Ridiculous or Doable

It is time to think about the possibility that we have hindered the Lord in His efforts to perfect us.  He did not say for us to "be perfect" in the sense that this is something that we should do for ourselves.  Christ more literally said that "You, yourselves shall be perfect ones" or "completed ones" in His Sermon on the Mount.  He makes this tremendous pronouncement after a rather long string of comments on the commandments and how we are to carry out our response to them.  Every time our Lord makes a demand on our personality in the sermon, He contextualizes it with impossible behavior.  No sane man or woman has ever seriously contemplated the possibility that those commands have been followed by him or her.  Only Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of Man carried them out to their end and the rest of us are perfect basket cases when it comes to not lusting, not being angry with our friends or enemies, not holding a stain of hatred toward our real enemies but really loving them, giving to those whose requests are absurd to us.  In fact, the Sermon on the Mount is more like a comedy routine than actual religion before we are born again.  Almost at every point of Matthew 5 and on into 6 and 7, we are presented with a ridiculous lifestyle that no one wants to take seriously.  The moment though we are born again, the Living Lord Jesus becomes a part of us and if we give Him room in our soul to have sway, we begin to feel the absurdity of living the old way of greed, lust, anger, bitterness, selfishness and discontent with what God has given us.  Perfect is not an impossibility in Christ, it is where we are going.  The day shall come when we will be perfect just like our Heavenly Father and as we let our Savior have His way with us rather than fight Him at every turn, we shall pull into perfect places...a kind response to someone who hates us, a nonchalance about what we have, a lack of interest in men and women whose attractiveness once held our thoughts captive.  Perfect is what we will be when Christ is so completely aligned with us that we won't be able to tell the difference between what we are doing and what He is doing.  What we want and what He wants are going to be the same and on the way, we give in to every urge of Christ we have within us.  For so long we have let our sin corrupted flesh pull us here and there.  In Christ however, we are free to live the good life without the gnawing beast of sin tearing at us and making so much we do a misery.  When we let our crucified Savior live through us...our actions and our thoughts, we find "rest for our souls".

Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.   Matthew 5:48 NASB

Fix the Mind First

The great moments of testing come without warning.  Suddenly they are upon us with the force of a hurricane.  A financial blow...a rejection...a traumatic injury...a crushing loss...despair...depression...failure...It seems impossible this life of faith.  We sigh deeply.  "What do we do now?"  There are some who it appears never have an unhappy moment but that is not me or you.  The Garden of Gethsemane was not a mythological battle of great forces thumping each other in a Shakespearean play.  Jesus Christ prayed in agony on a plot of ground that was known to real people in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel and He did so during the specific hours of a particular Thursday evening and Friday morning when Saul and Mary and Jonah and others we have not met were doing the same sorts of things you and I do at those times.  In that particular Garden Jesus took in the full force of an unraveling world and traveled the same road we have taken.  He agonized.  What He did not do though was lose His mind.  He did not fix His thoughts on what was coming up against Him.  He did not become a dandelion worrying about what to wear or a woodpecker worrying about what to eat.  He did not let His mind become a godless fury of Google searches for answers.  Jesus Christ fixed His mind on the Father and in that shelter, He found rest; even while agonizing over the Sin of the world.  The way to rest as we enter into the great swirl of life at the office, at the meeting with the principal, at the mechanic's shop, in the hospital room and the funeral home is to keep thinking on Jesus with ferocious determination.  Your mind may swell with anguish and despair, your stomach may swim in anxiety but with your thoughts on Jesus now and on Jesus a minute from now and on Jesus thirty seconds later you will have the power of Heaven working in you to give you the rest you need right then.  Worry is your terrible enemy; not the troubles that are before you.

Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.      Hebrews 3:1 NIV

Rest for a Weary Soul

We love to make much of our choosing God and doing something for Him when it is all backwards.  We did not choose Him.  He chose us.  And our work for God is like a candle set up against the sun when compared to the work of His for us.  We get disappointed when ministries do not go well.  Sometimes we grumble about how tough we have it and how hard is our lot in life.  Take a moment to stare up at Christ crucified.  Listen to Him groan as tries to lift up to gather in one more breath.  Taste the blood that drips down from His forehead and onto His cheeks and falls down to the dusty hill below Him.  Smell the sweat as the soldiers pass by you after they finish flogging Him.  Feel the vibrations of the hammer beating down upon the spikes going through His wrists and into the beams of the Cross.  Watch as His body trembles with another blow across His back.  Weep with Christ as the Disciples flee and Judas hangs himself.  Shake in agony over the crowds calling for His crucifixion and the nine lepers running off without looking back to thank Him for their healing.  Stare in bewilderment at the Disciples who fall asleep in Gethsemane and cannot pray with Him for just an hour.  It is all too much to consider, the agony of Christ as He worked His way up to Jerusalem without a single soul walking  at His side that He could count on to lighten His load; to reduce His burden.  The whole mass of humanity was upon Jesus' shoulders and He kept going to the end without a grumble or a complaint.  We live in a fallen world filled with disappointment and suffering and ministry is almost unbearable at times.  Yet we are not alone.  We have a Savior who lifts up from us the full weight of our troubles and carries them upon His own back as we regain our strength and have our hope restored.  Sit down for a moment and let the Holy Spirit sweep you up in His arms like a shepherd gathering a fallen lamb to his breast and be still with all your sorrows and pain.  Our Lord loves you and He will carry you in your time of trouble and heartache.   Give Him time to hold you for He knows how you have suffered and how hard it is for you to breathe.

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."    Exodus 14:14 NIV

Uncommon Peace

Are we disturbed by our circumstance, unsettled by our place?  Have we grown weary of the dreary, of the humdrum common existence we share with so much of the world?  Are we tired of doing the same things over and over again,  of having to make do with what we have and of living with so little excitement?  Do we dread the boredom and despise the tedium?  Nothing smacks of the Devil's temptation more than the resistance to God's placement of us.  Lust, coveting and gossip are the symptoms of a misshapen view of what living in God is.  Solomon proved exquisitely the hopelessness of trying to get every itch scratched.  The more his craven mind searched for another syrupy substitute for the joy of God's salvation, the more insatiable his thirst.  We are not made for such wanton wandering.  We are made for righteousness, peace and satisfaction.  The last place the world searches for happiness is at the Cross of Christ.  The blood and guts of Satan's fury resulted in the one hope this world has.  Jesus Christ crucified calms the storm that rages in the human heart and satisfies the thirsty soul.  You will continue washing dishes, putting up with selfish people and unfair circumstances but you can have joy if you look to Christ for your satisfaction.  One moment of closeted prayer, a single cry for help to the God of your salvation and you can find yourself peace in front of the pile of laundry or the critical evaluation.  You are not alone in your weariness but the one who is with you will not let you remain in your self-pity.  He will lift you up from your clouded grind and give you joy if you let Him have a place with you.  Take your Bible and don't try to find something in it, some promise or bit of direction.  Simply go to it so you can be with Christ and let the Holy Spirit wash over you as you read the Words prepared for you this very day.  Let God meet you here...here where your drudgery catches up with His climb to Gethsemane and beyond to Calvary and all self-pity will be consumed by the fire of His raging love for you.  Nothing, not even the tedium of your day, can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.  Find a way to rest in Him wherever the Lord's hand may bring you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.  John 14:27 NIV

The Crisis Point

The crisis point is not at the moment you find some part of your life out of control; it is when you must accept that every part of your life is actually beyond your control.  We try desperately to calibrate this and modulate that but it is in the end not ours to fix or determine.  The Lord does not intend to make you more differentiated from your environment...He is using it (that wild and unpredictable world where you have been placed) to add to the supernatural work of being born again.  The more we try to squirm out of our predicaments and fix our dilemmas, the more sustained the rough edges of our personality.  You cannot love unless God surgically removes the bumps of hate and jealousy, you cannot trust unless he sculpts away the scared ridges of doubt and self-confidence and you cannot hope unless he rubs off the fear and bitterness caked on your too fragile psyche.  You have been placed at your spot so that the Lord can perfect His work in you.  Rest your soul in God who loves you enough to keep you where you are.