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

The Great Moment

The Great Moment of our "turn around" is never at the spot when everything changes but at the point at which we decide for God.  When a paralytic was carried to the home where Jesus was teaching, the turn around was not when the man arrived.  It wasn't when Jesus bent over the cripple and told him to walk.  It wasn't even those rapid fire nanoseconds when healing flashed through the paralytic's legs.  The turn around was when it was decided to go to the Lord for help.  Repentance is a turn around.  The cry to God for help is a turn around.  The lostness that is discovered in the heart is a turn around.  As we come to grips with the  realization that every hope we have must end with God and if the truth be known, starts with Him, we meet the turn around at our doorstep.  Faith is the turn around; it is the spot at which we go outside ourselves and the miserly universe and seek the treasure trove of God's grace.  This world is never enough and will never provide us with enough.  We are always left with an empty pang in our stomach when all we do is rely upon this world for what we long to have.  It is more than metaphoric that the prodigal realized where he should have lived all along when his stomach growled uncontrollably.  We seek the Father not to get something in the end but because He is the beginning and the end.  All joy and peace and love and contentment are found ultimately in Him and although we may mistake some carnal longing for its heavenly desire, even in our most lustful cravings, we have in them the opportunity to fill our stomach with the bread Jesus offered the crowd on the hillside.   His broken body and poured out blood come to us at the moment of our hunger pangs and if we are wise, we will feast on them.  Given the voracity of our appetite, the only way we can ever be filled is by turning to Christ and letting Him fully satisfy us.    When you decide to go after the Savior, He saves you beyond the saving  you sought.

Why are you downcast, O my soul?  Why so disturbed within me?  Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. Psalm 42:5-6a NIV

An Extension of Christ

Do you know a "hard case", someone who is so far from God that he seems to be impossibly lost?  Have you come across the soul who is irascible, who is such an irritant that you are ready to be done with her?  The great temptation is to give up on certain people; to dump them in the hopeless bin.  And yet there is not a single person who is "hopeless"; otherwise what good is the cross of Christ.  Zacchaeus was content in his greed and selfishness and certainly many must have prayed for his demise.  Was he hopeless?  Saul was a human butcher, cruel and a prig.  He must have been the subject of many a cry for destruction, the Christian community surely longed for God to take him apart.  Was he hopeless?   We are astonished by David's miserable wailing when he found out Absalom had been killed because it was Absalom who despised David more than even his worst enemies; who although a son, wanted him dead and publicly humiliated.  Was Absalom hopeless?  David didn't see him that way and he is our standard for evaluating others.  No one is too wicked to be scorned; no one is too lost to be rejected.  Jesus died for all, not just those who were good prospects for holiness.  If His love extended beyond the natural bounds of affection, then ours can and must too because He lives within us.  We never have an excuse for giving up on another; for quitting on her.  We may be discouraged by the outer show of things but our Lord went straight for  the heart and loved even the most haughty of sinners.   We must stand firm in Christ and let Him love through us and not confound His efforts by letting our dislike for someone keep us from being the Lord's good and faithful servant.  It is no use complaining to the Lord who was beaten in the courtyard of Caiaphas.  The Lord sees a place of hope in your Pilates and Matthews.  Nothing warms the heart of our Lord quite as much as having a friend who sees that hope too.   Ananias did not want to go to Saul and touch Him but he did and the world has not been the same.  Extend your reach past your feelings and let Christ win you over.

Then Ananias went to the house and entered it.  Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord--Jesus…"  Acts 9: 17

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

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

How Long Will You Wait?

The problem we face as Christians who sincerely want to see our neighbors and friends come to Christ is the misconception we have about what this means for them to make such a dramatic left turn.  The vast majority of people we contact daily who are not born from above are completely content as they are.  They don't want our assertions or our "great opportunity".  It is absurd to them that they should change their lives so dramatically as we insist and their conscience is not the least bit troubled by what they do.    Divorce is reasonable if they are no longer in love, pornography is enjoyable and maybe even helpful, what we call sexual immorality is moral to them and greed honored.  The itch is meant to be scratched every time it surfaces and the audacity of demanding something approaching limits to freedom is irrational to them.  We are not, and never have been offering something so enticing it cannot be rejected.  Jesus did not say He came to bring peace but a sword.  Most people do not see Christianity as a better life; a less tolerable one perhaps, a constricted one probably.  Even many Christians are a tad bitter about what they find Christianity to be.   The deceit of Satan is thorough and penetrating.  The lie that being in Christ is a meager and impoverished existence is believed almost universally, even many times within the church.  Why would those infatuated with death want to cross over to life?  The Gospel is not seen as good news but a bitter pill to swallow.  What can we do about this?  The Lord has given us two directives.  Pray for the hearts of our family, friends and neighbors and say the Gospel clearly.  Rather than being confounded by a  wasteland of wrecked souls, grab the hope Jesus Himself had when He happily proclaimed His mission...The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.  (John 10:10 NIV)  Not everyone will realize their lives are bankrupt without Jesus but some will.  Not everyone will want to hear what you have to say but some will.    We must not be dismayed by the prevailing blindness.  The Lord is present shedding light in the darkness so not every soul is trapped in the shadows.   The Gospel is even now unlocking rusted padlocks binding hearts and you have that same key in your hand.  Don't worry yourself with strategies for trying to convince people to come to Christ.  Let the Holy Spirit do that work.  Give  the Gospel  away though as if it were the  hope of all mankind; don’t hold back when your time has come to be the great angel of grace, God's personal messenger.  Someone is waiting for you.  God has prepared the way!

Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."   Luke 9:60 NIV