holder that has all of the Voice of Prophecy’s Family Reunion CDs in it. While He’s in there, He also somehow gives you all new upholstery, a brand new V6 engine, paint job, mag wheels, spins your odometer back to zero, and even sprays your interior with that new-car-right-out-of-the-showroom fragrance. He’s the anti-thief who comes in and fills your life with abundance. Instead of that bare, I’ve-been-robbed look that houses sometimes have on Law & Order, you come home and find that this friendly Visitor has filled the place you live with warm and comfortable gifts beyond anything you could imagine.

Well, friend, we want to take that beautiful metaphor of the “anti-thief” and use it here in our radio discussion about conflict and fighting. We’ve spent a whole week already praying over the hard reality that sinful humans love to fight. Humans in the church love to fight and cross swords and draw blood. The book of James describes this tendency as the “lust that wars in our members.” Bickering and doing battle are ingrained in the software of the soul; it’s our default mode.

And so the Christian is called to exit from that battlefield, but not for the purpose of simply walking to the sidelines. Let’s notice in the Sermon on the Mount –Matthew 5-7 – that Jesus doesn’t tell His followers to simply LOVE peace. The Bible doesn’t say “Blessed are the peace-LOVERS.” No, instead, God’s command to us is very stark and plain:
“Blessed are the peace-MAKERS, for they will be called sons of God.”

The new WWJD New Testament — “What Would Jesus Do” — puts it in these activist words:
“God blesses those who WORK FOR PEACE, for they will be called the children of God.”

So friend, we have thieves and we have “anti-thieves.” And here we have fighters and also ANTI-fighters. People who don’t just go into their houses, shut and bar the doors, draw the shades, and turn up the volume on their Enya CD. No, these people of God invade the community where the conflict is happening. They try to draw people together. They go to church every Sabbath or Sunday morning and try to create calm. When someone attacks the pastor, they look for the good in him. Or they gently ask: “Have you talked to him? Pastor Jones is a servant of God, man. I know he would want to fix that problem. I know he would move heaven and earth to resolve that situation, if you’d just make him aware.”

Last week we got some marvelous material from a website called “thelivingwordtbc.com.” A Ken D. Trivette shares some exceptional teaching from the book of James, and he makes this comment:
“A spiritually mature person does not live after his or her own desires. They do not live by the wisdom of this world. They live by an altogether different standard. They don’t CAUSE trouble. They sow peace instead of strife.”

Do you remember the Matthew 13 parable Jesus told where an enemy pulled a ski mask over his face, disabled the alarms, climbed over the fence at midnight, and planted weeds everywhere? Well, here it’s the opposite. These quiet heroes of the kingdom go about their lives, sowing seeds of harmony. They quell rebellions instead of fomenting them.

Ironically, one chapter earlier in his book, Bill Hybels has a chapter entitled “Radical Love: Breaking the Hostility Cycle.” And, as we’ve been saying, hostility is the default setting for most human beings. As newborns, almost, we strap on swords and shields from Johnson & Johnson when we’re still in the delivery room. And Jesus invites His friends, the people who care about His kingdom, to do the very opposite thing. Don’t be a thief; be an ANTI-thief. Don’t be a peace-destroyer; be a peace-MAKER.

Jesus Himself conceded that when someone slaps you on the cheek — which was a common insult there in Jerusalem — the instinct is to hit back. Tit for tat. But Jesus tells us to love peace, to actually turn the other cheek. Accept a second blow. Give someone your coat and your cloak.

Hybels calls these people “radical lovers” and shares this little story:
“A friend of mine is a paramedic in Humboldt Park,” he writes, “a Chicago neighborhood notorious for its gangs. ‘You know how it goes,’ he told me. ‘It starts with a little misunderstanding. It escalates when someone gets his feelings hurt and uses a little sarcastic language. His sarcasm provokes a smart-aleck response, which elicits a threat and then a challenge. Now the male bravado and honor get going. And then come the fists and the clubs and the knives and the guns. The blood flows and the flesh tears, and when it’s all over and people are lying in piles, they call us and we come in and pick up the pieces.”

It sounds like the opening scenes of ER, doesn’t it? And it’s not always blood and switchblades and semiautomatic rifles. Hybels continues:
“I know how it goes. It’s been going that way for thousands of years. Granted, in a ‘sophisticated suburban’ environment most of our hostilities do not end in hand-to-hand combat. They end in cold wars: detachment, distrust, alienation, bitterness, name calling, mudslinging, separation, isolation and lawsuits. Although we rarely fight with our fists, we can do a great deal of damage without ever soiling our three-piece suits.”

And then comes the biblical diagnosis, which is the assignment Jesus gives to all those of us who would like to be known as sons and daughters of God. Hybels concludes with this:
“But the cycle of hostility must be stopped if there is ever going to be relational harmony in this world, and it will take radical, NONretaliatory, second-mile lovers to stop it. Somebody has to absorb an injustice instead of inflicting another one on somebody else; somebody has to pull the plug on continued cruelty. God says, ‘You can do it, if you’re willing to become a radical lover.’”

Can we do this in our marriages? Hybels asks. In our schools? Where we work? Don’t just walk away from the tumult; walk INTO it, with a plan for peace, and a willingness to give, not just one, but both cheeks to the cause.

What a sacrifice that can sometimes be — and not just the giving of a cheek or a cloak! Your pride, your wounded feelings, your very SELF may need to be laid on the altar of peace-MAKING. But Matthew 5, where this command is found, is the Magna Carta of the kingdom. When we are meek, merciful, hungry for righteousness — and especially when we sacrificially MAKE peace — we advance that kingdom.
‘Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

We not only pray that prayer, we help Jesus make it come true.