Every Time I Remember You

I thank my God every time I remember you.  In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.  Philippians 1:3-6.

What would it be like for us to this kind of praise from Paul?  The Philippians gave him joy, there’s no doubt about that but to be so praiseworthy…wow!

But what was it about them that made him so proud to know them?

Their partnership in the work in the gospel.

It was at Philippi that Paul cast the familiar spirit out of the slave girl, then, because of this, he and Silas were beaten and thrown in the stocks, and where they sang songs of praise for being counted worthy to suffer for the sake of Jesus.  It was also there they experienced the miracle of an earthquake opening all the prison doors and breaking the stocks which held them.  The jailer and his whole family gave themselves to Christ because of this.  Once the town magistrates found out that both Paul and Silas were Roman citizens they tried to get them to leave quietly, though Paul refused.  The first converts in this Roman colony, by the way, were women, whom the two apostles met by the river outside of town.

It’s easy to see how attached Paul could become to these people who were so sincere in their Savior and faithful in their lives.  Certain experiences bind people together for life; the earthquake must have been one of these things.

Taken in context with the rest of the passage, the promise He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus takes on a special meaning to the Philippians.  God came into these people’s lives in very unmistakable way—one which would tend to make anybody dedicated for life.  You don’t see miracles or hear a message as beautiful and hopeful as the gospel and not respond.  The work God had begun was to renew a relationship with them through bringing them into harmony with Himself.  There is no greater work than that of oneness with the Heart of heaven.

This promise should bring us a certain amount of security, for its very premise builds confidence in the Lord’s intentions towards us.  If God began the work, He will be the one to finish it.  Our part in this whole process is to be actively submissive to His work and will.  From experience, I can tell you neither one of those is easy for me; submission to anyone’s will but my own is a tough pill to swallow.  I find some of the work He does quite painful for it demands change and, like everyone else, I thrive on the security of sameness in many ways.  On the other hand, He also reveals His will, which also comes as a painful shock to the system.  While I enjoy the love of God when it makes me feel good about myself, His work reveals places where I am outside of His will…it just doesn’t feel right.

If we are going to grow in Christ, the only way to this head space is submission—as one of my pastors broke the word down:  “coming under His mission.”  We cannot belong to Christ and the world at the same time.  We can be in the world but not of it; part of world experience but not the cause of its wrong.  The Name by which we are known, Christians, is derived from the root word Christ.  If we are called by His name, we must be like Him otherwise the name means nothing and is nothing to us but window dressing.

The good news, of course, is that we don’t begin the work nor do we finish it; God does this.

I’m glad someone responsible is taking charge of our lives…

Jesus’ Idea of Friendship

“My command is this:  Love each other as I have loved 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.  I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.  Instead I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”  John 15:12-15.

For a long time this passage became my default quote.   I love the fact that Jesus calls us “friends”.  The God of the universe, through whom all things were made, just called me His friend, that’s unreal.  It’s also wonderful beyond words.

Unfortunately, His friendship is not without a condition or two.  Do you see them?  One isn’t stated as a condition but as a truth about friendship itself.  “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Love for each other just took on a scarier meaning.  We can’t get away with casual contact or offhand friendships anymore within the body of Christ because to be like our Master we must lay down our lives for one another.

There’s no way around it, friendship in the way of Jesus means sacrificing our own life sometimes for the sake of others.  It also  subtracts any sort of superiority in the Body of Christ since Jesus doesn’t call His disciples “servants” anymore but “friends”.  That distinction is incredibly significant because we think of ourselves as less-than God, which we are in ability, physicality and spiritual acumen.  But He doesn’t care.

Jesus, the Lord of all Creation, the Judge, the Advocate, the Savior of the world, knows me, loves me and wants to be intimately acquainted with me.  Make it personal, folks, He calls us His friends and reveals to everyone willing to open up to Him what is on His mind.  Jesus reveals everything He learned from His Father to us through His teachings.  In other words, everything we need to know is written down for our growth in friendship with God.

Does this lessen God’s stature by His being a friend to humanity?  Not at all!  It raises us up to spiritual heights unknown, changes us into His image, and transforms our very being into something entirely new.

We show our friendship with Him by loving each other, and He demonstrated what that looked like by paving the way through the cross.  For us to be His friends, we have to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

This is Jesus’ idea of friendship.

Great Expectations

Author’s note:  I wrote this for a friend of mine, Susan, who’s blog TLC4Women published it the first time.  I’ve done a little editing to tweak it up a bit.

Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Psalm 37:4.

Mom used to always say about the girls I dated,  “Watch how they treat their dads and you’ll know how they will treat you.”

Consistency is one of the hardest truths to live out.  We expect it from others but rarely require it of ourselves.

So what kind of woman do most men want anyway?

That’s like asking what a man’s favorite car is or which football team he likes best.  The answer is as varied as you should expect.  Yet when it comes to the heart of a spiritual man, though we know the variations in taste will remain the same, there’s one large caveat:  They’ll want a woman who loves and obeys God.

Sounds simple enough, right?

I’m gonna’ give you two of  my easy rules for finding a mate:  Be in the flow and middle of God’s will for your life and base your decision on character.

It’s actually not all that hard to tell what God’s will or purpose is for our lives, because the imprint of it is on our hearts and personalities.  Once we know what our tastes and preferences come down to (how He made us specifically), we can then look for the person who demonstrates Jesus in their lives. 

A woman’s taste in men is on par with her taste in soap, deodorant or anything else they might prefer–it is personal and sacrosanct to the one doing the choosing.  I know many women will object to this comparison, but I ask them to look at it without romantic blinders on for a minute:  Some like tall men, others like guys with a little belly on them.  I’ve been told countless times women like bald guys (though no one’s beating down my door).  These are issues of taste so should be left to the individuals involved.

The same for men.  I know women think all guys just want a skinny little waif who looks like she’s barely 16, but that doesn’t really cover the truth about men’s preferences.  One of my best friends likes curves on his woman and is actually going to marry one who doesn’t fit the popular bill.  Advertising may glorify certain types of bodies, but this should tell you something right there:  a few trying to dictate to the many never works.  A man is as complex as a woman in this aspect of their psyche.  A man of God, however, is far more simple, honest and caring about his partner.

The need for character, however, is universal for it is the stamp of God’s nature on the person, therefore I’m gonna’ concentrate on this for the rest of our time.

Once we figure out our tastes, the only thing we have left to do is be transformed and we got it in the bag.  What does Romans 12:1, 2 say?    Therefore, I urge you, brothers (and sisters), in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–His good, pleasing and perfect will.

Our problem as humans is we have it all ass-backwards–or as my dad used to say,  “The cart before the horse.”  We think we have to find a spouse before we can be happy, when the truth is inverse of that thought.  Before we find the type of person God created us for, we have to be the type of person God created us to be for them.  Look, it’s not rocket science but godly wisdom.  To know God’s will, we have to know God; and to know God we have to know what He says; and to know what He says we have to spend time reading His words.

Jesus said,  “As you would have men do to you, do also to them.”  Most people, however, base their relationship expectations on what the other person can do for them.  Marriage is a partnership, nothing more, nothing less.

Christians carry one piece of baggage, however, which trumps their reasoning power:  We’re all hopeless romantics.

O, I’m not just talking about the Cinderella or Snow White style of romance, but we look for a happy ending to our story and history of mankind.  So this permeates everything we do and think in such a great measure many of us struggle to get the real point of our hope:  to live a full life now and not wait till then–whenever “then” is.  The adventure of a lifetime is waiting for most of us but we would rather dream about it than actually live it.  It’s strange how many times I hear someone wish to be married but fail to do the work to be in the way of God’s purpose for their lives.  They wait on the sidelines of life expecting love to just jump into their laps miraculously when God commands us to go out and live to the full.  It’s not for nothing Jesus told His disciples,  “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” 

Where is God’s will?  In service of His people, His world.

Take a moment to think about how we would like to be treated, then turn that thought upside down to the other side of the coin to think about how the other person would like to be treated.  Do you see how easy it is to apply the principles of God?  We don’t need any other formula to find our mate.  All we need to do is find someone who shows respect to everyone, is industrious, kind, thoughtful of others, loves from a heart filled with the Spirit of God and gives of their means freely as unto the Lord, and we find the person we fit with like a puzzle piece.  That is, we find them if we are such people too.

You see we cannot have great expectations for a spouse if we don’t hold the same standard up for ourselves.  If you want to attract honey bees, you need to be a flower.  Hopelessly romantic isn’t bad, it just usually isn’t based on reality–even a spiritual reality.  God will only give us the desires of our hearts when our desires match His.

There’s one more aspect to this we need to address which is quite unpopular even with men:  Marriage is as much a business arrangement as it is a romantic adventure.

If any of us enter into marriage thinking we’re going to just fly all the time, we’re in for a rude awakening–and some pretty rough unhappy times.  When Paul told the Corinthians not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, he wasn’t making a suggestion just for marriages but also business men.  Entering into a business arrangement with someone who doesn’t share our mores and values on the subject of eternity affects how we do business.  A person in business tied to earthly profit operates differently than one tied to eternal investments.  May be some of you who read this are too tied to earthly security for the Christian spouse you long for, then I would suggest you untie or cut that bond.  A person tied to earth’s security is no good to God’s kingdom, for their entire lives are spent in pursuit of their own happiness and dreams.  A person tied to the kingdom of God lives in such a way as to invest on earth what will bring a profit for God.  Another way of saying it is:  Live to please God not yourselves.

Is that too heavenly minded for some of you?  If you worry more about what most people call the “bottom line” here on earth yet forget the spiritual bottom line, you’ve missed God’s will for your life–and, quite sadly, for your future spouse as well.  Unless we become the workmanship of God, we cannot enter His kingdom to come or where it starts here on earth.

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied,  “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say,  ‘Here it is,’ or  ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”  Luke 17:20, 21.

That passage might sound off topic to some of you, but for me it is the crux of the whole message.  The kingdom of heaven starts right now where we live, work and believe.  We are the kingdom of God not some specific country or government.  His government is demonstrated within our hearts and minds for the sake of being lived out in the world around us.  This attracts those looking for light.

It also attracts those who look for light in order to take advantage of others.  You know, those people who are always looking for a new angle to make a profit of some kind.

Who should we keep our eyes open to?  Jesus. 

Who should we be looking for as a spouse?  Those with the kingdom of God already building inside.

How long will it take to find them?  As long as it takes to get to know another person’s witness for the Lord.

Remember what my mother used to say:  “How a girl treats her dad will be how she treats her husband.”  It goes well here for us too, for how we respond to God’s Spirit living within us is how we will respond to those around us who are of the spiritual kingdom.  Don’t be deceived by packaging.  I know a lot of men who have nearly shipwrecked their faith because they involved themselves with a beautiful un-spiritual woman.  I know many a woman who has been trapped by her vows because she went for the bad boy over that guy who was not quite so exciting but a lot nicer.  A carnal man is strong in worldly wisdom, worldly passion and their idea of love; a spiritual man is strong in spiritual passion, truth and God’s love.  If you’re attracted to that bad boy over the nice guy, there’s something wrong with your connection to reality not that nice guy.  Make no mistake God’s reality is the only reality there is, everything else is illusion.  Guy’s who pursue the beautiful “dangerous” woman, will get what they are chasing:  Dangerous beauty which turns pretty ugly fast.

How a man treats the women in his life will be how he will treat you.  How a man responds to God will tell you how he will respond to you.

Do you want to find a spiritual man?  Be a spiritual woman.  Do you want to find a spiritual woman?  Be a spiritual man.

Do you want to know God’s will for you as it relates to marriage?  Live in the middle of the stream of His purpose for kingdom people and you’ll run into the man who is also living in the middle of God’s flow.

Do you want passion, romance and the love of a lifetime?  Get to know the Source of passion, romance and love, for only in the plan and purpose of God will our hearts be satisfied.

A Sound Investment Strategy

“The master commended the dishonest manger because he had acted shrewdly.  For the people of the world are more shrewd in dealing with there own kind than are the people of the light.  I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.  Luke 16:8, 9.

Last night Jerome taught on this text (you can hear his teaching on it here) and it struck me just how clever our Master Jesus really was and is.  Sometimes we forget to connect the dots with Christ’s teachings, thinking His subjects jump around a bunch of times in random sequence without really being intertwined.  Jerome reminded us last night that Jesus demonstrated the vital connection between the Prodigal son’s tale and this subject of the shrewd manager.

For one thing (and I’m ripping you off a little here, Jerome), Jesus shows how much the Father’s heart longs for His children to come home and become part of the family again through the tale of prodigal son.  But what He also goes on to say in the Luke 16:1-15 is quite different than it seems He said in the wayward son’s story.  What He says here speaks to how we deal with the gifts given us here on earth.  The younger son wasted his inheritance then returned to be welcomed home sure, but hard on the heals of this story Jesus warns His disciples about squandering their gifts.  The rewards will be lacking in the kingdom to come because the gifts were not invested in eternal goods. 

What are these eternal goods?  Jerome pointed out it was the friends we used our worldly wealth to bring to the light.  At that great party where the bride (the church)  meets the Groom (Jesus) will we have used our worldly wealth to His purpose of saving those we come in contact with or squandered it on temporary pleasures in the here and now?  The younger son represents those who have squandered their gifts on making a name for themselves or gaining security only for this life.  When the son was welcomed back, he had no friends except the father to be glad of his return.  Sure the servants celebrated but not from a personal connection to the son, rather they were just glad for the Father. 

One other thing that struck me, though Jerome didn’t emphasize it as much:  The jewels in our crowns are not a physical thing in the sense of actual rocks, for what man values, God despises as worthless.  No, the jewels are the people we have invested in for eternal returns.  Paul speaks to this by saying,  For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when He comes?  Is it not you?  Indeed you are our glory and joy.  1 Thessalonians 2:19, 20.  The crown we work for as believers is not a hat with jewels in it but people in whom we have invested our time, energy and money.  Let’s exhaust all our means for the sake of showing the attitude of Jesus who invested everything He had to save a world that doesn’t really seem to want Him.

If we invest in earthly security more than eternal, our rewards will be small, for earthly security is fleeting and temporary at best.  Our reward in heaven is the friends we make for the kingdom here and now.  So let’s exhaust our means and energy on the family of God—and by that I mean increase the numbers of disciples.  I believe Jesus tells us we need to be as shrewd about eternal investments as the world is about earthly.

Outside Fellowship

A man has his father’s wife.  And you are proud!  Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this?  1 Corinthians 5:1b, 2.

I never liked this passage much because it sounded so harsh and hard-hearted toward the man under church discipline.  (And, by the way, I’m not using the word “church” as a metaphor, symbol of an organization or a building, it’s the people who follow Jesus as the Christ.)  Anyway, my problem with this passage is that I thought the man would feel ostracized, left out and alienated by the punishment.  I’ve heard some in the body of Christ call this type of thing antithetical to the salvation message, which means they either ignored the Scriptures like this discussing it as additions of a later time or they called it an outright fabrication.

I don’t enjoy making others feel like outcasts or aliens, so my trouble with this subject stems from my desire not to hurt anyone.  Yet I can’t escape the clear presentation of Paul’s argument here.  Considering what the man did I understand his concern, but as far as I grasp the subject, he only took his father’s concubine because Paul didn’t say he took his mother, which in their day meant someone who was a lesser wife.  Since his dad must have had two or more wives, taking one wouldn’t seem all the problematic until one takes into account covetousness and theft of a love and loyalty belonging to someone else.

The punishment goes against everything I’ve been programmed by the sixties leaders of acceptance to believe—i.e. “I’m ok, you’re ok” or it’s all good.  What we call “dis-fellowship” is really making whoever we are pushing out of community feel bad, hurting their self-worth and ostracizing them for their natural tendancies.  The reasoning might sound like this,  “These two people fell in love.  They couldn’t help nature’s demand on them; they had to go with what was good for them…”  You know the rhetoric.  From the text it sounds like this guy was flaunting his choice by bringing her to the dinners and worship times with the other followers of Jesus, yet no one appears to have rebuked him or took him aside to confront his sin.

The believers at Corinth were sincere about their commitment to Jesus.  How I know this is in the the second letter to them Paul commends them for their obedience then recommends they restore the fallen brother to fellowship.  Look at the wording here:  If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you, to some extent—not to put it too severely.  The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him.  Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.  I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.  2 Corinthians 2:5-8.

What was his punishment?  Dis-fellowship.  He was not allowed to continue the sin and remain in the community of believers at the same time.  As long as he justified the sin of adultery with his father’s wife, he could not join in the fellowship time.  This pretty much sums up their punishment.  Now that may not seem so harsh to some and way too harsh to others, but in my view I don’t think we get it as well as we should.

For someone to be dis-fellowshipped they must have fellowship.  To make the point more pointed, for someone to feel the sting the discipline of being outside the community of believers brings, they must have experienced and valued the richness inside it.  If the lesson of being outside the community is going to be effective, first we must make sure that it matters to the person being asked to leave.  This man broke faith with the covenant of those who follow Jesus by doing something outside the nature of his Lord and Savior, therefore he had to be rebuked.  The context of the passage suggests that for a time he stubbornly held onto his stolen wife for obvious reasons, but the determination of the body of Christ isolated his sin like a diseased limb and shut him out from infecting the rest of the them.

I think this is what Jesus meant by “if an eye offends you, pluck it out; and if a hand causes you to sin, cut it off” for neither body part causes sin on a physical scale, rather it is in the context of the fellowship of Christ we see people as spiritual parts of whole body.  It is better to enter the fellowship of the kingdom without a limb or an eye than to let a diseased and infected person who refuses to reform to continue to spread their sickness.  Sin is a disease and Jesus’ presence through the Holy Spirit is the only cure.

For the punishment to do its work, this man had to have experienced solid, rich, loving and deep friendship with his brothers and sisters in the faith, otherwise he would have simply resented and hated them then gone on his way. Now there are many in the world and currently in the church who claim this method is antithetical to the principle of love.  The body of Christ is a hospital for sinners not a haven for saints, right?  Yeah, for sure, but the language we have misappropriated somewhere along the line of history is the separation of the words “sinners” and “saints” as mutually exclusive.  Saints in the Scriptural context are sinners washed in the blood.  The reason they are washed in the blood is because they have sinned, confessed and repented.  Let’s put that last sentence in modern vernacular:  They did wrong, recognized it, admitted it and switched directions with their  behavior through the power of the presence of Jesus.

The man must have returned his father’s wife for it sounds like from the text he repented and now desired fellowship again.  Wow!  That in itself is a testimony to how close these people must have been, how incredibly important their connection became to be to them and what a deep seated love they grew because of their shared relationship with Jesus.  Paul’s firm “expel the immoral brother” turned to “forgive and comfort him” once the dude turned away from his sin.

Here’s another lesson we need to glean from this situation:  They did all this punishment with horror and sorrow!

There wasn’t this severe, condescending or austere “we’re-perfectly-sinless” mentality going on but a real knuckle biting hard decision to deal with someone they all loved deeply who wouldn’t repent.  Stoning someone we don’t care about is easy, but dealing punishment to those we love is distressing to the nth degree.  It should hurt us, it should stress us out and we should never do it unless love is the motivation.

A child who disobeys and runs into the road receives punishment, not out of careless indifference or judgmental harshness but out of a desire to teach them to be more cautious in the future and to preserve their lives in health.  The same can be said of this method of dealing with sin.  Unrecognized sin infects the rest of the church; and by “unrecognized” I don’t mean people don’t know about it, rather they refuse to either bring it out into the open or admit it as sin.  We get so scared to confront those who do wrong we end up over-compensating and running the other way. We do this for various reasons, like we hate confrontations, fear of offending others, fear of hurting someone’s feelings, or fear of being found out ourselves, so we avoid dealing with the problems around us.

I am not sinless and neither are you.  This doesn’t mean we can’t deal with blatant unrepentent sin in our midst.  Look at what I just said, then take it apart:  we deal with sin that is not recognized as such or is being held on to without turning from it.  In other words, the person who sins needs to not only recognize his or her sin but stop it when confronted.  If someone is given to rage, they need to begin the process of learning self-control.  This doesn’t mean they won’t fail and fall back into their old habit, rather every time they fail they admit their failure and release their anger.  After a while of turning toward godly responses of gentleness and self-control, the hold rage has on them will begin to wan.

This is what the body of Christ is for:  heal sinners and make them saints.  But what’s odd about this is that the moment we accept Jesus we are saints.  Our sainthood is based not on our sinless condition but our connection to Christ.

A Little Help from My Friend

Hi, folks, this note was put on a forum where I’m a member and this friend wrote about her search for God.  I thought it would work very well here, so I grabbed it because I thought it said everything in such a real and substantial way.  Dani lives in Australia where she’s pursuing a counseling career.  Her journey to this place she talks about below has taken her through some very painful places as well as some pretty bizarre alleyways.  I will use pronouns for the name of the man she mentions but otherwise it is written just as she wrote it.

A christian physcologist meant God as the unknown one when he said “The desire God has placed within us is wild in its longing to pursue the One who is unknown.  Its capacity and drive is so powerful that it can only be captured momentarily, in moments of deep soul communion or sexual ecstasy.  And when the moment has passed, we can only hold it as an echo, a haunting of Quicksilver that flashes a remembrance of innocence known and lost and if we have begun to pass into the life of the beloved, a hope of ecstasies yet to come.”  Previous to this he had mentioned moments of spiritual transcendence from no transcendent sources.

I know these moments, I had my first one 3 yrs ago, with (my friend), me first and only, I have never given to anyone what I gave to (him), the trust, closeness I didn’t even know I had it to give.  We never had a sexual relationship or even kissed, but I feel more “one” with him than with anyone else.  When he ended things I thought I would die.  Living with the pain of unfulfilled promises and desires was so intense it nearly killed me.  Then to make the pain go away I tried to kill the desire, then I tried to fill it with other people and things.  Finally I realised through reading that I needed to learn to live with unfulfilled desire.  That God could use these unfulfilled desires, that they were part of being fully alive.

Now I am living with the unfulfilled desire and it’s not so much a pain as a hunger for “something” and this hunger is what drives me to try to understand who God is, and what he wants from me.  I NEVER understood what God really wanted it, it didn’t mean anything to me, seemed an abstract concept…. and I would read what everyone wrote on this site and I sometimes envied them.. and I didn’t know what they meant…

Now I do… 2 nights ago, after reading this God told me what HE wanted from me… He simply said “I want what you gave to (your friend)”  and for the first time ever  really understood, I used to sit on the floor rest me arms on (friend’s) knee’s and just look up at him while he talked… I never cared what he talked about as long as we were together, and I could hear his voice, see his smile, breathe his air, I trusted him with all of me.  This is what God wants (and more) but first I need to deal with what I know, and what I know of me – is what I gave and shared with (my friend), and I understand that much and I can give that to God… I had some incredible moments of intimacy with God, that night, I know that they are but a poor shadow of what he wants so share.  But finally it is a concept I understand…

Incredible to think that God used someone who claims not to believe in him to teach me how to love Him… and it’s taken me 3 years to see why he was in my life, and WHY I HAD TO LET HIM GO. God could not come to me and teach me and work with the hunger when I was not hungry…

I get it finally, and the pain was all worth it, God is good,  What lengths he goes to, to pursue my heart

The Cut of the Sword

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.  I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  Matthew 10: 34.

Sometimes I’m so guilty of forgetting this truth.  The word of God which is the sword of truth comes to divide between soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.  Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.  Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.  (Hebrews 4:12, 13.)

How do we think to escape the penetrating eyes of a God who reads the heart’s motives?  The division spoken of in Matthew is between a person and his or her closest human connections–or the joints and marrow of our existence.  In essence we see this everyday of our lives in Christ.  The choices we make either make a compromise with the shadows or lead the way as a light through the dark of this earth’s twisted byways.  No one is safe from the divisive nature of God’s love for the world resents such boundless love based on the guidelines of righteousness.  It’s strange to say but the world would rather accept  and free a sex offender than give into the borders of God’s love, who’s Word says such a person must pay the penalty for their sin while on earth.  This latter truth doesn’t say anything about their eternity, however, but does declare strict boundaries for public actions.

Those who would follow Christ to the cross and beyond to His resurrection will be rejected by the rest of the world who in an effort to avoid death altogether, run right into its eternal clutches without seeing the warning signs glaring all around them.  It’s unavoidable that we will face opposition to our choice to follow the Man of Sorrows.

Jerome said something Sunday morning (very early I might add) that stuck in my head (paraphrased, of course),  “Those who face the Judge better be sure their fire insurance is paid up because everyone enters the kingdom with smoking coat tails.  This means if any of us have sinned, we must confess it and repent as soon as we’re aware of it.  If we have a problem with another person, we must quickly make it right so that nothing will stand in the way of our connection with God.”  He wasn’t saying our salvation would be forfeit exactly but our transition into the kingdom would be far more traumatic if we have not built our spiritual house with good materials.

Our choice to follow Jesus means we have forsaken all other teachings as authoritative for the authority of the Scripture.  This doesn’t mean we don’t see truth in those other ethics or celebrate the good in them, rather they are not our bottow line or first and last word.  In doing this we paint a big sign on our back which says “kick me” on it.  The world doesn’t like its own all that much because the fighting and discord demonstrate the chaos in its thinking, but it becomes absolutely united when confronted by the message of the gospel–I mean who wants to hear “repent and submit”?  This should serve as a warning to those of us who believe in Jesus as the Christ, at the same time we shouldn’t be all that surprised when professed “believers” misuse the Name for the sake of worldly gain or placement.  Paul claimed the world was dead to him because of Christ, how many Christians can say the same?

Yes, we are to work with our hands to provide for our families and the church; yes, we are to live quiet lives of light so the world sees our example.  And as far as it depends on us we must live at peace with all humanity.  Yet facing this as our responsibility doesn’t negate the reaction of the rest of the world to the message we teach, preach and live out loud.  The opposition to the Word of truth will come not just from those outside the walls of Christian faith but inside it as well.  Our belief will be challenged from inside by people we call our brothers and sisters in the Lord.  Why?  “God made man upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes.”  Solomon.  The world comes to the church in order to find the peace they see in the true believer, yet rejects anything about the church or Christ that doesn’t fit with their core desires.  Jesus warned us to beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing infiltrating the church.  Those who grow discouraged with the church because of the hypocrites in it seem to forget the meaning of their own faith.

Unless those of us who follow Jesus remain true to the Master despite the fakes who run after selfish gain from the truth, who will represent the Master to both the hypocrites and world?  In essence, we are all hypocrites in some form.  None of us is perfectly Christlike and those who might want to portray their walk as better than others imediately set themselves up for scrutiny from not only the church but world.  No, a humble realization of our own clay feet is vital to a clear true witness.

The moment we step into such a faith position, however, we set ourselves up for being cut off from those we value.  I find it strange the gospel brings this on in others because the teaching just doesn’t seem to be all that divisive.  Yet, it is and the proof can be found in 2000 years of persecution, political take overs, power hungry church leaders and martyrdom.  When we stand for the message of Christ in its totality as truth, our closest associates will push us away.

Here’s the kicker, however, we need to chew and swallow:  This separation must not ever be for obnoxious attitudes, presentation or relationship problems we cause.  In other words, if someone pushes me away, it must come as a result of them rejecting the positive change in our life and thinking.  Yes, Jesus demands radical change; yes, He makes radical claims; yes, we choose to follow the way through a very narrow gate.  Paul tells us those in Christ become the smell of life to those who being saved but the smell of death to those perishing.  Have you noticed, people don’t like to be reminded of their bad habits.  Even if we don’t say anything at all verbally, our example and lifestyle shouts volumes.

As far as it depends on us, we must live at peace with the world.  But this doesn’t mean peace will reign because the world is not a peaceful place.  When Jesus said world would reject us, He meant it.  He also said the only way to be accepted by them is to cave to the pressure the put on to conform to their way of thinking and behaving.  Then they will love us as one of their own–which is to say, until it’s inconvenient to their own plans to do so.

Yes, the Word of the Lord is two edged sword which will divide loyalties, connections, motives and convictions.

The Compliment

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work.  If one falls down, his friend can help him up.  But pity the man who has no one to help him up!  Ecclesiastes 4:9, 10.

Most of the time when we use the word “compliment” we are saying something nice about someone else.  Yet there is another meaning which gets used less now than it did in bygone eras, I’ll have to use it in a sentence:  Those two compliment one another.  Meaning they benefit, complete and take care of one another.

The church is supposed to be this kind of atmosphere.  What one cannot do, another steps up to fill the gap.  None of us can be completely independent or self-sufficient.  Those who live this way (if you can call it “living”) seem self-reliant and okay, but really they steel themselves against the need they feel inside.  Sure they might have shut themselves off to the reality or believe they have extricated themselves from needing anyone, but the only reason anyone does this is to avoid being disappointed.

 This is an area where I lack wholeness (another word for “perfection” in Biblical terms).  I don’t really know how I came to feel the outsider, it might be that I just took it more to heart than other kids, whatever it was, I know that I felt left out of a lot of relationships.  So I began the trek into the world of books so I could find some kind of connection with people.  In books I could hear people’s thoughts, get their motivations and find some sense of belonging–even though merely as an observer.

As I entered music more and more, it also pulled me away from others in an odd way, for I began to meet them through music almost exclusively.  I used my guitar to attract them and then the songs to hold their attention.  I honestly felt nothing else I offered gave them a reason to stick around.  Of course an attitude like that leads to misunderstanding other people feel the same need.  In the late sixties and early seventies the pop world emphasized individuality to the point everyone felt like worlds unto themselves, though there were definitely pockets of people teaching commonality and community.  Songs and posters telling us no one can know how we feel programmed a generation into isolation.

Yet the songs did know how we felt or we wouldn’t have related to them.  We can’t escape our need of each other and shouldn’t want to, but fear keeps us out of reach.  We desperately crave community and acceptance all the while we are attempting to escape its clutches or control.  Being on the outside of this social turmoil has its advantages because people like me stand back and observe, though our viewpoint is many times skewed by resentment and feeling ostracized.

Let me stop here to make clear I don’t feel this isolation anymore, not since I gave it up for Jesus.  He brought me into community, although He worked pretty hard to change my fear of people into a genuine love for them.  By the time I turned 25, I let go of much of what held me back from church body.  I am only telling my experience to show you what I know about being outside the community and it’s taken years of redirection and education in the Word to get me admit I needed them.

One of the reasons, however, I struggled to give it up to any church was the way many of them seemed to force a political, social or particular doctrinal agenda.  I am an odd blend of SDA, hippy rock n roll and Evangelical…How could I help but be such since I grew up SDA but have accepted a more ecumenical stance?  Many arriving to the community of believers from such strong churches as Catholicism and Pentecostalism find they still hold certain POV from their past and incorporate these into the group in which they find themselves.

Our tribal, social strata, nationalistic and other affiliations have been greatly destroyed by the sixties in an effort to preach the better truth of shared humanity.  Yet many have tried to throw the baby out with the bath water by shunning any emphasis on the racial differences to escape the insidiousness of racism.  While I understand this as white man, as a Christian I find it repulsive and godless.  The differences between us racially would be best served if we celebrated our heritage where it is noble and rejected what showed itself as ignoble–but doing both with open discussion and without blinders on of any kind.

The lesson for the church is our disparate abilities compliment and serve one another. 

The abilities themselves give no one more or less inherent value for they are just another means for the follower of the Master to wash one another’s feet.  As in my last blog entry where I quoted Paul discussing the different gifts, we serve one another with these abilities, all the while avoiding the trap of the world’s perception of some being better than others.  Again, here’s how our Master taught us to behave:  Jesus called them (the disciples) together and said,  “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you.  Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  For even the Son of  Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.  Mark 10:42-45.

So you see we have a mandate to keep our hearts from vying for position or status in church.  It is so pronounced a teaching in the NT, Jesus repeated it several times in various ways.  All of us from pastors to ditch diggers belong to one body and no one holds more power or honor than others.  A pastor who honors his or congregation above himself/herself demonstrates the attitude of Christ as an example for them to follow.  The ditch digger who earns less than most demonstrates his or her greatness in the church by becoming wise in the things of God through His Son Jesus Christ.  Both use their gifts and abilities to serve the church; both are worth the life of the Son of God; both demonstrate the commonality and community the world lacks by warming their brothers and sisters, bearing their burdens for a time, washing their feet when they are dirty (rebuke, correction and teaching in righteousness) and giving of themselves to the betterment of the body.

Without this kind of loving service to one another, the church is just a religious collection of people lacking any life or vitality, and completely misrepresenting the nature of Jesus Christ to those who watch them.  As the Bard wrote years ago, “All the world’s a stage…”  On that stage where the cross casts its shadow should be inacted the principles of unity through diversity Jesus so emphatically taught before His death.  In our daily routines and fellowships we must complete in others what they lack.  Paul said it better,  We apostles have been put on display at the end of the procession… 

If this is how one of our greatest theologians thought of himself and his compatriots, how should we consider ourselves?

There is a reason why some are not preachers and others are.  I’ve met preachers who cannot even drive a nail.  I know a member of one my churches who gets confused by almost any kind construction yet is a lawyer and intellect.  The former truth doesn’t make him an idiot nor does the latter make him superior, rather it makes him able to service others in a way they can’t help themselves.  Yet people like me who are gifted at driving a nail and shaping wood complete him.  I’ve met carpenters who are deep philosophers but will never be clerical or writers; I’ve met clerical people who cannot think spatially.  Each completes in the other what they other lacks and, hopefully, serves to lift the other up.

This is what being family means through the view of the cross.

Latte Machines

In the last two weeks I’ve noticed a decidedly odd taste coming out of my latte machine.  It’s sort of like old coffee or bath water being thrown in the mix.  I checked the inside where the fresh water goes and it smells okay, then the underside where the steam goes through the grounds, it was a little dirty but nothing untoward (it’s been worse).  

This morning I made my latte, let all the steam out as usual, then sent fresh water with no coffee grounds in the carafe to flush out the metal screen.  This done, I wiped the screen as clean as a bachelor is want to do with a paper towel in hopes I wouldn’t have to do any more.  We’ll see tomorrow.

Paul calls the gifts the Philippians sent him a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.

What happens when our gifts to God begin to have an odor to them?  What do we do about it when our attitudes begin to stink?

I know from my own life it’s sometimes fairly impossible to pinpoint the cause of all that moldy, mildewy odiferousness, because the problem lies under piles of garbage in my life.  There are places in my apartment that smell like a cat sprayed somewhere, but I can’t find the exact spot where it happened.  I’ve killed most of those spots, but there’s one in my office I can’t find–picture me on my hands and knees going around the floor and lower part of all my recording equipment sniffing to find the source–not once but several times.  I do this many times with my relationship with God.

I believe as we grow accustomed to clean living and right standing before God, our insensitivity to our own bad spiritual hygiene grows less and less, so we’re able to smell something ugly in our souls.  I don’t know what your problems are, but I’m guessing they are just as stinky as mine because both of us need Jesus.  Yet He came precisely to wash us with water from the River of Life, to put a clean robe on us washed in His blood, and baptized us with His Holy Spirit inside so that we learn to know through this what it feels and smells like to be clean.

No one is exempt from being aware of their own smelly condition once they bath in the water of life.  It comes naturally to know the difference between someone who smells clean and one who hasn’t bathed in a while.  I believe the more mature we grow in the Lord, the more sensitive our spiritual olfactories grow.  It’s probably one of the main reasons “mature” Christians become so critical of younger Christians.

Yet it shouldn’t be this way at all.  As older brothers and sisters, we should remember all of us begin as babes in Christ.  If we take that analogy far enough, we see that someone had to change our spiritual diapers many times before we were able to keep clean on our own through Christ.  The point of discipleship is for those able to teach the Word to discipline those too young to grasp it all yet.  True maturity in Christ or any other walk of life realizes the stages of growth we all must go through, accepts the responsibility with joy and teaches the young not only through playing and words but example.  A truly mature follower of Jesus grows merciful, gracious and gentle with others because their Master treats them this way.  Maturity critiques without being merely negative; troubleshoots without causing undue trouble.  A mature believer doesn’t need to shout to get a point across because they’ve learned the quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of fools.  Love accomplishes far more effective change in the lives of humans than force or criticism.  When a person knows they matter, they grow far more willing to adjust their attitudes and behaviors.  In other words, once they know what it’s like to be clean, they begin to recognize their own state more readily.

My latte machine might just be tired of dealing with Gladstone (a suburb of Portland) water, which has a lot of minerals in it and leaves rings around my tub.  It might also be that the poor workhorse has seen its better days–it is, after all, over ten years old.  Whatever the case, I’ll continue to care for it since we’re friends.  I don’t throw out familiar stuff just because it gets a little worn out, instead I become even more careful to care for it and preserve it.  Plus, I don’t have the extra money to go buy a new one.

I want to grow like this in my witness, discipline of others and teaching.  I pray that when I smell something bad in a younger believer’s spiritual underwear, I won’t treat it like a witch hunt to crucify them for being too young to realize they just soiled themselves.  I would much rather gently clean them up, work with them to be aware of the spiritual potty over there in the bathroom and reward them every time they do the right thing.

As to my latte machine, here’s hoping my efforts this morning worked.

The Puzzle of Me

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.  I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.  And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.  Romans 7:14-16.

It’s been a long time since I first read this passage.  I’ve heard sermons with take after take on the subject of what Paul set out to convey, each of with a preference affected by their own personal struggle with our human nature.  Self-help people would criticize this as defeatist rhetoric; conservatives bring up the argument that Paul couldn’t have been talking about actual sin but the problem of original sin in his thought life or temptation.  The liberals reason this whole chapter gives them freedom to not worry about being righteous at all as long as they are loving and nice to everybody.

Personally, I’m somewhere in the middle.

I believe Paul is doing his level best to convey the need for righteousness, yet at the same time empathizing with our total lack of ability to even get our “want-to” to work.  Instead telling me I have a license to go out and just let it all hang out, this passage tells me that our battle with our sin is not easy nor something we even want to win a lot of the time.  What’s nice about Paul’s rant here is that he explains why.

Verse 17:  As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

I don’t think Paul ever abdicates responsibility for his sin, instead he explains how his sinful nature has a will of its own–one in rebellion against God.  There are two natures at war with each other fighting for control.  This epic struggle is universally ours as human beings.  When I hear preachers say that we are more than conquerers sometimes, I cringe, because I see them leveling their anti-sin lasers at their sheep in a way that is both unrealistic and unhelpful.  We are more than conquerors through whom, guys?  Jesus alone.

For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.  What a wretched man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord!  Romans 7:22-25.

Those two natures don’t ever give up either.  Some of us will have more trouble with the old man than others, but this should never give rise to disdain, condescension or a feeling of superiority from those who don’t, for the moment we move in those directions, we are held by the sin of comparison pride.  Our pride should be in our progress as measured against our past and Word of God, nobody and nothing else (see Galatians 6:4, 5).  When we see a weaker brother or sister struggling with sin in their lives, falling back into it and constantly getting back up to stagger on, we should give them an arm or shoulder to lean on.  As St. Francis said,  ”We are His hands, we are His feet…”  Jesus will give them the will and the way just like He does us, but I wager most of the time He’s waiting on His sons and daughters to step up to the plate and encourage the weak.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  Ephesians 6:12.

Our biggest enemy is denial, which grows out of the pride of comparison.  We hate being weak so we work out some other explanation for our failure to be like Christ.  We hate falling but love our sinful pleasures, so we work out a theology which either allows us to go on like this indefinitely or we live tragic Christian lives.  I’m sure there are other ways to deny our sinful natures existence, but I want to focus on our need to be honest with ourselves.  Let’s look this thing square in its ugly face and call it what it is:  knowledgeable or unwitting rebellion against God.

This means the man who struggles with porn must confess that he’s looking for his own way to sexual pleasure rather than God’s.  It also means that a woman who seeks any security outside of the Word of God and His promises must confess her lack of faith and lust for control over her circumstances.  These examples are not gender specific but general examples of our common war.  We have a need more than ever of honesty with ourselves and our fellowships.  It’s the only way to healing in Christ.  A sickness which is not acknowledged eventually kills its host, for where no intervention takes place, the disease spreads unchecked.

Sometimes I can’t figure out the closest person to me:  Myself.  I want to serve God with a zeal and will, though at the same time I feel timid, weak and ineffective.  All of God’s servants went through similar feelings.  Samuel felt sorrow for Saul’s rebellion, Elijah felt like he was alone in his service to God, etc.  Instead of believing the world’s mistaken POV on Christianity, I say we discover our true heritage in the fact that everyone struggles.  It’s one of the most encouraging things about God’s Word to me:  these heroes of Scripture weren’t infallible and definitely didn’t have it all together, but they accomplished impossible things for God by simply being His instrument in the right place at the right time.

The gospel encourages us to keep getting back up on our feet after we dive or trip into the mud.

O, that last phrase “trip into the mud” probably put some of our hackles up, huh?  I understand why, because so many use their weakness as an excuse to continue jumping into the mud, like the little boy who came home from the pond all wet after his mother told him to stay out of it.  She said,  ”Didn’t I tell you to tell the devil, ‘get behind me, Satan!’?”  He replied,  ”I did, Ma, but then he pushed me in!”

Jesus did say there were those who could cause His children to sin (see Matthew 18:1-9; Luke 17).  The truth is we are all weak towards something, so we are to be on our guard against it by constantly submitting to Christ.  This means focusing on our relationship with Him in every context imaginable.  Though this is the goal, it is not what we do.  The encouraging truth is:  Though we love sin, God is willing to work with us and steadily wean us from our addiction to it.  He does not treat us as our sins deserve but shows mercy and grace.

Our response to this?

Well, it should be gratitude which results in a greater love and desire to obey.  For some this attitude grows more slowly than others, depending on the willfulness of the character, but the progress can be seen clearly if we stick around long enough.  It took Paul thirteen years or more to grow into the dynamo Christ planned him to be.

I must say, though I understand all of this in my mind, snapping out of the desire to get my own way right now is something I admit isn’t a part of my force of habit all the time.  In some areas, yes, I automatically turn to God, but other areas I have to actually turn my eyes to God with a force of the will He has instilled in me by His Spirit.  For it is God who works you to will and to act according to His good purpose…

The secret to conquering sin?  Submission to God.  The reality of our ability to do this?  For some it will be easier than others, depending on the amount of time spent in slavery to sin, but it doesn’t depend on our strength of character or our purity, but His Spirit filling our hearts and minds with the atmosphere of heaven. 

Never be deceived into thinking the war mentioned in the Bible is more about governments than it is for men’s hearts.  Politics definitely plays a part but is mostly merely a distraction to the main event playing out in the hearts and minds of humanity.  We are the battlefront, we are the war zone, nowhere else is there more of a struggle than for our attention and loyalty.

Do not be misled:  ”Bad company corrupts good character.”  Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God–I say this to your shame.  1 Corinthians 15:33, 34.  Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.  Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me–put it into practice.  And the God of peace will be with you.  Philippians 4:8, 9.

I don’t understand myself.  In my inner being where God renewed my sense of person, I want Him more than anything, but in my flesh I want what I want when and where I want it.  Please let’s not fool ourselves into believing the humanistic argument that if we just think good thoughts, concentrate on good things and become good people we will be able to conquer this nature of ours.  Our only hope was and still is the cross, therefore I am determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

After thought:  Isn’t ironic our greatest place of victory is the place of our death?