Unharried

The average modern Christian lives chaotically.  She goes from one activity to another, accomplishing countless chores and feeling the weight of ten thousand demands without a shred of the peace and contentment Jesus possessed as He went about His Father's business.  Jesus did not separate what He did from what His Father was doing through Him.  The reason is that He refused to disengage Himself from the Father relationally or psychologically.  It was not theological fluff when Christ said that He and the Father were one.  Our Lord worked at this oneness and developed it so that it was habitual.  His times on the mountain established the oneness but so did His turning inward to the Father as He ate, talked with the disciples and the Pharisees, sat on the well in a Samaritan village and strolled along the edge of the lake.  He kept His mind aligned with the Father wherever He was and refused to let the lusts of the world disrupt that connection.  There are two temptations of Satan that knock us off our block.  We want what isn't ours and we don't want what God bestows.  The struggle in our head is a violent one.  Do we believe that our Lord loves us absolutely and that His will for us is perfect and good?  When we question those two axioms of scripture we lose our bearing with God and strike out on our own.  At that point we begin to operate as the Israelites in the time of the Judges, "everyone did as he saw fit."  If you want the peace that "passes understanding", then you must doggedly remain aligned with the same God who provides that peace.  Stay attached to the Lord at every level and at all costs.  Habitually thank the Lord for what you have and what you encounter at the moment, whether it seems good or bad to you.  The gratitude of the saint is her greatest defense against depression, anxiety and conflict.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.     Colossians 3:15 NIV

Who Are You?

Matthew 16:15 NIV

 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"

Who Do You Say He Is?

Last year I coached the Little League Baseball team of our youngest son and the only reason I did it was because the league was desperate for more managers.  I had the youngest of the teams in our division and had no experience ever coaching baseball.  No one thought our team would be any good…least of all me.  We held practices and the kids worked hard and miraculously we won our first game and it happened to be against the best team in our level.  We then won the next game and the next game and the one after that and suddenly everyone in our league began to take notice of us.  Parents I did not know were talking about me and our team and before games people would walk up to me and congratulate me for our team’s success.  One of the grandparents of a player of ours one evening walked up to me and made this funny comment.  Our team had won all six games we had played thus far and so it became somewhat legendary what we were doing.  “Everyone is going to want a pastor to coach their team now”, he told me.  I just laughed and wondered if that were really the case.  Did all these parents really want a pastor in charge of their kids?  Did they want me coaching their children?  What was I to these people who barely knew me?  Was I coach?  Was I pastor?  Was I parent just like they were?  Was I a strange guy who has a loud voice?

Our tendency, before we get to know someone is to objectify that person.  He is a policeman.  She is a doctor.  That one is a waiter.  Those are students.  They are Malaysians.  He is good looking.  She is smart.  There are a thousand different categories we use to objectify people.  Because it is difficult getting to really know everyone we come across, it is much easier for us to shelve them all into mental spots of categories so we don’t have to bother with their humanity.  We all do this at one level or another.  It is why racism is found in every region of the world and the reason totalitarian governments and feudalism and caste systems can survive.  It seems like the internet for all its good can perpetuate this approach to people.  You are what your comments are rather than a real person who lives a life of trials and celebrations and mundane chores.  It is human that we don’t want to be known as a category of a person.  We want to be ourselves…unique, this one and only this one.  We know how complicated we are…how changeable and multi-faceted.  I am not a tall, white pastor.  I am me.  You are you.

Our Lord addressed this concern with His disciples.  He wanted to know what sort of impression the disciples thought  He was leaving upon the world…what was the category people were using to describe Him.  He asked them.  "Who do people say I am?" (Mark 8:27 NIV)  The responses were varied:  John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets.  The people believed He was a spokesman for God; that was clear.  Jesus wanted to know what His friends thought of Him.   "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" (Mark 8:29 NIV)  Now this question is well phrased and gets at the heart of the matter.  He does not ask, “What do you say I am?”  That is a question that would lead them to objectify Him.  What sort of category do you place me?  Jesus didn’t want that.  The crowds who kept track of Him were doing that.  Jesus wanted His friends to personalize Him.  “Who do you say I am?”  Now this is a critical question to be asked!  Who is Jesus?  Not what is He?  That is a lazy way of considering Him.  Who is He?  It takes real mental effort to get at that.

I wonder what others besides the disciples would have said about who He was and is!  There was an older man who had been crippled thirty-eight years.  Day after day he reclined beside a pool that many thought had magical powers to heal.  You had to be the first one to get into the water after bubbles mystically appeared on the surface or it didn’t do anything for you.  At least that was what was thought.  Here he waited for his chance of having his legs healed but nothing happened.  No one helped him get into the water just as the bubbles floated up to the top.  He was all alone is a sea of destitute and handicapped people.  One day Jesus arrived and the crippled man had no idea who he was.  When Jesus told him to pick up his mat and walk, the fellow did and low and behold he could stand when he tried and he could walk.  It seems that he never bothered to thank Jesus for what He had done for him; never even seemed compelled to find out who Jesus was.  I wonder how this guy would have answered Jesus question, “Who do you say I am?”

The Temple in Jerusalem had several sections, each designed to give specific groups of people an opportunity to worship and pray and talk about God.  It worked well with the sections for Jewish men and perhaps even Jewish women but it was a train wreck where non Jewish people were to go to pray.  The area had been turned into a bazaar.  Goats and sheep and breads being hawked all about.  Money changers worked deals for out of towners who needed Jewish shekels to give their offerings.  When Jesus came into the Gentile section of the Temple, He was appalled by what He saw and threw a fit.  He overturned tables, chased away animals and created a ruckus.  He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.  And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: "'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'?   But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'" (Mark 11:15-17 NIV)  What would the merchants and priests in the Court of the Gentiles that day have replied if Jesus asked them, “Who am I?” 

Pilate could have been asked this question.  “Pilate, who am I?”  As Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus, using brutality to get at Him, Jesus might have been a “what” for Him.  Yet as He watched Jesus get beaten without begging for the guards to stop, refuse to give a defense for Himself when the priests and their cronies made all sorts of bizarre accusations against Him, did not plead for Pilate to let Him go, Jesus must have at some point become a person to Pilate.  Pilate’s wife came to him, imploring Pilate to release Jesus because of a dream she had about Him. This must have shaken him a bit and pushed the Roman governor to look at Jesus more closely.  When Pilate finally sent Jesus off to be flogged and crucified, I wonder what his answer to Jesus’ question would have been.  “Who am I?

When the Lord suddenly appeared in the room where Thomas and the other disciples were, just seven days after He was raised from the dead in a new resurrected body, the thought must have crossed Thomas’s mind for a split second, “Who is this?”  Quickly he regrouped after Jesus got his full attention.   A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!"  Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." (John 20:26-27 NIV)  Thomas immediately blurted out to Jesus, "My Lord and my God!"  (John 20:28 NIV)  This sudden apprehension of Jesus is shocking and disconcerting when like Thomas, we have it.  If He is your good friend, that is one thing.  If He is an absent father who doesn’t pay attention to your, that is another.  If He is a critic who finds all your faults and puts you down, that is still something else.  If He is weak and incompetent and has nothing to offer, then that is even another way of deciding.  If though, He is your Lord and God, you must consider the ramifications of that.

No one can talk you into this; it requires the revelation of God to make it clear.  There isn’t a pastor or book or video that can convince you of this that Jesus is your Lord and God.  Only the Father in Heaven can make that certain but once He does, once you come to that conclusion, you must act upon it.  You must make a clear break from every other loyalty that keeps you from Him as your Lord and your God.  At one time you were happy to follow Jesus.  It was easy then because you were fascinated by Him.  Now though it is hard and life has taken a toll on you and there Jesus is before you, calling to you to come after Him.  Is He still your Lord and God?  Does He still have your absolute loyalty?  Can He do with you as He wishes, take you where He wants, give you whatever task He decides?  Until you make this dramatic shift in your will, that Jesus Christ is your Lord and your God, nothing much will happen with you.  You will get along; you won’t however be joined with Him in His great mission.  But once you do decide He is your Lord and your God, He will align you with Him so that you will be in step with God and part of what He is doing in this world. 

Wait

Endurance is not something typically glamorized either in the media or in contemporary Christian annals.  It is not faith but often an offspring of her.  The eject button symbolically represents the normal approach to difficulties, trials and painful circumstances.  If we are forced to go through something that is trying for any extended period of time, all too often we turn away from it and move to something else more rewarding.  Success resonates; forbearing carries an icy chill to the bones.  The problem with Biblical timelines is that they carry with them a fantasy feel.  One hundred years is just a quick descriptor we breeze past.  Forty years is a blink in a biographical account.  Seventy years is a parenthetical insert.  Yet the one hundred years of Noah were ten thousand days and a million hours.  The forty years of Moses were almost two generations...the time it takes to build a family and wave good-by to the kids as they put together families of their own.  The coming of the Messiah waited for entire civilizations to rise and fall a dozen times or more.  Now we wait again for our Lord to return and we face a most disconcerting Spiritual axiom.  God's people must wait.  They suffer.  They endure for lifetimes and across generations.  They wonder when the end will come and it doesn't.  They stand in line and their number doesn't get called.  Joshua waited eighty years for his day in the sun and impatient David ran for years from King Saul with no end in sight.  The character of the Christian is built upon the unyielding rock of waiting.  Waves of time beat against the stony fortress but it refuses to budge.  We must not think that we can force our will upon God's demand of standing still.  He will take the impatient soul and put him or her in a holding pattern until our Lord's character is developed within.  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not upon your own understanding" has a context.  Almost always it is a wait that seems unreasonable and unbearable that pulls out such faith and makes it true.  Do we have enough time for God to work His life into us so that it is actual rather than imagined?  As impossible as it seems, thank the Lord for your times of waiting because in them, if you are trusting in Him, God will make you the sort of person He can use for divine purposes.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.    Psalm 130:5 NIV

Fine Dining

You are not here to make the world comfortable.  When Christ comes dripping out of you at first, then a sprinkle and eventually a great torrent, it will not land you in the preferred spots at the table.  Even our Lord was pushed aside in the Samaritan village, mocked in Jerusalem and nearly knocked off the cliff in His home town.  You cannot expect to be beloved everywhere you go if God is seeping out of you!  His love, His patience, His calm assurance, His holiness and humility do not win over Pharisees or judges but the aroma of Christ will entice some to want a taste of what you have.    The "least of these" are frantically scanning about for a sign that the universe is more than just a wasteland...that there is real life somewhere.  You come to them with the Breath, the Light and suddenly darkness is not oppressive, the empty spaces are not a vacuum.  There is real hope and you possess it; a reason to believe and you hold it in your hand.  Do not neglect the life of God within you.  Do not starve it by letting the world be your nourishment.  You are God's gift to the world, His fine banquet.  Be filled with the Holy Spirit, eating with ravenous hunger the Scriptures, drinking deeply of Christ in prayer.  Never let a day pass when you do not put into practice something you see God is working into you.  Whether it be forgiveness, mercy, calm assurance, wisdom, pure actions, guarded words or generosity, let the Spirit bring it out of you.  At times God may have to squeeze it out of you like juice from the grape but when He does, you can be certain it is not in vain.  The pressure that breaks the bread and crushes the grape produces a rich meal for a "God-starved" world.  If you are squeezed, don't panic or fight to get out of God's grip, let Him produce in you a feast that is irresistible when the right guest sits at the table.

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples,         Isaiah 25:6a NIV

Sin Unbound

We see that there is a deep advantage to being hurt by the badness of people.  It awakens us to just how profound the ramifications of Sin are.  Sin strikes at the core of every relationship we have and impacts every thought we possess.  Sin runs deep into our unconscious and percolates up into our dreams and odd reactions to circumstances...tempers we don't expect, lusts we thought we didn't possess, depressions and anxieties that seem unfounded.  The world is permeated by Sin and the cruelty and rudeness that exists is mind shattering if we give it much thought.  Even school-age children are severely damaged by the prevalence of Sin in the classrooms that we would like to believe are sanctuaries for them.  Thank God He did not close His eyes to the cruelty and corruption of Sin.  Our Lord took it on His own back and wore the brutality of it in His muscles and skin and He absorbed it fully until it was clear, "it is finished".   When we feel the weight of Sin upon us and it's cruelty marks us too, we can at that moment recognize the assignment God has given us to intercede for those about us.  Pray for the ones you see suffering from the agony of Sin induced sorrow and pain.    No heartache or wound is too deep for Jesus Christ to heal and redeem.  No fury is too great for Him to calm and no lust too powerful for Him to tame.  The Cross of Christ brings victory at every point where Sin has had its way.  The Cross is God accepting in Himself each outcome of Sin within His own body and thereby making every sin we commit and face  a broken chain that once bound us but does so no longer.  Sin still wrecks lives and brings misery but Christ Crucified gives the peace and joy of God  entrance into every human heart that looks to Him for salvation.

For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 1 Corinthians 2:2 NIV

Martyr's Hill

One of the most devious tricks of the devil is to get us to say, "I can't" to God.  Is it really that you can't or that you won't?  Every creature, from the snail to the leopard is made perfectly by God for whatever purpose our Lord has planned.  We make much of genetic deformities as if that is sensible.  What we may call a deformity is in fact a way of expressing disbelief in God's handiwork...as if He is a flawed artist.  If at any point God gives you direction and you are clear it is God, you can be certain you are equipped and prepared for the task.  Nothing about you is out of place or lacking.  It must be dumbfounding to the angels that any born-again Christian would question God's call based on skill sets and talents.  Yet even Moses stood at the burning bush arguing with Almighty God over his fitness to lead Israel out of Egypt!  What slander to confuse defamation of God's work in you with humility!  It is not humble to turn down our Lord because we think we are inadequate for the task!  It is rather outright rebellion against His rule.  Nothing amazes the world quite as much as the fisherman who stands the world on its ear with his preaching or the tax collector who composes the very first book of the New Testament or the lunatic who Christ proclaims will be remembered eternally for her holy devotion.  How will heaven remember you?  Will you be compared to all those called by God who turned aside out of fear or indifference or will you be known as the one who scorned the devil's mocking of your readiness for the task and gave God all you had for your Savior's glory?   Will you stand on the hill of your martyrdom and plant the banner of Christ there, declaring the land irrevocably God's and His alone? 

 "Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them.     Jeremiah 1:17-18 NIV

Community in Christ

The Christian Community is much too quick to snip at one another and go after the jugular of faults.  Do we think it was toward the Pharisees only that Jesus aimed his barbed arrow in the Sermon on the Mount?  It pricks us too and more truly stabs us all the way in the heart.  How can we ever hope to progress in joy if we are captivated by the splinters in the eyes of our fellow servants?  Evangelism is simply pious platitudes if we are not loving one another unconditionally.   It is laughable to hope that we can build the Kingdom if internally we are squabbling and mocking one another, critiquing and evaluating each other's works and motives.  The crisis in the Church has never been without but for two millennia within.    Much more damage has come to us at the hands of our fellow believers than any non-Christian has ever caused.  Love does not begin with some lavish pronouncement but with a single determination to overlook an offence or keep to ourselves our criticism.  We can do this with Christ living through us but without Him, we are hopelessly entangled by our grievances and dissatisfactions.  As we look to Christ in the heat of our acrimony, the Lord will grant us His love and kindness to come out of us at the very moment we need it.   Our Lord has a great deal of grace for those who "love too much" or "overlook too much" it seems and if we should err, it would be best to err on the side of mercy and compassion rather than take up with the older brother in his complaints.  Job's friends look all too familiar to us  and we must be careful we don't sit in their camp when Job comes our way.  We might find ourselves begging the Job God has given us for mercy when the Lord "catches up with us."

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."   Matthew 7:1-2 NIV

Will of Man

The assumption that we have somehow given our best to God is an absurdity.  What we have to give is His already and what we think is a form of best is so riddled by sin and vanity that we cannot in any way assess its quality.  We do have something to offer though...it is our will.  Our Lord will never forcibly retrieve our will once He has given it to us.  It is ours for eternity...a gift of God that makes us in His image.  Belief is not our will but rather a function of our will.  Why is it that hell is a gaping abyss for those who deny God His devotion?  To not give the abyss would be to deny us our will and destroy the basis of our humanity.  We take our will with us wherever we are sent and a will that refuses God and the humanization of His love, His Son, cannot be pushed or squeezed or manipulated into Heaven no matter how great the goodness and mercy of our Savior.  We truly choose our life, whether that life is redeemed from Sin or wrecked by it.  The devil cannot break your will either...he can make a scramble of your mind but he cannot kidnap your will.  You may hand it to him and then he has the free run of your head as seen in Judas and Herod.   The obstinate unbeliever is no more or less willful than the most saintly of believers.  What separates the two is the throne at which the will has been placed.  When Peter and the other disciples handed Christ the will each of them possessed, they found themselves at once beside a lake, next within a temple and finally upon a hill.  It all seemed a whirlwind of following, following, following.  But as they went with Christ in the full power and depth of their individual wills, they became transformed by Him and His crucified and resurrected life into His actual presence so who they were was merged with who He is and their wills became His...bearing much fruit.

I am the vine; you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit;  apart from me you can do nothing.  John 15: 5 NIV

Spirit Journey

Psalm 51:10-11 RSV

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.

Do You Have a Spirit Or Are You a Spirit?

When I was ten years old I made a most terrifying journey that only was about fifty feet long.  I got out of the chair where I was sitting, stood up, and walked to the pastor who was standing at the front of the congregation of Pacific Avenue Baptist Church.  He asked me why I had come to him and I told him I wanted to become Christian.  The pastor had a few more questions for me and as the rest of the church waited, I prayed with him that God would forgive my sins and give me eternal life.  I that day put all my hope in Jesus Christ as my Savior.  About six months later, a new pastor had come to our church and in the church’s brand new baptistery; Pastor Culp baptized me on Easter morning.  I was stunned by how I responded to this.  For no reason that I could figure, I began to weep as soon as I came out of the water.  It was amazing to me because I didn’t think I was nervous nor was there any reason for me to be sad and I cannot say I was overwhelmed by any relief to get my life on track.  My spirit simply broke apart that morning and weeping was my physiological response.  Now I know that it was the Holy Spirit that came over me and after seeing this same reaction in others who have been baptized, I realize that I wasn’t weird or “just a cry baby”.  But back then, I didn’t understand what had happened and no one ever pulled me aside to tell me what I had experienced.  Some would call it a “spiritual moment”.  But what does that mean?

We speak of certain things as “spiritual” but do we really know what that means?  Is going to a Buddhist temple spiritual?  Is walking through a meadow spiritual?  Can sipping coffee at a café be spiritual?  Is it spiritual to sit in on a worship service or to read your Bible or give to a charity?  Are we spiritual?  Is there something real and discernible that we know about the spirit that we can explore and discuss?

One way to make sense of this question is to consider the part the spirit plays in life.  The Bible teaches that each person is comprised of body, soul and spirit. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1Thessalonians 5:23 NIV)  More than that, our spirit is what makes us a living human being.  Until God breathed into Adam, he was just a dead body.  After he gained his spirit, Adam was a “living soul”.  God tailor makes each spirit for the particular person who receives it.  The Lord, who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the spirit of man within him… (Zechariah 12:1-2 NIV)  Without spirit, the body dies.  What we call death is when the spirit returns to God.  …and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.  (Ecclesiastes 12:7 NIV)  Jesus, when He was about to die on the Cross quoted from Psalm 31: 5 as He gave to the Father His spirit.  Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last. (Luke 23:46 NIV)  In John 19:30, the spirit departing and returning to God is synonymous with the declaration, “He died”.  Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (NIV)  Death is the loss of spirit…that is the definition of death…even more so than the brain no longer functioning or the heart no longer beating.  As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. (James 2:26 NIV)  Consider the great miracle of Jesus bringing back to life a little girl in Luke 8.  She was dead but when her spirit returned to her she rose up and was alive again.  But he took her by the hand and said, "My child, get up!"  Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up. (Luke 8:54-55 NIV)  The spirit was not wrecked when the girl died but still existed…Ecclesiastes tells us it goes to be with God.  It lives even when the body and soul die.

The spirit is therefore who we are eternally.  Some would speak of it as our personality.  The spirit processes what the body receives.  John 13: 21 expresses this perfectly.  As He contemplated His coming death, Jesus in His spirit sorted out what this would entail.  After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, "I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me." (NIV)  After Jesus told the paralytic that his sins were forgiven, in Jesus’ spirit He recognized the reaction to His words of the lawyers who overheard His declaration.  Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, "Why are you thinking these things? (Mark 2:8 NIV)

Consider the most fascinating relationship between one’s spirit and body delineated in 1 Corinthians 14.  For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.  So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. (1 Corinthians 14:14-15 NIV) The spirit and the body do not have to work together all the time.  Our mind can be completely unaware of what is happening within our spirit.  When we talk about the unconscious, often this is exactly what we mean.  Our spirit can connect with God without our mind knowing anything about this.  But there is another possibility here also.  Our spirit can connect with the demonic realm, with Satan, and not be aware of it either.  This is a most exciting and troubling discovery.  There may be much going on with us that our mind is oblivious to and unable to process.  All sort of wants, hateful feelings and godly interests can bubble up to the surface and we wonder how they got there.  It is because our spirit can interact both with God and with Satan without our mind realizing what this is doing to us.

There are crucial ramifications to this.  There is a back door to spiritual forces that can wreck us psychologically.  But there is a tremendous benefit also.  When we pray for someone, God can open this back door wide enough for a great working to take place.  Suppose you pray for Joe whose mind is shut firmly to God.  He has no interest in Him and in fact due to some terrible things that have happened to Him, Joe has a rather intense hatred toward God.  But, the Lord can, as we pray open this back door, interact with him in his spirit and by doing so, prepare the mind for repentance and faith.  In other words, we can never assume that Joe or any of the Joes or Josephines are hopeless cases.  Even a closed mind can be impacted and transformed by an open spirit.  The back door is available for God or Satan to enter and we decide in our praying or lack of praying who gains access.

Now we must turn to the most important part of our discussion regarding spirit.  Perhaps the greatest promise found anywhere in the Old Testament is presented in Psalm 51: 10.  The English translations differ in this verse in a significant way.  The RSV has the best rendition of the Hebrew intention and so we shall use it here.  Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.  Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.  When Jesus told Nicodemus and the rest of us that we have to be born again, He was referring to this promise.  We do not get a new body when we are born again nor do we receive a new soul...both come much later when the resurrection of the dead occurs.  But now, as soon as we put our trust in Jesus Christ to save us, it is a new spirit God gives us and that spirit is new because it now is joined to the Holy Spirit…we become as Jesus put it, “born of the Spirit”.  The great prophet Ezekiel put the promise this way.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (Ezekiel 36:26-28 NIV)  This work of God in joining our spirit to His Spirit is made explicit by Jesus.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."  By this he meant the Spirit… (John 7:38-39 NIV)

So what do we have here?  We have the most extraordinary finding.  The cross of Jesus Christ has the potential to work out a miracle in you.  If we stake our lives on the forgiveness of God and His mercy to give us eternal life because Jesus Christ took the punishment of God for our sins…the Holy Spirit then becomes a part of us; our personality saturated with the personality of God.  So what is wrong with us?  Why is it that so much of us does not seem like God?  You cannot remember because you were too young but you have seen it in others; when you were a baby and even older, your spirit struggled to express itself through your body.  You spoke gibberish, you threw tantrums, you stumbled about, you misunderstood the world all about you; your disorganized thinking caused you all sorts of problems.  Your spirit was ready to take on the world but your body was young and clumsy.  When we are born again and we gain a new spirit, one joined with the Holy Spirit of God, our body and soul are not ready for it.  They aren’t trained with the new spirit, too clumsy and corrupted by sin to act right, think right.  As Jesus puts it perfectly,  “The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." (Matthew 26:41 NIV)

How do we look…how does our personality express itself if the new spirit we have is not developed in us, if we are childish and our spirit, the one joined to the Holy Spirit, is not established fully with our body and soul?  A snapshot of the untrained body is found in Galatians 5:20 and it isn’t very attractive...discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness and the like… (NIV)  We don’t have to live like this though because we have a new spirit.  A similar list describing how we can look if our new spirit is not fully in control of our personality is found in Colossians.  …Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. (Colossians 3:5 NIV)  But how do we look if our new spirit is directing our body and soul?  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV)

How do we get our body to catch up with our spirit so that we look like that?  The spirit must express itself through the scriptures within the structure of the body.  This can only happen through faith.  We must begin to believe that what the Bible says we are to do, we can do because we have a new spirit.  Until we begin to do this actively, aggressively, we will look and act like babies…jealous, angry, given to selfishness, impure actions and thoughts, unforgiving, trying hard to get our way.  The moment we take a behavior or attitude from the Bible, something we are told by God to do, and believe that because of the new spirit we have we can do it, a miraculous change occurs in us.  God will work in us His spirit.  Our habits will look like God.  Our dreams will look like God, our spontaneous thoughts will look like God, our behavior when we think no one important is watching us will look like God.

Until we are born again, Bible thinking and doing will be annoying and impossible to continue.  The moment though we put our hope in Jesus Christ to save us, the Spirit of God will join Himself to our spirit and the Bible will make sense, become reasonable and realistic to follow.  Until then, it is mere disconnected gibberish.  But you, if God’s Spirit lives in you, will begin to look like Jesus Christ Himself if you let the Scriptures unleash the new spirit you have that is fired up to take charge of your personality.  At some point every lion must stop pretending to be a rabbit and fulfill its God ordained destiny.  Christian people are made to live Christian lives.  Why should we look like the devil when God has made His home in us?  We are too good for that!

Do You Know Who You Are?

There is no one quite so disoriented and frustrated as the man or woman who has gone part-way with Christ...the Savior is neither Lord nor rival but somewhere in-between.  The commands in Exodus are acknowledged but the ones of Matthew 6 are for another day and time.  Faith is some sort of murky variable rather than a clear and certain way to face each decision of the day today.   Charity is an institution rather than a lifestyle and contentment is more like shrapnel from an exploded hope.  The whining of the Israelites when they stood at the edge of the Promised Land the first time is such a distant thunder for us but are we certain the lightening does not strike at our feet too?  Are we ready to abandon ourselves to the wild God who told the rich young ruler to get rid of His fortune and follow along the path of disciples?  Will we hold tightly to what we have or pursue the vision our Lord has set before us of holy abandonment to God wherever that may take us?  Is there within us a leaning forward as Christ calls to us to come or do we lurch back at the tug upon the bit.  Many are called but few are chosen!  Are you chosen or do you do most of the choosing?  Something deep within us calls to go into the raging waters of the Galilean Sea but do we hesitate within the boat?   Have you decided to put your plans into God's hand and let Him reshuffle the deck and then show you how you are to make your next move?  Are you confused by your uncertainty to follow Christ or do you have a clear determination to let Him be fully Lord and thereby bring your rebellious disposition into alignment with His plumb line?  Are you a "true Israelite in whom there is nothing false ?"

 "How do you know me?" Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you."

John 1:48 NIV

Why Are You Praying?

One of the great misconceptions in Christian circles is that God must give us what we ask because of our great need...or because we are so fervent in our praying...or because what we ask is not selfish or intended to feed some ungodly lust.  Our Lord answers our prayers because of the work of Christ on the Cross.  Sin is the great destroyer of all praying and, regardless of our determination to get what we want, it is fool's gold to reach out to God for anything but His forgiveness and transformed life.  Have we come to realize that Satan can give us what we ask and we can gain great treasure on earth without a drop of God in it?  The only proof you have that God is coming to you in your praying is if your faith is in Christ alone to save you.  His blood upon your heart is the mark of your citizenship and family heritage.  What good is it to gain the whole world and lose your soul!  What good is it to have a new car, a better job, a string of new friends or a fixed home if the blood of Christ does not seal them with redemption?  Prayer is the grand opportunity we have to give ourselves completely over to Christ to care for us and transform our will which we have from conception as a gift of God.  Wants and needs are never to be the center of praying.  It is the remade personality we have through the crucified life of our Lord that must take center stage.  At some point, we will discover in our praying that we have not a shred of worrying in our praying, that we have become like little children who trust absolutely in the Good Father due to the transforming work of Christ in our crucified praying and the fret will be gone that perhaps we have been abandoned in our needs and wants.  The theology of praying must never be bound up in the getting but always in the receiving.  These are two very different ends and it can take a lifetime to know the difference between the two.

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.  Mark 11:24 NIV

Urgent Care

Can we bear a bit of honesty?  The Church has as a whole forgotten to pray.  We organize meals, put together events, talk extensively about the Bible, argue over by-laws and form endless numbers of committees but give prayer the once over and then we’re off to something else.  We pray and then try to get something accomplished as if the accomplishing is not occurring in the praying.  The Disciples asked the Lord to teach them how to pray.  We know how to pray.  We don’t know how to start praying with determination and abandonment to the work of prayer.  Would Peter have been led out of prison by the angel if the band of believers quartered in the home of John Mark’s mother had not been praying?  We cannot say for sure one way or another but they certainly were juxtaposed with each other in the Scripture.  Would Lot have escaped Sodom if his uncle were not praying?  Would Job’s friends have escaped judgment if Job had not prayed?  Would Jericho have ever been taken if for seven days straight the Israelites had not prayed?  Given the stakes, why do we do so little praying?  The Lord insists that He will do the heavy lifting if we would just put the shovel down for a while and pray.  The seeds need rain and sun and good soil to bring about the harvest.  All of these required necessities come from God.  Only the seed distribution is our responsibility.  If three-fourths of the work is God’s and we must go to Him in prayer to gain His help in them, why do we give most of our time to seed casting?  It is the praying that is the most critical part of the harvest because to be brutally honest, we can chuck our seeds anywhere and God can make them sprout right where they land. We have so little confidence God actually exists and carries those who go to Him in prayer that we make prayer perfunctory and everything else a necessity.  Our Lord is not scanning the horizon for better workers to bless; He is searching for more faith-full workers who have come to rely upon prayer above all else to make it through their days.  Would the world collapse in a heap if you gave an entire day to praying and reading the Scriptures?   Would your family be crushed by the weight of your devotion to praying?  Or might it just be that more can be done in ten hours of prayer than a lifetime of plowing?

                                                                            

"When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.   2 Chronicles 7: 13-15 NIV  

Comfort Re-examined

What makes you so certain you have all the facts?  Do you know everything you need to know when you make your decisions?  Are you clear on all the factors involved as you move forward?  We find in 2 Thessalonians 2: 7ff that there is a great set of unseen forces at work all around us and we are like mindless bobs bouncing at the whim of a seething  ocean storm if we do not seek the Lord in all we do and say.  The deception is at every level and in each turn; everything that is of God is opposed by the power of lawlessness and we pretend to our great harm that it is not present in our spot of the world.  The vast majority of our personality is hidden from our view and therein is the rub.  What we don't see we pretend doesn't exist but we cannot continue to hide from it.  Forces are at work within us and without and it is the fool who does not bring Christ into each part of his day because those forces are most certainly there already.  If insanity is the mental deviation from the norm, then it is insanity to take into consideration forces operating within each of your moments influencing your emotional reactions and marring your mental acuity.  Yet insanity is sanity when reality goes unnoticed and denied by the acknowledged "norm".  Jesus Christ died to free you from slavery to the rebellion in the universe and to let yourself be subservient to that rebellion without a care is the remaking of General Custer's march into the Little Big Horn.  The Lord broke your bondage to Satan and the will of his cohorts; why put back on those chains by ignoring the working of Holy Spirit in your heart; guiding you, inspiring you, elevating your view.  The man of lawlessness is no comic book character...he is at the heart of our world's misery even in your corner of the world.  Take action.  Pursue with determined fortitude the power and might of Holy Spirit at the very spot where you are in your day through all those spots of your day.  You are at the front line of the battlefield and you must have the eyes of God Himself seeing through you if you are to be of any good in this fight.

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing.  They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.  2 Thessalonians 2: 9-10

The Evil Eye

Have you come to the spot where you notice something wrong with another person?  Do you see clearly that person’s flaws, moral inadequacies or bad behavior?  Do you recognize what that person must do to get things straight so he or she can be a better person?  Well great!  Pray about it.  Pray with humility and great respect for the work of God already accomplished in that one person.  Pray, recognizing God’s sovereignty in that life as the creator and sustainer and the finisher of the work He has already begun.  Bite your lip and slap your face though as you start to be God and point out what you have seen wrong with the person.  Cut out your tongue before you try to get out a word of criticism.  Be as harsh with your soul as Pontius Pilate was with Jesus if you think you should begin to give way to your urge to judge one of the Lord’s own.  You open yourself up to all the flaming darts of the evil one if you begin to take your place as corrector and faultfinder because, as well-intended as you mean to be, you have stood in the place of Satan and usurped him in his obscene work.  Satan is the accuser and if you wish to join him in his rebellion against the Lord, then at least be prepared for the consequences.  Nothing shuts down the work of God in us quicker than our sharp tongue and critical evaluations.  We cannot advance at all with God if we take this stance abrogating God’s authority.  Of course we mean well when we point out flaws and correct personality deficiencies…just like Eve meant well when she offered Adam the fruit.  Given how high the stakes, would it not be better just to swallow our criticisms like a deadly poison pill than let them get out into the open and make ourselves enemies of God?  If you see something wrong with another person, pray about it and let the matter rest with Jesus Christ who knows what to do with such things.

Do not judge or you too will be judged.  Matthew 7: 1 NIV

The God Twitch

The God twitch is a spontaneous turning of one’s spasmodic concentration to God.  It is the sudden, spontaneous reaction to the Holy Spirit poking at your hot nerve.  Some are more reactive than others; quicker to flinch in God's direction.  If we don't realize what is happening we may mistake the poke as a crisis, as a terrible occurrence, as a heartbreak.  It is not.  It is the Lord making Himself unmistakably visible.  David felt it when Saul came after him in the wilderness.  Stephen felt it as he faced his martyrdom.  Jonah faced it as he sat in the belly of the great fish and Peter came upon it as he wept uncontrollably in the dark closet of Jerusalem Good Friday.  We may question many matters in our life but when Job like you was hit in the head by the lightning flash of God he became silent as a door knob.  There is nothing to do when God comes upon you with the force of heaven itself.  You must silently wait upon Him as He works Himself through every cell and corpuscle you possess.  Why should we think God would always deal with us peacefully and comfortably when the greatest people in the Bible were struck dumb by the weight of His awful Presence?  As Christians, we must stop making excuses for God; quit sugarcoating the ways He moves within us.  Did Ruth lose her husband or not?  Did Elijah face the terror of Jezebel or not?  Did Paul get beaten with rods or not?  It is anathema to make God out as some kind of silly puppy who bounces about mindlessly whenever we meet Him.  He is stern in His determination to make us face Him.  Should we think His glory is casual and light?  It is not!  It is as heavy as the weight of the firestorm that fell upon Sodom.  Nothing stops the force of our God's entrance when He decides to make Himself known to us with finality.  Just look at the picture we have of Jesus in Daniel 7 and try to wiggle out of this one simple attribute of God.  He is holy...terribly holy and it is a grave error to mistake Him as Santa Claus.  Sin is not a bad move on our part; it is the terrifying rebellion of a fool who dares come up against the Almighty God.  We must never mistake God as a doting father who overlooks every offence of his child.  He is not.  That is why the cross of Jesus Christ is such a roiling cauldron of chaos for Satan and the demon world.  Jesus Christ crucified is the lightning bolt of the Father that makes the entire world twitch in horror or in wonder.    The sins of the billions embedded within the dying body of the crucified King of Kings makes stones shatter in wonder and the universe come unglued in the end.   Are we so silly as to think God will only deal lightly with us when He comes upon us?

"As I looked, "thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat.  His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool.  His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze.  A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him.     Daniel 7:9-10 NIV

Reflecting Upon Narcissus

How many times do we make an assessment or give a justification for some action of ours or inaction and frame it as an indisputable fact?  Oh I did not have time to pray much.  Really?  I was unable to keep my promise.  Truly?  I can't afford to tithe.  Is that so?  I was prevented from reading my Bible.  Oh?  I don't know a soul who is ready to hear the Gospel.  What?  I was too busy to participate in congregational worship.  Huh?  If God stuck His nose in our business and dug around a bit, would He make the same determinations as us?  We shake our heads at Ananias and Sapphira and piously declare their wrongfulness but have we not also lied to the Holy Spirit on occasion?  Have we not thrown up our hands and most honorably asserted our inability to do what God has said clearly to do?  Have we not pretended not to hear when He knows we have heard?  Do we not pretend to be something we aren't...feebler than we are, more busy than we are, poorer than we are, less capable than we are?  Thank God for His mercy that He has not struck us down for the very same sins of Ananias and Sapphira!  Too often we say we can't when what is really so is that we won't.  We won't have faith.  We won't make the effort.  We won't stop loving the world.  We won't quit being lazy.  We won't turn away from temptation.  Narcissism is at its core is far worse than simple vanity.  It is the determination to keep your eyes fixed upon yourself rather than looking up to the God who saves you.  We don't lie to the Holy Spirit because we are trying to fool Him; we do it to try to fool ourselves into justifying our lame spirituality.  The Lord is good enough, strong enough loving enough and resourced enough to give us great power and ability.  Paul instructs all good Christians who walk by faith.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  There is little room in that assertion for "I couldn't!"

"My people have committed two sins:  They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." Jeremiah 2:13 NIV

What Are You Really?

The most gracious work of God that occurs for the developing believer is the realization he is inconsequential.  His knowledge base is minuscule.  His benefit to others is minimal, if not harmful.  His goodness is impoverished.  It is then that God can do something with him.  Abraham finally threw his hands up after the Ishmael mess and realized he and his wife had no idea what they were doing.  Jacob in all his brilliance couldn't make out Leah from Rachel and Moses thought killing an Egyptian foreman would turn things around for the Hebrews.  The perfect mess is just a mess unless we get at the main thing in life.  We are nothing but a developing corpse if Jesus Christ is not working His way through us.  The silence of God won't last but it will continue long enough until we grip hard on the absurdity of leaving our Lord out of what we do.  God may have shown you something at one time but you let it pass.  He may have pushed you toward something but you turned away.  Jesus had one purpose in life, to do the will of the Father.  Nothing distracted Him from it and as a result, at each point He knew what to do.  Do you know what to do?  Do you know what the Father is doing with you?  You can avoid the place where God developed your course or you can return to it and do the one thing you know He wants you to do.  It is up to you; the Lord won't make it easy on you by manipulating your thoughts or backing you into a corner.  You must decide the Lord is LORD and then turn into Him.  As you do, you might have to abandon some long standing belief of yours or an important person's view of you but do it today.  Do it now.  As the Lord works His way through you, He will work His way out of you and you will be like sparkling ice water in a thirsty land; you will be a well from which living water flows. It may be startling  the ways in which God refreshes and transforms lives through you.

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.  John 7:38 NIV

When There Is Nothing You Can Do

The most frustrating of people are those who have been born again but turned away from the Lord and dismissed His fellowship.  We have the impulse to feel sorry for them; to compassionately coddle them but the Lord isn't in such misguided nurturing.  They must be allowed to go off to the far country, to squander the riches of heaven on "prostitutes" (any substitute for living in close communion with Christ) and wallow in the muck of pigs.  It is only when they reach the end of their rope that they can get a handle on the lunacy of their ways.  But if we try to keep them away from the far country, we usurp the wisdom of the Father who let His son go and did not go off chasing him down the road.  There is much to lose for the prodigal and many may be hurt by his corrupted decisions but it is no use trying to change his mind once he has taken the inheritance and left.  Husbands and wives have shed countless tears over their prodigal spouses, fathers and mothers have sat in a dejected stupor over their prodigal children but it is hopeless trying to herd them back into the pen.  They are gone and the facts must be faced courageously.  So what should be done?  As the father in Jesus' parable waited for his son, so we too must wait for the return of the prodigal.  It is the prodigal's decision alone that must rule and if he chooses to come back, then we throw a party and rejoice.  If he does not, we must accept it and let him have his way as God works the circumstances in his life to pinch him in tightly enough until he is able to face himself squarely.  Our praying does something; it unleashes the full resources of heaven on our behalf as we mourn the departure of the prodigal.  We cannot expect the Lord though to "make him return."  The prodigal is not some trained rat; he is fully human and free to decide for himself whom he shall follow.  When your own prodigal walks away, mourn as terribly as the pacing father in the Lord's story but do not extend him a lifeline.  He must make his way back himself, repent because he chooses to repent and seek out the Father because that is what he has decided to do.

When he came to his senses, he said…"Father I have sinned against heaven and against you…"  Luke 15: 17, 21 NIV

Abandonment...Really?

Lost in our age is a boundless abandonment to much of anything.  We have grown so accustomed to instant messaging and continual entertainment that we grow weary when any vision or mission crosses our perseverance threshold.  Profit margins are now measured by level of effort and degree of boredom.   If anything requires too much of us or does not make us happy, we give up on it.  A holy life is superficially regarded as unattainable, unreasonable.  Given the volume of meta-messages bombarding our conscious thinking, we cannot make heads or tails of what is important to us.  It all is a blur of instantaneous provocations and titillations.  Is it any wonder that some just jump ship; the drowned life a welcome relief to the bombarded one?  Contemptuous humanists mock the Christian who waits upon the Lord because she seems so mediocre, so juvenile.  The contemplation of the scriptures extended past intellectual stimulation is absurdly dissolute for the mind absent of any real hunger for God.  Depravity is now flipped around on its head; faith and purity are the new perversion.  The corrupted soul is the one waiting upon the Lord . The  cost of waiting upon Christ seems monstrous.   To walk in the Spirit is not a moment of exalted rapture but rather a day in and day out communion with the Lord who does speak and certainly leads.  We read the scriptures not to get something out of them but to be given up to them.  We pray, not to attain but to be with God in His very presence.  We sing songs of praise not to be entertained but to live within the mercy and joy of the Living God.  Who has really abandoned himself to Christ?  Who has become accustomed to the voice of God and fallen in love with the One who speaks?  Who has made his life holy in the wash of the Living Word?  Who has gained the treasure of being consecrated and filled with the joy of true Christian living?  Who has been given The Gift and loved the hand that held it?  Are you too callous to be aware of what great love awaits you if you would just  wait for God a moment longer?  Do you have the patience needed to stay where you are so that Jesus Christ might meet you?  Does it seem the greatest good to be with Jesus and give yourself over to Him?  Would it make you happy to gain just one more bit of God in you?  Have you discovered the sweet perfume of holy abandonment?

 Peter said to him, "We have left all we had to follow you!"   Luke 18:28 NIV

Spilling Out

God has not called you to "be all you can be".  He has no interest whatsoever in you developing your potential or making something of yourself.  He is transforming you that the Son of Man might live through you.  What good really is it that you gain the world and lose your soul?  Anyone can reach their potential and have no need of Jesus Christ whatsoever.  The Lord did not send His Son to die for you so you could do that!  Our Savior gave up His life on the Cross to redeem you from all your scurryings and strivings because it all leads no where but to destruction.  He bought you back from death so that you might be made complete in Christ alone.  Your education and professional advancement and success at getting your children into prestigious colleges is of no use to God at all and even less use to you if the Lordship of Christ is not front and center in you.  If He is not the Life in your life, then you have made a wreck of the opportunity God has given you to be.  Satan is more than happy to let you continue your course as long as Christ is not spilling out of you in your daily dealings.  If Jesus Christ does not tumble forth from you as you get after your work assignments, while you are doing the dishes and as you settle down at the library to start your homework, then it is a meaningless exercise.  But if the Spirit of God generates your whirl of activities, even if they are mundane, then you have lived well.  What good is your sermon if it does not have the taste of Jesus Christ in it and of what use are your flashes of brilliance as you entertain your friends if nothing of it has the aroma of Christ?  Everywhere you go, the resurrected Christ goes with you.  Your challenge is to let Him loose.   Give Him sway wherever you are!  The power of God working through you is the greatest of miracles!  Why would you ever keep that back?  Let just one person in on your life with Christ and a landslide of sweetness might spill out of you into a world waiting for a single soul to come its way with Jesus Christ at the forefront of what she does.

If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.  1 Peter 4:11 NIV