Unsettled Christianity

It is so easy to live spiritually when sitting at a cafe sipping a coffee or while the great preachers of our time captivate us with their intoxicating messages.  What happens though when your co-worker cheats you out of your bonus or your dad ignores your accomplishments?  How well does your spirituality fly when the sales team meets together at a local club; what sort of religion do you possess as the argument in the kitchen spins out of control?  Where is your love for God when you are disappointed, frustrated or filled with itching desire?  Christianity is not a religion of clear mountain streams and golden sunsets.  It is the blossoming faith of those who face connivers and debaters and humilators and wreckers of days.  Christianity is for the tele-conference, the sales floor, for the Google search and the hospital waiting room, for the shattered dream and the wasted day.  Christianity is for all those times you feel angry and confused and tempted and proud.   We do not read the Bible and pray and pay attention to anointed sermons to be able to live on pause spiritually until the next time we can relax with God.  The Lord gives us His power and conviction so that we might express His life in us at the darkest and ugliest moments and rather than just be ourselves, we find we are more than ourselves, we are Christ joined to us in holy revelations of God's glory.  Of course we can't forgive our mother but Christ in us can.  Of course we can't say "no" to one more drink or having the last word but Christ in us can.  Of course we can't be kind when we have been ignored or belittled but Christ in us can.  Every place we go and each circumstance we face is an opportunity for Christ to shine more brightly through us than ever and for our character to be upgraded into a purer form of godliness.  Nothing surprises Satan more than Christ suddenly showing up where He hasn't been noticed before.      Who better to make Him known than you, who better to reveal His power than you when no one expects to find Him in the room?

And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.   Luke 9:52-54 NIV

Undecided

It is one thing to choose Jesus Christ for your salvation; another matter altogether to decide He is Lord.  We circumvent the question  by passing over its implications.  Are we ready to pray a while longer with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane?  Do we have the heart for storing up in our own bodes the blows intended for Christ?  Have we really taken up the call to "make disciples of all nations"?  Is there a flinch, a hesitation to the demand to let the world run roughshod over us that we might be salty salt and a city on a hill?  It is a clear sign that we are not altogether given over to the determination that Jesus Christ is Lord over us when we get bent out of shape over how He has mistreated us, how He has mishandled us, how He has misappropriated our skills and talents.  "What a waste of my time or abilities", we whine .  "How foolish that I must endure this", we complain.  Are we ready to declare that Jesus Christ is Lord over us wherever He has us land and that the complaint we mutter over our trying circumstance is nothing but full out mutiny?  We certainly have a right, even as God's child, to be upset that we have not gotten a fair shake in life and that we deserve better treatment than we have received.  But we mustn't lie to ourselves that Christ is Lord over us.  He is not.  We have let our wounded ego get the upper hand.  If Christ wishes to crush us with troubles and disappointments that the sweetness of Him might seep out of us, then so be it.  He is Lord.  If wants to break apart our plans and aspirations that something of us that is altogether His might become consecrated bread for the world, then rejoice for He is Lord.  Once the boy gave Christ his loaves and fishes, they were God's to do with as He wished and it would have been a ridiculous absurdity for him to complain when the disciples gave some of that bread and fish to a neighbor he despised.  It was God's alone to dispense as He saw fit the moment the loaves and fishes were handed over to Christ.  Once you declare Jesus Christ is Lord, you are His to do with as He wishes so settle down and with the same faith you had at the beginning when you made your decision to give Him your life, hold to that decision now as you discover He really intends to do with you as HE intends.

...then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve… Joshua 24:15 NIV

Forgetting Where We Are

We have bought into the proposition that everything is natural and random, originating in the mindlessness of circumstance.  Even as far back as the exodus out of Egypt the presence and activity of God was lost on the exiting Israelites.  When Pharaoh and his army of charioteers barreled down upon the encamped Israelites, the half-crazed Hebrews lost their minds over the perceived danger they faced.  It was as if they had forgotten altogether the plagues upon the livestock and the deadly hailstorm and the deaths of the firstborn; all of which did not touch them but ripped into the Egyptians.  If the Israelites could be oblivious to the hand of God back then given their experience with His work, it is not unreasonable that this same sociological circumstance would be present today.  The mob reacts to every bit and parcel of circumstance as bad luck, good fortune or the natural outcome of hard work and ingenuity.  The Holy Spirit alone brings to light the absolute and constant interplay of God within our world.  If Israel could stare at the photograph of God's intervention and see nothing, how likely is it that we will see it.  We must rely upon Holy Spirit to part the curtain as it were and make it so we  recognize all the ways our Lord is working in and among us.  Only then can we rest peacefully as we do our work and make our plans and evaluate our situation.  Nothing frustrates our joy more than the blackened goggles we stretch across our eyes given us by Satan to block out our discernment of what is really happening.  Satan cannot inhibit our view of God; he can only encourage us to block Him out of our sight.  You must choose to see God right there with you when you drop the dinner on the floor or your stocks tumble off the table.  You can see Him if you will look with Holy Spirit fixing your mind on what it should be noticing.  The worst of your day is never lost in circumstance...it is just as surrounded by angels as the shepherds who watched their sheep at night.  At no point have you been overtaken by your troubles and hardships...you are in just as good a place as Israel standing before the Red Sea.

"...It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!"   Exodus 14:12NIV