CASTAWAY

God calls us to community within His family, a fellowship purchased with holy blood. When we reject the Second Commandment to love others we are relegated to the solitary confinement of our ego, pacing the prison cell of “self.” Left alone to poke around in the drifting fog of our own mind we become isolated and self absorbed, ultimately incapable of even recognizing our own isolation. To be an island adrift in the sea of humanity is a self dominating choice. To dwell within the community of God is a gift of grace: The imputing of His agape love into our hearts provides both capability and capacity to truly love others as we so easily love our “self.” No man is an island except by choice.

PIGGYBACK IS GOOD

"Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It's not about certainty, but about trust" (Flannery O’Connor). “Believe,” the verb of faith, means much more than giving mental assent. The verb means to trust in, put one's confidence in, rely upon, and cling to -- to actively place one’s trust in something. We tend to let the noun “Faith”, which means firm persuasion, define its verb “Believe” giving mental assent without the corresponding action element which makes “Believe” a verb. This is, of course, the meanings in the Greek.  Unfortunately, there is a significant difference between the Greek and English meaning of the word "Believe" which further compounds and clouds our understanding. “Believe”, in English, simply means to have a conviction about something, to think something is true divorced from active trust, which does not necessarily change our lives. “Trust” is assured reliance on something, and TRUST CHANGES OUR LIVES BECAUSE WE ACT UPON IT. Remember the old analogy where a person says they can carry another person on their back across a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Believe says "yes, I believe you can do it", while trust says "I'll get on your back." When you see the word “Believe" in the scriptures replace it with "Trust", than stop and climb up on God's back -- He won't let you fall.

TRUST

We may not always have clarity during trying times but we should always have trust.  In seeking clarity we are tempted to cease from trusting God, to step from “being” back into “doing.”  But, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” I can see this godly man, called blameless by his God, setting on the trash dump scraping his oozing sores with a clay shard and thinking "Lord, whom have I but Thee.  Only You have the words of eternal life."  We must trust Him.  There is a tension between the will of God and the promises of God, between what is and what is to come, between the day to day and the supernatural, between the seen and the unseen.  And we often don't know the way.  There's a tension in the unknown that will come if we allow it, but this tension opposes trust.  So if I perish, then I perish, so be it!  But I will trust God!  Stop now, still your heart and listen to your spirit commuting with the Holy Spirit of God.  What is it that you hear echoing down the corridors of time eternal?  It's a multitude of saints, the general assembly and church of the firstborn shouting "Amen!  So be it!  Trust the Lamb of God for He is worthy."  Join with them now, shout it out aloud -- "HE IS WORTHY"!  He who put my wandering feet in His stocks, and keeps close watch on all my ways, tracing my footsteps one by one and setting my boundaries lest I wander too far --  it is He that keeps me, for I am truly His (Job 13:27). He who holds my life-breath in His hands and controls all that happens to me -- it is He who keeps me and I will trust Him (Daniel 5:23).  Come life or stingless death -- I will trust Him. FOR I AM MY BELOVED’S AND HE IS MINE, SO I CAN REST ASSURED, BECAUSE I BELONG TO HIM!

NEVER EVER ALONE

"For He [God] Himself has said, I will not in any way fail you nor give you up nor leave you without support. I will not, I will not, I will not in any degree leave you helpless nor forsake nor let you down (relax My hold on you)! Assuredly not! So we take comfort and are encouraged and confidently and boldly say, The Lord is my Helper; I will not be seized with alarm, I will not fear or dread or be terrified. What can man do to me"? (Hebrews 13:5, 6, Amp. Bible)

In the Greek and Hebrew languages statements are repeated for emphasis. There are only three places in the Bible where a truth is repeated three times for maximum emphasis: In Isaiah and Revelations the angels shout Holy, Holy, Holy, declaring God's holiness, and here in Hebrews where God declares emphatically we are never ever alone. Note that most translations do not capture this powerful statement embedded in these three negatives, but they are in the original text (reference Wuest Greek New Testament).     

BLING BLING

We all quote scriptures all the time. Someone says something, some synapses link up and out pops a scripture, or part of one... sort-of, regurgitated in our recollected form. The problem is we haven’t always made sure we understand the truth contained in our quote, truth embedded in the context of the parent passage. When we take a Biblical text out of its context we produce pretext, what Webster calls ostensible reason, something that is put forth concealing truth. Now there are those who pretext as a lifestyle –we’ve all heard them – using pretext as proof text to “prove” some scriptural hobby-horse, some belief they want everyone to ride with them. Beware of beliefs packaged in “too good to be true” self indulgent blessings that stoke the fire of “other love”, love directed anywhere other than God and His Kingdom... especially if money changes hands. Sometimes we simply need to turn the TV off and trust our Daddy. 

Rappers created a word – it’s apparently easier to learn language if you make your own up – the word “Bling”, to describe their flashy oversized fake jewelry: If it is gaudy, glitters and looks valuable it is Bling. Some people in the body of Christ spew Spiritual Bling espousing half-truths, contextual misfits, which stroke our fleshly desires like a good massage. Remember: God hides His truth in plain sight – in the context. The Apostle Paul commended the Bereans for searching the scriptures daily to see if he was telling them the truth (Acts 17:11). Now if fact checking the Apostle Paul was a good thing, maybe we should be a wee bit more careful before we accept something as truth – after all it is our own salvation we are cautiously working out with reverence and awe (Phil. 2:12, Amp.). So when our best friend... or our neighbor... or our pastor... or that guy on TV with the big hair and the perpetual smile, throws out a truth-ball, don’t get Blinged! Dust off that old book on the corner shelf, carefully turn those brittle pages and search the scriptures for yourself, paying close attention to the context while considering all related passages. Prayerfully let the Holy Spirit teach and confirm God’s truth... as the Bible interprets itself. Oh, and lets guard our own mouth too... don’t be a Blinger!

GOD IS THE OBJECT

“Have faith in God.” Faith is firm persuasion, conviction, to believe in, trust in, cling to and rely upon God. Faith is based on fact, who and what God is, and produces realistic hope. God is the object of our faith in this verse. Some erroneously interpret this verse as “Have the God kind of faith”, where faith is misconstrued to be the object of God. God neither has nor needs faith for this is a one sided dependency proposition, He’s the God and we are the man! Likewise some put their faith in what they want from God, healing, financial help, relief from the adversities of life. But the need should never be the object of faith, merely the reason for exercising it. The object of faith is always the Lord Himself, who knows what we have need of before we ask and will only give us good gifts that accord with His purpose for us – good from His perspective. And as to His purpose: “You shall be perfect.” Perfection (gk., teleios) is spiritual maturity, the emanating attributes of Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-control. In a word, the Fruit of the Holy Spirit. Our loving Father is constantly at work in us “both to will and to do”, equipping us to carry out His will, then reminding us it is “for His good pleasure” and “well pleasing in His sight.” It is noteworthy spiritual maturity has little to do with gifting or ministries, and everything to do with character, the character and nature of our savior reproduced like reflected light in and through us. If we love God we are the called of God, “called” denoting not only the call of the Father to a wayward heart but the acceptance by the receptive heart – “the called” as a completed act. All things of life, the good, the bad and the ugly are used by our loving Father to mold and shape us into sons and daughters reflecting the attributes and nature of His son. God wastes nothing, especially pain. As C.S. Lewis so eloquently put it “God whispers to us in pleasures…but shouts in our pain.” In this way all things of life, life’s circumstances, produce good in accordance with the Father’s purpose. If it’s a “thing” God uses it to produce the object of our faith in us – God in us transforming us into Himself. This is a good thing! (Mk. 11:22; Matt. 6:8, 7:11, 5:48; Gal. 5:22-23; Phil. 2:13; Heb. 13:21; Rom. 8:28)

THE SAFEST PLACE TO BE

The civilized view of Jesus is that He is a cross between superman and our mother.  He always shows up just in time to protect us and save us from disaster.  His purpose is to ensure our safety, our convenience, our happiness and our comfort.  We all know the safest place to be is in the center of the will of God, right?  Just ask John the Baptist or Stephen or Paul - or Jesus at Golgotha, after His gut-wrenching prayer in the garden of Gethsemane: “My Father if it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken from me.  Yet I want your will, not mine” (Matt. 26:39 NLT).  This cliché, “the safest place to be is in the will of God” is taken from the diary of Corrie Ten Boom with a significant loss of contextual understanding, for Betsy, Corrie’s sister, wrote these words while they were in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. Corrie “lived” to tell the story but Betsy and the rest of Corrie’s family died.  Betsy’s statement was a declaration that to walk in the character and nature of God is always the right choice regardless of outcome, consequence or circumstances.  Her rational was that it was God’s will that their confinement area be infested with fleas because it kept the guards from coming inside and finding their Bible.  This statement was never meant to be justification for choosing the path of least resistance, least difficulty, and least sacrifice.  Somewhere along “The Way” the movement of Jesus Christ became civilized as “Christianity”.  The reality of Christ became a religion of man and we convinced ourselves that God’s optimal desire for our lives was to insulate us in a spiritual bubble where we risk nothing, sacrifice nothing, lose nothing and are safe.  Why does it hardly ever dawn on us that God may have higher priorities for us than keeping us safe, prosperous and healthy?  God’s will for us has little to do with our comfort - it is all about our contribution!  God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance - our life should count for His Kingdom.  We should remember the Greek word “martys” is translated both “witness” and “martyr” in the New Testament, and is where we get our English word martyr.  John the Baptist understood what it meant to be a witness of Christ. God is not safe!  But He is just and good!

SEEING IS PERCEIVING

Man has five physical senses or gates, taste, touch, smell, see, and hear, and one spiritual sense, the Holy Spirit speaking through our spirit into our thoughts, with which to know the physical and spiritual worlds. Of these the physical senses of sight and hearing, and the spiritual sense are primary.

God’s power and majesty may be seen, through our physical senses, from His creative works (Rom. 1:20). From these visible physical things we should and must perceive and understand, through our spiritual sense, the invisible reality of a creator behind it all. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed - ordered and established - by the word of God, creating the visible from the invisible (Heb. 11:3). God’s creative will is the basis for all physical reality. This is a statement of faith, which “sees” with the spiritual sense the invisible as the true reality wherein our hope of salvation resides. So knowledge of God as the creator of the entire physical world leads us to knowledge of God as Savior, and King of an invisible world. This is a picture of how our physical senses take us from the visible through our spiritual sense and the invisible, to a saving knowledge of an invisible God and the faith to believe. The mind thinks, the soul feels, but the spirit, in concert with the Holy Spirit, knows.

GOD I GOT NOTHING

“Now godliness with contentment is great gain.”  I suppose we all have our own definition of godliness, mine plays off the idea of piety and devotion toward God that is both an attitude and a manner of life: Worship rightly directed, manifested in conversation, conduct, sacrifice and prayer. Or perhaps we should just say exhibiting the character and nature of Christ.  When we add contentment, spiritual equilibrium in the midst of both favorable and adverse circumstances, to our godliness God promises great gain... gain beyond our expectations. Now some suppose this gain to be some physical, tangible blessing we will really enjoy, but God’s new covenant promises rarely invoke physical blessings since He has already prepared a place for us -- inconceivably grand to our puny earth-bound minds – and glorified bodies that will defy the laws of physics -- for our eternal enjoyment. He seems to think this is enough. God’s word does focus on conditions of the heart and matters of the spiritual realm, for He is actively engaged in inputting His nature into us.

That considered I believe the great gain from the marriage of godliness and contentment is Joy, the second fruit of God’s Spirit. This Joy of the Holy Spirit is calm delight... peace with a smile, based in the sure knowledge of our two-fold position in Christ. First, we are... this very moment, seated in the heavenlies with our Lord. How this works is a mystery known only to God, but our human spirit in union with the Spirit of God is in Christ, who is seated at the right hand of the Father in Heaven. This is our spiritual position... our spiritual unity with the Godhead during earth-life. Second, we have the Blessed Hope in our Lord’s soon return to fetch us home ... to be with Him forever. This is our physical position... a life of expectant hope in our physical reunion with the Godhead... soon... in the twinkling of an eye. The reality of our two-fold position in Christ brings Joy... Joy which never needs to strain beyond itself... Joy that is strengthening.

Mere mortals tend to confuse God’s Joy with happiness, but happiness is the result of a pleasant “happening”, a gift, a kind word, a new toy, some event that momentarily strokes our nature.  Like a sharp knife on sheetrock or a new pair of shoes worn in the rain, happiness all too quickly wears out and is gone in a twinkling of an eye, waiting for another “happening” to fleetingly appear. It’s just the finicky way we are wired. But the indescribable Joy of the Lord just gets better and better as we learn to find our true happiness in Him. A five year old was asked by her mother during bedtime prayer if she wanted to tell God anything. Having just listened to her mother’s petitions for their needs she responded “God, I got nothing.” A five year old does not understand delayed gratification but God’s saints should. We have the elixir of the Holy Spirit as a down payment, a sure guarantee that our Lord will return for us and take us home to be eternally with Him. God we got everything... we got Your Son!