What Do I Do?

The problem with Christianity is not that it is too difficult to practice, it is that Christianity is too easy to believe.  Nothing is simpler than following a GPS turn for turn and the allowance of the Holy Spirit combined with the clarity of the Bible to direct each step is just as effortless. Where we stumble out of the gate is the frozen unwillingness to do what we are told.  "Turn right!"  We turn left.  "stop!" We go.  The grace of God is too astounding to believe, the fact that Christ really died for us is nearly unbearable.  How can that much love be poured into us?  We simply do not in the crunch of time accept it.  Otherwise, how can we explain the knee jerk response to bear outside the lanes of God's clear directions.  Don't complain any more about not knowing what the Lord wants you to do.  Simply do what you know He has said and let Him work out for you the instantaneous flow of your momentary actions.  The one who keeps His eyes fixed upon Christ is the will of God.

The Wandering Reality

The moment you begin to question the reality of your experience with God, question the presence of the Holy Spirit, return to your root.  The Cross of Jesus Christ happened at a specific moment in history among an actual crowd of people just as reliable as you.  No one ever questioned the crucifixion of Christ and the empty tomb was never doubted.  Return to the physical moment when Jesus Christ died for You and let that spot in time steel your resolve to follow Him anywhere.  The Cross is the power of your faith in God and it is your anchor that keeps the stormy day from swamping you.  Let the Cross of Jesus Christ be the source of your strength and hope.  Ponder it rather than your doubts.

The Defining of Pressing Forward

Have you thought much lately about the extreme agony of God as He stood at the brink of the Cross...taking within His body the terrible sinnings you have been working out moment by moment?  Nothing troubled the Lord in His daily dealings with us.  He was not maddened by the rejection nor was He discouraged by the flip-floppings of the crowd.  He pressed forward with the joy of doing everything within the Father until He came to the Garden and He stopped dead in His tracks and His anguish dripped out of Him.  He was not afraid.  He wasn't disheartened or depressed.  He swelled with sorrow as the sins of us came upon Him, as the agony of our precious independence scored a direct hit within.  Ponder the pain of Christ when you take that left turn off the road, when you screech to a halt as the Holy Spirit calls you forward.  Take the moment here to breathe in the air Jesus exhaled as He bore your sins within His body.  You are not the only sinner for which He died but you are the only one living at your spot and that sort of love cannot be taken lightly.

Real Freedom...Real Thanksgiving

Why is it that so many who turn away from Christ and the salvation He alone offers do so because they want to be free?  There is no freedom outside of the life hidden in Christ.  Don't we see it in the laboratory of daily activities?  The one who drifts away from God is not free of anger, not free of selfishness, not free of jealousy and craven desires!  He is not free of self deception and mistaken longings.  The one enveloped in the love of Christ loses her bitterness and prejudice and mad strivings and wounded ego and is no longer a prisoner of any desire or shattered want.  Jesus Christ and only Jesus Christ can and does take the entire person and make her free to love and free to be at peace.  The turn into Christ is always a turn out of bondage toward unpretentious freedom.

The Curses of Good People

When you lose your sense of comfort in any situation, it usually is because the Cross of Jesus has become too small to you.  Everything that could ever wreck you is crushed by the destruction of sin within the body of Jesus Christ.  Pious worry is still worry and contrary to the state of things for you.  There is a reason why the Lord commands us not to worry.  Worry is the expletive in the conversation, the unnecessary and ridiculous adjective that makes all thinking fuzzy and distorted.  Think a bit more about the terrible suffering of Jesus that you might live with Him forever and then if you can, get back to the absurdity of your worries.

Let Go, Let God?

Have you thought about what it would really be like if you let go and let God?  Would your mind collapse in a rubble of deserted dreams and desires?  Would you feel the need to pick up the pieces after you went with God for a while and saw where it left you?  Could you think clearly if you let your world be God's in every way?  God does not have any interest in working with you.  He only wants to live through you.  Welcome Him into your kingdom!  The Holy Spirit has never been your servant...our confusion is often tied to our hope that He is or might be.  Let Him teach you how to pray and you will gain access to the bounty found only in Christ...a bounty limited only by your resistance to the working of God in your every day life as His child and beloved home.

Nothing settles the Lordship question more firmly than hardship.  It is there that you see the thing most clearly: follow Christ or abandon Him.  Once you know where you stand, everything else falls into place.  Forgive or not.  Complain or not.  Believe or not.  Take the forbidden object or not.  As long as we waver between one or the other, hardship will work its way back into our soul and make the object clear again.  The heart of every situation that startles our sensibilities is the great decision.  Follow Christ or abandon Him.  We rarely settle this absolutely; more often we do so time and again.

The Moment...

The moment of surrender is not just before the big crisis or the courageous endeavor but it is at the breakfast table when your wife scorns your advice or at the school when your son barks at you for being late to come get him or in the evening when everyone walks away from the dinner table and leaves the dishes for you to clean and put away.  The moment of surrender is at the store when the line to check out is ten deep or as you take out the trash and discover your husband threw away your mail without checking with you first.  The moment of surrender is the point at which you decide you have been crucified with Christ and you no longer live but Christ lives in you and you let Him steal your self-righteous indignation and your justified frustration and replace it with real forgiveness and actual rejection of the grievance.  Christ died for those moments when you want to scream in despair but you don't because the Lord Himself has enough joy to see you through it.  Take care to not take care much and let Jesus live fully in you.

The Rise of Obedience

Salvation through Jesus brings us eternal life but the working out of that new life is practical and daily.  It is when we obey God and do what He says in those moments of clarity that more of us (body soul and spirit) becomes free of the chaos and sticky brokenness brought on by sin.  A little act of disobedience, one that seems trivial, can set a chain of events within and without us that can destroy much of the progress we have made toward heavenly joy and peace.  Disobedience is the great drug that intoxicates us and brings hidden destruction.  We grow in grace and freedom and joy as we simply by faith do what the Lord tells us to do.