You Are Not Alone In This

The world is in desperate need of holy people.  It doesn't need any more sanctimonious prigs who make the world bristle at their rigid opinions.  Genuinely holy people who uphold righteousness in their personal affairs, who laugh joyously in trying times, who have confidence that God will see them through any painful circumstance, who hold the hands of the broken-hearted and forgive with genuine love and humility are the pivot upon which all radical movements of God turn.  When Elijah complained that he was the only faithful servant of God left, he did not realize how many others were walking along the same path he was.   You are not alone in your longing to have Christ built into every part of your day.  Others also want the Savior flowing out of them in contagious ways.  There is a growing desire to be truly good and the only way that is possible is if our Lord is living within us and His holiness is entering every nook and cranny of our hearts.  There are deep hidden places where we have resisted God and settled for a form of Christianity our Lord never intended when He saved us.  We have habits we have not let the Holy Spirit touch; memories we have kept in gilded cages so that the Savior cannot approach them.  Today, with your hands stretched to the heavens, surrender your life to God and give Him permission to invade every part of you and put His crucified life at work wherever He sees a need for redemption.  The atonement had one purpose, to make you so completely God's that it becomes nearly impossible to see where you end and the Lord begins.   Holiness is not what you do; it is who you are.  When you are made right with Christ, everything you do will become the fragrance of God in a world looking for evidence our Savior really does make a difference in those who join with Him!

Then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets. 1 Kings 18:22 NIV

Taken Apart

When God begins to work in us, He leaves no stone unturned.  He takes apart our entire personality bit by bit and regenerates it by fire.  From head to toe, where sin has marred us and warped our being, our Savior gets in there and goes to work.  Paul called it "being crucified in Christ".  James labeled it "the testing of your faith".  Peter spoke of it as "judgment" that starts with the "family of God".   John the Baptist described the work of Christ as that of baptizing "you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Jesus called it a pruning.   God will not let go of us until we are a holy people who love with the same love Christ loved us.  It is a shame that so many speak only of the blessings of God without including within those blessings the purifying work of our Lord to make us free of Sin and righteous not just by decree but in actual day to day living.  There comes a point when we must decide if we really want to be wholly God's or if we are satisfied with the world having a part of us too.  The Lord won't force Himself upon you.  He won't tackle you and make you beg mercy.  He lets you go on your way but if you are born again, you will never be settled with the corrosive effect of sin working through you; you will want it out of you and it is then that a transaction occurs.  It will be your life for His.  You give God your life and He gives you His and God, like a surgeon, begins to go at all the damage your sin has caused you and others.  Meticulously He works on the habits you have developed that make you impure.  He grinds down the thought patterns that corrupt your actions.  The burdens that you grip with terrible force that other sinners have placed on your shoulders, He lifts from you.  God will not be satisfied with you until He has given you a "clean bill of health" and you are holy.  You may not even realize what our Lord has done for you until it suddenly dawns on you what a new person you are; that you are really transformed and have all the earmarks of Christ in you, the hope of Glory.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.     2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV

Obedience—The Great Uncovering Step 2

Genesis 28:16 NIV

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it."

Are You Aware Of God’s Work In You?

Perhaps the most odd of all my actions in college was when I got involved in a “love triangle”.  Now I am sure that the girl in the triangle did not think of herself as being in a love triangle.  She was just having a good time going out with different guys.  My two friends though who liked her and who wanted her to choose between them felt very much like they were in a love triangle; or at least in a very attracted to this girl triangle.  For several weeks each of these two guys pined to me about his affections for her and how he could not tell if she liked him or  was just pulling him along to feed her ego.  I liked these friends and didn’t want either one hurt and so finally when I heard the girl was going out with a third guy at our school, I decided we should do something about this.  A group of us guys snatched her one day, brought her to the school fountain at the front of the campus and tossed her in it.  Now some would say this was a very mean thing to do and although the girl was laughing and mad all at the same time when she got out of the fountain and perhaps in some strange way liked all the male attention she received that day, I was doing something that had to break some rule.  Even though I never read a single regulation in the school handbook prohibiting guys from throwing girls in the fountain, I cannot say that what we did was “right”…funny perhaps but not right.  What struck me in this was that it probably revealed more about me in organizing this prank than it did about Ella who we all thought deserved to be “baptized” in the fountain.  The question is, what did this rebellious and somewhat mean spirited act reveal about me?

We are unconscious beings who carry below the surface a vast assortment of memories, ideas, convictions and desires.  Who we think we are and what we decide about ourselves isn’t necessarily the complete picture and perhaps not even a true picture of us!  There is much to us that we don’t grasp…some we recognize but try to keep from others and a lot that is hidden from us of which a little, unbeknownst to us, has trickled out where it is observed by friends family members and even strangers.  The question is not whether or not we have a significant unconscious world within; it is what shall we do about that unconscious world and will we let it determine key aspects of our lives.

The Bible provides us with rich insight into our inner world and it is of great value to study the people who are described in it.  One of the most important players in the Old Testament is David, the eventual king of Israel whom some would call the greatest of all the Hebrew kings.  David was courageous, intelligent, creative, godly and passionate.  But he also was lusty, narcissistic, bull-headed and ambitious.  He was a wild tangle of conflicted personality traits that God worked through to establish a culture of faith among the Hebrew people and make into a “man after his own heart”. (See 1 Samuel 13: 14)  David knew there was much below the surface of his personality that he didn’t understand and he invited the Lord to probe it.  Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24 NIV)

There is a powerful and critical way the Lord reveals our hearts to us and it is astounding how effective it is.  The law of God not only defines holy behavior but it also uncovers layers of buried material that unconsciously drive many of our actions.  The Sermon on the Mount is a surprisingly effective way God reveals to us our hearts and the hidden wounded parts of our soul.  Consider just the directive to forgive.  For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:14-15 NIV)  It is amazing how difficult it is for us to do this.  In fact, it could be argued that it is nearly impossible for many.

The painful description of David’s relationship with his first wife Michal illustrates just how illuminating the law of forgiveness can be.  David was the golden boy of his time, the conquering war hero who could do no wrong.  Yet it is likely that deep resentments that were developed in childhood haunted him.  His father saw so little in David that when the great prophet Samuel came to their town and called for everyone there to meet him for a sacrificial feast, the boy’s dad never bothered to call his youngest son back to the house.  He left David out in the fields tending sheep while every other child of Jesse was at the party.   To get a perspective on this, suppose Michael Jordan or Bill Gates were to come to your neighborhood and everyone on your block was invited to meet him at one of the homes down the street from you.  You had eight sons but brought only seven of them to the meet and greet.  How would it have felt to have been the only child not asked to come?  Later, we see what this mindset of the father did to David’s siblings.  When the older brothers went off to war to fight the Philistines and David’s father sent David to the front lines to bring food to his brothers, the oldest brother had a bitter reaction to David’s natural curiosity about the taunts of the giant Goliath and the way the soldiers planned on responding to Goliath’s challenge to fight him.  When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, "Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle." (1 Samuel 17:28 NIV)

Of course, we know that David not only ended up watching the battle but played the most important part in the Israelites winning the fight.  As a result of this bravery and other successful accomplishments in war, David was made a high ranking general in Saul’s army.  His popularity exploded and he was revered by the Israelites.  In fact he was more beloved than the king himself.  This infuriated King Saul and his jealousy inflamed his hatred of David.  The king concocted a plan to have David killed.  He told the boy that if he could somehow kill one hundred Philistines, he would give his daughter Michal in marriage.  Michal was in love with David and it would seem the feelings were mutual for David agreed to the bridal price.  David successfully killed one hundred Philistines and won Michal as his bride but their marital bliss did not last long.  Saul’s hatred of David grew so bitter that it became clear soon Saul would kill him if he did not immediately go into hiding. His wife Michal helped in his escape despite the risk she took enraging her father.  She knew it was possible that he would kill her for the part she played in David’s getaway.  But her love for David was too great for her to worry about her own life.  She had to help David save his.

What followed is tragic. The timeline isn’t clear but this marriage of infatuation and sacrificial love fell apart.  Abigail quickly got on a donkey and, attended by her five maids, went with David's messengers and became his wife.  David had also married Ahinoam of Jezreel, and they both were his wives.  But Saul had given his daughter Michal, David's wife, to Paltiel son of Laish, who was from Gallim. (1 Samuel 25:42-44 NIV)  Did first Saul force Michal to abandon her husband and marry someone he handpicked to replace him or did David first marry Ahinoam and Abigail and as a consequence Michal abandon her marriage to David and marry Paltiel upon her father’s direction?  We don’t know.  Probably Michal was the first one to remarry based upon Saul’s fury with David and Michal’s fear of her father.  David now had been rejected by the two most important men in his life, his father and the king who had taken him under his wing.  Michal may have been a mere pawn in her father’s hand but her rejection of David clearly stung David and his bitterness over her betrayal worked like dry rot in his soul.  He never forgave her.  One might argue that he couldn’t.   He was still the little boy whose father did not think he was good enough to warrant attendance at the party.

Ten years passed.  David had now added at least five more wives and perhaps more, fought a bitter war with Saul’s son and Michal’s brother Ish-Bosheth to gain control of all of Israel and no longer had King Saul to fear due to his death six years before.  Ish-Bosheth’s general Abner had become incensed with Ish-Bosheth and so decided to form an alliance with David and pave the way for David to be king over all Israel.  David was more than happy to make this agreement but first he had a requirement if he was to make peace with Abner and his army.  The general had to bring Michal back to David so that he could force her to be his wife again.  For perhaps ten years Michal had been with her new husband and he loved her deeply.  She was his only wife…he was her only husband.  David on the other hand had at least seven wives and many more he would take later.  What sort of bitterness of soul could lead to such a cold hearted, spiteful demand?  It was an ugly scene.  David told Abner and King Ish-Bosheth, "I will make an agreement with you. But I demand one thing of you: Do not come into my presence unless you bring Michal daughter of Saul when you come to see me." Then David sent messengers to Ish-Bosheth son of Saul, demanding, "Give me my wife Michal, whom I betrothed to myself for the price of a hundred Philistine foreskins."   So Ish-Bosheth gave orders and had her taken away from her husband Paltiel son of Laish.  Her husband, however, went with her, weeping behind her all the way to Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, "Go back home!" So he went back.  (2 Samuel 3:13-16 NIV)

Consider an imaginary conversation taking place between David and Jesus, one much like what happened between Christ and the rich young ruler.  David asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life and Jesus tells him as he tells us all in the Sermon on the Mount to forgive, “Forgive Michal for marrying Paltiel and come follow me.”  David replies, “I can’t; it’s too much to ask, to demand I forgive her!”  Now, why couldn’t he forgive Michal for remarrying?  Why did he make her return to him?  He no longer loved her.  She didn’t love him anymore it seems.  Why couldn’t David just forgive Michal and move on in his life and let her move on too?  What drove his determination to ruin Michal’s life and Michal’s husband’s life even though it is a fundamental principle of God’s Kingdom to forgive those who hurt us?  Perhaps, it was because David always had to prove he was the biggest man in the room, always had to be the conqueror, always needed to have the prize in his hand, always needed to be respected and appreciated.  He could never let anyone get the best of him, never be disrespected. He had a deep seated need to prove his worth, to be someone!  Why might that be?  Perhaps, his bitter disdain for Michal and her needs and his unwillingness to forgive her was rooted in something deep and ugly…perhaps it had to do with his battle to prove his worth to his dad.  Maybe, there was a wound in David’s soul that had never healed and when someone he cared about deeply reminded him of the rejection he experienced when he was a child, he could not let go of the hurt it uncovered.

What if though, everything went in a different direction and the rich young ruler did give up his wealth and follow Jesus and David did forgive Michal for marrying someone else?  Is it possible that in doing the command of God, by forgiving Michal, David might have been freed by God of his need to prove himself, freed of his neurotic need to live up to the expectations of his father?  We cannot say what might have been but we do know this.  The commands of God are not intended to take apart the joy we have in being independent and free.  God’s demands are based in love and if we obey Him, there is power in God to make us more free than we ever thought possible.  Consider the promise found in Malachi made to those who take God seriously enough to do as He commands; who believe that in all His ways He is good, even when He tells us to do something that we feel is too hard to do.  But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. (Malachi 4:2 NIV)

Are You Really You?

Why do the ramifications of being born again startle us?  When a child is born into a family, it is a complete revelation to the home, a revolutionary break with the old structure and forms.  Each child, even when added to large families destroys absolutely the old family and restructures it into a new dynamic that permanently ruptures all of the relationships built before.  Abortion is the ultimate fear of the new beginning.  So to think that when one becomes a Christian we are to be the same old person with a religious overcoat thrown on top of us is ludicrous.  We mustn’t let the stored memories and genetic layering fool us into believing that we are the same when Christ comes to us and makes us new.  We are new and it is not temporary.  We play mental games with ourselves thinking the old behavior patterns that made up our days before will be able to continue into our newness.  The bitterest and saddest and most disappointed people in the world are those Christians who try to keep up the charade of living and doing as they did when there was no Holy Spirit a part of them.  The adultery and corrupt business practices and snobbish indifference to grudges bottled within are not just contemptible within the Christian community, they are a sign that the believer has failed to acknowledge just how new he or she is.  Perfect peace and sustained joy are given over to us when we live freely in Christ and not when we remain bound in the chains of our old way of being.  Dogs return to their vomit but Christians grow increasingly disgusted with the old patterns of sin.  We are born again that we might become perfect and holy…it does not go another way than that.  The sooner we accept our lovely fate, the speedier will come our peaceful happiness.  Dogs gnaw on bones, bears hunt for berries, otters dart about in the water, eagles build nests in the cliffs and each species holds true to itself as the years pass.  A Christian who thinks like a prostitute, dreams like a miser, whines like a selfish prig and is petulant like an unrestrained child is good for nothing.  All the sweetness and courage and steadfastness and contentment put in him by God is wasted by the believer who will not walk in the Spirit and live by the Scriptures.  You are made good by Christ that you might live good; to do otherwise is like dropping diamonds down the drain. 

He put a new song in my mouth…     Psalm 40:3 NIV

Indwelling Love

The closer we look at the true morality of our heart, the less confident we become of ever having a family resemblance to Jesus.  Our actual affections should sicken us if we care much about being holy.  If we have come to the conclusion that we are spineless and lack integrity between what we confess about Christianity and what we are, then something supernatural can begin within us.  God is not waiting breathlessly to see if we can make something good of ourselves; the opposite is actually the case.  He is watching for our tipping point when we become available for Him to rework.  At the point of our hopelessness, we may open ourselves to the intervention of Holy Spirit and His marvelous transforming power.  Jesus Christ did not tell us that we were to love our neighbors as ourselves because He thought we could ever do it.  We can barely love our children in some approximation of it, love our best friends as best friends, but our love of the neighbor who takes our legs out from under us somehow is not going to be adored with the affection God wants for him.  We can only hope that Jesus Christ will do our loving for us; that He will assert His will and power in our actions.  The cross dangling from our mirror or hidden within our heart is not a reminder of distant God keeping an eye on us.  It is the statement that Christ in us is the hope of glory and that He is violently at times working His way out of us and into our world.  Let us not try to love through Him but rather let Him love through us.  The purity we seek is not some gilded try on our part but rather bloody holiness brought in by the presence of the Lord Jesus Himself.  True loving of your neighbor as yourself happens only if you give Christ room to do that loving, if you make yourself available to Him to bless those who hate you and cherish the enemies God died to save.  Nothing is more sure than the ability Christ has to make you full of love;  your faith in Him will do the trick. 

...grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.   Ephesians 3:18-19 NIV

The Expanding of Christ

One of the absurdities of our modern Christian era is the belief that God is after our success...or our health...or some form of self-realization...reaching our potential.    When Peter had to man up and face the Christ He had abandoned, the Lord had nothing to say about Peter's bright future.  He asked Peter if the disciple loved Him.  When Peter made his affirmation, Jesus told him to "feed my sheep".  The inner core Jesus was wanting was love for Him.  The outer stretch was for Peter to be Jesus for the world He faced.  There was nothing in this of "being all you can be" or getting God's blessing.    Being born again is the most devastating of blows to self-realization.  The moment the grace of God works its way in us, Jesus Christ joins us and we are transformed into someone totally new; Christ/us.  We forget to our harm that Jesus never went about figuring out how to make His life better; He sought only the will of the Father.  If that meant sleeping out in the open with His disciples or biting His tongue as the priests questioned Him, He did it.  When the Father told Him to throw His life down just as the adoring crowds began to look to Him as Messiah, He did not hesitate.  This character, this absolute loyalty to the Father is what we acquire when we are born again.  If the Father wants us rich and successful, then so be it but we must beware of thinking this is of course God's will for us. If it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven, then we can be certain very few of the wealthy and  accomplished will find themselves on the narrow way.  Not only that, one of the great temptations for anyone wanting to be holy is riches and the achievement of personal goals.  People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.  1 Timothy 6:9-10 NIV  The great will of God is that Christ be the central part of us.  He must increase is our constant push….and that may not mean we get healthier or more successful in the process.  It is when we are weak that He is made strong…or to put it another way, that He expands His influence in us.   Nine of the healed lepers ran off and completely forgot about Jesus.   It was only the one out of the ten who when He got what He wanted returned to Christ.  Those are not great odds and it certainly flies in the face of modern convention that those who are "blessed" or the ones mostly likely to be loyal to God.  The opposite seems to be the case both in Scripture as well as in the casual observations we make.  God's glory is most often exhibited brightest in the poor and downtrodden parts of the world.   The priority of the Lord for you is that you first seek the Kingdom of God both in your praying and in your wishing and longing...then all these other things we care about will be addressed and attended.

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?  Luke 9:25-26 NIV

Life Upside Down

If there is one thing we are never quite ready to do, it is laying down our lives  for anyone we haven't got the utmost respect and affection.  Give that person a nasty side, a ridiculous bit of arrogance, a slanderous disdain for anyone or anything we like and all bets are off.  The deal is done and whatever Christ may have to say about the romance of love, we see right through it.  We are better than that.  We have the sophistication of our pride to barricade us from laying down our lives for such frivolous purposes.  Jesus told us to lay down our lives for our friends in the same way He did and that is where this spins on the dime.  He put His life on the ground of the cross for the snarling world that despised Him and that is the very point at which His children do so also.  We have mistaken nearly altogether what it means to lay down the life.  It is not dying for some cause ; it is letting ourselves go that the Holy Spirit might work Himself through us.  It is a surrender at the moment of discernment that God wants to do something through me just now: help a rude customer, defend a selfish co-worker, encourage a lazy friend, pick up an insolent child, give way to a pretentious prig.  We have no way of knowing what God is going to do with us as we lay down our lives but we can be certain of this.  He must do something He insists matters and do it right then.  An eternal array of circumstances and shifts are about to begin as we lay down our lives and to stop them all because we insist on our right to do as we wish is profound arrogance.  A serial killer can give up his life for a philandering prostitute; only one with the Spirit of God working through him or her will lay down  life at the moment of the Holy prompt, an unwelcome prompt perhaps but a certain prompt.   The opportunity to be the pipeline through which God's work in humanity flows is most astounding if you think about it.  You, dirty and contentious as you are with God are His chosen beloved partner in the transformation of a world all about you.

 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.   John 15:13-14 NIV

Pushing Forward

Why do we think we have developed a heightened level of spirituality when we give up on praying and stifle our love of Christ in a muffling "your will be done"?  Nothing so marks the carnal mind like the indifference to praying and "keeping on" praying.  It is passive aggressive bitterness that stops at the point of impassioned interceding for all the needs that come to our mind.  The great purpose of intercessory prayer is simple; to bring each and every one of those things that disturb us to the mind of Christ and there with the Holy Spirit working in our heart  learn to love God with the type of love Mary had not many minutes after she  wondered aloud why Jesus had waited too long to save Lazarus.  The pagan determination to pray for the dead is not so far off the mark as we think.  In Christ, who is the Alpha and Omega all at once, who is to say our praying cannot reach back before us and alter even what has happened in the past.  Where is the justification for giving up on everything that seems hopeless to us if God can pull the dead from the grave on the last day?  The praying of one believing Christian can change the course of events miraculously and in stunning fashion, not because she is worthy of it but because the love of God is poured out in the interceding and that love is a healing fire.  Nothing in the spiritual realm is quite so intoxicating as the determination to quit on a matter because it seems hopeless.  It is the morphine of Satan, this resolve to let go of the thing when the Holy Spirit is pressing us forward in prayer.  Who among us has not quit on a matter just as arrogantly as the mourners who laughed when Jesus informed them that the little girl was not dead but merely sleeping?  The opportunity to pray at any given moment for each part of a day is a privilege won for us at the Cross and we should not quit on it so carelessly.  

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