Do The Faith

Back in the Old Testament we see one of the most practical and profound examples of faith.  Abraham, but at the time we are speaking still known as Abram was living with his wife Sarai in Haran because he and his father Terah decided to move there.  Why they left their home in Ur to set out for Canaan which was much further south we don’t know but rather than continuing the journey, when they reached Haran, the little clan just stopped there.  Nothing is said of God telling them to go to Canaan or stop in Haran, they simply went there.  This though is where the story gets quite interesting because when Abram was 75 and his father 155 years old Abram was told by God to leave Haran and go on to Canaan.  Now how this came to him we cannot say; it may have been through a dream or a vision or just a sense but however it came to him, the message was clear.  Abram was to leave Haran and go to Canaan and there God would make his name great and everyone in the world would be blessed through him.  That of course was a monster of a word from God but again we don’t know how it came to Him nor how believable it seemed for Him or anyone else.  All we know is that Abram packed his things and brought his wife and nephew Lot and all his stuff as well as his employees down to Canaan.  Terah, his father, did not go however. Why didn’t he?  Perhaps he didn’t have faith in what Abram said was a word from God.  Maybe he was tired and just wanted to relax.  He did live another fifty years in Haran though so it isn’t like he was at death’s door.

Faith is a practical thing.  For Abram it was the quite concrete and common-place act of moving.  For you it could be quitting your job, giving more to the church, starting a cell group in your home, changing majors, building a friendship, stopping a habit, forgiving a sin, rejecting a sinful behavior, carving out time to study the Bible, praying over a sick friend, taking up the piano, giving away your TV, organizing a mission trip, starting a conversation about your faith, inviting neighbors over for dinner so they can hang out with a real Christian, saying “no” to an opportunity because you realize God is telling you “no”.  Abram had to leave his father in Haran when he wouldn’t go and move to a place filled with danger and corruption but he went because by faith he knew God wanted him to go.

Faith is the practical act of doing what has become clear God wants you to do.  The Holy Spirit can speak to you through a dream, through the Bible, through a Christian friend or just a clear sense of something but as it starts to become obvious to you that God is pushing you into an act, it is the most right and perfect thing for you to do, both for you and those impacted by you doing the faith act.  Your hesitancy only makes your relationship with God muddied and inhibits the blessing God has for those affected by your act of faith.  The longer you wait to do what God has said, the less you know anything of God and His ways, the more hard and unproductive your life becomes and the less you do any good for anyone.  In fact you may hurt greatly those you love by stopping at the point of faith.  We would never have had a Savior if Abram had stayed in Haran, but when He acted in faith he started the same sort of thing you too can start.  He kicked off a chain of events that resulted in God blessing Abram’s world.  Do the faith act and you will know God like never before and those you are afraid you will hurt by your obedience to Christ will be blessed beyond your dreams.  You are Abraham and you are Barnabas and you are Ruth.  Read your Bible daily and each time you know God has told you to do something act in faith and do it.  Do it and don’t hesitate.  Do the faith.

Minding Your Business

Minding Your Business

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. (James 4:1-3 NIV)

Every form of anger other than righteous or holy anger generated by the Spirit of God is due to a lack of contentment with what God has given you or allowed come to you.  When you want more than He wants you to have or feel that you deserve something better than what you have gotten, whether it be better treatment, more respect or greater influence, you get angry or depressed and the peace of God leaves you.  Angry, bitter thoughts sprout within a mind that has not made Christ its center or Lord.  Cursing, complaining and angry words are always a sign of idolatry; of wanting something more than what comes out of the hand of Christ.

When Christ is not the source of your joy and peace, your mind will become less able to guide you rightly, making you susceptible to depression, anger, apathy and confusion.  Nothing weakens your mind’s ability to make sense of things more than your devotion to Christ weakening.  You are less patient, more prone to take offence, less able to forgive, more judgmental, more frustrated and your ability to make sense of your life diminished.  The mind out of sorts with the Holy Spirit lacks the most important component needed to be happy and at peace; the guidance and empowerment of God.  The mind becomes a battleground where despicable and hurtful thoughts fight with what is right and good and all too often win.

The way to clear your mind and make your thinking free of its power to mislead you is to follow the instruction of Philippians 4.  Present your requests to God rather than ponder them, complain about them or fume about them.  Be thankful rather than disappointed, keep looking for the good Christ is doing for you and do not be misled into thinking you are somehow losing or missing out.  Every circumstance is being used by God for your good so there is never a reason to be frustrated or upset about how someone treats you or the difficulties you face.  The role of your mind is to keep bringing you to Christ if it isn’t, you must discipline it to do that very thing.  Force yourself to be thankful to God or ask for His help.  If you aren’t doing one or the other, you are losing your mind to every trap and misdirection Satan may use to confuse and confound you.  It is certain if you fail to pray for help or thank God for what you have at any moment, you risk losing your thoughts to a demonic attack upon your brain, one you may even know is happening.  Depression, anger, bitterness, jealousy, despair, loneliness, lust, disgruntlement, self-pity are not from God.  They are all the fruit of refusing to either ask Christ for help or thank Him for what He has given you.  You may be snared in one of Satan’s traps or just living in the natural result of your own sin but you don’t have to stay there.  Your mind can be happy and contented but you must go back to the one thing.  Praise Christ for what you have or ask for His help.  Reclaim your mind and get on with the business of having a good life today.

Blinders

One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched.   (Luke 14:1 NIV)

There are only two reasons to carefully watch Jesus.  Either you do so to know where to turn away from Him or you do so to know where to turn into Him.  Jesus put the Pharisees and religious leaders on the spot when He asked them if it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath.  If they said, “yes”, then they would begin to turn into Him but if they said, “no”, they would move away.  Jesus is the way; every turn from Him is toward hell and the bitterness of perdition.  Turn into Him and your soul begins to light up with the golden blaze of heaven and the comfort of His glory.  The move into Christ is subtle and quiet, away is loud and boisterous.  The cheers of the world give you a great boost as you jump out from His shelter.  It is exhilarating; freeing to turn outward and gain something fresh and pretty.  Yet the maggots begin to eat at the corpse and it soon becomes clear that the move out is one of the grave and the façade gives way to a very real end point. 

Turn inward though to Christ and the stillness of the move shocks you for you had hoped it would be more glorious, livelier than that.  You had planned on a great pleasure to overtake you, a mighty rush of joy to prove your rightness but it is more still than the breeze of the butterfly or the whisper of the creeping lizard.  The aloneness of the move inward frightens you for it is at once quite final and at the same time uninspiring.  Yet you are alive and living will take you captive, just as the antibiotic takes you captive with its dripping health.  The death of self is not a dying death; it is a living death that becomes more vivacious as you escape into Christ.  Your tears will come alive along with your wounds and terrifying doubts for the deadness of them before will wiggle free with the life of Jesus.  All wounds will be cause for glory, all heartache a well of sweet freedom and hope, all doubts a cup of faith.  Turn into Christ with each moment of the day, every trial you face and temptation stumbling your plodding steps and you will gain a bit more life, a bit more dynamic gumption.  Your mind will grow free of the former bondage that fooled it into thinking it was already free.  You will see and love and bless and be a well of living water springing up at the moment within the hub and bub of your normal contentious day.  Someone will feel your touch and it will be the touch of the Spirit slipping to them with all the power of the resurrection of Christ Easter morning.

The Right Spirit

The Right Spirit

 

A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?  (Proverbs 18:14 NIV)

 

Of the many tasks a church may have, certainly high up on the list is making certain none of its members have a crushed spirit.  There are countless ways a spirit can be crushed but never should it be a Christian who does it.  Jesus rebuked and sometimes fiercely.  His admonishment of Peter for insisting that Jesus would not suffer death was astonishingly stern and yet we can tell it did not crush Peter’s spirit nor was it intended to do so.  When our pride is struck a blow, our self-interest threatened or our greed throttled, viciously we go after the spirit of another and with the force of a hammer come down upon it with all we have.  We must pierce our own sin with the same tenacity of a surgeon going after infection but it is not ours to go after the sins of another.  We are too prone to cut off the arm when we find a sliver in the hand which we would never do about our own slivers. The tender generosity we have toward ourselves is not what we show toward the sinners we have grown to dislike.  We can tell just how far we have come by the way we view the atrocities of family members with whom we have grown weary.  A husband or wife or parent or sibling is our best barometer of real spiritual pluck.  If we give in to the temptation to try and batter the spirit of those closest to us for “making us” not like them, we know just where we are.  We have lost our mooring and strayed far from the Spirit’s shore.  It is hard to pray for one you dislike but it is the beginning point for regaining the love of Christ and the happy Christian life.  Certainly, if you cannot pray for the beast, then keep your mouth shut and stop being the beast.  Give yourself a chance to be the one those closest to you love to think about and find when they are with you gain renewed strength to rise above the sickness that comes upon us all.

Hatred Unveiled

 

…a time to love and a time to hate, (Ecclesiastes 3:7a NIV)

 

We are known not for what we love but for what we hate.  It is the easiest thing in the world to love something…whether it be sleep, solitude or survival.  Hate is a bit more tricky because it has a piercing odor to it, like reeking of garlic or onions.  We see hate and it startles us; makes our stomach turn at times.  We cannot imagine fully the hatred of God for it is such a disconcerting thought.  What would He hate?  Who would He hate?  How would His hatred look?  The warning in Malachi that God hates divorce and a lifestyle of violence gives us pause.  In Amos God announces His hatred of religious festivals when justice and righteousness are ignored.  Jesus said every person is bound to hate one Master.  The question is not if but who.  What master will you hate?  God does not shy away from the violence of hatred.  He means “hate” but do we when we contemplate our masters?  It is impossible to love one master if hatred is not scorching the attachment of another master.  Given the severity of the consequence, has the world become a loathing to you or are you more like Lot’s wife, leaning back in your retreat?  Do you love forgiveness with the same intensity as a grudge, purity with same passion as a brief fling with lust, kindness with the same fervor as your desire for ease?  Even in Heaven there is great hatred or else pride, selfishness and envy would have their places next to humility, generosity and contentment at God’s table.  Be careful what you love but certain of what you hate.

Prayer Living

What makes prayer such a crucial exercise for the Christian?  Is it the impact we have on others when we get what we ask?  Is it the ephemeral presence of God we feel as we pray?  Is it the duty done to Christ and the work accomplished in pleasing Him?  Is there something about prayer that gives it a special place in the Christian's daily doings?

Prayer is the hub of everything Christian.  It is the center from which all things of God spring.  Take the start of every action you do that is Christian.  It begins with the movement of God toward you just as the body only acts with the spark of innervation coming from the nervous system.  You cannot do a single thing of God without it being generated first in His own mind.  Once this happens you enter into prayer even if it is subconsciously.  Prayer is the interaction between God and us in whatever form it takes, whether it is us talking to Him or Him breaking through to us or our sometimes discouraging, sometimes awakening effort to listen for Him.  That is what makes Bible reading such a profound experience.  When we read the Bible, we enter into a form of prayer rarely deemed prayer but indeed the very essence of it.  The more we interact with God as we read the Bible the deeper we enter into prayer.  The Bible was never intended to be a history book or even a theological manual.  It is first and foremost the entryway into God.  Treat Bible reading as an exercise or task to get done and you lose the best part of it.  Recognize it as it is, time spent living in Christ and you gain the mind of God dwelling in you.

When praying through the scripture, give yourself a shot at really drawing near God.  Expect the Holy Spirit to make something of your time there with Him.  Talk to Him as you go through it.  Bring your requests to God as you go through the verses and make your time with Him in the scriptures a fellowship rather than a spiritual exercise.  The Psalms obviously are meant to be spoken out to God but the rest of the Bible also is a dialogue between the two of you so make the most of it and gain from your prayer within the Bible all the strength and guidance and recovery from the wounds of your day intended when God first called you into the Scriptures at the beginning.  Pray the Bible; don't just "read" it.

Thomas Kinkade My Eulogy

Thomas Kinkade

My Eulogy

For thousands of years certain people have been bigger than life.  Perhaps unfairly, they are beloved more than they deserved and critiqued more harshly than was warranted.  The Christian community has been as guilty of this as any collection of people and this has been particularly true of our own.  And yet a strange twist on this has taken place recently that has troubled me.  Thomas Kinkade makes this point clear almost perfectly.

Beloved by many in the Christian community for his bold proclamation of his faith through his paintings, Kinkade was derided by critics in the art community for his style and technique.  His passing brought out the best and the worst in his life and made his legacy an object of public scrutiny.  Yet was it deserved?   Should this be the way we react to those who “make a name for themselves”?

Recently a number of public figures have made strong statements of their faith in Christ and their popularity among Christians has provoked a backlash that has stunned many of us.  Jeremy Lin, Tim Tebow, George W. Bush and Thomas Kinkade among others have become heroes of sorts because their success has catapulted them into the public arena where their proclaimed love of Christ has reached a broad audience.  Because that clear public loyalty to Jesus has infuriated many, they have become polarizing figures beyond the scope of their professional success.

The success certainly has fueled their exposure in the press but it has also guaranteed them undo scrutiny.  The technique, talent, skill and worth of these popular Christian artists, athletes and leaders have all been excoriated by those who just don’t like them.  Of course  they all have flaws and certainly they don’t always get it right in their private lives but must they receive such caustic contempt?

Thomas Kinkade’s brother has been quoted as saying that the extreme criticism Kinkade received in the art community hurt him badly and that does not seem implausible.  It is painful to be derided publicly or even privately by one’s peers.  Was it warranted though?  Did Kinkade have to be Dali or Picasso to deserve the popularity of his works?  Did he have to hate the Gospel or be a serial adulterer to gain favor in the art world?  Regardless of one’s take on his creativity or skill set, Thomas Kinkade did something with his art that I will forever be thankful. He made the love of Jesus Christ a topic of discussion among those who considered his works.  That can of course be said of Jeremy Lin, George W. Bush and Tim Tebow.  Each in his own way made his professional status a forum for proclaiming devotion to Jesus.

When you reach the status of viral popularity, you become a target for those who think little of your abilities and less of your acclaim.  That must be accepted but it does not need to characterize the response of the Christian community.  Cannibalism is common within every grouping.  Democrats are guilty of it as well as Republicans. Evolutionists and Creationists have engaged in it.  So too have liberals, communists and conservatives.  If one of us steps out of line, we are just as prone to turn on our own as we are to attack those outside our group.  Which brings me to my own, the Christian world. 

The Christian community must make it anathema to practice cannibalism at any level.  When finally someone of us reaches the privileged place of a Thomas Kinkade, we must do our best to protect him or her.  I am embarrassed to admit my failure to pray even once for Kinkade, to send him a single note encouraging his faith, to attend to the spiritual battle surrounding his work.  We must do our best to ignore the foibles and style points these public figures generate and simply give our best to fight spiritually for their lives. They need our help and Satan will do his best to attack the chinks in their armor.  One prayer can save Kinkade from a bar fight, rescue Tebow from sexual immorality, protect Bush from ignoring crucial advice.  We don’t need our public spokesmen but they need us.  They need our joy in their testimonies, our support for their efforts to honor Christ and our prayers for their protection and help.  The gospel does not depend on these public figures but because they are ours, they depend on us.  The body of Christ must be the safest and most supportive home another believer has and we cannot shatter this by ignoring, critiquing or disabling the ministry of others trying to be brave Christians in a disparaging and slashing unbelieving world.

I salute the Christ who called out Thomas Kinkade for more than just a shallow, muted faith.  I applaud the Father who enabled Thomas Kinkade to have a forum for honoring Jesus with his work.  I bless the Holy Spirit who gave voice to Thomas Kinkade’s longing to make of God’s grace an object of praise and wonder.  May the memory of Thomas Kinkade and the lingering evidence of his witness in his art bring us a renewed commitment to stand together in the faith and be a living laboratory of true spiritual union and love.

Undisturbed or Undetermined

Have we got anything to look forward to today?  Are we satisfied with the way things are going to such a degree that it would be perturbing if God said “do this” or “do that” all of a sudden?  Could we bounce out of our plans or are we too settled for God to blow them apart and not come unglued ourselves?  What would we give to have things go smoothly right now?  Is there something we can’t see torn asunder?  Have we a freedom of the Spirit that leaves us empty of self-will and determination?  God is not interested in us becoming the best we can be or making our days uncomplicated and settled.  He is righting the ship that has been broken completely by the storms of sin we have leveled against it.  We are undone and don’t realize it because we are too far invested in ourselves and how we want things to go.  God’s will for us is to kill off our will so that we can be one with Him and free of the tangled weeds of sin choking our life.  He must break up our day and shatter our plans for us to give in to Him and let Him become our all in all.  The sacredness of the day is not found in what we accomplish or set out to accomplish but rather in our complete trust in Christ to make of it as He will.  That does not mean passively sitting back in a mess of meaningless activities but rather drawing near to the Holy Spirit in each and every part of the day.   It is not Christian to realize your dreams.  It is Christian to die to the will to sin and become so in love with Jesus that nothing He makes of our moment is cursed and everything we want is undisturbed by a love of the world.  Find a moment to love Christ without conditions.  Let this day be His.