Wish or Do

There is a level of Christianity that never reaches farther than a wish.  It likes the thought of praying, it is impressed by sacrificial giving, it believes in loving hurtful people, it knows it ought to look away when tempted but it just will not make the move.   What good is an "amen" if it has no legs under it?  Would we think it reasonable for a fisherman to bait the hook and never cast the line out into the water or a student to prepare for an exam and never take the test or for a bride to stand at the altar with the man she loves and never voice the vows?  Are we Ananias and Sapphira who wished for the reputation of holiness without the sanctification of the gift?  Our born-again spirit longs to run to the horizons of holy living but our body wants to just go so far and no further.  Like the child standing at the edge of the pool who dreads the first chill of the water, we wait and wait to throw our lives fully into God, afraid of what true holiness will mean.    But those who have gone before us...the Apostle Pauls and the Apostle Peters and the Mary Magdalenes and the Ruths urge us onward and outward.  "Forsake the love of the world" , they urge.  "Abandon yourself to Christ."  Trust Him with the sorrow of leaving behind your chair and chase the dream of living within the wild unknown of God's will for you today.  Perhaps He has something risky and preposterous for you to do at this moment but you sit waiting and waiting for the breeze to blow another way so it will be easier for you.  It will never get easier; only more risky and more preposterous as the hesitation extends beyond the limits set by God.  Now cannot be later if you do not want to go away "sorrowfully"  like the poor young man who was too rich to go beyond the wish of Christianity.

How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?   John 5:44 NIV

Careless Giving

Are we conflicted over doing something nice for someone who doesn't deserve it?  Have we tried to avoid the ungrateful and contemptible?  Are we shying away from all those who want more of us than we are willing to give?  The oddness of Mary pouring her perfume on the feet of Jesus was not lost on the disciples.  It was an extravagant waste and even Jesus noted the irrationality of it.  It is deeply human to concern oneself with the nickels and pennies and avoid wasteful expenditures on others.  We can talk ourselves out of the slightest hint of irrational loving if we are careful and purposeful.  What is strange though about the mind of God is that He often wastes His resources on foolish extravagance.  Take a look at the tiny paramecium under  a microscope and you become dumbfounded by its elegant structure.  Yet there are billions of those lovely creatures that go unseen and unnoticed.  The bluebells hidden away in mountain meadows that fade and drop from their stem before a single human notices them and the sparkle of light refracting into hundreds of little rainbows as droplets spray out from a cascading stream no one is watching remind us of the way God thinks.  He wastes His kindness on ungrateful nitwits who don't have the least concern for what He has done for them.  He restores the health of a drunk who goes out in his new found fitness and gets into a bar fight.  He gives us glowing red and pink and yellow sunsets that are ignored as we traipse about with our cell phones glued to our ears and our eyes fixed on the traffic.  Wasteful love and extravagant gifts are the stuff of God and we have excused away our life in Him by refusing to make such lavish expenditures on anyone but those we like.  We might buy a sandwich for a homeless vagrant who begs us for money and feel like we have really made the loving gesture but are we willing to do the extravagant thing, the irrational thing that we could not cogently justify only because it is so much like God to do such as that?  The tree across the way is full of so many loquats that not even the crows and sparrows can make a dent in the harvest and the tree is too tall for the people in the neighborhood to pick its fruit.   God is irrational.  Mary was irrational.  The disciple who preached in the far reaches of the world only to lose their lives for it were irrational.  Zacchaeus was irrational to give half of what He had to the poor.  The one who walks with God and truly loves Jesus will do irrational things because that is the nature He possesses.  Beware of being judicious and careful with what you have and the time you possess.  It may not be the Spirit of Christ ruling you there.   A crazy giver is far more beloved in heaven than the reasonable spendthrift.

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Luke 6:38 NIV

The Hidden Life

One of the most elegant descriptions of how God wants his people to be is the little aside found in John telling us of the boy who gave his bread and fish to the disciples to do with as they wished.  Matthew, Mark and Luke don't even mention him; he was so forgotten to them yet John's Gospel proves his hidden act of faith was not lost on the Holy Spirit.  Where we stumble badly is the thought that the flash and bangles of Christianity is what God really likes.  We turn the page altogether and hardly give it a glance where Christ said to make no show of your giving or praying.  If this is so for the person, why would it not be also for the church?  We are to hide ourselves in Christ and let God lift us up at the proper time.  Nothing insults the Spirit more than the propagandist view of Christian living.  We are most bound up in our Lord and His life when in Christ we quietly wash the dishes and unobtrusively ignore the rough edge of a grumpy neighbor.   God has not called us to make something of ourselves; He has taken us under His wing so that everywhere we go, Jesus is noticed.  We have a task before us, to become so acquainted with Christ working all about us that we hardly notice what we are doing.

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:3 NIV

Distancing Yourself From Sodom

Don't think it is so odd that Lot hesitated before leaving

Sodom.  It is the most human of all tendencies; to flinch at the moment God starts to move in a life.  He reveals a sin, directs a move, makes a determination and we pause in our acceptance of it.  The nature of man must be conquered in this spot; our wincing doubt.  Nothing gets done in us without faith in God.  We can believe a billion things about ourselves and others but until we have grown to trust God in the smallest part, we have gotten nowhere.  Abraham believed God which is why he never had a Sodom to abandon.  He waited for the Lord to guide him where to go and believed God would.  There is nothing complex about living in Christ.  Faith in Him is at the heart of the relationship...not personal holiness, not sacrificial giving, not even generous love and affection.  Everything else comes around as we take faith in God at the tiniest point and move forward from there.  Faith the size of a mustard seed moves mountains!  Imagine what might come of faith a bit larger than that?  Christ cannot be followed until He is trusted.

In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. Psalm 22:4 NIV

The Giving Cycle

Today as I was reading my Bible I fell into the passage below. It has been used in a thousand different ways to promote all sorts of agendas. I wondered though at its most basic level how this applies to me. I have been tithing to my church since I was 18 (whichever church I was attending at the time) and so that is not a real issue for me. Cheerful giving though is questionable in all sorts of situations. Time probably is my most grudging charity and I have found myself grumbling for hours about lost moments. Yet I can squander thirty minutes on the sports page. The days are numbered and so are the bills in our wallet but only for a while…Soon enough we will enter the limitless realm where we will be held back only by the generosity we have pushed away now. It is time to give…


Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written:

"He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever."

Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
2 Corinthians 9:6-11 NIV